AA LANDSCAPE URBANISM AND HK WORKSHOP EXHIBITION DEC 2010











Indexing Yantse River Delta was a collaborative effort between the AA Landscape Urbanism Ma and the Landscape Department at HK University. The final outcome is being exhibited at the Shanghai Study centre until the 6th January 2011 Shanghai, China. Special thanks to Dorothy Tang and Vincci from HK University.

AALU exhibition in Shaghai @ Architecture SH Gallery opens 14th December 2010


AALU is opening an exhibition presenting the work of a joint workshop held by AA-Landscape Urbanism and the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Time: 18:00 December 14, 2010

Location: University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Centre

上海市北苏州路298 邮政博物馆副楼
298 North Su Zhou Road, (near Si Chuan Road)

The exhibit will continue until January 6, 2011, and is open for public viewing.

Critical Territories exhibition, Tehran, Iran



From the 25th December to 30th December AALU and Groundlab are opening the exhibiton: Critical Territories "From Academia to Praxis" at Artist forum in Tehran, Iran. More information coming soon...

Landscape Urbanism RA Forum

15 November 2010 at Royal Academy of Arts

In the Reynolds Room, a John Madejski Fine Room

The scale, forms and inevitable indeterminacy of landscape all fit well with the challenges of working in today's urban environment, and is thus a source of ideas and inspiration for architects. This event looks at this emerging movement, called landscape urbanism, and how it promises to connect nature and culture more deeply than ever before. Speakers include Eva Castro and Alfredo Ramirez both of Groundlab and the Landscape Urbanism unit at the Architectural Association, Peg Rawes, Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett, and landscape architect, Andrew Grant.
More info at:

AALU OPEN DAY 3rd NOVEMBER 2010



Each year, an international and diverse range of Crits are invited to offer new perspectives on the last year projects of Landscape Urbanism at the AA. This will open up the possibility of actively contributing to the (re)definition of landscape urbanism as a new operative field.
This year the open day is on the 3rd of November 2010 at the AA Lecture Hall from 10:00 A.M. onwards.

AA LANDSCAPE URBANISM NEW WEBSITE OCTOBER 2010


AA LANDSCAPE URBANISM is lauching is new website please visit at: www.aaschool.ac.uk/lu
“The AA Graduate School’s Landscape Urbanism MA programme is a twelve-month studio-based course for students with prior academic and professional qualifications. The Programme offers a collective environment in which to construct a mode of practice whereby the processes, techniques and modes of operation that have historically modelled the landscape are integrated into the domain of urbanism. This is seen as a way of enabling it to cope with the new and varied scales at which it is currently being challenged to operate

Recovering Waterscapes | AA Visiting School Mexico City 5-14 January


Water has historically been a major concern for the viability of Mexico City; posing a huge challenge at a metropolitan scale, with infrastructural, social and urban implications. The scarcity of water, the increasing cost of the resource and its short-sighted management, together with infrastructural changes currently taking place – major drainage and wastewater treatment works plus plans to control and prevent flooding and landslides – all present opportunities in the recovery and management of water. With the idea of integrating water back into the landscape of Mexico City and trigger the regeneration and reconfiguration of the urban realm, The AA is organising a Visiting School in Mexico City called "Recovering Waterscapes" in which all issues associated with water will be addressed, infrastructually, historically, politically and architecturally.

To participate apply online here

Application forms can be download here

and applications can be submitted to: visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk

for more information please visit:

http://mexico.aaschool.ac.uk

AA Symposium Mexico City







AA Symposio in Mexico City: From Academia to Praxis, 11 October
The director of the Mexico City Visiting School Alfredo Ramirez has organised a symposium at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City on Monday 11 October 2010.

This one-day event of lectures/presentations given by staff and alumni of the Architectural Association was a preface to the AA Visiting School in Mexico City in January 2011. The event was an opportunity to present the work and research methodologies being developed at the Architectural Association with AA graduates.

AA lecturers and guests invited to the symposium shared and commented on their own research ambitions and the use of these methodologies in practice and education. At the same time Brett Steele discussed the role of schools of architecture and his vision for the future with a distinguished group of Mexican practitioners and educators. The symposium aimed to contribute to the exchange of pedagogic ideas and it will confront the leading issues shaping architecture, design and urban culture at the outset of the 21st century.

Guests and lecturers included:
Brett Steele (London)
Michael Rojkind (Mexico)
Derek Dellekamp (Mexico)
Juan Carlos Sanabria (Costa Rica)
Jose Maria Nava (Mexico)
Kevin Mccleland (USA)
Alfredo Ramirez (London)
Carolyn Aguilar (Mexico)
Edgar Payan Pacheco (London)
Jose Arnaud (London)

Douglas Spencer lectures at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 14-10-2010


Abstract

Both landscape and infrastructure are territorial practices. Each functions as a kind of ‘groundwork‘, shaping, organising and servicing bases upon which forms of social, economic and ecological relations operate. What, though, is their relationship? Landscape design and landscape urbanism have tended, in recent years, to follow an agenda set by infrastructural development, in both its technical and economic senses, or even to identify themselves with, and as, infrastructural practices. Since this development is itself largely driven by processes of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism, however, greater critical reflection on the position of design, its own agency and its practice in relation to infrastructural matters are required. Exploring the possibility of landscape urbanism as a critically-informed practice, and the design processes by which it might operate, this lecture will draw upon examples of recent work in China by graduates of the Landscape Urbanism programme of the Architectural Association, London.

AALU Director Eva Castro opens a solo exhibtion in berlin




NODAL LANDSCAPES- Solo Exhibition at Deutsches Architekturzentrum Berlin: Plasma Studio inaugurates Formel X- a new series of exhibitions where offices of the up-and-coming generation will present their architectural positions. The series’ focus is on design methodology & design processes. With the new series, FORMULA_X, the DAZ will open discussion on the facets of sustainable ideas and visions.

AALU FINAL PRESENTATIONS SEPTEMBER 2010







The final presentations of Landscape Urbanism MA on the 14th and 15th september showed the the final thesis-projects of students to an external board of crits. Invited crits included: Theo Lorenz, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Andrew Yau, Jeff Turjo, Max Kahlen, Holger Kehne, Ross Adams, Jon Goodbun and Tanja Siems.

AA LANDSCAPE URBANISM IN TOPOS MAGAZINE


An essay by Douglas Spencer "Landscape urbanism at the Architectural Association" has been published in the latest issue of Topos Magazine:

"A hybrid of urbanism, architecture, and landscape architecture, landscape urbanism has evolved in recent years as a cross-disciplinary response to the conditions defining the contemporary city"

LANDSCAPE URBANISM PROJECTS REVIEW EXHIBTION 09/10







The work in progress of AALU students 0910, together with the work of the Landscape Urbanism Unit from Costa Rica it's being shown at the Architectural Association Projects Review exhibition until the end of the month.




















LANDSCAPE URBANISM PROJECTS REVIEW EXHIBTION 09/10






The work in progress of AALU students 09107 it's being shown in the Architectural Association Projects Review exhibition until the end of the month.

Landscape Urbanism lecture series updated



Each year, an international and diverse range of speakers are invited to offer new perspective on the issues that concern the practice of Landscape Urbanism at the Architectural Association. This will open up the possibility of actively contributing to the (re)definition of landscape urbanism as a new operative field. This year the lecture series will run from the 26th may to the 17th of June and speakers will include: Chris Reed, Alex Wall, Alberto Clementi, Steve Graham, Erik Swyngedouw, Alejandro Zaera, Simon Marvin, and Mike Hodson.

LANDSCAPE URBANISM LECTURE SERIES: STEVE GRAHAM

An investigation of the ways in which the disruption or destruction of the infrastructure systems that continually sustain contemporary urban life act to reveal the usually hidden politics and geographies of the city.

LANDSCAPE URBANISM LECTURE SERIES: ERIK SWYNGEDOUW

Nature and its more recent derivatives, like ‘environment’ or ‘sustainability’, are ‘empty’ signifiers. There is no such thing as a singular Nature around which an environmental policy or an environmentally sensitive planning/architecture can be constructed and performed. Rather, there are a multitude of natures and a multitude of existing, possible or practical socio-natural relations. The obsession with a singular Nature that requires ‘sustaining’ or, at least, ‘managing’, is sustained by a particular ‘quilting’ of Nature that forecloses asking political questions about immediately and really possible alternative socio-natural arrangements. I conclude with a call for a politicization of the environment, one that is predicated upon the recognition of the indeterminacy of nature, the constitutive split of the people, the unconditional democratic demand of political equality, and the real possibility for the inauguration of different possible public socio-ecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and equality.

LANDSCAPR URBANISM LECTURE SERIES: ALEX WALL, THE URBAN SURFACE - PUBLIC, GLORIOUS, URGENT

The Urban Surface - public, glorious, urgent"Programming the Urban Surface" is the title of an article Alex Wall contributed to Recovering Landscape, edited by James Corner and published in 1999. In the early days of landscape urbanism, the article looked at the emergence of projects, nascent theories and the potential significance of an "extensive" design of the urban landscape. Since its publication, the twin forces of urbanization and climate change bring a far more urgent focus on the performance of public space and the public realm. The lecture will consider the design of the urban surface with respect to the city as a context "as found," to questions of density, social equity, and as Philippe Rahm has put it, "public space becomes the place where the quality of air is defined.



AA Landscape Urbanism tutor and Groundlab Director Alfredo Ramirez will lecture at the International congress “Designing Ecotown”in Pescara Facoltá di Architettura,Italy, on 13th may. In “From the academia to the praxis” Alfredo will present the research of the AALU MA and its application in the large scale urban projects Groundlab has been developing recently.

www.unich.it/dart/ecotown.htm