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.