By this, we mean those institutions surrounding and mitigating architectural and urban design practice; governing and licensing bodies, local authorities, those forces which are at once nebulous and pervasive, and which have more impact on the realisation of the built environment than the singular genius of any designer. We hope to question the validity of top-down institutionalism such as is represented by RIBA, ARB and other disparate bodies, as well as the agenda and parameters such institutions provide for architectural and urban agency, expression, and citizenship.
The conversation will take place inside Black Maria, a temporary event space housed inside the new campus for Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in London’s Kings Cross. As featured both online and in print by Blueprint, Black Maria is a commissioned installation, designed and built by Richard Wentworth & Swiss architectural practice, GRUPPE; watch a video of its construction here.
The event is free and open to the public; space is limited but you can register for the event. We’d love to see you there.
Speaker Biographies
Dan Hill is a designer, urbanist and author currently CEO at Fabrica, Treviso, the prestigious communication and design school-cum-think tank, supported by Benetton. Dan writes about urbanism, technology, design and much more in between, for Domus and at his singular blog, City of Sound. He recently published Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary with the innovative all-digital Strelka Press (2012).
Wouter Vanstiphout is a founding member of Crimson Architectural Historians, an extremely diverse Rotterdam-based practice engaged in city-making on many levels, from art exhibitions to policy advice; he is also Professor of Design As Politics at TU Delft. Recently Wouter has been writing a regular column discussing the intersections between current affairs and architecture for Building Design.
Jeremy Till is an architect, educator and writer, currently Head of Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design and Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of the Arts London. His extensive written work includes Flexible Housing (with Tatjana Schneider, 2007), Architecture Depends (2009) and Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture (with Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider, 2011), all three of which won the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding Research.
They will be joined by Shumi Bose, Assistant Editor at Blueprint Magazine. This event is made possible with the kind support of Refin Ceramiche and Openvizor.
See more information about the event.
