As final juries draw to a close, graduating architecture students are left with a crucial decision to make. While some might take a plunge into the scary real world looking to gain professional experience, others might choose to further reinforce their architecture education and skill set. Of the latter, most enroll in an MArch program, or take well-trodden paths into urban design and planning, landscape architecture, historic preservation, or theory and criticism. But in an increasingly complex world faced with myriad problems, what about those graduate architects looking to bolster their education in other related disciplines that will give them a more unique perspective on design problems? Here, we shortlist seven alternative, interdisciplinary graduate programs offered by architecture schools worldwide.
Architectural Association: The Latest Architecture and News
7 Alternative, Interdisciplinary Graduate Courses for Architects
Nomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers
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Architects: AA Museum Lab
- Year: 2017
Director of London's Architectural Association, Brett Steele, to Become UCLA Dean
Brett Steele, Director of London's Architectural Association (AA) since 2005, has announced that he will become Dean of UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in August 2017. Although American-born, Steele has since become a naturalized British citizen. He studied at the AA, the University of Oregon, and the San Francisco Art Institute respectively, before working as a Project Architect at Zaha Hadid Architects in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
AA Summer DLAB Program Applies Computational Design to Concrete
Update: We've added a video of the process to the article!
This year's Architectural Association (AA) Summer DLAB program culminated in Weave.X, the final working prototype of three-dimensionally interwoven concrete structures. Designed and fabricated by 21 participants from 11 countries in July and August, the prototype explores computational design, geometry rationalization, material behavior, and robotic fabrication as applied to concrete and robotic rod-bending techniques. The result is a network of self-supporting concrete branches that envelop an amorphous enclosure.
A Forward-Minded Retrospective: Cedric Price Works – 1953-2003
Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective, written and edited by Samantha Hardingham, is a two-volume anthology bringing together for the first time all of the projects, articles and talks by British architect Cedric Price. Co-published by the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the publication will be launched on 14th October 2016, celebrating Price’s illustrious career as an influential thinker, philosopher, teacher and architect.
18 Useful Research Resources for Architects Online
For those of us that aren’t based out of a university—and even for many who are—finding research resources that cover the topic you're interested in can be a challenge. But they can be found, and thanks to the internet your search no longer needs to be limited to nearby libraries. In fact, many world-renowned libraries and magazines are now working to digitize important parts of their collection, while a number of online organizations have sprung up with missions to improve access to information. To help you identify some of the most useful, we’ve put together a list of 18 free websites that offer scholarly articles, publications, photos, videos, and much more.
"There is Much More at Stake Than Simply Being In or Out" – Rem Koolhaas Speaks Out Over a Potential EU 'Brexit'
In a recent interview with the BBC, Rem Koolhaas (OMA) has spoken out against the campaign seeking to remove the United Kingdom from the European Union, upon which the British people will vote in a referendum next week. Reflecting on his time spent at London's Architectural Association (AA) in the 1960s and '70s, Koolhaas fears that advocates for withdrawal may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.
If you look at the arguments to leave you can see this is a movement of people who want to fundamentally change England back into the way it supposedly was before.
7 Early Drawings by Famous Architects
Drawings from the private collection of Alvin Boyarsky, Chairman of the Architectural Association (AA) from 1971 to 1990, will be on display as part of Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association. Hosted by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union from October 13 to November 25, 2015, the free, public exhibit will also feature panel discussions with Nicholas Boyarsky, Joan Ockman, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Michael Webb and Dean Nader Tehrani. Read more about this event and the drawings exhibited after the break.
Self-Aware Nanobots Form Futurist Megastructures in this Thesis Project from the AA
Architecture is a swarm, and a self aware one at that. That's the vision presented by noMad: a built environment made of Buckminster Fuller-like geometric structures that compile themselves entirely autonomously, according to data gathered and processed by the units. Developed by Architectural Association students Dmytro Aranchii, Paul Bart, Yuqiu Jiang, and Flavia Santos, on a basic level noMad's concept is fairly simple - a small unit of motors that is attached to several magnetic faces, which can be reoriented into different shapes. Put multiple units together, however, and noMad's vision becomes an entirely new form of architecture: non-finite, mobile and infinitely adaptable.
Applications Open For The 2015 AA Visiting School In Rotterdam
This year the Architectural Association (AA) Visiting School programme will extend its reach to the Dutch city of Rotterdam – a place which, "by some strange twist of geographical and historical fate, has the highest concentration of architects and architectural thinkers in the world." The workshop, which will run for two weeks in July, will explore issues of inhabitance, perception, and intensity through analysis and creative interpretation of Rotterdam’s 'core' "or, more likely, its multiple cores, invisible to the untrained eye." Based in the Shell Tower on Hofplein, students will be afforded the opportunity to observe and analyse the city from on-high.