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7 Alternative, Interdisciplinary Graduate Courses for Architects

7 Alternative, Interdisciplinary Graduate Courses for Architects  - Featured Image
The Harvard Graduate School of Design offers a "Master in Design Engineering (MDE)" in conjunction with the university's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Image © Flickr user peterhess licensed under CC BY 2.0

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.

Call for Applications: AA Visiting School Moscow

We start to accept applications for the participation in the Summer Visiting School ‘In-transition lab: Structure as an Urban Catalyst’. It is a joint project of Shukhov Lab, which is a research unit and educational space of HSE Graduate School of Urbanism, and London Architectural Association School of Architecture, the oldest experimental school in the UK which organises visiting educational workshops around the world each year. The course is aimed at current architecture, urban and media design students and young architects.

Nomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers

Nomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers - Temporary Stores, Beam, Column, HandrailNomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers - Temporary Stores, ChairNomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers - Temporary Stores, Table, BenchNomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers - Temporary Stores, Facade, ArchNomadic Bookstore in Milan / AA Museum Lab & Lars Müller Publishers - More Images+ 11

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.

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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.

The House of Politics - AA Visiting School Brussels

In AAVS Brussels you will experiment with film with the cutting edge film director Luis Cerveró. Film will be addressed as a critical instrument to inquire on the role of architecture in providing a space of representation for contemporary political bodies. Brussels, home of Benelux, EU and NATO, will be taken as a paradigmatic example, and the European Parliament as a concrete case study. The output of the workshop will be short films directed by the students and produced with the support of a specialized team from the HELB.

Panel Discussion: Architectural disAssociation

Architectural disAssociation - A reflection on the state of the education of architecture at the AA. Open discussion inviting everyone with an opinion of the school - students, tutors and alumni alike to retrospectively reflect on the state of the AA's unit system and speculate the possible future of its education. This discussion will have no panel as it is an open floor discussion.

AA Visiting School Hawaii

The AA Visiting School Hawaii is an architectural workshop dedicated to the investigation of flying machines through fabrication and geometry as well as performance and choreography.

From their earliest use as measurement tools for the city, the 2000 year old history of flying machines is deeply rooted in architectural investigations.

Gliding between its leisure vocation and its scientific relevance, we will immerse into this legacy starting from the world’s oldest from of air-craft: the kite. 

Debate: Pret A Habiter - Ready to Inhabit

AAgora is a debate platform based at the Architectural Association, London, which aims to shed light on relevant architectural topics. These debates take the form of an open-table discussion which encourages the audience to participate at any time. AAgora's third debate will be "Pret A Habiter" - or, Ready to Inhabit - Towards Nomadic Homogeneity, in the city through the sharing economy and Airbnb.

Debate: On the Chicago Architecture Biennial

AAgora is a newly-founded critical architecture debate platform at the Architectural Association in London, which aims to shed light on relevant architectural topics. These debates take the form of an open-table discussion which encourages the audience to participate at any time. AAgora's second debate will be "On the Chicago Biennial" - On Biennials, and how we define contemporary architecture.

Exhibition: Savage Architecture: Gian Piero Frassinelli, Superstudio and 2A+P/A

On the 26th of February 2016 the project Savage Architecture — an exhibition at Architectural Association of London and a book published by Black Square both curated by Davide Sacconi — will be presented in a symposium at the Italian Cultural Institute of London. The project recounts the research at the intersection between architecture and anthropology developed in the last fifty years by Gian Piero Frassinelli (former member of Superstudio) and his recent collaboration with 2A+P/A (architectural practice based in Rome).

Lecture and Book Launch: International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth

Join David Nixon at the Architectural Association on March 2nd for an evening lecture and book launch for his new book – International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth – which is published by Circa Press on 1 March. This book offers the first comprehensive account of the Station’s conception, design development and assembly in space and its publication coincides with Tim Peake’s current mission to the Station.

7 Early Drawings by Famous Architects

7 Early Drawings by Famous Architects - Featured Image
Superstudio, New-New York, 1969. © Superstudio. From the Collection of the Alvin Boyarsky Archive. Image Courtesy of Collection of the Alvin Boyarsky Archive

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.

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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.