Community consultation is meaningless vacuous tick-box bullshit. It has become a decoy that developers deploy to shove unwanted projects down the throats of an unconsenting public. Its cringeworthy language of community empowerment is just thinly veiled power moves and lazy spin. The profession, the public, and the built environment would be better off without it.

Consultation Con is one in a series of debates rugby tackling six fundamental issues facing contemporary practice with a playful and combative format designed to ferment open and critical discussion. Framed by theatrically provocative opening gambits, a series of free debates will turn conventional consensus on its head.

We all assume that to quit architecture is to fail. Yet the vast majority of those who stick it out are sucked into a world of disempowered subservience to big business. Becoming an architect squanders the creativity and energy of those who are attracted to study architecture in the first place, robbing society and the individual of their potential. There is a better way. We should all quit architecture before it's too late.

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The Korean artists, MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho have teamed up with the design collective, Urban-Think Tank, based at ETH Zürich, to launch the newest version of the ongoing project, “News from Nowhere.” Past versions have appeared in documenta (13) in Kassel and the Sullivan Galleries of the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 2013. The “News from Nowhere: Zürich Laboratory” establishes an interdisciplinary and participatory platform to discuss the urgent social, political and economic issues. Located in the Migros Museum for Gegenwartskunst, the “News from Nowhere” exhibition brings together artists, architects, designers, scientists, and documentarians in order to discuss issues facing contemporary society. 

In 2015 Critical Concrete was founded with the ambition of promoting a new model: the refurbishment of abandoned places for social housing and cultural initiatives through summer camp programs centered around sustainable architecture and art in context. In this sense, we want to conceptually reconnect the artist to the amateur and foster the sharing of skills and knowledge between experienced practitioners and surrounding communities, material reuse and sustainable, ecological constructions.

Come to the Table is an installation made of reconfigurable elements that serve as a platform for dialogue. The construct is a framework to engage local architects, artists and thinkers in questioning What is the State of the Art of Architecture Today? Confirmed Panelists include Penelope Dean (Associate Professor, UIC), Vedran Mimica (Associate Dean, IIT)
and Ben Nicholson (Professor, SAIC).

As part of the CA Group’s lecture series, “Architour”, co-founder of Hamonic+Masson & Associés, Jean-Christophe Masson, will give a lecture at 15:30 on October 30th at the Ablues Design Exhibition Auditorium in Shanghai. For 2013 through 2015, “Architour” has as its theme “New Force of Architecture – Leading Young Architects”: each year, the CA Group will select nine young, global leaders in architecture (four from Asia and five from the West) to lecture on topics that cross typologies and disciplines, from architectural design, urban planning to interior design. Sou Fujimoto, Hirata Akihisa, Christian Kerez and Thomas Heatherwick were the series’ first speakers.

The project in the architectural design competition is called “Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense Museum.” This museum is a permanent, public and national institute and the aim in establishing it is providing required basis for deeper identification of Iranian Islamic Revolution and the period of the holy defense (the imposed 8-year war with Iraq), historical bases, the highlighted role of the Supreme Leader and Iranian people, events, realities, values and achievements of these two important eras in the contemporary history of Iran.

The Architectural Review is seeking the most exciting cultural buildings in the world completed in the last 5 years – from museums to performance spaces, galleries to libraries. This is your chance to be recognised on the global stage as a leading designer of cultural projects!

This lecture will discuss Terreform ONE, a non-profit design group that promotes smart design in cities. Through intensive projects, the group aims to illuminate the environmental possibilities of New York City and inspire solutions in similar areas globally. The group develops solutions for local sustainability in energy, transportation, infrastructure, buildings, waste treatment, food, and water. These solutions are derived from the interface of design, computation and synthetic biology.

At its 2017 Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, SAH will offer a total of 36 paper sessions. The Society invites its members, including graduate students and independent scholars, representatives of SAH chapters, and partner organizations, to chair a session at the conference. As SAH membership is required to chair or present research at the Annual International Conference, non-members who wish to chair a session will be required to join SAH at the time of submitting a session proposal.

Wood Design & Building Awards is the only North American program to annually recognize excellence in wood architecture. Entries to the 2015 program celebrate leading edge architecture.

Meet the challenge – take part in the International Student Competition of the LE:NOTRE Institute Landscape Forum! The competition aims to support integrated and holistic approaches to the Akamas landscape through multidisciplinary student teams elaborating planning and design proposals at various scales.

Imagine future cities full of gardens with flower carpets, full of playing children, humming bees and fluttering butterflies. Gardens that help to create a healthy environment, cool cities, collect rainwater and are adapted to the local climate. 

Architecture students and designers are called to define the home of the future under the theme ‘Living Tomorrow’. This is an idea-based challenge and seeks for conceptually sound proposals. The site can be of any size or form but limited to the Zimbabwean future context.

In collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Cal Poly LA Metro Program in Architecture and Urban Design, Caroline Bos, co-founder and Principal Urban Planner of UNStudio (www.unstudio.com), will speak about recent architectural, infrastructural and masterplan projects carried out by UNStudio. She will also introduce UNStudio’s Urban Unit and the approach to knowledge sharing recently adopted by the practice to enable the development, application and dissemination of practice related research.

An architecture lecture series society at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and the Built Environment in Aberdeen, Scotland. The society, 57°10, has been running for 27 years and invites guest lecturers to the school to talk about the ideas and projects explored by their practices. The society prides itself in being student led; providing lectures that will in turn inspire our future architects, perhaps on topics out-with the discourse of the school.https://www.facebook.com/FiftySevenTenSociety