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Architectural Association: The Latest Architecture and News

A Lot With Little: Video Installation at the AA School in London Highlights Resource Efficiency in Architecture

Noemí Blager and Tapio Snellman are presenting a new video installation at the Architectural Association (AA) in London. The exhibition titled “A Lot with Little” set out to explore and showcase how architects can employ a more economical use of resources to create architectural works that are both sensible and sustainable. Previously shown in Germany, Switzerland, China, Czechia, the US, and the Venice Architecture Biennale, this London debut aims to highlight the global relevance of resource-efficient architectural practices. The exhibition is now on view at the AA School in London from April 26, until May 30, 2024.

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BAM Ranking 2023: Top International Master's Programs in Architecture Revealed

The annual BAM ranking of International Master’s Programs in Architecture aims to assist architects and students in identifying the top international Master’s programs globally. Assessing programs from various leading architecture schools, it evaluates degrees through a comparative approach developed by a panel of 15 professors and international experts. For this edition, different Architecture and Built Environment programs have been selected to be part of the BAM Ranking 2023, and 18 Universities worldwide were featured in the 2023 edition of the BAM Ranking.

Similar to the past few years, Harvard University, Columbia University, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid maintained their position at the top of the ranking. MIT has made the list with two programs, one focused on urbanism and the other on design. Moreover, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, made the list with their English Program for Master in Architecture. The ranking also features TUDelft (Netherlands), TUM (Munich), and TUBerlin (Berlin) in Europe.

The Architectural Association's EmTech and Hassel Design Pavilion Using Reclaimed Timber

The Architectural Association's EmTech and Hassel Design Pavilion Using Reclaimed Timber - Featured Image
© Studio NAARO

In collaboration with architecture practice Hassell, Architectural Association's Association's Emergent Technologies and Design (EmTech) programme created a reclaimed wood pavilion, exploring the convergence of computational design, new construction technologies, and material reuse. Titled Re-Emerge, the project addresses the issue of limited material resources, exploring the architectural potential of material recycling in the context of generative design.

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The 2021 Architecture Film Festival London Gives a Platform to Multiple Curatorial Voices

The Architecture Film Festival London, now at its third edition, fosters conversations around architecture, society and the built environment through the medium of film. Along with the International Film Competition, the 2021 programme, debuting on June 2nd and held online, will feature a collection of diverse thematic screenings, essays and events titled "Capsules", which offer a platform to multiple curatorial voices.

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Foresight - AA Visiting School Stuttgart

Never before have there been such fundamental uncertainties about our future. Obvious signs of climate change, a political landscape in flux, rapid advances in technology and their consequential societal changes are making us anxious about our personal life in the next decades.

The Laboratory is a cross-disciplinary initiative that brings together architects, artists, designers and researchers to speculate about the near future through an exploration of our social, cultural, spatial and technological present. What could the impact be onto our shared future? Avoiding dystopia, the workshop aims to come up with productive narratives about the future that try to

Apply now to join AA Visiting School Budapest 2019

Budapest-based Visiting School, is part of the world most prestigious and renowned architectural school - Architectural Association (AA). It will take place from the 2nd of August to 11th of August this year. In collaboration with prominent art and architectural institutions, such as FUGA, KÉK, IVANKA, and HELLO WOOD, all work will be exhibited during Budapest Design Week.

Zaha Hadid: Maker of the 21st Century

This article was originally published by Autodesk's Redshift publication as "Respect: Architect Zaha Hadid, Queen of the Curve."

In March 2016, when world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid died of a heart attack at age 65 in a Miami hospital, the news sent shockwaves through the architecture community.

The flamboyant British designer—born on October 31, 1950 in Iraq, educated in Beirut, and known as the “Queen of the Curve” for her swooping, elegantly complex designs—was a legend in her time. She had design commissions around the world, been awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2004 and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ gold medal in 2016, and transcended the old-guard strictures of a staunchly male-dominated profession.

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Storefront for Art and Architecture Appoints José Esparza Chong Cuy as Executive Director

José Esparza Chong Cuy has been appointed as the new Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture. Following the departure of former director Eva Franch i Gilabert to London as the new Director of the Architectural Association, the extensive international search to fill her shoes began. An architect, curator, and writer, originally from Mexico, Esparza Chong Cuy was named and will assume the position starting November 1st.

Storefront, a non-profit organization based in New York City, engages in the advancement of design and architecture with interdisciplinary dialogue through exhibitions and projects that aim to transcend geographic and ideological boundaries. Charles Renfro, President of Storefront's Board of Directors, remarks, "We are thrilled to welcome José to the helm of Storefront, the very institution where he began his curatorial career over a decade ago."

Manuel Zornoza of LATITUDE: "We Were Fascinated by this Idea - How do You Build a City from Scratch?"

Manuel N. Zornoza grew up in Alicante, Spain and, following studies in Madrid (UAX) and London (the AA), relocated to China in 2010 to avoid the economic crisis stifling architectural work in his home country. Over the last eight years, the young architect’s small but thriving studio has built more than a dozen projects, from shops, to factory space conversions, to a traditional Chinese hutong - all in China. But that’s not to say Zornoza’s left his roots behind. He now also maintains a small practice in Madrid, which handles projects in both China and Spain.

This interview was conducted on a bullet train ride from Beijing to Tianjin, where we ventured in search of the recent architecture that has brought so much media attention to this emerging metropolis.

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The Laboratory - AA Visiting School Stuttgart

Future eating, future drinking, future love, future working – what will our everyday life be like in the not too distant future?

The Laboratory is a cross-disciplinary workshop that brings together architects, artists and researchers to speculate about our life in the future. Participants are asked to develop written and drawn proposals about our life in tomorrow’s world through an exploration of our social, cultural, spatial and technological present.

The Laboratory will have input by experts from different fields such as architecture, nano science, entertainment design, trend research and photography. A series of field trips will explore centres of innovation

BAM Ranks the 20 Best Master of Architecture Programs in the World in 2018

Spain-based platform Best Architecture Masters (BAM) has revealed its inaugural ranking of the best postgraduate architecture programs in the world. Based on the QS Ranking by Subjects – Architecture / Built Environment, the rankings were selected by 13 educational-performance indicators, including quality and internationality of faculty, alumni, and postgraduate program.

Harvard's Master in Architecture II has topped the BAM ranking, followed respectively by TU Delft's Berlage Post-master in Architecture and Urban Design, and MIT's Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism. By region, Tsinghua University's Masters in Architecture was ranked first in Asia (#5); Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile's Magíster en Arquitectura in Latin America (#11), and Sydney University's Master of Architecture in Oceania ranks 17th worldwide.

The best master's degrees in architecture are:

Resilience and Adaptation

The Architectural Association Visiting School Amazon is organising for the fourth consecutive year a workshop in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest open to design and architecture students and professionals in which an experimental floating structure will be designed and constructed in collaboration with Atelier Marko Brajovic and Ecofloat.

Join us at AA Visiting School Budapest 2018

Budapest-based Visiting School, is part of the world most prestigious and renowned architectural school - Architectural Association (AA). It will take place from the 31st of August to 9th of September this year. In collaboration with prominent art and architectural institutions, such as FUGA, BVA, KÉK, Ivanka Concrete and Hello Wood, all work will be exhibited during Budapest Design Week.


Brief and Agenda

One lilac evening in New York, Jack Kerouac walked and dreamt of all that was beyond a ‘white man’. In Paris, Georges Perec roamed and exhausted a place by recording what happened when nothing happened. Stanley Brouwn’s participatory mapper,

Eva Franch i Gilabert Selected as the New Director of the Architectural Association

The Architectural Association has announced that Eva Franch I Gilabert has been selected as their new Director, following a public months-long search to replace former Director Brett Steele and interim Director Samantha Hardingham.

The AA School Community, consisting of students, staff and Council members, selected Franch i Gilabert from a shortlist of 3 candidates by a majority vote of 67%, the highest percentage received in a contested election since 1990. Over 1,000 total ballots were cast.

3 Shortlisted Candidates Announced in Architectural Association's Search for New Director

The Architectural Association has announced a shortlist of 3 candidates in the running to become the new AA Director, who will lead the direction of one of the world's foremost architecture schools and institutions.

Paving the Way: Celebrating a Centenary of Women at London's Architectural Association

This short essay was written by Elizabeth Darling and Lynne Walker, the curators of AA XX 100 a multi-media project celebrating the centenary of women in London's Architectural Association (1917-2017).

Zaha Hadid, Amanda Levete, Patty Hopkins, Denise Scott Brown, and Minnette de Silva are familiar names of women who were products of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). Less familiar are the women who paved the way for the global careers of these architecture superstars.

Established in 2013, the AA XX 100 project was initiated to tell the story of women at the AA, with the aim of commemorating the centenary (this year) of their admission to the school with an exhibition, book, and international conference. When the project began we didn't know the names of the first students but, four years on, we do, and in telling their story—and that of the generations of women who followed them—we see that their history is at once a history of the AA and architectural education, as well as a history of British and world architecture across the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Architecture Is Moving Into a Realm Where History Plays as Much a Part as Medium

In this essay British architect and academic Dr. Timothy Brittain-Catlin presents the work of Space Popular, an emerging practice exploring the meaning of and methods behind deploying virtual reality techniques in the architectural design process.

Architectural practice, especially in the UK, is moving fast into a realm where history plays as much a part as medium. But the ways in which architects work have been transformed entirely from those of the past, generating a fundamental conflict: how in practice does design through virtual reality use history? In the earliest days of fly-throughs we all realised that we could show our work to clients in a way that even the least plan-literate could understand. We could develop details three-dimensionally and from different angles, even representing different times of day. But what next? How do we engage historical knowledge and experience of buildings?