Realising Frederick Kiesler’s Endless House

Frederick Kiesler’s Endless House is regarded as one of the most visionary projects in the history of 20th Century architecture. It was a project that spanned almost forty years, developed through sketches, drawings, plans and models between mid-1920’s to the 1960’s but it was never built. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, considered it important to translate Kiesler’s architecture into reality.

Kent School of Architecture and Planning’s 3D CAD Technician, Julien Soosaipillai, built a digital model of the exterior shell from texts, drawings and photographs of Kiesler’s model for his unfinished Endless House project. This is the first step in DARC‘s current project to realise Frederick Kiesler’s ‘Endless House’.

Timothy Brittain-Catlin at the London Festival of Architecture

Timothy Brittain-Catlin will be appearing again at events during London Festival of Architecture, this year acting as chairman at two contrasting discussion evenings. Both events are planned by long-term supporters of Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) in the professional world. The first, which takes place on 6th June, is hosted by Proctor & Matthews at the Oxo Tower, and takes the form of a debate entitled From Boundaries to Belvederes. The discussion, with the participation of Dr Husam AlWaer, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Design and Evaluation, University of Dundee and Mark Newman, Archaeological Consultant, National Trust North Region, will focus on the definition of settlement edges, articulating the importance of the interface between public and private realms and identifying the thresholds between an inner inhabited and domesticated world and the wild landscape beyond.

The second event, Style Wars, will be a lively discussion on 26th June at the offices of Donald Insall & Associates about the use and meaning of style in architecture today, and it will complement the discussion on a similar theme held at KSAP at the end of last year. The speakers will be the architects Charles Holland, Amin Taha, and Tanvir Hasan, the lead director of Insall’s London office, as well as the architectural historian John Goodall, author of The English Castle and architectural editor of Country Life.

Kent School of Architecture and Planning launch new Digital Architecture Research Centre

Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) are pleased to announce the launch of DARC (Digital Architecture Research Centre).

DARC is the newest research centre at Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP) specialising in the application of digital technology in architecture. DARC will focus on the creative use of digital technologies to enhance design and fabrication possibilities for architecture and the built environment. The Centre has streams headed by its members:

  • Generative design and computational creativity
  • Digital fabrication and robotics
  • Digital visualisation and mixed reality.

The Centre is a new interdisciplinary direction for KSAP, founded on members’ expertise and international research profiles, it aims to promote an innovative interdisciplinary research environment exploring intersections between architecture and digital technologies.

If you’d like to find out more about DARC, and about the latest addition to KSAP’s postgraduate offering, MSc Bio Digital Architecture, email ksaadmissions@kent.ac.uk to join the free Google Hangout with Dr Tim Ireland, Director of Digital Architecture, on Wednesday 5 June at 14.00 BST.

Dr Tim Ireland to present recently published paper at 2019 Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics

Dr Tim Ireland, Kent School of Architecture and Planning’s Director of Digital Architecture, will be presenting his recently published paper entitled, ‘The Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information‘, at the 2019 Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics in Moscow in July.

The presentation, co-authored with Dr Jaime Cardenas-Garcia (University of Maryland) is entitled, A New Biosemiotics Paradigm: Bateson Information. Biosemiotics integrates theoretical biology with semiotics, a science on signification and meaning.

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. The paper seeks to establish a unified definition of information and claims a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, and provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities.

A key issue in reaching a singular definition of information is the problem of identifying how a human organism develops from a state in which its knowledge of the human-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent, to a state in which the human organism not only recognises the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it in its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens, from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively.

Dr Manolo Guerci to give talk at Sir John Soane’s Museum

Dr Manolo Guerci will be giving a talk titled, ‘The Great Houses of the Strand: an overview’ at Sir John Soane’s museum in London on Tuesday 4 June. Based on his upcoming book, ‘Great Houses of the Strand: the Ruling Elite at Home in Tudor and Jacobean London’, Dr Guerci will give an overview of the ‘so-called Strand palaces’ in London. For further information about the talk and to book your place, see here.

Dr Peter Buš to present at eCAADe SIGraDi 2019

Dr Peter Buš will be presenting his recent paper titled, ‘Large-scale prototyping utilising technologies and participation: On-demand and crowd-driven urban scenarios’ at the next eCAADe SIGraDi 2019 taking place in Porto with the theme of ‘Architecture in the age of the 4th industrial revolution’.

Dr Buš’ paper theorises and elaborates the idea of crowd-driven assemblies for flexible and adaptive constructions utilising automatic technologies and participatory activities within the context of 21st century cities. As economic and technological movements and shifts in society and cultures are present and ongoing, the building technology needs to incorporate human inputs following the aspects of customisation to build adaptive architectural and urban scenarios based on immediate decisions made according to local conditions or specific spatial demands. In particular, the paper focuses on large-scale prototyping for urban applications along with on-site interactions between humans and automatic building technologies to create on-demand spatial scenarios.

It discusses the current precedents in research and practice and speculates future directions to be taken in creation, development or customisation of contemporary and future cities based on participatory and crowd-driven building activities. As such, the main aim of this theoretical overview is to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the relations between technology and humans in the context of reactive and responsive built environments.

KSAP launches new MSc Bio Digital Architecture course

Kent School of Architecture and Planning are pleased to announce the latest addition to the School’s postgraduate offering: MSc Bio Digital Architecture. The new MSc in Bio Digital Architecture provides students with the skills and know-how to practice architecture at the cutting edge of digital design. The programme is designed to provide a theoretical basis of Computer-Aided Architectural Design as an academic discipline while simultaneously teaching the use of the computer for analysis of design problems and a tool for the generation of space and form.

Led by KSAP’s Director of Digital Architecture, Dr Tim Ireland, the course is primarily intended for graduates and professionals from a range of design backgrounds, including architecture, interior, graphic and urban design, who wish to develop computational techniques in architecture and gain the ability to use programming as easily as any other form of communication.

If you are interested in finding out more about the programme including course structure, entry requirements, career progression and more, please email ksaadmissions@kent.ac.uk to book your place on the MSc Bio Digital Architecture FREE Google Hangout on Wednesday 5 June at 14.00 BST. You can also read all about the course, click here.

Dr Nikolaos Karydis presents his recent work at the University of Warsaw

Dr. Nikolaos Karydis has been invited by the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw to present his recent reconstruction of the lost church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. This was one of the most influential Byzantine churches. Its use as a model for the church of San Marco in Venice has been well documented. However, we know very little about the origins of the church of the Holy Apostles itself. This is largely due to the fact that this church no longer exists and its form has mainly been studied through Middle Byzantine descriptions. Based on a new interpretation of these records, Karydis’ recent visualisation of the church of the Holy Apostles provides a new base for investigating its origins. The key to establishing these origins lies in the comparison of Justinian ‘Apostoleion’ with the coeval church of St. John at Ephesos. This comparison sheds light on the stream of architectural influences between Constantinople and the provinces. It also helps to gain a better sense of the development of the type of the cruciform domed basilica during the first half of the sixth century.

The lecture is part of the Faculty of History’s ‘Late Antique Seminar’ and is intended to open the conference ‘Clerics in Church and Society’. Further information about the event can be found in here.

Image: Justinian’s Church of the Holy Apostles: Reconstructed Section by Nikolaos Karydis

Howard Griffin speaks at Lyon Light Festival Forum

Howard Griffin, Director of the MA Architectural Visualisation programme, was invited to speak about his research into projection mapping at the Lyon Light Festival Forum in December.  The forum, which takes place as part of the annual Fête des Lumières, widely regarded as the inaugural and most famous light festival in the world, was attended by academics, lighting designers, projection artists and festival organisers.  Building on a recent article co-written with Dr Jane Lovell of Canterbury Christ Church University, Howard argued about the importance of understanding the nature of different projected installations and the effect this can have on their evaluation.  The article can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19407963.2018.1556674

The presentation coincided with the University of Kent becoming an associate member of LUCI (Lighting Urban Communities International), a network of cities and companies focused on urban lighting and festivals.  Howard is working with stakeholder and partners to develop plans for a Light Festival in Canterbury in the near future.

Timothy Brittain-Catlin speaks at Preserving the Recent Past 3

CREAte director Timothy Brittain-Catlin was selected to speak to an international audience at the recent Preserving the Recent Past 3 conference at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles last week. His subject was how the Twentieth Century Society, of which he is deputy chairman, won protection for British postmodern architecture last year through a campaign of events, talks, publications, and listing campaigns and challenges, and an approach towards understanding these buildings based on his book Bleak Houses: failure and disappointment in architecture. The work of the British architectural amenity societies such as the C20 Society was described at the conference by a senior figure from the World Monuments Fund as ‘far, far in advance of that in any other country’.

Preserving the Recent Past is the leading conference for all those engaged with twentieth-century building advocacy and conservation and was attended by delegates from all over the world. The last time the conference was held was in 2000, so this was an eagerly awaited event. The proceedings of the conference, including videos of all presentations, will be eventually be published online.