‘The Edwardians and their Houses’ on BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour

Timothy Brittain-Catlin presented an episode from his forthcoming book The Edwardians and their Houses on BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour last night. This told the story of how from 1900 the London County Council, controlled by members of the Liberal Party, transformed a district of industrial works and slums at the southern edge of the Palace of Westminster into an idealised ‘late Stuart’ residential quarter around the baroque church of St John, Smith Square.

Some of the finest buildings here, including 4, Cowley Street (pictured), were designed by the architect Horace Field, whose commercial buildings look as if they were the homes of prosperous Restoration merchants and were thus the harbinger of much interwar high street bank architecture. Appropriately, this house, which had been built as the offices of the North Eastern Railway, served as the headquarters of first the Social Democratic Party and until recently, the Liberal Democrats. Today the district serves as a fine example of a politically inspired residential area which looks as if it has ‘always’ been there.

The report starts at 45′ on BBC Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour.

Kent School of Architecture and Planning hosting Virtual Open Day

Kent School of Architecture and Planning are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a Virtual Open Day on Thursday 7th November from 11.00 –  12.30 GMT.

If you are interested in finding out more about the BA (Hons) Architecture course at the Kent School of Architecture and Planning, including course structure, entry requirements, portfolio advice, then please email ksapadmissions@kent.ac.uk to book onto our first ever Virtual Open Day in collaboration with KMTV.

This is the perfect opportunity to find out more about the Kent School of Architecture and Planning, and have your questions answered by our BA (Hons) Architecture programme director, Chloe Street Tarbatt and Stage 3 Coordinator Dr Ambrose Gillick who will be hosting the event.

FEW-Meter hosting one-day symposium: ‘Technology and Green Spaces’

Dr Silvio Caputo is leading the UK team in an international 3-year project, funded under the SUGI called Food-Water-Energy Nexus, which started in June 2018. The FEW-meter project aims at measuring the efficiency of urban agriculture in terms of resource consumption, food production and social benefits. Each one of the five countries involved in the project (UK, France, Germany, Poland and USA) will focus on a specific type of urban agriculture and a particular city. The UK will be looking at Community Gardens and City Farms in London, which have recently seen a surge of interest.

On Tuesday 29 October, the FEW-Meter project will be holding a one-day symposium showcasing the use of the latest technology in green spaces. Sessions covering topics surrounding technology, food, environment and access; plus a presentation given by key note speaker, Mike Hardman from the University of Salford.

The ‘Technology and Green Spaces’ symposium will be held at The Garden Room, St Luke’s Community Centre, 90 Central Street, London EC1V 8AJ.

For all staff and PhD students at Kent School of Architecture and Planning,  the event is free. Please contact Dr Silvio Caputo or Dr Victoria Schoen for registration. For other University of Kent staff who are interested in attending, please select ‘Concession Ticket‘ on the event page.

Sir Terry Farrell to give ‘Open Thinking’ lecture at University of Kent

Sir Terry Farrell will be giving a talk titled, ‘From China to Kent Towns and Villages’ on Friday 25th October at 6pm in Templeman Lecture Theatre as part of the University of Kent’s new ‘Open Thinking’ lecture series. This event is being jointly organised by The Canterbury Society, The University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Kent School of Architecture and Planning.

Sir Terry Farrell, CBE, is considered to be the UK’s leading architect planner, with offices in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. During almost 60 years in practice he has completed many award-winning buildings and masterplans including Embankment Place and The Home Office Headquarters building in London, as well as millennium projects such as The Deep in Hull and the Centre for Life in Newcastle. He designed the current Charing Cross Station as well as the MI6 Building in London, an exuberant work of postmodernism. Current projects in Kent include Otterpool Park, the proposed new Garden Town on the former Folkestone Racecourse site, and the UKC campus Masterplan.

The event will be preceded by a master class with Sir Terry, Kent School of Architecture and Planning’s MA Architecture and Urban Design and MArch students, and a group of architecture students from Lille led by Gilles Maury.

CASE Open Lecture: Professor Rohinton Emmanuel

The first CASE Open Lecture of the year will be given by Professor Rohinton Emmanuel, with his talk titled, ‘Architectural education in a time of climate emergency: thoughts on key challenges and future directions’ on Tuesday 15 October at 6pm in Marlowe Lecture Theatre 1.

We live in a rapidly warming world with limited time for corrective action. The contribution of built environment to the problem of climate change is considerable but many of the low-hanging fruits of actions to mitigate it are also found within the built environment, especially in cities.Based on my own world view of higher education in the 21st Century I propose to explore the key challenges facing university education at present and enumerate the architectural educational responses needed urgently to address the climate emergency. We will explore a set of initial ideas to transform architectural education to be fit-for-purpose to face this challenge and put forward ideas to move forward to a climate-sensitive design future.

Rohinton Emmanuel is Professor of Sustainable Design and Construction and Director, Research Centre for Built Environment Asset Management (BEAM) at Glasgow Caledonian University. He pioneered the inquiry of urban heat island studies in warm regions and has taught and consulted on climate and environment sensitive design, building and urban sustainability and its assessment, building energy efficiency, thermal comfort and carbon in the built environment. Rohinton was the Secretary of the largest group of urban climate researchers, the International Association for Urban Climate (2010-2013) and was a member of the Expert Team on Urban and Building Climatology (ET 4.4) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as well as the CIB Working Group (W108) on “Buildings and Climate Change.” He has also worked as a green building consultant (LEED certification) and has authored over 150 research publications, including An Urban Approach to Climate Sensitive Design (E&FN Spon Press, 2005), Carbon Management in the Built Environment (Routledge, 2012), Critical Concepts in Built Environment: Sustainable Buildings (Routledge, 2014) and Urban Climate Challenges in the Tropics (Imperial College Press, 2016).

He is currently the Coordinator of an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree Programme on urban climate and sustainability, MUrCS, as well as a Co-Investigator of a H2020 Project (OPERANDUM) on nature-based solutions to mitigate hydro-meteorological risks.

Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou speaks at Asia-Pacific Energy Sustainable Development Forum

Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou recently attended the fifth Asia-Pacific Energy Sustainable Development Forum, for the fifth anniversary celebration event of APSEC, held in Tianjin on 18-20 September. The forum was organised by APEC Sustainable Energy Centre under the guidance of Tianjin University and National Energy Administration China.

Professor Nikolopoulou presented the recent work on the Urban Albedo project, with a talk titled, ‘Developing an urban albedo calculator: an empirical model to predict changes in relation to urban fabric and solar altitude in London’. Urban albedo, the capacity of urban surfaces to reflect solar radiation, is one of the most important contributors to changes in outdoor temperature, intensifying the urban heat island phenomenon, where temperatures in urban centres are higher than the surrounding rural environs.

In addition to attending the conference in Tianjin, Professor Nikolopoulou also represented the University of Kent at the EIC Fair in Tianjin, and visited schools and agents in Beijing as part of her trip to China.

The Canterbury Diocese and Queen Anne’s Bounty

Timothy Brittain-Catlin will be joining Professor Catherine Richardson and Professor Kenneth Fincham of the Schools of English and History in an event on Saturday 28th September that celebrates the treasures of Kent’s diocesan archives. He will speak about the fascinating collection of late Georgian and early Victorian mortgage application drawings submitted by architects that can be found in the Archives and Library of Canterbury Cathedral. The full story is told in his book The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century (Spire Books) that was launched at the University in 2008 during the Lambeth Conference that took place here that year. The illustration seen here is the design of 1841 for the elevation of Stalisfield vicarage, between Charing and Faversham, designed by the architect F. Brown of Torrington Square.

The event, ‘LUCIT IN TENEBRIS VERITAS’: researching the archives of Kent’s Anglican dioceses’, will be held at the Kent History and Library Centre Maidstone, and more information can be found about it here.

 

First DARC Open Lecture of the year: Pablo Zamorano, Heatherwick Studio

Digital Architecture Research Centre (DARC) are pleased to announce their first open lecture of the year will be given by Pablo Zamorano from Heatherwick Studio on Tuesday 1st October at 6pm in Marlowe Lecture Theatre 1.

Pablo Zamorano is Head of Geometry and Computational Design at Heatherwick Studio. As head of the studio’s specialist modelling group, Pablo works across all studio projects providing expertise and guidance on new technologies and techniques, and the execution of challenging geometries. He has been instrumental on award-winning projects such as Coal Drops Yard. Prior to joining Heatherwick Pablo was based at SOM London. Pablo has lectured widely, and his personal work has been published and awarded internationally.

Translating complex geometry for real-world fabrication

The lecture will feature the work of Heatherwick Studio. Showcasing the processes behind their world-renowned designs, explore how the studio is engaging with emergent technologies and utilising Rhino and Grasshopper in the realisation of recently completed projects including New York’s Vessel, as well as their current explorations of mixed-reality in construction, to enable collaboration with local craftsman, ensure quality throughout the build process and allow designs to be pushed to their limits.

All welcome!

Chloe Street-Tarbatt wins RIAI Silver Medal for Abbeyleix Library

The RIAI Silver Medal is the highest award for buildings that have undergone a process of conservation and is awarded to the architectural practice by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, several years after the completion of the project so that the success of the building can be confirmed by the passage of time. This year’s medals were announced at a ceremony in Dublin yesterday, 19th September, and were awarded for projects completed in 2005-2007, 2008-2010 and 2011-2013.

Chloe Street-Tarbatt, BA (Hons) Architecture Programme Director, was the Project Architect for Abbeyleix Library which was awarded the RIAI Silver Medal for 2008-2010. She worked closely with the partner in charge, Shane de Blacam, over a period of four years (2005-2009) to bring this project to fruition. The library, which also includes a small gallery, is housed in the original market house located in the centre of the town, and has become an enormously popular community facility, set within a newly landscaped town square.

First KASA Open Lecture of the year: CJ Lim

Kent School of Architecture and Planning are pleased to announce the first Open Lecture of the academic year will be given by CJ Lim, titled, ‘Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-Warriors’ on Tuesday 24th September at 6pm in Marlowe Lecture Theatre 1.

The book represents a crucial voice in the discourse of climate change and the potential opportunities to improve the ecological function of existing habitats or create new landscapes which are considered beneficial to local ecology and resilience. The notion of the Smartcity is developed through a series of international case studies, some commissioned by government organisations, others speculative and polemic. Following on from the success of the first edition ‘Smartcities + Eco-Warriors’ (2010), this second edition has nine new case studies, and additional ecological sustainability studies covering sensitivity, design criteria, and assessments for ecological construction plans. The book concludes with two new essays on the romance of trees and the empowering nature of resilient landscape.

CJ Lim is the Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at The Bartlett UCL, and director of Studio 8 Architects. His research is in urban design/planning and architecture, focusing on issues of resilience, sustainability and the challenges posed through climate change, population growth, socio-economics, and the reciprocal benefits of simultaneously addressing the threat and the shaping of cities. CJ has authored 10 books including ‘Virtually Venice’ (2006), ‘Short Stories – London in two-and-a-half dimensions’ (2011), ‘Food City’ (2014) and ‘Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?’ (2017).

All welcome!