Designed for success: Spatial Design course is tops for graduate employability
96% of Spatial Design students graduating from UCF’s BA(Hons) Spatial Design in 2005/06 secured employment in the design world. In the highly competitive world of design this is an enviable employability rate both for the College and for potential future employers. 22 of the 23 Spatial Design graduates secured jobs as Architectural Assistants, Interior Designers, Exhibition Designers, Landscape Designers, Film Set Designers, Teachers, Animators, Visualizers and other design-related posts. The design projects worked on include: major planning and regeneration projects across the country (including the regeneration of Blackpool promenade), working as part of a team for promotional videos for the London Olympics, working on the design of retail outlets for Heathrow Terminal 5, exhibition design for multi-national companies and designing promotional material for UCF. One of the most important attributes required by .. [ read more ] »
University College Falmouth - Web site »

A Guallart building has been selected as an icon for the candidature of the EXPO 2012 in Wroclaw ( Poland )
Wroclaw city, candidate to celebrate the Expo 2012, has selected from the architect Vincent Guallart a building, as the main one of the Expo. The project that was the result of an international contest, for designing the Master Plan and selecting its principal building, has been already exposed by the Pole authorities to the Bureau International des Expositions committee, who has the responsibility to choose the city that will be in charge of the Expo 2012 at the end of 2007. The Guallart master plan has been awarded in the contest and the organizers decided to incorporate his main building to the candidature. The subject proposed by Wroclaw for the Expo is ... [ read more ] »
Vicente Guallart web site »

The Canadian Centre for Architecture presents Urgency
a public conversation with Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman on 8 June 2007
Major international figures of the architectural world, Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman will each address one topic they consider to be of vital importance and urgency in contemporary architecture. Following their presentations, the architects will be joined in conversation by CCA Founding Director and Chair of the Board of Trustees Phyllis Lambert. Urgency is a free event and takes place in the CCA’s Baile Park from 10 am to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and director of the Project on the City at Harvard University. OMA’s recent projects include the Seoul National University Museum of Art (2005), the Prada Epicenter in Los Angeles (2004), and the Seattle Public Library (2004). Rem Koolhaas received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000.
Peter Eisenman is a New York-based architect. Through his extensive theoretical writings and built projects in the United States, Japan, Spain, and Germany, he has influenced generations of architects and paved the way for the current digital avant-garde. His Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin received the Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter, in 2005. The CCA holds the comprehensive archives of Peter Eisenman, including drawings, prints, models, photographs, and documents covering his practice from the late 1950s to the present.
Urgency reflects the CCA’s ongoing exploration of critical issues facing architecture and contemporary society. The event is presented in conjunction with the 2007 Soirée Phyllisienne Ball on 7 June and forms part of a series of special events and programs in honour of Phyllis Lambert’s 80th birthday in 2007.
The CCA is an international research centre and museum founded in 1979 on the conviction that architecture is a public concern. Based on its extensive collections, the CCA is a leading voice in advancing knowledge, promoting public understanding, and widening thought and debate on the art of architecture, its history, theory, practice, and role in society today [ read more ] »
Canadian Centre for Architecture web site »

2nd Advanced Architecture Contest - Self-Sufficient Housing
The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia directed by Vicente Guallart - www.iaac.net –is issuing an international summons to architects, designers and students from around the world, inviting proposals for the construction of self-sufficient dwellings with an emphasis on exploring people’s capacity to self-construct their own homes.
The 2nd Advanced Architecture Contest directed by Lucas Cappelli - www.advancedarchitecturecontest.org - encourage in this edition of the Self-sufficient housing competition, the design of a “SELF-FAB HOUSE” using industrial or traditional craft-based techniques generated on the basis of the knowledge of the information age, such as digital processes, software-driven manufacturing, skills and know-how in the use of new or established materials, the strategic recycling of other chains of production or familiarity with the historical processes of the construction of habitats in natural environments, revised in the light of new standards of sustainability. The proposals must be digitally delivered in 3 PDF files DINa3 format. Registration is free. The prize (total value: € 39.500, 00) will be distributed at the discretion of the Juries following the bases scheme. [ read more ] »
Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia - web site »

Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X
Montréal, 8 February 2007 — From 12 April until 9 September 2007, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) presents the exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X, comprising ground-breaking independent periodicals from the 1960s and 1970s whose experimental ideas and innovative designs spurred this influential period in architecture. Curated by Beatriz Colomina and a group of PhD students at Princeton University School of Architecture, Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 expands upon an initial presentation of the exhibition in New York City with rarely exhibited original material from the CCA’s special collections of architectural periodicals and archives.
Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 begins in the Octagonal Gallery and infiltrates other spaces throughout the CCA. Highlights include original first editions of what later became major journals, such as Oppositions and October (New York), breakaway student publications Archigram (London) and Melp! (Paris), and a variety of scarce “underground architectural protest magazines” like Polygon (London) and Bau (Vienna) that reflect the era’s spirit of social activism. Assembled in this exhibition for the first time, these remarkable documents are of particular interest for their combination of avant-garde critical content with radical use of graphics and images, and they provide a unique view of a key period of architectural experimentation and innovation.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
An explosion of architectural little magazines in the 1960s and 1970s instigated a radical transformation in architectural culture. Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X takes stock of seventy magazines from this period which were published in over a dozen cities. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term “little magazine” was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals that appeared in response to the political, social, and artistic changes of the period. Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 investigates how a diverse group of international architectural magazines informed the development of postwar architectural culture and provided an important platform for innovation and debate. In addition to short-lived radical magazines, Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 includes pamphlets and building instruction manuals along with professional magazines that were influenced by the graphics and intellectual concerns of their self-published contemporaries.
If the little magazines of the 1960s and 1970s were the engine of an intensely creative period of architectural design, they also provided a space for architectural theory to flourish and an arena for critical discussion of the role of politics and new technologies in architecture. With their dissemination, these innovative and energetic documents established a global network of exchange among architectural students, architects, and theorists, as well as a means to situate themselves within the historical context of architectural publishing of progressive thought and design.
In keeping with the radical and parasitical nature of little magazines, the exhibition infiltrates various spaces of the CCA, including the Library, Shaughnessy House, Bookstore, and hallways. The focal point of the exhibition is the Octagonal Gallery, where an annotated timeline wraps around the gallery walls and charts the progression, upheavals, and transformations of the magazines. Displayed in clusters of freestanding plastic bubbles, original and facsimile magazines offer a survey of the variety of unique formats, introducing rare examples from the CCA’s holdings and private collections. Highlights range from landmark volumes of Perspecta (New Haven, CT) and Casabella (Milan) to short-run journals such as Megascope (Bristol) and even the single-issue Signs of the Times, or Rather More Symbols than Signs (London). Several volumes of Internationale Situationniste (Paris) are also on view; the CCA Library holds the complete facsimile edition of this serial, which was reprinted in 1997 and edited by Guy Debord. Also from the CCA Collection and never before presented is Peter Eisenman’s original maquette created for the first volume of Oppositions (1973). The displays are complemented by audio interviews with editors and designers of these publications such as Kenneth Frampton, Peter Cook, Lisa Ponti, Takefumi Aida, and Hans Hollein as well as several complete facsimile magazines for visitors to browse. [ read more ] »
Canadian Centre for Architecture web site »

Architectural video by Wika for Knoll International
Paris, April 2, 2007 - This April, we are transforming St. Germain. WA is a site-specific video installation created for Knoll International by Gabriel Winer and Dana Karwas. Large-scale architectural projections turn the existing seventeenth century facade into a drive-by cinema and pedestrian spectacle. Playing with a unique two-screen format, the movie re-imagines the story of the company’s founders, how they discovered a minimalist approach to design, and came together to create the modernist symbol that Knoll is today. The two videos are synchronized to play with, and against, each other, or as a single vertical image, creating a captivating dialogue between the characters on screen, the architecture of the building, the street, and the viewers. State-of-the-art projection material is used to implant the images onto the skin of the building and live editing software (developed by WIKA) remixes certain scenes, creating a fresh version of the movie each time it plays. These various elements come together to tell the story of Knoll the way it should be told, through time and urban scale.
The movie was shot on-location by WIKA in New York City. The installation is part of an event at Knoll International France designed and overseen by Stéfan Golinski to promote a new line of Knoll furniture designed by Piero Lissoni and Mark Krusin.
CREDITS :: Installation Design: WIKA, Director: Gabriel Winer, Producer: Dana Karwas, Design Manager: Stéfan Golinski, Screenplay: Gabriel Winer and Stefan Golinski, Director or Photography: Michelle McCabe, Photography: Michael Lanzano, Florence Knoll: Marianna Rothen @ Fusion, Hans Knoll: Jason Smith @ VNY, Projection system: TAV, Projection material: Twinscreen, (Visit Knoll International online for more information on the WA furniture line) [ read more ] »
WIKA - Web site »