Edwin Reynders’ Post

5 years ago today, the Anthropocene Architecture School held its first public event at the oldest Victorian music hall in the world - the Britannia Panopticon, during 2019’s Architecture Fringe. The event held space for a forum of discussion on architectural education & education more broadly during what has begun to be cited by scientists as the #Anthropocene, as human activity has reached a magnitude the equivalent of a geological event on the Earth’s climate systems. Naming the “school” after the Anthropocene was a provocation, an invitation - to look at the reality of the #climateemergency in order to imagine beyond today’s norms & of side-stepping using any cliched ‘climate’ or ‘green” phrases & this name has opened up many conversations since. This event built on the foundation laid by the launch of the AAS Library that February & the carrying out of research that assessed the experiences of Scottish architecture students in 2019. This research quantified students Knowledge of sustainability - what we defined as #ClimateLiteracy in 2020 before the phrase was adopted across industry & academia, their Awareness of climate & sustainability initiatives in the built environment space & their Engagement with built environment & #sustainability goings-on beyond their university education. This research was shared widely with curious academics & the research was cited & features in the ACAN! contribution to “Design Studio Vol. 1: Everything Needs to Change: Architecture and the Climate Emergency” edited by Sofie Pelsmakers & Nick Newman. The AAS was not intended to outlast its initial provocation but began to be invited elsewhere & to undertake other activities beyond teaching in academic institutions & has since engaged thousands upon thousands of people through a variety of events, workshops & media. You can book a ticket here (https://lnkd.in/e8UffVUn) to join us as we mark half a decade of the AAS at Civic House in Glasgow on the 22nd of June with a ceilidh & more.

Selected Works We are pleased to present a small series of selected master's theses and student projects that have been created with our support in recent years. The works not only demonstrate very convincingly the high standard of many works by architecture students at the UdK Berlin, but also provide a good example of the diversity and innovative power that can arise from the overlapping of creative and academic practice. At the same time, they are also an example of a departure and rethinking in architecture towards a performance-orientated and knowledge-based design of people's physical spaces and a sustainable architectural practice that is fit for the future. After the initial presentation of "Rethinking Affluent Buildings" we would like to proceed with the work of Jan Winkens: "Noise is Beautiful" Jans master’s thesis, combines his two personal fields of interest – architecture and noise music. In his search for unusual sounds in the noise of the metropolis, he focussed on the area around the Messe-Nord/ICC, supposedly the loudest place in Berlin. For Jan, this is a place that generates a great deal of tension between excessive demands and enthusiasm, melancholy and euphoria. Based on the research on site, the project attempts to give the noise of the city itself a spatial expression. To this end, the on-site recordings are alienated and placed in a new context. The experimental search for new forms of representation and notations of noises and sounds became an essential aspect of the work. #noise; #architecture; #field_conditions; #new_notations_of_noise; #sound_of_metropolis https://lnkd.in/d3RK9xmX https://lnkd.in/dxKh9cig

This is just a point of view. With a great respect towards all scientific jobs done in this case.🙏 As a university lecturer and a professional, I have been reviewing something in my mind for some time. Something that hurts, but it is a bitter reality. During these years, when I was involved with discussions in the fields of energy and architecture, sustainable architecture, the quality of interior space and similar topics, a key question bothered my mind. Why do we lack theorists and philosophers in these fields? Perhaps the biggest scientific gap in the field of sustainable architecture and green architecture and similar topics is theological theories. For modern architecture, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe and others presented theories of modern architecture in the form of philosophical discussions, where people like Charles Jencks, Bernard Chomi and... drew postmodern; Where people like Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman objectively turned deconstraction into a form; No one has done this for sustainable architecture, energy optimization in architecture and similar topics. It can be boldly said that with all the respect to the experimental work that has been done regarding sustainable architecture, a philosophical and theoretical view has not yet been presented in this regard sharply. Maybe it's time that after a mountain of articles and experimental works, someone philosophically draws the framework of sustainable architecture, green architecture, zero energy architecture, etc. Maybe it's time for universities that train doctoral students in this regard to train theorists instead of specialists.

"Climatic Architecture: Phillippe Rahm's Wunderkammer of ideas" Now on KoozArch, my conversation with Philippe Rahm (Philippe Rahm architectes, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation) on how his design research and practice merges physics, chemistry, and physiology to tackle today's climate crisis and on his recent book "Climatic Architecture" (Actar Publishers, 2023).

What does climate accountability look like for architecture? In an online exhibition curated by the Arièle Dionne-Krosnick at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the participants in the »2022 Toolkit for Today: Carbon Present« seminar and the »2022 Doctoral Research Residency Program« were invited to collaboratively re-read objects from the CCA collections in ways that highlight how carbon shapes our present built environment. MoA research associate Iva Rešetar contributed to two thematic clusters: Combusting with Demetra Vogiatzaki and Hamish Lonergan, examining the double meaning of combustion as power: although it provides energy, it is tied to the control of resources, processes, and knowledge; in Easing, together with Arièle Dionne-Krosnick and Christian Saavedra, she asks: how do design practices channel and redistribute access to natural elements like vegetation, water, and air in order to meet human needs for comfort and leisure? And how do they reconstruct or substitute these ›missing‹ aspects of nature in the built environment? We'd like to invite you to follow the evolving display, as new thematic clusters are being added to the CCA channels (link via our website below)! https://lnkd.in/gbrQ5GD7 #exhibition #virtual #design #climate #architecture #CCA #resources #power #air #water Image: Ernest Cormier, Thermometer. ARCH252051. Copyright: Fonds Ernest Cormier, CCA

For over a decade, we've been developing buildings with natural air conditioning and heating systems. After years of studying ancient architecture, we started applying these solutions to our projects. We had no scientific evidence that it would work, but our curiosity did not stop us from trying. The results were mind-blowing. The more we built using ancient technology, the more we understood the intelligence of natures systems. Fast-forward 15 years, and we've implemented these solutions in various climates, from extreme cold to intense heat. People are always amazed at how comfortable the indoor temperature is without using any mechanical or electronic components. The simplest way to explain how this system works is to understand that all organisms naturally regulate their body temperature. For example, humans store heat in fat and cool down by sweating. Similarly, our buildings use thermal mass to store heat and underground tunnels to cool the air. By mimicking the strategies of nature, ancient architecture, and modern technology, we are confident we can build a civilization beyond anything attempted in human history. This picture shows some basic design principles we're applying to a retrofit project in Malaga, Spain. If you want to join us on this journey and learn more, sign up for our waiting list and get invited to join our projects—see the link in our bio. #biotonomy #naturebasedsolutions #innovation

A much needed initiative- “ACSA Justice in Architecture provides resources, references, and scholarship on equity, and social, and ecological justice in architecture. These references include works on anti-racism, settler-colonialism, disability studies, ecological justice, and other topics germane to the pedagogies of the built, destroyed, and imagined environments that comprise architecture and related fields.”

Annonce de conférence sur l'histoire de la construction à #Bruxelles ce semestre : We are thrilled to announce an engaging online lecture series, on the flows of materials, energy and labour in Architectural and Construction History. The lecture series is part of the course Architectural and #ConstructionHistory for 3rd bachelor students in Architectural Engineering and Master students in Urban Studies (Vrije Universiteit Brussel+ Université libre de Bruxelles). Line-up: - Jane Mah Hutton: "The expanded #relationships of the act of #building. From #material flows to #labour movements." >>Thursday February 29, 4pm (CET) - Sabine Barles: "From #circularity to #linearity. The #infrastructures of urban metabolism, 18th-20th centuries." >> Friday March 1, 5:30 pm (CET) - Barnabas Calder: "Emergency stop. A call for radical inaction." >> Wednesday March 13, 2 pm (CET) - Kiel Moe: "Construction #Ecology. Thinking about systems rather than objects." >> Thursday March 28, 4 pm (CET)

The Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism (ASAU) invites submissions for the 2024 Marco Frascari Prize. Deadline is Monday, April 1 at 1:00 p.m. This drawing competition is open to ASAU graduate or post-graduate students who have completed at least one year of their program. The prize money amounts to $10,500 for first, second, and third places and honourable mentions. This year’s competition invites students to use hybrid drawings combining digital and hand work, as demonstrations offering “clues” of adaptability in architecture and plural storytelling(s) of sites whose stories are in the making. Adaptability can have a retrospective and prospective quality. We can convert existing buildings to new uses or construct new buildings and details with a propensity for future adaptations. Students may submit either a hand-drawing or a hybrid drawing (digital/hand drawing together). Submissions cannot be entirely digital. See the call: https://lnkd.in/gZSmNxk6

The new issue of the journal Architectural Research in Finland (ARF) is now out including our article "Housing design quality in Finland: Room for improvement" 🎉