AA Global Forums provide a space to learn, share and discuss architectural ideas and initiatives in a local context, both online and through onsite meetings, lectures and workshops. AA Global Forums are made up of networks of AA alumni, students, staff, members and Visiting Schools, and offer support to AA students and members of the School community who are currently dispersed around the world.
The Venice Architecture Biennale has always had a particular appeal for AA graduates. In recent years this relationship has grown even stronger, with increasing numbers winning commissions as curators, exhibitors or designers of national pavilions. What is it that attracts AA alumni to Venice and makes them such a good fit for the Biennale?
The AA Global Forum: Venice to London on 11th of October will bring together recent contributors to discuss the role of the Biennale in a rapidly changing world, explored through the theme of the 2021 British Pavilion – The Garden of Privatised Delights. The exhibition, which travelled from Venice to London and is currently on show at the Building Centre until 15 October, had many AA graduates and current staff involved in its making. Land ownership, high streets, playgrounds, green spaces, pubs, data – all these forms of privatised public space shift alongside our environment and have certainly changed since the pavilion was originally conceived. Through a gallery tour and panel discussion, as well as over drinks and dinner, we will hear about how these themes and spaces have evolved over time and during the pandemic, as well as the impact of having this conversation through an international exhibition.
Speakers
Madeleine Kessler and Manijeh Verghese (co-curators, Unscene Architecture), Will Gowland and Harry Kay (Built Works), Carolina Caicedo and Xavier Llarch Font (The Decorators), Jonathan Orlek and Julia Udall (Studio Polpo), Torange Khonsari and Andreas Lang (Public Works), and Catherine Pease (vPPR Architects).
Schedule
17:00 – Exhibition tour of each of the installations by the curators and designers at the Building Centre
18:00 - Networking drinks at the Building Centre
18:30 – Panel discussion at the AA on the impact of Covid-19 on privatised public space as well as the specific themes explored in The Garden of Privatised Delights
20:00 - Dinner at the AA for all panellists, members and alumni (ticketed)
Tickets are available at the link below:
AA Global Forum: Venice Biennale to London Tickets, Tue 11 Oct 2022 at 17:00 | Eventbrite
Unscene Architecture was founded by Madeleine Kessler and Manijeh Verghese in 2019. It operates across disciplines and scales to reveal the unseen forces that shape our cities, working with local communities to give them greater agency over how they use and occupy their spaces. Providing a platform for design, research, curation, and realisation, it aims to provoke a wider conversation about the city through action rather than just words.
The Decorators area collective of designers with backgrounds in landscape architecture, spatial design, curation and psychology. They curate interventions and actions to make communities and social networks visible. Putting conversation at the heart of their process, they examine the means by which they can maintain a critical and meaningful exchange between communities and the urban regeneration forces they are subjected to.
Built Works area creative practice exploring the intersection between art and architecture. With a focus on emerging technologies and the impact of their use on citizens and the built environment, it constructs one-to-one working prototypes of concepts and systems in order to test ideas through physical experiment.
Studio Polpo is a social enterprise architecture collective based in Sheffield. Its work is undertaken through exchanges with others, including people from different and diverse disciplines and backgrounds, an approach that can lead to more critical, situated and responsive architecture. Collaborative practices allow the studio to address wider issues relating to spatial, social and ecological justice. It is connected to activist, community and cultural projects, and works with them to co-construct questions, themes, and sites for action.
Public Works are a not-for-profit critical design practice set up in 2004 to occupy the terrain in between architecture, art and performance. Together with an interdisciplinary network, the studio reworks the city’s opportunities towards citizen-driven development. It aims to create long-sustained relationships that build commonality and trust and enable co-authorship.
vPPR Architects was set up in 2009 by Tatiana von Preussen, Catherine Pease and Jessica Reynolds. The studio believes in the continual crossover between art and architecture, seeking creative solutions that strengthen communities, no matter how large or small. The practice is working on public housing, cultural and mixed-use projects and has recently completed a multi-generational playscape in Higham Park in London.
