CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE

In confronting the climate and energy crisis architecture is reconnecting with its fundamentals..

Materiality, daylight, ventilation, and resource are being re-examined in detail. Architectural language is being radically reshaped by developed understandings of reuse, disassembly and the circular economy. Vernacular and territorial intelligences are providing deep insights in typology and technology previously ignored by an overly narrow definition of of architecture. Design quality is being reframed by state procurement to support designs for long use over low cost. This is not a change motivated by theoretical texts or manifestos, but rather a fundamental reconnection between the discipline and its understanding of cause and consequence. We all play a part in this, and schools are critical sites in working out what comes next.

In this day long event we gather leading practitioners and researchers to share their work in the context of our school exhibition. We will talk through the tectonic investigations happening in our school, and hear from our guests Prof Marilyne Andersen - one of the leading scientists propelling our understanding of day lighting and its effect on human experience.

Practitioners play a key role in this process, and throughout the world we see innovative territorial works that show a way forward. We are joined by Johansen Skovsted from Denmark - sensitive practitioners navigating complex regulatory circumstance and deploying reuse, cirularity and care in their works. We follow with a round table discussion on the contingency and rich landscape of ethical and technical challenges that are fundamental aspects of the architectural imagination and the practitioners life. In so doing we seek to provide a landscape of thinking to inform both the work of our school, and of our guests.

All are welcome. And you if you cannot make the entire day you are welcome to come for specific parts of it.

Timetable

10:00 - Exhibition open for visitors to see student work

11:30 - Coffees

12:00 - Introduction - Andrew Clancy

12:15 - Tectonics, Assembly and the Imagination - Nicholas Lobo Brennan

13:15 - Keynote lecture Prof Marilyne Andersen - Human needs vs. modern living expectations: a case for daylight access

14:15 - Lunch and round table discussion - On Fundemantals. - Prof Marilyne Andersen, Nicholas Lobo Brennan, Heba ElSharkawy, Ciaran Malik. Audience are invited to bring their own lunch for this.

15:00 - Break

16:00 - Johansen Skodven lecture

17:00 - Round table discussion - Practice and Contingency - with Søren Johansen, Nana Biamah Ofosu, Astrid Smitham. Chaired by Andrew Clancy

18:00 - Drinks

More about our speakers:

Prof Marilyne Andersen

Prof Marilyne Andersen is a Full Professor of Sustainable Construction Technologies in EPFL and heads the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) in EPFL that she founded in 2010. She was Dean of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at EPFL 2013-18 and is the Academic Director of the Smart Living Lab in Fribourg. Before joining EPFL as a faculty, she was an Assistant Professor then Associate Professor tenure-track in the Building Technology Group of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and the Head of the MIT Daylighting Lab that she founded in 2004. Her research lies at the interface between science, engineering and architectural design with a dedicated emphasis on the impact of daylight on building occupants. Focused on questions of comfort, perception and health and their implications on energy considerations, these research efforts aim towards a deeper integration of the design process with daylighting performance and indoor comfort. 

Søren Johansen (Johansen Skovsted Architects)

Søren is a founder and co-director of Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter. Their practice is concerned with making readable, lyrical architecture which finds its language in a clear reading of site, and minimal resource use. In this talk he will discuss a range of projects including recent larger works, reuse and retrofit projects, and more. A discussion will follow which will explore the limits of the practitioners agency, when confronting regulation, economics and code, and how the territory is changing. 

Dr Heba ElSharkawy

Heba is Associate Professor and head of the department of architecture and landscape here in the Kingston School of Art. She is a leading researcher in the area of environmental design and sustainability with published peer reviewed articles in high impact journals and conferences. She is Principal Investigator (PI) to a British Council funded project Towards Net Zero Carbon Campuses for Climate Change Mitigation and Resilience. She is also Co-Investigator to a Medical Research Council funded project Healthy Energy Efficient Dwellings in partnership with two other UK universities. Prior to this she was PI to a British Council funded project; Building Capacity for Sustainable Development of the Built Environment (total £288K).  

Nicholas Lobo Brennan

Nicholas Lobo Brennan is Associate Professor of Tectonics here in the Kingston School of Art. He is also co founder and director of Apparata Architects, whose recently completed ‘House for Artists’ has recently been awarded a RIBA award for its innovation in housing design. In his work in tectonics in Kingston he has developed a teaching approach that uses the constraints of engineering and material as a creative starting point, presently based around lightweight civic structures. 

Nana Biamah-Ofosu

Nana is an architect, educator, researcher and writer. She is a co-founder of Studio NYALI, an architecture, design and research practice based in London. As an educator, she has taught and lectured widely in the UK and abroad. Nana is particularly drawn to the complexities of the modern African city and the relationship between the individual artefact, primarily the house, and its connections to the collective, the fabric and structure of the city. She is currently researching the African compound house as a communal housing typology with a Graham Foundation supported publication titled The Course of Empire: A Compound House Typology, to be published in 2023. Most recently she co-curated the 'Tropical Modernism' exhibition for the V&A at the 2023 Venice Biennale. 

Ciaran Malik

Ciaran is a regenerative designer, teacher and structural engineer. He is a Senior Lecturer here at the Kingston School of Art, and works as part of the tectonics team. His practice and research are interested in design methods that reduce the climate, biodiversity and cultural impacts of building. He has been researching Low Carbon Design, better integrating ecology, exploring Water Management and Inclusive Design. I have applied my research to practice including the Light House, the Round House and Walworth Gardens Horticultural Classroom. In 2020 he led the [ECCG] a cross industry carbon research group. he is part of the ACAN Embodied Carbon Group and the Whole Life Carbon Network (WLCN).