Really Sayin’ Somethin’: ExDP REG 2022 Symposium

Friday 20th May 2022, Grand Parade, University of Brighton & online

 Join us for a one-day symposium exploring and sharing practice-based research in art, architecture & design that uses socially engaged or participatory methods. This programme brings together artists, researchers, curators and writers to ask:

How do socially engaged and participatory methods offer different understandings of what research can be?

What sort of outcomes do they produce?

How can this work be documented, and shared in ways that acknowledge the collaborative and dialogic nature of the research?

What sort of challenges come with socially engaged and participatory research for the researcher and the participant?

Join us for a day of inspiration filled with talks, discussions, workshops and events.

Keynote speakers: Sophie Hope, Anthony Schrag, R.M. Sánchez-Camus, Vanessa Marr, Claire Staunton, Torange Khonsari, Gil Mualem-Doron, Sarah Akigbogun and Unit 38

Workshops, activities and visits to take part in:

–Special tour of Socially Engaged Arts Space (SEAS) Brighton exhibition Queering Nature, led by Pacheanne Anderson

– One on one mentoring with artist Lady Kitt

– Drop-in self-led duster making activity with artist Vanessa Marr

– Visit Quiet Down There in residence with their laundrette project

– Leap then Look present a film about their recent arts education practice

Roundtable discussions with practitioners and researchers:

(1) Practice-based research, and the problematics of participation
(2) Institutions, access and inclusion
(3) Co-creating spaces and places of encounter

Register in advance through our website to join us in-person at Grand Parade, University of Brighton or to join on line:

https://brightoncca.art/event/really-sayin-somethin/

Co-hosted and supported by School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, School of Art & Media, Experimental Design Practices Research and Enterprise Group (ExDP REG) at University of Brighton, and Brighton Centre for Contemporary Art

Programme

9am Registration

9.30am Welcome and introduction

10am Panel Discussion 1
Engaging with participatory art practices as research: Sophie Hope, Anthony Schrag, R.M. Sánchez-Camus and Vanessa Marr

11.15am BREAK

11.45am Panel Discussion 2
Changing architecture, spatial practice and spaces through social engagement: 
Claire Staunton, Torange Khonsari, Gil Mualem-Doron, Sarah Akigbogun and Unit 38

1pm LUNCH

Lunchtime activities:

– Join for a special tour of Socially Engaged Arts Space (SEAS) Brighton exhibition Queering Nature, led by Pacheanne Anderson. Pre-book your place through the website. 

– Artist Lady Kitt invites you to spend one on one time talking though your socially engaged art project. Four one to one pre-booked sessions are available on a first come first served basis. Please register your interest through the website.

– Participate in a self-led duster workshop by artist Vanessa Marr
Drop-in, Brighton CCA North Gallery

Visit Quiet Down There, in residence with their laundrette project at Dorset Place
Drop-in, 6 Dorset Place, BN2 1ST

Leap then Look present a film about their recent arts education practice
Drop-in, Sallis Benney Theatre

 2pm Parallel Roundtable discussions including presentations 

(1) Practice-based research, and the problematics of participation
(2) Institutions, access and inclusion
(3) Co-creating spaces and places of encounter

3.30pm BREAK

4pm  Concluding discussion
Join the speakers from the morning session to reflect on and discuss the day

5pm End

Book to join-in person or to join the panel discussions remotely at: https://brightoncca.art/event/really-sayin-somethin/

To join one of the Roundtable Discussions remotely please contact us: BrightonCCA@Brighton.ac.uk

COVID: The safety of all our visitors and staff is paramount and therefore we will be organising the event with careful attention to suitable COVID safety procedures.

Access: Brighton CCA has step-free access throughout its public spaces. We are wheelchair accessible and can organise a carer ticket free of charge. There are two bookable Blue Badge holder parking spaces at Grand Parade, contact BrightonCCA@Brighton.ac.uk to book. Our toilet facilities are male, female and there is an accessible, gender neutral toilet. We can organise audience members a quiet space during the day as required.

If you have any questions or need assistance with your visit please contact Polly Wright on 01273644716 or email

BrightonCCA@Brighton.ac.uk and we’ll do everything we can to make sure you have a positive experience here.

 

 

Matt Reed + Dr Poorang Piroozfar, Brighton in 4D: augmented reality

6pm Tuesday 7th December, Teams

You have never met someone at a place unless it was also at a time. And you have never met someone at a time unless it was in a place.

We can be standing on one spot on the Earth, and that physical location is the same as it was yesterday, a hundred years ago, or ten thousand. Yet on that same spot there might have been all kinds of activity. The site’s features might have changed over time, but the location is still one and the same. Could these “ghosts” from our perceived past, help us to further understand our place within space and time and better inform our understanding of the built environments we live in? Could augmented reality as a time-based medium somehow simulate time-travel by allowing us to experience things that stood in a location, in a different time, in a much more immersive way than photographs or recorded media have ever been able to do?

Matt will discuss his ongoing work on developing these proposals into a live project in Brighton with Dr Poorang Piroozfar who has been engaged in the realisation of the work with the MAVRiC Research Group.

Matt Reed is a freelance inter-media artist and designer specialising in architectural and stained glass design, video production and bespoke wallpapers for film and television. He has worked for all of the major TV networks and has had his work shown in London’s Institute of Contemporary Art and The National Portrait Gallery. His work is also included in a book entitled “The 100 Best Stained Glass Sites in London” which charts work in locations around London by some of the most respected artists working in stained glass between 1399 and 2015. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1113187/

Matt is currently studying for an MA in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Brighton where he is exploring new ways of working with technology such as Augmented Reality and 3d scanning.

Poorang is a Reader in SoATE. Before moving into full-time into academia after his PhD in the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, he practised as an architect and an urban designer for over ten years. His research investigates the drivers, requirements, benefits and responses to deployment of advanced technologies in Architecture, the Built Environment and Construction, and triangulates people, information, technology and environment to find out the most viable and highly acceptable solutions to the problems in the field. His work involves both hard and soft technologies, as well as the socio-cultural and human-machine interactions to achieve this goal.

Poorang is co-founder and director of @BEACON (Advanced Technologies in the Built Environment, Architecture and CONstruction) research group, founder and immediate past director of BERG (Built Environment Research Group), founder and director of Digital Construction Lab, at School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, UK, co-founder and chairman of NoNames Design Research and Studies, founder and director of MAVRiC (Mixed, Augmented and Virtual Reality inter-Connected) research group and a British Council Fund Reviewer.

 

ExDP Conversations 2021

The ExDP Conversations series aims to offer a forum for the discussion of evolving and ongoing research through which we might offer peer support and review. The series begins in December 2021 with an initial conversation on the Tuesday 9th December at 6pm.

Do get in touch if you would enjoy the opportunity of a conversation around your work.

Nada Subotincic + Nat Chard

6pm, Tuesday 9th November, Teams

For the next in our series of Autumn events we are delighted to organise a viewing of Nat Chard and Nada Subotincic in conversation with Sam Lynch.

Nada Subotincic has been a professor of architecture for 32 years in Turkey, Denmark, Canada, & U.S.A. She most recently left MEF University in Istanbul to co-found a small museum in Montreal called Ceci n’est pas un musée. Since 2006 she has been collaborating with the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, designing exhibition spaces. Her creative research includes: ‘Interpretation of Rooms,’ an ongoing spatial analysis of Sigmund Freud’s consulting room and study; ‘Incarnate Tendencies – An Architecture of Culinary Refuse,’ a social and architectural re- evaluation of food preparation consumption in Jamie Horowitz and Paulette Singley (eds), Eating Architecture (MIT, 2004); ‘Anaesthetic Induction,’ an enquiry into Duchamp’s Le Grand Verre & Étant Donné, in Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture (McGill/Queen’s; Press); and a photographic exploration of technology, architecture and the body in Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Polyphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited – An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture (MIT, 1992).

Nat Chard is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the Bartlett, University College London, following professorships at the Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, the University of Manitoba and the University of Brighton. He taught at the Bartlett throughout the nineties. He is an architect registered in the UK and has practiced in London. His work has been published and exhibited internationally. His research practice develops means of discussing uncertain conditions in architecture and the recent work has been acted out through a series of drawing instruments. With Prof. Perry Kulper he won the competition for Pamphlet Architecture 34 (Fathoming the Unfathomable).

The event will be held on Teams at 6pm, Tuesday 9th November

Oliver + Kasia Wilton: The Cork House

Teams, 6pm, Tuesday 19th October

For the third of our Autumn events we are delighted to have Oliver Wilton join us to discuss his work on the Cork House. The house has won many awards including the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize, The Manser Medal, Wood Gold Award, RIBA National Award, RIBA South Sustainability Award and was short listed for the Sterling Prize. The work on this collaborative project was part funded by Innovate UK and EPSRC, and an article on the research also won the 2019 RIBA President’s award for Design and Technical Research. More on the Cork House here: https://www.architecture.com/awards-and-competitions-landing-page/awards/riba-regional-awards/riba-south-award-winners/2019/cork-house

Oliver is an architect and academic, and associate professor of environmental design at the Bartlett, UCL where he has taught for over twenty years. He has taught at numerous other Universities including Cambridge, Aarhus and we were also very fortunate to have him with us in the MArch here at Brighton a few years ago.Kasia and Oliver collaborate in their Hove based practice WW Studio which collaborated on the Cork House which they will speak with us about tonight.

The talk will be held on Teams, 6pm, Tuesday 19th October:

Do get in touch if you have any queries: s.stevens2@brighton.ac.uk

Perry Kulper 6pm 28th September 2021

in the margins’

We are delighted to have Perry Kulper join us for the second of our Experimental Design Practices REG autumn events on Tuesday 28th September at 6pm (online – link to follow). Perry will discuss a cross section of work, with an emphasize on process and how the work happens.

 

Perry is an architect and associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He previously taught for 17 years at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles and held visiting teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University. He has worked for Eisenman/ Robertson; Robert A.M. Stern Architects; and Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown Architects.

Perry is engaged with the generative potential of architectural drawing, the different spatial opportunities of diverse design methods, and interested in broadening the conceptual range by which architecture contributes to our cultural imagination. In 2013, he published Pamphlet Architecture 34, Fathoming the Unfathomable: Archival Ghosts and Paradoxical Shadows with Nat Chard with whom he also co-authored Contingent Practices.

All welcome.

The talk will be held online, links to follow.

Do get in touch if you have any queries: s.stevens2@brighton.ac.uk

Experimental Design Practices Research and Enterprise Group

 

 

 

ExDP Autumn Events

We have an exciting programme of upcoming events this autumn. Links will be sent by email.

Tuesday 7th September, 11am Teams (recording posted below)

Murray Fraser, Professor of Architecture and Global Culture, Bartlett School of Architecture UCL

Tuesday 28th September, 6pm

Perry Kulper, Associate Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Tuesday 19th October, 6pm

Oliver Wilton, Associate Professor of Environmental Design and Director of Technology, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Tuesday 9th November, release

Nat Chard, Professor of Experimental Architecture, Bartlett School of Architecture in conversation with Nada Subotincic, Professor, Faculty of Architecture University of Manitoba

 

Professor Murray Fraser

 

As the first of our autumn events we were delighted to have Professor Murray Fraser join us on Tuesday 7th September at 11am (Teams) to discuss the history of design research in architecture and its various potentials.

Murray has published extensively on architectural design, architectural history & theory, urbanism, globalisation, post-colonialism, design research and cultural studies. His book Design Research in Architecture is now a standard work in its field and forms part of book series also titled ‘Design Research in Architecture’, now published by UCL Press, which he co-edits. Murray has an amazing breadth of experience and probably needs little introduction, but there is a bio below that attempts to pick up just some of the things he has been engaged in. We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to have him join us on Tuesday.

The video of the presentation is below.

Upcoming events:

6pm 28th September Perry Kulper
6pm 19th October Oliver Wilton

 

ExDP REG 2021 Prize: movement

Our symposium this year explored work that reflects on what it means to be in constant motion, and how we might reconsider design through this lens. Our 2021 Experimental Design Practices REG Student Prize continued this focus. We were interested in seeing work from all courses and levels which engages with experimental process to understand the implications of movement. The prize therefore foregrounds process and its impact on conclusions.

Students in all courses and levels in the School of Architecture & Design at the University of Brighton were invited to submit their explorations on the subject of movement for the Experimental Design Practices REG 2021 Prize. We wished to see what was at stake in the work, how this was explored and how the understanding garnered through this process informed any final proposal.

We live our lives through movement. From the movement of others around us, to the movement of the cells within our own bodies, nothing is truly still. Movement can however be a less explored foundation for design, and we received a wide rang of exciting exploratory work engaging with these concerns this year. The winner was Solange Leon Iriarte, MA Sustainable Design:

 

Sam Lynch: Slippery Time

This is a presentation I gave as part of the Temporal Drawing Event hosted by the Drawing Research Network at Loughborough University. The talk speculates on how the simultaneous manifestation of multiple times may occur in the creative process as a method of invention, generating a larger critical discourse on creative methods in research practice. It does so through the discussion of an ongoing body of drawings and research that stem out of my investigations into temporal drawing. With an interest in the time-based relationships of both the architecturally propositional drawing (as a projection of a future place, with its own inhabitations and unfoldings) and the drawing process itself (as an instigator of imagined futures), I ask what the possible connections between these temporalities might unearth, and what consequences they may have on space and place in the territory of the drawing.