Housing: how architects can design for wellbeing and equality. Event at The Building Centre

6 December 2017, 6:30 PM

The Building Centre

This event, chaired by Peg Rawes and featuring architects who contributed to project film Equal by Design, is part of the Making Wellbeing: from Birth to Death exhibition at The Building Centre, curated by The Built Environment Trust.

Tickets and further information available here.

Solutions to the housing crisis are political and complex with change needed at policy level as well as across the building industry. However, debates often exclude the role of the architect. This event will explore how architects can be actively involved in addressing issues of inequality and disparities of wellbeing in the built environment through housing design and provision.

Architects Peter Barber, Alex Ely and Sarah Wigglesworth will talk about their approaches to human-centred design and concerns for wellbeing. The speakers will shed light on the positive agency an architect can have and will consider what must be addressed for such approaches to have a stronger influence on housing provision and wider architectural practice.

The individual presentations will be followed by a chaired panel discussion and audience Q+A.

Speakers:

– Peter Barber, director of Peter Barber Architects

– Alex Ely, principal of Mæ Architects

– Sarah Wigglesworth, director of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects

Chair: Peg Rawes, co-author of Equal By Design and senior lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

Tickets and further information available here.

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Making Wellbeing exhibition at The Building Centre #makingwellbeing

Exhibition run now extended to 26 January

We are excited to announce the Making Wellbeing exhibition, opening on 9 October at The Building Centre in London. Project film Equal by Design is featured in the exhibition.

Making Wellbeing: from birth to death

9 October – 26 January 2018

The Building Centre, Store Street, London

Making Wellbeing is an exhibition and related programme that assembles key themes, recent explorations and interventions in the built environment that impact wellbeing at all stages of life, from birth to death. 

In 2017, wellbeing is a benchmark that drives everything from government policy to classroom spaces, from the interior arrangement of offices to the design of buildings for care at the end-of-life.

But the term itself is a contested notion with many facets. Through a selection of major international architectural projects, new smart city technologies, research by ethnographers and academics, and even an interactive sleep pod, the exhibition gathers voices and knowledge from across the spectrum to offer insights and open up debate. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major event series and will be the key theme for the second issue of BE:, the journal of The Built Environment Trust.

https://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/exhibitions/making-wellbeing

 #makingwellbeing

Curated by The Built Environment Trust

Spinoza and Aesthetics conference

spinoza research network

SPINOZA & AESTHETICS/SPACE
Friday April 21, 2017

INTRODUCTION | JB Shank | University of Minnesota 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

WORKSHOP I | Arun Saldanha | University of Minnesota: Spinoza’s Geography of Bodies: Global Capitalism and the Responsibility to Revolt
Respondents| Harshit Rathi + Joseph Bermas-Dawes  11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

LUNCH BREAK 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

WORKSHOP II | Peg Rawes| University College London: Dissimilarity: Spinoza’s Ethical Ratios and Housing Welfare. Respondents| Anjali Ganapathy + Austin Young  2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

COFFEE BREAK 3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

WORKSHOP III | Susan Ruddick| University of Toronto: A/Synchronic Earth: Spinoza and the Spatial Aesthetic of the Anthropocene. Respondents| Kai Bosworth + Lindsey Weber   4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

135 Nicholson Hall | University of Minnesota

For information: Cesare Casarino: casarino@umn.edu, Anjali Ganapathy: ganap002@umn.edu
Co-sponsored by the Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World; the Department of…

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Peg Rawes’ recent events

On 19 November 2016, Peg presented a co-authored conference paper with Dr Doug Spencer (Westminster) on ‘Material and Rational Feminisms’  at Architecture & Feminisms: Ecologies/Economies/Technologies, AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association) 2016, KTH Stockholm. The audience was international and included around 50 academics, students, and architectural professionals.

On 9 January 2017, she gave an invited talk on the film at London Architecture School to 35 postgraduate students and academics.

On 19 January 2017, she gave an invited talk on the film to Architectural Interdisciplinary Studies, UCL, to around 25 students and academics.

On 14 February 2017, Peg participated in ‘The House that Philosophy Built’, a panel organized by The Forum (LSE) to a public audience of around 75. The talk is now available on the Forum’s Blog at:  http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/the-house-that-philosophy-built/.

The House that Philosophy Built

14 February, 6:30-8:30 PM, London

Readers might be interested in this free event next week, featuring Peg Rawes.

Speakers
Juliet Haysom, Artist and Tutor, The Architectural Association, London
Kristen Kreider, Professor of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Peg Rawes, Professor in Architecture and Philosophy, University College London

Chair
Shahidha Bari, Lecturer in Romanticism in the Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow

This panel will consider the ways in which philosophers have engaged with architecture and explores how architects have thought philosophically about their own work.  Are there are philosophical ideals at the heart of civic building projects and social housing programmes? What are the principles of good design and how could a three dimensional space represent an idea? Is the primary purpose of a building aesthetic, social or moral?  Do we judge a building on the beauty of its structure, the practicality of its form or the human interaction it enables?  And how should we imagine the skyline of the future?

Full details: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/forthcomingevents/the-house-that-philosophy-built/

Screening to Aberdeen City Council

Beth Lord screened Equal by Design to Aberdeen City Council’s planning department on 17 January 2017. The audience of around 20 followed up with a lively discussion of some of the issues in the film – including the suggestion that the next phase of the project should propose some practical Spinozistic solutions to the housing crisis.

Recent screenings in Scotland

On 10 November 2016 Equal by Design was screened for a meeting of around 15 members of the Scottish Young Planners’ Network (part of the Royal Town Planning Institute) in Edinburgh. The screening was followed by a discussion with Beth Lord, Adam Lang of Shelter Scotland, and Nikola Miller of Homes for Scotland.

In October 2016, a screening and discussion were held at the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Early Modern Studies.

Further screenings at University of Aberdeen and Aberdeen City Council are coming up in the new year.