About Spatial Practices

Spatial Practices at Central Saint Martins is a group of related courses: MA Architecture: Cities and innovation, MA Creative Practices for Narrative Environments and BA Architecture: Spaces and Objects, that provide a route from foundation, through undergraduate and postgraduate study to doctoral research and professional practice.  Each course has its own character, exploring, in its unique way, the human environment as a living network of people, buildings, spa

Identity, in, and through, the built environment

This group of researchers explores the built or human environment as a living network of communications and interactions between people, buildings, spaces, objects and stories, and sees the physical environment as an ever-changing crucible of ideas, needs and desires where identities are formed, expressed and reformed.

Architecture Books/Open Access

02 Dec 2011
Posted by Allan Parsons

The Australian organisation, re.press, attentive to the latest developments in contemporary technologies, makes its publications available globally, wherever there is access to the internet. It seeks to make as many of its publications as possible available as open-access files, free to anyone who wishes to download them.

In the context of architecture, the following titles may be of interest:

Architecture and Philosophy

02 Dec 2011
Posted by Allan Parsons

The European Graduate School has made available a series of talks by Jeff Lynn on the future of architecture and philosophy. They are available here: http://www.youtube.com/egsvideo#g/c/F77463256CDC13C0

Data as a form of liberation

01 Nov 2011
Posted by Geoffrey Makstutis

With the rise of projects like Map Kibera, we are seeing how data is becoming an increasingly powerful vehicle.

Only a few years ago we would have been discussing the value of data as a commodity, as it clearly continues to be, we must also start to see the potential of data as a means of empowering and enabling new expressions of power.

Slums as innovation hotbeds

21 Oct 2011
Posted by Allan Parsons

Reena Jana reports on the exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute's Cooper-Hewitt museum entitled "Design with the Other 90%: Cities". The exhibition, which is located in the United Nations building in New York, is on from 15 October 2011 until 9 January 2012. It addresses how urban slums can serve as innovation hotbeds.

onsite review: culture urbanism art architecture

14 Oct 2011
Posted by Allan Parsons

On Site is a bi-annual print publication on architecture, urbanism, landscape, material culture and infrastructure.  Each issue has a theme, contributors stretch the limits and investigate the implications of the theme on the making of architecture. It was founded in 2000. It is published by a non-profit group, Architectural Fieldwork, and is directed by Stephanie White.  Contributors are mostly Canadians working at home and abroad.

Design Factories and Living Labs: Experimentalism and Globalism

27 Jul 2011
Posted by Allan Parsons

We should be aware of developments in Finland and Australia that affect the global environment of design, particularly as these incorporate the element of manufacturing, which could be considered a weakness or a deficit in approaches to design based in the UK.

Swinburne University of Technology has announced that it is to house a ‘Living Lab' dedicated to design. It is inspired by, and was created in collaboration with, the Design Factory at Aalto University in Helsinki.