The May 2008 issue of Icon Magazine (London) features the recently-completed AADRL Ten Pavilion, erected as a temporary pavilion in London’s Bedford Square, opposite the AA School. Made out of several hundred Fibre-C lightweight, reinforced concrete panels, the project was designed by Alvin Huang & Alan Dempsey, DRL graduates who collaborated on the competition-winning design. […]

Brett’s ‘Architecture after Geography’ essay is include in this month’s publication of Arquine (Spring 2008), the Mexican architectural journal published in Mexico City. The essay offers a short introduction to four recent graduate design projects undertaken at the AA School, and discusses the circumstances of a contemporary globaliation of architectural practise and education.

‘What Planet are they from?’ is the Front-page Headline of this week’s Architect’s Journal. The subtitle says it succintly: ‘The AA’s Design Research Laboratory, now 10 years old, has changed the language of architecture forever’. ‘Digital Generation’ is the title of an article by Jaffer Kolb in the 21.02.08 issue of the magazine, which […]

‘Cutting, Bending and Stacking by Code: Machines and Ornament in Architecture’ is an essay introducing ‘The New Materialists’ section of ‘Re-Sampling Ornament’, an  exhibition catalogue accompanying an upcoming exhibition at the Swiss Architecture Musueum, in Basle. The essay relates the work of three contemporary architects that make extensive use of robots, laser cutting and other […]

‘Literary v. Literal Architecture’ introduces the recent work of NaJa & deOstos featured in an upcoming issue of Pamphlet Architecture, in New York. Nannette Jackowski and Riccardo deOstos practise in London, and teach in the AA Intermediate School. Their upcoming Pamphlet Architecture issue (following their previous publication, titled ‘The Hanging Gardens of Baghdad’) features two […]

‘The Death of Models’ is a short essay just sent to the Print Studio for this month’s publication of ‘DRL Ten’, a decade-long monograph featuring more than a hundred projects by the Design Research Lab. The launches Tuesday evening March 11th at the AA–don’t miss it, and see accompanying exhibition and concrete pavilion in Bedford […]

‘Prototyping Architecture’s Future, Again’ is the title of a short introduction just written for Manufacturing Material Effects: Rethinking Design and Making in Architecture, to be published this spring in the USA. The book is a compilation of an internaitonal symposium last April in Indianapolis,and features the work of two-dozen architects, theorist and fabicators.

I was in Munich for two hours Wednesday, to deliver ‘Ambient Formalism & Distributed Design’, on the topic of learning and design across complex project fields. The talk extends research I began last January for a lecture in Tel Aviv on ‘digital formalism’ and the coincident rise of new formal languages in architecture alongside an […]

A combined television and newspaper interview with Brett, by Ju-Kwang Park, UK reporter for the YTN 24 Hour News Channel, and Choi Boyun, Staff Writer from the Entertainment Desk of The Chosunilbo Daily. The interview is part of a story the channel and newspaper are preparing now for their cultural affairs programmes, and will be […]

Remarks on Architectural Education & Creativity
Presented at the Westminster Media Forum Keynote Session ‘UK Creativity’, in Whitehall (London)
Thank you for inviting me to this Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar, and this session on Education, training and the UK’s future creative talent.
My theme today will be how to FOSTER creativity in higher education, and the […]

An interview with the Wall Street Journal this morning, for an article the newspaper is preparing on the world-wide boom of architecture, urbanism and its challenges to conventional architectural education. Once published, the WSJ will send me a link I will post to the online version of the story, which is surveying the changes cities […]

My fourth and final lecture as part of this Spring Term’s ‘Architecture from Discipline to Cutlure’ course. An hour on the topic of architectural publications, magazines and other documents, and the way in which these have shaped twentieth-century architectural culture.

Session One of my four courses in this Spring Term’s 3rd Year Histories & Theories Course, ‘Architecture From Discipline to Culture’. My four weekly sessions are titled ‘Architecture as Knowledge’. I’ll survey a different kind of architectural knowledge each week. Today: ‘Architecture as Plan’, on the modern history of plan-making operations.

My AA 3rd Year History & Theory Seminar kicks off during Week 2 in Spring Term 2008. The course, titled ‘Architectural Knowledge as Projects’, surveys the way in which projects structure the serial forms of architectural expertise, experience, and knowledge.

Brett will moderate ‘Real Architecture’ by Farshid Moussavi, at the London’s Tate Bankside Museum April 29th, 2008 at 7.00pm. The lecture by Farshid is on Foreign Office Archtects’ John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex, in Leicester.

At the Aedes Gallery, to celebrate the opening of the AA’s just-closed ‘The World of Madelon Vriesendorp’ in Berlin.

A postponed short presentation and roundtable discussion at the Ottoman Bank Museum, in Istanbul. Titled ‘Off-centre, or Out-of-Bounds: Learning Architecture at 1 to 1’ coincides with the end of the ‘Fibrous Structure’ exhibition at the Garanti Gallery.

At BMW Welt, in Munich, for a Lecture at the 2008 SmartGeometry Conference, on the topic of new geometry and digital design tools.

POSTPONED: A lecture at 12.00pm at the Architecture School in Ankera, Turkey. ‘Prototyping vs. Type: Open Plans and Closed Patterns’. <we will find a new date soon>

Brett speaks at the Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar, titled ‘The UK’s Creative Economy’. Talks by Will Hutton and the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, UK Minister of Education with UK Culture leaders, and an audience from Whitehall and more than 100 members of both Houses of Parliament.

At the Fuessli store yesterday in Zurich I found a copy of Lars Muller’s beautiful new monograph on the little-known Muji art director Kenya Hara. Designing Design looks at first glance like another promotional outlet for minimalism today. Its not, and more. Coupled with John Maeda’s 2007 Simplicity, the beginnings of a movement whereby creativity […]

Near the top of my holiday stack of books to catch up on: Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks. Heavily influenced by the jurisprudence of Lawrence Lessig’s hard work on creative commons and networked forms of creative production (whom he credits with jump-starting this book), Benkler’s writing focused on the economics of collaborative and open […]

AA Diploma Projects by Jean Taek Park, Dae Song Lee, MinSeok Kim, Ill Sam Park and Myung Ho Lee have been published together in a 405-page monograph titled ‘Process’, published by Spacetime (Seoul).