At the Uni: critic|all conference in madrid

This Thursday morning, June 12th, I will head one of the "working tables" for critic|all, the I International Conference on Architectural Design and Criticism at the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM), thanks to an invitation by Federico Soriano, who heads the Department of Design at the school.

Researchers will present 4 papers on the theme of Utopias and Manifestos, followed by a moderated discussion. For more information, visit the critic|all website.

After the working table and a coffee break, Joan Ockman will deliver the keynote address, "Conjuring with Ghosts (Geists)", which should be interesting.

The papers to be presented:

10:00 “Transferencias desde los manifiestos a la teoría arquitectónica contemporánea”
            Beatriz Villanueva Cajide
            Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:25 “Yona Friedman: utopías realizadas desde la Ville Spatiale”
            Ramón Durántez Fernández
            Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid

10:50 “Revisiting the encounters of the social concern with the utopian aspirations:
           Is pragmatist imagination or utopian realism the way to follow?”
           Marianna Charitonidou
           National Technical University of Athens, School of Architecture

11:15 “Utopías de reconstrucción”
            Enrique Fernández-Vivancos
            CEU-UCH, ESET

Wish me luck!

What's Cooking in School

The Daily Mail Online, believe it or not, is a fascinating source for architecture news, particularly everything spectacular. Who is the editor there? Kudos!

The latest: The Walking City Revisited 
A thesis project by Madrid architecture student Manuel Domínguez, who is associated with the Zuloark architectural collective. 

Official name: Very Large Structure (not so imaginative, but may sound good in Spanish). AKA: Plataforma Probeta Móvil para la Gestión y Coreografía Territorial. Translation: Moving Test Tube Platform for Territorial Management and Choreography.

In bad times, back to Archigram.

Wouldn't you like to get up on that platform as it rumbles across the countryside (which is presumably rather flat), squashing everything in its path? Can't you feel it shaking and heaving under your feet, the steel humming and vibrating around you? Like one of the combines I see in La Mancha but on a serious scale.

One must also imagine it scooping up provisions along the way and unloading wastes. Loading and unloading people. With advance teams preparing the territory ahead. It really is predatory. A visual metaphor for an army moving across the countryside.

More coverage:
ArchiDaily