AHRA - Architectural Humanities Research Association

AHRA Events 2007:

4th Annual AHRA International Conference:
Architecture, Urbanism & Curatorship
Kingston University, London
17-18 November 2007

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: www.ahra2007.org.uk

Call for Papers

4th Annual AHRA Research Student Symposium:
University of East London
21 September 2007

Call for Papers

Other events:

Rethinking Boundaries: Architecture, Culture and Socio-Political Change in the 21st Century
Centre for Architecture and the Visual Arts (CAVA)
Launch Conference
School of Architecture, The University of Liverpool
10 February 2007

The continuous expansion of the European Economic Area along with the pressures that such an expansion effects on the continent’s cities, its national governments and societies have brought the question about boundaries - physical and intangible -to public prominence. In the United Kingdom such a question has permeated into the most recent debates about nationhood, identity and governance. This conference will address the effects that the continual expansion of the European Economic Area will have on cities in the United Kingdom and the ways in which visual art and architecture can respond to such a complex set of changing circumstances.

While many of the issues that arise from the continually changing boundaries of Europe are relatively new to artists, architects and the general public in the United Kingdom, they have affected people and professionals in other contexts for many years. That is why this conference will assemble an outstanding group of artists, architects and scholars who have worked extensively on the question of boundaries in other critical contexts in order to illuminate emergent debates in this country. Rethinking Boundaries will provide an exceptional opportunity to explore the way we understand the frontiers of the nation in an increasingly globalising era.

Keynote Speakers:
Teddy Cruz, University of California, San Diego (USA)
Jennifer Beningfield, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Juan Herreros, School of Architecture, Princeton University (USA)
Jane Rendell, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Eyal Weizman, Royal College of Art, London

Organizers:
Jonathan Harris CAVA-School of Architecture, University of Liverpool
Felipe Hernández (Chair) CAVA-School of Architecture, University of Liverpool
Judith Walsh CAVA-School of Architecture, University of Liverpool

For further information please visit our website: www.liv.ac.uk/abe/cava/conf_07.html

or contact Felipe Hernández E-mail: felipehm@liv.ac.uk
phone ++(0)151 794 3336

_______________________________________

Geometrical Objects
Architecture and the Mathematical Sciences 1400-1800

Museum of the History of Science
and Worcester College, University of Oxford
19-20 March 2007

Recent scholarship in the history of science has underscored the mutually reinforcing relationship between “high” and “low,” or theoretical and practical, forms of early modern mathematics. As many historians have shown, mathematicians of the period were deeply involved in problems of instrument making, surveying, engineering, gunnery, and navigation. At the same time, the practitioners of these arts were increasingly concerned with questions of higher mathematics and natural philosophy as they pertained to the advancement of their craft. In fact, practitioners appear to have provided an important intellectual and technical context for many of the period’s mathematical discoveries – an essential development, historians now maintain, in the larger history of the “scientific revolution.”

Architecture, too, was a “mathematical” art, almost wholly dependent on geometrical or arithmetic operations of some form or another. The process of design itself – insofar as it required the application of consistent proportional rules – was largely defined by them, as were many other basic tasks. Surveying, cost estimates, bookkeeping, and even the use of routine graphic techniques – perspective, scaled orthogonal drawing, and stereotomic diagrams – all entailed a certain amount of mathematical training. Nor were these skills limited to the design of buildings. Architects also used calculations in mapping cities, laying out fortifications, and planning hydraulic projects for gardens, dams, and canals. Military and civil engineering had long been part of the Vitruvian tradition.

This symposium seeks to explore issues and questions raised by this situation. To what extent can the architect be considered a “mathematical practitioner”? What role did architectural practice and building technologies play in the broader evolution of mathematics? How did architects see themselves in relation to mathematicians and scientists? What are the documented cases of contact or conflict between these groups?

For further information see:

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/architecture/

--
Anthony Gerbino
Scott Opler Fellow
Worcester College
University of Oxford