​AA Approaches is a week-long festival of ideas to mark the start of the new academic year, a celebration of the AA’s 175th birthday and the beginning of Ingrid Schroder’s tenure as AA Director. This is an excellent moment to question what and how we teach, and the impact of the work we produce, at a moment characterised by rapid change and urgent global challenges. Each talk pairs two related yet contrasting themes, which draw upon legacies and lineages present within the school and reassess the strategies and methods that they have produced. It is an exciting opportunity to reflect on how different approaches have evolved and come to frame the more critical concerns of the immediate and more distant future. The academic year begins within this critical moment to stop and consider where we have been – to engage, to take responsibility, to reflect on where we are going and to respond with delight and hope, as well as fear and trembling.
The second session explores the tradition of an architecture and urbanism derived from an understanding of architectural and social HISTORY and an approach that privileges the inherent logics of MATERIAL and fabrication. This conversation will ask how these different positions are bound by their own logics and areas of knowledge. Find out more here.
Speakers include: Shumi Bose, Peter Carl, Takeshi Hayatsu, David Kohn, Guan Lee and Mark Wigley.
