07 October 2013

MEETING ARCHITECTURE in Rome. Architecture and the Creative Process, programme of lectures, study-exhibitions and performances at British School, 29th October 2013 .

MEETING ARCHITECTURE in Rome. Architecture and the Creative Process, programme of lectures, study-exhibitions and performances at British School, 29th October 2013 . The British School at Rome, Via A. Gramsci 61, invites you to the conversation “Madame Wu and the Mill from Hell” on 29 October at:
- 18.00: conversation between Adam Caruso and Thomas Demand chaired by Mario Codognato - 19.30: opening of study-exhibition.
Meeting Architecture, The British School at Rome’s new programme, curated by Marina Engel, will run from October 2013-December 2015. It will consist of lectures, study-exhibitions and performances by some of the leading figures in architecture, art, film and music and will analyse the nature of collaboration between architecture and some of the other creative processes.
This programme is in collaboration with the Royal College of Art who will also host the lectures in London. Thomas Demand and Adam Caruso will open the programme on 29 October 2013 with a conversation and study-exhibition: Madame Wu and the Mill from Hell. The Anglo-Canadian architect and the German artist have collaborated for many years and this event will provide a rare occasion to hear them discuss the nature of their collaborations as well as present for the first time an analysis of some of their work together. The Italian critic and curator Mario Codognato will moderate the discussion.
Projects presented include: Thomas Demand’s exhibition at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2009; Nagelhaus, the redesign of the Escher-Wyss-Platz, Zurich, 2007-2010 and Thomas Demand’s house, near Berlin, that has just been completed this summer. Documentation will include a selection of models, photographs, drawings and films.
In Britain, “This is Tomorrow” at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 saw artists, architects, musicians and graphic designers working together in a seminal art exhibition. The crossing of boundaries between the different creative processes has since become characteristic of British culture. Internationally as well, contemporary architects are designing an increasing number of art spaces, galleries and museums as well as concert halls, performing arts spaces, fashion sets, technological institutions etc. They are constantly expected to understand and accommodate the creative processes of other disciplines in order to design their work successfully. This process has also led to a number of fascinating collaborations, most notably between artists and architects, two fields that are historically closely linked.
Meeting Architecture will examine some of these collaborations and focus on those rarer examples in which architects and artists conceive and design the projects together as opposed to architects inviting artists to decorate a finished building. The programme will also consider sound and look at some of the projects that unite architects and composers focusing on how architecture, venue and context can help shape the artistic output of composers, an area that has not been widely investigated. The concept of cinema as the architecture of moving space has often been discussed. However, there has been little consideration of how many film directors, directors of photography and scenographers have been trained as architects and of the considerable influence that this has had on their work in film.
Some of the themes investigated in the programme include: What are the convergences and the divergences in sources of inspiration, working methods and aims? How does understanding the creative process of other callings help to develop the practice of one’s own discipline? How can one define creativity in architecture? Does architecture as a practice risk losing its autonomy and ethical status with so many interdisciplinary crossovers?
Finally, Meeting Architecture will also reflect the multi-disciplinary nature of the British School at Rome and indeed of many of the other foreign academies in Rome in which a variety of scholars and professionals from an extremely wide range of disciplines live and work together.
Future participants include: Reinier de Graaf (OMA), Amos Gitai, David and Peter Adjaye, Cecil Balmond, Vivien Lovell, Eric Parry and Richard Deacon, Wouter Vanstiphout (Crimson Architectural Historians), Richard Sennett, Thomas Schütte and Alfredo Pirri and many others.
Discussion moderators include: Francesco Garofalo (architecture), Mario Codognato (architecture and art) Irene Bignardi (architecture and cinema), Martin Brody (architecture and music).
Adam Caruso was born in Montreal in 1962 and studied architecture at McGill University. He established Caruso St John Architects with Peter St John in 1990. Projects by the practice include: New Art Gallery Walsall; Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood; Brick House, London; Nottingham Contemporary and Gagosian Galleries in London, Rome, Paris and Hong Kong. Recently completed projects include the first phase of their work at Tate Britain and a new chancel for the Cathedral of St Gallen, Switzerland. Adam Caruso is Professor of Architecture and Construction at the ETH Zurich.
Thomas Demand was born in Munich and studied at the Academy of Arts in Duesseldorf and Goldsmith’s College in London. His solo exhibitions include shows at the Graham Foundation, Chicago (2013), DHC/Art, Montréal (2013), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2012), the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2012), Kaldor Public Arts Project #25, Sydney (2012), Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2009), MUMOK, Vienna (2009), the Fondazione Prada, Venice (2007), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2006), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005), a retrospective at the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004) and he represented Germany at the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale (2004). Curated shows include When Attitudes Become Form at Fondazione Prada Ca’ Corner della Regina (2013), La carte d’après nature at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (2010) and Matthew Marks Gallery (2011), a room for the Fondazione Prada Ca’ Corner della Regina (2011). He contributed to the Architecture Biennale, Venice, in 2008, 2010 and 2012. His work is represented in numerous museums and collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Tate Modern, London; the Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Fondazione Prada, Milan. He lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles.

Study-exhibition opening times: Madame Wu and the Mill from Hell:
29 October – 19 November 2013, from Tuesday-Saturday, 15.00-19.00
With the support of: French Academy in Rome, Bryan Guinness Charitable Trust, Cochemé Charitable Trust, John S. Cohen Foundation, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Israeli Embassy, Delegazione del Québec a Roma.
For further information:

The British School
Via A. Gramsci 61
00197 Roma / Italy
Tel +39 06 3264939 Press Office: Meeting Architecture
* Marta Colombo, e-mail: martacolombo@gmail.com - Tel. +39 340 3442805.
* Ilaria Gianoli, e-mail: ilariagianoli@alice.it - Tel. +39 333 6317344.