Last friday, february 24th, MAA students had the midterm presentations. Willy Muller, Maite Bravo and invited jury, Antonio San Martin (aSZ arquitectes and UPC professor, Barcelona), Máxim Perov (Architectural Institute of Moscow) and Enric Massip-Bosch (EMBA -Estudi Massip Bosch Arquitectes) attended the presentations, giving feedbacks to the students on their projects. The site for this studio is located in the port of Barcelona: from Barceloneta to the industrial part in the south. In such a complex and diverse site, different kind of ideas are growing from the same starting point. Borders, city connections, void, water flows or transition space are some or the themes that we could see during the last presentations. Final presentations of the RS studios will be held on 19th -20th  and 21st of March.

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Mike Schlaich, professor at TU Berlin and the Managing Director of schlaich bergermann and partner, was yesterday evening at IAAC. He mainly spoke about lightweight structures made with concrete. He made an overview of concrete shells through history showing Felix Candela’s work who was able to build 4 cm shells with his hyperbolic paraboloid. The thickness was the minimum and the structures become lighter. He is trying to follow the flow’s forces and the distribution of the bending moment. As an example of his work, he showed a bridge which appear from an artist scketch based on bending as a mirror axis, the tension and the compression. Mike Schlaich gave us an idea as well the current research on lighweight bridges at TU Berlin.

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Students of MAG LAB from Syria visited IAAC with their workshop Tutors : Eduard Cabay and Noelle Halabi.

Usman Haque and Natalie Jeremijenko presented different projects at their lecture IAAC. Usman Haque presented one of his most relevant projects called Pachube. It is a website were the users can upload any kind of information in real-time and use it. The MAA students had been working with this platform during their first term in the research studio. Natalie Jeremijenko showed part of  her work and how she is exploring the interface between society, environment and technology and  how to integrate the people into her projects.

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John Palmesino presented yesterday the work that it is devel0ped at the Territorial Agency, founded by him and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog. Based on theoretical background John talked about urban scale by following a rather historical path of territorial approaches, as they were thought, formed or changed by community creation and later on by city inhabitation. John also explained projects and proposals based on physical phenomena and how those could form part of architectural solutions and vice versa.

Territorial Agency is an independent organisation that combines architecture, analysis, advocacy and action for integrated spatial transformation of contemporary territories. Together they run Diploma Unit 4 at the Architectural Association in London investigating The Coast of Europe.

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IAAC had the pleasure to welcome Philip Ball for a Lecture as part of the Master in Advanced Architecture. Philip Ball´s participation to our MAA lecture series supports the multidisciplinary education program of IAAC bringing expertise from different fields of interest.

Philip Ball is a freelance writer. He previously worked for over 20 years as an editor for the international science journal Nature. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media, and has authored many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture, including The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature, H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth, Universe of Stone, The Music Instinct, and his latest book Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making People. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books.

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