Architectural Association / Visiting School Program

The Architectural Association (AA) is the UK’s oldest inde­pen­dent school of archi­tec­ture : cre­ated in London in 1847 by two stu­dents when no sim­ilar training course existed, it develops since then an ambi­tious educa­tive pro­gram, which in a very great degree helped shape modern archi­tec­tural edu­ca­tion and the pro­fes­sion in the UK and beyond. With renowned teachers and pres­ti­gious alumni, its Architecture School leads and trains stu­dents to modern archi­tec­ture’s ongoing evo­lu­tion and the chal­lenges faced by today’s archi­tects : city poles trans­for­ma­tion, Renewable energies and urban ecology, or new social issues of glob­al­iza­tion.

Structured around a world­wide asso­ci­a­tion of mem­bers, the Architectural Association endeav­ours to give to its school a res­o­lutely transna­tional dimen­sion. Alongside with the fact that 85 per cent of its stu­dents (and a sim­ilar per­centage of tutors) come to London from abroad, the Architecture School develops since 2008 the pro­gram « Visiting School » : a serie of work­shops held all around the world, based on an inter­na­tional net­work of insti­tu­tions. Students, but also pro­fes­sionals and other par­tic­i­pants, can this way dis­cover excep­tional places and per­son­al­i­ties, new archi­tec­tural issues, specific tech­niques and knowl­edges…

With this in mind, the Architectural Association appealed to Villa Vassilieff to create its first « Visiting School » in Paris. This first work­shop, titled « Architecture and Writing » directed Caroline Rabourdin, will be mod­eled on the Parisian lit­erary Salon and will mostly be based on French lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­ophy, from Merleau-Ponty to Michel Butor and sur­re­al­ists writ­ings : it aims to cel­e­brate writing as a crit­ical and cre­ative prac­tice, in its analo­gies and links with archi­tec­tural prac­tice. Participants will see manuscripts and artist books first hand, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, as well as from the smaller col­lec­tion Immanence; they will gain crit­ical insight on their own writing and also learn to pre­sent their work in front of an audi­ence.

Some guests will be there to guide and help par­tic­i­pants :

 Caroline Rabourdin, is a French archi­tect, essayist and aca­demic living in London. Her cur­rent research includes spa­tial theory, geom­etry, phe­nomenology, spa­tial lit­er­a­ture and com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture as cre­ative prac­tices. She cur­rently teaches at the AA School and is a PhD can­di­date at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL.

 Prof. Mireille Calle-Gruber, writer and Professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III, editor of Michel Butor’s “Œu­vres Complètes” (Paris: La Différence, 2006) and co-author with Hélène Cixous of “Photos de Racines” (Paris : Des Femmes, 1994).

 Didier Faustino, artist and archi­tect, diploma unit master at the AA and chief editor of French archi­tec­tural and design magazine “Ar­chi­tec­tures Créé” since 2015. Faustino explores the rela­tion­ship between body and space, through archi­tec­tural inter­ven­tions and instal­la­tions. His latest exhi­bi­tions include “Des Corps et des Astres”, in Grenoble, and “Un­do­mes­ti­cated Places” at the AA.

 Sojung Jun, South-Korean artist in res­i­dence at the Villa, recip­ient of the Pernod Ricard Fellowship. Jun’s cur­rent work on synaes­thesia takes lit­er­a­ture as a point of depar­ture; her next pro­ject is based on “Le Paysan de Paris” by sur­re­alist writer Louis Aragon.

 Dr. Kristen Kreider, writer, inter­dis­ci­plinary artist and Director of the prac­tice-based PhD Programme, English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, author of “Po­etics & Place: The Architecture of Sign, Subjects and Site” (I.B. Tauris, January 2014) and co-author with James O’Leary of “Falling” (Copy Press, 2014).

The work­shop will take place at Villa Vassilieff from July 1st to 10th, 2016, and will cul­mi­nate in a public event where the par­tic­i­pants will be able to show­case their final work. The pro­gram will be run in English.

Architectural Association Visiting School, Villa Vassilieff, 2016.

Architectural Association Visiting School, Villa Vassilieff, 2016.

Architectural Association Visiting School, Villa Vassilieff, 2016.