'Continuity and Innovation', Architectural Association and University of Nottingham symposium
January 2024
On Friday 2 February, Simon Henley joined the "Continuity and Innovation" symposium organised by the Architectural Association (AA) Housing and Urbanism and the University of Nottingham.
Today’s growing emphasis upon adaptive reuse has widened the range of projects which base themselves on retention and redesign of the existing, and this has brought a new vitality and critical reflection into architectural education and learning. The trend has drawn together two important architectural themes – the study of structure and materials, and the investigation of changing ways of life – and connected them to a third: a heightened design ambition in the aesthetics and resolution of continuities in our built environment.
The symposium brought together a group of leading architects to present projects demonstrating these themes, with the intention of stimulating discussion around their lessons for education, practice, and policy. At the heart of these dramatic shifts in architectural reasoning is less an insistence upon preservation, but a rapidly evolving search for innovation in material culture.
Simon spoke on the theme of Patterns of Living - the dynamics of inhabitation, collaboration, and material culture: the innovations inside continuity.
For more information and booking, please visit the AA website here.