Architectural Association School of Architecture

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The AA Foundation Programme (.foundation.course) recently had their end of term Jury at Hooke Park, Dorset. Students wor...
26/05/2026

The AA Foundation Programme (.foundation.course) recently had their end of term Jury at Hooke Park, Dorset. Students worked operationally with models and prototypes, assembling 1:1 scale fragments for a cabin. Their work examined changing weather, shadows and the surrounding woodland, using photographs, film and recordings made on site.

Last week, the Foundation Programme had their end of term Jury at Hooke Park, Dorset. Students worked operationally with...
23/05/2026

Last week, the Foundation Programme had their end of term Jury at Hooke Park, Dorset. Students worked operationally with models and prototypes, assembling 1:1 scale fragments for a cabin. Their work examined changing weather, shadows and the surrounding woodland, using photographs, film and recordings made on site.

Last week, we hosted the 2026 AA Writing Prize presentations in the Lecture Hall, where shortlisted students from the In...
08/05/2026

Last week, we hosted the 2026 AA Writing Prize presentations in the Lecture Hall, where shortlisted students from the Intermediate and Diploma programmes presented and discussed essays that approached architecture through history, politics, infrastructure, territory, ecology, language, and representation.

This year’s submissions were exceptionally strong, reflecting a wide range of references, questions, and approaches to architectural writing. Together, the shortlisted essays demonstrated the different ways writing can operate as a form of architectural research and critical practice.

Congratulations to all shortlisted students and thank you to everyone who submitted work this year.

The shortlisted essays can now be read on the AA Writing Prize website.





Join us next Friday to celebrate the launch of a major digital platform of over 4,000 archival drawings, photographs and...
05/05/2026

Join us next Friday to celebrate the launch of a major digital platform of over 4,000 archival drawings, photographs and documents related to the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture (1954–71). The platform maps the careers, experiences and legacies of over 550 alumni, across 82 countries – foregrounding previously hidden histories and revealing the transnational relationships and networks of practices, institutions and government bodies which interacted with, and informed, the pedagogy of the programme.

AA Department of Tropical Architecture Archives (1954–71): Project Launch
AA Lecture Hall
Friday 15 May, 6.30–8pm
RSVP on Eventbrite, link in bio

This project has been generously supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/public/whats-on/department-tropical-architecture-launch

Join us in the AA Lecture Hall on Thursday 30 April, 6.30pm for ‘Follow Me to Pie Land’ by the artist Andrew Holmes. The...
27/04/2026

Join us in the AA Lecture Hall on Thursday 30 April, 6.30pm for ‘Follow Me to Pie Land’ by the artist Andrew Holmes. The talk will be a chance to hear Andrew discuss his current exhibition, ROAD WORK, and hear a recorded version of the song Stack o’ Bricks, performed by his band Alabama Chrome and played for the first time. ROAD WORK brings together 16 large-scale prints from a series of 1,000 polaroid photographs taken in 1980s Los Angeles. The exhibition, on display at 1 Montague Street, closes on Saturday 2 May.

‘Follow Me to Pie Land’
AA Lecture Hall
Thursday 30 April, 6.30–8pm
RSVP on Eventbrite, link in bio

‘I don’t like to be lectured. I like to be told stories and to listen to songs. I like Texas country, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Townes Van Zandt, Ray Wylie Hubbard. I like repetition.’
– Andrew Holmes

‘Can you play an E ninth chord?’
‘Yes, of course’, came the reply.
‘But can you play an E ninth chord all night?’
– Extract from an interview by James Brown and guitar player Jimmy Nolen

David Greene says Andrew Holmes is a monk, but a monk in a car. He is assembling his equivalent of The Canterbury Tales. He is doing it in the form of images and messages. The messages are song lyrics, themselves the equivalents of Polaroids, brief snatches of glimpsed graphics on the sides of trailers, advertising on the car radio, the voice giving directions on Google Maps, announcements over the PA and overheard conversations in truck stops.

Take the 405, Follow me to Pie Land,
Ripon, take the five, Travel Stop Colony Road,
Take the shade, Get out damn slowly,
Put on straw Stetson, no breeze, ninety degrees,
South West Motor Freight, Tri State Motor Transit,
Refrigerated, World Wide Moving Arrowhead,
Any comments please call, Young Blood Truck Lines Scheduled,
Great Dane Bama Pies, Wanted Moving Systems.
– Extract from Stack o’ Bricks
by Alabama Chrome

Images:
1 Andrew Holmes, Go With Best, 1985
2 Andrew Holmes, Bama Pies, 1985

Applications are open for the AA Summer School 2026! This year’s three-week Summer School, Learning from London, takes p...
25/04/2026

Applications are open for the AA Summer School 2026! This year’s three-week Summer School, Learning from London, takes place 6–24 July. Across six units that explore multiple ‘Londons’, the programme treats architectural education as a radical and inclusive practice, challenging disciplinary boundaries and engaging with the social, political and spatial realities of the city.

The Summer School is aimed at current and prospective architectural students, as well as newcomers to architecture. To find out more and apply, visit the AA website.

Learning from London units:

Unit 1: Microcosm(ic) London with tutors Lindsey Krug, Radu Remus Macovei and Edward Wang. This unit reinterprets Charles Jencks’ seminal Cosmic House as a laboratory for reading London through the architecture of a single building.

Unit 2: The Infraordinary with tutors FORMS OF COMMONS (Chiara Malerba, Margherita Sorgentone and Constanza Zeni). What if architecture began with questions about how we look at things rather than making grand gestures? This unit explores the infraordinary – the overlooked, the habitual, the everyday.

Unit 3: Cry Me a River with tutors Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton and Matthieu Brasebin. This unit takes London as a city shaped by water as its starting point, proposing a critical reading of water infrastructures through observation, mapping and experimentation.

Unit 4: Parade with tutor Alessandro Pasero. This unit explores London as a stage for collective action – marches, celebrations, protests and urban occupations. Through research, design and construction, we will create props and devices and choreograph a parade in the city.

Unit 5: Feasibility with tutors Gonçalo André Pires, Marija Urbaite and João Lourenço dos Santos. This unit begins by considering London through the intersection of its infrastructural rail network and land ownership to examine how infrastructure generates spatial exceptions.

Unit 6: Heatwave with tutors Jacob Höppner and Leo Herrmann. This unit will explore the effects of the climate emergency on the urban fabric of London to develop our own way of designing for the future.

“What makes a sacred space sacred?”Project by Ruihan Reena Shen Intermediate 14 (2024-2025) Project Description by Ruiha...
20/04/2026

“What makes a sacred space sacred?”

Project by Ruihan Reena Shen Intermediate 14 (2024-2025)

Project Description by Ruihan

This project reflects the 20-year journey of nomadic worship across diverse architectural spaces of the London Huaxia Christian Church, a Chinese diasporic evangelical Christian community in London. This includes moving from rented offices to grand traditional churches. A reflection that identified how sacredness emerges not only from physical structures but also from the communal life within them.

By comparing London Huaxia Christian Church with Westminster Cathedral, through the analysis of elements like materiality, spatial function, and circulation, it became apparent that sacredness is as much about human connection as it is about architecture. The design response reflects this insight, proposing a new church space in Brixton’s civic centre—an adaptive structure combining classic architectural elements with a flexible, community-centered design.

The proposal is a multi-floor conceptual structure that mirrors Huaxia’s journey, integrating both architectural and communal themes. It uses steel to create a transparent, functional aesthetic. Moveable units allow for baptisms and choir practices in various locations, responding to the dispersed nature of our congregation.

Ultimately, the design bridges the gap between stability and movement, blending the old with the new. It allows sacredness to unfold wherever the community gathers— emphasizing that architecture forms the body, but community is the soul of sacred space.





As part of the AA’s exhibition with Alcova, students from the AA’s Design and Make programme will be exhibiting a modula...
17/04/2026

As part of the AA’s exhibition with Alcova, students from the AA’s Design and Make programme will be exhibiting a modular timber roof structure designed on site at Hooke Park in Dorset.

The design combines different timber species, integrating natural geometries with engineered components. The timber structure pavilion will be installed outside the Centro Ospedaliero Militare di Baggio, a former military hospital complex.

Coalescence
20–26 April 2026, 11am–7pm (CEST)
Centro Ospedaliero Militare, Via Giovanni Labus 10, 20147 Milan, Italy

Join us on Tuesday 21 April, 6.30pm in the AA Lecture Hall for a talk by Walter J Hood considering the challenges and po...
16/04/2026

Join us on Tuesday 21 April, 6.30pm in the AA Lecture Hall for a talk by Walter J Hood considering the challenges and possibilities of America’s postcolonial landscape.

The lecture will interrogate the American narrative of community 'underdevelopment,' centring minority communities where the accumulation of cultural and economic capital has been deliberately constrained. It will reframe underdevelopment not as cultural absence, but as the result of racism, structural disinvestment, housing discrimination and inequitable policies that continue to shape the American landscape.

Through the lens of Hood Design Studio’s cultural practice, and in collaboration with arts institutions, nonprofit organisations and local agencies, the work reveals stories embedded in place, stories of erasure, resilience and persistence. These layered narratives illuminate both the challenges and possibilities of America’s postcolonial landscape. The studio’s tripartite practice – community lifeways, the everyday and mundane, and commemoration – serves as a framework for uncovering lost community memories, physical palimpsests and practices, transforming them into new patterns and opportunities for ritual and development.

The event will conclude with a conversation between Walter J Hood and Nana Biamah-Ofosu.

The publication ‘The African Ancestors Garden: History and Memory at the International African American Museum’ will be available to purchase following the talk.

Joy and Pain – Audacious Acts in Underdeveloped Landscapes: Walter J Hood
Tuesday 21 April, 6.30–8pm
AA Lecture Hall
Free to attend, register on Eventbrite

Photo by Toni Smailagic, courtesy Hood Design Studio

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walter-j-hood-joy-and-pain-audacious-acts-in-underdeveloped-landscapes-tickets-1985926627001?aff=oddtdtcreator

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