Like all products of architecture the magazine you see before you, along with the homogenized group of individuals behind it, is the result of both desire and necessity. On one hand, my colleagues and I have a lot of thoughts on art, architecture, society and the ties that bind them and we wish them to be expressed, challenged and developed in a meaningful way. This is our desire.
On the other hand, a student society at the University of Ulster was established early this year, due largely to pressure from lecturers and staff as opposed to the student body itself. No-one has yet taken ownership of the society. This is an attempt to do so. This is our necessity.
We don’t want to be an affiliate of any existing university, practice or body. We will not be exponents of any particular cause, opinion or agenda. We will broadcast any and all points of view but will remain critical of them all. We are not a soapbox. We wish to be collaborative, discursive, multidisciplinary, procrastinatory and active. We welcome feedback and criticism.
This is the apex of two years of thinking and planning, but please do not let the word ‘apex’ suggest that the process is complete. As Dominic Stevens said ‘Process has no end product but is actually a series of fixed points.’ What you have before you is merely the point we are at, and possibly some allusions as to where we are heading.
On the other hand, a student society at the University of Ulster was established early this year, due largely to pressure from lecturers and staff as opposed to the student body itself. No-one has yet taken ownership of the society. This is an attempt to do so. This is our necessity.
We don’t want to be an affiliate of any existing university, practice or body. We will not be exponents of any particular cause, opinion or agenda. We will broadcast any and all points of view but will remain critical of them all. We are not a soapbox. We wish to be collaborative, discursive, multidisciplinary, procrastinatory and active. We welcome feedback and criticism.
This is the apex of two years of thinking and planning, but please do not let the word ‘apex’ suggest that the process is complete. As Dominic Stevens said ‘Process has no end product but is actually a series of fixed points.’ What you have before you is merely the point we are at, and possibly some allusions as to where we are heading.
Andrew Molloy - 6th year MArch student
Index
- - inaugural lecture
- - forum for alternative belfast - a students perspective
- - what is the ideal home?
- - DDIY in barcelona
- - architecture and music
- - guerilla alleyway intervention
- - the art of mortality - an introduction to wabi sabi
- - the secret laboratory - the paul clarke prize for best sketchbook
- - PLACE
- - architecture and the recession - an interview with ciaran mackel - part one
http://www.bemakeshift.com/
ReplyDeleteThis website is also to a large extent within its infancy (2008),developed by a group of 5th Year MArch Students and presents a fantastic digital example of a studio network one to continue beyond and include the entire architecture profession and general interest.
There exists a current problem of language accessibility to those outside of the architecture profession however despite this it has many great ways of continuing to explore modes of learning, conceiving, organising, designing, building and using…with strong emphasis on collaboration, and graphic presentation...
Their Description of MAKESHIFT can be found on the following URL (http://www.bemakeshift.com/about/), here is some of the text:
Makeshift is an experimental fanzine about architecture and its alternatives. Where current architectural journalism continues to celebrate the built, the photogenic, the 'well-detailed'- with successful professionals writing wry critiques on a minority of 'nice Buildings', Makeshift is an attempt to go where architecture is not yet; to bring together a wealth of IDEAS that are currently disconnected by professional categorisations, geography, or un-fame.
Makeshift is for all those people who are still interested in the design of the world between 5 O'clock in the evening and 9am the following day. It is open to all, It is available to all, but it is not without purpose. Observing global change and understanding that a rethink is badly due, at the root of Makeshift is the question: What might architecture do?