From the tallest building in the world to a vision for desert settlement; from a multi-award winning London school to a Norwegian cultural centre; Real Architecture returns after spring’s phenomenal sell-out run. Maintaining its commitment to hosting presentations on the most important architectural projects of today, this series has the added bonus of taking place in two of London’s most innovatively designed buildings, both not normally open to the public. Opening with a special presentation on the Stirling Prize nominated Westminster Academy that will take place in the Academy itself, the remainder of the series will be housed in Sir Denys Lasdun’s Grade 1 listed icon of Modernism, the Royal College of Physicians.


Thursday 13 November
Paul Monaghan, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris presents Westminster Academy, London

A Real Architecture first; an in-situ lesson on the art of school architecture as AHMM presents their Stirling Prize short-listed academy. The rectangular glazed green terracotta-clad building is five-storeys high rising out of North London’s urbanity. It is a testament to how much architecture can reinvent a formula long past its prime, not least the inclusion of inspiring furniture by Eames and Jasper Morrison and anti-bullying multi-exit toilets. For the first time members of the public will have the opportunity to hear the stories and psychology behind everything from the giant light-filled atrium to the concrete, neon-lit lecture theatre.

Thursday 20 November
Reinier de Graaf, Office for Metropolitan Architecture presents City in the Desert, UAE
For some time now desert developments have been constructed as though they could have been constructed anywhere else. Large sections of the desert are being turned into high maintenance lawn.
When it comes to the city, 20th century cures may yet prove 21st century ails: everything we have grown to like - low density, lawns, spaciousness, luscious green, has suddenly become an ecological time bomb. OMA has created an efficient and compact form of urbanisation, a blueprint for an instant single integrated city built from scratch as a manifesto and model for the development of the Arabian desert that attempts to correct the extravagances of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Reinier de Graaf takes on this very contemporary discussion and explains how.

Thursday 27 November
Tarald Lundevall and Kjetil Thorsen, Snøhetta present New Opera House, Oslo
This talk explores Norway’s new gleaming landmark: the largest cultural centre built in the country in 700 years, a seductively sculptural work of art from architects Snøhetta, the minds behind the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (2002). The building infiltrates its surroundings by sloping its stone roof - made up of 36,000 fitted pieces - up from the adjacent fjord; allowing members of the public, residents and opera goes alike to navigate over the building, developing a personal relationship with the public structure. Integral to the
1,000-room contemporary edifice’s interior, which is largely lined with crafted woodwork (using the traditions of Norwegian boat builders), are a number of art commissions interwoven into the structural fabric, including a unique take on the traditional cloakroom, which sees the architects reunited with their 2007 Serpentine Pavilion collaborator Olafur Eliasson. A glimpse at an architectural landmark, which has received rare universal praise.

Wednesday 3 December
William Baker, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP presents Burj Dubai, Dubai, UAE
What do you do when you need to transport a great number of people up a 636+ metre mixed-used tower? How do you deal with condensation that builds up when the heat of the desert meets the cool of the air- conditioned interior? As it turns out, you develop a 40 mph elevator - the world’s fastest; and collect the moisture and pump it into the site’s landscape plantings. Yet there are so many more questions still to be asked regarding the Burj Dubai, the tallest building on earth and surely one of the most ambitious projects the world has ever seen. This talk is a unique opportunity to do so.

Email: oliver@architecturefoundation.org.uk