RSA Architecture Forum 2019
Our Place on Earth

This year’s Royal Scottish Academy Architecture Forum will challenge the popular idea that ‘people make places’ by demonstrating that our ‘place on earth’ remains a powerful and omnipresent force that fundamentally affects our person, our national character, our culture and therefore our art and architecture.

We invite you to a dialogue with three critical thinkers, an artist, architect and writer, to deconstruct ‘the now’ through the lens of art and architecture. The role of art and architecture in society has never been more acute, come join us and explore together how we can alter or ignore our reality.

Chair: Paul Stallan RSA (Elect)
Panel: Jude Barber, Jonathan Charley and Patricia Fleming

Tuesday 10 September 7pm
Civic House, Glasgow, G4 9RH

Paul Stallan the architect –   inner and outer punk, supplied the music

Jude Barber  Collective architecture  Common Guild 

Jonathan Charley  writer  critic political character, recommended the reading, mostly vintage and untrendy.  Cocaine Nights by Ballard included.

Patricia Fleming  gallery owner  administrator  artist, says she was educated not in school, which she hated, but by looking at and understanding artists

I made a special effort to attend this, driving into Glasgow on a damp dark evening and getting lost!  Eventually arrived at the Civic House.  I am so glad I did make this effort, because the event was very encouraging and interesting.

HERE ARE SOME QUICK IMPRESSIONS OF THE EVENING.

The debate was lively and original, especially Paul’s music and Jonathan’s book selection.  Jude made a great contribution from the socially engaged architectural standpoint and Patricia very insightful about the role and nature of artists.  She is aware of the deep thinking that goes into making art, and commented that art works best if it combines an “instant hit” with thought and meaning.

Critical awareness of the pressurised consumerist and politically disoriented society we inhabit, social media included, was taken for granted,  as was the call for an engaged art.

One of the panel, maybe the punk architect, Paul Stallan, maybe all of them, agreed that  art is a destructive force before it can become a creative one.  The deconstruction or destructive is a  part of seeing the new and creating something from the breakages.  I applaud this insight.

Architecture Fringe, an annual summer event, across Scotland – so worth knowing about.