L.A.W.u.N the Invisible University

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sabe/page-1136

Run by Professor David Greene and by EXP research Fellow Samantha Hardingham, the Invisible University is a live research project – as part of Professor Greene’s wider ongoing L.A.W.u.N. investigations – that seeks to gain knowledge and understanding of an architecture that is evolving from a culture whose dominant raw materials exist outside the visible spectrum, i.e. mobile and wire-free technology. The project thus investigates changes in architecture driven by changes in technology and the influence of cultural drifts (what most people are doing most of the time), another significant factor in affecting change in architecture. L.A.W.u.N. rethinks the role of the university in the age of the text message, and asks whether there is a correlation between the way that technology has influenced banks and the way that we do our banking, and the way that technology is influencing our use of a university, and specifically a school of architecture? Hence this live project hence the interactivity between the accepted definition of ‘university’ as a fixed place for the practice of knowledge transfer and conversation and the potential for mobile wire-free technology to deliver teaching and learning in a truly extra-mural context.
The project (or, rather, a series of interlinked projects) is being developed in collaboration with a number of practising architects, designers and students chosen by Professor Greene for their specific approaches to the research problem. The projects are shaped to produce a range of immediate outcomes, such as exhibitions, lectures, workshops etc, often solicited by outside agencies, and often cross-disciplinary. These events, usually seen as a by-product or outcome of the research model, therefore become a working tool, and part of the project's methodology, and the partially ad-hoc nature of such collaborations is seen as an essential part of the evolving model of a flexible university. The projects, events, talks, etc, are recorded in various forms, the material then re-worked into the evolving design project, as in the current folio edition, book and exhibition. L.A.W.u.N project will be developed and published as a book co-edited by Professor Greene and Samantha Hardingham.
Collaborators in the Invisible University project include:

Jana Bradley, library expert at the University of Syracuse
Jason Bruges, interactive designer
Mike Davies, ex-partner in the Richard Rogers Partnership
Chris Dawson, ex-partner in the Richard Rogers Partnership
Susannah Handley, textile specialist at the RCA
Usman Haque, interactive designer,
Will McLean, technical tutor at the University of Westminster
Orange
Michael Paris, Hawkins Brown
Matty Pye, artist at muf art and architecture
Leon van Schaik, Innovation Professor at RMIT, Melbourne

Public showings of the Invisible University project include:Architecture Foundation: invitation to exhibit in Selfridges window alongside
Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid et al, 2004
London Architecture Biennale: invitation to create major urban installation, 2005
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, invitation to hold workshop for
senior engineers and mathematicians, 2005
Architectural Association, London: invitation to put on solo exhibition and
accompanying publication, in progress
Columbia University: Invitation to exhibit, in development
Madrid University: Invitation to exhibit, in development
DotDotDot magazine, Netherlands: publication in three issues, 2006-07.
‘Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design’, curated by Zak Kyes
& Mark Owens, Architectural Association, October 2007.
Greene, D. & Hardingham, S., The Disreputable Projects of David Greene, London:Architectural Association, forthcoming for 2008