Omrania|CSBE Student Award for Excellence in Architectural Design

Dear friends and colleagues,

After a successful launch in 2008, Omrania and Associates and the Center for the Study of the Built Environment have expanded their Student Award beyond Jordan to include all Arab countries. The Award, which is given to the most outstanding architectural graduation projects submitted, aims at recognizing quality in the teaching of architecture in the Arab world, and at encouraging students in schools to excel in their design performance.

Submission

This consists of the student's submission for his / her final-year graduation design project. No additional work may be done to the project except for re-formatting it onto 2 sheets. The submission deadline is August 31, 2009, and submissions will be accepted beginning on August 1, 2009.

Full information about submitting is now available on the CSBE website: www.csbe.com.

Jury

Projects will be evaluated by a highly-distinguished, independent jury. This year's jury members are:

· Farrokh Derakhshani, Director, Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Geneva, Switzerland (Mr. Derakhshani's participation is made possible through the kind support of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture)

· Saleh Al Hathloul, Advisor, Arriyadh Development Authority; former Deputy Minster for Town Planning, Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

· Khalid Nahhas, Senior Architect and Founding Associate Director, Symbiosis Designs, Amman, Jordan

Prizes

The Jury will select the top three projects. These will be awarded the following prizes:

· First Prize of 3,500 USD

· Second Prize of 2,500 USD

· Third Prize of 1,500 USD

The winners will be invited to receive their prizes in an Award ceremony to be held in Amman, Jordan.

The projects will be displayed in an Award exhibition that follows the ceremony. The winning projects also will be published in the CSBE website and in other print and online professional publications.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Award, one needs to have been during the 2008 - 2009 academic year a final-year student for a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture or Architectural Engineering at a university located in a country belonging to the Arab League. Applicants should have successfully completed and defended their final-year architectural design graduation project before the Award's submission deadline.

Further information

· To obtain full details, please visit the CSBE website (www.csbe.org)

· Regular updates on the Award also are available on Facebook [The Omrania|CSBE Student Award for Excellence in Architectural Design]

· For any specific inquiries, please send an email to award@csbe.org

from pao with love.

Connecting Dots How-To!!!

Hellooo!

Here we go;

Below are 3 very different, very simple thoughts on how two dots on a single white sheet of paper can be connected.

I've posted these to further clarify; you can do whatever, i'm starting to feel that there are those who want to do the exercise and think they don't have time, or their idea is not good enough (well in this scenario there is no such thing as a bad idea)

We're now well into friday, we all know how long friday is :) i hope to see posts coming in by the hundreds, but even 4 or 5 would do for today!

Thanks :)

Live Drama on Watwet

I loooooooooove the new drama happening on Interruptions watwet channel! we just need to bring more people, and have more interruptionists participate! Interruptionists are really spoiled needing all the cheerleading to do an exercise! but we're ready at all costs! We proved we are capable! we ate 20 bananas and put them on a magazine cover! so trust me we're capable of anything!

the success of the exercise is a success of the visionary concept of watwet's channel!

Student Deceleration | Follow Up!

For those incharge of rephrasing discussion-group pointers

Please try to phrase your topic discussions in 5 points with one introductory paragraph and have it ready by the end of this week! Updates would be posted on blog and you will receive the final decelaration form once finalized!

thank you all! Best!

Exercise!

All interruptionists, those who aren't busy yet, here you go, those of you already busy, what's one more tiny thing going to do :)

Well, here's the deal, attached is a .jpeg format of an A4 layout.

>> Print

>>Connect the dots

(however you like, using whatever material you like, there's absolutely no limits on the ways you can connect them but the most obvious "one straight line" answer isn't an option, and no; it's not profound in any way)

>>Scan or Photograph it

>>Post on blog

{tag it "exercise")

>>Send it

in high-resolution to both interruptions e-mail and (pinkblackwaters@gmail.com) Please fill in subject "exercise"

In this issue, there will be a white page with two dots inside with the same request to the readers of the magazine, the page will have a perforated edge or a (cut here) indication, and all interested readers will be interrupted into doing this simple exercise, then scanning or shooting it, and finally sending it back to us causing a level of engagement and interaction between the interrupter and the interrupted.

Us doing it is simply a case study on what a bunch of creatives from different backgrounds and disciplines would do. And these examples you do will be published too.

This is not a test or a competition and there is only one rule; connect the dots, other than that, anything goes.

There shouldn't be any questions; Hopefully Posts will start coming in quickly.

Thank you all for your participation.

First Student Deceleration Meeting (3.3)

so for the first time ever for an Interruptions meeting, people show up at 9.55 to a 10.00 am meeting! Muhtaraf al Rimal's door was still locked, the sun was rudely arrogant and over 20 interruptionists gathered outside eager to declare intentions!

quite an insperational scene to wake up to this morning-

we sat around a circle which turned to be two halves of a circle where JU students clustered at one half and JUST students at the other penetrated by some Yarmouk and ASY students here and there and a GJU student in the middle! But I was certain this would break soon positively because of my belief that no person would ever wake up on a weekend before 9am at the ridiculously hot weather and make it all the way to Lwaibdeh, (with stylized hair) to find the door locked and still wait without really being up to something!

and 'something' was what were up to!

in a matter of minutes everyone began to 'click'- the conversations went on to many aspects, emotions, ideas and opinions were unleashed and it was time to break into the designed workshop format!

in 5 discussions group, we discussed 5 topics concerning education, the role of institutions, the role of students, solutions, negatives and an alternative utopia.

each group responded to the given topic in 5 points to summarize their full hour discussion!

the points were presented to the rest, elaborated and then given to each group as an assignment to rephrase into five solid statements.

these statements will be posted on the blog gradually as they come in to Interruptions inbox, and updates about the final format of the "document" will be posted as well-

I didnt find an evaluation of the meeting neccessary because one noted thing was how passionate and eager each one of the participants was- I hope we could arrange for a meeting once the document is out in its final form to present it to a wider audience

thanks for everyone who shared his/her morning hours with us today

First Student Deceleration Meeting (2.3)

First Student Deceleration Meeting (1.3)

William Mitchell | Example of MIT's Experiment on Remote Collaboration

following previous post

"...Mitchell cited interesting developments relating to experiments in studios that are involved in remote collaboration and are separated by significant time zones. He gave the example of a project where students at MIT collaborated on a studio project with students in Japan. A time difference of twelve hours separated the students in Japan from those in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The students very quickly figured out that they could use the time difference to get a twenty-four hour design process implemented. The MIT students would work for twelve hours and hand over the work to students in Japan, who would work for another twelve hours, hand the work back to the MIT students and so on. Of course, the students left an allowance for some overlap in the schedules so that they could synchronize and coordinate their activities. In the final result, the project developed at a much faster rate than it would have in a traditional studio."

William Mitchell; the Future of the Design Studioand an Introduction to the ArchNet Project

an essay on a presentation made by William J. Mitchell to Diwan al-Mimar on February 25, 2000.

http://www.csbe.org/e-publications.htm

Abdali Innovation Award | Techno (vs) JU

So you bring together two competing campuses, minimum exposure, zero level of interaction, contrasting teaching methodologies; select 50+ projects from all types, subjects, context or scale, with a 3:1 ratio for the project, stack them in 8 themes, keep them away throughout the whole process and then bring them all together to submit their ‘products’ hours after midnight at prestigious Kempinski!

Result: a damn interesting experiment worthy of a doctorate dissertation!

Perhaps Abdali’s competition did not provide student/student exposure but it certainly exposed many important issues. Perhaps the highlight of last year’s CSBE | Omrania award is the jurors’ summary released which questions architectural education, externalizing the matter of education out of the institutions—

The Abdali Award designed as a competition for ‘innovation in design’ is less important for the projects it collects but rather for the opportunity it given us to observe current architectural education logics—

The non-existing interaction platforms, the radically internalized teaching environments, the emphasis on ‘product’ rather than methodology, isolation of ideas, lack of criticism, adaptability or connection dynamics.

it appears that our “mutation” is counter to that of contemporary architecture models—

Here I can mention two examples for comparison,

1 The MIT architecture campus joins an arch department at a university in Japan for a collaborative student project through virtual online connection using the 12 hour difference to work in shifts where students at MIT use the 12 day hours and then pass the work online to Japan’s campus to work their 12 hour shift- the result is unspeakable!

2 The AA did not only connect virtually but moved all the way to Beijing and established an AA center where they can bring together student from the AA with those in Beijing as well as international students to produce collaborative material, and currently studying doing a similar experiment in Dubai

We managed to meet Ms Luna H. Madi (Abdali Investment & Development PSC) and Jo Chemali (Regional Communication Director, MS&L) and agreed to work something out between AIA and Interruptions— we are hoping this could use the AIA as a gateway to turn this experiment into a student manifesto and a review/analysis/or critical observation (the minimum) to follow this basic blog draft in our upcoming edition.

Abdali InnovationTechno (vs) JU

So you bring together two competing campuses, minimum exposure, zero level of interaction, contrasting teaching methodologies; select 50+ projects from all types, subjects, context or scale, with a 3:1 ratio for the project, stack them in 8 themes, keep them away throughout the whole process and then bring them all together to submit their ‘products’ hours after midnight at prestigious Kempinski!

Result: a damn interesting experiment worthy of a doctorate dissertation!

Perhaps Abdali’s competition did not provide student/student exposure but it certainly exposed many important issues. Perhaps the highlight of last year’s CSBE | Omrania award is the jurors’ summary released which questions architectural education, externalizing the matter of education out of the institutions—

The Abdali Award designed as a competition for ‘innovation in design’ is less important for the projects it collects but rather for the opportunity it given us to observe current architectural education logics—

The non-existing interaction platforms, the radically internalized teaching environments, the emphasis on ‘product’ rather than methodology, isolation of ideas, lack of criticism, adaptability or connection dynamics.

it appears that our “mutation” is counter to that of contemporary architecture models—

Here I can mention two examples for comparison,

1 The MIT architecture campus joins an arch department at a university in Japan for a collaborative student project through virtual online connection using the 12 hour difference to work in shifts where students at MIT use the 12 day hours and then pass the work online to Japan’s campus to work their 12 hour shift- the result is unspeakable!

2 The AA did not only connect virtually but moved all the way to Beijing and established an AA center where they can bring together student from the AA with those in Beijing as well as international students to produce collaborative material, and currently studying doing a similar experiment in Dubai

We managed to meet Ms Luna H. Madi (Abdali Investment & Development PSC) and Jo Chemali (Regional Communication Director, MS&L) and agreed to work something out between AIA and Interruptions— we are hoping this could use the AIA as a gateway to turn this experiment into a student manifesto and a review/analysis/or critical observation (the minimum) to follow this basic blog draft in our upcoming edition.

Hewar with Riwaq @ Masra7 al Balad

Subscribing to Watwet channel | Baby Steps!

1. go to http://watwet.com/signup
2. after registering your account, in your account page go to settings -> mobile settings
3. Send a blank msg to the number on the screen
4. after confirming, in your account page go to channels -> all channels
5. find interruptions, or click on "Media" to narrow down the list
the following link might take you directly to interruptions link
http://watwet.com/channel/interruptions

and now ur an official interruptions subscriber!
but now you can only recieve (be interrupted) and not 'interrupt' yet
send me your (username) whether here as a comment or text it to me so i can add you to the list of contributors and 'allow' you to interrupt the rest of us!

to post on your personal page:
send an sms to 97999 of 140 charectars and it's automatically posted

to post on INTERRUPTIONS Channel!
1. send an sms to 97999
2. begin your message with
@interruptions
your message would be instantly sent to all subscribers phones, updated on Interruptions channel page, interruptions blog and interruptions twitter page!!

once your activated and allowed as an interruptions channel contributer watwet to all the rest to let us know ur on board!

Interruptions Team to be Technologically Baptized!!

So as it appears the attempts to 'technologize' interruptions aren't going to be easy!
Now that we are 46 posts ahead since first creating the blog 8529 words has been published on the blog! and mostly by interruptionists with no 'blogging history'!
The recent attempt to channel Interruptionists through watwet has failed so far! My attempts to sell the idea as a virtual interruptive network, networking ideas, maximizing 'reach' potentials and ofcourse the top argument: watwet updates are FREE! has failed too!

so here's how it'll go, tomorrow we are meeting at bake-house rainbow for breakfast at 9.00 a laptop would be present, all interruptionists cellphones would be present as well and ready for each interruptionist to be technologically baptized! Else, no one is allowed to have a moning pancake!

!Attention!

To all Interruptionists: This blog is a bit late, but it's urgency persists. It has come to our attention that there are groups and individuals who wish to express ideas and concepts in one form or another. All those who have ideas or projects, weather they are urban interventions, galleries, screenings, installations, etc. should present themselves at this meeting. We want, together as a team, to realize individual projects under Interruptions. The aim is to complete and display our results within one month time, be it sculptural, video, or theoretical. It will be a great step of development and satisfaction not only for the publication, but for ourselves. The meeting will be held in appox. 10 days. This should be a sufficient amount of time for those who already have ideas for projects to present the project to the team on paper. For those who don't, can conjure an idea into a project, or join another. There is at least one team project ready for production.

For more info. leave a comment or contact Khaled. Thank you

Ode to "Stateless Nation".....

Souls without a country
swim between seven skies,
between nightmare and reverie,
time negates chronology,
all narratives die.

Neither here nor there, outside everywhere,
presences lighter than light
while their executioners languish
in the abyss of an endless night.

from (Exiles without Narratives, 2008)
01.06. 2009 Eman