Pete Silver
The Electronic Architect
Thursday 6th November, 6.30pm, Room M421
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS
Pete Silver will discuss the origins and more recent applications of an interactive, dynamic and responsive architecture; including a brief history of analytical computing, the Cybernetic experiments of Prof Gordon Pask and the emergence of environmentally responsive, computable architecture. Pete Silver is an architect with experience of the construction industry, public sector housing, teaching, research and private practice. During the 1970s, he worked for five years as development manager for Solon Housing Association where he was responsible both for the rehabilitation of pre-war housing stock and the development of new-build projects in the outer-London boroughs, working with architects such as Patrick Keiller, Edward Cullinan and Walter Segal. Subsequent to this, he worked as a tradesman for a long-established building company before setting up as a private contractor specialising in conservation and refurbishment. During the 1980s, Pete Silver trained at the Architectural Association under Professors John Frazer and Gordon Pask, and subsequently completed four years as a Research Associate in the Land Use Research Unit at King’s College London under Professor Alice Coleman. The research sought to correlate the design of post-war planned housing with long-term environmental and social breakdown, and resulted in a £50m DOE grant to re-design some of the most run-down housing estates in Britain. Pete Silver has worked as a studio design tutor at the Architectural Association where he established 1st year, undergraduate courses in media and communication and the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he introduced and managed specialist courses for Diploma/MA students on expert and real-time environmentally-responsive systems. Silver has co-authored three books with colleague Will McLean; Fabrication: The Designers Guide, Introduction to Architectural Technology and Structural Engineering for Architects: A Handbook, a fourth book, Air Structures is due out next spring.
For Lecture details
Will McLean / Pete Silver
w.f.mclean@wmin.ac.uk