The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced the Peter and Muriel Melvin Debates, a series of three events in 2011 featuring leading commentators and practitioners. Funded in memory of the late Peter and Muriel Melvin, the Melvin Debates will explore ideas that help architects face and resolve diverse professional challenges in the context of contemporary social, economic and political conditions.
All three events are free of charge and take place on a Friday afternoon at the RIBA, between 2.30 and 6pm and conclude with a reception to which everyone participating is invited to attend. Each debate offers plenty of opportunity for everyone attending to comment and interact.
Peter Melvin (1933-2009) and Muriel Melvin (1931-2008) both studied architecture and worked together for almost 50 years after they married in 1960. They established what became Melvin Lansley and Mark in 1965, and Atelier MLM in 1994. Peter Melvin was a member of RIBA Council for many years, and twice an RIBA Vice-President. The Melvin Debates reflect their wide and varied interests in the discipline of architecture, and are funded in their memory by their children Joanna, Jeremy, and Stephen Melvin.
The Architectural Uneasy: Relationships Between Old and New
Friday 18 March, 2.30pm, RIBA
Introduction by Paul Finch
Francis Golding, Chair
Eric Parry and Niall McLaughlin, architects
Margaret Richardson, architectural historian and curator
Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times architecture correspondent
Catherine Croft, Director, 20th Century Society
Owen Luder, past president, RIBA
Themes will include:
- Politics and authority in conservation and heritage:
-- How are responsibilities for the restoration of historic buildings divided between owners, statutory and voluntary bodies, and design professionals?
-- Right and might; whose judgments on worth should prevail?
- The case against conservation; why bother with make and mend?
-- Can existing building stock ever deliver the essentials for post-industrial living?
-- Modernism knows best; demolition and renewal
- Complement, copy, or contrast?
-- Constraint, consolidation, and inspiration; why is conservation in the UK so retentive?
-- Judgment of the eye, or the archive?; restoration strategies and reliable source material
- Forensic reconstruction vs. interpretative redesign
-- How architectural theory helps define design strategies
-- Why architectural history provides models for the future
Innovation, Liability and Risk: Architecture and The Law
Friday 20 May, 2.30pm, RIBA
Alfred Munkenbeck and Graham Stirk, architects
John Barber, barrister, engineer, and academic
Margaret Bickford-Smith, QC
David Jones, solicitor and ARB council member
As demands on the professional design team appear to grow in inverse proportion to fees, key themes for discussion might be:
- Balancing innovation and risk
- Insurance: professionals' responsibility, clients' benefit?
- Is PII the reason why most buildings never become architecture?
- Risk and scale; big project, bigger problems?
Architectural Education: Cost or Benefit?
Friday 16 September, 2.30pm, RIBA,
Simon Allford, Chair, Past RIBA Vice-President for Education and AHMM founding partner
Professor Neil Spiller, Greenwich University
Angela Brady, RIBA President (as of September 2011)
Professor David Dunster, sometime Roscoe Professor of Architecture
Professor Jo Noero, University of Cape Town
At a time when higher education is facing significant changes which may limit opportunities for professional study, the debate will focus on:
- Speculation or apprenticeship; what is the purpose of an education in architecture?
- Schism or synergy; what is the role of practice in education?
- Value, cost, and alternative educational models
- Architectural education; making comparisons in a global context