This event is part of The Shadow Series organised by John Andrews & Maria Theodorou With the support of Membership Office.

The final discussion of the 2016-17 Shadow Series will be dedicated to the asemic mark; a mark containing no conscious meaning or specific semantic content. The term is often applied to the calligraphic fusion of image and text, but we will be examining the associated conceptual bridge between automatic drawing (the doodle) and architecture, being attentive to the primacy given to drawing in general. The doodle is usually read retrospectively as the start of the design process, but we are interested to focus on the asemic mark as the manifestation of a crisis in which rules, forms and structures crack and self-combust.

The Shadow Series intends to turn the (usually) shadow condition of AA members and alumni into a shadowing force that debates architecture at the present scale of an expanded AA. Unlike the global school, in which the AA ventures across a variety of locations, the shadow series is an intimate event, held at the institution’s core, that assembles the AA’s bodies and brains to debate current architecture issues and processes. Held every third Thursday of the month, from 6.30–8.30pm, on a variety of topics.