Fast Forward is the bi-annual lecture series hosted by the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning. It aims to foster debate, discussion and development within the disciplines of architecture, urban design and urban planning.

For Making Ways FFWD is collaborating with the Objectspace Ockham Residential Series to bring this public lecture into the gallery, based around the themes of the exhibition.

An architectural journalist and critic, Kester Rattenbury is also a Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster, where she set up the Research Centre for Experimental Practice. As a guest of the University of Auckland, hosted by the Seelye Charitable Trust, Kester will discuss the theme of Making Ways, this motivation to ‘re-invent’ architecture, as can be seen both historically and in contemporary times. This lecture will take place in the gallery among the work produced by Hatch Workshop, a research and design partnership from New Zealand currently working in India specialising in corporate social responsibility design projects with the goal to bring dignity to the conditions of overlooked citizens. 

This event is part of the Festival of Architecture. This lecture series is made possible by the generous support of GIB®.

Book here.

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Kester Rattenbury trained as an architect, before completing a PhD in 1990 on the representation of architecture in the UK national press, published as part of the book This Is Not Architecture (Routledge, 2002). Kester worked as an architectural journalist (full-time and part-time) in both specialist, national and international press and UK newspapers. In 1992 she began teaching architectural design, first on Degree at the University of Greenwich, and then from 2000 on Diploma (now MArch) at the University of Westminster, in a long term teaching collaboration with Sean Griffiths, founder of Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT), leading the experimental Design Studio 15.

Rattenbury has written and contributed to many books including the Supercrit series (2007-12), Architects Today, The House Book, the tourist guide to the London Eye, and books on architects including Cedric Price, Terry Farrell, Thomas Hardy as well as writing hundreds of articles, reviews and building studies.

Rattenbury runs a new PhD stream at Westminster which uses the 'By Practice' methodologies developed at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and is also involved with the RMIT programme and collaborations between them, Westminster and other European partners. She has written and spoken widely on design methodologies considered as research, to international and cross-disciplinary audiences including literary and neuroscientific communities.