The Martin Centre Research Seminar Series: Legacy

The Martin Centre Research Seminars - 56th Series

LEGACY

We had numerous meetings about the new Martin Centre Seminar Series theme in the last academic year. Leading a Centre which has been serving as a hub for research and disseminator of ideas for almost 60 years– with the world’s longest running seminar series in architecture– is a momentous task. We kept going back to Sir Leslie Martin, looking in the archive, pouring over previous seminars, looking into past research: from our vantage point of time, it all seemed consequential, fascinating, meaningful. The Centre’s reach and output unraveled before us like treasure, and we understood that it needs to be celebrated and amplified.

Legacy is a heavy word. It seems weighted with responsibility, continuity, and heritage. We invite you to think about it another way: as strong rather than rigid, as possibility rather than principle, as framework rather than monolith. In that sense, we understand legacy as airy and agile; propped up, not weighted down. In our discussions, legacy– including the legacy of the Martin Centre– illuminates like a contested terrain.

What is architectural legacy, and how old is it- as old as the moment dwelling became architecture around 12000 BC? There is no single trajectory, no linear progress in the legacy of architecture; first built structures and first cities were structures of radical experimentation, where both forms and social life were imagined, and tested. Are the abandoned and the destroyed a part of its fabric, is legacy what survives, what is chosen, what is resisted? From the ergonomic forms of first shelters, to the algorithmically designed cities of today, architectural legacy is a record of history and civilisation itself. From human ingenuity, systemic exclusion, technological innovation, political influence, aesthetics, and collective memory, the legacy of the built environment is equal parts preservation and a call to action.

As a concept in architecture, legacy invites a critical and revolutionary inquiry into preservation, transmission, and transformation across time It is crucially connected to meaning, values, ideas, memory, power structures and actual structures. Legacy is a sieve for both immaterial and the material: what is preserved, what is dismantled, what is remembered and what forgotten, and the level of agency in all these processes. how do ecological, historical material, social legacies shape the architecture of the future? As we confront social and ecological challenges, the banality of economics, resource depletion, and technological advancements, we ask: what legacies are we building today? (How) can architecture become a tool for reclaiming agency and rewriting our future?

Beyond the surface lie many forms of this year’s theme: legacy of the brief and the program, legacy of individuals, legacy of ideas, legacy of time periods, national and regional legacies, legacy of materials, legacy of institutions, legacy of events, legacy of mistakes and failures, legacy of scientific inquiry, legacy of technology, social legacy, biological legacy, spiritual legacy, political legacy, legacy of environmental responsibility, legacy of architectural concepts, legacy as burden, legacy as myth, legacy as warning, legacy as giants’ shoulders, legacy as freedom. On a meta level, this year’s theme additionally explores (and presents!) the pedagogical legacy of architectural education: the dissemination of knowledge through discourse.

You are kindly and enthusiastically invited to dismantle the concept of legacy this year with the Martin Centre.

Easter Term:

6 May - Tim Fu

AI: The Rewriting of Architecture

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Wednesdays at 1.30pm

Lecture Room 1, Architecture Department, Scroope Terrace and live on Zoom.

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More about the Martin Centre Lectures

The Martin Centre Research Seminar Series is one of the longest-running in the field, with the current one being the 54th annual series. The seminar series is hosted and supported by the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, the research arm of the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. The seminars are held every Wednesday during term time at 1.30pm UK time in the Faculty’s lecture room. They are typically well-attended by both staff and students in the department, as well as by members from the University and the wider Cambridge community. You can find out more about the Martin Centre Research Seminar Series on our website and the virtual seminars can be found on YouTube.

Previous Lecture Series

Previous lectures are now available on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@martincentreresearchsemina3554/videos