Architectural Association School of Architecture

Projects Review 2010

New Architecture, New Century: The AA School 2010

'Design is concerned with the conscious distortion of time, distance and size. Anything less is just the status quo.' Cedric Price

The academic year captured by this 2010 Projects Review in its book, exhibition and website is one of historic proportions for the Architectural Association, and I mean this in the most literal – indeed, the least hyperbolic and the most architectural sense imaginable. Last September, for the first time in the school’s modern history, the AA welcomed its largest class of new and returning students to a unified central campus in Bedford Square. Since the AA originally settled into Bloomsbury in the early years of the last century, it has not undertaken an architectural project at the scale of the one currently underway.

In 2010 the AA at Bedford Square is nearly twice the floor area it was as recently as 2005, and is correspondingly more generous, public and inviting than ever. As the world’s leading experimental school, the AA is also daring enough to experiment with its own form, organisation, even daily life. With students and staff travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometres to convene in London each autumn, the AA’s dramatic transformation of its own architecture has set the stage for yet bigger changes to come.

Brett Steele
Director, Architectural Association School of Architecture