We try to avoid just reeling off someone's biography by way of an event preview, but given architect Paffard Keatinge-Clay's extraordinary Zelig-like career, it's worth repeating. He worked with an almost unfeasible line-up of Modernism's founding fathers. Starting out at Erno Goldfinger's office, he left the UK for France to work for Le Corbusier (on the Unite d'habitation) before heading to the US as an apprentice for Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona. Next stop Chicago, for SOM (before it was quite such a global corporate behemoth) and where he became chums with Mies. Rubbing shoulders with Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames... it's possibly quicker to list those he didn't work or socialise with. Best known for his own office's work in San Francisco in the '60s, culminating in his building for the state's university Student Union building, he eventually moved to Spain (via Canada and Africa), where he still makes architecture. As it happens, he originally trained at the AA, making this visit something of a return to his roots.

NB: also of note is the AA's Le Corbusier At The AA exhibition which runs from 28/11 till 13/12. For those of you heading to Liverpool make sure you catch Le Corbusier: The Art Of Architecture at The Crypt, Metropolitan Cathedral (runs till 18/01/09).

Getting a music hall is exciting for architects, it makes them feel pretty clever and can top off a career nicely: think Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Casa da Musica, Sage Gateshead even -- all beacons of ballsy building bravado. Oslo has been whinging about building one for 120 years, so no pressure then when they finally awarded it to eminently capable local boys Snohetta. Opened this summer, the Oslo Opera House just happens to be Norway's most important cultural building in 500 years. It's a huge chunk of designer iceberg lapped by the chilly waters of the city's fjord and they finished it ahead of schedule and under budget (pay heed Olympic Delivery Authority). Snohetta's biggest completed project to date is the Biblotheca Alexandrina, a flying saucer crashed in the Egyptian sands. Founding partner Kjetil Thorsen was in London last year with buddy Olafur Eliasson, another king of "can do", to build the plywood corkscrew Serpentine Pavilion. Thorsen and Tarald Lundevall will talk about their opera house project with committed fan and Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey.

NB: this event is part of the Architecture Foundation's Real Architecture: Autumn 2008 Programme. Up next, on 03/12, is William Baker (SOM) and Paul Finch discussing "superscraper" Burj Tower in Dubai.

Not ones to sit at home lamenting the imminent closure of their spiritual home, Bugged Out! dedicate a night to the all round brilliance of Castle Donnington cosmic indie wizards Late Of The Pier. Their debut long player, Fantasy Black Channel, will no doubt feature heavily on those end of year lists that everyone with a opinion on music revels in, and LOTP are perhaps one of the most entertaining live acts around. Mention of the band is usually prefaced by the words Erol and Alkan, with LOTP and the DJ/Producer sharing a muse-like relationship. It's no surprise the indie disco pinup has been coaxed into giving one of his revered DJ sets, this time under his Disco 3000 guise. The promise of these two alone is likely to pack out Heaven with Durrr regulars, but Bugged Out! give added incentive for attendance in the shape of The Golden Filter who revel in a shiny discopop sound, and occupy the mystery identity space which has previously served the likes of Fan Death and Fake Blood so well. Add to this DJ sets from Ed Banger artist Mickey Moonlight and Metronomy, and, it's handclaps all round for team Bugged Out!.

At 22, Swedish singer Lykke Li has a brazen confidence that's a mix of youthful bravado, "fuck-you" attitude, a desire to be loved, energetic frustration, and disarming frankness. She's cool. And her music sure-as-hell measures up. Her album, Youth Novels, was released this summer and has tracks that mix melodious melancholy with catchy up-tempo pop beats, accompanied by a cynical commentary with heart-on-her-sleeve openness. Her songs have a simplicity rounded to fullness by unsettling starkness and dry humour tinged with pain. And she maintains a seriousness amidst the emotional velocity and wry humour of her songs that's defiantly theatrical... just look at the video for "I'm Good, I'm Gone". Such po-faced determination in the centre of monumental craziness can only be applauded. Up 'til now she's only played in smaller London venues like the ICA but (praise be!) she's graduated to bigger spaces, one can only imagine due to popular demand, and so Friday sees her play at KOKO. Grab this opportunity with both hands.

Whilst specialist record shops are currently riding high on the endangered list of UNESCO World Heritage sites, one or two continue to buck the trend. Pure Groove have gone from strength to strength, recently opening a new expanded shop in Farringdon; Rough Trade traded in their pokey Covent Garden premises for a gleeming indie megastore just off Brick Lane; and in Soho, where several shops have gone under in recent years, Phonica keep plowing on and ensuring that many a DJ's bank account is kept firmly in the red. Indeed, Phonica reaches a milestone this week as they celebrate their fifth birthday down at Corsica Studios, with a line-up that will give you a pretty good idea what is flying off their racks these days. Alongside a large proportion of the staff, nearly all respected DJs in their own right, you'll also get a London outing for one of Norway's cosmic disco superstars Prins Thomas, Berlin resident and star of the excellent Mobilee record label Sebo K and Bristolian tech/dubstep producer Peverelist. All logic and reason may point to the future of music being purely digital, but we wouldn't bet against them being back for their 10th birthday party.

Back in April, Why Not? took the bold step of putting on the first dubstep festival -- actually just a one night event -- but with over 40 of the scene's biggest players, this was probably the largest event of its kind that the capital has seen. This Friday sees the next instalment, with an equally formidable line-up. The move to switch venues from the Ministry Of Sound to Scala may well attract those who'd been reluctant to set foot in the infamous super club and, with so many DJs playing, they're sure to be making use of several different rooms. The talent on display traverses the genre, uniting established figures and reliable crowd favourites with some of the freshest names coming through at the moment. DJs of note include Skream, Kode9, Appleblim, Pinch, Ramadanman, Pangaea, Ikonika and Headhunter -- with plenty more besides. It's an appealing prospect both for dedicated followers of the scene and perhaps also those looking to sample some of the best that the style has to offer.

Most of us have had the experience of watching a badly dubbed film (remember the old Grolsch "martial arts" ad that lampooned dodgy soundtracks?) or seen a classic film that was just that wee bit out of synch. To our brains, expecting one thing and experiencing another, this type of discordance between image and sound can be surprisingly unsettling. For the last five years Dundee Contemporary Arts' Kill Your Timid Notion has been showcasing artist filmmakers who are deliberately exploring discontinuities between sound and vision in moving image, and this year they are bringing the "best of" -- both music-based performances and films -- to London. Highlights include Ken Jacobs' "movement without motion" Nervous Magic Lantern; a programme of "Word Associations" -- works that explore discontinuity between narration, image and text; and Hollis Frampton's 1971 Nostalgia, with live narration by Michael Snow (whose work will be featured in the BFI Southbank Gallery in December). This is experimental work that rarely makes it to the big screen, which offers a chance to see (and hear) things in a different way.

NB: Kill Your Timid Notion runs on 29/11 and 30/11 and is held at both the BFI Southbank and the ICA. Also of note this week is Ano Una (released on 28/11), The Silence Of Lorna (released on 28/11) and The London African Film Festival (29/11 till 07/12).

Jonas Cuaron's Ano Una is a bold experiment: a feature-length film composed entirely from a sequence of still photographs taken over a year by the young Mexican director, over which a narrative is laid. Cuaron has said that his inspiration was Chris Marker's avant-garde masterpiece La Jetee but the result is less purely experimental than enjoyable as a piece of traditional cinema. The story unfolds from the images (an unconventional move in itself, given the primacy of script in the filmmaking process) and charts the stories of New Yorker Molly, a tourist in Mexico, and Diego, a 13-year-old boy who develops a crush on the visiting gringa. Told via internal monologues and occasional scraps of dialogue, the film is a quiet study of two people from different generations and cultures tentatively developing a relationship. But though the narrative is propelled by the voice-overs, the stark monochrome images nevertheless hold their own against the onward march of the story, standing as isolated moments of time. Highlighting interesting connections between the cinematic and photographic mediums, Ano Una is that rare thing: a piece of exploratory but also recognisable cinema, and ultimately a success.

NB: after this screening catch a Q&A with Alfonso and Jonas Cuaron. Ano Una is released in London on 28/11. Also of note this week is The Silence Of Lorna (released on 28/11), Kill Your Timid Notion (29/11 and 30/11) and The London African Film Festival (29/11 till 07/12).

With G, Australian Dance Theatre's Artistic Director, Garry Stewart has a point to make: Giselle is basically about sex, death and jealousy. Which also explains why this is the one of the best loved ballet. This radical reworking draws on many different types of movement, including gymnastics, ballet, breakdance, and even Butoh. It demonstrates Stewart's distinctive choreographic approach, which tests the possibilities of the human body through full-tilt athleticism. This is the second of Stewart's classical ballet reconstructions. Birdbrain -- a wry, action packed deconstruction of Swan Lake -- earned critical praise and remains one of the most popular Australian contemporary dance pieces, with a global audience of tens of thousands. Long-time company collaborator Luke Smiles has created a soundscape that plays with words running on a video screen hovering above the dancers. Their eyrie green costumes provide a visceral image of death as opposed to the more ethereal and usual white after-life like costumes of classical ballet. This powerful contemporary take on the most iconic of ballet promises to tickle you in all the right spots!

NB: Australian Dance Theatre perform on both 28/11 and 29/11.

Anyone who's been to a techno club in the past five years needs no introduction to Michael Mayer. Alongside running uber-cult label Kompakt, as close to an immovable object as you can get on the minimal scene, he's made himself an authority with his Speicher releases. Last year he "saved the world" with fellow Cologne stalwart Superpitcher, in a tie-up that proved particularly experimental. The duo also turned in some serious tricks remixing artists from the other side of the spectrum: Gotye, Foals, Hot Chip even Rufus Wainwright got a spacey makeover. Needless to say Germany's techno scene gets a lot of its push and pull from Mayer, and Fabric's devotees will be making notes. But beyond the headline the real kicker could be a live show from Move D, aka David Moufang. The Source Records owner dropped Songs From The Beehive this summer, a wonderfully complex and ambient tapestry that warmed plenty of cynical hearts and heads bored by generic minimal productions. And, in Room 2, you get to hear some of the Playhouse crew, namely Roman Flugel, Ata, Heiko (M/S/O)and Holger Zilske (live).

Being punctual, a bit like being tidy and polite, is one of those under appreciated virtues that have come to be associated with control freaks and boring people. Those who are punctual can't stand the passive-aggressive behaviour of those who are late for everything and therefore disrespectfully waste other people's time, but if they point it out, they come across as a stickler. Such matters do not faze London-based author Geoff Dyer who embraces his punctuality to an unforeseen extent, happily sermonising to others about it. As part of The School Of Life's enlightening activities, the author of But Beautiful (1991), Out Of Sheer Rage: In The Shadow Of DH Lawrence (1997) and Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures, 1984-99 will deliver one such oration on punctuality at the Horse Hospital, rhapsodizing on the historical sacrifices and successes of punctual people in order to instil fear and guilt in the hearts of the low-lifes who treat tardiness lightly. The sermon will start at 11:30am -- best not be late as you might become part of the entertainment...

NB: also of note is The School Of Life's course on "Love" which can be taken on Weekends (29/11 and 21/02/09) or on Tuesday evenings (starting 24/01/09).

Dividing the space in half, Brazillian artist Rivane Neuenschwander has added a second floor to SLG's main exhibition space. The now "lower level" is devoid of natural light and houses heavy timber structures that support the upstairs flooring. A projector whirrs at the back of this space -- curiously titled Arabian Moons is 1,001 frames of 16mm film that has been pierced; resulting in small circles of projected light that dance manically in phases on the wall. Overhead speakers emit a symphony of dripping water; made in collaboration with O Grivo, It's raining out there (La fora esta chovendo) has its origins in the upstairs level where a drip of water leaks every four or five seconds from the ceiling into a large washing basin, it's tinny noise echoes in the space. Flooded with light, the upstairs is a stark contrast to the downstairs support structure, and is host to a line of holes drilled into the wall at eye-level, which follow the perimeter of the space -- the dust removed and formed into a small landscape. Through using minimalist structures and interventions into the existing architecture Neuenschwander has created an engaging exhibition akin to a Necker Cube that keeps folding in on itself.

NB: runs till 30/11.

Continuing their ongoing theme of people surviving on the fringes, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's most recent realist drama makes a return to the female point of reference. Young and ambitious, Albanian immigrant Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) has settled in Liege, a dull industrial city in Belgium, and works hard at crummy jobs. Life is not easy but the future is bright: she has plans to become the owner of a snack bar. To raise the money she participates in a citizenship scam, organised by a fellow Albanian mobster: a marriage to local junkie Claudy (Dardenne regular Jeremie Renier) will grant her Belgian citizenship, after which she ditches her "husband" for another marriage to a rich Russian gangster in need of an EU passport. But opinions and plans begin to diverge: will the Russian be marrying a divorcee or a widow? Starting out in control of her future, cool and assured of her coming success, we (and she) gradually become aware of how powerless Lorna really is -- seen as just another commodity by all those around her. Dobroshi is excellent as Lorna, giving very naturalistic performance, but the ending of the film (winner of the 2008 Cannes Best Screenplay Award) however, has divided opinion.

NB: The Silence Of Lorna is released in London on 28/11. Also of note this week is Ano Una (released on 28/11), Kill Your Timid Notion (29/11 and 30/11) and The London African Film Festival (29/11 till 07/12).

Spread across London for nine days, the festival is a remarkable selection of films by African filmmakers. Although "World Cinema" has done much to raise the profile of East Asian and Latin American films and filmmakers, aside from a flurry of attention in the 1970s (primarily centred around the films of Senegalese directors Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Diop Mambety) African films have remained below much of the world's cinematic radar, with limited arthouse release. The cinema of Africa often follows different rhythms and pacing, with narratives more akin to oral storytelling. Thematically, many of the films programmed deal with the concepts of identity and the search for a place in a changing world. LAFF offers a strong contemporary documentary section (Mo And Me, Arlit: Deuxieme Paris), some pre-1930s curiosities with live music (Siliva The Zulu, De Voortrekkers) and the first anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back Africa, as well as classic and recent features. Best of all, the two main heavyweights of African cinema -- Chad's Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Bye, Bye Africa, Abouna, Daratt) and Mauritania's Abderrahmane Sissako (Bamako, Waiting For Happiness, Life On Earth, Rostov-Luanda) -- will both be attending for post-screening Q&As.

NB: LAFF runs from 29/11 till 07/12 at the Barbican, the BFI Southbank, the ICA, the Renoir and Rich Mix. Also of note this week is Ano Una (released on 28/11), The Silence Of Lorna (released on 28/11) and Kill Your Timid Notion (29/11 and 30/11).

Early techno is inherently futuristic. The ideas of sci-fi writers such as Philip K Dick and Alvin Toffler were cast against the bleak industrialism of '80s Detroit, establishing a conceptual framework that lies at the core of the music. One manifestation of this was X-102's Discovers The Rings Of Saturn album (X-102 aka Mike Banks and Jeff Mills -- an offshoot of their Underground Resistance work), which explored themes of space travel, particularly to the solar system's second largest planet. Mills has drawn on similar inspiration throughout his exceptional career as producer and DJ, and he and Banks updated the X-102 concept this year with their Rediscovers The Rings Of Saturn album, inspired by NASA's Cassini-Huygen exploratory mission. At this event, Mills presents a screening of the accompanying film he directed for the project, as well as taking part in a rare public Q&A with Kodwo Eshun (himself prone to a bit of Futurism). As a counterpoint to the high concept musings, the ICA bar will later host musical presentations from Mills and a DJ set from regular collaborator, Steve Bicknell, rounding off a fantastically techno evening.

NB: the 8pm screening and talk is already sold out so make sure you get your tickets fast for the 10pm one. Techno fans take note of Juan Atkins and Steve Bicknell's intimate set at East Village on 29/11 (10pm - 4am).

Now based in America, Shirin Neshat is the art world's Marjane Satrapi. But unlike the cartoonist, her work is not obviously autobiographical, nor is it funny. Forced into a sort of exile while at art school because of the Islamic Revolution in the late '70s, like Satrapi she makes work from the the perspective of a woman with roots in a prohibitive Muslim culture. Raised by progressive parents in a Western-style environment, the Revolution only added to her sense of displacement. Renowned for her elegant but edgy photographs of women overlaid with Arabic writing, since the late '90s she has been moving into video and film. Still negotiating between East and West, modernity and traditional culture, the resulting films -- and installations -- possess an increasingly poetic and lyrical quality, unlike the seemingly more confrontational photographs. However like that other Iranian, Abbas Kiarostami, a sense of foreboding and restrained violence seems to underlie her all efforts. As part of the Barbican's Iran: New Voices festival, Neshat will be screening three short films which are part of her adaptation of Shanrnush Parsipur's novel, Women Without Men -- a work also banned in Iran. Also on view will be two older pieces from her video installations.

NB: Shirin Neshat will be present for Q&A after the screenings. Iran: New Voices runs from 25/11 till 07/12.

Much like the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs series, but without the expensive CGI and more facial hair, ATP are taking us back in time this week to a period when the big beasts of electronica ruled the land. Out of the prehistoric mists, from a time long before a cracked copy of FruityLoops and a MySpace page was all your average obnoxious teenage bedroom producer needed to declare themselves Aphex Twin's heir apparent, lumber those behemoths of bruised beats, titans of techno, Squarepusher and LFO. Neither should need much introduction, Tom "Squarepusher" Jenkinson's journey from jazz bass infused hardcore junglist to jungle infused hardcore jazz bassist has been well documented, and after more than ten albums still continues to baffle and delight in equal measure. LFO, known to his mum as Mark Bell, has been around even longer, responsible for several of Warp's early seminal bleep classics and with a work ethic that would shame The Stone Roses three classic albums in his nearly 20 year career. Needless to say tickets for this will probably be long gone by the night itself so get yours now to avoid the crushing disappointment that will inevitably accompany missing out on this gig.

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