Nick Callicott and Bob Sheil, ‘Plot 22 (Sunbury Workshops E2 and Sydenham SE26)’, 1994. Diploma Architecture Unit 19
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sequence of events surrounding Cook’s appointment, she understood the advantage in concentrating efforts in one place at the exact moment the international scene was on the wane. Hawley, a partner in Cook and Hawley Architects since 1975, had also been external examiner at The Bartlett in the late 1980s before being approached by O’Sullivan. She was under no illusions as to the steep challenge of the task but, after six years as head, left UEL to rejoin her long-term teaching partner from the AA, Peter Cook, as director of The Bartlett. At UEL Hawley had instigated many transformations, leading the school to its first RIBA President’s Silver Medal win in 1991. Her experience and expertise were to serve the school and later the faculty to a significant degree significant degree, both in keeping its operations on an even keel and establishing a core strength for the discipline, which allowed it to thrive in the surroundings of an academic institution. Hawley was the figure who would effect some of the greatest impact, not only as one of the school’s most formidable design tutors alongside CJ Lim in Unit 21, but also as a leading strategist in establishing an avant-garde school within a university context containing internationally renowned departments in many fields such as fine art, engineering and medicine. Her stewardship on managing the school’s complex transition alongside Cook, involving numerous changes to staff and budgeting, was handled behind the scenes with immense skill. From then on, the new teachers and intensified interaction with students focused on design, and drawing in particular. By the mid-1990s drawing skills had increased exponentially, soon after leading to the first RIBA President’s Medals for Bartlett students: Abigail Ashton, Andrew Porter and Tony Smart (Silver 1994), Simon
Aldridge (Bronze 1995), Tim Sloan (Silver 1995), Yutaka Yano (Bronze 1996), Matthew Springett (Silver 1998) and Sonja Stoffels (Bronze 1999). Drawing also had a critical purpose; teachers such as Kevin Rhowbotham and Neil Spiller encouraged students to push the nature of it and explore its potential as a mode of research and invention. This process took many forms but by 1997 Philip Tabor was able to clear numerous administrative hurdles to set up a PhD programme in architectural design. Based on the model of a PhD in music, this calibrated design against the primary measure of academic achievement. As drawing became a way of expanding rather than confirming architectural knowledge and ideas, the relationship between design representations and the physical world began to transform. The linear, mechanical process of research leading to drawing, which itself became an instruction for making, became far more fluid. A project might start in the workshop and move through drawing to identify a theme for research. From the dynamic between drawing and making – the two fundamental processes of design – grew a relationship with research in fields as varied as landscape, narrative and computation. Underlying these various strands was a new sensibility towards technology. In theory this was one of The Bartlett’s great strengths, as Llewelyn-Davies and his colleagues had advanced understanding of how the building envelope, daylight, sound and ventilation affected buildings in use; some also looked at the impact of specific building types, especially housing and hospitals, and interacted with their social context. But these programmes were driven from abstractions rather than the technological challenges of any particular project.
Stephen Gage, within a couple of years of establishing a design unit, took on the additional role of director of technology in 1993. Fully committed to the idea of design as a mode of knowledge, he combined a longstanding interest in cybernetics and logic systems, with a career in practice designing some of the best small healthcare clinics in London of the 1980s. This gave him a fresh perspective on how to relate technology and architecture. While acknowledging that students need a grasp of basic principles of structure, ventilation and insulation, which can be taught in undergraduate programmes, at graduate level he instituted a technological thesis that allowed students to focus on a defining aspect of their design project, thereby developing an element of research that underpinned their project. The point was not to become expert in an abstract realm of building science, but to test how ideas from building science could contribute to a design project. Architects, Gage argues, are generalists and, rather like barristers who become temporarily expert in their cases, architects can absorb a large amount of information on specific points when they relate to an important aspect of a particular project. This information, while technological in origin, becomes part of the way designers ‘invent the world and test it’. Technological research became integral to design development, providing another step on the path to realising research-based education. Final-year technological theses today remain true to these principles, as the baton has been passed on. The combination of drawing, making and a new approach to technology provided fresh ways to develop and communicate ideas, and so opened doors to other UCL departments. Within a few years students such as Neil Tomlinson, Mark Smout, Usman Haque and Mette Thompson were hunting down expert