Year 1
Occupying Routes: from the City to the Valley Director: Frosso Pimenides
Director Frosso Pimenides Design Associates Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Gavin Robotham, Emmanouil Stavrakakis Lecture Series Nat Chard, Peter Cook Fabrication Consultant Emmanuel Vercruysse The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017
Installation Consultants Indigo Rohrer, Nick Westby Media Studies Tutors Joel Cady, Danielle Hodgson Design Tutors Fenella Colingridge, Stefan Lengen, Ifigeneia Liangi, Rebecca Loewen, Thandi Loewenson, Emma-Kate Matthews, Brian O'Reilly, Eva Ravnborg, Farlie Reynolds, Umut Yamac Partners B-made workshop, CRAB studio Thank you to: Jenna Al-Ali, Will Armstrong, Michael Arthur (UCL President and Provost), Julia Backhaus, Blanche Cameron, Mario Carpo, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, Stewart Dodd, Emma Flynn, Adrian Forty, Christine Hawley, Daniel Howarth, Richard Jeffries, Mary Johnson, Stephen Johnson, Lilly Kudic, Saskia Lewis, CJ Lim, Phil Medowcroft, Jack Newton, Alan Penn, Jonathan Pile, Juliet Quintero, Bob Sheil, Colin Skeete, Emmanuel Vercruysse, Patrick Weber, Gwendoline Webber, Paul Wenston, Nick Westby, Nick Wood, Paolo Zaide
16
Initiating students into civic life and the world of architecture is the foundation of their education in the first year. Students are encouraged to develop their personality, learn skills, enter the world of ideas and cultivate creativity. Communicating ideas and expressing one’s imagination through drawing and making is our main intention. A series of experiments and a group project led to an individual building project situated in East London’s Lea Valley. The year started with a group fabrication project, ‘Return and Reinstall’, a celebration of a pivotal moment in the life and tradition of the School. It comprised three parts: a bonfire of old models, marking our departure from 140 Hampstead Road; a procession of 125 students transporting archived models back to our new home at 22 Gordon Street; and finally, installing these models to mark the start of a new era. The field trip to Northern Italy was a great source of inspiration and collective culture as students were exposed to some of the world’s most influential buildings and places. By surveying a small fragment of Bologna, students immersed themselves in a different culture that they then interpreted via their own personal understanding. The ‘Live-Work’ building project, located in Lea Valley, was an opportunity to explore the importance of ‘context’, enclosure, spatial qualities and the materiality of a proposed vision. The project was a vehicle for students to explore their own inspirations and focus on their own interests. A series of sites were chosen adjacent to the River Lea and Olympic Park area. Each student was asked to explore and understand the character of a site and inhabit it through a proposed story (each student’s personal programme) that established a dialogue with the surrounding area. The life of our first year students is a continuous process of testing, questioning, rethinking and visually communicating a series of design explorations over the course of a year, as part of a vibrant studio culture. It is a journey of learning skills and knowledge that give students the tools to think, experiment, make mistakes and celebrate their failures – and finally, to have fun designing.