B-Pro
B-Pro, Bartlett Prospective, is a new global postgraduate entity within the School of Architecture currently composed of two courses: MArch Graduate Architectural Design (GAD), an advanced programme led by Alisa Andrasek (Biothing), providing access to the most sophisticated research in design and fabrication; and MArch Urban Design (UD), led by Adrian Lahoud, an advanced programme open to critical and theoretical strategies in urbanism and offering new approaches to planning cities. The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013
The one-year B-Pro programmes are open to a diverse international student cohort and offer highly structured access to the realisation and application of research, and to the production of new schemes of conception and construction in architecture and urbanism. Housed in the School’s newly acquired Royal Ear Hospital building, B-Pro has developed numerous lectures, seminars and workshops to underpin these ideas and promote a broad dialogue. To this end, the 2012-2013 MArch GAD course was organised around eight Research Clusters driven by their respective tutors. These Clusters featured specific research in a number of domains, and offered the opportunity to gain access to new computational tools and a new culture of scripting, directly connected to tools of fabrication. Inspired by, and directly related to, the current scene of international architecture creation, the teaching of software packages such as Maya, Grasshopper, Arduino, Processing and other generative platforms comes from the perspective of an innovative idea of conception and fabrication in association with new digital production facilities (robots, SLS printing, advanced CNC tools etc). Based on a global overview of the Mediterranean context, the 2012-2013 MArch UD course offered new theoretical schemes to analyse this complex social, cultural, economical and political territory, each of the seven Clusters of the MArch UD working on a specific city (Algiers, Athens, Beirut, Marseille, 2
Messina & Reggio Calabria, Tangier, Tunis). Alternative proposals based on new morphological concepts and protocols were developed in response to urban field studies. The Bartlett International Lecture Series – with numerous speakers, architects, historians and theoreticians – presented the opportunity for students to be confronted by the main streams of research that will be influential in the near future. Students’ work evolved through different crit sessions and the final exhibition in the Royal Ear Hospital, with the presentation of drawings, models and animations, all of a very high quality, which clearly demonstrate the intense activity undertaken throughout the year. Through the federative idea of creative architecture, B-Pro is an opportunity for students to find a way to participate in a new community and to affirm the singularity and originality of individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to advanced architecture but also the base from which each student can define a singular practice and invent a strategy to find a position in the professional world. From 2013, B-Pro will incorporate the MA in the History and Theory of Architecture, to create a larger field of research in theory and to stimulate new exchanges between the three poles of the programme. The school’s production facilities will be enhanced with B-Made, a global entity for fabrication which launched in 2013, and the opening of a real factory space. The 2013 B-Pro exhibition and the publication of this book provide an excellent overview of the depth of quality and the intensity of the teaching of The Bartlett’s tutors. What they also showcase is the passion of all the students involved. Frédéric Migayrou Bartlett Professor of Architecture Director of B-Pro