B-PRO UD SuperCrit_Booklet_2025

Page 1


02.07 10:00am13:00pm BST 14:00pm17:30pm BST

03.07 10:00am13:00pm BST 14:00pm18:10pm BST

03.07 PERVASIVE URBANISM/VANISHING CITY/ 10:30am13:00pm BST 14:00pm17:15pm BST

ANA FONT VACAS, LIDIA GASP KOHLER, LAURA NARVAEZ ZER PETER NECKELMAN

DANIEL KOHLER, FREDERIC MI

LUCIANA PARISI, MARCO

JONATHAN TYRRELL, PETER

PETER COOK, ANA FONT VACA

IC MIGAYROU, MATHIAS MAIER REISNER, ALDO SOLLAZZO, PE LIO

PERONI, OLIVER HUNT, DANIEL RTUCHE, RASA NAVASAITYTE, NN, AIMAN TABONY

IGAYROU, RASA NAVASAITYTE, POLETTO, YAEL REISNER, TRUMMER, SARAH WILLIAMS

AS,DANIEL KOHLER, FREDERRHOFER, PAUL NICHOLAS, YAEL ETER TRUMMER, GEORG VRACHOTIS

ABOUT B-PRO

B-Pro is a group of five graduate programmes. These programmes welcome a diverse international student cohort, with highly structured access to the realisation and application of research, and the production of new schemes of conception and construction in architecture and urbanism. Throughout the year, B-Pro tutors and students develop numerous seminars, workshops, lectures and public events to encourage collaboration and the discussion of ideas which further our understanding of the future of design, the urban environment and architecture.

Through a shared vision of creative architecture, B-Pro is an opportunity for students both to participate in a new community and to affirm the singularity of their individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to an advanced architectural practice but also form the base from which each student can define their particular approach and architectural philosophy, in order to seek a position in the professional world. Attracting high-calibre staff from all over the world and led by Chair of School Professor Frédéric Migayrou, B-Pro includes a number of research ‘labs’ dedicated to advanced experimentation in architectural and urban theory.

B-Pro AD Programme Director: Tyson Hosmer

B-Pro UD Programme Director: Roberto Bottazzi

B-Pro Programmes:

Architectural Computation (MSc/MRes)

Architectural Design (MArch)

Architecture & Digital Theory

Bio-Integrated Design (MArch/MSc)

Urban Design (MArch)

B-PRO UD RESEARCH CLUSTERS

2024-2025

RC11 COMMODIFICATIONS

Design: Julian Besems and Andrew Porter

Technical: Julian Besems, Ioana Drogeanu, Joris Putteneers

Theory: Philippe Morel

[ Suspicious Content] In 2001, Michael Landy’s Break Down marks a ritualistic undoing of ownership and consumption, staged poignantly in a shuttered London department store. Over two decades later, consumption itself shifts—its spaces fracture between decaying high streets and the immediacy of digital platforms. RC11 explores this condition as both cultural artefact and spatial phenomenon.

From Cedric Price’s Fun Palace to Koolhaas’ Projects for Prada, architecture speculates on the merging of culture, commerce, and public space. Today, flagship stores serve not only as points of sale but as spatialised narratives—architecture becomes branding, and vice versa. Yet while brands claim visibility through built form, the logistics of digital shopping remain hidden, reshaping the city invisibly.

Shopping becomes a continuous act, woven through every aspect of life. Public and private blur; experience is commodified; the citizen becomes consumer. RC11 investigates how this shift redefines architecture—not to optimise it, but to explore its contradictions. It uses machine learning, algorithmic filtering, and speculative design to probe the digital plenty of consumer culture, navigating between decay and emergence, spectacle and infrastructure.

This year’s site is Athens—a city where ancient urbanism and contemporary commerce collide. From tourist-saturated prom-

RC14 SENSORIA URBANISM – MACHINE INTUITION

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, and Tasos Varoudis

Technical: Margarita Chaskopoulou and Vassilis Papalexopoulos

Theory: Provides Ng

The introduction of machine learning [ml] models in creative disciplines such as urban design represents more than a mere technological or functional improvement of the current status quo. By projecting and correlating data onto each other, they provide new representations of cities and widen the range of design operations possible. This new condition cannot be grasped by the technical literature alone, as it gives rise to profound questions regarding the methods and aims of design. Firstly, this new affordance transforms the role of the urban designer closer to that of a curator, a data curator. Also, it expands the range of qualitative aspects of urban environments possible to engage and manipulate through design. Think of this condition as a new sensorium (the totality of your sensory apparatus) or, better, in its plural form, as new Sensoria consisting of multiple ways in which to sense urban life through form, sound, colour, perception, health, etc. Mediated by algorithms, this new sensorial approach allows students to imagine new spatial, cultural, social forms of organisation for urban design.

RC14 explores the implications of ml urbanism by engaging the ephemeral, abstract aspects of data to conjure up new forms of organisation and experience of London.

RC15 PERVASIVE URBANISM

Design: Vincent Nowak and Annarita Papeschi

Technical: Vincent Nowak

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

Building on last year’s investigations, RC15 continues to explore how pervasive forms of spatial injustice are embedded in the contemporary urbanscape. In London, generations of systemic inequality—shaped by colonial legacies, migration policies, and market-driven redevelopment—have produced contested sites where access, belonging, and visibility remain unevenly distributed. Yet today’s advances in AI and data science, paired with low-tech tools for in-situ sensing, offer powerful new ways to trace these dynamics and amplify marginalised voices. This year, RC15 deepens its experiential and participatory approach to design research, experimenting with wearables for situated sensing of environmental and biometric data. Working in the River Lea Valley, students mapped emotional and cognitive responses to space, constructing layered portraits of place that link human and non-human ecologies.

Combining these methods with online data-scraping, machine learning and immersive storytelling, the studio generated design scenarios that act as spatial prosthetics: responsive infrastructures that operate across scales to reveal, reframe, and resist inherited patterns of exclusion.

At the intersection of emerging cognitive technologies and post-humanist approaches to spatial design, RC15 prototypes a distributed design methodology that reimagines collective authorship and proposes new forms of infrastructural agency grounded in situated knowledge, emotional resonance, and reciprocal modes of spatial care. actice to explore the emerging new relationship of digital networks, cities, and citizens.

RC16 VANISHING CITY

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic Migayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Technical: Filippo Nassetti and Sheng Meng

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

Cities are layered landscapes, shaped by the stratification and sedimentation of cultures, evolving over centuries throughout continuous cycles of construction, destruction and renewal. Each generation leaves its mark on the urban fabric, transforming the city to reflect technological, social and economic priorities. Twentieth century modernism, with its radical rethinking of architecture and urban planning, left a dual legacy for contemporary cities. It gave the city an expansion but localised its interventions. While modernist buildings and infrastructures represent an invaluable cultural and architectural heritage of the mobilisation of instrumental reasoning and consequently to an ever expanded urb, their localised presence made them failed utopias .

Vanishing City seeks to transform that way we think the vanishing city through its decay. It suggests an opportunity to foster new forms of life and value. By exploring the intersection of architecture, ecology, and urbanism, the studio challenged students to rethink the role of cities in the Post-Anthropocene, envisioning designs that are extended and ecologic.

Vanishing City seeks to transform that way we think the vanishing city through its decay. It suggests an opportunity to foster new forms of life and value. By exploring the intersection of architecture, ecology, and urbanism, the studio will challenge students to rethink the role of cities in the Post-Anthropocene, envisioning designs that are extended and ecological..

RC17 PLANETARY URBANISM

PARLIAMENTS WITH THINGS

Llabres-Valls and Zachary Flucker

Design: Enriqueta lLlabres-Valls and Zachary Flucker

Theory: William Huang

Technical: Dimitra Bra, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls, Huang Sheng Yang

Theory: Huang Sheng Yang

In RC6, material is the starting point and key driver for our design projects. The most critical and practical aspect of architecture for us is the matter we make with and why. This year, we will study materials used in art for the conception, production and inhabitation of architecture. What is the significance of materials in making art, and what can we learn from it? Are the key differences of utility and scale? What happens when an art fabricator makes architecture, and what if a builder of buildings were to make artwork? Methods and media in art production are varied and often do not conform to any single criteria, yet they are pointed and specific. Like art, the material we choose to make architecture has environmental, geographical, cultural and political weight. Can the material of art be more than the sum of its parts? How do we explore the art of material use?

RC18 explored a transformative approach to urban design by integrating non-human actors and platform ecosystems. Drawing from Bruno Latour’s concept of the “Parliament of Things,” the Research Cluster challenged traditional design hierarchies by recognising the agency of both human and non-human entities—rivers, bees, AI, and data. RC18 emphasised the role of platform ecosystems, metaverse tools, and generative AI to rethink participatory design in the face of ecological crisis. Students developed urban prototypes and digital twins, using advanced mapping, sensing, and simulation technologies. These prototypes aimed to foster new forms of collaboration, disrupt linear design processes, and reimagine urban engagement.

The cluster encouraged co-creation as a radical design methodology, critically interrogating how creative and technological innovations can build equitable, sustainable futures within the climate emergency. RC18 ultimately situates design within complex socio-environmental systems for inclusive, adaptive urban strategies.

COMMODITIES/ SENSORIA/ PARLIAMENT

02.07 10:00am13:00pm BST

PANEL: LIDIA GASPERONI, LAURA NARVAEZ ZERTUCHE, PETER NECKELMANN, OLIVER HUNT, RASA NAVASAITYTE

10:15 RC11 PLAYGROUND OF THE OLYMPUS

Students: Patrick Tjandra, Zoey Ye, Sang Zhou

Design: Julian Besems and Andrew Porter

Theory: Philippe Morel

Gods of the past remain among the stars. Contemporary cultures no longer worship them the way our ancestors did. The pattern follows in terms of commodification. Facing the emergence of commercial digital space, people still celebrate the essence of space the other way around. The gods return to host the Olympics, intervening in the relic of commodified sports—the Faliro Coastal Stadium—celebrating the essence of sport through a playground of celestial pavilions. All the deities now dictate how humans experience space by domesticating man-made sky objects, just as they once embedded their symbols in asterisms. The reimagined Olympic playground serves as a mixed-use space, commemorating the celestial glorious presence and preserving ancient symbols as cultural representations amid the trend of commodification.

10:45 RC14 URBAN RESONANCE

Students: Shufan Yao, Chongyang Cai, Aditya Shroff, Nishna Gaddam,

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, Tasos Varoudis

Theory: Provides Ng

Urban Resonance investigates how temporary, festival-inspired interventions can transform dormant urban spaces into vibrant, culturally rich environments. Focusing on the potential of ephemeral music festivals, the project analyses socio-spatial and cultural dynamics through extensive data mapping of London’s cultural scene. Inspired by the sensory elements of festivals such as sound, color, and form, the design uses audio and visual data as generative tools to inform the design. Data-driven processes such as agent-based simulations, spectrogram analysis, and spatial mapping guide the form-finding and site selection. Musical elements like rhythm and velocity influence the morphology of pop-up forms, while linear connections between permanent and temporary areas are shaped by spatial logic and movement patterns. The result is a layered urban field where pop-ups and semi-permanent spaces coexist and evolve over time. The aim is to design an ephemeral urban landscape that captures festival energy and enriches daily life.ip.

11:15 RC18 RE: COAST

Students: Jiayue Tian, Jingyun Huang, Lihui Jiao, Xiao Wang

Design: Zachary Flucker and Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Theory: William Huang

RE: Coast is a co-design tool for cities on the edge of sea level rise. Accessed through a metaverse, the project aims to produce resilient and adaptable urban design strategies through co-design platforms. Using current and anticipated data, our project drives planetary action across virtual and physical spaces. Players can enter the lobby to visit the Planetary Urbanisation digital exhibition, where they confront the coastal crisis. Then players can enter the coastal areas and learn about urban resilience through games. After unlocking resilience, players can enter the “City Solutions Lab” to interact with other players and devise urban interventions. Players use AI-powered tools to design models. It helps players to combine and regenerate new models based on a latent walk between different resilience. This project presents a novel vision of urban intervention, establishing a connection between planetary communities and local people working on sea level rise.

11:45 RC14 ECOSTACK

Students: Kamilya Kelbuganova, Isabella Bai, Minghao Wang

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, Tasos Varoudis

Theory: Provides Ng

Eco Stack is a bioregional design framework transforming London’s brownfield sites into layered, resilient urban ecosystems. The project - tested in Deptford - is rooted in environmental, social, and wellness resilience and sees the city as a living system where ecology, community, and wellbeing are deeply interconnected. In response to Deptford’s fragmented spaces, low wellbeing indicators, and biodiversity loss, Eco Stack proposes a three-part strategy: the Wellness Stack enhances public health and accessibility; the Environmental Stack restores biodiversity and strengthens climate resilience; and the Community Stack creates inclusive, participatory spaces. These layers reimagine 40 underused sites as green, socially vibrant landscapes. The project balances adaptive reuse with green infrastructure and social programming, turning neglected land into productive, biodiverse public spaces. Eco Stack offers a vision of urban regeneration where nature, community, and health are not separate goals but interconnected systems working together to shape a more resilient and inclusive city.

12:15 RC11 WHAT MAKES MODERN CITIES SO APPEALING

Students: Kexin Wang, Ziyue Tang, Jieyu Lou

Design: Julian Besems and Andrew Porter

Theory: Philippe Morel

The project takes Richard Hamilton’s work titled “just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing” and the commercialized domestic space exhibition “Ideal Home Show” as its starting point, distinguishing between “home” and “house.” It aims to address the emotional disconnection caused by the increasing “dehumanization” of urban space under the context of high commodification, by deconstructing “home” into scene-based modules and reinserting them into the urban fabric. In contrast to the function-oriented “house,” this design breaks down “home” into spatial units with emotional value (such as the kitchen), embedding them into vacant buildings in Athens to reconstruct the emotional connection between people and the city. The project emphasizes perception-first and micro-scale interventions, using everyday experience to expand the realm of the fractured urban fabric and exploring a new design language for the city.

COMMODITIES/ SENSORIA/ PARLIAMENT

02.07 14:00pm17:00pm BST

PANEL:

LIDIA GASPERONI, OLIVER HUNT,

DANIEL KOHLER, LAURA NARVAEZ ZERTUCHE, ANA FONT, AIMAN TABONY,

14:10 RC18 FIREVERSE

Students: Yangqing Zhao, Zehao Sun, Junyi Wu, Hengyu Gong

Design: Zachary Flucker and Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Theory: William Huang

Fireverse is a research project that uses the Metaverse to explore urban wildfire. We designed a virtual platform where users can communicate together, simulate fire path and step into spaces built from public memory. It consists of two interactive modules. The simulation module allows users test how fire spreads by adjusting fire-related parameters. The memory module consists of a database of urban wildfire images uploaded by the public. Within this module, an AI tool helps generating new images from the original ones, constituting a live memory lab of urban wildfire. By positioning the project within the Metaverse, we aim to explore the physical and emotional aspects of urban wildfire, offering a safe space to learn, reflect and grow through uncertainty. Our ambition is to bring together knowledge and storytelling, strategy and emotion. Fireverse offers a new way to understand wildfire under climate emergency, helping people predict risks, and prepare for real events.

14:40 RC14 BEYOND BOUNDARY

Students: Minyue LI, Eric Zuo, Jiahang Yang, Qi Wan

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, Tasos Varoudis

Theory: Provides Ng

London’s evolution has been profoundly shaped by waves of immigration, from the 18th century through the Industrial Revolution to the British Nationality Act in the 20th century. Migrants introduced distinct cultures, establishing communities such as Chinatown and South Asian enclaves. In seeking to preserve their cultural heritage. These communities often established boundaries; however, widening wealth and social class disparities, among other factors, have gradually intensified tensions within and across these boundaries.

Beyond Boundary employs geographic data analysis and deep learning techniques to identify areas in London characterized by residential spatial segregation, erosion of local cultures, and social inequalities. By introducing and reinforcing local cultural elements and implementing targeted interventions at “boundaries,‘’ the design seeks to create spaces that encourage interaction among diverse groups, foster cultural exchange, mitigate spatial isolation, and promote social integration.

15:10 RC11 DISTURBANCE FIELDS

Students: Zhuoshi Chen, Shuying Jin, Xinhao Yang

Design: Julian Besems and Andrew Porter

Theory: Philippe Morel

This project investigates how narrative intervenes in the generative structure of urban space. By extracting structural language from contemporary news and ancient Greek tragedies, it develops a text-based spatial mapping mechanism. Adopting a structuralist perspective, the project decodes relational networks within language and projects them onto the city. Events, characters, and actions are translated into tangible spatial movements and transformations. 3D entities respond to narrative impulses—moving, mutating, and recomposing across the urban fabric. Through this process, the city becomes a dramatized spatial construct shaped by narrative logic.

15:40 RC14 MOODLENS

Students: Qizhen He, Hanjie Pan, Jun Hao

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, Tasos Varoudis

Theory: Provides Ng

Based on data collection and research on transportation, living conditions, and artistic works, we devloped an urban proposal that systematically explores the emotional characteristics of London’s urban spaces. Through the analysis, we discovered that movies, as an all-encompassing medium, blend images, words, colors, and styles, offering rich emotive and cultural context that can create a unique narrative relationship with the urban space. Located in Battersea, the proposal adopts movies as the thematic framework, integrating real-world traffic accessibility and streetscape data to identify areas with low emotional ratings, and seeks to revitalize public spaces in London through the infusion of movie culture. In this way, we aim to blur the boundary between reality and fiction, allowing the urban experience of London to be reshaped through the interplay between everyday life and artistic narrative.

16:10 RC18 WHERE THE WATER REMAINS

Students: Jiexin Yu, Yimeng Sun, Jiaqi Liu

Design: Zachary Flucker and Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Theory: William Huang

This project aims to address the pressing issue of extreme rainfall and floods in Sudan by creating a virtual humanitarian platform. This platform is built based on the Unreal Engine, designed to simulate an environment prone to floods, and showcases a decentralized rainwater collection and distribution system inspired by local materials and knowledge. This virtual design not only represents futuristic water conservancy infrastructure but also serves as an interactive metaverse hub. Through immersive narrative and data-driven visualization, this platform enables global contributors - designers, engineers, funders - to connect with vulnerable communities. It reimagines how digital tools can enhance the resilience of areas that are difficult for traditional governance to reach. Through cooperation in the global public virtual space, this project aims to crowdsource solutions and raise awareness of the climate challenges in Sudan.

16:40 RC11 DIGITAL RUIN

Students: Bingye Chen, Ke Xu, Mishika Hirwani

Design: Julian Besems and Andrew Porter

Theory: Philippe Morel

This project approaches “ruins” as a four-dimensional intersection of time and space ― a transitional state that is unfinished, yet constantly evolving. Athens, as a physical city branded through the image of ruins in a commercialized context, carries layers of civilization within its stones. Likewise, digital ruins serve a similar cultural function. GeoCities, a key example of digital decay, becomes a metaphor for a branded micro-city. Its visual language from webpage design and image fragments to scattered words offers material for exploring digital ruins and rethinking how urban identity is shaped through branding. Taking inspiration from archaeological methods of recovering and organizing fragments, the project re-archives, collages, and reconstructs the digital remains of GeoCities. Through the interplay of color, language, and cinematic space, and drawing on online mapping data and visual codes, we construct a new “polysemic space.” This space opens up alternative imaginaries of Athens as a branded ruin, allowing the symbolic meanings of the ancient city to continue evolving within the digital age.n.

PERVASIVE URBANISM/ VANISHING

CITY 03.07 10:00am13:00pm BST

PANEL:

DANIEL KOHLER, FRÉDÉRIC MIGAYROU, RASA NAVASAITYTE, PETER TRUMMER, SARAH WILLIAMS

10:45 RC16 RESTRAW HABITAT

Students: Hao Liu, Chenglong Li, Yuetong Lu, Xiaotong Xu

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic MIgayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

Our project transforms crushed rice straw and local clay into biodegradable biocomposite units that assemble into modular nesting habitats for birds. By integrating agricultural residue with region-specific natural materials, we create ecologically embedded structures that address habitat loss caused by paddy field expansion and support biodiversity restoration. These bio-integrated blocks decompose naturally over time, enriching the soil and reducing the environmental harm of straw burning. The modular system allows for adaptive, site-responsive construction across diverse terrains in Punjab. This regenerative strategy repositions agricultural waste as a functional material in ecological repair—offering a scalable, low-impact solution to restore avian habitats and environmental balance in intensively farmed landscapes..

11:15 RC15 GROWING GROUNDS

Students: Zhixuan Deng, Hanwen Gong, Jiyi Liu, Suyuan Zhou

Design: Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

This project addresses the structural and experiential deprivation embedded in contemporary urban food systems, where access to healthy food is limited and mediated by sterile, market-driven environments. The disconnection between growing and eating—especially in underserved areas—reduces food to passive consumption, eroding sensory engagement, autonomy, and collective rituals around nourishment. Focusing on a site in Poplar, the group explored the relationship between food access and sensory deprivation in a spatialised context. Through on-site data gathering, supported by Arduino-based sensing, they produced a series of site-specific maps that revealed the lived experience of food accessibility, and the sensory disconnections embedded in the area. They propose an urban farming system that combines year-round cultivation with collective food processing and consumption. Paired with a digital platform that generates “food paths”, the system redistributes food while activating communal spaces, fostering an ecology of care where nourishment, space, and community shape new forms of resilience.

11:45 RC15 GHOST SPACES

Students: Bingnan Lu

Design: Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

This project explores the connection between urban environments and ghost stories, focusing on the Three Mills neighbourhood in East London. It investigates how traditional folklore can be embedded into spatial narratives to create public spaces rich in cultural and emotional resonance. Understanding how ghost tales shape collective memory, local identity, and the character of a city is essential to preserving cultural heritage—particularly in East London. By transforming these stories into spatial design elements, the project opens new narrative possibilities for the urban realm, supporting both tourism and local economic activity. As a key strategy, a series of “Ghost Nodes” are developed—interactive urban interventions that incorporate light, sound, material, and environmental effects to evoke local folklore and atmosphere. Integrated into existing spatial and transport networks, these nodes form a ritualistic, experiential infrastructure where cultural storytelling and economic activation converge.

12:15 RC16 VOZROZHDENIYA ISLAND

Students: Aditya Landepatil

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic MIgayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

The drying of major water bodies globally is driven by a combination of environmental shifts and human activity. The Aral Sea, once one of the world’s largest lakes, has suffered dramatic transformations losing much of its water surface due to the diversion of its feeder rivers for agriculture during the Soviet era. This led to widespread salinization, desertification, and extreme temperature cycles, drastically altering the landscape.

The project reimagines one of the world’s most devastated landscapes by weaving together ecological restoration, cultural memory, and community resilience in the dried Aral Sea basin. Through cellular automata-guided patterns and modular bio-concrete blocks, which trap seasonal water and shade the landscape to create a micro-climate, the system reduces soil erosion, improves soil nutrition, and fosters the return of native plant and animal life. Over time these blocks will decompose and merge with the landscape.

PERVASIVE URBANISM/ VANISHING

CITY 03.07 14:00pm17:00pm BST

PANEL:

RASA NAVASAITYTE, LUCIANA PARISI,
MARCO POLETTO,YAEL REISNER, PETER TRUMMER, SARAH WILLIAMS

14:10 RC16 VANISHING SEA

Students: Janelle Amanjol, Si Qi Zhen, Patcharasiya Kamphusan

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic MIgayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

The Aral Sea, once one of the world’s largest inland seas, has dramatically transformed over recent decades. Vanishing Sea explores its ecological challenges and proposes turning these into opportunities for sustainable urban development. Our strategy focuses on improving water quality through filtration and utilizing salt flats in Tastak, northeastern Aral Sea, as economic and ecological assets. Salt becomes a key resource for shaping long-term, site-specific growth, while seasonal water bodies are preserved through integrated water networks. Our research aims to create a public space that promotes environmental and public health, enhances local livelihoods, improves economy globally and locally, and raises awareness for nature. We study salt, water, and natural material interactions to inform meso-scale architecture using local patterns, simulations, and modular forms. At the mega scale, we envision a regional system that revives the Aral Sea’s landscapes through adaptive, resilient, and context-sensitive design strategies.

14:40 RC15 TIDAL COMMONS

Students: Zhitong Chen, Yinglai Chen, Chaoyin Luo, Yue Zhu

Design: Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

The project explores spatial strategies and behavioural patterns of individuals living off-grid on canal waterways— communities who reject mainstream systems in favour of autonomy, mobility, and experiential living. As climate change accelerates and flooding becomes an urban reality, these houseboat dwellers—once fringe— may hold vital knowledge for future resilience.Focusing on London’s floating communities, the group conducted research combining social media analysis, video ethnography, in-situ interviews, and emotional data mapping using biometric sensing. What emerges is a portrait of decentralised urban life, where resilience is sustained through everyday practices of autonomy, reciprocal care, and spatial ingenuity.The project speculates further on a flooded London in 2070, where boaters may become key actors in survival and regeneration. A dual design strategy includes a self-building modular infrastructure that harnesses tidal energy to grow biorock, paired with a speculative AI app that maps emotional responses and shares collective knowledge—offering a blueprint for water-based, adaptive futures.

15:10 RC16 PALIMPSEST

Students: Chi-Chen Chen, Yaxuan Zou, Youtao Chen, Zhenyu Zhou

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic MIgayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

This project explores a data-driven ecological design strategy for regenerating abandoned or underused industrial sites on London’s urban fringe. Using Millennium Mills as a prototype, wind velocity and solar radiation were analysed at the city scale to identify climatically viable zones. Structural pathways were then generated using the Shortest Walk algorithm, producing a responsive moss-based pipe system that integrates with the existing framework. Reacting to wind and humidity patterns, this system gradually attaches, grows, and metabolises across the architectural shell—reconnecting nature, structure, and time. It proposes an adaptable regeneration model for post-industrial spatial relics.

15:40 RC15 BETWEEN DESTINATIONS

Students: Shanshan Gao, Boren Huang, Qianqian Wang

Design: Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

The project investigates the hidden emotional costs embedded in London’s public transport system. While efficient on the surface, the network imposes overlooked burdens on its most dependent users—such as long commutes, cognitive fatigue, and emotional strain. These impacts are rarely addressed in transport planning, yet they deepen urban inequality. Using geospatial analysis, PTAL mapping, and wearable GSR sensors, the group mapped emotional stress across transit journeys in Stratford (East London), revealing unequal experiential geographies, and how, for many, public transport is not a path to opportunity but a mechanism of urban injustice. In response, the project proposes a dual intervention: a mobile app that tracks users’ emotional states in transit, offering a live affective overview of the network and suggesting neurodiverse routes; and a parasitic architectural system embedded in multimodal hubs, offering spaces from quiet rest to collective events—in a process that transforms commuting into civic time and reimagines mobility as a shared spatial practice of care.

15:10 RC16 LUMI CITY

Students: Ho-Yi Mao, Chi Shen, Xingyue Fang

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic MIgayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

After the invention of artificial light sources in the 19th century, human lifestyles and daily routines underwent significant changes. Along with the rapid development of cities, the resulting light pollution not only reflects the advancement of human civilization but also disrupts the ecological rhythms of non-human organisms. Our design concept is based on this context, exploring how to utilize natural resources while reducing the further spread of light pollution. We use bioluminescent algae as our primary element and apply different forms of vibration to create an organic, bio-based lighting device suitable for urban environments.

04.07 10:00am13:10pm BST

PANEL:

NICHOLAS, MATHIAS MAIERHOFER, RASA NAVASAITYTE

10:15 RCX META-CLT

Students: Terrence Chan, Hanieh Hosseinzadeh, Shaunak Mujumdar

Design: Federico Borello, Cesar Fragachan, Gilles Retsin

Technical: Christoph Geiger

Theory: Alejandro Veliz Reyes

Meta-CLT redefines urban development by challenging static planning models and introducing a dynamic platform based on adaptability and participatory processes. Instead of fixed density and rigid structures, it promotes flexible architectural systems that evolve over time through negotiation and dialogue. Central to this approach is an innovative timber-based construction system that replaces traditional modular units with continuous, reconfigurable assemblies. This system enables porous, non-hierarchical spaces that support temporal use, shared ownership, and long-term adaptability. Operating across multiple scales, Meta-CLT offers a resilient framework responsive to ecological, social, and economic changes. By shifting construction from static objects to a generative, iterative process, the project fosters a fluid relationship between planning, building, and habitation—allowing urban environments to grow and transform in harmony with the needs of their communities and the environment.

10:30 RC5 HOLOLAB

Students: Marco Cappelletti,Wang Gao,Daley Hall,Jiayi Sima

Design: Stefan Bassing and Marios Tsiliakos

Technical: Zehao Qin, Calin Craiu, Paul-Andrei Burghelea, JJ Lee

Theory: Darria Ricchi

HoloLab reimagines architectural construction by transforming demolition waste into intelligent, customizable design systems. Through an integrated digital workflow that combines material categorization, environmental analysis, parametric design, and machine learning, HoloLab enables the creation of modular, scalable structures using recycled materials. Custom 3D-printed joints and innovative assembly methods support construction across urban, residential, and public spaces. With a strong focus on circularity, the platform empowers architects and designers to reduce waste, lower material costs, and build more sustainably. HoloLab turns construction debris into high-performance architecture, offering a forward-thinking approach to a more responsible and adaptive built environment.

11:15 RC18 MACONDO

Students: Yongchun Wang, Jiamin Zhang, Zheyuan Zhang, Zhiyi Zhang

Design: Zachary Flucker, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Theory: William Huang

Peatlands are unique and rare ecosystems where waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing. Although they cover only about 3-4% of the Earth’s land surface, they store up to one-third of the world’s soil carbon - twice as much as all the world’s forests combined. Focusing on this particular ecosystem, our group proposes an exchange between physical and virtual worlds through practical connections and Metaverse. By extracting real-time weather and geographic data from peatlands, we create a digital twin in the form of a parliament building - a space where design decisions are co-developed. Participants can experiment with different perspectives, both human and non-human, to explore how each decision might impact the ecosystem. Through this platform, we aim to empower the peatlands and the non-human species inhabiting them, allowing people to reconceptualize and rethink these overlooked landscapes.

11:30 RC15 A LIVING ARCHIVE

Students: XIANGLAN HE, YILING WANG, BORUI ZHOU

Design: Vincent Nowak, Annarita Papeschi

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

This project explores how the layered histories of Leamouth can be reactivated through participatory spatial recollection—where visitors engage with the site’s past through embodiment and storytelling. Despite its central role in the operations of the East India Company, much of the site’s colonial history remains unacknowledged in the contemporary landscape. The project investigates how culturally diverse historical narratives might be experienced by broader audiences. To this end, the group analysed a wide range of historical literature—across British, Indian, and Chinese sources—using sentiment analysis to visualise cultural differences in tone and framing. This was paired with sentiment analysis of video materials and fieldwork combining biometric sensing with in-situ interviews. The project proposes a situated “living archive”: a participatory system combining an online platform with AR gateways embedded in the docks. As visitors move through the site, they access spatialised virtual archives and contribute biometric-enriched experiences, creating an affective, multicultural memory network navigable through the perspectives of others.

12:15 RC2 MOBAS

Students: ZAID KHAN, XIAN ZHOU, ASAF GULUZADE, NAMAN DHIMAN, ZHIJING YAN

Design: Valentina Soana and Shahram Minooee Sabery

Technical: Valentina Soana, Shahram Minooee Sabery, Aya Meskawi

Theory: Provides Ng

MOBAS is a responsive architectural system that reimagines how spaces adapt to the needs of work and study environments. Built on the Elastic Robotic Structures (ERS) framework, it integrates large-scale fabrication, prototyping, and AI to respond to human behavior.

Using a Bending-Active Tensile-Hybrid (BATH) system, MOBAS enables real-time spatial transformation. Natural language processing and sentiment analysis via large language models(LLM) allow users to interact through voice or text. The system interprets tone and intent to adjust lighting, layout, and enclosure.

Modular and reconfigurable, MOBAS is suited to exhibitions, co-working spaces, and pop-up events.

It redefines architecture as an adaptive, intelligent system that evolves with its users.

Students: CARLOS GUATAME GARCIA, HUANQI XIA, YUTONG WANG

Design: Julian Besems, Andrew Porter

Theory: Philippe Morel

The transformation of housing into a tourist product redefines the city: no longer a place to live, but a setting for consumption. Urban space, once shaped by coexistence, is now curated for fleeting desire, filtered through digital platforms and aestheticised for visitors. The centre of Athens functions as a resort—not by design, but by extraction—where value is measured in ratings, not relationships. Yet the ordinary persists. Traces of memory and resistance remain inscribed in the urban fabric. Athens Resort moves within this tension: by intersecting real housing typologies with visual, performative and literary representations, it reveals how commodified urban life can be disrupted by new ways of seeing, naming and occupying space—reclaiming spectacle to restore presence in the centre. If the city already operates as a resort, the next step is simple: turn citizens into guests. Perhaps, to reclaim the city, we must first inhabit its irony.

04.07 15:00am18:10pm BST

PANEL:

PETER COOK, GEORG VRACHLIOTIS, YAEL REISNER, PETER TRUMMER, PAUL

NICHOLAS, DANIEL KOHLER, ALDO SOLLAZZO

15:15 RC8 FIBRE ENCLOSURES

Students: Çağla Türkoğlu, Zhang Lixingyue, Elif Nur Hologlu & Fu Jiaqi

Design: Kostas Grigoriadis and Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez

Technical: Samuel Esses & Hanjun Kim

Theory: Ilaria Di Carlo

We are at a pivotal moment in architectural practice—shifting from using digital tools as extensions of pre-digital thinking toward a fully integrated computational approach to design and construction. This project proposes a reimagined building envelope that challenges conventional façade paradigms through material experimentation, geometric exploration, and a continuous construction methodology. At its core is the integration of material behavior with computational design and digital fabrication. The result is adaptive, future-oriented architecture that leverages digital technologies alongside sustainable strategies—marking a shift from representation to material agency in architecture.

15:30 RC6 REPACKAGED

Students: LARASYA MAITRI ANJANI, YUMIN JEONG, MIN YEN LIU, KAREN DIXIE MARCES, SUBIN YUN

Design: Guan Lee, Daniel Widrig and Christopher Fischlein

Technical: Bartlett BMade

Theory: Mark Garcia

Repackaged investigates the architectural potential of found materials, with a particular focus on the structural and expressive qualities of cardboard. Omnipresent yet overlooked, cardboard accumulates in urban spaces: stacked on doorsteps, discarded on streets, woven into the fabric of everyday life. This research engages with cardboard through casting, leveraging its structure for lightweight rigidity and its adaptability as a formwork material, shaped through cutting, folding, and laminating. By embracing impermanence, the project reframes decay as integral to the material’s lifecycle, transforming cardboard into a dynamic medium where each iteration leaves not ruin, but a trace of ongoing reinvention and spatial experimentation.

16:15 RC16 REBORN IN MEMORY

Students: Yuchen Liu, Xiaoxuan Yu, Xi Li, Chutian He

Design: Claudia Pasquero, Frederic Migayrou, Filippo Nassetti

Theory: Emmanouil Zaroukas

We are at a pivotal moment in architectural practice—shifting from using digital tools as extensions of pre-digital thinking toward a fully integrated computational approach to design and construction. This project proposes a reimagined building envelope that challenges conventional façade paradigms through material experimentation, geometric exploration, and a continuous construction methodology. At its core is the integration of material behavior with computational design and digital fabrication. The result is adaptive, future-oriented architecture that leverages digital technologies alongside sustainable strategies—marking a shift from representation to material agency in architecture.

16:30 RC14 MOTIOGLYPH

Students: Sneha Nour, Varssni Karthick, Vania Arlene

Design: Roberto Bottazzi, Margarita Chaskopoulou, Tasos Varoudis

Theory: Provides Ng

The project is a high-dimensional movement-to-generative design exploring how the body can become a core methodology for shaping third spaces. Rooted in the term ‘motion’ and ‘glyphic’, it frames movement as both a generator of cultural expression and a communicator of spatial memory. Using pose detection neural networks on film media, we analyzed everyday gestures, walks, pauses, and stances as reflections of identity, behavior, and mental well-being. These patterns, segmented through unsupervised clustering of urban datasets, inform spatial strategies that are adaptive, inclusive, and culturally responsive. Set in Mile End along Regent’s Canal, the design transforms the site into a choreography of zones that respond to shifting bodily rhythms. These zones are characterized by movement typologies- such as speed, standard deviation, and gestural variation- capturing the nuance of spatial engagement. MotioGlyph asks: Can movement-driven spatial analysis transform the city into a dynamic choreography of urban life?

17:15 RC3 AUTOPOIESIS

Students: Jie Qiu, Elif Solcun, Grahesh Bhandari, Emre Taş, Shengyuan Yu

Design: Tyson Hosmer, Octavian Gheorghiu and Philipp Siedler

Technical: Ziming He, Baris Erdincer, Sergio Mutis

Theory: Jordi Vivaldi Piera

What if architecture could build and rebuild itself? Autopoiesis envisions a future where recycled matter and distributed robotics co-create adaptable spaces. Modular blocks, carved from reclaimed stone and waste plastic, interlock into ever-changing structures assembled by swarms of custom robots that learn, navigate, and collaborate. Spatial agents choreograph form; encoded behaviours bring motion to matter. The system grows, heals, and rearranges like a living organism with zero waste and zero hierarchy. Merging robotic autonomy, material circularity, and algorithmic design, the project proposes architecture not as a finished object, but as an evolving, sentient ecology.

17:30 RC7 B.L.U.R

Students: Miruna Porosnicu, Roba Abdelhak, Yuchun Lu, Wei

Zhang,Iravati Wagle, Qingxuan Li

Design: Richard Beckett and Christopher Whiteside

Technical: Hangcuan Wei

Theory: Yota Adilenidou

B.L.U.R explores the application of ‘engineered living materials’ for architecture that exhibit animate material properties of self-healing, and environmental responsivness. The project explores the potential of Bacterial Cellulose as a dynamic architectural material, emphasising the importance of continuous tending and care throughout its lifecycle. Given its degradable and ephemeral nature, bacterial cellulose challenges conventional notions of permanence and restorative approaches in architecture, driving instead a strategy that embraces decay as a design catalyst. Digital technologies are integrated into biomaterial workflows to monitor material degradation and environemental data-sets to inform biomatreial tending interventions.

Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit

Bartlett B-Pro SuperCrit

Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
B-PRO UD SuperCrit_Booklet_2025 by bartlettbpro - Issuu