Architecture MArch | Dissertation
John Bold (module leader), Harry Charrington, Davide Deriu, Andrew Peckham, Jeanne Sillett, Ben Stringer, Victoria Watson & Julian Williams
Dissertation Grounded in a History and Theory course, students choose their own subject to explore in the Dissertation, guided by tutors with a range of specialisms and methods. We encourage a wide range of topics and a plurality of approaches with the intention that the work produced will be distinguished by its high quality rather than by adherence to a rigid methodology or a School style. This approach has proved very successful in gaining Westminster a high reputation for the excellence of the results, fully justified once again this year with the award of the RIBA Dissertation Medal to Marie Price for her outstanding study, ‘The Overlooked Back Garden’. The judges were particularly impressed by her synthesis of historiography, case-study analysis and digital mapping technology. The message for all of us is that the always fragile notion of privacy has now been thoroughly and irrevocably shown to be a delusional fantasy, exploded by the manipulators of the all-seeing eye-in-the-sky. In a close study of his own family home, Oliver Cradock has explored different facets of what makes up the notion of ‘home’ – the house, its environs, the family and their belongings – lots and lots of ‘stuff ’ – in his dissertation titled: ‘It could be a lot nicer. It does need some work, but it’s got potential for things’. Through looking in detail at the physical environment, and illustrating it very well in photographs and drawings, the author explores the intangible qualities of attachment, belonging and homeliness. (t l) Molly de Courcy Wheeler: Pink House, site B, Cross to Cong (c l) A tanaska Dimitrova: Buzludzha Monument, an abandoned ‘flying-saucer’, Bulgaria (b l) Oliver Cradock: The Dining Room
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In ‘The Bungalow: The Last Taboo’, Molly De Courcey Wheeler has mixed personal knowledge and observation with primary research in order to analyse the ‘non-pedigreed architecture’ of rural Ireland. In a very well structured and stylish thesis, the author clarifies different interpretations of traditional and conventional, vernacular and ordinary architecture. Case studies enable an examination of the larger issues as well as an investigation of the smaller details of design, the changing floor plan and how the houses are used. The Buzludzha monument, an abandoned, decaying ‘flying-saucer’ in the Central Balkan Mountains of Bulgaria is the subject of a beautifully produced dissertation by Atanaska Dimitrova. The history of the monument’s relationship to photography is revealed, enabling a consideration of the idea of construction as a mode of propaganda. The story of the commissioning, designing and building is well told, illuminated further through an interview with the architect Georgi Stoilov. James Dunn’s ‘Common Ground?’ presents a sophisticated and inventive exposition in which the relationship between housing tenure, typology and shared space are considered through a comparison of the current state of housing in the UK and the communal housing built in post-revolutionary Russia, notably the well-known Narkomfin in Moscow and the kommunalka apartment type, a forced collective that never worked, as we might readily infer from the excellent illustrations. (t r) Marie Price: S atellite imagery of Golders Green (case study site), tiled from Bing maps (b r) James Dunn: Welcome to the Kommunalka. individual bells on the front door to a single apartment