exhibit 2009 Design Yearbook

“ONE PLANET: OUR SCHOOL” The 2009 Yearbook and Summer Exhibition entitled One Planet: Our School celebrates the cultural diversity within our school and signals our commitment to one planet living. It also celebrates amongst our international alumni the presence of the School of the Built Environment around the planet. The planet has many unique places, and this is one of them…

Our school is a microcosm of a greater planet, and we believe that by experiencing the real dimension, diversity and most importantly the fragile condition of that wider horizon, we will better our understanding and nurture professionals equipped to tackle the demands of a challenging millennium.

Humankind has only one planet and stewardship of human and natural resources is of vital importance. It is the aspiration of the School of the Built Environment not only to inform the practice of future architects and engineers but also to run the school with a one planet carbon footprint.

It’s our privilege that each year students from every corner of the planet generously share their cultural heritage and experiences with us. In return they’ve been spreading our school’s commitment to preserve and enhance the places we live in.

This book celebrates the hardwork of those students and the resultant cultural richness of the school, at the centre of which stands a dynamic studio culture. It also describes key initiatives and projects that have taken place this year when the school is contributing locally, nationally and globally to the creation of high quality architecture and a sustainable built environment. This contribution can be practical, philosophical or by design and invention.

The cover illustration has been produced by Kinni Soni, student on the MArch in Design course, as part of her research on means of universal expression and communication of architectural experiences.

In her own words: “This story is my expression of my experiences within the University of Nottingham, without words, in a common universal language. The story begins with an empty green courtyard surrounded by the old and new buildings along with a beautiful pink tree. Walking through the gallery seeing glimpses of presentations, I emerge from the old building and see green hills and the Eco House standing still whilst the sun plays with the clouds. Moving down towards the row of cars takes me to my work place where this vintage car makes me curious as to whom it belongs! It meets me every day when I am walking through the dark forest towards the outside world, while the school grows with me, reaching all over the planet from that green and silent courtyard in Nottingham”

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EXHIBIT! 09

One Planet: Our School

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The South African Experience

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EVENTS

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Special Professors Week

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Tour de Pasenville

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The Butterfly Effect: Ibstock Lecture Series

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Elementary, Elemental, Participation

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Elemental Parts: On making Holistically

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Ispace & Designs on the planet 2

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Engagement with live projects and the Project Office

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PEAR, paper for emerging architectural research

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Built Environment Reference Library

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Materials Bank

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Creative Energy Homes

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Green Refurb

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Journalism Workshop

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STUDENTS PRIZES

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UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

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Dissertation Summaries

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UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO

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Year 1

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Year 2

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Year 3

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Year three_unit one (Luke Olsen)

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Diary of a Sustainable Architect - Satellite Architects

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EXHIBIT! 09 DESIGN YEARBOOK

Printed in England by Eight days a week printing solutions Ltd.

School of the Built Environment University of Nottingham

Copyright 2009 Š School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978 0 85358 257 1 Design, Layout and Edition by Guillermo Guzman Dumont Published by the School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham 2

Year three_unit two (Jonathan Morrison)

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Practice article - ARTICLE 25

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Year three_unit three (Nicola Gerber)

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Butterfly House - Chetwood Architects

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Year three_onit four (David Short)

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Blueprint - Vicky Richardson

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Year three_unit five (Darren Deane)

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Practice article - Jo Fairfax Practice

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Year three_unit six (July Richards)

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OUR SCHOOL AROUND THE PLANET

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Overseas Opportunities

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Field Trips

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Diploma in Architecture Introduction

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Diploma year 5 modules

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STUDIO YEAR 6

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Year 6 Thesis Projects

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Research at the SBE

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Master Degrees

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Industrially Sponsored Studentship Scheme

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Diploma Student Bursary Scheme

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School Staff

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London Show 08

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Exhibit 08 prizes summary

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Exhibit Pavilion Project

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Tongue & Groove

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Sponsors & Aknowledgements

The views expressed in the included articles are those of their authors and may not reflect the views of the publisher, as well as the responsibility for copyrighted content supplied for those articles.

School of the Built Environment University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG72RD UK Tel: 44 (0)1159514184 Fax: 44 (0)115 9513159 www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe www.exhibotnottingham.com

CONTENTS

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Cover images: Original Illustration by Kinny Soni Inner back cover image: Photography by Graham Farmer “The Woodland Cemetery”, Stockholm Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund

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ONE PLANET: OUR SCHOOL

The annual yearbook is a celebration of the work of our students.

It reflects their diverse responses to the challenges of designing the built environment in today’s rapidly changing world. With an emerging global consensus on climate change, it is clear that future development of our towns and cities must be ‘sustainable’ and that architects and engineers have a huge role to play in achieving this in practice. At SBE we are fuly aware of the importance of our role in ensuring that these challenges are addressed and this is evidenced through most of the projects that we undertake.

While primarily showcasing the achievements of our students, the yearbook also provides an opportunity to review some of the high points of the year, including: - We had students shortlisted for the RIBA President’s Medals awards at both BArch and DipArch in 2008 together with success in the Isover competition and hope to repeat this success in 2009.

- We successfully achieved reaccreditation from CIBSE for our BEng, MEng and MSc programmes in November 2008.

- SBE is progressing its entry for the international Solar Decathlon project for which it was successfully nominated earlier this year.

- Exciting ‘live projects’ for Chilwell School and Brayford Pool, Lincoln

have enabled our students to engage with real clients and communities.

- Work on the ‘Creative Energy Homes’ project has continued with the completion of the E.ON ‘1930s ‘ House and the Tarmac House nearing completion.

- In September 2008, the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies building was opened at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China and has subsequently won awards in both China and Europe.

- The first cohort of 64 students on the joint BEng programme with UNNC are due to arrive into the second year of our programme at Nottingham next September.

- Organising the successful ISpace project and hosting the Designs for the Planet symposium.

- The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise confirmed our research strength by ranking us as 5th in terms of research power amongst all built environment schools in the UK. For me personally, one of the most exciting, challenging and innovative projects undertaken this year has been the nursery school live project with Education Africa in the township of Jouberton, South Africa. Since first meeting with the founder of the charity about eighteen months ago, to visiting the potential site last July and returning in Easter this year to assist with the construction and see the amazing

product of our students’ designs and labour, I am totally amazed at what our students can achieve.

This project has set a new benchmark for student projects that engage with the needs of local communities and I cannot express fully the pride that I have in the achievements of all of those involved in the creation of the new school.

The School has continued to grow this year and this growth is matched by an ambition to not just maintain, but to improve standards. The current situation in terms of the global economy places new challenges upon us but I am hopeful that employers continue to recognise the unique qualities of Nottingham graduates. The projects with which our students engage help them to develop unique skill sets that have always been highly sought after and we will keep striving to ensure that this keeps Nottingham and our graduates at the forefront of built environment education. As such, the School is in an excellent position to consolidate its international reputation for the quality of its graduates and for its research.

Professor Tim Heath Head of the School of the Built Environment

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THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE

THE JOUBERTON NURSERY PROJECT In September 2008, the 2nd year students were briefed by Chris Brown of Johannesburg based NGO, Education Africa to design a sustainable nursery school for Jouberton, an impoverished township near Klerksdorp/ Matlosana in the Northwest province of South Africa, 250km South West from Johannesburg.

After responding to the brief with individual schemes during Semester 1, a panel of tutors and lecturers from the Institute of Architecture convened in December and long listed the eighteen strongest proposals, three of which were then chosen for further development. A team of thirty six students consisting of twenty nine 2nd years and eight 5th years were also selected to detail the overall winning scheme as well as taking up responsibility for fundraising, sourcing building materials and making travel arrangements to South Africa where they undertook the task of physically building the nursery.

Choosing which project to finally take forward proved to be a daunting task as three very strong

schemes were presented before us. In the end we selected what at the time seemed to be the most complicated project of the three but at the same time the most meticulously researched, with the least uncertainty regarding its design, structure, materials, details and buildability Over the course of February and March the students were divided into groups, each of which were led by two fifth year students.

Each group researched and developed a specific aspect of the project such as groundworks, superstructure, envelope, and materials, etc. As well as working on an individual package the students also coordinated the impact of their progress and decisions to their colleagues looking at other areas of the scheme. All the information was collated in the form of drawings and documents, which was then sequenced in a six-week construction programme. Once on the ground this programme was reviewed at the end each day to assess how much progress was made. This was informed by our speed and ability to carry out certain tasks, availability and lead times of materials, weather, public holidays etc.

Rashid Ali

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In the Exhibit 07 Design Year Book, Charles Holland of FAT Architects shunned the “idea of the architect as a lone gun, the lack of collaboration or teamwork between students, the distrust of other related professionals such as engineers, surveyors etc”.

A privileged group of students at Nottingham have finally surpassed his plea. In the course of the year, we designed and constructed a nursery school for the impoverished township of Jouberton in South Africa, not only working as a group of second and fifth year students, tutors and volunteer architects, but with engineers, surveyors, building contractors, suppliers, labourers and volunteers on the other side of the world. A triangle of land (previously a rubbish tip) in Jouberton, South Africa was our site. This was real architecture.

We have returned feeling racially perplexed, convinced that the African pace of walking (very slow, for those who have not experienced it) is a successful attempt to aid social interaction, and absolutely in awe of the patchwork of charming, simple and highly personalised dwellings. The latter may bewilder the locals of Jouberton, but as John Turner wrote in ‘Housing by People’, “the much reviled shanty towns of the Third World are actually a constructive housing solution, because people are free to build their own homes and then progressively improve them, according to their means.

The inhabitants control of the design, construction and management of their own dwellings is a process which stimulated individual and social wellbeing”. For now, at least, a few lucky volunteers have a bounty of left-over earth bags and insulation with which to improve their homes.

As for our school, it seems necessary to say very little. Yet the photographs and drawings in the following pages will do well to portray how incredibly hard everyone worked and how much the building means to us and, we hope, to the people of Jouberton.

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If Architects Were Carpenters When 36 students and I embarked on a journey to build a nursery school, I wondered how we were going to do it all within the 6 week timescale. Our design was technically ambitious, and we were by no means construction experts. When we arrived in South Africa, things were slow to begin but quickly picked up pace and soon enough, 12 hour days and 6 day weeks became the norm. We all fell in love with South Africa and more specifically, the community that we were building for.

Mistakes were made and everything was discussed in detail (several times over) before it happened, but we got there together in the end and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do or any group of people I’d rather do it with. We worked until we physically couldn’t work any more and in the end produced a result that we’re all very proud and honored to have been a part of.

If architects were carpenters… “…They’d have known one to complain about when the drawing doesn’t show it all.” “…Buildings would not be curvy, angled or complicated in any way.” “…A lot would be learnt very quickly.” “…Details would change several times during the build.” “…They’d be the hardest working people alive.” “…The sense of achievement they get at the end of the build would be multiplied by 100.” “…Yes, buildings would still get built.”

By Samuel Critchlow

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The design for the nursery school was definitely very adventurous for a student ‘design and build’ project. However it’s unique concept captivated the local people of Jouberton and inspired an amazing community spirit.

Building in South Africa was such a fantastic experience that was made so much more memorable and rewarding by the local community. Their involvement and enthusiasm has created a place that will be cherished and respected.

This project far exceeded all my expectations of not only what a group of students can achieve, but how a single building can inspire a community.

By Will Gowland

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EVENTS 13

SPECIAL PROFESSORS WEEK

Special Professors Week (26th to 30th January 2009) This year we launched a brand a new event for the School of the Built Environment - a week long series of creative workshops, lectures, debates, visits, seminars and socials entitled ‘2009 S.P.A.C.E. ODYSSEY – Special Professors in Architecture, Construction and Energy’.

The aim of Special Professors Week was to improve the contact between our visiting professors and a wider range of students across the school, to enhance their input into the school, to facilitate greater contact between students in different year groups as well as between our visiting professors and to have some fun in the cold and dark days of winter. To allow all students and staff to take part fully in the weeks activities all studio and lectures for the entire week were cancelled.

‘We should take every opportunity to play!’ Ted Cullinan.

The series of events for Special Professors Week were: Creative Workshops: Solar Dechathlon (with Peter Clegg and Ted Cullinan), Making Workshop (Tim MacFarlane and Michael Stacey), Clarity workshop (George Clark), The Big Draw (Phil Watson), Stop Frame Animation (Melissa Appleton), Life Drawing (Rachel Grigor), Journalism workshop (Guillermo Guzman), Art Pavilion Competition (Nicola Gerber), Textiles and Architecture (Ana Arajo), Sustainable Sculpture Park (Paul Thomas), Pin Hole Camera to Camera Obscura (Sarah Moore), Dancing Between Walls workshop (David Short & Mathew Butcher) and Urban Design Workshop (Mark Alston).

Lectures: Ibstock Launch Lecture by Peter Clegg & Max Fordham, Mario Cucinella Seminar, Architecture and Media by George Clark, Creative Energy Homes and Z Cars by Max Fordham.

Debate between Ted Cullinan and Dean Hawkes.

Tours of Creative Energy Homes Project.

Events: Staff vs students football tournament, Visiting Professors Dinners, socials, prize giving and closing party.

Special thanks must be given to all staff and students who contributed to the event and in particular to our special professors Ted Cullinan, Peter Clegg, Mario Cucinella and Tim MacFarlane and to key contributors Max Fordham and George Clark. The event was coordinated by Liz BromleySmith.

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TOUR DE PASENVILLE

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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT Professor Michael Stacey

The Ibstock 2009 Tectonics lecture series ‘Making Architecture’, which provided the material for a forthcoming book edited by Dr Darren Deane and Professor Michael Stacey, explored the relationship between the making of buildings and the theoretical discourses that underpin their creation. Key to this relationship is the notion of reflective practice and those practitioners who creatively engage with the art, craft and science of building – in essence those who seek a ‘reflective tectonics’ of practice. The series, by emphasising the composing and assembling of architecture beyond construction, revealed at how construction is construed. Geometry, digital practices, craft, materials and detail were explored, not as ends in themselves, but as means that cannot be abstracted from their cultural and social context.

The relationship between practice and teaching was also examined, underpinned by the recognition of the vital role that research plays in both realms. The boundaries been practice and research was interrogated and the concept of ‘design as research’ and ‘research practitioners explored. The series aimed to bring the related realms of the academy, of practice and industry into a more productive and reflective relationship and to stimulate a dialogue beyond the immediate demands of specific contracts or projects. The series brought together the range of knowledge and skills required to create the built environment, from clients to theoreticians, specialist contractors and specialist consultants. Each seeking to inform the creation of a sustainable and high quality built environment with human life at its centre. Jørn Uzton observed in his address during the consecration of Bagsvaerd Church “there are

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lots of building materials, there is cement and there are bricks but the most important building material is the customer” – the people.

The series revealed that architects are not the only creative participants in the design and construction process. Each pair of speakers took up the challenge differently from a gentle conversation reflecting on a specific project to down right disagreement on key decisions and even the history of the project. Peter Clegg [Architect: FCBS] and Max Fordham [Environmental Engineer: MFP] started the series by discussing the design development of Heelis in Swindon, the new National Trust Headquarters. The roof of Heelis, inspired by Brunel’s day-lit 19th century engineering works, deals with climate modification of the deep plan spaces below. Although built on a standard ‘commercial budget’ – this project has raised the standard for office design.

Peter demonstrated a masterful attention to sustainability, from the cast aluminium louvers (92% recycled aluminium and fabricated only 27 miles from the site) to the provision of thermal mass and control of daylight. Max then eruditely set out the low energy credentials of the project and was polemical on the human perception of hue.

The focus of the presentation by Nick Eldridge [Architect: Eldridge Smerin] and Gary Elliott [Engineer: Elliott Wood] was the new house at 85 Swains Lane, Highgate London, which replaced John Winter’s earlier 1980 house. Nick showed his depth of understanding of space, geometry and proportion – immutable qualities of architecture articulated via boldly contemporary domestic architecture. Revealing that detailing can be driven conceptually, flushness

was considered of greater importance than structural clarity. The presentation showed the iteration of details between the architect and engineer, a process of proposition and rejection searching for the mechanically and visually appropriate components of the chosen architecture. A surprising element was the role of embedded memory of materials and how John Winters own Corten Steel House, in Highgate, visited by Nick Eldridge, the author and Jim Eyre as second year architecture students had become a generator of the flush detailing.

Whereas Gary Elliott exuded certainty pushing at the boundaries of our knowledge of glass, Andrew Greig [Greig Ling], also a structural engineer, who spoke with Daniel Rosbottom, discussed the value of tectonic uncertainty. Daniel and Greig presented drdh Architects Villa 69 in the Ordos project located in Inner Mongolia. Drdh were invited by Herzog & de Meuron to design one of 100 villas, each 1000m2, on a master plan curated by the renowned Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. Daniel Rosbottom set out an argument for how architecture can be generated by an intellectual context rather than a physical context. Sited within a context-less ‘architectural zoo’, drdh’s project tackled a major dilemma in contemporary architecture - celebrity and autonomy, or the absence of any agreed canon. This freedom is an issue the profession needs to handle with great care and skill.

Daniel drew upon Soane, the Picturesque tradition and paragons of Modernism such as Lewerentz.

The facades of the house picked up on the use of brick in China by Ai Wei Wei, which drdh decided to articulate as a veneer of brickwork held in bronze frames. Daniel

described how all the detailing of the brickwork changed because Grieg still wanted a single butterfly tie in the centre of each panel.

Such rigour points toward a highly original, ‘chaos theory’ of tectonics, where singular acts of small detailing have the potential to produce the material equivalent of a tectonic butterfly effect.

Julian Marsh [Architect: Marsh Growkoski] and Nick Ebbs [Developer: Blueprint] described the difficult gestation of a mix-used development in Leicester – The Phoenix. This talk was based on an extended metaphor of procreation, parenting and fostering. Possibly more than any other lecture in the series they illustrated the political skills required by architects and their clients to realise successful architecture in contemporary Britain.

Architects Rab and Denise Bennetts were joined by their RSC client Peter Wilson, who before he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company was Director of Estates at the Tate. Wilson began by tracing the contributions of various architects to major Tate projects from St Ives to Tate Modern. In comparison to the client-driven 1970’s extension of what is now Tate Britain, the richness of spaces and opportunities generated by collective synergy between creative architects, an enlightened professional client and a scientist, is a better explanation of the gift that is architecture.

Rab and Denise Bennetts set out their fascination with the repetition, purposefulness and economy of 19th Century industrial architecture, illustrating how this had formed a key starting points in their work from Powergen to Wessex Water. Another strand of

ideas came from city life and architecture’s role in creating spaces and places in our towns and cities that create new possibilities within specific contexts such as Stratford Upon Avon. A key element in their refurbishment of Elizabeth Scott’s Theatre was the construction of a brick campanile or viewing tower inspired by Kahn’s Richard’s laboratories at Penn and towers in Lucca and fair Verona. However to achieve the rotation of the plan by 45° from base to crown necessitated the manufacture of corner bricks that taper at 1 degree. These bespoke bricks are, in the terms of the brick industry, ‘special specials’. Bennetts had journeyed from standardisation to customisation in a single talk, sustained by a body of major architectural projects that are linked by a depth of understanding of the craft of making architecture.

Sir Richard MacCormac [Architect] and Rogier Van De Hinje [Lighting Designer: Arup] discussed their collaboration on a number of projects including the Welcome Wing of the Science Museum and the BBC Headquarters project.

Light and colour filled the space of the lecture hall as daylight and artificially light was manipulated to materialise space and dematerialise architecture. Richard carried the replacement of MaCormac, Jamieson, Pritchard as architects of the BBC building as a burden of concern for the project, describing almost like a lost son architectural inventions created with Rogier such as the urban cyclorama that may never be realised. Rogier clearly demonstrated the depth of knowledge of light, yet more revealing was his use of the large physical models that became the focus of creative collaboration between architect and client.

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The series was closed by Bernd Schmutz of Caruso St John Architects, John Angus [Textile Specialist] and Bruce Grant, Grant McKenzie [Quantity Surveyor, Designer and Sub-contractor]. John Angus of the University of Derby showed how a simple objective such as ‘the concrete cladding of Centre of Contemporary Art Nottingham incorporates three dimensional scans of industrial produced lace’, actually necessitated a complex process of exploration and experimentation involving dedicated hours of ‘supersized’ lace making. Bruce’s contribution was the curtain walling and cladding including the billowing curved gold anodized enclosures of the ‘lanterns’, the corners if which can be read as a rejection of a well-known typology: the Miesian re-entrant corner on Lake Shore Drive. However perhaps they are an exuberant celebration of this tectonic by Caruso StJohn, demonstrating that opposition can act as an inverted celebration of an original type, a sort of intellectually recast detail.

Bernd Schmutz of Caruso StJohn and project architect for Centre of Contemporary Art Nottingham who has worked on this project for four and half years, set out a intellectual and technical explanation of this new art gallery due to open in Nottingham this autumn.

Communicating his passion for the project and its roots in the body of work of his practice, he included the following quote from Adam Caruso: “The exterior image for the Centre takes its inspiration from the amazing 19th century buildings of Nottingham and in particular from the impressive facades of the Lace Market, where hard bricks form a tough shell to the repetitive structural frames of the warehouse buildings. The toughness of these

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facades was originally about durability and low maintenance but the rigour of their repetitive pattern and precise material assembly also lend a dignity to the streets of the quarter. The facades for Nottingham Contemporary are developed as a continuous patterned surface of pre-cast concrete elements. Whilst pre-cast has long been popular for the efficiencies that stem from prefabrication, the crude techniques and materials of the 1960s have undergone intensive development resulting in a surface that has the potential to be somewhere between stone, terracotta and concrete. Terracotta facades by Louis Sullivan, in particular the Guarantee Building in Buffalo, have served as a model for our façades. These finely moulded surfaces with their rich and considered use of pattern speak of their material and fabrication as well as being incredibly beautiful.

Something of these qualities can be achieved with contemporary techniques of casting concrete, without the intensive use of skilled labour that was required in the production of terracotta. Computer milling allows for the production of formwork directly controlled by the Architect - CAD drawings, graphics or even photos are translated into machine milling instructions, allowing positives to be cut from resin board. Hard latex moulds are then made, tough and flexible enough to be reused many times.

The patterned moulds can be used as modules within the formwork of an individual pre-cast unit, allowing a variety and hierarchy of patterning at little extra cost. The recent enthusiasm for wallpaper like patterned elevations could be developed to a more mature exploration of this rich and fertile subject. The starting point for our research was lace patterns; with a particular reference to the machine produced lace that Nottingham was famous for, an indus-

trialised, economical version of an older handcraft. Like many of the 19th century industrial buildings that surround it, Nottingham Contemporary deploys a single economical material, to achieve a set of tough interiors with a civic and dignified exterior.”

Darren Deane and James Timberlake of Kieran Timberlake and Darren Deane shared the platform to discuss Parts, Elements and Components. Enclosed are abridged versions of their chapters in Making Architecture.

Making Architecture demonstrated the range of voices and intellects that inform and form architecture. Architecture should not be riven with uncertainties; it should be practiced with passion and commitment; skill and judgement; boldness and humility. Ultimately it is a thoughtful collaboration informed by culture. By the end of this series I was reminded of a quote by John Ruskin ‘no one can be an architect who is not a metaphysician’.

The Making Architecture: 2009 Tectonics Lecture Series was sponsored by Ibstock and organised by Tongue and Groove with the Tectonics and Digital Fabrication Research Group.

ELEMENTARY, ELEMENTAL, PARTICIPATION Dr. Darren Deane

In architectural theory the term ‘element’ seems to have become rather ubiquitous. Both Cecil Balmond’s Element, which appeared in 2007, and KieranTimberlake’s recent reflections on ‘elements and parts’ in Loblolly House place the term at the heart of their arguments about the performative reordering of architectural design.

But this is the tip of an iceberg, for both are preceded by Simon Unwin’s search in 2003 for the ‘basic elements’ of place making, whilst Pierre von Meiss’ Elements of Architecture appeared in 1992. Even Peter Zumthor has been drawn into the debate over the nature of the architectural element, the difference being his preference for calling them “elementary qualities” such as the “sound” or the “temperature” of space.

What makes a seemingly banal term like the element so intriguing and yet so problematic is both its arcane status and ambiguity. It can refer to one of three things: a simple architectonic component; a primordial elemental substance holding together an otherwise fragmented reality (underlying framework) or a timeless entity known as the ideal part. This lecture examines three ‘tectonic moods’ or sensibilities both contemporary and historical in scope, revolving round these notions of the ‘architectural element’.

ELEMENTARY: The first category I’d like to deal with is the ‘elementary’, or what cannot be broken down any further. The search for an irreducible atom or element dates back to Pre-Socratic thought in 6th Century Greece.

Even Vitruvius mentions “bodies that cannot be cut up” or indivisibles, these being the primordial elements combined by the architect.

However, the notion that design has an elementary outcome is a

relatively recent notion dating back to 18th Century French typological thought and graphic decomposition. German Romanticism would later adopt the element, not as a formal idea, but as an interdisciplinary, process-based concept designed to reconcile art and science following which it became possible to re-vivify creativity and forge a common ground with physics.

Eventually incorporated into the dematerialising thrust of modernism, the ‘elementary’ stood at the forefront of early 20th century debates over the prospects of a universal architectural language, the role of primitive gestures and simple materials therein, and, to quote Alois Riegl’s remark from 1898, the “negation of the massive, the heavy and the monolithic”. I’ll come back to these other traditions, for now it is important to register the French origins of the ‘elementary’.

Intuitively the elementary conjures up small entities arrived at through continuous subdivision or distillation. It is synonymous with reduction, simplification and division, particularly in relation to nature or any other complex situation lacking coherence or rule. ‘Elementary reduction’, which implies taking control of nature through the formulation of an instrumental method, became particularly relevant to post 18th century architectural theory, driven by a desire to link the ‘elementary’ with the question of historical progress. As the French Encyclopaedics saw it, the elementary impulse leads to the search for absolute knowledge and a desire to perfect human culture.

If one agrees with the basic premise that architectural thought and practice is enriched through contact with other fields then it should come as no surprise to

learn that the emergence of this ‘elementary’ mindset owes something to its proliferation during the 18th and 19th centuries in a wide range of other disciplines. The British Library for instance holds approximately 470 remarkably similar-sounding volumes, all written in French between the 1709 and 1850 covering subjects as diverse as pyrotechnics, chemistry, politics, geology, geometry and architecture.

The architectural encyclopaedia comparable in scope and intention is Neuffort’s Elementary Compendium of Architecture from 1754, a text containing no less than 900 diagrams of every conceivable typology, an approach culminating in Durand’s Precis of 1802.

Elementary design is an act of decomposition, dissection and simplification rather than enrichment; a process of abstraction that extracts the core structure, resulting in diagrammatic, elementary regulations. Largely devoid of meaning or any analogical reference, these are not abbreviations of the world, but the formal elementary bones on which to base its instrumental reconstruction. In the French tradition this is the end-point of ‘elementary thought processes’ that began by first taking the imagination to the point of nothingness in order to rediscover a primitive gesture or utopian beginning, turning the architect into someone whose sole task is to re-engineer the world from scratch, a creation ex nihilo rather than an embellishment that make sense of reality.

In order to understand the thrust of the elementary impulse it is important to notice how it deliberately disentangles two previously intertwined and reciprocating levels of reality - the ideal and the real.

The elementary impulse provides us with a point of departure for

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assessing more recent trends in contemporary design.

Take Kengo Kuma’s 2003 claim “I want to erase architecture”, an ambition paradoxically played out through a process he refers to as the “particalisation of matter”, which sounds a bit like taking a mortar and pestle to the integrated composite figure. According to this tendency the ‘elementary’ expresses the dissolution of the object, or tangibility in reverse, a strategy of disintegration that replaces edification and synthesis with its opposite – simple particalisation. If at the beginning of the 20th Century ‘elementary’ disintegration held sway, this has now intensified to become what Kuma jointly calls ‘particalisation’ and pixelisation, both of which cannot result in a holistic or unified design process.

‘Particalisation’ and pixelisation is a heightened experience of division which loses sight of what is being divided. What matters is where you end up, not where you started. As such it is a potentially problematic tectonic mood that has further unseen consequences for making architecture.

For instance it can be linked to the notion of rapid information flows and compliant digital systems. Culture has become less “striated” we are now told; neither it nor nature is configured into layers that hide or reveal latent strata, but flattened into a “smooth” field of intensities. According to the American critic Robert Somol, architecture is shifting from a critical to a projective paradigm, that is to say, it is rearticulating and mobilising the elements of architecture in order to engage with society and market flows more effectively, which is fine from a general ethical standpoint.1 It is also claimed that the most interesting and relevant architecture doesn’t deal with ideas, meaning or content in the

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traditional sense. Rather, in the words of Arjen Mulder, it “organises information.”2 The formal datascape of virtual reality, emptied of content, smuggles in another type of ‘elementary code’, ensuring the global mobility, technological transparency and exposure of architecture to wider fields of decontextualised consumption. The escalation of modernist transparency into ‘particalisation’ and ‘pixelisation’ allows design to follow a path of least resistance in terms of the amplitude of media used in its creation. Our pursuit of the ‘seamless digital platform’ disguises the fact that architecture is becoming less attuned to the difficult translation or patient movement of an idea through the differentiated modes of embodiment and scales encompassed by a single project – the sketch, film, plan, 1:500 model, material study, geometrical diagram, perspective, composite drawing, 1:20 sectional model – this is the composite field of making that facilitates a truly integrated build-up of architectural qualities. So paradoxically, one could say that the emergence of a quickened ‘elementary medium’ in the form of seamless digital practice may in the end flatten the amplitude of the architectural imagination.

As the cultural critic Jean Baudrillard points out, the rise of information is driven by a desire to overcome mediation: we “will seek something faster than communication” he writes, as “communication is too slow; it is an affect of slowness; it proceeds through contact and speech. The look is much faster; it is the medium of the media, the quickest.” 3 The deregulation of content produces an elementary, diagrammatic coding that can be pushed through virtually any tool, medium or con-

text almost without hindrance.

ELEMENTALISM: A second, more subtle definition of the ‘element’ derives from its Latin root ‘alo’, meaning to nourish, support, sustain, and physically maintain a healthy body, hence our reliance on the ‘four elements’, the seasons and the weather. This is the primordial strata of elemental substance described by Vitruvius and Alberti as a kind of cosmological base-layer, and buildings the alimentary canal. It is a sensibility extending into the recent past.

During a conversation held in 1969 at the University of Pennsylvania Louis Kahn told his students that “the stream and the mountain and the wind and the sun…its best to consider your mind as being made of that stuff, than to think that it is made now of a different type of thing.”4 These words immediately bring to mind Gaston Bachelard’s subtle deconstruction of matter and mind of 1943 known as the “law of the four elements”: “the physiology of the imagination, even more than anatomy, is subject to the law of the four elements” (The Necessity of Material Causality in Aesthetics) Now perhaps the most overused example of this elemental ‘tectonic mood’, one which has become a sign of our times, is Diller and Scofidio’s, Blur pavilion from 2002. Was that a work of architecture, a patch of weather, or are both collapsed? The elemental reversal of the concise architectural figure represented here has in fact been around for some time. The Romantic painter Joseph Turner for instance attempted something similar his The Fighting Temeraire.

Closer to our own time is Olafur Eliasson’s 2005 installation The Body as Brain, consisting of a hermetically sealed gallery ‘replenished’

and re-materialised by diverting a local stream through several of its principal spaces. Autonomous artefacts and introverted spatial practices are here opened up to the ‘elements’ so to speak, converting closed introverted space back into a contemporary interpretation of the ancient Greek ‘stoa’. The ‘stoa’ incidentally was a peripheral colonnaded region of the Agora open to the ‘elements’.

‘Stoa’ derives from ‘stoichea’, the original Greek term for ‘element’.

This elemental use of the ‘element’ thus relates to the reinvigoration of architecture, in the same way that traditional motifs such as nous, logos, aether and pneuma were transformed into the reanimating concepts of air and light in modernism.

Over the course of the 20th Century the term ‘element’ acquired several meanings. Firstly, it supplied the reductive building blocks of nature and culture; these are the spiritualized particles of cultural reconstruction that are light, refined and effective. In contrast, the singular elemental quality becomes a potential source of renewal in a narrow-down material economy.

This type of “element” begins its life in the “extra-plasticity” of Dada, the useless material “data” of Surrealism, and the “reversed porosity” of Marcel Duchamp, and it continues into the lumpy thoughts of the Smithsons and their recent followers.

PARTICIPATION: The final tendency I’d like to describe is called ‘participation’, or better still, the ‘participatory element’. To be precise, I don’t mean particalisation, but participation. Grasping this sensibility is made difficult by the fact that the sources for its interpretation are more historically remote, and that our memory of this design process has somewhat

lapsed. It can only be approached through the ‘part’. Cecil Balmond for instance defines the element as a “basic constituent part”, which points us in the right direction.

So at the risk of sounding like an obsessive hair-splitter, what is a ‘part’ and how is it different to an ‘element’ or a particle, and more importantly, how might this enrich our understanding of holistic or integrated design. I’ll briefly answer these questions before handing over to James.

The Greek origin to the word is quite revealing. ‘Parts’ were known as moirai, or members that belong to fate, destiny or an elevated order of intelligible beauty. As we know, ‘elements’ were referred to as stoicheia and largely reserved for use in speculations about the lower spectrum of earthly reality.

The key thing is not to see these two levels of reality as separate; they are reciprocal, co-dependent and intermixed.

A Renaissance thinker such as Alberti can thus describe the art of building as the transformation of indivisible, elemental bodies into a ‘sympathetic order of parts’, and intelligent design as the movement between the two, a reading confirmed by David Leatherbarrow who writes that “[i]n the difference between elements and parts, or forces and measures there is also the difference between health and beauty.”5 The Platonic version of the ‘element’ contained in the dialogue Timeaus, is for instance situated both in time and becoming, and therefore subject to change and interaction, and participates in a geometrical order. Plato tells us: “Arguing from probability”, “let us proceed to distribute the elementary forms, which have now been created in idea, among the four elements.” Here is an exam-

ple of the ‘element’ moving between geometrical schema – the “elementary form” – and elemental material process – the “four elements”. So earth for example is assigned a cubic form because it is “the most immoveable of the four”, yet at the same time it is the most “plastic”, i.e. open to metamorphosis. Poised between two cosmic layers as a middle ground the Platonic ‘element’ is a linking entity that moves back and forth between the realities of materiality and universal geometry. This is why in the wake of the Timaeus both Euclid’s Elements – an early geometrical treatise - and Galen’s De Elementis – a manual on physical health - carry the same name whilst discussing two different grades of reality.

Alberti (1404-1472), who was essentially a Neoplatonist, connected this structure to architectural design. Firstly, there are four elements making up the fit and auspicious context. This is the elemental field assessed by the founders of towns and estates by way of cardinal orientation and prevailing winds. This is architecture in its most embodied state, where elements refer to local material qualities and ‘elemental processes’. On to this diffuse locality Alberti overlays four specific elementary components: the area or base, wall, roof and opening, all of which are specific representations of the primordial elemental domain. These elementary architectonic things mediates between inhabitation and environment and are the first stage of articulation, for not only do they perform and transform the local region into inhabitable place, they are also on the verge of representation. When the elements become interrelated and transformed by proportional measure and calculation, Alberti stops referring to them as ‘ele-

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ments’; calling them ‘sympathetic parts’ instead.

Now this is an interesting twist that reveals the deeper, reciprocal relationship between nature, human beings and the greater order of things, which then becomes understood as an integral field. This suggests that in traditional (pre 17th-Century) Architectural thought the element was considered a participatory entity occupying the gap between the timeless order of ideas and mathematics, and the fluctuating materials of time, change and metamorphosis. The first supplies architecture with measured relationship, whilst the second provides the anima or elemental spirit, with the bits between being the stuff invented by architects.

On this basis one can begin to see architecture as a miniaturised cosmology of states encompassing natural elemental matter, the elementary components that perform within that context, and the relational or participatory diagram which reveals a bigger picture or story. My final thought is that for holistic design to become possible it must involve the creation of a more enriched spectrum in which architectural perception and intelligence can play itself out.

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(Endnotes) 1 - Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, “Note around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism”, in Perspecta, (Cambridge: MIT, 2002), Vol 33, 75.

2 - “Intensity Generators: Scott Lash and Arjen Mulder in Conversation”, in Content: The Triumph of Realization, ed. Rem Koolhaas and Brendan McGetrick (Taschen, 2004), 301.

3 - Jean Baudrillard, “Fatal Strategies”, in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Cambridge: Polity Press, 186.

4 - Louis Kahn, “In the L.I.K. Studios University of Pennsylvania, 29 September 1969”, in What will be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I Kahn, ed. Richard Saul Wurman (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 78.

5 - David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, Enclosure, Materials, 86.

ELEMENTAL PARTS: ON MAKING HOLISTICALLY James Timberlake KieranTimberlake/University of Pennsylvania (Reading from Loblolly House: Elements of a New Architecture)

Unless somehow, they can all come together holistically.

As with the rest of our work, the process that led to Loblolly House was one that rejected the notion of a conventional language of modern design. Rather than begin from the premise of a certain look being the principal driver of composition, we subscribed an open, holistic process of need and solution. We reject what many architects constitute as an important result. We do not adhere to a formal language requiring their construction support appearance inside or out. Rather the appearance is the result of carefully constructed decisions interwoven in search of solutions and guided by the ultimate objective of placing substance over surface. We believe that beauty is inherent in all things and that it resides in whatever composition has been carefully constructed of informed solutions. It now refers to something that I wrote in this afterward, but it has to do with these things here that we call piles. Are the piles ugly or beautiful? We think of them as beautiful, but in different circumstances they may have been ugly.

As Michael Stacey suggests in the introduction of this book, “Architects need to uninvent the process that has led to the current state of design. A new ecology of architecture must emerge with sustainable solutions driven by performance, not appearance. A new order of beauty derived from purposeful deployment will become the new language, the new polemic.”

One of the things I wrote down during Darren Deane’s talk, was a comment, “But how do you take this information and work with it in such a way that it comes out to be a whole?” My response is that, well, architects, at least over the last 35 to 40 years, decided that they did not, up until about 4 or 5 years ago, want to work with everything that made up architecture.

They wanted to be pure designers. They were only interested in the delight portion of commodity, firmness, and delight, which Vitruvius speaks of as the elements of architecture.

I took the liberty of calling this talk, Elemental Parts: On Making Holistically. I want to concentrate on the holistic piece, because parts, or elements, or components or however else they are beautifully defined, to us are only just that: components, parts, and elements.

We subscribe to commodity, firmness, and delight. Not just delight, and not just firmness, and not just commodity. It all has to be there.

In order to make what you are trying to make as students, and as professors, and as architects, you have to have those three things in balance. One cannot be out of balance from the other. The second comment that I wanted to make before I begin my talk is about Le Corbusier’s famous book, Vers Un’Architecture (in English, Toward a New Architecture), one of several books that Darren put up on the wall is the process toward a “new architecture.” Le Corbusier talks about a whole series of things in his book that he feels makes up architecture. He makes arguments about aesthetics, about beauty, about figuration, about form making. But I think that is a kind of crude reading of it. Also embedded in the book is a whole notion of process as well, and a whole notion of firmness and commodity amongst all the delight that I spoke of.

In refabricating Architecture, that little “red” book of ours—also

subject to less sophisticated critique by many as purely a process book—that it had everything to do with either firmness or maybe commodity, but did not really have anything to do with delight.

In taking those titles that Darren showed together, including Elements of Architecture, or Balmond’s book, Element, none really speak to anything holistic. Add to it Toward a New Architecture, and then you start seeing the picture that Steve and I did with writing Refabricating Architecture and Loblolly House, Elements of a New Architecture.

We will debate that a little bit more going forward. But I think the intention here is to get across and drive home how much we believe this gathering of elements, and parts and components is really very much about the stuff that makes up architecture, and that all of that stuff has to come together holistically. Let me talk a little bit about how that happens.

It happens this way. We want to design, and we want to innovate, and we want to invent, just the way most architects want to do that.

We do it because we have a process. We plan. We do. We monitor what we do. We learn from that monitoring. That feeds back into the process of planning and doing all over again. Our process is collaborative and about collective intelligence. It is not about singular intelligence.

How did we get there? We got there beginning with this book.

This was the first book that we did, called Manual: The Architecture of KieranTimberlake. It has in it ten gerunds to acknowledge the ten books of architecture or the ten chapters of Alberti, or some of the others—Palladio—and so forth. In

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it are ten gerunds—active terms about making. They are all about craft and putting something together. The pictures in the book are all about fragments of the work. They were fragments for a reason, which I will not go into now; except for the short version which was that we really had nothing big that we could show at the time. We had lots of fragments and we had lots of bits, but we did not have that big, spanking, spectacular project that everybody would buy a book about. People bought the book for the notion that architecture is made up of things that are active, and they make something, and that which is made has a process to it which is chronicled in the book and comes out in the craft and the aesthetic of what is brought together.

Just to prove that we do know how to put things together and we do have a craft and a tectonic about what we make; here is one of our projects at Yale University.

What is important is not the image, not the surface of that image and the kind of tactility of it, but in order to get to that image, we had to do the drawing, to get to the image.

There is something inherently messy, difficult, and turgid about what is hidden behind this drawing. It is very precise. It shows intent; it has an idea; it is very clean; it does not have any mistakes in it, and it does not have the messy vitality of construction and of making. Here is the image that results from that—a picture of precision, of calm and serenity. What happens in between is a very messy, ugly, dynamic, challenging process. That process got us thinking about this, about why we wanted to write this book, and why it is about making things holistically.

We went outside of architecture to write the book and looked at how

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planes are made, how ships are made, how cars are manufactured, and so forth. Inherent in how those things come together—all those bits, components, elements—is a holistic entity and an end in itself that is very much something beautiful, useful, and has great quality and firmness to it.

Going back to the elements and parts, and components issue, Habraken, Stuart Brand and others have analyzed and written about, breaking architecture down into a series of layers or a series of bits that have differential elements of time. That differential sense of time is all about how long things last and how we ought to think about putting them together.

What, for instance, lasts longest in a building? The structure. That is what you can un-skin, take all the finishes out of and do some things with the mechanical systems, but once you take all that away, you are still left with something fairly robust that still has purpose.

If you can repurpose that through rethinking, recombining, recycling, re-sourcing, rethinking the nature of how all those things come together, then you have a very different nature about how we make things. If we think of buildings in terms of life cycle, and we think of them in terms of understanding what we make them of, then we start thinking very differently about how they might come together in a much more sustainable future.

This is the beauty part. That was the commodity and firmness part.

The first active curtain wall in North America, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Melvin J. and Claire Levine Hall, is common here, but completely foreign on our shores.

A double-skin façade with blinds in between and electronics embedded. I do not need to explain how

important a façade like this is, but what results are beautiful spaces on the inside with abundant natural light, and a reduction in the energy consumption of about 25 percent.

It comes together as integrated component assemblies made of parts combined with elements with the electronics in it.

Glass and blinds are assembled in the wall, allowing us to reduce the amount of time that the building comes together and results in a beautiful outcome. So where do we go from here? We learn from this particular façade and apply what we learn in subsequent projects like the Yale Sculpture Building and Gallery in New Haven.

Now I am going to take you through two houses, Loblolly and Cellophane. Loblolly sits up on piles in a tidal flood plain on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It was a provocation about obviating the way a typical house was put together, 90 percent onsite, 10 percent offsite.

We wanted to try to reverse that equation to 70 percent offsite, and 30 percent onsite.

This was the first active design.

What is this about? It is all about putting the house together, who is putting the house together, and how they are going to come together. It is a supply chain diagram that brings elements, and parts, and integrated component assemblies holistically into architecture, and makes something out of that.

It was designed for assembly and it was also designed for disassembly. The intention was that it would be assembled—not constructed, but assembled—in 30 days. That active assembly is also a way forward to understanding a very, very different reality about how architecture can then also come apart and have value beyond its life as

the building that it was.

Here it is sitting in the Loblolly pines; the house has a very simple plan; a place to park the car under the pilings lifted up from the water, two bedrooms and a bath, a living space, and another bath and bedroom, all designed through the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), so we could understand this holistically, all at once. BIM is something that enables us to see the totality of what we are making.

In this particular case, it is about “hybrid” modularity where we have taken each of the elements of architecture, in this case, the scaffold, in this case the cartridges, in this case the blocks, the bathroom and kitchen. We have taken the smart cartridges that are the floor and we have broken them down into the elements that make up that house so that they can come together optimally.

Defining those principles and goals from the outset leads you to different kinds of solutions. If you don’t define them, then you cannot get to the optimum answer. The front wall has a series of performance characteristics including a Nanogel filled, accordion glass wall, and polycarbonate garage doors that lift up, which allows the house to open up in a way larger aperture than a conventional house.

Here you see those window walls completely open and looking out on the Chesapeake Bay from the kitchen. The bedrooms are like sleeping on a porch. Because the wall opens up completely, you feel like you are sleeping amongst nature. Because of the precision achieved through the use of BIM, I cannot put a business card in that joint between dissimilar materials.

It sits naturally in its landscape because it is of nature, not in nature,

and it becomes very much a piece of that site.

This next series is about a very different kind of house called Cellophane House. It is a mass customizable prototype that was commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of an exhibition called Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. This particular prototype was thought of as a single-family house in a rural optimized setting, but also thought of as a place in urban settings as a series of row or townhouses, which we have in Philadelphia as you do here as well.

Again, a very simple plan, with the intention here being an armature for mass customization. I think the most important diagram is the process of assembly. Note the distinction—it is about assembly, not construction. I think this terminology that really has to shift in architecture—that constructing a building means one thing, and assembling a building means another. The two have different outcomes. They have different elements, and parts, and integrated component assemblies whether they are constructed or whether they are assembled. But one has an end in itself—deconstruction— that is rather unfortunate in my opinion, in this economic time and in this era of sustainable ethics.

You have to take everything apart, part by part—brick, and shingles, and nails, and everything else— you have to take each of those pieces apart from one another so that they can be properly restreamed, or recycled, or whatever. It cannot really be taken apart as component assemblies and reused somehow because that is not how they were configured and conceived. Whereas if you conceive for disassembly before you

assemble, then you have an opportunity to think very differently about architecture, and what that means for what you have made.

Cellophane House is conceived as a series of “tabletops,” with a bridge piece in between. The timeline is not indicated here, but we estimated five days at the onset, and I will tell you the outcome of that in a minute. Design for assembly and disassembly leads you to a very different language of elements and component assemblies that are brought together very differently, in this case with a hex head wrench, or an Allen wrench.

This too was thought of as having simultaneous construction or assemblage and delivery, rather than sequential. It is not like making a tapestry or a rug, but it is very much like making a quilt. Those then come together in something that is eminently sustainable, that is over 90 percent recyclable by content and weight, proven through our research, and we are deeply involved in the process.

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iSPACE & DESIGNS ON THE PLANET 2 Sergio Altomonte

Funded by the University’s HEFCE Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund, the iSPACE Project (integrated Studio Project on Architecture, Construction and Environment) was set to contribute to develop and put in practice an innovative pedagogical method for implementing the education of environmental design and construction within Design Studio teaching units, creating a “comprehensive package” that - whilst still delivering detailed scientific education - reinforces the role of ‘technical’ inputs as creative factors in the practice of architecture.

The specific objective of the Project consists in the development of a comprehensive “design studio space” where design, structural, construction and environmental issues are introduced, investigated and actively implemented at once within the studio teaching, effectively enhancing the integration of technical disciplines in the education of future architects with significant impacts, in the short as in the long term, on the quality of learning experience of future practitioners. The measurable outcomes of this process will be:

· Reflect a need in the marketplace that demands graduates able to face a range of integrated problems which necessarily include awareness of environmental, structural and construction issues in the practice of design. · Contribute to reduce the number of modules being offered at undergraduate level.

The iSPACE Studio Project will embrace Modules which are currently taught and assessed separately in a comprehensive Unit, thus simplifying administrative and recruitment procedures whilst meeting educational targets.

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· Reduce the assessment load on staff and students.

Major assignments for Design, Environmental Design, Structures and Construction will be coordinated and evaluated within a single submission, highlighting the specialist component within a comprehensive design effort.

2008. DoP2 has been tagged to a SBE internal seminar, iSPACE, which involved SBE staff members (including course leaders, design studio leaders, technical and design staff and part-time tutors) in discussions about the integration of technical disciplines within design studio briefs.

· Increase the credit value of modules.

The integrated Studio Project will encompass the credits currently spread amongst the various mentioned disciplines, yet considering differences in current curricula throughout the three years of undergraduate education.

The 2-day workshops were attended by around 40 SBE internal staff and more than 40 external academics (representing 16 different schools of architecture in UK), practitioners and representatives from industry. Presentations and workshop sessions have been focused on the development of briefs for design studio modules, integrating principles of construction, environmental design and sustainability. Sub-themes which oriented the discussion within workshop groups included: the definition of a framework for the writing of design briefs; integrating teaching methodologies; assessment and marking criteria; barriers and challenges for integration. Both events have included a ‘charette’ on a design brief-writing exercise in order to set the agenda for the briefs to be delivered within studio modules for the forthcoming year.

· Provide students and staff with experiences away from the University.

The Project will be primarily based on a collaboration between leading UK Schools of Architecture (Nottingham, Oxford Brookes, Cambridge and Cardiff) and with building practitioners and regulatory bodies (ARB/RIBA).

Within the context of iSPACE, the SBE has engaged - in collaboration with the Department of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University and the Welsh School of Architecture - in the workshop series, Designs on the Planet (DoP) to explore ways in which design studio can strengthen its creative ambitions while introducing students to sustainable construction and reinforce the role of environmental responsibility as a creative factor in architecture. The series has been endorsed by CEBE (Centre for Education in the Built Environment) and RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects).

Designs on the Planet 2 - The development of design briefs in a climate of change was held in Nottingham at the SBE in September

The 2-day event was facilitated by Peter Clegg, principal of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, and hosted keynote presentations by Alistair Guthrie of Arup and Sally Stewart of the Mackintosh School.

ENGAGEMENT WITH LIVE PROJECTS AND THE PROJECTS OFFICE The School is committed to undertake live projects, both regionally and internationally, to provide excellent ‘learning through doing’ opportunities for students whilst serving society at large. Current examples include the design of a new low energy school for a Nottingham school by fifth year students. This takes the existing CLASP buildings of Chilwell School as the starting point and provides a vision of a new school, which the governors and SBE will take forward in future years. In May 2009 second year and fifth year students successfully completed the design and construction of a Nursery School in Jouberton, South Africa for the charity Education Africa. [see: www.projectjouberton.com].

A related activity at fifth year is the student masterplanning project at Brayford Pool, Lincoln, for the University of Lincoln working with students from that University. In essence the students are undertaking a pre-feasibility study of the new master plan before consultants are engaged and the project includes consultation with key stakeholders. For the past three years, in ZCARS (Zero Carbon Architecture Studio), fifth year students have been designing zero carbon homes on a challenging site in Nottingham owned by the developer Blueprint. This project provides students with the opportunity to participate in the challenge of reducing the carbon footprint of Nottingham by designing homes that people would enjoy living in – creating dialogue with local practice Marsh Grochowski who have been commissioned by this client to design ‘Code Level 4’ homes for one of these sites.

The School has also been commissioned by the Spanish Government to design and build a Solar Decathlon House, a zero carbon

home powered by photovolatics. Fifth Year students successfully contribute the majority of Research Deliverable 3 and the winning team presented the design of the School’s entry in Madrid on May. This house will be prefabricated in Nottingham, exhibited at Ecobuild and erected in Madrid during 2010. The School also has strong links with the City Council, Nottingham County Council and EMDA. The success of a range of live projects has led, during 2008-9, to the establishment within the School of a Projects Office. The Projects Office will combine teaching, research and practice with a particular focus on tectonics and the social science of sustainability. It will become a store for best practice on live projects and build up a body of knowledge on funding opportunities combined with potential routes to engage with society be that in the East Midlands or a country such as South Africa. Within the current economic climate the School considers it of vital importance to create employment opportunities within the School and to provide constructional experience that may be missing or under developed in a student’s portfolio. The School’s commitment to one to one making can be demonstrated by the successful Energy Technology Research Institute bid with Engineering. This new building costing over £5,000,000 will be completed in 2011 and will house a 400 square meter prototyping hall, enabling one to one prototypes to be made in dray and safe conditions. This will be used for research, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.

Enquiries for the Projects Office should be sent to: projectsoffice@ nottingham.ac.uk

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issue no. 1 Ideas of Copy & Duplication

P. E. A. R .

Paper for Emerging Architectural Research

PEAR_A5_Invitation.indd 1

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17/5/09 14:13:15

E.P.E.A.R. A. R .

PAPER FOR EMERGING ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH

Emerging Architectural Research

: Rashid Ali; Matthew Butcher and Julian Krueger.

ine Launch Event

day 15th June 2009, 18.30–20.30

e Building Centre ore Street Issue Nº 1: IDEAS OF COPY AND DUPLICATION ondon, wc1e 7bt Edited by: Rashid Ali; Matthew Butcher and Julian Krueger. elephone +44 (0)207 692 4000

P.E.A.R. is a new architectural fanzine, presenting work from a variety of lease R.S.V.P. to info@pearmagazine.eu

contemporary architectural practices, researchers and individuals working in Europe. P.E.A.R. aims to re-establish the fanzine as a primary medium for the dissemination of architectural ideas, musings, research and works.

Through its presentation of a wide range of architectural discourses, the edition ofof P.E.A.R. to present the complexity and variety of conIssue No.first 1, ideas copyseeks & duplication temporary architectural practice.

In its first edition, P.E.A.R. presents work centred on the themes of Copy Contributing are: Rashid Ali; AOC; Pablo Bronstein; Tobias Klein and Duplication. These themes could be said to be central to architectural discourseDavison; and design,Dorell.Ghotmeh.Tane whether in the exploration of Architects; modular construction and Bruce systems or in musings on architectural styles and their origins. Presented Friendandcompany GortScott in this first edition are Architects; a series of varied and complexArchitects; readings of copying and duplicating in relation to contemporary architecture. Included are reAdam Khan Architects; Liquid Factory; Photolanguage; sponses that stem from the disciplines of urbanism, theory, photography andWorks; contemporary The fanzine includesbywork fromLuca AOC Amadei. who present Post Liamart.Young.

Editorial Gian

a toolbox of copy and duplication; Photolanguage explore the uncanny effect of stereoscopic photography while recording a newly constructed landscape outside of Malmo in Sweden and Pablo Bronstein presents two P.E.A.R. is an exciting new architectural fanzine, presenting designs for a Grand Parterre outside Tate Britain, which consider notions of role from play in the design of work a variety ofarchitectural contemporary architectural practices, space.

researchers and individuals working in Europe.

Also Contributing to the first issue are: Rashid Klein; Dorell.Ghotmeh.Tane ArchiFor aAli; fullBruce list ofDavison stockistsand andTobias further information visit the P.E.A.R. tects ; Friendandcompany Architects; GortScott Architects; Adam Khan website: www.pearmagazine.eu Architects; Liquid Factory; Post Works; Liam Young. Editorial by Gian Luca Amadei.

Design: Avni Patel

Supported by:

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BUILT ENVIRONMENT REFERENCE LIBRARY Bradley Starkey In the Autumn Term of 2008 the School were pleased to open the Built Environment Reference Library. More than doubling the floor area of what was previously known as the Resource Room, the Reference Library provides improved facilities and a more extensive collection of books and periodicals.

Located off of the Foyer of the Environmental Education Centre (EEC) the Built Environment Reference Library is open on weekdays between 12.00 – 5.00pm and it is staffed by PhD students from the School.

Since its opening the library has proved to be a useful and popular resource for students and staff alike. The library includes duplicate stock from the main collection of architectural books at Hallward Library, an ever expanding technical library, leading periodicals and information about architectural practices. The School have also secured a Reference Library budget to expand the collection and a significance number of new purchases are made at the architectural book sales, which take place within the School each term. Keen to also promote online resources, the Built Environment Reference Library provides an access point to Architecture and Urban Planning Database’s, and to other online learning resources, through The University of Nottingham’s eLibrary gateway.

In the future the School intend to further expand the Library’s collection and to install an additional PC for access to online resources.

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MATERIALS BANK: what’s it all about then?

Beatrice Omisakin

A group of students clearing out the EEC studios for cash (courtesy of the University), at the end of September, unknowingly stocked Vic Hallam with its supplies.

Started in October 2009 and located at Vic Hallam (a.k.a. Guillermo’s cottage), the Materials Bank was to be a place for which all students from of the department could get model making materials for FREE! Students were seen to be re-using the same materials year on year, throwing them away, spending money that need not be spent. Why not recycle and use what was already there?

As you might expect with many new ideas, there were a few problems.

The code for the door on Vic Hallam got out. C1756; in case you were one of the few who got left out and maybe still interested to know what it was. Not all knew what the materials bank was doing at its location. Vic Hallam was being for others purposes; workshops, unit space, storage of large scale models, a temporary dumping ground.

The second semester saw the Re-Launch. To the undergraduate years of the school, the group of volunteers presented the Materials Bank.

Using an informative yet simple power-point presentation, not too many animations and taking the ‘Any Questions?’ slide that always seemed without fail to appear at the end of all 1st yr studio Monday morning presentations, the presentations went well. Putting a face to the names seen in emails and the creation of ‘Materials Bank for Modelmaking!

Free!’ Facebook group (yes, materials bank had gone global) all helped to achieve an increased awareness of the materials bank and pressure for it to deliver on what was promised. Plus, Key over Code, a definite improvement.

The staff that provides coordination and technical support… plus a group of volunteers that runs it...

What’s in store for the materials bank next year you might ask? Well to find out, you shall have to wait for the next academic year to start. As you may see below due to pictures and having only been given this one page in the year book to work with, I have ran out of space so can’t and would prefer to leave you dreaming…

What’s on offer...

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CREATIVE ENERGY HOMES Mark Gillott

The Creative Energy Homes project located on Green Close in the grounds of the School continues to lead the way in low carbon research for domestic buildings in the UK. The BASF house (Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4) has now been lived for over 12 months and has already provided a significant amount of research data. The latest additions to Green Close are the E.ON 2016 Research House and the Tarmac Masonry Homes Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 and Level 6 semi-detached houses.

The E.ON house is a replica 1903s semi detached home which will be retrofitted sequentially over three years to take it to a zero carbon standard. The Tarmac Homes project will investigate the provision of affordable zero-carbon housing using traditional building techniques. For more information contact Dr Mark Gillott (Creative Energy Homes Research and Project Manager) mark.gillott@nottingham.ac.uk

BASF house - Nina Hormazabal and Deborah Adkins (PhD students) monitor their home energy consumption.

E.ON 2016 research House - Researching the energy consumption associated with existing homes.

Tarmac Masonry Homes Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4 and 6 Houses

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GREEN REFURB February 4th 2009

2pm – 9pm School of the Built Environment University of Nottingham

Expo and symposium on energy efficiency measures for existing homes Expo 2pm - 9pm, at 2pm Dr Wolfgang Feist, founder of the Passivhaus Institute, will open an expo of low

carbon energy efficiency products & solutions from leading manufactures. The event will also include the following talks:

2.15 - 3.45 Dr Wolfgang Feist – Passivhaus Design & the launch of the 2009 Multi-Comfort House Architectural Student Competition supported by Saint-Gobain Isover

6.00 - 6.15 Alan Simpson MP – If we are to survive – housing and a sustainable future 6.15 - 6.30 Penney Poyser & Gil Schalom – The Nottingham EcoHome

Penney Poyser, BBC presenter of “No Waste Like Home”, and Gil Schalom of msarchitects present their highly acclaimed low carbon Victorian semi green refurbishment project.

6.30 - 6.45 Julian Marsh – Green Refurb, the architect’s perspective

Julian Marsh from award winning architects Marsh Grochowski will present a number of renovation projects where reducing energy consumption was a primary goal.

6.45 - 7.00 Gilli Hobbs – T-Zero, towards low carbon homes

Gilli Hobbs, Director of Resource Efficiency at the Building Research Establishment and T-Zero project leader will preview the T-Zero tool, a one-stop shop for housing refurbishment to achieve low carbon homes.

7.00 - 7.15 Questions 7.30 Refreshments Expo venue: Environmental Education Centre (the studios) Symposium venue: Sustainable Research Building For more information and to register your interest email greenrefurb@nottingham.ac.uk

Expo and Symposium on energy efficiency measures for existing homes.

On the 4th February 2004 the School staged a ‘mini-expo’ featuring over 30 sustainable products from leading manufacturers. The event was staged in partnership with SIG Sustainable Products and E.ON. On show were a range of sustainable technologies from insulation, draft proofing and lighting to rain and grey water harvesting, as well as many domestic renewable energy systems for heating and power generation. The event was attended by well over 1000 people and was open to students, staff and the general public. The mini-expo was complimented by a lecture on Passiv haus Design and an evening symposium which featured lectures from key note speakers including Penney Poyzer, presenter of BBC 2’s ‘No Waste Like Home’ and Alan Simpson MP. Event Organisers: Dr Mark Gillott, Zeny Amante-Roberts and Claire Hardwidge

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JOURNALISM WORKSHOP Communicating the SBE A journalism workshop was proposed as part of the Architectural Research Methods module in the Autumm semester. This workshop was aimed to reflect on those aspects that make the School of the Built Environment a unique place.

A space of intensive learning and research like this is full of stories that need to be discovered, explored and communicated in an effective way.

Research, recordings, surveys and interviews were used in an inquisitive and reflective way in order to generate attractive and original contents.

The outcomes were presented in reports at the end of the module but the plan is to use these “stories” to be periodically published at the school’s website, contribute to the generation of school’s new marketing material and contents for the Yearbook.

During the Special professors week a new workshop was aimed to recruit those curious and inquisitive students that would like to get involved in reporting in a very creatively way, all the activities comprised during the Special professors’ week. Lectures were presented by experts in Architectural journalism, plus collective research and open discussions complemented the practical tasks involved during the week.

During that week a very succesful open BLOG reported the events as they happened. Additionally, the group produced a very accurate set of recordings using various methods in order to be compiled at a later stage.

Guillermo Guzman Supported by Francesca Bailey & Elizabeth Webster 34

Sample of the work produced The following article was produced by the student Andrea Goh as part of her submission for the architectural research methods module.

Architecture Dress Code The Fashion Demands of Architecture School

by Andrea Goh

F

ashion and architecture are intertwined disciplines. Both begins its explorations with the human body and expand on the ideas of space, volume and movement while serving as visual expressions of cultural identity and individuality.

Architects and designers also aim to produce environments (although at different scales) through spatial awareness of volume, function and tectonics. Besides these evident parallels between both practices, there are also cultural and historical similarities that bind the 2 disciplines. Therefore there must be a strong association of fashion and the creative identity in architecture.

Design Process Although the first early examples of clothes and buildings were devised from necessity, both architects and designers address the human imperative for protection and shelter.

Besides the intensive study of the human body, both deal with three dimensional volumes. Most early conceptual ideas are developed from two dimensional sketches and then translated into three dimensional products.

Using geometry to generate form is also a common thread running through fashion and architecture. Geometry and proportion becomes the focus. Architects use the careful arrangements of bold geometry to construct and configure interior spaces and elevations. Fashion designers on the other hand use less rigid geometry conventionally to conform to the human body which is more organic.

Both architecture and fashion is created by comparatively two dimensional elements to construct the three dimensional volume. Architects use walls, beams and columns to create space and fashion designers use multiple pieces of fabric to produce a garment. The construction process also places much emphasis on construction detailing. Detailing in construction joints for architecture is crucial in completing the concept of the structure. Detailing for fashion designers are just as important to fit and create certain silhouettes.

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Tectonic expression is probably one of the most important to designers. Both disciplines are extremely tectonic and materiality is almost everything. The physical touch is dependent on the choice of materials as both architecture and fashion are based on the human body and are utilised and interacted with. The Curtain Wall House (Tokyo, Japan, 1993-1995) by Shigeru Ban addresses the need for shelter by using an enormous fabric curtain on the exterior surface; likewise, Helmut Lang uses special synthetic fabrics to create certain sleek silhouettes and drapes.

The processes of the separate disciplines of fashion and architecture are very similar. The seemingly different types of design actually share similar processes to derive the final design because the primary basis of fashion and architecture run parallel to each other.

Fashion + Urban Design Modernity has opened up new possibilities for the creation of identity1. Likewise, fashion is shaped by the way urbanised cities are designed, especially with respect to the public domain. The sociability of people is enhanced when the public is viewed as a performance, separating the public and the private life2.

In the nineteenth century, the rise of people

1 Entwistle, Joanne.(2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory, Fashion and Identity: 117 2 Entwistle, Joanne.(2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory, Fashion and Identity: 119

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moving into large and modernised cities in Paris made the urban bourgeoisie realise some importance in dressing to preserve the distance between themselves and the public gazer3. This slowly developed into a discreet style of dress as protection and later into the idea of spectacle. In Paris, the urban planning and arrangement was about boulevards and promenades where observers would give inquisitive gazes from their private balconies to the public domain. People would dress well to be seen in public to parade their best fashion.

This only reinforces that urban planning indirectly shapes fashion. The architecture of the city affects both the use of fashion and crafts the peoples’ association with fashion. Fashion cannot thrive without the influence of architecture.

Design and Identity “Fashions are bonds that link individuals in a mutual act of conformity to social conventions.” - Frinkelstein

How we perform our identity has something to do with our location in the social world as members of particular groups, classes, cultural communities. What clothes we choose to wear is a compromise between the demands of the social world, the milieu in which we belong, and our individual desires4. The proportion would obviously depend on the wearer and his own individuality.

Dress reflects both conscious and subconscious attitudes to morality, illustrating the ideas and ideals of the designer and the person wearing the garment, and, by extension, the

3 Entwistle, Joanne.(2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory, Fashion and Identity: 117 4 Entwistle, Joanne.(2000) The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory, Fashion and Identity: 115

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culture itself5. Fashion is very much a strong reflection of the group that you belong to. It is not necessarily the same style or look that people must conform to but the way people view fashion and design.

Fashion in Architecture School “Architects need to pay special attention to his or her own identity and fashion. By the end of the day, human eyes are designed for seeing beautiful things ... Architectural designers need to have a holistic vision on design, and the design consciousness is crucial for producing delightful work.” Benson Lau, Architecture Lecturer, School of the Built Environment, University of Nottingham

If fashion and architecture are so similar, fashion should be treated with the same importance as architecture. Design in itself is holistic and encompasses an entire lifestyle rather than just one specific part. So if we were to be considered architects (who are essentially designers of buildings and the environment), we should be also representing designers to the social world, at the same time, being conscious of what we put on our bodies like how we would design buildings.

In the School of the Built Environment, it is not about conforming to the ideas and expectations of what the social world deems as what a designer should wear or look like but instead, it seems to insist on a code that shows respect for design and with it – the consciousness and attitude towards how we portray ourselves.

After all, we are designers...

5 Arnold, Rebecca.(2001) Fashion, Desire & Anxiety : Image & Morality in the 20th Century: 125 Subjects of the photography were not informed they were being studied.

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STUDENTS AWARDS 39

CORUS COMPETITION Nottingham students take Gold and Silver in Corus Steel Industry Competition 2008 July 2008: Students from the University of Nottingham have won top prizes in the steel industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. Secondyear architecture student Li Gan from the School of the Built Environment beat final-year students from all over Europe to take first prize in the 2008 Corus student Architecture competition. And a team of four students from the School of Civil Engineering won a second prize with their sleek airport terminal in the Structure category.

The annual Structural Steel Design Awards have been running for 40 years. They’re sponsored by the British Constructional Steelwork Association and the steel giant

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Corus. The award ceremony and gala dinner at the V & A museum in London is the most significant event in the steel industry calendar. Teams from industry compete in a variety of categories, and universities are invited to compete in three student categories. This year’s top industrial award went to the consortium who built Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 for BAA. The Corus student architecture competition aims to give budding architects a creative vehicle for learning about the use of steel in buildings. Li Gan’s winning design fulfilled a brief to design an urban housing scheme which addresses the problem of ‘living with waste’.

Under the supervision of his tutor, Bradley Starkey, Li’s innovative housing scheme used gas turbine technology to generate energy from waste matter. The judges

commended him on his ambitious and thought-provoking response to the brief and to his evocative drawings. Steel is one of the most readily recyclable materials and had to feature in his design entry.

He won a prize of £1,000.

Nottingham’s Civil Engineering team came second in the Corus student Structural Design competition. The brief was to prepare an outline design for a new airport terminal building and control tower. Andrew Gamblen, Simon Lea-Wilson, Robert Weiss and Alexander Alvarez are all third year MEng students. They share a prize of £1,600. The group entered the competition as part of their curriculum module on steel structures, supervised by Associate Professor, Dr Walid Tizani.

PHILIP WEBB AWARD Jennifer Routledge’s Thesis design project, passé nouveau, has won First Prize in the Philip Webb Award 2008. This prize is sponsored by The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Jennifer’s project regenerated the docks of Newhaven by creating a Maritime and Transport Museum in former railway engine sheds.

Reviving links to Newhaven’s past as Britain’s gateway to Paris and the continent. The museum features a combination of local history and under displayed industrial artifacts – particularly steam powered transport.

‘Jenny was a delight to teach in her final year, her response to critism was to study another transport or maritime museum in Britain and France as a precedent – by visiting it herself.’ Professor Michael Stacey

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ISOVER COMPETITION In only the second year since the UK has entered an international student design competition the first placed UK entry from the national competition won an international award. The top three UK entries from the national competition were placed in the international final, a contest sponsored by Saint-Gobain Isover for students of architecture and engineering to design a building to a PassivHaus standard, Two entires from the University of Nottingham’s School of the Built Environment came first and second in the National competition. The third place was awarded to an entry from the University of Lincoln’s School of Architecture and one of those teams then went on to win third place at the international gala held over four days in Slovenia.

The winning students from Nottingham – first-placed Rosemary Connors, Jessica Thurlbourn and Rupert Rathbone, who also came third in the grand international final; second-placed Laura Mitchell, Michael Shupac and Hazwan Hakimi, and third-placed Tom Atkinson – have now been honoured at an awards evening at the University of Nottingham.

The sixth Saint-Gobain Isover competition attracted unprecedented interest this year, with entries from a record 16 countries. The contest is now accepted as part of the official syllabus at the University of Nottingham.

While previous years have focussed on designing buildings such as hotels, houses, schools and even exhibition stands and discos, to Passive House (or Isover Multi-Comfort House) standards, this year’s design centred around an office building in three climate zones – cold, moderate and hot.

The Isover Multi-Comfort House concept promotes the ideal that an appropriately constructed house with additional insulation can run on approximately 10% of the energy of a traditional house – an ideal that is proven with thousands of homes in Europe.

The Venue ay Ljubliana, Slovenia

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Michael Shupac, Hazwan Hakimi and Laura Mitchell

Rosie Connors, Rupert Rathbone and Jessica Thurlboun

The three UK entries to the International ISOVER competition

The International competition jury presenting the 3rd prize to the students 43

CIBSE PRIZE BEng Architectural Environment Engineering Year 3 student, Carlo Castellana, has been awarded East Midlands CIBSE 2007-2008 Best Achievement Student Award. He received the award from the President at the CIBSE annual dinner on 6 March 2009.

YOUNG AND CREATIVE COMPETITION Jerome Flinders (3rd yr) wins the ‘Young and Creative’ competition, May 2009, with a design for a sailing boat dock on the Trent.

The awards, organised by One Nottingham and Nottingham City Council, aim to put Nottingham’s young people on the city’s creative map. They were presented by Sheriff of Nottingham Brian Grocock.

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UNDERGRADUATE COURSES 45

BARCH (K100) BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE

The undergraduate BArch Course is the first building block in the lifelong process of engaging with and learning about the practise of architecture. The course at Nottingham is built around a holistic approach to architectural education based on the two fundamentals of creativity and technique. At every stage the design process is informed and tested against the critical rigour of technique. The studio work, which is so fundamental to the student’s training, is informed at each year by the humanities modules of history and theory and the technical modules of construction, structure and environmental design, in particular sustainable design. Urban design and practice and management modules are also introduced into the process. Each student moves through the course on a trajectory. Students are increasingly able to map out their own pathway through unit-led programmes set against ARB/ RIBA criteria.

Year 1 studio consists predominantly of a series of skill building and knowledge gathering short programmes. These are brought together in a final short design project at the end of each semester. All students are working to common programmes ensuring basic skills are taught and learnt.

A practising or academic architect leads one of five units in the year.

Year 2 studio continues the skill development programmes in se-

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mester one. Working within one of six units, students follow common programmes. In the second .semester programmes are unit based and led again by practising or academic architects. Students elect to work in a unit of their choice at this stage.

Year 3 studio builds on the student’s goals by allowing each to select to work in one of 6 units led by a practising architect. These units develop particular ethoses and interests and create an opportunity to work with individual students through the year. Students are, however, free to move units between Semesters. The final project in Semester 2 is seen as a rounding up of the undergraduate course by way of a major design project.

Inserted within the more formal programme of each year are short sketch exercises, which allow students to free up their approach and be more experimental. Within years 2 and 3 the studio programmes are in addition infused with a series of workshop days where guest lecturers are brought in to enrich the course further. Artists, product designers, materials specialists, structural engineers, landscape architects and practising architects make contributions here. These days usually begin with a lecture followed by a studio-based workshop when appropriate.

BA (K902) ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

This course offers an attractive option for students who are interested in Architecture and the building industry, but do not want to follow the vocational-professional route to becoming an architect (offered by the BArch course).

This undergraduate-level course thus offers a well-rounded degree which engages with a wide range of interests.

The three-year course introduces at a theoretical level the humanities, sciences and technologies that influence the built environment and allows students to acquire an awareness and understanding of the issues involved with the creation, sustenance and maintenance of the built environment. This course uniquely allows students to chart a particular specialization according to their interests in light of the wide-ranging supporting services and businesses in the Architectural and Building Industry.

In the first part of the course, students pursue core studies in the wider context of human settlements and environmental concerns and elect to do elective modules within the University leading to their specialization in the second part of the course.

In this second part, students are able to programme their course ‘specialization’ in the selection of further elective modules, which eventually leads to a topic for a supervised dissertations. A selection of areas of specialisation / dissertation titles are shown on the page

opposite.

The Architectural Studies course prepares students for a widerange of employment positions in the Architectural / Building Industry and related supporting services. Graduates of this degree go on to work in industries such as planning, property and project management, estate and building development, building technology, the architectural and building press, interior design, product design, graphics and multi media, etc. Some graduates also pursue post graduate studies in a specialisation developed within the Architectural Studies course, such as urban studies, history and theory, conservation or environmental studies. Graduates may also continue on to do Law conversion courses or an MBA and with their background in Architectural Studies are able to offer a unique combination of legal, management & architectural studies skills to potential employers.

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MENG (K230) ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

Today we have at our disposal a staggering array of systems that allow precise control to be exercised over the environment within buildings. Mechanical ventilation, refrigeration, and electric lighting are but a few of the inventions that have liberated designers from the constraints imposed by climate.

No longer do building form and materials have to be painstakingly manipulated to moderate external conditions. In principle it is possible for architects to design anything they want, safe in the knowledge that mechanical systems can be relied upon to impose comfortable conditions within.

Divorcing building design from climate comes at a cost however.

The energy required to operate building environmental systems is responsible for the consumption of finite fuel resources and represents one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. A major challenge faced by our industry is how to design buildings that rely less on mechanical systems, yet still keep occupants healthy, comfortable and productive.

It is unlikely that in the short term we will revert to purely traditional forms of architecture with their inherent passive environmental strategies. Occupant expectation demands high levels of comfort.

In addition, the range of materi-

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als from which buildings may be constructed and the development of energy efficient technologies, provide a far richer pallet for crafting solutions than was hitherto the case. Holistic design, where the building, its environmental services and its occupants are considered as a system, requires new ways of thinking and it is clear that neither architects nor engineers can continue to practice in the manner that most do today.

The MEng in Architecture and Environmental Design seeks to develop some of the new interdisciplinary skills that might make a difference. The 4-year course is built upon the School’s Architecture degree, making use of the additional year of study to develop expertise in environmental design.

The course is recognised by both ARB/RIBA and CIBSE. Joint accreditation provides graduates with wider career prospects. They may pursue the route to becoming professional architects by gaining industrial experience and completing the Part II and III examinations.

Additionally, graduates have the opportunity to obtain chartered engineer status by successfully completing a period of appropriate experience and professional review. The course is supported by key players in the building design industry and its graduates are sought after by both architecture and engineering practices alike.

Internal Tutors: Rabah Boukhanouf, Ed Cooper, David Etheridge, Guohui Gan, Mark Gillott, Matthew Hall, Andrew Howarth, Hao Liu, Yuhong Su, Robin Wilson, Shenyi Wu, Yuying Yan, Xudong Zhao, Jie Zhu.

BENG (K240) ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT ENGINEERING

Architectural Environment Engineering is recognised as an important engineering discipline of the Building Service Industry and for many years demand for graduates in this area has outstripped supply. Architectural Environment Engineers are involved with the design of energy efficient buildings, renewable energy, green architecture, ventilation, heating & cooling, thermal insulation, lighting, acoustics, electricity and control, many or all of which are necessary in modern buildings. Architectural Environment Engineering has also diversified to meet demands for building energy management systems, fire/ smoke control, indoor air quality standards and environmental pollution control. The course aims to provide a programme that is academically stimulating and relevant to current industrial needs, to train the candidates aiming for Chartered Engineer status in the above areas as well as the associate areas including management, communication, health & safety as well as legal and environmental issues.

This unique course of study provides an environment in which Building Service Engineering, Environmental and Architecture students can work alongside each other with the aim of achieving better building design and construction. The innovative and internationally leading researches carried out at the School are channelled into lectures and student projects, particularly in the area of sustainable and renewable energy technologies.

The three-year full time Bachelor course of Engineering (BEng) in Architectural Environment Engineering involves the use of modern and environment friendly technologies to create comfortable and efficient indoor environments. Engineers in this field apply their skills to design energy efficient buildings incorporating renewable energy, green architecture, ventilation, heating & cooling, thermal insulation, lighting, acoustics and electrical/control systems.

Environmental design for buildings is multifaceted and each project is likely to present new and often unforeseen challenges. The role of the design team is to ensure that on each occasion the client receives a building which is on time, within budget and meets the requirements of those who use it.

This role has always been challenging, but never more so than now. This is largely due to much greater awareness of the impact of buildings in the global context in addition to their effect on the local environment they serve. As buildings currently account for up to 50% of all energy consumption, today architectural environment engineers will play a major role in bringing down future CO2 emissions.

The course has a modular structure: Year 1 deals with fundamental subjects such as the interaction between people and the environment, computer aided design, maths, thermofluids and professional issues. Year 2 focuses on more specialised and advanced subjects including the

designs of building space heating system, air-conditioning & ventilation, acoustics and lighting, introduction to renewable energy, engineering applications of IT and management studies. Year 3 is characterised by student-centred research and on design projects and optional modules which students select according to their needs and interests. The Year is concerned with the application of fundamental knowledge and skills acquired previously, to major design projects, and with development of the students’ design capabilities.

The BEng course has been awarded the CIBSE President Award in 2005-2006 and student best achievement award in 2006-2007.

The course has also received bursary supports from CIBSE Patrons, East Midlands CIBSE and leading building serve companies such as Hurley-palmer-flatt, etc.

The Times Good University Guide which was published in October 2006 has ranked the BEng Architecture Environment Engineering course at the University of Nottingham as the 1st in the league table for courses in the Building category in the UK. The course has also recruited students from the University’s China Ningbo campus since 2007. With its high standard and unique features, the course have drawn much attention from international candidates and has become one of the most popular engineering courses at the campus.

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BA (KF28) SUSTAINABLE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

The BA Sustainable Built Environment is a specially designed course that deals with sustainability issues in the building sector.

The development of our built environment without considering the environmental and social contexts is not sustainable. The concept of the course is to interconnect the built environment with the community and the health of the people in order to create buildings with minimal environmental impact. Creating a sustainable environment is a complex task which requires a wider range of knowledge and experience than the conventional practices, a multidisciplinary approach combining effective technologies with strong new directives on policy, market and user uptake. Therefore, the sustainable built environment is a multidisciplinary, practical subject aimed to deal with the issues of sustainability through the aspects of technology, humanities and management involved in the building development. This goal can only be achieved from the cooperation of architects, engineers, building owners and developers, for which an effective coordinator is very much needed. It is a new and high quality course which will contribute to improved sustainability by bringing together fundamentals of architectural humanities and environmental technologies. It explores renewable energy appli-

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cation in buildings, and highlights the social, economic and policy issues that underpin the successful implementation of sustainable designs and technologies.

This 3 year modular structured course offers modules covering: - Architectural Theory and History, - Building Energy, - Renewable Energy, - Economics, Policy and User Behaviour The final year also features student-centred research projects, concerning the application of fundamental knowledge and skills acquired previously for assessing, planning and managing sustainable built environments. The students will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to deal with the issues of sustainable development for the built environment through the training of this course.

BA Sustainable Built Environment has been accredited by the Association of Building Engineers (ABE).

DISSERTATIONS SUMMARIES Straw construction: A viable building material for the UK? Nikki Desborough BA Architectural studies This dissertation assesses the possibility of implementing straw construction in the UK for domestic housing developments, with particular reference to the publics and professional’s opinions on this building material.

To answer this problem, research has been conducted through books, journals and websites to assess the feasibility of straw dwellings, with regards to the UK building regulations and government’s housing plans. A questionnaire has been devised to acquire the general public’s reaction and assess whether they would consider living in a house constructed of straw. Interviews with the built environment professionals have also been conducted to gain their opinions on working with straw and if they believe it can be implemented in the UK for housing developments.

The findings have demonstrated that straw dwellings are a feasible construction method where straw exceeds the required properties of the UK building regulations. A positive reaction to straw dwellings has also been received where 87% of questionnaire participants stated they would consider living in a house made of straw. All interviewees had positive comments concerning straw construction, where 60% believed straw has the capability of being used for large scale developments.

The results indicate straw is a viable construction material for the UK; however further action is required to inform the wider public on the benefits of straw construction.

The Social Challenge of Urban Regeneration: Mixed Communities in Greater Manchester Adam Davies BA Architectural Studies The nation is often successful at property led regeneration of areas and buildings. Regeneration seeks to alleviate social, environmental and economic problems. The social challenge of regeneration is to solve the problem of helping the disadvantaged households and their children, out of the deprivation caused by poverty and longterm unemployment. Regeneration often works economically but to what extent can it deal with the social problems of poverty and segregation? After all poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that people face in the 21st century.

This paper investigates the government’s main solution to help deprived inner city areas, the creation of ‘mixed communities’.

It is believed that mixed communities are an effective way to reduce deprivation and social exclusion but how effective is it. Does it just touching the surface of the underlying problem of economic inequality?

The purpose of this study was to examine how effective ‘mixed communities’ created by regeneration are at alleviating poverty and resolving segregation within inner city areas of Manchester. The paper implements 3 main case studies for evidence, Salford Quays,

Hulme and New Islington. All three are regarded as successful regeneration projects from the 1980s to today. Previously deprived inner city areas of Manchester were transformed. Salfod Quays was one of the first regeneration projects and there was a great physical transformation of the built environment. However the regeneration had a big impact on the area but a little impact on people’s lives. It resulted in a segregated and specialised area. Its failure to integrate and benefit the disadvantaged households supports the argument for mixed communities. It is now accepted that regeneration must to some degree cater for the local disadvantaged residents.

The later projects of Hulme and New Islington were better examples of mixed communities. Here the local residents benefited from new social housing and a better quality built environment for they were integrated into the redeveloped areas. The areas were more inhabitable and healthier. In interviews and site visits it was found that there was tension between the newcomer and local residents.

At Hulme this is represented as a ‘them and us’ neighbourhood. The type of mix was partly segmented, as different tenures were in different blocks resulting in inner segregation. There is division between the new young professionals and the pre-existing community.

In regeneration projects there is a balance between catering for the existing community and attracting the new comers. There is a danger that regeneration areas can become victims of there own success by pricing out the local residents. To reach a truly mixed community there needs to be greater integration between the local residents and newcomers. This can be achieved through ‘Pepperpotting’ however due to current legislation this is unrealistic.

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Olivia Pendered BA Architectural Studies This study explores the relationships between pace attachment, place identity and place dependence expressed by residents and visitors in Nottingham Market Square. Place attachment, the key construct within this study, may play a role in determining individuals’ attitudes and valuations of a specific place. An exploration of these relationships was achieved, first by measuring the intensity of place attachment, place identity and place dependence expressed by quota sample of 139 residents and 103 visitors. Data was collected through a face-to-face questionnaire, utilising the 5-point Likert scale for the attachment, identity and dependence items.

Five attitude questions were used to examine respondents’ opinions of the Square design and the contingent valuation method assisted in an exploration of respondents’ hypothetical value of the Square.

Study results found that on the whole, residents expressed higher levels of place attachment, place identity and place dependence, with place dependence being the strongest construct for both groups. In both groups, place identity was found to be the weakest of the three dimensions. Results reveal that visitors favour the design more than residents however residents detailed to ‘value’ the Square a lot higher than visitors. Place attachment was found to be fostered through a combination of external variables and was proven to be a strong indicator of attitudes and valuations.

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An Analysis of the Impacts of New Housing Developments in Rural Areas Oliver Fas BA Architectural Studies In July 2007, the UK government released a green paper entitled “Homes for the Future: More Affordable, More Sustainable.” In it was an announcement that 3 million new homes would need to be built in the UK by 2020 in order to keep up with rapidly accelerating demand. Also in the paper was a detailed plan of how these houses will be delivered. The majority of these homes are to be built in designated ‘growth points’ in the Midlands and Southeast. 6300 homes are to be built in rural areas and whilst this is a small amount when compared to the overall total, careful consideration must still be taken when delivering the homes so as to not damage the unique character and appearance those rural areas posses. It must also be noted that this delivery of 6300 homes was only the allocation for 2006-08 and that more announcements would be made in the coming years. The purpose of this study was to raise awareness and increase knowledge of the impacts that housing developments can have in rural areas.

To do this I carried out a detailed design review of a recent housing development called the Dairy, which is located in the village of Henlow, Bedfordshire. The Dairy was awarded a ‘Building for Life’ silver award, but as a local resident I was aware that the development had both positive and negative impacts on many aspects of the village. I therefore believed it to be the ideal case study as I could learn from both its successes and

failures what the components of a high quality residential development are.

In my evaluation of the Dairy I used two main qualitative research methods. I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with a wide range of village residents and I carried out a design review, which utilised a framework that I designed with the aid of existing literature.

Completion of the above revealed a large amount of information and enabled me to propose a series of guidelines to help better inform the design of future housing developments in rural areas. It is imperative when designing these developments that their wider context is properly examined and explored. Schemes should be bespoke and must be designed so as to enhance and preserve local character and charm. They must also contribute to the provision of local services such as healthcare and public transport. Local planning authorities currently have the power to do this under a section 106 agreement but they do not always do so. I believe it should be compulsory. Also, I think that instead of just charging the developers a fee, they instead should also have to play an active role in securing increased and improved services for areas that they wish to develop. I also propose that every village should have a detailed long-term development plan in order to help prepare and provide for better services and infrastructure. This will help ensure that new developments are only built as and when a village has the capacity to cope and will also help to keep residents better informed of what could and will be happening in their village in the future.

Samuel Tomlyn BA Architectural Studies I created this Flash movie for the K13DEX module which explores a range of digital software and possibilities for presentation of digitally produced work. The submission brief was to create a video which displayed all work produced for the module.

The concept behind my movie was to create a ‘digital sketchbook’ which would display all the 3D models and images produced for the module in a single interactive program. The images were to be presented on the page of a sketchbook, initially as a hand drawn sketch and then the user would be able to click or hover over the image with the cursor to see the finished digitized image.

I chose to create the ‘digital sketchbook’ in Adobe Flash as it allows for interactive content; this would allow me to present the user with opportunities to explore at their own pace and to return to pages of interest. It would also allow for a range of other creative possibilities such as interactive sound and video.

Pages completed so far include a 2D digital drawing of a bass guitar created in Serif DrawPlus 7.0 which is a 2D vector drawing program. As intended the guitar is initially presented as part of a hand drawn sketch, hovering over the guitar with the cursor fills in the sketch with the rendered digital drawing. The user can then click on the image to see a zoomed in

detail view; in this view the user can also hover the mouse over the strings to recreate the sound created by the respective string.

The second completed page presents an image of a house, again as a hand drawn image. As with the previous page hovering over the image fills it in with the digital version which was created in Sketchup 6.0. Clicking on this image however takes the user on a video tour as if they are entering the pages of the sketchbook and guided around the virtual 3D house.

The images of the sketchbook itself were created by carefully photographing a sketchbook of mine and then opening the pages and photographing them again to give the impression of pages being turned. The intermediate stage of the turn is seen when the user hovers the mouse over the next page button, the image on the page is distorted and edited using Adobe Photoshop to create the perspective and shadow effect.

Pages yet to be created include another 3D model, a tall building created in Archicad 12 using hotlink modules and based on the New York Times building. This is to be presented as an interactive slideshow of digital images of the model in which the user can click to go through the images on demand.

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Thermodynamic Analysis of an Organic Rankine Cycle for a domestic biomass-fired CHP Carlo Castellana BEng Architectural Environment Engineering

In the research project the thermodynamic modelling of a Rankine Cycle with Organic Fluids (socalled ORC) in a Biomass-fired Micro-CHP has been carried out; the system produces electricity and useful heat. The effects on the CHP electrical and heating energy outputs resulting from i) changing operating conditions, ii) recuperating energy with an Internal Heat Exchanger (IHE), iii) superheating the fluid, and iv) subcooling the fluid have been investigated for three environmentally friendly fluids. The fluids used in the modelling have been selected according to the system specifications of a domestic biomass-fired microCHP. Environmentally friendly fluids with low Global Warming Potential and low Ozone Depletion Potential have been considered.

As a further restriction, only fluids that were present in the database of the computer software used for the model analysis (McGraw-Hill’s Engineering Equation Solver, EES) were considered. The fluids used in the analysis were n-pentane and the hydrofluoroethers HFE7000 and HFE7100. Different routines were created with EES to model different cycle types. In all routines, a simple Pinch-Point analysis based on temperature profiles in the condenser was carried out to calculate the temperature at

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which the water in the heating loop was leaving the condenser. Maximum system temperatures in the range of 373-433 K (100-160°C) and minimum temperatures in the range of 293-343 K (20-70°C) were used in the analysis. Results show that both increasing the evaporator temperature and decreasing the condenser temperature will increase the CHP electrical efficiency. Very low condenser temperatures (less than 303K, 30°C), can be impractical, because the water in the heating system will be too cold to be used; very high evaporator temperatures require that the boiler withstands high temperatures and the associated pressures. Using an Internal Heat Exchanger increases almost linearly the CHP electrical efficiency, approximately by 0.4-0.5% for every 10 K temperature drop on the IHE hot side. The maximum drop in the hot side of the IHE is determined by the operating conditions and by the fluid characteristics. Superheating is, as expected, detrimental for cycles with dry fluids, such as those selected for the model. The CHP electrical efficiency decreases almost linearly, approximately by 0.4-0.5% for every 10 K of superheating. Small degrees of subcooling are needed to prevent any vapour from entering the pump; however, subcooling too decreases the CHP electrical efficiency, approximately by 0.50.6% for every 10 K of subcooling. Amongst the fluids tested, n-pentane shows the best electrical efficiency, although its flammability can be an issue; cycles with n-pentane are also less affected by superheating, subcooling and recuperating heat with the IHE. A safer, non-flammable, alternative to n-pentane is HFE7000, which shows better efficiencies than HFE7100 for evaporator temperatures lower than 420 K.

‘Low-cost Solar Thermal Collector for the Nigerian Climate Frances Iwuoha BEng Architectural Environment Emngineering Nigeria, is a place that experiences a great amount of solar radiation – between 990-1100 Wm-2.

Unfortunately, little progress has been made in harnessing this abundant solar energy mostly due to financial reasons. The project mainly involved the investigation of a low-cost solar thermal collector which will be used for the Nigerian Climate. The importance of renewable energy as well as the various types of solar collectors and their uses were also highlighted. The report contains the stages in development of the collector, from design to implementation, where several factors were considered including economic and political factors in Nigeria. The report also contains the details of the laboratory tests carried out to determine its feasibility and efficiency of the collector. The report also includes the test results and analyses of the results. The issues faced with the building integration of the collector and allowances for future development were also added in the report.

The collector without black paint

The collector painted black to increase efficiency

Osarogie Edo-Osagie BEng Architectural Environment Engineering The K240, Architectural Environment Engineering course enhanced my thinking of the functionality of a building and gave me an understanding of why and how buildings should and can be made more efficient in their operations. I have also acquired knowledge of various techniques that are able to enhance the efficiency, comfort supply and energy efficiency of buildings in accordance with their uses.

My dissertation contains an investigation of an innovative concept of a combination of evaporative cooling and hydropower principles together with their integration into commercial buildings.

A synergy of evaporative cooling and energy recovery technique using hydropower is researched.

Existing evaporative cooling and hydropower techniques are review and discussed in relation to the system set-up. Information on how this synergy operates and an analysis of its effectiveness using existing theoretical equations and a modelled building is provided.

The system is integrated into a modelled commercial building and analysed under different operation conditions. It is designed to substitute a portion of the gridsource electricity demand during operation hours at the same time providing evaporative cooling to

reduce or replace the need for mechanical refrigeration for air conditioning cooling. Cheaper offpeak electricity is used to create potential energy when the building is not in operation. The set-up also aims to aid the building aesthetic feature.

Further work will need to be carried out in relation to the ability of a building to handle an integration of the system components, control strategies, pressure variation using computational fluid dynamics tools to enable a more detailed analysis of fan power required, possible indirect evaporative cooling techniques which can also be employed and support from renewable technologies to reduce the running cost of system and carbon emission associated external energy demand.

Patrick Lui BEng Architectural Environment Engineering Thermal insulation of building is vital to reduce the energy used. We have to familiar with the thermal properties of wall, and also bear in mind that wall is not just the support of building. Good wall should be designed based on water control, air control and thermal control. Improving the performance of wall by understanding the factors affect it.

The world does not want to waste more too much power on heating and cooling for buildings as energy is running out soon. Reduce the power needed of HVAC and heating system is the direct way to solve the problem. Ten or twenty years before, the main concerns of a wall were cost and outward appearance. In this century, these cost and outward appearance are still important, but not important as energy saving. That is the life of our next generation. Think energy saving first before everything started.

In this high technology world, nothing is impossible. The perfect wall will become better and better. The ideas of double glass wall, PV wall, phase changing wall and GORE-TEX速 fabrics wall could be future development of wall.

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The control strategy of air-conditioning systems and its influence on the sustainability of buildings.

Dennis Mak BA Sustainable Built Environment Energy management is the control of energy consuming devices for the purpose of minimizing energy demand and consumption. Manually switching on and off devices based upon need is a simple form of energy management. The advanced control methods consist of devices such as time clocks for automatic switching devices on and off, and thermostats to control the output of heating and cooling devices along with pneumatic and electrical controlling systems. The improvement in electronic control devices and the increasing power of the microprocessor based personal computer have led to dramatic advances in energy management and what today has given descriptions such as Energy Management System (EMS), Energy Management Control System (EMCS), Building Management System (BMS), Building Automation System (BAS), etc. . The main difference between early automatic temperature control systems and EMS is the application of a broad base of variables through programmable logic controllers to optimize the use of energy. A well designed EMS can have a lot of benefits, which includes lower

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operating expenses, optimize operating efficiencies of energy consuming equipment, improve comfort for occupants, improve indoor air quality, monitor equipment performance and energy use, etc. . The energy management industry has evolved standard software routines which are commonly referred as control strategies. These routines can be applied in virtually all energy management systems which they are customized for different buildings.

Almost all of the control strategies are used in EMS for commercial buildings, only a few of those strategies can be applied to residential buildings or direct expansion AC system. During the research process, the theory and concepts of air conditioning and control strategies are studied.

There are four case studies being used in this report which they compare the energy use before and after installing the EMS. Each of the four case studies is a different type of building and they are office, hotel, educational building and retail store. The results from the case studies suggested that a well designed EMS can really save energy for buildings especially for older buildings, and also improve the indoor comfort for occupants.

This would lead to improvements of energy consumption of the building and thus reducing CO2 emissions, therefore well managed building with suitable control strategies would minimize the effect of global warming.

Joanne Clarke BA Architectural Studies As the world’s population grows, urban areas are particularly under pressure, therefore it is vitally important that new towns and cities are developed at a fast pace to manage this growth. For these new urban areas, planning is vitally important in creating effective urban areas that can cope with the demands of the 21st Century and that people can live in and navigate through successfully.

This dissertation assesses the relationship between the gridiron system and the perception of Milton Keynes. Since its development, Milton Keynes has been deemed an important example of modern urban planning - a new and innovative town that was created in the form of a gridiron system.

The gridiron system itself can be seen as an important urban planning model. In this dissertation, its success is realised through its assessment in terms of how it is used and perceived within Milton Keynes. Kevin Lynch defined five urban elements - these are identified within Milton Keynes in this study and subsequently used to provide a basis for determining people’s perception and understanding of the town. Ultimately, people’s perceptions are considered from their understanding of the gridiron system and other elements in order to determine the success of the urban form of Milton Keynes.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDIO 57

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YEAR ONE DESIGN STUDIO

The first year is a foundation and qualifying year at the University of Nottingham for both Architecture (BArch) students and Architecture and Environmental Design (MEng) students. It is a studio based module within which the fundamental principles of architectural design are taught, tested and developed through a series of design projects.

The studio module is a year-long module. It runs for 25 weeks, with two full days of tutoring per week.

The year is divided into six units, each unit having a full-time Unit Leader, assisted by visiting practitioners, PhD students and 6th Year Diploma students (listed below).

The students entering year one, each have very different sets of skills and levels of understanding related to the study of Architecture. The foundation year is designed to be a gradual process of learning and development with each project building on the project before, and designed to test the students’ skills in each of the key areas of architectural education.

The academic year starts with the ‘Tour de Pasenville’ project run by visiting professor Ted Cullinan of Edward Cullinan Architects. The ‘Pasenville’ is a fast paced, action packed design project in which students from years 1, 5 and 6 work together to produce the design for a building in two days.

It’s an exciting project and a great introduction to the world of Architecture for year 1 students.

The Studio programme comprises five stages. Stage 1 - ‘Foundation One’ is an initial 7 weeks of observation, drawing, sketching and skills development, based on short

practical exercises, culminating in a six day field study trip to Amsterdam. Stage 2 – ‘Design Integration One’ applies and tests the skills acquired in ‘Foundation One’ in a 4 week exercise to design a ‘life-pod’, an optimal living space for a given client. Stage 3 - ‘Foundation Two’ is a further 7 weeks of skills building through 3 projects: the Construction Project, the Cad Project (learning to use computers to create 3D Cad models) and the Typologies project. Stage 4 ‘Design Integration Two’ is the final project of the year. It is a 7-week design project which integrates all the knowledge and experience all of the previous stages, in the design of a building on the University Park Campus for Students and Staff of the University. Stage 5 - ‘The Portfolio Review’ assesses how well the students have progressed throughout the year and whether they have acquired the skills needed to pass to the second year of their course.

In addition to learning the fundamental architectural principles of creating a building that responds to the needs of a specific client and a given site the studio module entitled ‘Design and Communication’ also places great emphasis on teaching students to communicate their ideas and design intentions clearly and effectively through drawings, models and verbal presentations.

Studio Leader: Liz Bromley-Smith Unit 1: Ricardo Martinez, Neil Price, Fidel Meraz, Genine Zeigler, Fei Xie, Steve Townsend, Luke Jackson, Aiden Bell Unit 2: Rachel Grigor, Michael Dahlke, Paolo Acone, Michael Ellis, Rachel Yi-Wen Wang, Sophie Waterhouse, Jonathan Davey.

Unit 3: Valeria Carnevale, Jeffrey Keays, Paul Thomas, Yan Zhu, Owen Pritchard, Holly Stanton, Simon Crockford.

Unit 4: Liz Bromley-Smith, Dhiran Vagdia, Inga Sievert, Isin Can, Paul Kelsall, Tim Gibbons Unit 5: Mark Alston, Stephen Brown, Martin Smart, Amy Tang, Ehab Kamel, Laura Lockwood, Jaspal Johal.

Unit 6: Patrizia Riganti, James Alison, Gayle Monaghan, Tom Osborne, Francesco Proto, Robert Grewcock, Andrew Chapman.

The integration of taught modules within Studio plays an important role in Year one with Environmental Design, Contemporary Debates, Construction, Structures, and Integrated Design in Architecture contributing to and being tested within the studio projects at various points throughout the year.

Images from Will Gowland (best portfolio 08), Hajer Karim (best drawing prize 08), Michael Perkins and students involved in drawing workshops.

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YEAR TWO DESIGN STUDIO A year in Africa Following my visit to South Africa in July 2008 courtesy of a Johannesburg based NGO Education Africa the school was presented with a golden opportunity to compact a teaching and building exercise into one academic year fuelled by a nursery school designed and built by students. This practice of architecture would reinstate the building sciences tradition of the school first established when the then Nottingham Government School of Design opened in 1843. Then its earliest pupils included “architects’ clerks”, and the school taught both the art and practice of building, with attention to draughtsmanship and studies in architectural ornament. What better foundation for the 180 students entering Year 2.

As with previous second year studies our goals were to immerse ourselves in the complexity of the subject and discover new architectural sciences and angles of investigation on the fringes of process and methods of production. In this almost ruthless acceleration of production the second year curriculum, perhaps appropriately given its context in a technical university, has assumed a creative mechanic quality that I can only liken to the unfurling of Fischli & Weiss art installation. An almost seamless procession of connected constructions, each systematically activated by the energy released from the collapse of the previous one. With the extreme precision in the manipulation of the otherwise imprecise props, the processional setups are constantly on the verge of complete disarrangement, but never actually succumb, instead freeing up territorialities for the construction of new constructions.

Thus we were able to develop teaching aids that fed the creation of 180 individual South African nursery school projects, then shortlisted to 18, then 4. Adopted by three working groups from Unit 4 we added economy of materials and efficiency of manufacture, essentially the logistics of building, to bring us on track to construct Will Gowland’s winning design over the Easter vacation. Our approach seemed to key in well to the South African rural building culture, tied by a sense of material, climate and landscape with inherent restrictions of economic means and need for frugal solutions.

Importantly, the remaining five second year units examined the relevance of our post-industrial landscape, which is a good counter point to our studies in South Africa where Third and First World cultures blended together. All projects were injected with aspects of cyclic behaviour, recycling, ecology and ethical action and reaction.

Adrian Friend, Studio Leader Unit 1 Guillermo Guzman assisted by Lizzie Webster and Francesca Bailey Unit 2 Matthew Butcher assisted by Alisdair Russell and Robin Wilson Unit 3 Sarah Moore assisted by Nicola Antaki and Anna von der Schulenberg Unit 4 Adrian Friend and Rashiid Ali assisted by Andrew Cross Unit 5 Melissa Appleton assisted by Rosy Head and Chryssanthi Perpatidou Unit 6 Bradley Starkey assisted by John Newbury and Tony Davies 61

third year projects

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YEAR THREE DESIGN STUDIO

The Year 3 Design Studio is characterized by a strong unit based organisation. A distinctive profile of each of the six units reflects on the diversity of unit leaders and creates a wide and diverse spectrum of individual themes and methods, distinguishing the units from each other and allowing the student to choose a unit according to his/her personal interest.

While the content of the studio work is determined by the practicing architect or member of staff leading each unit, an overall organisational and review structure applies to all units.

Over all the year’s structure is made of three individual projects, firstly the narrative project ‘Start with Art’, relating to literature, painting, sculpture, music or film.

The second project is a short-term project called ‘Make Matters’, which has a distinct objective, e.g. the making of an object, the production of a prototype etc. Finally ‘Without title – SO FAR’ is forming the main studio project. Within these year-wide themes each unit leader develops his or her own framework and approach. The three projects could either stand-alone or thematically relate to each other. Each unit challenges the students to define their own brief within the unit’s framework; this task of individual brief writing clearly develops the student’s contextual responsibilities and furthers individual and personal work.

Project deadlines and review dates are generally identical to achieve an even rhythm within the school.

The students are encouraged and challenged to look beyond the classroom investigating farther aspects of architecture by introducing FIELD TRIPS as a means to experience built architecture in its local, social, cultural and physical context and form as well as by encouraging independent research; some units have even introduced workshops with students abroad.

An intense studio environment supports our effort to engage the students with their work.

The studio space is the focus of the student’s life and communication.

The principle of the INTEGRATED STUDIO is implemented through the introduction of two technical modules into the design process, Structures and Construction and Environmental Design. These modules alert the student to think laterally, introduce the concept of interdisciplinarity and define those subjects as essential elements of the creative design process.

Nicola Gerber Studio leader

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Unit 1

YEAR THREE_UNIT ONE

Project 1 – Catching light in the Magic Hour Our focus is on testing ideas. In project 1 we build a1:1 piece of architecture and place the work directly into the public realm. This year we made receptive installations designed to be responsive to light and the public in Old Market Square in Nottingham Centre during the ‘Magic Hour’ for one evening in October. Following the success of this event we were invited, by Nottingham Council, to exhibit at the ‘Light Night’ Event in February.

Project 2 – Drawing with Light We continue testing ideas through densely layered multimedia time-based production methods otherwise known as movies. For this we run a series of intensive workshops in photography, movie making, storyboarding and animation using CAD programs (Maya / Microstation / Premiere and After Effects). We presented the movies at a matinee in the world famous Soho Curzon Cinema in London’s Westend.

Project 3 – Light, Space and Building in Helsinki For the major building project we took a field trip to Helsinki. Sites were selected and registration of the site and context were meticulously recorded. Assimilation of this information, the students’ ideas and the notion of work/rest and play was undertaken through a series of mapping and model making exercises. The students building proposal is further tested through scaled models in the real and the virtual realm in addition to the more traditional 2D drawn methods of design development. Context, communication, first hand experience, diverse methods of process, multifacetted interrogation methods understanding complexity and having fun are central to our unit design process.

(Many thanks to those who shaped our unit and the past students for regularly poking their heads up) In order of appearance: Luke Olsen - Unit Leader Ulysses Sengupta - Unit Tutor Laszlo Fecske - Unit Tutor Jonathan Rice - Unit Tutor Tim Greatrex Sharon Scaniglia Stephen Atkins Thilo Aschmutat Zander Olsen Cesar Juliea Stewart Dan Farmer Chris Leung Antti Nousjoki Tuomas Toivonen Yasmine Shafi Tiago Costa Jorge Anurag Verma Timo Deljana Stuart Milne Chris Lee Martin Self Rutgers James O’Leary Polly Bansal Matthew Butcher William Firebrace Gabby Shawcross Peter Ferretto

- Jason Bruges Studio - Light Installation Workshop - Nottingham Council - Arts and Events - Nottingham Council - Arts and Events - AA and Munich University - Maya Workshop - Photographer for Make Architects - Photography Workshop - Southampton University - Movie and Spacial Theory Workshop - Arup - Movie Making Workshop - Make Architects - Animation & Post Production Workshop - The Bartlett School of Architecture - Interactive systems and Guest Critique - ALA, Helsinki - Helsinki Masterplanning Workshop - Nowoffice, Helsinki - Helsinki Architecture Workshop - 4F-DD director - Guest Critique - BAND architects - Guest Critique - MJP architects and Lecturer - Guest Critique - Herzog and De Meuron Architects - Guest Critique - Urban identity phd, Japan - Guest Critique - Bentley Systems - Generative Component Workshop - Bentley Systems - Microstation Luxology Workshop - AA tutor and Zaha Hadid - Structural Engineer and Guest Critique - Eckersley O’Callaghan Structures - Structural Engineer and Guest Critique - Head of Chelsea School of Art & D. - Guest Critique - AHMM and Kingston Uni. Tutor - Guest Critique - 2nd year tutor + Bartlett Dip Tutor - Guest Critique - Bartlett & Westminster Unit Tutor - Guest Critique - Westminster Unit Tutor and arch. - Guest Critique - AA unit leader and architect - Guest Critique 65

Unit 1

Light Year Light affects everything. Light is matter. Light is mood. Light is energy. Light is mass. Light reveals, hides, shocks, sooths, tickles, prevents sadness and can cut through metal. Light is metaphor, mystery, macro and micro. Light is concept, feeling, allegory, natural, artificial, spiritual, physical and architectural. Light is light and our theme for unit 1 this year.

Lo Chi Keen Ambrose

Unit 1

Gateway to Kallio

Project 1: The White Cube A temporary light installation that transformed in the magic hour at the centre of Nottingham. The project was based on shadow projection. Two simple cubes were created, one inside another, everyday objects and people passing by were created layers of abstract shadows.

Project 2: The Diffuser A short film was composed using a mixture of photographs, films and Maya animations. Based on the journey of ‘The diffuser’, the effect of differing water condition on light was explored. The film begins looking at a shower scene where steams are revealing more and more of the surface. Then it continues through a plug hole and moving away the light source. Juxtaposition between the scaled of the physical world and the com-

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puter animated world enabled the discovery of different lighting condition.

Project 3: Gateway to Kallio (Helsinki) Starting with an exploration into the only axis in Helsinki, intersecting the heart of the city and an underdeveloped area called Kallio, my proposal aims to address the weakness of the axis and regenerate the surrounding area. An investigation was carried out into the market at Kallio during the summer and winter period, which lead to the proposal of a perfume factory.

The factory is designed to be an energetic landmark within the local community, a space which stands apart from the dense and dark buildings which surrounds it.

Unit 1 Pasila Dance Centre proposal in Helsinki aims at establishing an institution for dance artists and a metropolitan venue for contemporary dance. As well as providing professional dance education, it will boost cultural revitalization, encourage appreciation of performing arts and act as a leading location for festival use providing an attraction to all sections of the public including tourists and other visitors. Development objectives of

the design aspired to express the energy of dance by creating kinetic spaces, elevations and translucent interiors that give glimpses of ‘behind-the-scenes’ life of the dancers to the general public. The structure sits on a brownfield site previously used as railway warehouses; the actual building form attempts to highlight site’s existing architectural features by interpreting, replicating and experimenting with its immediate physical context.

Indre Baltusyte Pasila Dance Centre

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Unit 1 A project located in Helsinki city centre, Finland, focusing on light and the dramatic environmental changes seen throughout the year.

The art gallery aims to highlight the change in temperature through the water. The building makes use of a moving facade, which hangs down in a series of strips and sits on the surface of the water. When the water freezes in winter the facade is

frozen in place and a seasonal icefloored exhibition space is created.

As the temperature increases the facade breaks free and each strip is left to float and ripple with the water it rests on. The melting of the ice also sees the disappearance of part of the gallery floor, cutting the building in two and creating a central water channel to allow boats through. The passage of boats through the building becomes an

event as the building facade swings up to open up the channel.

The strip facade system is angled to control the views out of the building, directing attention to the more interesting areas surrounding the building. The facade also creates some interesting shadows through the building which swing round the building, marking the path of the sun during the day.

Jessica Benson Helsinki - Art Gallery on Ice

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Unit 1 ‘Light is being so important in our lives, we can’t live without it!’

Project1 ‘Filtering the light’ is the language of this project and a full scale installation is made to represent this idea, where the projectors are the light source. There’re 3 filters before the light reaches to the destination(screen), the projectors, cup-shelves and human interaction.

Project2 By developing this lighting language, an idea of ‘dapple light’ is investigated. Dapple light doesn’t only create interesting shapes among light, but also make a sense of excitement in a space. A movie is produced exploring the feature and spatial ability behind this idea and named ‘Piercing through the darkness’.

Project3 It is an architectural design project that integrates with the idea of ‘dapple light’.

When visiting Helsinki in January, the whole city was so white that the snow covered the melt-away and the original scene of Helsinki was hidden.

Therefore a rock oasis is designed to keep the ‘green’ over this period.

It’s placed inside a rock hill which is next to the central sea and is the only resting place in this area.

Because there’re the routes for both locals and tourists, in order to make the building nimble, spaces for tourist information and community exhibition are designed in cooperate with this oasis. In terms of ‘dapple light’, the reflective mirror and roof pool are the gimmicks to extend the ‘ripple’ into the interior.

Sin Yan, Cindy Chan Filtering The Light

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Unit 1 This project proposes a marine laboratory and aquarium on a hilly site in the heart of Helsinki.

Through thorough investigation of the surrounding environmental parameters (movement, typology or sociocultural aspects), this project proposes two volumes that oppose each other in axis, form, weight and composition. The floor plan al-

lows the blending but segregation of private and public programs, so both can co-exist to embrace each other. The nature of the design reflects a subtle approach that is both respective and harmonious with the pre-existing vernacular of the surrounding built environment.

Jonathan Cohen Light, Space & Building in Helsinki - A Rocky Distortion

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Unit 1 Finland is one of the few countries in the world with a growing surface area, due to the ‘post glacial rebound’ (the rise of land masses that were depressed during the last ice age) The entire country was in the past, covered in huge sheets of ice up to 3 km thick.

The geological and urban landscapes of Southern Finland help to paint a picture of it’s capital city, Helsinki.

I have been working on an architecture which unites and engages the disected inner city district of Kallio with the massive, floating terrain of high capacity vehicle infrastructure.

Stuart Colaco Float Rock Road

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Unit 1 Along side the unit theme of ‘Light’ my personal interest lay with the idea of surveillance. In todays’ world no action goes without being seen by at least one pair of eyes.

Without light though, these actions cannot be observed, and the inner light that a person possesses becomes the element to watch.

The amination produced entitled ‘Innerllumination’ is a piece set in the underground networks laid below the city of London, a space filled with artificial light. Not only this but the rate of human passage through these spaces varies from a single human entity to a collection of human entities creating a larger mass.

The design project for the year is set in Helsinki, a city with extreme 72

lighting conditions - having very little light in the winter and having almost no darkness in the summer.

Residents of Helsinki and other countries in Northern latitudes are known to experience higher suicide rates than other regions, there is a direct link between the daylight hours and the suicide rates, and in an attempt to rectify this problem i have proposed a ‘Wellness Centre’ in Helsinki, with a bias towards treating Seasonal Affected Disorder (S.A.D). An illness caused by the lack of sunlight, resulting in an increase in the production of melatonin (depressive hormone) and a reduction of seratonin (happiness hormone) in the body. The treatment of which consists of exposure to extremely bright lighting conditions.

Alexander Fox

Mina Gospavic The Urban Sami : A

The dichotomy between the Finnish and the Sami population of is rooted in the creation of cultural individualism and identity in order to enforce their territorial stamps on Finland. A nomadic population of the Lappish region of Finland, few Sami live in Helsinki but maintain contact with other Sami populations in Nordic countries. In the heart of Helsinki, a Sami Publishing House for Sami news and literature will place a firm stamp on Finnish urban fabric-remaining open to everyone for visiting its library and

Unit 1

Modern Folk Story

archives. The topography of the site places the Publishing House in direct contact with vernacular buildings which include a school, University and residences. The Publishing House will capture the hues from months of winter daylight, and the rare brightness of summer mornings and sunsets. It will bleed into diffuse foggy skies to combine solidity with an airborne quality, cascade rhythmically down the gradient of the site- sprouting and penetrating through surrounding urban fabric in a transparent yet

textural skin. Interstitial, cavernous spaces inside link the public with the workers who are suspended above them in tall modules and hovering transparent bridges. A mystic sky and raw ground evokes the ancient pagan quality of Sami folklore, helping the Sami to find orientation in an urban environment. The Publishing House is a revitalising, celebratory introduction of the Sami into Helsinki’s society.

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Christopher Lee The Search for LandUnit 1

scape in a Flat City

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The city centre of Helsinki consists of relatively flat earth. After wandering the city, it is clear the exposed bedrocks scattered around the town has captured many imaginations. Especially with the manipulation of the bare rocks in the Temppeliaukio Church of Rock.

The slope is located on the east of Helsinki, next to the bank on the bottle neck of the in-flowing sea.

The north facing slope consisting of exposed bedrocks, backs on to the psychology department of The University of Helsinki and faces the waters.

A particular slope found lying against the faculty of behavioural science of The University of Helsinki has the potential qualities of texture, height and contours for an exciting project.

This design involves excavation into the rocks in order to create a series of spaces, only to reveal part of the structure. A path cutting into the hill connects these spaces and provide a pleasant experience through both the building and the slope itself.

Unit 1

Light and its affects on the human psychology play an integral part in every aspect of life on this planet, and it is how varying lighting conditions control the personality of spaces that have played an ever present theme throughout the projects I have undertaken this academic year. Project one, an installation in Nottingham’s market square -’The Kaleidoscopic Grannykart’focused on the power of light to provide safety and sanctuary removing a subject from vulnerable situations in the passing from daylight to darkness, whereas Project two, a short stop frame animated movie -’The Puppeteer’- dealt with the psychological repercussions of low lit spaces and how spatiality and lighting conditions can manipulate the mind into feeling out of control even in usually comfortable spaces.

Project three - Rehabilitating Helsinki- combines the nature of the first two projects and demonstrates the affects seen by them in a real life example. Due to Helsinki’s Northerly location it is subjected to rather extreme lighting conditions; from days of near complete darkness to summers of glowing sunshine. My project aims at providing therapeutic solutions to the sunlight deprived population of the city of Helsinki, in the form of Dance, Music, Art and Light itself.

Stephen Maxfield Rehabilitating Helsinki

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Unit 1

Cultural Hotspot

Seetal Mistry To design a centre for music, art and performance with an accompanying outdoor stage. The centre should seek to inject a sense of art culture into an area of Helsinki which seems to be lacking in both culture and recreation and therefore create a social “hub” or “hotspot” in this area. It aims to provide and encourage people of all ages but especially the youth to learn, contribute and strengthen the image and identity of a city which with an ageing population is in danger of being lost. Today, in Helsinki’s modern society there is a sense that the younger generation are beginning to lose their roots; they do not seem to appreciate let alone understand what it is that makes this city special. The centre will be both a teaching facility as well as being open to the public for performances and exhibitions. It will be split into three different zones; art, music and performance with the aim of bringing together the public and private in a central open space.

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Unit 1

Vivien Ngai Light/Architecture/ Helsinki

The first project, “Catching Light in the Magic Hour”, involved in designing and creating a 1:1 installation in Nottingham city centre. The finished piece consisted of translucent and transparent balloons. As the magic hour approached, the sunlight shined through the transparent balloons onto the pathway of the tunnel. During the magic hour, the sunlight shined directly into the tunnel.

The second project, “Drawing with Light,” involved in creating a short film using time based media, mainly a combination of real life video footage and Maya animation. In

the short film “Flicker”, slow movements of flickering flame and the effects it had on the surrounding surfaces were captured in different scaled spaces.

The final project, “Light, Space & Building in Helsinki”, began in Helsinki, the capital of Finland.

The project involved the design of a duel programme of cinema and restaurant on a disused railway tracks site in the heart of Pasila, which is north of central Helsinki.

The design focused on using old shipping containers and rearranging them on a grid system.

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Unit 1

PROJECT 1 WHITE CUBE: Market Square, Nottingham.

The public light installation was based on shadow projection. A simple composition was created; one box placed within another, whilst everyday objects were hung within the inner box to cast abstract shadows onto the canvas surrounding it. As people entered through the first layer, their shadows were cast onto the outside fabric wall, generating curiosity, hence drawing people into the installation creating further layers of figurative shadows.

PROJECT 2 IMPRISONED LIGHT: Architectural Film Project involved the production of a 3 minute film using photography, film and Maya animation, which explored the possibilities of light exposing space, whilst being trapped and limited by it, in a mix of real and virtual worlds.

PROJECT 3 HELSINKI: Emerging Culture The site chosen for this project was located in a neglected residential area in the north of Helsinki, where neither the student nor ageing population were correctly catered for. The design evolved through the creation of an excavated artificial landscape that allowed for the continuation of its previous use, whilst injecting a sense of vibrancy evident in the bohemian style of the local residents. The site has been manipulated into a landscape that both encloses and reveals cultural spaces, providing points of seclusion, exposure, shelter and unity.

Elizabeth O’Neill Project 1 & 2

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Unit 1 Project 1- A public light installation in Nottingham’s Market Square.

The piece was an exploration of light and shadow using various forms to intrigue and invite the public to experience, with the viewer?s shadows becoming part of the spectacle.

Project 2 ? Disjunction, A short film stripping down the forms and textures of a tree with the subject?s environment and form becoming clearer throughout. The piece explores textures and materiality, distortion of 3D space and perception.

Project 3 - The Hidden World, A large scale redevelopment of a public market square in a culturally diverse and politically active area of Helsinki. The design deconstructs the square and explores subterranean dwellings using landscaping and cuts in the square to suggest a magical hidden world beneath.

Tom Penny MEng

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Unit 1

Project 3 continues elements of the research from project 1 through thought to blurring boundaries and the notion of change over time.

Following the conversation of the transition and contrast between light and dark in project 2, project 3 also considers the duality of Helsinki in the summer and Helsinki in the winter.

Helsinki is a city of contrasts; throughout its near 500 year history it has been influenced from both the East and the West.

The combination of public and private spaces through the form of art exhibitions and studio spaces begins to explore these ideas.

Kaplan Pirgon MEng

Dynamic Duality

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Unit 1

Tomomi Sekine Art Park

This project is located in the central park of Helsinki. The area is called cultural and historical area.

My project aims to combine art with the park to revitalise the park in the area which has been left for development and also, to expand the aspect of culture into outside.

My building provides studio space for artist, library for art and music

and gallery. The park provides studio art gallery and recreational facilities. This project combines public and private programmes, open and enclosed space and integrates landscape. It will be an attractive destination fro the tourists and locals and also, refine a new relationship between art and park.

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Unit 1

This project aims to regenerate the desolate area enveloping the base of a four-lane motorway bridge in Helsinki, Finland. The complex provides people from the surrounding area with a place to work, create, perform and obeserve.

The penetration and displacement of light within the structure and in the negative space under the bridge are driving forces for the project, as are using the building envelope to sculpt vistas and the three vertical levels on which the building engages with the bridge.

Christine Skaar Interstitial

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Unit 1

Ivan Tomasevic Esplanade Park

Esplanade Park is at the heart of Helsinki. It is a sanctuary from city life, a host to many annual events and steeped in historical significance.

The promenade leads from the harbour to the busiest road in the city.

It is these green areas, in the midst of the city, which make Helsinki so unique. It is therefore important that these areas be maintained and nourished.

In the scale of Helsinki, Esplanade Park and the streets surrounding

it can be considered as vibrant places by comparison. By night the trees are illuminated majestically, studded with lights creating a romantic atmosphere. During winter couples stroll down the promenade and write their names in the fallen snow on the benches. In summer people gather at the eastern end of the park for music concerts and sit on the benches and grass.

My intervention aims to strengthen the link along the boulevard and to provide needed space for exhibitions and festival events.

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Unit 1 Project 1 involved a light installation in Market Square that showed changing light conditions from day to night. The finished piece dealt with different translucencies, changing from mirrored surfaces during the day to transparent ones at night. Project 2, an animation titled “Abstract Translucencies”, developed upon some of the same themes. The stop-frame animation, mixed with Maya renderings, dealt with light being shone through flat planes layered over each other, creating different translucencies and textures of light. The 2-D planes then started to fold up into 3-D forms, creating a very real sense of spaciality. This followed neatly into project 3, as similar ideas would be implemented into the building de84

sign. The project, based in Helsinki, would be something comparable to an “Arts Co-op”. Themes of translucency and texture of light running throughout the scheme, carrying over ideas from previous projects, expanded upon changing seasons and conditions by exploiting how ice in winter and water in summer, affect appearance. As light shines through these different materials, they give different light conditions and atmospheres. Furthermore, as the day gradually changes to night the building can change in terms of light and translucency, mirroring the first light installation project. Taking origami and layering as inspirations that run through this project resulted in an interesting and complex intervention.

Michael Turner Layered Origami Between The Folds

My primary focus was to consider the people moving through the site at different speeds. Transport was key to this investigation (the integration of the railway in particular.)

Also considering the preservation of public open space within the site- my intention was to create a building proposal which gives more to the area without taking away the cultural context of the site. Opportunities- there is a substantial lack

of impressive vistas within Helsinki, my building design should help to counter-act this observation and in doing so help to create something that can be easily seen as well as a means for viewing the city. I used the historical research and previous investigations into light to help inform the design of my building.

Furthermore, my intension was to maximise the potential of the boundaries of my site in order to create an iconic ‘focal point’ which ultimately helps to bring something new to Helsinki as well as sit well within its specific context. Lastly my intention is to create a design which can be used as a source of reference which impacts upon Helsinki as a city.

Ellen Ward Project 1

Unit 1

We travelled to Finland’s capitol to study the unusual lighting effects of this Scandinavian country (during winter time, three to four hours of daylight a day is to be expected) This has an unusual impact upon the city’s architecture.

Magic Hour

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Unit 1

Project 1 A group project, involved the design and creation of a 1:1 installation in Nottingham Town Centre for an evening in order to experience the magic hour, in this case interaction with the installation was the theme.

The finished piece consisted of 3000 glow sticks and 3000 straws, embedded into wooden panels.

When put together it created a corridor designed for people to pass through, in doing so breaking the glow sticks so their luminosity became apparent as dust fell.

Project 2 Focused in the city at night, expressed through a short movie using a combination of live-action footage, photo stills and created elements from the programme MAYA. I created a short film showing various shots of buses, nature and the sunset to try and highlight that although people sleep the city never does.

Maya animation. My focus was on the city at night, and what takes place when people go to sleep. I used a combination of film photographs and Maya stills.

Project 3 This began in Helsinki; key design complications were the climate, with few hours of sunlight in the winter, and long hours of daylight in the summer, as well as the freezing conditions in winter time. My proposal aims to bring a culmination to the Helsinki Marathon which can be used to stimulate people to train in the cold weather. The building functions consist of a cafe, museum and changing facilities. The museum is positioned with a large glass facade that faces the sports pitch so the sport going on outside becomes part of the museum collection. A key design proposal was the seating around the football pitch folds back into the building to create an interesting form within the building.

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Sarah Williams Run Helsinki

Unit 1

Tim Williams

Light changes everything. The simplest architectural detail, an opening, a window, allows light to alter what it touches. Its presence reveals and its absence conceals.

Light is insubstantial yet can divide space, intangible yet can affect sensation, dynamic yet static, eternal yet ephemeral. Light creates space. And with this as our doctrine and as our credo, we begin the year.

The Magic Hour is the space between night and day, the greatest change in light. FILTER projects light through a frame of dripping water, changing in colour, and onto a screen, dynamically and uniquely altered by the people who pass through it.

Light captured in a single moment in time is motionless yet by play-

ing a series of still images one after the other, movement can be recreated. BUS STOPPING records the movement of a journey captured in a series long exposure shots, viewed through a fixed portal from an apparently separate world, an envelope in which light and movement is manipulated.

Helsinki is a place where light is absent for much of the day. With this project I try to return some with a Finnish National FILM THEATRE, celebrating Finnish culture and its influence in film. Situated in the northern bohemian area of Helsinki and directly next to the central lake, it attempts to maintain the public’s link with the water visually and physically blending with the water while projected light and views inform the design of the building.

Light, Space and Building

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DIARY OF A SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECT Stewart Dodd Satellite Architects Limited

Monday • Start the week in our 1820’s cottage in Devon having spent the weekend there with friends.

• 10:00am have a site meeting to see how Hugh’s writing studio is coming along. We are building a workspace for Britain’s favorite carnivore and sustainable guru, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

• 12:30 Swing by the River Cottage store that we designed to pick up some lunch for the train.

• 12:49 – 15:49 - Back on the train to London. This is where I catch up on all my emails as my phone service never works so it’s not worth trying to talk to anyone.

• 16:00 – 17:00 Meet up with the team to get a handle on the week.

I have a presentation to finish for a lecture on Thursday evening at Nottingham University, a school of architecture that takes sustainability as seriously as Satellite does.

Also we have a presentation to prepare for a lecture I am giving in Amman, Jordan for the Think Green 2 Conference on 26th May, looking forward to that trip but can’t quite see how I can get there by 26th May unless I fly, so need to find a sustainable airline, now there’s an oxymoron if I have ever heard one.

• 17:00 – 19:30 Review tender package for house and recording studio project in East Sussex. Talk to client about a house in Salisbury and its progress through planning, we are trying to achieve Code 5 (Code for Sustainable Homes) and it’s not that easy.

Tuesday • 9:00 – 11:00 Taken up with discussions about a new housing scheme we are designing in Newry, Northern Ireland. We are trying to figure out a way to get the electricity from the canal for nearly 200 apartments, the site is spectacular and abounded by a river and ca-

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nal, which we think can provide a great opportunity for a hydroelectric scheme.

• 11:00 – 12:00 Speak to client about the feedback from our planning meeting for the sustainable development of his Scottish estate.

He is hoping to develop a number of sites for visitors’ accommodation, including an eco-hotel. The local planners are very receptive to sustainable design, which is good for our client and good for us.

• 12:30 Lunch with engineer, his treat. A great little restaurant, Terrior, off the Strand it got 5 stars in the Observer and it deserves all of them.

• 15:00 – 18:00. A walk back to office to review the publicity plans and discuss moving into new studio in Clerkenwell.

Wednesday • 9:00 – 11:00 Finish lectures.

• 11.00 – 13.00 Discuss Newry site again with client there’s a chance I may need to go to Ireland next week, so need to make a plan.

• 13:00 – 20:00 Off to the Bartlett for Unit 12 (Jonathan Hill, Elizabeth Dow/Mathew Butcher) final crit of the year. A great mix of clever projects and some truly beautiful drawings. Also good to catch up with old friend Jason Griffiths who is now ensconced in the USA at Arizona State University doing some great things on Eco Building.

• 20:00 Catch up with email on blackberry during the tube ride home; find out we have a possible new project in Ireland.

Thursday • 9:00 Read BD breaking news on Prince Charles speech at the RIBA, can’t really work out what all the fuss is about, does anyone really care what he thinks?

• 9:15 – 10:30 Discussion with client about surveys he is having on his land where we are building a sustainable housing project and

another project he wants to discuss about student housing.

• 10:30 – 11:30 Negotiating with builders on the cost of a project for a swimming pool building we have designed in Dorset. Why is their bid higher than the last bid? Did the other builders leave something important out of their bid, are they padding their bid or is it just more expensive?

• 11:30-13:30 sit down with Rozelle to review progress of project in Devon and final image finding for lectures.

• 13:30 Lunch with the office.

• 14.00 – 15.30 Need to read up on the Stern report for a discussion with some councilors, so download the briefing notes from Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment.

• 16:15 – 18:00 On the train again, to Nottingham to speak at the Tongue and Groove lecture series.

• 21:30 - 23:30 late train back to London with Rozelle from the studio, arrives at St.Pancras near midnight. Great space and even better when the station’s empty, very tranquil. Still have to make some notes for studio meeting in the morning with the contractor about the Village Hall. We won a competition for a new Village Hall in Sussex and we are having some issues about the green roof so we need a workable solution to get this part right.

Friday • 9:00 go to the Jordanian embassy in Kensington to collect visa.

• 10:00 – 11:00 Stand outside embassy talking to client about costs coming back from builders. Discuss how to choose best builder.

• 11:30 – 13:00 Back to the office to meet Tony Hayes from MBP (Structural Engineers) about Village Hall project. Camilla, the project architect, really wants to work with MBP but the costs are still not right so we need to get fees sorted out.

Always a painful job I just can’t un-

derstand why they don’t work for free its all for a great cause!

• 13:00 – 13:30 Lunch with office • 13:45 Friday afternoon disappears as I’m red lining the Recording Studio project drawings, more on that next week, its 8pm already and I need to get to dinner in Primrose Hill but the Helicopter that runs on H2O hasn’t been invented yet so it’s the tube and I’m an 45 minutes late. When I do eventually arrive I can’t believe the debate is about Prince Charles, again what is the fascination, there isn’t even an architect in the room.

Saturday • Wake up in our flat in the Barbican and realize I have missed the 10.20 train, so have to wait 2 hours, writing the diary sounds like the best plan for the day, so much for the Sabbath.

Sunday • Made it to Devon. Today I meet with a potential client who wants information on a series of new sustainable barns on his 600 acre farm, great opportunity for some creative barn buildings.

• Take the rest of the day off and explore the countryside.

Links for the week www.rivercottage.net www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/programmes/units/unit12.htm www.asu.edu www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe www.mbp-uk.com w w w. b d o n l i n e . c o . u k / s t o r y. asp?storycode=3140351 Stewart Dodd is a director of Satellite Architects Limited

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Unit 2

YEAR THREE_UNIT TWO PROGRAMME TO FORM

Projects begin with research into philosophical methods, poetics, critical literature and technology.

The development of an inquiry begins in the first term; students develop their own interests, which are referenced against a programmatic method.

In the second term we locate the projects in a physical environment that will allow the development of the issues.

In the third term we begin to develop form and technology as a response to the critical issues developed in the first 2 terms.

The projects become more informed as we begin to detail.

There are 26 students in the unit all of whom have different projects. Most of the students enjoy hand drawing as a method of developing and presenting their work. we find this is a less constrained tactic for developing this type of work which often demands a lot of changes during the development stages.

Staff Jonathan Morris Phil Watson Visiting staff Dav Davell.. Philosopher psychologist .. Env scientist o u Tobias Kleine unit master rca Derek Hale, Huddersfield school of architecture Tim Norman bartlett Charlotte Ereckwrath bartlett Stuart Monro bartlett masters tutor* Guy Pocock sculptor* Rachel Armstrong gp* Geoffrey James Greenwich school of architecture* Ruairi Glynn

 practicing architect* Martin Bullman practicing architect athens* Jezz Monk Hawksworth urban designer * Means member of final review panel on 29th may

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Unit 2

Each project carries its own particular direction

Unit 2

Climbing is the extension of walking, of moving up into ever steeper terrain. In the Architecture of Inaccessible Space, it is the deeply rooted response of the mountaineer to a landscape of towering peaks and canyon walls. For some, this vertical landscape brings a surge of energy, an urge to climb the seemingly unscalable that is an almost spiritual impulse.

The topography machines shift and stretch the fabric of the landscape, changing the internal environment.

With the fabric insulation wrapping the internal spaces of the building, the internal atmosphere can change with the differing thickness of material being stretched and folded. Programmed obstinate climbs of well-documented peaks, order the claustrophobic twisting and bending steel walls which connect the spaces whilst mingling between the water channels cooling and ventilating the spaces.

The building is a journey full of obstacles and seemingly inaccessible spans to challenge the occupants who experience the building physically and emotionally.

Megan Bamber Architecture of the Inaccessible Space

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Kevin Chen

Unit 2

Imaginary Planes

The project discusses the relationships between object, subject, image and landscape, and was initially inspired by an exploration of concomitant developments in theories of vision, philosophy, photography and landscape painting. It seeks to elaborate upon the notion of the imaginary plane, as explored by the paintings of Rex Whistler and de Chirico.

Sited at Plas Newydd on the Isle of Anglesey, which has a subtle connection with the Battle of Trafalgar, naval warfare, seafaring and navigation are further explored as the geometries associated with military strategy are akin to the rules governing the laws of optics and perspective. The architecture is thus

inspired by the structural dynamics, conflict, tension and projections of seafaring to explore shifting perspectives and synaesthesic experiences.

The materials, qualities and geometries inherent in photography, warfare and navigation are thus used to architecturally discuss notions of process, reaction, time, event and the simultaneous shifting spatial and temporal dimensions of our lived experience, on what Deleuze calls a plane of immanence.

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Yuk Fung Cheung The Death of ObserUnit 2

vatory

An observatory that reads and records the environment in the spectacle of the mixing of the nature and the man made. The delicate boundary between the land and the sea is translated into the shifting language of architectural elements, which results in provision of different viewing vistas, layering and overlapping of views, distortion of spatial depth at different

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moments of time. All these allow the re-reading of the environment in the manner of scenographia, the notion of pictorial depth suggested

by Vitruvius. It is a phenomenological experience of extending landscape within the system, which challenges the conventional idea of observatory that reduces the environment into abstracted figures and statistics.

Unit 2

Daniel Fenster Facts On The Ground

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Unit 2

Charlotte Francis This project is a specialist growing archive where the structural frame replicates an orchard and the structural columns act as a cider press, also circulating air and allowing the orchestration of light. The structural columns act like a series of trees within a forest and become invisible in the architectural process acting as an extension to the landscape.

The orchard roof acts as a series of skins creating a narrative of tree branches with overlapping and linking leaves creating a hybrid of different things with a secondary smaller structure ‘sapling trees’ holding the floors and giving stability to the main structure. Purlins pivot and swing in different locations at different pressures at different times creating a nomadic structure. The architecture is adaptable and the form alters and surfaces change and react to the environment in which the structure is located. The changes in the structure need to deal with movement and time. The structure is attached to the natural topography of the rock face giving a chizzled out and carved appearance within the rock.

Specialist Growing Archive

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Unit 2

Adam Greenhalgh The project is about the meeting of several different technologies over time. Architectures become reoccupied/re-formed and adapted.

The experience of time as an event in a system of parts leads to the idea of a theatre of components as an architecture. Light, form, material and texture are reviewed as a method for observing moments in a system. The tactic is to uses

structure as a mechanism of geometry to register distortion in the form. This distortion is then used to stretch shift a projection that is relocated onto the hull of a ship.

The wearing of time on the fabric becomes central to the project as the architectural space becomes re-enabled as a theatre constantly performing; in this sense the drift space of technology becomes a paradigm shift object.

The Projective Theatre

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Unit 2

This project aims to focus on the intrinsic relationship that exists between nature and technology.

The defiant challenging of beings that aims at the total and exclusive mastery of nature through the transformation, storage and distribution of the resources that nature has to offer. This idea has been used to inform the design of a garden that focuses on the relationships between spaces and the objects within these spaces. Governed by a number of individual interventions that form a coherent whole these spaces fluctuate according to the environmental conditions of the site. Sited at the head of a valley in northern Snowdonia the garden of geometry’s refers to the naturally occurring, Cartesian and linear spaces that are formed by the passing of seasons, change in water levels, wind pressure and solar exposure. Energy harnessed from these sources acts to fuel the growth of plants. Slowly cultivated and controlled some of these plants are grown to replace parts of the system worn away whilst other are being cultivated in an effort to reclaim the natural landscape lost overtime to agriculture and mining.

The structure itself reflects through a series of pulleys, counterweights, folding roofs, cogs and membranes the tensions that exist within nature, creating a series of parallel spaces between architecture and the landscape.

Matthew Holt Garden of Geometry

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Selina Lau

Unit 2

The Art of Discretion

Fantasies of inclusion and exclusion are wrapped around the image of the Japanese geisha; artisans highly trained in the traditional skills of dance, music and conversation. The slight hitch of a richly decorated kimono sleeve serving tea reveals the delicate skin of the inner wrist, the slight submissive bowing of their elaborately decorated heads reveal the unpainted curve of their lower neck. Small discrete actions, subtle touches of a particular system can have a greater effect than imagined, not

only physically, but also in a more phenomenological sense. The design is one which is focused upon the delicate and fleeting touches of the architectural system, ordered by the discrete moves and hidden structures within Japanese ceremonial dance steps, accompanying music, instruments and traditions. Such light touches and movements within the system, although sometimes hidden or barely perceptible, facilitate detectable changes within the internal environment of temperature, light, volume

and spatial experience. A narrative through a dance performed by the geisha, the building acts as a visual representation of the spatial forms and steps of the geisha, as well as the temporal musical rhythm and instruments. Just as the art of Noh theatre is a highly ordered art of time and space, the design represents an architecture focused on temporal and spatial changes generated by controlled discrete alterations to the system.

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Unit 2 On 16/12/2008, a 15 year old boy was shot by a policeman in the centre of Athens. The next day, the streets were full of people demonstrating against the assassination but also expressing their anger towards the existing political system that gets corrupted day by day. During the months leading up to the day of the murder, the government had been under scrutiny following the uncovering of five political scandals. I believe that the uncovering of these scandals one after another was in order to manipulate the media in the same way that the exaggerated coverage of riot incidents was to later cover the event of the murder. The project looks at the eroding qualities of the existing political and economic 100

cosmos and how this affects architecture; destruction cannot be the solution in an era of such an enormous environmental shift. So, I am revisiting parts of the city through installations from the recycling of rioting material, following the route on which the demonstrations took place. Thus, the project talks about the idea of distortion through soft and hard structures that allow footsteps to affect the physical qualities of a building, voices to form new windows and a freezing icecream to warm up our winter. The randomness in which these driving forces operate my structures is what interests me, in the sense that its spontaneous nature is the only human equivalent to the chaotic situation of the world we live in.

Lfigeneia Liangi Dreaming

Desislava Lyutakova The Press.

The Space Between

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Unit 2

The architecture of overlapping spaces, materials and locations.

The project is based on a North Wales Lake sited on a previous monastic order of St. Clements and the Rollers. The remaking of the monastery as a recycling and meditation space for bikers. The shift in the space between religion and technology as a method of manufacturing the overlap between time and institution is the main purpose of the project. It can be seen as a micro-regional architecture between the fixed and the nomadic, in this sense the shiny helmets and baldhead brigade. A site that crosses existing identity, cultures and rituals for the relocation of outlaws and valley bandits.

Unit 2

Tina Qiu

FIGURATIVE GARDENS - HydroOPERA

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“Distinctions between the Figure and the Figurative (Les Lauves)

place, or upon itself. This is the Operative Field.

The nature of the Figurative within architecture as a shifting / editing negative space outside and contained within that of the object and material volumes. The isolation of the Figure by locating / positioning it within the Figurative or geometry of shifting forms / Fields. This is the editing space, removed negative volume of the sculpted held within the spatial field of the material that defines the form of the object. The important point is that the geometries do not consign the Figure to immobility but, render through sensation a kind of progression, an exploration of the Figure within the

The relationship of Coupled Figures as opposed to intelligible relationships of objects and ideas is where there is a blurring between matter and nothing. Illustrated through particles and mist systems where through dust and steam motion plays a part in omitting the static nature of objects and nothing. The Coupled Figure is a third condition sitting outside of matter and space and is a momentary bind between them. Momentary in that as inertia dissipates from the bind matter is reformed in rest and the dynamics of voids are re-framed.�

Alun Singleton

Unit 2

The Ecological Dot

Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ play for voices, Under Milk Wood, The Ecological Dot questions the nature of the machine as a grammatical structure. Whilst projecting aspects of the surrounding bay of Laugharne and using a fictional environment to cultivate algae, the user is to proceed through a series of metaphorical time-based systems. The 5 acts to the play each have individual locations, independent speeds and characteristics, yet are all conducted by the resonating chime of Duchamp’s bell upon a moment of internal syzygy. ..

As the mechanisms of each cybernetic clock project sound and light, the syntax of space, memory, meaning and contradiction all intertwine into a new interpretation of an ecological structure. question open...

question...

dot

dot,

..

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Unit 2

Mark Skinner Glass Ampoule hydroponic botanical research centre

The project discusses the measurements in perspective where unseen form suspended between multiple views of an object in the visual field. The design looks to insert drift technology to re-scale through time and proximity, where time delays and distance architectures can adjust the traditional form to reveal through animation a suspended hidden form.

The project is a glass workshop for the casting of glass ampoules 104

pressed into temporary geometry translated through the technology of the building into resin and sand moulds. Voids within the amulets caused by the change in energy transfer within the structural geometry become water tanks for the hydroponic suspension of plants.

The ampoules are inter-linked together to create a layering of veils, environmental regulatory devices that sustain the temperature, daylight, carbon dioxide levels and

acoustics of the building.

The herbs are dried and ground in the junction details of the building and when mixed with water then poured into the glass press as a cooling system.

The project is sited over the former site of the 104-year-old Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare, sadly burnt down for the second time in July 2008. The design fragment the mile and a quarter pier into a sequence of measurement at which points differing perspectives are obtained of the building.

time. The change of its spatial quality reveal the unexpected recomposing possibilities between functions.

The acoustic scoring of the landscape creates a series of geometry changes of its topography. The volume of spaces becomes distorted in response to the movement over

Parts of the structure operate as a silent sound buffer to enhance acoustic clarity. The slow acting surface materials work as a trace and recording system of the naturally occurring.

Yifei Song Into Great Silence Unit 2

This project is about flow of locations in nomadic architectural spaces that deal with motion in a series of connected technologies.

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Unit 2

Neal Tanna Drift

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The conflict of global and local values has supplied an insight into issues regarding the interconnectivity of individuals all over the world.

We now see a fused world, a platform where people, knowledge and goods can be spread rapidly around the globe. On the flipside, we also see an ironic fragmentation of communities as global ideals clash with locally formed ethics.

Where the benefits of intercon-

nectivity are clear, the unsustainable and conflicting nature of the homogeneous aspects of globalisation create new reflex reactions.

Culture and identity are questioned through new lines of individual and mass inquiry.

21g

the body would then be burnt into ashes, and placed into an ossuary box, and set onto a rotating plate, which forms a ‘dot’. As the plate is constantly rotating powered from the thermal energy of the crematorium, the heart of the building, the location of the dots would be randomized. This is to form an improvised musical composition. As it rotates, the dots would touch each strip of cloth laced with metal string on each own track. The vibration is converted into electronic signals by magnetic transducer, which is wrapped with a coil of a few thousand turns of fine enameled copper wire. The electronic signal would then be sent to an organ playing each note as a metaphor the spirit of the dead is transformed into sound, the requiem.

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Unit 2

Mu Wang

They say we all lose 21 grams... at the exact moment of our death.

Everyone. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained? How much did 21 grams weigh?

The project deals with the notion of location and relocation within multiple systems, to create a cybernetic space, which changes its state by detecting external object state changes within or surrounding the architecture.

The program starts on the side of the cemetery island in Venice, San Michele. Where the coffins are collected from the Gondolas, onto a transferring belt going into the crematorium. The coffin and

ARTICLE 25

Children participating in Community Consultation Strategy who will benefit from our work of developing a Prototype Rural School in Sierra Leone.

In Mazenod, Lesotho, we designed a child care and counselling unit taking in abused and maltreated children. We undertook the project in partnership with Sentebale (Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho’s charity.)

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Article 25 is named after the 25th Article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which states that adequate shelter and housing are a fundamental human right. We are a UK registered charity of specialists who design and implement the construction of buildings, such as schools, homes, hospitals, orphanages, wherever there is disaster, poverty or need. We give the essential expertise needed by aid agencies, charities and NGOs to execute their built projects on the ground. We are in great demand by organisations like Save the Children, the Red Cross, UN Habitat, Muslim Aid, Merlin and many others. We have saved projects that would have failed, we have made buildings safe after disaster that would have been deadly and we have created buildings that our partner organisations thought would take 3 or 4 times the budget we used. In just 3 years we have undertaken 30 projects in 15 countries and have provided shelter and education to an estimated 15,000 people, most of who are vulnerable children. We work in Pakistan, India and Sub Saharan Africa. We manage the building cycle from start to finish and we increase the involvement the community.

We create bigger, better buildings. We provide greatly improved, more costeffective and user-centred design.

We source local materials and train local communities. We do not hand over cash but instead manage the funds until a building is complete, stewarding donations effectively and giving better accountability.

Just one example: Article 25 worked with ‘Let Kids Smile’ (a Dutch registered Charity in Ghana) to build an orphanage in Nkoranza. The building is home for 30 orphans and abandoned children whose previous home was suddenly taken away. Article 25 worked from design to completion in only 4 months, always on site, working with the community, building skills and sharing the project with them all the way.

The new residential building has provided all the kids with a safe and comfortable place to live and learn at last, all on a budget of just £20,000.

Besides the building projects, Article 25 is involved in an educational mission. We

have created the first ever industry recognised Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses in humanitarian architecture, an amazing opportunity for students in architecture to learn about humanitarian activities in this sector.

We previously organised workshops in architecture universities. We worked in partnership with the University Of Sheffield School Of Architecture on a Live Project studying the role of human urine as a binding agent in the making of mud bricks and, in May 2008, we ran a successful construction workshop in the University of Nottingham to build and test a prototype design for the Kyomya East Sponsorship Project. We have also set up several partnerships in prestigious English universities through Student Chapters, to facilitate Article 25’s advocacy work and give students the opportunity to exciting activities in the name of fundraising, such as skydiving jumps.

The role of architects in development and disaster relief is crucial to insure long term and efficient solutions, as well as fighting poverty and empowering local communities to come to terms with themselves. As students in architecture, your skills are more than important for the future of these populations. If you are considering joining the sector of humanitarian architecture, we recommend registering on our BEAR database, a resource maintained by Article 25 for the benefit of all (local and international) charities and NGOs in need of building related professional services.

You can also participate in activities organised by Article 25 as a way to challenge yourself and raise vital funds!

We are currently offering architects and cyclists the once in a lifetime opportunity to cycle the Great Wall of China in September 2009 and get an exclusive VIP tour of the Olympic “Birds Nest”. Raising £3000 of sponsorship means you can go for free to achieve this amazing challenge!

All information is on our website, www. article-25.org, and you are more than welcome to give us a call on 020 7375 0144 to discuss all the opportunities we can offer you to take part in Article 25 project.

A local bricklayer putting mud render on the walls of one of the houses we designed in Bagh, Pakistan, after the 2005 earthquake.

In May 2008, we ran an amazing construction workshop at the University of Nottingham to build and test a prototype design for the Kyomya East Sponsorship Project.

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Unit 3

YEAR THREE_UNIT THREE TRANSIENT TECTONICS

Unit 3

“…recent work in the ecological sciences seeks to envision landscapes composed of shifting nodes of interaction, driven by dynamic temporal relationships rather than deterministic trends…a non-equilibrium view of natural processes has literally changed the way scientists think about the nature of nature; they now frequently see the change as probabilistic and multidirectional, rather than a progressive march towards clear endpoints…”

Kristina Hill, Shifting Sites in: Site Matters The nature of our environment is changing, as is our perception and experience of it through complete accessibility, fast data collection and comparison, modern media, instant information technology, mobility and international exchange.

The complex and powerful processes within nature and its formation make landscapes real and authentic, therefore only an architecture that explores a changing nature, its history, processes, its myths and imagination, its model function and its continuous instigation to question, and which relies on nature as an inspiration and a laboratory, can be real and authentic and will therefore be contemporary.

This unit explores aspects and possibilities of a changing environment and develop appropriate and imaginative architectural interventions – transient tectonics.

P1 PANORAMA | observation and imagination An inspired observation of the Thames/Estuary translated into a short visual narrative presented as an animated collage.

Paul Virilio’s “Art as Far as the Eye Can See” is the step into your visual voyage along the Estuary - collecting visual material to construct your digital layered collage - on location, in archives…an imaginative scenario.

P2 FLUVIAL PROTOTYPE | generic multiples A generic and programmatic object/topography is to be developed for transient territories to interact with existing and imaginative fluid environments along the river Thames.

The FP will be tested in singular and multiple form and able to move between various locations, conditions and situations.

P3 COASTAL PLUG-IN | programmatic plug-in The coastal plug-in is an investigative and complex project adapting and transforming the programme of the fluvial prototype to plug into the delicate environment of the marshlands at the Island of Sheppey.

This project will draw on contextual conditions – geology, time, culture, imagination and myth – rhythms, cycles, weather, the fluvial environment… inventing an architecture, which conceptualizes ‘change’.

The projects are clearly distinguishable, but will have a strong programmatic relationship leading to an individual brief for the final project.

A group of students from the University of Braunschweig worked simultaneously on a similar brief and location – two workshops in Braunschweig and Nottingham explored the idea of a ‘Distant Double’, the potential of parallel and comparative research and the integration of ideas located outside the expected context.

This unit challenges inventive capabilities and asks students to develop a unique image of architecture and to conceptually fold complex contexts into a tangible architectural project translating aesthetic and theoretical ambitions through structure and construction. The idea of ‘adaptability’ will be introduced at all scales to further investigate the idea of environmentally responsive concepts.

Unit leader: Nicola Gerber Tutors: Farida Makki Stuart Buckingham Guest crits Alison Gwynne, London Astrid Bornheim, Berlin Tiran Driver, London David Baggaley, Nottingham Jaspal Johal, Nottingham Emily Thurlow, London Workshop with University of Braunschweig, Institut fuer Entwerfen 1 Prof. Penkhues, Braunschweig Nico Schwartzer, Braunschweig Astrid Bornheim, Berlin

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Unit 3

My projects focus on the landscape looking at the beauty of the setting in respect to the Horizon, its line and its vanishing point. With the play of the horizon, the environment is constantly changing and architecture adapts and responds to nature. Project 2 is a minimal intervention where one is allowed to appreciate the natural beauty of the setting. With the rise in sea level, many landscapes that are familiar will disappear. The intention of the Éprouvette is to work in close relationship with the first metre rise in sea level and taking the site as an area of experimentation. The Éprouvette is a Reactor to flooding The idea is to create a floating farm adapting to the effects of rising sea level. The marshes are a resourceful area for nutrients and alluvium, thus allowing the éprouvette to use the technology of hydroponics to fertilise the plants. With the rise in sea level many areas will be affected. The main resource for human survival is food and water. The éprouvette’s programme is to be an experimental field for possible solution to this natural disaster. It also allows for direct public intervention within the structure. It becomes an area for learning and experiencing the effects and advantages of using resourceful technology.

Anvina Canakiah

ÉPROUVETTE

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Unit 3

Deadman’s Memorial

Elice Catmull

Throughout the year, I have looked at environments which human beings have rejected.

I began by looking at how we often search for familiarity in uncertain environments in order to suppress our fear of them.

For the final project I looked at Deadman’s Island, which lies alongside the Isle of Sheppey. It has existed only as a burial site for people that died of contagious diseases in the 19th century.

No-one has been buried on the island for over 150 years and the

island is eroding away; predicted to completely disappear within the next 2 centuries. My program deals with memorial and an attempt to restore the dignity of those crudely buried there. It also looks at the fear of disease in the past; and, presently, the rooted fear and the telling of ghost stories by the local Sheppey residents about Deadman’s Island.

We, as humans, often have a desire to leave a mark on the world which would exist after our lives have ended. We don’t like the idea

that we will fade from memory. The building attempts to prolong the existence of Deadman’s Island by creating a marker which remains as the island erodes away; highlighting its disappearance. 50 years after the island has disappeared, the building itself can start to disintegrate, leaving the memory of Deadman’s Island up to the story telling between the living.

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Unit 3

Justin Chan My design programme is to house a studio space for the making of Wallace & Gromit, Aardman Animation. The Northern coastline of the Isle of Sheppey has been exposed to erosion where nature is all domineering, resulting in the redundancy of architecture. The majority of the island is made up of rich London clay. Instead of observing the clay wash away as the cliffs erode, the clay is extracted and utilised for the production for the stop-frame animation.

The purification of the raw clay is divided into three main process, clay extraction, the drying of clay and sieving. The processes are exposed throughout the entire structure, providing a realm of transparency where visitors learn about the animation and clay extraction processes. In an environment of constant change, the structure is able to respond to nature, shifting with the retreating cliff and extracting more clay as the cliff erodes around the structure. With the theme of ‘self efficiency’ the structure translates the natural movement of wind and wave to mechanically induce motion for the processes.

Animating Extractions

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Jiajie Chen

Unit 3

Leisure center

My project is leisure center with a cycle workshop, boating and diving, and a local gallery as programmes.

It is located on Sheerness, Island of Sheppey, South East of UK.

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Unit 3

Chih Yi Chene Transient Tectonics

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The site itself, Isle of Harty in Kent, is very sensitive and there is a particular aspect to the landscape by building something that is unsuitable to the environment. What is important is the environment itself, and the building is simply on the site to tell the story and provide a connection between people and the environment, in this case, particularly the wildlife (birds).

The main theme of the design is “camouflage�, which set back into the landscape and response to the landscape itself. Almost as lift the landscape and tuck a building under it. The main building, a bird education center, is situated in the higher part of the hill and it offers

small group visiting. The entrance begins with a narrow ramp surrounded by a concrete wall. From here, the covered plane is the only perceptible element; its horizontal development dominates and redefines the movement into the landscape. The organization of the spaces offers a visual and spatial openness that emphasizes the link between human and nature.

The bird hide cabins are spread out down the hill near the marsh land. Each one offers bird watch lovers short term accommodation and materials for observation and research. As it camouflages itself, it reflects the way nature has been manipulated by the hand of man.

Unit 3 Project 2: reconstructs traditional fish ladder and fits to various fluid condition along the Thames River.

The shift programmes among keeping nature reserve, well being and civic education connects segments of the river and urban landscape.

Yuqian Fan

MEng

Symbiotical treatment

Project 3: aims to provide a space in which patients will have mudtherapy, at the same time reveal the beauty of natural surroundings. Mud found as a rich source in the Thames Estuary serves well being. In addition, medicinal herbs growing nativelly on the island will be introduced and planted. Aromatherapy becomes a parallel treatment with mudtherapy.

It will create a space where people can do herb planting and aromatherapy themselves rather than a traditional treatment place. The herb and mud will be processed on site and supply a need.

A coherent system of producing:consuming:self-learning will be brought to the local community. The programmes work symbiotically to treat patients with emotional or physical aliments through holistic methods of treatment using the properties of geology, water and flora specific to the coastal marshland environment. The concept of herbal garden wraps up the whole programme and keeps the surface of existing context and landscape

Transient Tectonics

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Unit 3 Places have the power to affect us.

An environment can have negative, as well as positive effects on both physical and psychological levels. If you have been to a place that has renewed your energy, bathed you in tranquillity, stimulated you, you will come to know that places can be health-giving.

Hot waters have been a natural source of enjoyment for thousands of years. Water cleanses, relaxes, 118

and refreshes. The spa concept of healing benefits the well-being of the mind and health of the body.

My aim is to design a sanctuary with the philosophy of ‘self preservation’, where one leaves feeling re-enchanted. The treatments form a total relaxation therapy which will benefit the mind and body as a whole. The benefits include relaxation of the muscles and the mind, stress-relief, enjoyment, and cleanliness.

Nurein Jamal A ‘HEALTH-GIVING’ HAVEN

The three projects this year have worked within a fluvial environment to obtain an understanding of an ever moving process; a system of objects sliding past one another, a system of collision and force but also slow encrustation and deposition.

These works have led to ‘Sloe Refinement’; a Sloe Gin Distillery situated on a corroding and disintegrating shipping wharf on the Isle of Sheppey. The process of distillation embraces many of my thoughts from projects this year; a poetic action of infusion over time, a slow build up. The site holds within,

clues to the history of this spirit on the Isle, as well as informing materiality and ornamentation of my intervention. Many discarded and fragmented remains of the wharfs former glory now litter the shoreline here. Constructed from steel, the various objects and remains slow disintegration in shades of dark brown and orange, now being reclaimed by nature and returning to what they once were.

Jonathan Kaminsky Sloe Refinement Unit 3

The boundary between land and water is an ever changing and shifting landscape that informs the intervention ‘Sloe Refinement’.

Sloe Refinement is held within the site tactfully and blurs the distinction between the land the sky and the sea, giving new meaning and function to a discarded wharf and sand-spit, relating to and taking influence from this poetic, fluid landscape.

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Nichola Kaskow

Unit 3

Fluvial Dynamic Rejuvenation

This year I have been exploring how the dynamic of water evolves through the cyclic rising and falling of the river Thames and the relationship between static and dynamic elements. Project 2: The fluvial prototype intervenes with the natural flow of water to enhance one’s perception and to improve the water quality through water agitation.

Project 3: The structure initially explores phytoplankton blooms which occur in turbulent waters around the Isle of Sheppey, the use of a concrete agitation structure will enhance the natural upwelling. This will increase their lifespan and their environmental benefit. Dense population explosions colour the water revealing the water currents.

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The aesthetical, poetic qualities of water created by the plankton and water agitation will form a secondary program, which concentrates on the curative properties of water.

Different water movements, temperatures and harvested phytoplankton will help relieve joint and muscle pain, replenish the body with essential minerals and emit negative ions to increase serotonin levels. Water is also the most important soundscape which above all others gives us the most delight in its myriad transformations.

The structure will capture the narrative of water’s changing dynamic behaviour over the daily cycle of the tides and over the seasons, including water in it’s various states and it’s interaction with the weather patterns.

Unit 3 Our shift of perception continually alternates between parallel and sequential mediums of image and verbal communication. Often the success of creating a real image is lost or distorted but tilting it only to create a new reality in its own right. tilt: through the mirror Whatever we witness becomes this instant recording, a freeze frame within a sequence of time that we do not know about due to our absence in the state of the previsible. Our observation becomes a fragment of a story in which we ourselves only have a small part to play in, a part which later on progresses and transcends into the state of the unpredictable, the unexpected, events which have not even happened yet but have been ‘set out’ by the freeze frame we

have encountered. shift: blending the image The image sometimes never fully shifts but merges into another image. In the case of film, double exposure doesnÂ’t overlap but blends altering chemicals through light, creating a new interpretation.

Loannis Kyriakou

_shift : the independent film The independent film culture as the form of mass merged communication develops into the new perceived reality. The constant shifts in techniques, mediums and ideas continually tests the boundaries of the image and its communication influence and becomes an artpiece of reality in its own right due to its freshness as a concept of interpretation and a break of conventional ideas.

Tilt-and-shift-and _shift

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Unit 3

Pui Yee Lai Transient TectonicsBird watching and Education centre

Elmley Marshes are home to a wide variety of birds of prey. My project aims to create access to these wild habitats.

The bird watching centre allow vistors to experience and view the birds without disturbing the natural breeding environment. The building will follow the contour of the existing hill while creating a new and changing landscape which provide optimum viewing conditions throughtout the year.

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The Education Centre aims to increaes awareness of the types of birds that live in the marshes by using multi-media presentations for families and schools.It will be the main building of my design, which gradually flows down the hill slope where it creates a more quiet and individual viewing ports. It will be a jourey walking through the building/landscape and to experience the wild life nature.

Unit 3 Project 2: This project focuses on the environment issues. Although major investment in sewage treatment in London improved dissolved oxygen levels and allowed fish to return to the River Thames, fish and other wildlives are still at risk due to the river pollution.

My project is to increase the oxygen level at the polluted area by collecting the oxygen produced from the plant photosynthesis and pump them into the river constantly.

The floating structure of my “oxgenation green� also bring people close to the river, and give them more opportunities to appreciate the nature and care aobut the environment.

Li Le Oxgenation Green

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Unit 3

Anna Moldavsky

Intermediate Natures

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Project 2 – the Fluvial Prototype – attempts to connect the experiences of two parallel flows in the urban environment along the river Thames: the street and the river.

Attaching to the river bank, it provides fluvial experiences not usually noticed by city dwellers, working within a perspective which focuses on three notions unique to this generic environment. It then transforms the river bank into a new type of street, marked by human scale movement, speed and spaces.

Project 3 – Intermediate Natures – studies the way we explore and interact with the natural environment.

In the intermediate landscape of the Isle of Sheppey marshland,

where boundaries between water, earth and sky are constantly redefined, opportunities for experiencing a unique moment in nature are countless. The project allows for an in-depth exploration of the environment, providing spaces for orientation and enhancing familiarity with the site. Each subsequent step closer to nature is expressed in the built elements, which adapt their qualities of light, enclosure, shadow and form to tell a story of how they are used by different people, in different weather and site conditions.

The site is approached as a curious atmosphere, to be investigated but not interfered with.

Unit 3

Neel Patel MEng In recent times Sheppey has been perceived as an isle suffering from deprivation, resulting in a distorted perception which diminishes any interest towards the island. My project looks into changing this perception by resurrecting the historical importance of Sheppey as the ‘Birth Place of British Aviation’.

The programme of the building is to serve as an aviation educational hub with a working airfield where the building becomes a landmark for not only Sheppey but British aviation.

Changing Perception; from Deprivation to Aviation

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Unit 3

“As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.” –A. C. Benson

Judith Poole Transient Traveller

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Through investigation of the boundary that creates transitional space I have sought to create a layered architecture which both creates and blurs the concept of the edge.

The Isle of Sheppey is a community on the edge, separated from the mainland by a tidal swale. Minster Abbey has become a place of pilgrimage as pilgrims stop-off on their way to Canterbury Cathedral in order to discover the layered cultural and religious history of the Island. Pilgrims on a journey seeking separation will experience the transient landscape of Sheppey.

This connection with the changing natural cycles, through travel, will heighten awareness of the rhythm of day and night, moon and tide, weather and seasons. The retreat centre for a small community of travellers will create opportunities for rest and meditation while the individual connects with the isolation and solitude of the Sheppey Marshes.

Sharanjit Rehill negative about this part of Sheppey and unaware of the changing landscape. This ‘forgotten’ part of Sheppey has many hidden beauties that would be inspirational for artists and art goers. Local people can rediscover this forgotten part of the island and all its natural beauties. Clear views of the horizon allow artists to paint changing weather conditions affecting the landscape.

An Artists PeregrinaUnit 3

The North of Sheppey has a rich creative history of appraising the landscape and drawing upon the changing features of Sheppey.

Artists arrive to record the interaction between the land and water.

Joseph Turner and William Wyllie painted ‘objects’ in the water and were inspired by the connecting interface of the sky and landscape.

The Marshes remain undiscovered and unrecorded. Local people are

tion

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Unit 3

Richard Round-Turner Working Wetlands

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The aim of this project is to promote education and understanding of wetland areas. Emphasis is placed on understanding the fundamental connection between water and the wetland environment. Further investigating this carefully maintained balancing of water level by which the marshes depend, the same concept is echoed in the spaces provided for the committees responsible in maintaining this rare

habitat. The scheme works in balancing the relationships between local and global environmental bodies to promote the preservation of the landscape.

Unit 3

Sophie Smedley Composition Landscape

The Fluvial Prototype aims to bring order to the composition of elements within the transitional zone through appreciation of textures and landscape weighting.

TRANSITION – noun, 1. the process of changing from one state or condition to another, 2. a period of such change. – derivatives: transitional adj SPACE – noun, 1. unoccupied ground or area, 2. an unoccupied area, 3. the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move. – verb, 1. position (two or more items) at a distance from one another.

The prototype enhances lengthened visual connections in three directions to guide the user through the Transitional Landscape; from enclosed land to voided river. An understanding of the elements surrounding this boundary can now be explored. Landscape experience is developed from a new perspective which was previously inaccessible to the observer.

Composition of the landscape is explained further in Project 3. Initial theories are applied to a featureless landscape to create a spatial narrative. The intervention allows people to appreciate the heritage and value which had been lost in the vista amongst the vast openness of space.

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Andrew Tindale

Unit 3

Salvage Consolidation

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The natural relationship between land and water is one of conflict.

The upper edges of the River Medway area are under constant pressure from the action of the river’s continuous and peak seasonal flow. This transient region provides the theme for my final project.

SALVAGE – Strategic extraction of transported sediment from the river provides a range of materials to work with. The building mechanically digests this extracted material while creating a legacy as flood defences are improved and new land

is created. Recycled glass is also collected over a greater area and transported to site.

CONSOLIDATION - Silica sand, originating from the upper Medway sandstone regions is combined with the recycled glass, melted and extruded to form glass fibres. The resultant fibreglass is then used to make and maintain boats along the Medway.

These ideas of constant movement and change form the basis of the design. As a result, space is created and manipulated by varying movement patterns and speeds.

Unit 3

The INTERSTITIAL OBSERVATORY occupies and explores the thickened layer between the coherent and comprehensible ground and the unknown and dynamic territories below. The prototype is concerned with nodal points in the layered subterranean water networks; these points form the strategic network of observatory sites.

Each observatory is a monitoring system for three water systems [mains, storm and tidal], and the external structure of the building continuously adjusts to represent the below grade conditions. Three ‘black box’ installations allow users to interact with water harvested from the subterranean systems; a service tower acts as the technical heart of the prototype.

The WITHDRAWAL CO-OPERATIVE plugs into the blasted landscape of Sheppey, a flexible and adaptive retreat for a light-obsessed group of photographers suffering from SAD. Like the inhabitants and site, the building shifts programmatically and physically throughout the seasons. A core of sunken trenches and sheared trays form an ambiguous landscape [lands in lands] which accommodates the photographers in individual dark/ bed rooms. Short winter days are spent building analogue photographic equipment and archiving work, living in almost total isolation.

In summer, a series of lightweight exhibition spaces and workshops emerge from the landscape and shift across the site, opening up the building to visitors and spilling the photographers into the island.

Marcus Todd Withdrawal Co-operative

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Unit 3

Chao Wei Transient Tectonic WATER

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The main theme of my project this year is the origin of life – water I decided to discover to relationship between water and human being.

Project 2: a prototype to let people get close to the river thames surface. A water pavilion was designed which floating by the river bank created the activities and bring people closer to the water. It is also have water filtration system underneath, giving an opportunity to drink the water from the river even shower.

Also let people to observe the slow

sand filtration process in the pavilion to get understand the water.

Project 3: I bring this approach of investigation to a larger scale. The programme of this project is hydrotherapy centre, using fresh and salt water which collected from the site to clean and heal the body. Essentially it’s a place to reveal the quality of water and make it functional in both emotional and physical ways.

In the centre people can feel the relationship with water and nature in the most intimate way.

structure and let it become a symbol to the site. Also make it showing these different landscape characters. In small scale, my projects it’s about the connection between the nature landscape and abandon human structures. With re-life the abandon structures to celebrating the relationship between them. In large scale, with the idea of circle navigation to achieve the journey alone the coast line of sheppey, reprogramming the coast line both in historical and nature way. This theme connected these five different objects to achieve the circle of the coats line. It’s marking the coast landscape of sheppey to encourage people to get in and observing the landscape from the water.

Xu Xu Transient tectonics Circle navigation

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Unit 3

Circle navigation From project one and two, my basic idea is showing the relationship between the human structure and nature landscape. Try to Observing the object which is working on the liquid landscape. Project one is more focus on the object itself, with the strong color of British Red. Project two is more about an observation of the shipwreck under river Thames.

In this project, I divided the whole coast line of island into five different areas with different geological characters. How is the human abandon structure going to affect on the nature landscape? Or it’s already become part of the landscape? I try to renew parts of the abandon

Unit 3

Zhijie Yin The site enjoys beautiful surrounding environment, the large area of cliff and the endless blue of the ocean and sky. People often come to sheppey and enjoy the everchanging environments that nature can provide. My intent is to create a link that connects the motion of human activities with the motion of nature. To be specific, the program encourages a serious of human activities and interactions on the site.

Erosion

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THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE Chetwood Architects

The Butterfly House takes a 1930s dwelling and transforms it into an architectural sculpture inspired by the lifecycle of the butterfly. It is an experiment in zoomorphic design, and remodels a family home tracing each change from the larval stage (represented by the bridge leading to the house), to the chrysalis (captured by the staircase), through the enclosed areas of the house and conservatory to the final winged insect (as represented by external canopies over a paved garden space).

Entry to the property is via a steel bridge with curved balustrades that hint at the segmented body of a caterpillar. The interior of the house is ‘alive’ with colour and a web of fibres, wires and cables, cocooning inhabitants. The retractable winged canopies spread as sun shades over the conservatory, overlooking the garden.

Located on the Surrey/Sussex border, the design process took two years to evolve and explores the notion of fusing art and architecture.

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Chetwoods Architects Chetwoods was founded in 1988 by Laurie Chetwood and now employs over 75 architects across three offices in London, Leeds and Birmingham. We are now places in the top twenty architects in the country The practice has developed a broad portfolio of work, which is balanced between commercial and bespoke projects. We specialise in sustainable design, incorporating all sustainable principles – economic, social and environmental. We are a practice founded on innovation but projects are deliverable. Our Built portfolio exceeds £2bn

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Good architecture comes from the head and the heart. The emotional satisfaction of the client is as important as satisfying their practical needs. It is also necessary to win the hearts and minds of the people who will live and work in and around a building. In doing so, one develops a building which will be enjoyed by its occupants and by the people who pass it every day. In turn, an enjoyable building is a valuable building for all.

YEAR THREE_UNIT FOUR

Unit 4

DANCING SHADOWS – ESSENTIAL SPACES

The unit’s focus has been on the duality between imagination and reality. Through a pluralist approach, (allowing individual thought and direction), the unit seeks to give students confidence to develop and create their own architectural vocabulary and not to glibly follow or make ‘set–piece architecture’. “The stuff of angels” as Ted Cullinan called it.

The aim is to support original work of high quality.

Starting with texts on the city, lines of enquiries are established which are then used to investigate the urban condition.

The texts are important, as students are encouraged constantly to work with narratives, which are developed through the year into poetic tectonics. These narratives give a dimension of time and therefore journey to the design process and become the first subjects for sectional drawings. Using the techniques of making, drawing and video work, overt and hidden potentials are sought and revealed. The unit begins by drawing, designing and making prototypes to represent ideas and then to place these within a long sectional drawing of the line of enquiry thereby enhancing moments or memories along it. “...I spend a lot of time walking around the city... ..The initial concept for a project often emerges during a walk.”

Francis Alÿs, Mexico City 1993.

The second phase of the year takes these enquiries physically into the city where interventions are studied and designed to enhance potentials. These interventions are placed at key thresholds positions on individual journeys within the city. These journeys both actual and metaphorical become increasingly important as the project work develops and allows it to be investigated through the long sectional study. In this second phase this journey was given the context of the city of Bristol. The interests and lines of investigation and research started in phase 1 were placed into this real context and given new energy and relevance.

In the third phase individual ‘hybrid’ briefs are developed from the earlier work; the Urban Crofter, the Alley-gater and the Fisherman’s Friend being examples. By exploring this city’s social and physical contexts each student has made and placed building projects within individual locations, which address particular and peculiar values. The city wide journey ends within the building at a specific place, moment or time. The long sectional drawing was continued and has played a major role not only as an important means of investigating and testing the project but eventually as a means of representing it: the section becoming the context for the building project. The making of prototypes out of real stuff continued as a key part of investigation and presentation. The unit has tried to conceive and explore work that is not only rigorous in its formation and outcomes but remains firmly rooted in the poetic.

Unit Leaders - David Short + Amanda Harmer Studio Tutors - Hugh Avison + Tim Robinson + Naila Yussuf Visiting Critics - Mike Russum + Rob Adamski + Tughela Gino + Matt Strong Technical Tutoring – Structural Advice - Kevin Williams + Sarah Fawcus (Price & Myers) Environmental Advice - Peter Rutherford + Robin Wilson (SBE University of Nottingham) City Texts - Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino + Paris Peasant – Louis Aragon + Species of Spaces and Other Pieces – Georges Perec Field Study Trip - This year Unit 4 visited Amsterdam Utrecht and Rotterdam 137

Unit 4

Ellie Atherton

The Last Picture House

The essence of my proposal is to recreate the atmosphere and social conditions present in “the last Picture House.� In doing so the building would aim to reinvigorate the art of early cinematography to a modern audience and highlight the plight of existing film stocks.

Another central program within the scheme is restoration (renovating decaying films and preserving period costumes from the movies of the silent era.) This would serve to reflect on the memories of the past, as well as creating anticipation for

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the evolution of creative prowess from historical foundations.

Public involvement in this process, through visual links, tactile sensations and the progressive movement through the space, would create an emotive fusion between these two worlds: the existing and the forgotten.

The Last Picture House as such would be a reflection on not only the characters of the past, but of the conditions present in both society and the city of Bristol today.

The St Paul’s Speak-

Unit 4

easy

Thomas Bishop Spaces speak to us, but are we truly listening?

The focus on intellectualism, and abstract thought has shifted the emphasis of our experiences to one led by the eye, and all its distancing characteristics.

“Reliance on the sense of sight itself implies exteriority, where sound would embody an experience of interiority. Our eye straining to reach, where our ear would receive. “ -J.Pallasmaa The problem with the priorisation of sight in our experience is that it has accelerated the disappearance of a physical, sensual and embodied essence in our cities, our architecture and in our interactions. Vision and aesthetics have become the sole means of assessing value, and our cities have suffered as a result.

The St Paul’s Speakeasy addresses these problems, ones that have lead to society’s retreat from interaction in the city, by filling the acoustic void with an intimate intervention that deals actively with the soundscape of life.

The intervention therein endeavours to provide a social nexus and focus for music and creativity within a deprived and socially disparate area of Bristol.

Aiming to extend the opportunity for society to brush against one another; and experience the levels of conversation, whispering and intimacy that have become such a rarity within our cities today.

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Unit 4

Owen Devine

Located on the cliffs of Avon Gorge, this structure will combine manmade and natural environments, recreation and production, with land and sea. It challenges common cultural perceptions, whilst rebuilding succesful concepts from the past. By applying subtle architectural illusions and technical detailing, a synergetic spa is formed.

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Unit 4

Ramy Elmasry The project deals seeing the unseen. As the rate of technology increases we constantly finding that information is brought to us in an instant. When traveling through cities, the space between A (starting point) and B (end point) is lost in a blur as the need to get to B narrows the field of vision. Therefore the details and beauty of the city is lost to its inhabitants. Using a more traditional method of transport, (the hot air balloon), which is slower and provides a new perspective on the city in the hope of enriching the experience of the city of Bristol for its inhabitants.

Re-launched

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Unit 4

Nichola Finch Bristol’s dominating, monumental façade falsely allows itself to define preconceptions of the city.

Often neglected, it is the everyday spaces in the shadow of the monumental which capture and display the true essence of the city. Building up scars and marks of human occupation over time, these everyday spaces host the interactions and experiences of everyday life; capturing embedded memories and defined by boundaries other than the physical. Just as Bristol’s Stokes Croft has found itself neglected by the city, so has the once thriving River Avon. The city’s Crofts escape the order and control of society whilst their unregulated disorder is embraced by its inhabitants.

The tidal ‘new cut’ of the River Avon is the scar in the landscape where the Crofter dwells. The fragile threshold between the order and disorder of the regulated harbour and the unruly river is where he strives to exist. Embracing the water is the only way to survive. He must capture its scars and marks, recording the tide as it conceals and reveals his evolving structural frame allowing him access to his Croft. Drying silt, capturing the water and crofting the land allows a market exchange accessible by both land and by water to exist.

These interactions reintroduce the public to their river and facilitate the exchanges of everyday life. Through the Croft, monumental preconceptions give way to the true essence of the city and its experiences.

Bristol’s Croft

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Unit 4 I’m sorry to this city’s lovers, I just like to find a bit of wonderland in the places I love.

Heinz Swartz. Born; Christmas day 1984. Age; 24. Location; 20 Christmas Steps.

This project carries preconceptions of Bristol to the city itself through the form of 5 characters and the essence of their personalities disguised in an old sweet tin; the sea, the leather, the tobacco, the theatre programme and the peach scent.

The contents of the tin spill in a harbour side alleyway and manifest to form The Fisherman’s Friend. The intertwine of steam and tobacco reveal Bristol’s secrets, through the legality of smoking on stage where the composition of ‘stages’ frame pockets which allow one to

be spied upon. Timed entrance causes steamers to capture the early eastern light and smokers the late western and affords the contrast to peep, listen and trace over each other to ensnare conversation whilst the sun is at its highest in the sky.

And when the light keeper had told his story, the seamen would tell theirs. The glowing steam flows up and out of the alley assisting the fisherman as their lighthouse. They enter below deck to prepare their capture which are hooked, peach wood smoked and wound over a period to the ascent where by day are served to steamers after steam and smokers before smoke.

Amelia Hankin The Fisherman’s Friend

A point of perception for the visitor. A reaffirmation for the resident.

Bristol owes its status to the sea.

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Unit 4

Rebecca Harrison “Faith comes forth from the crucible of doubt� Dostoyevsky From an original investigation into the cyclical nature of doubt and faith, and how the process of doubting can make faith stronger, i have placed a cyclical wax production process into bristol, which brings spirituality back to a ruined church. The building, through its architecture and its public interaction, grows soya beans, crushes the beans to extract oil, and hydrogenates the oil to make wax. The wax feeds into a continuous flame wall creating a meditation space within the church.

Fragile Illumination

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Unit 4 Underneath the streets of Bristol lies the city’s lifeblood of centuries past. The River Frome, constrained in a series of lifeless culverts was the reason the settlement developed into the eminent town it became. It defined the town, where the city walls were placed, the positioning of the castle, where the centre was.

This project aims to rediscover the forgotten river through a conscious articulation of Bristol’s history, but also a sympathetic expression of the Frome’s modern-day context.

The city’s churches survive as documentation of medieval Bristol, providing a vehicle to expose the Frome to the people of Bristol once more.

The building combines the functions of bathhouse and monastery.

By studying the rituals and particulars of medieval bathing, the project aims to provide bathers with an experience informed by the routine of monks, inspired by the way they would have undertaken the same activities. The proximity of St. John’s Church to the River, further to a network of underground water conduits supplying preheated water to the site, allow for the building to operate fully in both capacities.

The monks are responsible for the running of the bathhouse, however, core to the narrative of the design is the idea that only evidence of the monks existence is seen - whilst people can hear creaking floorboards above and see silhouettes through veils, the monks operate stealthily without ever revealing themselves.

Nick Haynes Bristol’s Forgotten River - A Rediscovery

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Jethwa Shamir Unit 4

Bristol Salus Per Aquae

Bristol Salus Per Aquae (Health Through Water) is a therapeutic spa dedicated to the well being of individuals. It provides a sequence of spaces that form a journey to encourage a greater sense of relaxation. The occupant will be engaged in the act of cleansing and bodily treatment in order to completely remove from the thought of everyday and encourage a connection with their body within the spaces they encounter. The intention of the design is to allow thoughts of the individual to be seduced and entertained by carefully revealing and concealing space or activity. Similarly, I want to obstruct and reveal certain views out into the environment and setting in order to attain a greater focus upon their experience and gain a sense of inwardness. The design will entail inside-outside elements to greater the experience of an inward and outward focus of the body in space. The journey through the building will be of constant movement and stillness allowing the bather to gain relaxation through action, constantly awakening their senses. Once they are aware of their body in space, they will have complete control of their limbs and can relax each muscle at time, finding an inner level of strength that they can take back with them.

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Unit 4 The building is sitting at the Avon Gorge with spectacular views of Bristol. The aim of the building is to regenerate the lost space at the gorge which is rooted in the history of the landscape and its people since 15th century.

Hence, to attract people, a therapy centre is designed. The character of the spaces is determined by the natural light which is filtered into these spaces. Apart from people, the building also inhabits by living

organisms that grow in the dark which is fungi. Hence, no direct light is required for growing chambers.

A specific fungi which is poisonous is cultivated and harvested. This poisonous mushroom that has medicinal properties will be processed into therapeutic products which later can be used for treatment chambers.

Nuur Zaffan Khalid Regeneration Of Lost Space

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Unit 4

Lam Terence Bristol Reading Archive

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Interacting with books is something we do and we do this through different means and media.

The Bristol Reading Archive explores this through reading about the history of Bristol, in the course of diverse ways of reading and the materiality. The Archive identifies three types of reading: Elementary (basic), Inspectional (skim) and Analytical (detailing). These reading forms correspond to different reading mediums and these are housed within the archive. These conditions can be controlled and defined by lighting and materiality.

Elementary spaces deals with the Headlines through Newspapers about the city, showing key points.

Inspectional spaces are the link between two spaces and people ‘skim’ through it; the area will be used for referencing only. Finally, the Analytical spaces allow in-depth studying of the Bristol’s history through intense enclosed spaces.

As the building is explored more and more, the individuals will learn more about Bristol in many different approaches opening up skills and experiences never discovered.

Unit 4 Bristol has begun an initiative to close down the alleyways that are inherent to its character and the workings of the city potentially evicting and changing the subversive activity that is drawn to them. The project shows the Alley Gater’s domain as he acts to amplify the character of the alleyways and retain the fictional nature of the spaces.

The alleyway became a focus of the investigation because of the static permanence of the macro scale and the delicate intricacy and temporality on the micro scale as a constantly transforming space.

The Alley Gaters’ performance of fragile moments is about tension as a result of fragility of spatial condition. Fragile space therefore exists as a tension between permanence and temporality and is strongest on the point of change further amplified by the contrast between the changing conditions.

Rebecca Lee The Alley Gaters’ Performance of Fragile Moments

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Unit 4

William Main Bristol Temple Market

Initial investigations set about uncovering the unique set of rhythms to which each city ticks. Project 2 discovered that the core rhythm to which Bristol once beat no longer exists - the introduction of a nationalised rail network brought about the standardised Greenwich Mean Time; thus eradicating the centuries-old Bristol Time. In recognition of this, the Corn Exchange in the city has two minute hands on its clockface – Bristol’s minute hand offset by the 10 minutes which separate the two timeframes.

Since then, the city lost its 14th platform at Temple Meads railway station in addition to several local railway routes in the 1960’s Beeching Axe. This project aims to reintroduce the lost notion of Bristol Time by establishing a railway service which operates solely on this timeframe.

This service would reconnect the city with the numerous market towns which remain severed from their old source of sustenance, arriving at the dedicated market platform 14 in the heart of the station.

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Unit 4 Memory exists both personally and collectively. It is through the creation, storage and recollection of memory that a city grows and can define its identity through the complex knitting of past and present. Such an understanding of the city can be revealed through a discovery of the objects that are lost and discarded within the city’s life.

The exploration of the positive and negative topography of the city, on a micro and macro scale, has resulted in the discovery of the void within the city. This void stores the memory and is defined by the event in which the memory is created; it is through this process that the memory manifests, as controlled

and informed by the solid (the city), and becomes part of the city’s past and character.

A reflection upon the nature of these objects can ignite an understanding of the important role memory plays in all our lives. ‘The Bristol Memory Depository’ collects, records, stores and reconfigures these objects; seeking to connect the community with memories that have been hidden or forgotten.

Through the process of reconfiguring the objects, one can engage with the inherent nature of memory and its capacity to evolve, skew and distort over time.

Marc MathiasWilliams The Bristol Memory Depository

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Unit 4

Initial work looked at the concept of rhythms within an urban context.

As Stein Eiler Rasmussen stated in “Experiencing architecture,” every city has its own unique and defining rhythm. It was determined that Bristol’s governing beat was of an ‘Aqueous’ nature; as the focus of modern and historic activity lay along the River Avon. The extreme tidal range in this body of water once controlled and hindered man; however the creation of a “floating harbour” tamed the once roaring beast.

Dale Muscroft The Avon Smokery

The project aims to reconnect Bristol to its old ‘Aqueous Rhythm’ by working with different beats and tempos. The everyday cycle of the tides controls the daily use of the building, whilst migratory patterns of the European Eel determine when it transforms into a smokery and restaurant. The fragility of the species is an important factor in the function of the building, as eels will only be captured if stocks are sufficient enough not to harm their population.

Located next to Howard Lock at Cumberland Basin, the structure stands in the threshold between

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the unpredictable tidal river and the regulated floating harbour. It draws in Bristol’s residents by providing a bridging point between the city centre and the tree-lined cliffs of Avon Gorge.

Paul Ornsby The Bristol EavesUnit 4

Dropper Society

Our sonic environment shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet we rarely pay it the attention it is due, not giving ourselves the time to consciously listen to our surroundings.

The cities identity is intrinsically linked to what can be heard in its streets, squares and parks. An overheard conversation in a dying dialect, a peal of bells, a bicycle tyre on a cobbled street, a fracas between two swans, silence.

The eavesdropper is the secret listener of city life and within the chambers of the eavesdroppers society the sounds of the city resonate. Working alongside Bristol’s musicians a community of sound enthusiasts is created.

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Nevber Ozturk Unit 4

Bristol Bricolage

Bricolage is his way of life and always has been. A romantic, the lock keeper sees the poetry in everything at hand, be it discarded materials or discarded words. He makes it his life’s ambition to put the fragments of Bristol back together again as though they were always meant to be that way. Through his work, citizens realise the true nature of their ways by identifying themselves in the assembled writings. A permanent resident of the lock chamber, the lock keeper is the one who holds the ‘key’ to the gates and boaters who wish to pass through must make themsleves known to him prior to their arrival . Each day, the lock keeper ascends and descends his staircase to collect and assemble the written words deposited in the lock chamber. A collective diary is produced each day, within the heights of his observatory and its words can be heard for miles around as the air carries them away from the bricoleur’s recital stage. The texts and recital recordings are archived in a space accessible to all who wish to learn more about Bristol and, in this way, themselves.

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Unit 4 ‘An initial investigation into the disparity between the way in which the architect and the public perceive the spatial qualities of the metropolis led to a proposal for an architecture which would allow theories about how the city manipulates our journey through it to be tested, quantified and ultimately published as a concluding chapter to Walter Benjamin’s incomplete Arcades Project.

Thus, an Arcade (for a century the spiritual home of Benjamin’s Flâneur) was proposed in Bristol.

The building occupies an established pedestrian route into the city centre, providing the perfect location for the inquisitive Flâneur to

observe and manipulate the passage of people on their everyday journeys in the city; his realm is a delicately veiled one which entwines the public space of the arcade. The two territories frequently punctuate each other visually and acoustically - observe with the same dedication as the Flâneur and you will find him peering through louvres, collecting the dust from your shoes or examining the fingerprints you left on a railing.

Nevber Ozturk The Bristol Arcades Project

‘For the perfect Flâneur it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude...to be at the centre of the world and yet to remain hidden from it.’

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Unit 4

Craig Smith Inspired by ‘Lyrical Ballads’, a collection of poems by William Wordsworth published in the city of Bristol in 1798, my project provides a retreat for a poet who writes about a lost love. The building sits in the river Avon, on the edge of Bristol away from the chaos of the city. Parts of the building are submerged in water, whilst others are raised in the air taking advantage of views over tree tops and along the river. The fragility and sadness experienced by the poet is expressed through both structure, and materiality. There is a place underwater where the public can find books…

There is a place above the tree tops where the public can read… There is a place for the poet and the public to engage through the reciting of poems... There is a place for the poet to write, high above the city, away from everything, and everyone…

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Unit 4

Jonathan Toon Portland Sq. Printworks

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Mark Wade-Wright Unit 4

Clean Up, Banksy

Graffiti is illegal, unless it is done by Banksy.

There are three forms of graffiti, the illegal, the legal, and art. We first have proof of illegal graffiti being performed in Roman times, legal graffiti has recently come about through reverse-graffiti and is only possible due to the car pollution we create today, and Banksy has created the third by bringing together two worlds, the illegal world of graffiti and the legal world of art.

The various forms of graffiti have inspired my design of an urban park on a major roundabout in the

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centre of Bristol which purifies the surrounding polluted air, collecting the dirt and using it as a pigment for paint. Internal floating alleyways represent Banksy’s escape routes as he ran from the authorities, and threshold moments occur when these alleyways physically touch the supporting walls representing legal society, creating spaces for various Banksy galleries, since holding samples of graffiti in one building would ignore its nature.

Graffiti is then given greater exposure to the public with various billboards placed throughout the site which advertises the graffiti/art performed within

Unit 4

Katie Woolston The Journey Of An Abused Woman

Victims of domestic abuse do not feel safe in their own homes and are subjected to physical, emotional, sexual and financial control. These women require a place where they can find safety and a sense of belonging, obtain mental and physical assistance and receive guidance on how to regain their lives and reenter the city.

Their refuge will be situated in the backstage of a new theatre in Bristol, inhabiting the areas where the public is denied access. The women’s journey to recovery will incorporate the theatrical themes of costume, role play and performance to create a sense of escapism and build confidence, preparing them for their re-entry to the public realm. This will be juxtaposed with an intense sense of privacy as the women are provided with individual “dressing rooms” suspended high over the city with the comforting details of a domestic environment.

Their journey will culminate in a performance to the public on the theatre’s stage, symbolising their readiness to leave the refuge and return to their lives in the city

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Carolina Young The Bristol ‘mass’: Unit 4

A masquerade ritual

The Bristol ‘mass’: a masquerade ritual, takes the line of enquiry and the abstract themes tested and developed in the first two projects, and places these ideas into a more relevant context in the city.

The study began with the aim of bringing the citizens of Bristol together to explore four connections and understand themselves as a ‘multitude/mass’ rather than as zoned and classified individuals, with the motivation of abolishing any racial segregation and differences which society suffers.

The act of registering one’s “existence” within society can be seen as a ritual of individualization, yet when referring to one another as a ‘mass’, the existence of singularities need to be present in order to compose the ‘multiple’. Therefore, the idea of a Registering Office considering births, marriages, deaths, and immigration rituals is proposed. Through the performance of each specific ‘ritual’, the citizen gives up his state of pure individuality to become a ‘mass’.

The proposed Registering Office acts as an ‘anti-statistic’ building.

Every ritual is performed with a different mask, each having a different configuration and materiality. These masks become the archive, where an extensive collection of them is kept at the Registering Office and exhibited to the city of Bristol.

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Unit 4

In-b2-in spaces, explores how the journey within the building becomes the tectonic manifestation of what it realy means for a person to deal with emotional pain after a personal loss, especially that of the death of a loved one.

The engagment with the silk making process provides the appropreate framework to organise the building as a transition of spaces to respond to the user’s stages of grief.

Based on the Kubler-Ross model the 5 stages of grief are DenialAnger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance.

The program of the building proposes the vertical organisation of the spaces. The structure is split into 5 levels responding to the changing heights of the existing landscape at the site, the castle park in Bristol.

From dark to light, from enclosure to openes, from public to private, the users engage with the spaces according to their emotional state.

The users come together to an intemediate public tea room that is accesible to the general puplic from the park. Access roots within the building are separated to ensure a distinctive threshold between the ‘outside’ world and the users privacy.

In-b2-in spaces is more of an examination of how materiality and light define spatial qualities to respond to those emotional states of the user dealing with loss.

Athos Alexandros Zodiatis In-b2-In spaces

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BLUEPRINT Vicky Richardson, editor of Blueprint, gave a talk to Tongue and Groove in October 2008.

Here Paul Kelsall put a few questions to her about architecture and the media.

PK: What role do you think architecture and design magazines have in architectural education?

VR: The obvious answer is that they are a source of information about new work and ideas. But there are dozens of magazines out there, and each does a slightly different thing. Blueprint covers a broad range of design disciplines and we’re more interested in the ideas, rather than the technical or professional aspects of architecture. We see our role as making connections between design and society, history and culture. We’re also interested in the process of getting from the initial idea to the finished thing, and all the challenges along the way. I think that makes it particularly relevant for students and teachers of architecture.

PK: What’s the difference between architecture blogs and magazines?

VR: Blogs are usually quite personal and written by one person. Their strength is their individual character and quirkiness. Blueprint’s been going 25 years and in some ways it represents the collective identity of all the people who have ever worked on it. As an editor you have to give it a particular voice, while still representing a range of different opinions.

Print media is seen by some people as ‘out of the ark’. We might not be able to respond to events in print as quickly as we can on our website, but the time it takes to produce, and the various stages involving editing, subbing, designing and proofing, often make make the writing and imagery stronger.

PK: What do you think is the perception of the architectural profession in the wider media?

VR: Prince Charles seemed to capture the mood recently when he gave a lecture at the RIBA and said that the public feels like it’s part of an ongoing experiment being carried out by architects. The experiment he was talking about was Modernism. I think he was wrong to say that architects still talk about Modernism, but perhaps it is true that architects like to experiment – and that’s surely the best thing about them.

In a way, architects (the good ones, anyway) will always make themselves unpopular because they are driven to try out new ideas (even at the risk of failing) in order to improve on what we currently have. In that sense they have to be like artists. On the other hand they have to listen carefully to, and interpret the needs and desires of building users, even if they often have to challenge the aspirations of the brief.

PK: What plans do you have for rest of the year?

VR: We’re having an exhibition of drawings made for our back page, Paper City, at the Royal Academy (31 July to October 2009). With Paper City we ask creative people of all sorts to draw their ideas about the city. The brief is completely open: the drawing can be a distopian vision of the future or one specific idea for a particular city.

We’ll also be holding a Designers’ Question Time as part of the London Design Festival in September, at the V&A. PK: If Blueprint were an ice cream flavour which would they be and why?!

VR: I guess it would be a combination of coffee (for stimulation); sharp-tasting blueberry (to wake up your taste buds); and chunks of chocolate (to make you smile).

Vicky Richardson Editor BLUEPRINT Progressive Media Publishing 91 Charterhouse Street London EC1M 6HR Blueprint online: www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk

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March 2009 £4.75

PAPER CITY STEVEN APPLEBY

• MARCH 2009 • £4.75

THE ADAPTABLE HOUSE SCOTSWOOD EXPO COMPETITION RESULTS

Steven Appleby has created cartoon strips for numerous newspapers such as The Times, Die Zeit and The Observer. A prolific artist, his other works include the animated television series, Captain Star; the musical play Crocs In Frocks; more than 20 books, and his autobiographical comedy, Steven Appleby’s Normal Life for BBC Radio 4. Appleby illustrated for Blueprint in the 1980s, but this month he brings his astute eye to the subject of cities for the first time, observing that we all have different experiences of the same places. Appleby is now working on a new illustrated book; tackling a novel, and collaborating with the Tiny Elephants production company on a series of animated films based on his cartoon strip, Small Birds Singing. www.stevenappleby.com BLUEPRINT MARCH 2009

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LONDON AND ROME WORKS IN PROGRESS

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ZAHA HADID CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN RIVINGTON STREET STUDIO IAIN SINCLAIR

• FRANK KUNERT • PATRICK COLLINS AND LAURIE CHETWOOD • PEARSON LLOYD • SIMON COSTIN • PHYLLIS LAMBERT • ANTHONY BROWELL • ANDRE SCHMIDT • DAVID CHIPPERFIELD • ALESSANDRO MENDINI

• ZAHA HADID • DECQ CORNETTE • KING ROSELLI • IAN+ • MA0 • STALKER LAB • CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN • IAIN SINCLAIR • LAURA OLDFIELD FORD • RIVINGTON STREET STUDIO • ARIK LEVY

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THE IMAGE OF ARCHITECTURE

PINHOLE PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTHONY BROWELL ANDRE SCHMIDT’S INFLATABLE TV TOWER PHYLLIS LAMBERT ON COLLECTING ARCHITECTURE PLUS: SIMON COSTIN, DAVID CHIPPERFIELD AND ALESSANDRO MENDINI

Blueprint For more than 25 years, Blueprint has been the leading magazine for architecture and design. Published monthly, it is lovingly produced in large format on the best quality paper, with photography and illustration of the highest standard. Its long-standing appeal is also due to the finest criticism, news and feature writing on design and architecture, directed at professionals and non-professionals, alike. The magazine takes a parallel approach to the different design disciplines, reflecting a belief that fashion, product, furniture and architectural design can share ideas. As editor Vicky Richardson says: Blueprint aims to use the subject of design to reveal the workings of society. The magazine is about the important role that design and architecture can play in shaping the world.

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Unit 5

YEAR THREE_UNIT FIVE LATERAL INSTITUTIONS

“We have had enough of the extraordinary, what is needed is the self-evident.”

Sigurd Lewerentz ethos (mentality) The work of Unit 5 conjures up renewed academic interest in the irreducible elements of architecture – room, mass, surface, material, type, situation and site. We avoid converting architecture into media with ‘greater living presence’ – art, language, philosophy, reified concept or abstract narrative. The current flight from the medium of architecture is too easy and weakens our understanding of how ‘buildings’ speak through less-animate materials. Ordinary fabric is not viewed as deficient or a drag on communication, but as an opportunity for dim materials and flattened figures to utter a slower, less explicit language; a murmuring architectural parlante; a silent background witness to everyday life that only occasionally reaches directly into the foreground. We are more interested in the silvering found on the back of the mirror than the spectacle found on the front.

Our rooms ‘move’ up and down, side to side, back and forth in order to laterally enrich public programmes. The strict hierarchy of interiority and exteriority is challenged but without destroying the identity and integrity of ‘room’ (we do not subscribe to the total dissipation of architecture into a global field condition, a process once described by F.L. Wright as the “Destruction of the Box”). The interior room is taken as a conventional yet profound ambition - an essential building block of cities and institutions. Like ‘clearings’ in a forest, the ‘block of space’ is actually a void; a primordial emptiness (potentiality) where phenomena express and disclose themselves. Far from a reactionary quaintness in a global condition, interiority is a process of making room for things to happen. They begin with emptiness, places of becoming where the vagueness of the world arrives at precise appearance. As such they end up being “ramified” (Aalto) phenomenal knots. Made by otherness, the intimate interior ‘brings close’ the outside face of the inhuman. Hinting at some greater, unfathomable depth, they embody the slow act of secular revelation.

Despite the conventionality of the room, innovation and change can occur in the midst of its spatial and material constellation. It provides an implied connective tissue spanning and gathering human, inhuman and cosmic action, producing room combinations (quilting/patching/seaming); continuities between room and condition (stitching/extending); and the playful re-characterisation of room through renewed content (dyeing/contamination from without). We generate architecture by rubbing artifacts, scales of op-

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eration, equipmental networks, human and inhuman places, against one another, generating creativity through friction, reaction and reconciliation. Rooms are structured as graduated, de-construable, shared territories in every sense of the word – atmospherically, pragmatically and contextually. Their identity depends on difference. A kind of intenseimmensity, they are simultaneously finite and infinite; complete and incomplete; efficient and inefficient; functional and poetic; formal and metamorphic; actual and potential; sublime and beautiful (picturesque). For this reason rooms were explored at a number of scales, conditions and storylines.

Unit 5

materia (content) ‘Lateralism’ informed our strategic choice of representation, typology, site and programme. Initial studies examined marginal representational strategies such 2½-dimensional sections and swollen relief-collage. The laboratory – an introverted typology - was deconstructed and reassembled as a public room (the classical periagoge or perspectival turn/hinge) in order to facilitate a critical transition between systematic datascape and topography of embodied meaning. The focus of this typology was hydrography, an ‘edge-technology’ designed to translate the flowing, laminar medium of water (a threatening global element) into stable, embodied measure. Sites ranged across a territory bookended at one end by permanent urban institutions (justice, art, religion), with a canal lock and fluctuating river beds at the other.

Our attention then turned to Covehithe, Suffolk, a marginal territory subjected to over eight metres of coastal erosion per annum. Exacerbated by current rises in sea level this is a setting where erroneous erosion rates render ground both precarious and ruinous and put the local 16th Century church of St Andrews at risk of collapse. It was this ruined territory that provided inspiration for new territorial conditions (archipelago, defensive headland, inter-tidal fluctuation, inhabited foundation, underpin and retention) and prompted strategies for creatively-directed strategies of destruction. Rather than ask students to find their own sites, they were required to firstly reconfigure a site, and then build a corresponding programmatic field around the idea of (coastal) archaeology. research scaffold (process) The ‘straight jacket’ of the first concept is replaced by the Aristotelian entelechy, which states the final idea or form is what matters, itself the result of accumulated wisdom. Over the course of eight months a dense (lateral) body of material was built up to form a repertoire, from which coherence and identity was allowed to emerge. Rather than over-design the preliminary narrative for instance, the programmatic performance was orchestrated by careful notation (‘sheet music’) of volumetric, planimetric and sectional developments; a ‘making of rooms’ lasting many months (a poetic plotting of the plan). Architecture emerges from the activated ‘script’, rather than a notation of singular events.

The poetry of architecture exceeds obscurity, singularity and one-person-deep programme; it is about “finding the common ground between things”, to quote Braque. In Greek the word scaffold translates as ‘katabasis’ (that which lies beneath). The briefs issued throughout the year had this status of an ‘underscore’.

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The critique expressed through the Nickelodeon is one of semiautonomy, neither re-affirming the cultural image nor acting as an autonomous object.

The Nickelodeon operates by receiving discarded and retrieved motion picture film. This film is documented, viewed and then either utilised or destroyed. An Archaeologist and a resident film maker work together through this process

which culminates in the exhibition of films to the public.

The Nickelodeon is organised around an inserted street through which the public interact with the institution. The street, displaced from its urban context, reveals the degradation of film through controlled horizons and reactive materials while also acting as a retaining structure, protecting the ruined Covehithe church.

The Nickelodeon acts to extend the transitions between phenomena using the street elevation as a set in which to communicate this to the public.

James Alder

Unit 5

The Nickelodeon is an institution operating within a world where the recurring image dominates.

Built form creates a historicised reflection of modern culture, which paradoxically acts to reinforce that very cultural condition, rather than acting critically against it. This dependency, nihilistic or otherwise, creates an Architecture devoid of meaning.

The Nickelodeon

“Nothing is more common than the mass media technician who, after a hard day at work, goes off to the movies and cries� - Paulo Virno

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Unit 5

Helen Battison The Status of Earth: Pots, Land and Sea

In around fifty years the village of Covehithe situated on the eroding Suffolk coastline will be lost to the sea and forgotten.

The place embodies its dismal future. It has a powerful feeling of melancholy and dislocation; the community is shrinking, the shore is littered with remnants of previous dwelling and the impending doom of the historic church, four hundred metres away from the soft sand and clay cliffs, plays on the mind.

The Institute for the Study of Pottery would breathe life back into Covehithe. Archaeologist and Potter would work together utilising the surrounding ground. They would collect pottery shards from all over East Anglia and distribute newly crafted pots made from Covehithe clay; poignantly affirming mans relationship with the land in a place where land is to be lost to the sea.

The institute would consolidate over time as the landscape diminishes. It would transform from a place of culture to a place for the study of culture, housing and embodying the things that gave Covehithe meaning, allowing it to be remembered. ‘Past, not as a memory or idea but as matter.’ - Earth by Francis Ponge.

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Unit 5 Located on a temporal coastal site, the project aims to preserve St Andrews church, Covehithe, which is threatened by the approaching coastline. Strategically, the intervention makes use of long-shore drift, to preserve land and re-configure the site over a number of decades. Wave-energy generation is built into the fabric of the infrastructure; so that as land is lost, energy is recovered.

The program combines a nostalgic land-based activity (sericulture) with an explorative marine aspect (marine archaeology), at the interface between land and sea. Public exhibition spaces and galleries bring the public into the building, weaving and reconciling the two key

aspects of the program. Exposing the programmatic activities to public interaction and making them accessible, this hybrid-institution takes on a lateral character.

The intervention preserves and reappropriates the existing church buildings and spaces. Elements of the existing fabric are projected into a new realm bellow and at the periphery of the church. Clues to the realm beneath manifest through elements which penetrate the existing fabric. The intervention provides a place to engage with the dualities of the program, and reflect upon the dualities of the site.

To catch a last glimpse “of the land now being lost forever�

Thomas Bennett MEng

Temporal Dualities Marine Archaeology & Sericulture

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Unit 5

Jianhui Chen The Institution of Marine Archaeology

Cove hithe stands high on the cliffs overlooking the North Sea between Lowestoft and Southwold, over the years much of the village has been lost to the sea due to coastal erosion. Marine archaeology is a discipline that study human interaction with the sea, lakes and river.

It studies the past through submerged remains. Thus, I decided to design the institution of marine archaeology to enable the public to get a clearer understanding of the marine archaeology and the past history of the region. The program showcases the process from research to finding, conservation and lastly publishing to the public. It is about a journey from the land to sea or vice versa, sea to land. The main feature of the institution is its museum which houses the U-13 submarine which recovers from the North Sea just outside Lowestoft.

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Unit 5 A marine archaeology lab with a vault, and a chapel with an ossuary are intertwined, confronting a constantly evolving landscape. They share spaces and cross paths clutching the crumbling remians St Andrews Church in their grip.

As the parish graveyard edges closer to the cliffside, remains are exhumed and services are held in the chapel for commitment to the ossuary. A journey of encapsulation leads to a vaulted space that projects the ossuary vertically and creates a connection with the sky.

Hugh Diamond Commitment to the Sea

As the landscape diminishes, thick walls set into deep trenches are excavated by the sea. The architecture exploits this onslaught and crafts a protected environment for the marine archaeologists to work.

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Unit 5

Eleanor Farrant Architectural Salvage Yard

St Andrews_Covehithe_Suffolk: A stout church ruin embedded with fragile land Through the destruction and displacement of the existing matter, the archaeologist redefines the engagement between the human and the material. Salvage becomes a fascade of protection from the encroaching coastline creating a new removed whole.

Relics of Covehithe become a foundation to exhibit architectural salvage of Suffolk.

From the structure exists worlds within worlds that through continu-

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ous vertical connections express the stratification of matter and salvaged artefacts of the space. The materiality of layers exists within the dialogue of relics that when combined with the gradation of light through the space, provide an unfolding orientation.

Relining rooms creates a temporal frame that expands, constricting the inhabitable space as more historical relics are displayed to be exhibited and sold.

The redefining of space alters the perception of artefacts, dematerialising the context and engaging the public through the transition to human scale.

Unit 5

Bryn Hallett MEng

Archaeology and Aquaculture

The project develops the idea of a lateral institution, rearticulating a space to suggest a more rich interaction between two realms. The temporal reconfiguration of the site means the scheme will drastically change in relation to its surroundings over its lifespan. This implies a constantly mutating intervention to accommodate and guide this process.

The recession of the coastline provides a vast experimentation ground as well as a shift in land use.

Fragments of the surroundings are brought together to create a social topography and public ownership.

The scheme mediates between the boundary conditions inherent in the typology as well as retaining the economy of the area. Through the rearticulation of structured to playful across the boundary conditions the scheme becomes part architecture part landscape.

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Unit 5

Yiming Huang Inhabitation and programmatic investigation

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Base on this strategy, the draft design of the institution has been drawn out. The block for office space was suspended from the original position of the demolished wall, supported by load bearing walls that erected according to the trace of the church wall structure.

The office building now forms the south face wall of the church courtyard. This ‘wall’ turns at a 90 degree angle when it nearly reaches to the other wall. Another one floor high block was connected to the new wall perpendicularly, enclosure the space for archaeology laboratory.

The Archaeology lab touches the

church ruin (east wall) directly, forming a new courtyard. At the other side of the east wall, suited the salted fish making factory. The layout of the factory is very straight forward, from the north end to the south end, there are spaces for: salt mixing (to produce fishiness product in different flavour), salt storage, ‘fresh fish storage in brine’, dried salted fish chamber (upper floor), fish shop (under the chamber). At the south end, a cafe was added, with entrance open towards west. The view of the visitor enter from the gate of the grave yard should be guided by the south wall that leading to the entrance of the cafe.

Unit 5

Sui Lun Hui Project Covehithe

The site of my final project locates in Covehithe, Suffolk, where the coastline is subjected to an annual recession of 8 metres due to coastal erosion. The site is characterized by the ruin of church of St Andrews. The project starts with the implementation of coastal strategy to reconfigure the ground through the erosion, allowing architectural space to evolve in the course of time. The core programme of my scheme is a laboratory for the archaeologists and a whisky making facility. The decision of bringing whisky making into the scheme is developed around the idea of transforming Covehithe into a selfsufficient community. The income from whisky selling can support the running expenditure of the laboratory, and in extent the church village. Archaeology and whisky making both involves the perception of time. Time enhances the complexity of the process. The idea is to display the whisky making process to the public, in the way the artifacts are exhibited. Architectural space becomes the “container� the process.

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I seek not to impose something alien onto this territory, rather to rearticulate and amplify those experiences the denizens; at Covehithe; already embrace.

Unit 5

My intentions for this easternmost edge of England are to gather together the varied haptic experiences of the humans who dwell herein. There is already a gathering of conditions which rewards those who chose to inhabit, for however long, this eroding land.

I witnessed on this territory many guests, some tended the church and graves, some walked with dogs, loved ones, alone. Some came to the church, beach, ruins, broads, sea. Some lived, dwelled and died here, some farmed the earth, sought thrills, sought solace, sought answers. They all came for fulfilment. I contend that there is on this terroir, a gathering of the fourfold. In this gathering these inhabitants take measure of the world with their bodies. All these mortal activities occur standing on the consumable sandy soil by St Andrews, under an endless eastern sky.

A careful reading of entire context will inform the way the territory is transformed, there will be a re-presentation a re-articulation of mortal experiences. I will make room for these experiences to take place, that which arises currently, will be facilitated, there will undoubtedly be unscripted occurrences, the ordinary materiality of the existing can be articulated such that it poetically forms a new whole.

Andrew King Suffolk coastal dwelling.

A Crematorium mortality & memory

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Unit 5 The primary pragmatic field and the lateral meaning within a laboratory have been discussed throughout the year.

The site of Covehithe, Suffolk, East England is currently under severe coastal erosion. The village, as well as the St. Andrew’s Church, a precious ruin is predicted to be gone after 50 years. In this project, an archaeologist laboratory, a primary strategic programme towards the erosion and a secondary programme are introduced to the site.

“Raw to Refined” Lab work on the lowest level, Academic lecture on the mid level, Viewing platform on the highest level.

“Our rooms moved up and down, side to side, back and forth in order to laterally enrich public programmes.”

“Cultivation Act” The secondary programme is the workstations next to different excavation sites in the area. The workstations, with electricity and water supply connected are supplying the basic need for the archaeologists and volunteers during the excavation working days. After the excavation is completed the stations turn into an enabling, connective tissue allowing a range of “plug in structures” such as temporary campsites and farmer’s house.

Nickii Yick Chung Lau Suffolk coastal dwelling.

A Crematorium mortality & memory

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Unit 5

Shuo Liu Covehithe Lateral Institution

The scheme of this project is a combination with archaeology and crematorium,they are both about memory.

The site is on the southeast of UK-Covehithe. There is one interesting thing of Covehithe,it is the fragile cliff. Due to the sea encroaching more and more each year, the extent of this can be seen with ordinance survey maps.

The small thatched Church of St. Andrews was built in 1672 within the ruin of a much lager structure.

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Covehithe has a wealth of history especially discovering just how much has already been lost to the sea.

Generally,my strategy is to protect the ruins of the church,keep its function. Also the existing structure will be part my design,use the new structure to wrap the old one.

Unit 5

Toby Martin Gathering Fragments of a Lost Landscape

The ruins of St. Andrew’s Church are linked more to the impending sense of destruction on the Suffolk coastline than to the fragile landscape on which they rest. If nothing is done this magnificent reminder of riches and community will be lost.

My intervention will, when necessary, defend the church but harness the surrounding erosion in order to reveal forgotten stories.

The programme is structured such that the specialist process of Archaeology and the craft of Flint Knapping (whose spoils decorate the outside of the church) become inherent within a public exhibition space of archaeological finds.

This nurtures a conversation about gathering, refining and reconstructing, allowing the fragment to create an expanded narrative. One which can reconnect people with the landscapes lost historical strata and create a sense of belonging to a place and tradition.

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Unit 5

Matt McKenna Found Classified Documented Resolved

St Andrew’s Church, Scaffolding clips, hearth, posts, bricks, plough

Historically religious and legal institutions are intimately linked in place and share common ground; both containing congregation of people, morality and judgements.

Lost, Mislaid, Abandoned, Treasure Trove, Jetsam, Flotsam, Ligan, Derelict

Material ownership is resolved in the Coroners Court with an archaeologist as a specialist.

The rapidly eroding coastline; caused by long shore drift; threatens the church and reveals finds.

The Court is contained within “the foundation” of the existing Church, situated between raw, resolved, found and constructed, the public threshold through the institution transverses the resolving matter, forming a place of disclosure of find between sea level and current ground level.

Suffolk Coast, currently 400m East of Covehithe

The Institution reunifies and reorganises these two dislocated everyday and immediate happenings; discovery and ownership of material finds, and ecclesiastical activity.

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Unit 5

Jayesh Mistry Military Space

The project explores how a public laboratory can be designed on the basis of specifically constructed spatial relationships between an archaeological institution, an exquisite ruin, and a fragile site condition.

The temporal site at Covehithe continuously reveals and exposes ground, material, fragment and archaeological artefacts on the beach. The archaeologist’s record, archive and reconstruct found objects within a laboratory. The military archaeological history of the

coastline is communicated through a subterranean gallery that eventually defends the coastline in fifty years time.

The form of the laboratory responds to the axiality of the ruin. In responding to this placement the laboratory presents its own sense of public responsibility.

The geometry of the approaching coastline defines the placement of the gallery and a gathering space.

The organisation of the laboratory and public space and its unifying new design fuses the ruin into a new, integral whole.

The exploration of public architecture as a lateral institution is progressed through an understanding of the relationship between people and matter.

A reconciliation of abstract and concrete knowledge with the mediation of the specialist and public will provide the basis for the creation of a public archaeological institution. Public performance within the architecture will unfold onto the topography that is not of the buildings making.

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Unit 5

Chi Ho Vincent Ngai The Existing

Facing an enormous coastal erosion with eight metres of coastline on the edge of the land fallen into the east sea, Covehithe is dissappearing time by time. And the ruined 16th Century St. Andrews Church is at risk of collapse in 50 years time.

By introducing a lateral institution onto this piece of existing fabric to reinterpretate the essence of Covehithe. As the land is being transformed by nature, a programme is inserted by mankind to protect the existing habitation and to reassemble what would be missing in the

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future. Erecting walls to protect the church and the graveyard around it to conserve the peacefulness in the church yard. The old ground would become part of the history of Covehithe in a form of artefacts.

These artefacts are made from the existing fragemts of the ground and then via a serie of archaeological process, they become a representation of the fallen landscape.

Martin Punch Unit 5

Institution of books

Covehithe’s Book Binder and Library The ‘dominant idea of each generation will be embodied in the book of paper rather than the book of stone [buildings]’ It is the ongoing notion and reality of time that gives Covehithe its defining status; a place which suspends the mind in a world between permanence and temporality. The project tries to embrace Victor Hugo’s metaphoric language of the book and the temporality associated with the de-contextualising landscape through the process of translating an archaeologist’s fragment into the bound artefact of a book.

In this project, it is the ‘interplay’ of cultural tensions that enriches lateral connections. When private investigation, public activity, individual speculation, scared knowledge and the every day meet, there becomes a richer pragmatic condition. It is mediation of these territories that has informed the architecture.

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Asako Ueno Unit 5

Art and Science

The coastline in Covehithe looks significantly different compared to that of a few years ago, and in several years time, houses that stand safely on land would be lost at sea, due to coastal erosion. One of the buildings that proudly stand on the coast of Covehithe is St. Andrew’s church. The public are attracted to the impressive ruin and visit the coast before it disappears into the sea.

In order to design a building on this vulnerable territory, the building has to be protected and secured. The main building, which is attached to the church, contains an archaeologist’s lab and an artist’s studio.

During the day the archaeologists work near the coastline in three small “labs” for surveys, excavation and analysis. These buildings “move” with the cliff as the cliff gets eroded away. Foundations however get left behind to drop into the sea to create living/ breeding area for shell fish and other marine life. At a later stage, these shell fish get sold at a market next to the main building. The paintings and drawings by the artist get exhibited in the gallery with archaeological finds where the public are free to visit to see the recordings of the cliff which would by then be lost at sea.

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Practice Article:

JO FAIRFAX My practice is varied and I love it that way. I love to keep an eye on emerging technology and see how I can use it within my work. I don’t physically make any of my work anymore, instead I use the experience and knowledge of experts in whichever field is appropriate. This means that I have an everchanging group of people to work alongside - roving clusters of creative teams. I can therefore be more sensitive with my design solutions to a given commission by selecting the appropriate expertise and materials.

I like to design where you can quietly feel the pulse of a human and the rhythm of nature. The architectural specifics are a major influence that dictates the design of course. I like the idea of design with a twist or as the photographer William Eggleston says ‘at war with the obvious’. To succeed one needs a good commissioner/client. They have to have the courage to work with uncertainty. The 14th century Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko says in his Essays in Idleness, ‘Truly the beauty of life is in its uncertainty’.

This is interesting because it relates to design. The slightly offset rhythms so often seen in nature are in our blood. In my opinion, we see slightly offset rhythms of whatever sort and recognize it like one recognizes a family member, it has the same traits as us.

I find the certainty of gravity interesting, or more specifically how one can design something that is not squeezed by the stranglehold of gravity. Gravity seems to me to be like a massive waterfall that we are all in, it effects the way we receive everything. This is what drew me to holography and virtual reality.

I was very interested in designing where there was no gravitational force and surface didn’t indicate form. Images and objects didn’t have to be supported or suspended.

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Jo Fairfax Nesta fellow sculptor / holographer / designer / virtual reality practitioner / architectural lighting The Cottage, 19 Stathern Lane, Harby, Leicestershire.

LE14 4DA. England.

TEL/FAX 01949 860733 MOBILE 07980 344484 Email: jo@jo-fairfax.eclipse.co.uk Website: www.jofairfax.co.uk

I was brought up in a Thatched Cottage in a wood. Very isolated and our life had a very close relationship with nature, whether from my father’s single pellet policy for shooting pheasants or my mother acquiring a cabbage or two from the farmer’s field. Swallows came to live in our shed every summer and I learnt about the rhythms and currents in nature. This spirit and relationship with nature is central to all my work. It hopefully helps the work resonate with people because subconsciously I think we all understand our dovetailing with nature.

I trained in holography at the Royal College of Art, London and was taught how to make short holographic films at the Holocentre, New York. I was awarded a NESTA Dream time Fellowship to develop virtual reality as a public artform. Kevin Badni from Loughborough University taught me the building blocks of virtual construction and I made 4 real time responsive 3d environments that changed as people explored them within a virtual reality helmet and head movement sensitive tracker.

I designed the new Market Place in Chester – le – Street, County Durham and am currently designing the new Market Square for Wooler, Northumberland.

Life seems to me alarmingly short and I want to spend as much of it as possible totally absorbed and excited. I trained as a fine art sculptor and have reclusive tendencies. It is a huge pleasure and responsibility designing for public spaces (that is why my hair is grey) but I get a real buzz from doing so and hope that people enjoy my designs.

Jo Fairfax ©

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YEAR THREE_UNIT SIX MANIFESTOES FOR A FUTURE ARCHITECTURE Unit 6

The Tutors Internal - Julie Richards - Sam Jacoby - David Max Phillips - Aaron Chetwynd External - Chris Hill - Bolam Lee - Perparim Rama - Valentin Bontjes Van Beek - Feona Cheng - Yacira Blanco PROJECT 1 : THE MANIFESTO TASK: To devise an architectural manifesto. (… through writing, drawing and film).

Continuing last year’s explorations of the ‘manifesto’ as fundamentally a method to derive a coherent body of work that owes its consistency to the interrelationship of a social and tectonic agenda, we are this year approaching the same questions by beginning to revisit and redefine the notions of representation. Representation hereby is understood in its broadest sense of embodying thoughts on aesthetics and semiotics, which ultimately institute the way we understand or sense the world. The way we construct it. The way one constructs it as an architect.

When Marinetti in 1909 publicly declared the futurist manifesto it reflected a social critique as much as it envisioned a new age that would bring an aesthetic revolution influencing the way we see, create and live.

The manifesto in the arts quickly became a ubiquitous form of consolidating and disseminating intentions and beliefs.

What Marinetti began, the unit has continued into the 21st century by developing its own array of speculative manifestoes, explored initially through text and storyboard, culminating in a re-representation in film.

PROJECT 2 : THE PROTOTYPES TASK: To explore the architectural manifesto. (… through serial drawings, models and films).

The Prototypes required the exploration of the manifesto’s 3D aspects through a series of analytical drawings, diagrams and models. It was important that they form a coherent and consistent body of work through successive progression and differentiation.

This began by translating the manifesto/film into a series of drawings and diagrams which carefully analysed and described its structure in relationship to its physical and visual nature, thereby establishing particular techniques relevant to the structure of layers, sequence, series, framing and motion. A further analysis of the form of ‘editing’ characteristic of their manifesto and style informed their specific drawing technique and process; its formal language being capable of describing and capturing 3D spatial relations, movements or changes over time.

These were translated into a number of layered 2.5D thickened drawings, a hybrid between drawing and model, and subsequently further explored through a series of small-scale 3D physical models. Special attention being given to the technique and process, the degree of abstraction, the parameters of differentiation or seriality, texture and materiality, organisation and structure.

These 2D drawings/diagrams, 2.5D thickened drawings and 3D models demonstrating their techniques and processes were again concluded in a short film and became their descriptive and projective tools to help identify a site, determine the brief and develop a design for Project 3.

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PROJECT 3 : THE MANIFESTATION Unit 6

TASK: To demonstrate the architectural manifesto. ( ‌ within a site in Glasgow).

Whereas Project 1 initiated the manifesto, and Project 2 defined its technique and process by exploring its spatial implications through prototypes, Project 3 consolidated the preliminary ideas, analytical tools and formal language coherent to the manifestoes to be deployed within the constraints and conditions of a physical site. What until now had remained generic, became spatially and performatively specific.

Each chosen site therefore had to be relevant to the initial manifesto and provide a suitable context and test bed for its materialisation. Once a site had been chosen, the project brief was clarified within this new context and was formulated as a secondary manifesto with a clear hierarchy of design parameters.

Following this new design manifesto, the building design was explored by developing the prototypes further and testing them against the site constraints and refined performative requirements. During this process of design development and testing of ideas, emphasis was given to issues of placement, adaptation, differentiation, proliferation and user cycles. The building design is not only to be understood as a final proposal but is the manifestation of the ideas of the manifesto and prototype.

Image: Film Stills Of Light Display: Black-White-Grey, LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, 1930

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Unit 6

Talal Baweja The immediate response to architecture has been dominantly visual, subduing the other sensory experiences of the human body.

The intention of this manifesto is to challenge the visual dominancy in architecture by exploring and highlighting its aural capabilities. Aural architecture is created by sculpting the spaces based on their sounds and acoustic responses.

Aural Architecture

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Unit 6

Iona Campbell MEng

Re-dressing to Re-address

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A Performance Space set off Sauchiehalle Street, Glasgow, catering for amateur experimental performance.

Manifesto ‘An architecture that casts shadows, not purely with light, but a memory – a mapping of its reconfigurations.

This architecture has a path, a past, a varying footprint.

An architecture that changes its spots, an architecture with a wardrobe.

An architecture that alters, reconfigures, reorientates and even relo-

cates.

This architecture restyles itself, renews its message, changes with the seasons, re-dresses and ultimately re-addresses.’

Inspired by the couture works of Vivienne Westwood, and her manifesto entitled AR discussing art and culture, this project studies the techniques of exaggeration, displacement, reconfiguration and explosion in architectural design. The proposal seeks to readdress the strict Glaswegian street grid and to create a space that performs, that is a spectacle, that is a continually transforming expression of culture.

Unit 6

Wai Ying Rosalie Chan Pit Chu Fragments of Viewpoints

Viewpoints: 1. A position from which something is observed or considered 2. A way of thinking about a subject, a point of view Everything in this world is made of fragments. The world that we experience through our senses is often fragmented and incomplete, but it is these fragments altogether which create what we perceive. My proposed scheme is located at the central junction of two important axes in Glasgow, with 360 degree accessibility from all sides. Initially inspired by Analytical Cubism, extrusions and projections are made

to the original St-George’s Tron Parish Church, creating new spaces and new form.

New viewpoints are not only created visually along the 360-degree facade of the church, it is also intended to challenge the preconceptions of traditional churches, to create a new point of view on churches on a psychological sense.

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Unit 6

Elena ColyerWorsell My project germinates from anaylsing the use of advertising and the value placed on an exterior image. From this, I looked at ways in which value can be expressed without this modern dependancy on the exterior and focused on the residual space found within a small part of central Glasgow. Through analysis of these sites, I developed a method of connecting them utilizing their untapped attributes. The intervention resides in an alleyway and sews together the rejected parts of the adjacent city.

Redefining Residual Space

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Unit 6 MEng

The People’s Library

Antonio Fernandez Ortiz Inspired by the book crossing movement and the people’s oriented character of the city of Glasgow, the proposal will fashion a People’s library. This space will host the sharing of books and will provide a green space where to read and write free of charge. The visitor will be able to leave books behind and take any from it. This “People’s library will also house for the resident to leave and take books, as well as a place for lingering and cultural fostering.

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Unit 6

Fraser Godfrey MEng

Glasgow Maritime Museum

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The tempo manifesto

Museum programme

-different journeys have different rhythms and tempos -a journey can therefore be analysed like a piece of music -a piece of music with:

The museum will demonstrate the history of Glasgow’s maritime influence, primarily in three main stages:

trills diminuendi crescendi and a beat.

Architecture to can be experienced as a journey through space with corresponding ‘trills’, ‘crescendi’, ‘diminuendi’ and ‘beats’ which represent different architectural parameters.

slavery, looking at: the influence Glasgow had on the slave trade how some ships built and docked in Glasgow had been used to carry slaves to the west indies the dockyards, looking at: how Glasgow came to be a world recognised ship-builders the significance of ‘Clyde-built’ the future, focusing on: the present day dockyards, and ship builders Glasgow’s role in maritime nano-technologies and modern marine exploration and conservation

Unit 6

Thomas Gray Manifesto Of Detached Reality

The setting for the final project is Glasgow. Garscube Road was once a lively area, filled with public houses, public spaces and business. However, since 1970, when the motorway overpass was finished, the area has been totally destitute of culture, business and pedestrian flow. The motorway throttles the city centre.

Based around the ‘Manifesto of Detached Reality’, the aim of this project is to give people a sense of freedom and loss of inhibitions through techniques aimed at removing them from their objective reality, and causing them to reassess their perceptions of the space around.

The techniques are centred on creating situations where negative

space overrides solid volume in order to prompt a central disorientating landmark. From this landmark, come ‘Desire Lines’, which affect the surrounding volume, in order to add emphasis onto the central landmark.

The intention of this project is to return the site to its former glory, simultaneously creating a new quarter of Glasgow, whilst affecting the perceptions of road and motorway users.

In order to facilitate this, the intent was to create an intrusive space, which alters existing hierarchies, whilst detaching people from the reality around them. The main central landmark is a coffee house - overlooking the motorway - bringing people together in culture, business and relaxation – juxtaposed against the rapid movement of the road and motorway.

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Unit 6

Philip Jackson The Fruitful Manifesto

Architecture must be as a tree.

Architecture must blossom and it must bear fruit.

Architecture must put roots down in the soil beneath it.

Architecture must make space for birds to nest and bees to hive in.

Architecture’s fruit must be given away as freely as it was borne.

Architecture, when finished, must be cut down and reused and reused.

In an age when we buy identities in tertiary landscapes, with language usurped by the marketeers, with ornament excluded by the death of history, with green space commodified by the developers, Architecture must be as a tree.

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Unit 6

Rui Liu MAXIMALISM MANIFESTO

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Unit 6

Khyle Alexander Raja Mementoism

Architecture suffers from the mundane effects of established, conventional hierarchies in its arrangement of programmes and spaces.

The user develops preconceived notions about the forthcoming experiences. With time, the features of a space become ignored in our movements from A to B. Mementoism seeks to challenge preconceived notions and hierarchies in Architectural space. The conventions of spatial layout are to be challenged via three distinctive techniques: Spatial Jump Cut Spatial Repetition

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Spatial Reversal The Manifestation: Glasgow Baths & Basilica, bringing the River Clyde, Glaswegian professionals and the general public into a layered excavation on the Clyde bank. Mementoist techniques dissect the space, acting as the voids to bridge each distinctive layer, luring the bather further and further deeper through intrigue.

Glowing timber, rising steam, falling water. The Glaswegian Baths challenge conventional business transaction in a rich and intimate atmosphere.

Unit 6 Identivism seeks to eradicate monotony in our urban landscape by warping repetition to create unique and evolving spaces which have distinct identities.

The Kingston motorway bridge in Glasgow is a programme which damages its surrounding context by its disproportion of scale and repetition of form. A Public Art Studio for the students of Glasgow aims to revive the area by spatially addressing the motorway bridge and bringing colour and social interaction back to the site.

Douglas Sibley Identivism

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THE SCHOOL AROUND THE PLANET 201

OVERSEAS STUDY OPPORTUNITIES There are exciting opportunities to spend a single semester studying abroad during years 2 or 5 of the Architecture course or years 2 or 3 of the MEng Architecture and Environmental Design course.

The main facilitator of this is the Universitas 21 network, of which the University of Nottingham is a member. Universitas 21 (U21) is an international network of research intensive universities which fosters close collaboration on a wide range of projects and initiatives, including student exchanges.

In the past five years students from the School of the Built Environment have spent a semester studying at one of the following overseas universities: Australia / New Zealand: University of Melbourne, Australia University of New South Wales, Australia University of Queensland, Australia University of Auckland, NZ Asia: University of Hong Kong National University of Singapore Korea University, South Korea Fudan University, China Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China Waseda University , Japan Delhi University, India North America: University of British Columbia, Canada McGill University, Canada University of Virginia, USA Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico Europe: Lund University, Sweden University College, Ireland

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The School is also a participant in the Socrates-Erasmus network and has exchange agreements with TU Delft (Netherlands) and UniversitĂ degli Studi di Ferrara (Italy). In tandem, the School has a separate exchange agreement with Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada which runs alongside the U21 and ERASMUS schemes. The School also receives students from other universities in Europe and worldwide for periods of up to a year.

For more information on these schemes, please visit: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ international/current_students/exchange_study_opp/

TIRTHANKAR DATTA Year 5 Architecture Leaving the UK to experience life in a completely different part of the world has always been an ambition, and so when the opportunity arose to study abroad for a Semester, I snapped it up with not a moment’s hesitation, deciding (correctly) that I’ll never get a chance this good again.

Of course, being on my own in a new country was an intimidating barrier to overcome, and it was tough to begin with, but the exchange programme at NUS organized nights out for the exchange students, and hall life turned out to be brilliant, with people of all ages and backgrounds residing and socializing under one roof.

I soon found my feet, made friends and realized Singapore was a perfect base to travel to exotic destinations in Malaysia and Indonesia, and still, 5 months on, my travels are going strong as I explore this side of the World.

Singaporeans seem to be super hard workers, which tended to create a quiet and sterile environment, especially towards deadlines, but in these times I could always guarantee other exchange students would be free and up for a laugh. Being an exchange student has been the best, most relaxed, most fun university experience I could have wished for. It’s shown I can forge a life on my own away from home and enjoy it, as well as studying hard, travelling far and making friends for life from around the World.

My only complaint? It was only a semester…

PHILIP HURRELL Year 2 Architecture The University of Auckland (2009) Travelling away to study for a semester is a fantastic idea. The chance to be in a country as diverse as New Zealand for 6 months, whilst studying...a little, has really helped me. I tried to use this trip as an opportunity to learn how to get a good balance between work and play. In the first term I got together with 11 other people in my hall from all over the world and went travelling every weekend to different spots around the North Island. It’s been great fun and has made the times when I do work that much more effective. The facilities at Auckland University are brilliant and that is only made all the more enjoyable with a great group of friends in studio. Being such a tourist oriented country, travelling around the country is relatively cheap and the hostels are pretty good quality. We flew down to the South Island for the semester break for a two-week road trip, which was incredible! Auckland has been a great base to have for 6 months. If you do come here, try some of the incredible burger places and real ice cream shops, of which there are many! Being able to fly to Samoa for a week the day after final crit is a great incentive to work and a nice reward. I will cherish the memories and lessons learned here for a long time to come, not least the friends I have made here and around the world.

It has been great fun, although I do miss everyone back in Nottingham.

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VICTORIA DEAN Year 2 Architecture Going to Singapore to study has been both the hardest and the best thing I have ever done. It has truly changed my life and outlook in ways I could never have imagined. Singapore is very westernized, but still has a strong Asian identity and a mixture of eastern cultures. It is a tropical country and its humidity, plants and wildlife constantly reminds you of the dense jungle that use to dominate. It’s colourful. It’s busy. It’s ambitious. It’s unnervingly clean.

It’s eastern. It’s western. It’s exotic. It’s controlled. It’s English speaking. Its foreign- Singapore is a bit of a paradox and that to me is its charm. It is one of most interesting places. It is also incredibly well connected, which has allowed me to visit other parts of Asia that are less developed. Everyday since I got here I have seen, experienced or eaten something new! everything has been so unexpected. Its strange, because since very young I have seen pictures of animals, rainforest and the other side of the world in books and videos- and I thought as least I had an idea of what it all looked like. In reality I was surprised. Even though I recognised what I was looking at- I didn’t recognise my self in relation, if that makes sense. Walking through the rainforest in Borneo for example, I felt overwhelmed in the most fantastic way- totally insignificant yet euphoric!

My work here has been similar in content, the same western canon of architecture is the norm. Foster and Rogers are still the staple. As the only westerner in my year, I was humbled by how my fellow students new “my” history, spoke “my” language, yet I knew very little about their heritage. NOW I WATCH THE WORLD NEWS not just the local. I think that exchange has taught me a lot, and most significantly given me a new perspective, a better perspective that allows me to see more. To use an architectural analogy I feel like I have been zoomed in way too far on Photoshop that the picture its too pixelated and now its getting clearer- I got a way to go before it makes complete sense but I least I know there’s more.

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FIELD TRIPS Stockholm, Copenhague Berlin Amsterdam Chicago

Switzerland Tokyo

New York Havana, Cuba Barcelona, Valencia

Istambul Jouberton, South Africa

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NETHERLANDS Year 1 Field Trip to the Netherlands Field Trip Organiser and Leader: Liz Bromley-Smith Unit Leaders: Ricardo Martinez, Rachel Grigor, Valeria Carnevale, Liz Bromley-Smith, Mark Alston and Patrizia Riganti.

Contributing staff: Sergio Altomonte (Year 1 Environmental Design Module Convenor) and David Short (BArch Course Director).

On the 9th November 2008 180 first year students and 20 staff embarked on a 6 day coach tour of The Netherlands. With a brand new itinerary and specially prepared architecture field trip guidebook we spent four days exploring the sights of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hilversum, Utrecht, Delft and the Hague. Day 1 was spent in a rather wet and windy Amsterdam with the highlights being Java Island, Borneo Sporenburg, the Van Gogh Museum by Gerrit Rietveld and the Begijnhof. On Day 2, 3 and 4 the Units, guided by their Unit Leaders, visited Rotterdam, Hilversum, Utrecht, Delft and the Hague by coach with the architectural highlights being: the Oklahoma Sheltered Housing by MVRDV and Bijlmer Arena Station by Grimshaw on the outskirts of Amsterdam; The Sonneveld House, Dutch Architecture Institute, Kunsthal by OMA, Luxor Theatre by Bolles&Wilson and Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam; Netherlands Institute of Sound & Vision by Neutelings Riedijk and Hilversum Town Hall by Dudok in Hilversum; The Schroder House

by Gerrit Rietveld and Utrecht University Library by Wiels Arets in Utrecht; Delft University Library by Mecanoo in Delft and the Escher Museum in The Hague. The trip was a great success and the perfect opportunity for everyone to get to know each other better.

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BARCELONA & VALENCIA

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CHICAGO

A team of 30 visited Chicago 22nd-29th March, staying in a hostel in the centre next to Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Auditorium building. As well as taking in the tour of historic and present buildings in the famous elevated ‘Loop’, the team visited head offices of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, architects of the Burj Dubai and Shanghai’s Jin Mao tower.

We visited the office of Smith Gill, who are pushing the boundaries on bioclimatic design thinking in the US. We visited Gensler, a global practice whose headquarters are in Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott building. At the north end, the John Hancock Centre’s Skybar is the highest place in the US to enjoy a beer and great view. Chicago is experiencing a new wave of tower building and we could visit super tall towers under construction, including Calatrava’s Spire, the Aqua tower, Legacy tower and Trump. We visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s own house and studio, and his Robie house. We visited Mies’ Crown Hall and Koolhaas’ student building in IIT campus. We put up an exhibition of Nottingham student work in Crown Hall for a short crit, and took part in crits of their Tall Buildings project in Mumbai.

Chicago is an exhilarating place to visit, and we all want to return again one day.

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COPENHAGEN & STOCKHOLM The theme for this trip, sponsored

by Ibstock, was ‘Alternative Modernism’ and 20 students representing a cross section of the school, from BEng to Diploma, visited some interesting and at times challenging buildings. The tour, led by Graham Farmer and Michael Stacey, started in Copenhagen with a visit to the offices of Schmidt Hammer Lassen and an equally enjoyable visit to their impressive ‘Black Diamond’ Library. Other Copenhagen highlights included a visit to the new Royal Theatre by Lundgaard and Tranberg and MVRDV’s Gemini Residence together with a visit to Bagsværd Church by Jørn Utzon The latter is a jewel box of a building, its exterior is reminiscent of simple industrial or agrarian building but it cloaks an interior that is a celebration of materials and modulated light that is conducted via thin cloudlike concrete shells, adsorbing all of the variations in the

passage of the sun and weather.

Utzon described this church as ‘an architecture that is enormously simple and straight forward and gives the building a feeling of totality 1 Kenneth Frampton identifies this building as an exemplar of ‘critical regionalism’ and honours Utzon’s ‘mastery over prefabrication in which he is able to exploit a modular productive system as a source of inspiration not limitation. 2 A day trip to Malmo included a visit to St Peter’s Church at Klippan,

by Sigurd Lewerentz and whilst the Bagsværd church appeared to gather light, St Peter’s skillfully encloses dark and shadow, as suggested by Colin St John Wilson:

“we are invited into the dark. Enveloped in that heart of darkness that calls on all the senses to measure its limits, we are compelled to pause. In a rare moment of explanation, Lewerentz stated that subdued light was enriching precisely in the degree to which the nature of the space has to be reached for, emerging only in response to exploration.” 3 This theme of light and dark continued with a visit to the Malmo Eastern Cemetery (Lewerentz) at dusk – where the direction and quality of the light from the setting sun deepened the experience. Whilst in Stockholm we also toured the landscape of The Woodland Cemetery by Asplund and Lewerentz together with a visit to St Mark’s Church by also by Lewerentz. Erik Ahlsén recommends that young architects can learn from Lewerentz’s depth of understand of space and material – a confidence in the architectonic based on knowledge and craft- ‘One should not sacrifice the experience of building work to uncritical feeling and theorizing. 4 A morning spent in Rafael Moneo’s Modern Art Museum with its excellent temporary Sverre Fehn exhibition pointed to a future Norwegian leg of the Scandinavian alternative modernism tour……..

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1 Jørn Utzon Log Book Volume 11, Bagsvaerd Church, [Ed. Jørn Utzon etal] Edition Bløndal, 2005 2 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, MIT Press, 1995 3 Sigurd Lewerentz 1885-1975: The Dilemma of Classicism, AA 1989 4 ibid

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LA HABANA, CUBA

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THE DRAWING WORKSHOP

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TOKYO

Tokyo, one of the most developed urban areas on the surface of our planet, has greeted her very first architectural expedition from SBE. From 25th March to 2nd April – the most fabulous season of Japan, everyone in the group seized every minute to open our eyes exploring the mysterious and fantastic oriental city, architecture and culture.

The innovative steel skyscrapers with traditional timber bungalows, the crowded metro with swift bullet train, the popular plaza with tranquil moss garden, and the surreal shopping centre with ancient shrines… harmony between these interesting contrasts has established 22 different but vivid “Tokyos” in everyone’s mind. However, apart from these, we were sure of at least one common impression for Tokyo, which are the warm smiles from local people and the warmest welcome from Professor Amano and his colleagues and students in the Tokyo City University.

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A COLLECTION OF MEMORIES

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DIPLOMA IN ARCHITECTURE COURSE OVERVIEW During this year the two-year Diploma in Architecture programme has undergone the first stage of a transition to a new structure and curriculum.

These changes have introduced some new options and design projects and during the first semester almost one-third of the cohort elected to take the new practice-based modules that enable students to extend their year-out in practice whilst taking university modules. Other options give students the opportunity to students to undertake a U21 or Erasmus exchange programme whilst those students who returned to the school for the first semester were able to select from a choice of design studios covering themes in Urban Design, Environmental design and History and Theory. These studios continue to reflect staff research interests and the Diploma continues to aim for teaching that is informed directly by the variety of research carried out within the school.

During the second semester the curriculum each student took a compulsory comprehensive design module that offers a choice of four studio design projects. A key feature of the projects this year has been the introduction of ‘live’ design projects into the curriculum. These have allowed our students to work within both local and global contexts. The Chilwell School project provided the opportunity to work with the local community on proposals for re-shaping a CLASP constructed secondary school with staff, children and local community acting as client. Students in the Zero Carbon Architecture Studio (ZCars) have worked on a Solar Decathlon House that will be constructed in Madrid over the summer and a small group of fifth year students also helped to coordinate and project manage the design and construction of a nursery school in Jouberton, South Africa. Each of these projects demonstrates the ambition for the Diploma course to be outward looking, responsible, relevant and to make a difference where possible.

The opportunity for students to tailor their educational experience to suit their interests and career aspirations continues in the second year of the course. Here each student undertakes an individual, self-generated design thesis that they develop across two semesters. The students produce their own design brief, select their own site and conduct in-depth research into their chosen thesis theme. The broad range of subject matter and design approach suggested by the work contained within the following pages serves to demonstrate the unique character of the Diploma at Nottingham and is evidence of the school’s support for a pluralist approach to design that aims to develop an open, critical and reflective attitude towards the resolution of design problems. Overall, the key objective of the Diploma is to develop well-rounded graduates who can make a positive and relevant contribution to architectural practice on completion of the course. This goal relies on the commitment and dedication of full-time staff and on the invaluable inputs of external tutors, critics and consultants who provide the students with a valuable connection into the world of practice. The pedagogical aims of the Diploma would appear to be wholly supported from practice and industry and in addition to the large number of practices who regularly contribute to our teaching programmes and who seek our Part 2 graduates for employment we would also like to acknowledge those sponsors who choose to declare their support for the programme through Diploma student prize sponsorship and through the Part 2 student bursary scheme.

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BRAYFORD ENABLING DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK Katharina Borsi The Dwelling Place The Brayford Enabling Development Framework has been a collaborative project between the Architecture Department of Lincoln University and the School of the Built Environment of the University of Nottingham. Initiated by Professor David Chiddick, Vice Chancellor of Lincoln University, and supported by the Brayford Pool Trust and the City of Lincoln planning authority, the project explored proposals for the areas surrounding Brayford Pool in Lincoln. The aim was to create an Enabling Development Framework, which can inform future developments.

The project began with an intensive 2 week workshop coordinated by Renée Tobe for the SBE’s Urban Design Studio (MArch and 5th year students) and Lincoln University 3rd years and MA students. Meetings with Lincoln’s Planning authorities, Heritage, and archaeology officers offered background to the project. Mick Jones, the city archaeologist spoke on the heritage of the city centre and the Brayford, Elaine Ranyard, Senior Programme Development Officer, outlined the Enquiry by Design process that led to the City Centre Master Plan, and Glyn Stocker spoke eloquently on planning issues that included infrastructure, economy, climate change and flood risk. The final days of the workshop included presentations by Professor David Chiddick, Greg Havens, Professor Peter Salter and Professor Michael Stacey. A formal presentation of the student work to the Brayford Pool trust concluded the workshop. Another public exhibition marked the end of the design work.

It took place in January 2009, in the old printing hall of the Lincolnshire Echo.

Students presented their work to the planning authorities and the Brayford Pool Trust.

Lincoln University is the key driver for the regeneration of Lincoln. The campus is situated south of Brayford Pool, linked to but also separated from the inner city by the Pool. Between the vibrancy of the tight urban fabric of the High Street and the new architecture of the campus, the fabric on the north and east sides of Brayford Pool is ill-defined, with poor permeability, and lacks the identity with which it should support the Pool as a Lincoln landmark. The student work on Brayford Pool are reflections on how to remedy this situation. The question of the relationship between the University of Lincoln and the city is the background question the regeneration of Brayford Pool poses.

The analytic and projective work of the students explores the potential of Brayford Pool to introduce a new balance and hierarchy in the city. Rather than foregrounding Lincoln’s built past as a model to connect Brayford Pool to the inner city, most of the work suggested that the pool area has the potential to become a distinct component of the city. The consolidation of the urban fabric north and east of the pool into formally and spatially coherent quarters, clearly differentiated from their surrounding urban fabric, could cohere Brayford Pool into a district, acting as a counterpoint to the spine of the high street and the cathedral.

The drawings on these pages show the best two projects of the Urban Design Studio. (students: Eric Cheung, Mohieldin Gamal, Stephen Ho-Kiu Leung, Rachael Lee, Matthew Wingrove & David Baggaley, Mark Hall, Ismail Quaznili, Alina Toosy and Lenard Wong) On the basis of these drawings, and one project by Lincoln University, the decision was taken to take the project forward as a consultancy. The Enabling Development Framework we will be working on encompasses a larger area, and changes of ownership imply that the design will change considerably. However, the quality of the work produced both by the students overall and those selected, made this live project possible.

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CONTEMPORARY ART/ARCHITECTURE MUSEUM IN BEIJING Professor Brian Ford, Benson Lau, Lucelia Rodrigues and Giles Bruce Environmental Design in Architecture

Introduction This project which was in collaboration with the Department of Architecture, Tsinghua University explored the spatial and environmental aspects of exhibition design in relation to the wider architectural context of a contemporary art / architecture museum. With the support from the RCUK Summer School Award 2008, the project started with an integrated environmental design workshop which was held in Beijing in September 2008. Then the student representatives of the workshop disseminated the site information to the postgraduate students at the School of the Built Environment, Nottingham University. The design challenge was to explore the art and practice of display under passively controlled environments in an urban context.

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Project Site The project site is located at the IT Science Past West District, Zhong Guan Cun in Beijing. It is surrounded by modern buildings and bounded by major roads with busy traffic. The site area is about 6,150 m² and the gross floor is about 3,000 m². The limit of the building height is 15 m.

Design Challenges • To analyse, survey and model the site context and to conduct thorough site micro-climate study.

• To identify the site constraints and opportunities for the development of a passively controlled contemporary art / architecture museum.

• To develop a holistic spatial and environmental design strategy through testing to justify and refine the architectural solutions.

• To strike the right balance between architectural poetry and environmental performance of the proposed art / architecture museum environment.

K14CSP: Case Study Project Tutors: Benson Lau, Lucelia Rodrigues.

Reviewers: Professor Brian Ford, Giles Bruce (BDSP), Hadi Mozaffari (Price & Myers) The aim of the module is to investigate the architectural poetry, spatial experience and building related environmental design issues through fieldwork, onsite monitoring and physical and computer modelling on a chosen case study.

By conducting on-site monitoring, and building performance prediction through computer simulation, students will have a sound understanding of the inter-related architectural and environmental design issues which include Daylighting and Solar Control, Thermal Performance of the building envelope, Ventilation and building Acoustics. Students will need to submit a 3000 words written report summarising the qualitative and quantitative studies.

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EXHIBITING WITH THE PAST Dr Laura Hanks; Lizzie Webster; Dr Mark Rawlinson; Dr Jonathan Hale; Alex Rider; Clare van Loenen; Elvin Chattergon Exhibitions have long captured the imagination and created new realms: from the cabinet of curiosities of Renaissance princes, to the powerful technologically-driven displays of today. This project, in collaboration with the Department of Art History and the School of Computer Science and Information Technology, explores many aspects of exhibition design in relation to the wider architectural design of museums. It challenges participants to explore the art and practice of display, before creating their own exhibition design within the rich context of an existing building. Students are asked to be both building and exhibition designer.

The design challenge - like a good exhibition, according to Stephen Greenberg - takes the form of a three-part drama. Beginning with the exploration of an existing display space, it then broadens to consider urban and architectural design, before narrowing again to focus on the creation of an individual exhibition.

Initially, each group analyses, surveys, and digitally models an existing historic or contemporary art space, exploring both practical and conceptual approaches to exhibition design. The finalised CAD models are reformatted into newly developed Curata software at the School of Computer Science, before being trialled by students in the Department of Art History un-

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dertaking digitalised exhibition design. The Curata programme has great educational, commercial and professional potential, which is currently being explored.

The next phase, which steps up to the architectural scale and returns to Nottingham, sees groups select and adaptively reuse a postWorld War II building. By nature of its temporal proximity, the built environment of our recent past provides the greatest challenge to historians and architects alike.

Conservation is one approach to such building stock, and demolition to start anew is another, each having its own justification specific to place and time. The architectural challenge is to locate a building of suitable scale, deemed to have in-

trinsic ‘value’ and potential for display, and to integrate new and the old, finding a strategic and appropriate balance between demolition, conservation, and new build. The inclusion of inspirational exhibition spaces is crucial, but beyond this, the formulation of the programme is purposefully loose to allow for different interpretations.

The final stage, in a mirroring of the first, returns to the heart of the museum: the exhibition space. Participants select a relevant theme and artefacts for display, and undertake detailed exhibition design for a gallery space. At this smallest scale of the exhibition, a range of fascinating issues arise. What is to be displayed and who is to determine this? How are these objects

to be ordered in space, and what meaning will such arrangement confer? Is there a temporal or narrative structure, or is the aesthetic - possibly filmic - quality of the display space the overriding consideration? What relation is the exhibition to have with the building: can the ‘container’ reflect and inform the ‘contained’, and vice versa? At a wider scale, does the exhibition in some way ‘strike up a dialogue’ with the city outside the confines of the gallery? More practically, issues of circulation, lighting, materiality, environmental control, and security pose design challenges.

Most importantly though, how can the architectural and exhibition designs reinforce and accentuate each other most resonantly?

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BISHOPSGATE GOODS YARD Katharina Borsi Urban Design Study

Bishopsgate Goods Yard is a former goods station in the heart of London, located at the intersection between the City, London’s financial district and Shoreditch, an urban district that has been rapidly changing in the last 10 years to into a creative industry cluster.

The aim of this module is to explore the transformation of Bishopsgate Goodsyard into a high density, intensely mixed used dynamic urban hub. The design needs to respond to the different urban patterns surrounding it, to the different communities bordering the site, negotiate sightlines in the sky and transport infrastructure at high level and below ground. The scale and location of the site entails the careful examination of the development as a generator of urban change and its responsiveness to a diverse context.

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CHILWELL SCHOOL Mark Hines Jo Fraher, Lizzie Webster, Andrea Wheeler, Paul Younger A School for the Future Our project was to design a school for the future. The Government’s ambitious schools building programme aims to rebuild or renew every secondary school in the country by 2018. Chilwell School is a local comprehensive school, and is currently awaiting redevelopment.

This project was special - it was grounded in a real site, a real situation with a real live client. We had the opportunity to develop and present ideas to real stakeholders (pupils, staff and the local community). We explored how we could use our skills, as a team of designers, to help create a new vision for the school and inspire future generations of children.

A key aim of the module was to develop a wider approach to sustainable school design. Alongside the zero-carbon agenda, students were asked to consider the social and economic sustainability of the school. Individual responses and investigations were encouraged, giving the opportunity to develop radical new building types, programmes and aesthetics.

A live build project was developed as a means by which students might test their theses in microcosm. This architectural intervention presented the challenge of working with a retained existing structure – students explored how it might be upgraded or re-designed to provide a flexible learning infrastructure; a community centred space capable of supporting individualised teaching programmes.

Finally, the results of the exercise were captured in a briefing document - a vision for a new learning environment. We hope that it helps to realise and give form to the schools ambitions - developing an awareness of what Chilwell School is today, and what it could become tomorrow.

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SUSTAINABLE HOUSING DESIGN Tutors: Swinal Samant, Lucelia Rodrigues and Professor Michael Stacey ZCARS (Zero Carbon Architecture Research Studio) The aim of the module is to facilitate, through design and research work, engagement with issues of sustainable design and techniques for the prefabrication of architecture. This is structured as research based design studio with the title Zero Carbon Architecture Studio or ZCARS. The design research promotes the integration of the knowledge and understanding of the use of materials, structures, sustainability, environment and services through the design of prefabricated architecture and components. This year ZCARS took on two live projects: upgrading of the E.ON House on University Park and the Solar Decathlon House, which will be built in Madrid in 2010.

To deliver this ambitious programme, in addition to the studio team, students received specialist input through lectures and tutorials from practising architects, environmental scientists, structural and materials engineers. Students also visited the pioneering Hockerton Housing Project, Saint Gobain Innovation Park, and Ecobuild 2009 in London.

The House of Commons report on Existing Housing and Climate Change 2008, highlights Britain’s large existing housing stock (more than 26 million homes), many of which are highly valued culturally for their heritage and architectural significance. Over 23million of these homes are predicted to still exist in 2050. Therefore, in tackling climate change, it is essential that the thermal performance of this existing housing be addressed. Typically, they have single glazing and solid masonry construction or un-insulated cavity walls if built after about 1930. To articulate this challenge and research the options to transform Britain’s existing housing, a semi-detached house has been built to 1930’s construction standards on Nottingham’s University Park. This research project, led by Dr Mark Gillott, is primarily sponsored by E.ON and forms part of the Creative Energy Homes programme at the University of Nottingham. The house has been designed by Nottingham-based architect Marsh Grochowski. They have followed the pattern of 1930’s semi’s which are very common in the suburbs of North Nottingham and represent about 30% of homes in Britain. In the 1930’s, cavity walls had only just been introduced and the wall of the EON House comprises a brick outer skin with a 50mm cavity and dense block work inner leaf, which has been plastered internally. Next door to the EON House there is a research laboratory that mimics the environmental performance of its neighbour and helps to keep the party wall warm. This laboratory and the house contain a significant amount of monitoring equipment comprising nearly 200 sensors to measure environmental performance, occupancy, electrical power, gas and water consumption. The project has been organised in three phases.

The first phase involves the construction of the EON House. The house is occupied by a family of four who are being monitoring in detail from patterns of use to energy consumed.

The second phase involves upgrading the construction 25% better than current building regulations and the implementation of other measures to achieve the equivalent of Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3. This phase has been organised as a student competition within Zero Carbon Architecture Studio.

The students costed their proposals against a budget of £25,000 and the proposals by the winning group of three students will be implemented this summer. To understand the construction 11 brick cavity walls were built by ZCARS, following expert tutoring by John, a bricklayer on loan from Derwent Valley Construction. In phase three, Marsh Grochowski Architects will further improve the house to achieve CSH Level 6 including extensions necessary to achieve all aspects of this code. Therefore proposals in phase two need to take into account phase three. The winners of phase two Dan Dunn, Alex 228

Lewis and Seema Mistry, architecture students from ZCARS, proposed a realistic and holistic strategy, which included insulating the rear and side façades with external insulation finished with an acrylic render, such as STO render. Their win was announced in Building Design Magazine, 17th April 2009.

The second challenge in ZCARS was the design of a Solar Decathlon prototype home following on from the initiation of this project by Benson Lu and Professor Ford in Semester 1. However ZCARS situated the iterative testing of the prototype homes on three urban sites in Nottingham. An important objective is to design spaces within the homes and between the homes that are beautiful and desirable. It will also involve the creation of design/products that are sensitive, beautiful and appropriate, and celebrate sustainability and prefabrication. The designs have all been benched marked against the Code for Sustainable Homes, which revealed a number of shortcomings in this code, which will form an area for further research. The module is taken by 5th year Diploma (RIBA2) and MArch Students, with students working in groups of two or three students. The Solar Decathlon Prototype selected to be exhibited in Madrid, this May was designed by Rachel Lee, Ben Hopkins and Chris Dalton. However the whole studio worked with the Solar Decathlon research team to complete ‘Research Deliverable 3: HOUSE’ that included a 1:25 model of the prototypical home and its design reports.

The selected prototype has a plan morphology that is highly adaptable for the development of European urban housing, at a density appropriate for creating successful urban and suburban homes. The plan form has been developed out of the terrace form common in North Europe, hybridised with a courtyard characteristic of housing in Southern European, resulting in a highly adaptable housing system. The approach is to create spaces within the home that are sustainable because they work well and are beautiful, with space efficient integrated furniture. The aesthetic approach is as holistic as the environmental strategies.

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VERTICAL COMMUNITIES D. Nicholson-Cole Harjinder Singh, Joana Goncalves Advanced Tall Building Design

This unit investigates the relationship of tall buildings to their urban setting, their role in future cities, their environmental performance and their effect on the wider environment. Over-population, end of oil and climate change are the greatest problems facing mankind – are tall buildings part of the problem or part of the solution?

It’s a major design challenge to integrate Bioclimatic Design into the tall building as part of a Green strategy for cities of the future. We are bringing to life Ken Yeang’s environmental paradigm, in which the towers are multifunctional, connected and landscaped, and reach to the sky to harvest wind and sunlight as well as increasing the city density.

The towers must have an excellent structural and circulation concepts, but each has an additional special theme such as vertical farming, education, transport, hydrogen or power generation. Each tower is on a separate site in London, relating urbanistically to the work of colleagues on adjoining sites. The module is part of an international research effort (TBTARG) to enable “5th generation” design of tall buildings for the 21st Century. This is the most complex design task in the school, but vastly satisfying to those who meet the challenge. In 2009-10 Tall Buildings are expanding to a 2-semester course.

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URBAN MANUFACTURING PROJECT Luis Matania Chunxiao Lu, Tom Osbourne, Mathew Hayhurst, Joseph Fraher, Sheldon Brown, Jonathan Morrison Design Project The module takes the complex process of manufacturing as its theme for the design of a building set within the urban context of Nottingham, bringing the process into the city and adding to its life and regeneration.

The module encourages students to design a building that is taylor made and structured according to its function and that reflects and celebrates this through its very form.

It aims to develop projects that rely less on rhetoric but rather speak for themselves, for their time and incite the future, unravelling their identity through their own invention and manifesting the process they house through the very fabric they are made of.

Whilst the projects look to evolve naturally through their own necessity the challenge becomes to take the buildings beyond their role as pure machines and give them life as a beautifully engineered objects, highly tuned for their function yet also graceful and exciting in their physical form; much in the same way as the aeroplane has developed into an object of beauty through the creative interpretation of its aerodynamic necessities.

The success of the designs depend first and foremost on a deep understanding of the building type, the brief and the workings of all the elements of the manufacturing process. Therefore the module starts by adopting a creative approach to the research of the chosen manufacturing process in order to establish the vision and spirit for the project, looking beyond the obvious for inspiration and even outside the chosen process for references to stimulate a new gene pool and kit of parts with which to design.

The module takes the research material and then breaks down the project and its process into its separate elements, analysis them individually, establishing a DNA or kit of parts from the process, designing each element and part in isolation, then allowing the parts to inform the whole producing a building that should become greater than the sum of its parts.

The issues of structure and environmental design are treated, not as side issues but rather as design drivers, seeking to further inform the expression of the architecture by integrating where suitable sustainable technologies into the manufacturing process as well as the fabric itself.

Whilst students are free to work in all mediums they are particularly encouraged to design and present through physical models at every stage.

The module acknowledges the great importance of critically engaging with the past and present to be able to guide the behavior of tomorrow but it also questions preconceptions and offers invention rather than convention: ‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it’. Alan C Kay. Thus the projects make reference to precedence but also challenge the past, responding to the cultural changes, desires and needs of future generations.

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STUDIO YEAR SIX 233

THESIS PROJECTS In the final year of the professional programme students develop a self-generated design thesis. This study provides students with the freedom and opportunity to explore and research those aspects of architecture that are of particular interest to them. The year involves the in-depth investigation of a design proposition that is declared through a combination of written work and a comprehensive drawn submission at the end of semester 2. At the beginning of the first semester students develop a thesis proposal and they are allocated a personal design tutor who works with the student for the rest of the year. The design tutors are a combination of school staff and visiting tutors from practice. During the first semester students develop a design brief for their thesis and they also commence work on a design dissertation that records and declares the outcomes of research into the theoretical, technical and practical aspects of their chosen theme and site. In the second semester time is spent developing and refining the thesis and during this period students also produce a special emphasis study that records a process of in-depth research into a key aspect of the thesis.

There is no universal or standard model for the design thesis and one of the key features of the final year is a support for a pluralist approach to design.

However, despite the freedom afforded to students it is common for students to develop themes that they have explored within specialist modules during the previous year. It is also encouraging to note that much of the work this year continues to be underpinned by a desire on behalf of the students to address and explore a range of relevant and challenging design, environmental and social concerns. Whatever the source of inspiration and underpinning logic for each design thesis the work included in this yearbook certainly demonstrates a healthy diversity of design methods and approaches and provides a small glimpse into the energy, vitality and creativity of the students. However, the finished drawings and models in the exhibition and described within this yearbook can never fully chronicle the experience of a year that often provides a significant personal challenge to the students.

The final design declaration is underpinned by a process of questioning and testing themselves that helps to prepare the students for their subsequent careers in professional practice.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects Through an examination of the historical preoccupation of man’s place within the universe, specifically the epistemology of Orientation, the study suggests ways in which archaic and contemporary orientational devices can be superimposed to reveal new and hidden qualities of the landscape.

Verulamium was the third largest city in Roman Britain, but remains largely obscured under a municipal park in St Albans. During the summer of 1976, a record summer of high temperatures and low rainfall, sections of the city appeared as scars on the football and cricket fields for several months while the soils remained shallow. Comprehending this landscape as a geographical astrolabe, new meanings in the landscape could be uncovered through an architecture that

amplifies the orientational characteristics of the site at particular times.

This will manifest as a municipal building that juxtaposes a set of Home and Away football changing rooms, located over the excavated triangular temple of the Goddess Cybele, with a community centre and Roman museum for uncovered Verulamium archaeology. Like gladiators awaiting their fate, the visiting football teams will become more aware of the opposition and town they are visiting than their own team spirit through the architectonics that link both changing rooms together. The home facilities will discuss the changing nature of the landscape over and beyond a football season; creating a tangible link between football time and sidereal time.

Ali Abbas

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DipArch - Thesis Projects There has always been a superiority struggle between Man and Nature; where man endeavours to leave a human legacy on our biosphere. As a consequence, the self regulatory processes that our biosphere has to undertake to reach a stage of homeostasis, has become lessened due to human impact.

The complexity of homeostasis and creating a built environment for human existence has disturbed this equilibrium; where implications of manmade intervention are apparent. Nature is fighting back and claiming control.

The common theme for creating amicable built interventions to impede less upon homeostasis is forwarded by the notion of “sustainable development�. Sustainable development is by no means a misguided direction. A consciousness and understanding of the real issues which arise from predicted climatic change that affect our coastal biodiversity is needed, in order for future sustainable developments to work in line with the reduction of natural habitats and ecosystems.

We need to learn and evolve through the medium of our environment. Only through further knowledge and understanding of maintaining natural habitats which helps in sustaining homeostasis, can we adapt to change and work harmoniously with our environment.

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Aiden Bell Sustaining Geomorphic Adaptation

The project intention is to design “Sustainable Chinese Gastronomic Institute”; to preserve, promote and reinvigorate, the ORIGIN of Chinese “FOUR Great Cuisines” culture, tradition and the essences behind to the rest of the world. Showcase the hidden preparation of the eight cuisines; back to the basic of the process of transferring Raw materials from “NATURE” to the state of “CULTURE”.

Using the essences/characteristics of the cuisines and the processes above, exhibit through architecture, “VISIBLE” to the public, allow public to interact with, to experience and “SENSE” the process via the “Journey” through the institute, break down the general “wrong perception” by cultivating the public via healthy and sustainable aspects and positive characters of the authentic Chinese Cuisine, and encouraging an increase of public participation, and strengthen the culture.

Promote an alternative way of healthy, sustainable eating, gastronomic methods and life-style to the public in London.

Cultivating an awareness of food culture, and encouraging the use of the basic ingredient of the cuisines, “FRESH”, as the first step in the effort to conserve and farm distinctive local food products, deepen public knowledge of their local products, as the result reducing the Carbon Footprint, deepen the understanding the benefit of this cuisine.

“Nature” to the state of “Culture”

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Simon M.L Cheung

DipArch - Thesis Projects

Simon Crockford TITLE OF PROJECT

The village of Twyn yr Odyn suffers from post industrial amnesia.

The links to its rich quarrying past have been destroyed by the infilling of the Greenwoods and Osmond’s quarries with domestic landfill during the latter half of the twentieth century. Through the loss of this link, the village has slowly lost its sense of community too – a lack of understanding of its relevance within the landscape has lead to a malaise in the social fabric of the settlement.

A solution to this has asserted itself, through the collective desire to commemorate the quarrymen of the area in a memorial. This represents a material desire to reconnect with the past through a physi-

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cal intervention. Unfortunately, this has manifested itself in the form of a monument devoid of context. It has no meaning beyond what is inscribed upon its surface, because it has no active participation within the landscape of the village.

Through an understanding of how memory influences our perception of landscape, this project aims to question, reassess and reconstruct the role of the memorial, and declare it as an active agent in the communication of meaning, the understanding of context, and the process of repairing the residents’ link with the past, the present and the future.

Between Nature & DipArch - Thesis Projects

Artifice

My approach to architecture has developed from my conviction that the built project derives its meaning from the particular locale which it inhabits. I perceive a physical and conceptual interdependency between the work of architecture and its situation in the world. When this principle is adopted as a theoretical framework for architecture, construction necessarily becomes a dialectic process which occupies the shifting threshold between nature – the world itself – and artifice – that which is removed from the world. The constructed landscape must therefore be understood as a complex layering of natural condition and human intervention, not as an abstract spatial field, void of meaning. My proposals for a former colliery site in north Nottinghamshire are an exploration of this dialectic approach. My perceptual interpretation of the site, developed through extensive fieldwork, revealed the specific ways in which an apparent duality or ‘landscape dialectic’ had emerged as a result of intense cultivation and subsequent decay of the physical setting. This formed the basis for my reading of the site and subsequent architectural response. The proposed program is a centre for research and technical education in timber craft and technology.

Workshops and research laboratories are combined with a library, classrooms and exhibition space, meaning that intellectual inquiry is not separated from the physical process of making.

Jonathan Davey 239

DipArch - Thesis Projects

The city centre of Southampton is currently overwhelmed by the activity of shopping. Whilst other cities have commissioned art galleries and cultural centres to boost civic pride Southampton has relied on retail as a key driver for regeneration. This reliance has nullified street culture and civic pride within its centre.

The project conceptually considers the urban morphology of Southampton and introduces a new master plan to create a heterogeneous centre. Drawn on detailed site analysis and through modelled investigations the project fuses mat-building typology with a thickened ground approach to repair the urban conditions of the city.

The proposal introduces a series of new buildings and infrastructure, and at the core of the master plan is the institute of media that has public amenities and services interwoven to create spatial complexity and a dynamic 24-hour living urban environment

James Freeman Southampton Urban Mat

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DipArch - Thesis Projects There is a particular dialogue within the discourse of aesthetics that reflect two approaches to beauty.

One side sees beauty connected with perfection, geometry and the divine. The other discusses cosmetics as seeking to enhance beauty but resulting in a disfigurement of the natural. Whilst one is debated and discussed in an academic context, the other debate is reflected within mundane life in the field of fashion and use of cosmetics. The Institute of Aesthetics ex-

plores this debate within the subject of beauty and aesthetics and the implications of this upon the redevelopment of existing derelict buildings within Smithfield Market, London.

Whilst the Institute of Aesthetics explores the debate programmatically, architectural approaches have been developed in response to the overall theme of beauty. This covered the academic subjects of perfection within geometry and proportion and a more mundane

public response of enhancement and concealment within the cosmetics of make-up and fashion.

Whilst the debate is reflected within the program this it is also explored in the design of my architectural response where the two sides of the debate are expressed. This is to be done by subtle means of healing and enhancing the existing building and decisive ‘cosmetic’ interventions to conceal the buildings blemishes but in doing so reveal contextual constraints of the form and a contrasting structural grid.

Timothy Gibbons The Institute of Aesthetics

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Matt Gilbody

The initial thesis objective was to design a pre-fabricated set of systems or ‘skins’ that could be deconstructed (and reconstructed); comprising of multi-functional elements that utilise its climate, function and context to adapt to different sites and scenarios. The typology of schools within the UK set initial context. Movement was a key vehicle for the evolution of the design and this was met by experimenting with origami.

The thesis explored the potential for improving existing schools constructed using the CLASP system and Chilwell School in Nottingham was selected as a test bed for the system. A number of potential scenarios were explored to exploit the potential of the system to provide more flexible and stimulating learn-

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ing environments.

Assessing the weaknesses in the overall layout of the school provided the opportunity to incorporate elements of new build into the project.

Replacing the library, I.T. and humanities block improves the overall relationship between existing spaces, reconnecting the school to its surrounding context. A lightweight canopy over the courtyard provides a large multi-functional space that can be used all year round.

The replacing block that reconnects the lake became a main focus for the remainder of the year.

This flexible space became a suggestive contemporary paradigm for a shift in modern teaching methods and forms as a direct reaction to the outdated CLASP system.

Unfolding Systems

These conditions become translated into a series of live/work units and a community access point for Deptford which through the manipulation of space, material and programme seek to deliver a series of fluxing spatial constructions and rich urban experiences as one moves though the site.

Fl창neuristic Explorations of the Urban Labyrinth

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Embodying the rambling nature of the fl창neur, my thesis proposes a series of multi-referential investigations which seek to identify and reinterpret spatial situations within the continuous flux of the city. Working with an abandoned carriage ramp behind Deptford High Street my architectural intentions draw specific reference to the arcade construct and the labyrinth to deliver the spatial conditions conducive to the unspecified and unsystematic exploration of the urban environment undertaken by the fl창neur.

The arcade construct, the historical residence of the fl창neur, promotes an ambiguity between interior-exterior boundaries based on social interactions and exchange which is complemented by the complex navigational devices employed by the labyrinth.

DipArch - Thesis Projects An investigation into the ambiguous activity of play shows its importance to our society, especially in the cohesion of communities.

Whether it is the playful gambols of children or the euphoria of festivals, play has a cohesive effect.

It was Plato who stated that “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation�.

Luke Jackson

The Willow Gate

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Sited on the threshold of an urban and rural landscape, between the worlds of work and play, in the town of Calne, in Wiltshire the Willow Gate is a new community facility that aims to encourage forms of play, from day-dreaming to dancing. Engaging with local festivals,

in particular the annual Willow Lantern Parade, the scheme provides facilities for cultivating and processing willow, as well as workshops for making the lanterns and a large sheltered venue in which festivities can take place in. Combining agricultural, industrial and public typologies, the Willow Gate aims to bring communities together through work and play.

DipArch - Thesis Projects Like most city centres Birmingham’s high streets are bursting with places to shop. Every day the streets are packed with people buying clothes, food, CD’s, anything. A product is displayed, purchased, and then consumed.

In the shadow of Selfridges, Digbeth festers to the city’s East.

At first glance this seems to be a place left behind by heavy industry, but a closer look reveals craft still occurring in its old buildings.

These two worlds are separated by a void that exists in the urban fabric, but stretches to people’s relationship between craft and consumption.

This thesis aims to fill that void by stitching together the worlds of ‘Digbeth Craft’ and ‘City Consumption’.

Jaspal Johal ybrid Transitions

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DipArch - Thesis Projects A memorial to the 15 millions of Africans who were traded in the transatlantic slavery ,treated not as humans but as objects.So many millions of people and Slavery Memorial Museums are so rare around the world.The building is all about a sensorial experience, using Light As Key which is expressed through a journey , the journey to Freedom which as it ascends it tranforms.

Slits which bring natural light through, voids of freedom , concrete walls and steel become elements which interprete a memory , the journey to freedom.

Inspired by a poem written by Le Corbusier

The key is light And light illuminates shapes And shapes have an emotional power. By the play of proportions.

By the play of relationships. Unexpected, amazing . But also by the intellectual play of purpose: Their authentic origin, Their capacity to endure, structure, Astuteness, boldness, even temerity, the play Of those vital abstractions which are the essential qualities The components of architecture.

Dimitris Kaimakliotis Journey to Freedom, Slavery Memorial Museum

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Networked DipArch - Thesis Projects

Architecture

Paul Kelsall The aim of this work is to investigate the relationship between the social and the technological in terms of communication networks and systems; and more importantly to inquire into how this relationship has affected, and could affect, the way we experience, interact with and create the built environment.

Less emphasis will be placed on the technology itself, instead the focus will be on its qualitative attributes, its relationship with the user, and how it can be adaoted as an enabler to enhance social and communicative experiences within physical and virtual spaces.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects The shift from agrarian to industrial agriculture has generally been gradual, but in the 1950 – 60s production became truly industrialised. This was driven by supermarkets’ buying-power and facilitated by advances in technology. Those who highlight the benefits of modern agriculture point to its legacy of food that is cheaper and more abundant than ever. However, the abundant food is not equally distributed throughout the world’s population and its cheap prices disregard externalised costs to the

Matthew Kidner Agrarian versus Industrial: the search for common ground

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environment and our health.

Agriculture’s industrialisation has caused a loss of identity that is reflected not only by the supermarket-branded food it produces, but also by the buildings it uses. I have suggested how a new breed of farm structures could arise from diverse farm activities; helping to augment agricultural productivity through means other than hightechnology, whilst offering opportunities for diversification that help

to insulate against market fluctuations. At Manor Farm, Warwickshire, the clay soil suggests smallscale brickmaking, short rotation coppicing and timber harvesting.

These could be harvested as additional cash crops, but would also yield a palette of materials for the repair and improvement of Manor Farm’s buildings. The farmstead could benefit from new structures that are inherently place-based and that foster a more environmentally and socially sustainable form of agriculture.

In Search Of Wabi DipArch - Thesis Projects

Sabi

Mami Kim A poetic space in which people interact with all concrete things such as nature’s ordinariness, the activities in which we are involved in without consciousness, - from washing, chatting, sleeping, we seem to create happiness in ourselves. This rawness in the nature of our habitation through emotions and memories is the quality felt in the nature of Wabi Sabi - the Japanese art of imperfection in such melancholy manner.

My thesis intention is to express

this essence of Wabi Sabi in an architectural composition through way of ‘play’ - activities that involve endless discoveries that everyone knows how to play yet it is a mysterious and magical gift all living things own, to express our emotions, and exchange knowledge.

In the South West of Sneinton in Nottingham is a footway which links the bottom of the hill to the top, which is seen as an unsecure place to many especially at night

time with the presence of drug users and crimals’ escape route.

Wrapping around the footway will provide a nursery, reflecting the importance of ‘play’ as a child, and series of workshops for art, music and dance. ‘Play’ is expressed by composition, improvisation and intelligence throughout the space where people move in subconscious manner through their observation of materials and interaction with people and various activities.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Christopher Lee Learning from Nature

The dynamics of change in the natural world are being accelerated and perturbed by human activities at an unprecedented rate and scale. Global climate change is upon us, and its effects will be local and regional. More and more energy will be trapped in the atmosphere produces more intense weather systems; which in turn accelerates desertification in arid region, increased intensity and frequency of storms in other regions, and the warming of arctic and cold weather regions.

The aim of my design thesis project will explore the means of developing an architecture that is strongly correlated to the organisations and systems of the natural world. The logic of eco-system can be extended to develop biological energy and material systems for buildings and cities. If we were able to integrate temporally our rate of energy and fuel use with the availability and the natural rates of resource renew in the bio-sphere, then there would be absolutely no problem of depletion of non-renewable energy resources or global warming due to the environment effects of greenhouse gases.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects Is the earth a single plane from which we extrude our buildings?

Or, is the earth just a centre, surrounded by an infinite volume of space in which only our imagination limits us?

If we zoom out from the three dimensional world in which we live, we begin to view it as a set of two dimensional maps. Each building appears as an extrusion of its site, the two dimensional ‘ground floor’ of the earth’s surface acts

as the base from which all buildings appear to grow. This thesis introduces the idea of a 3D set of coordinates to create a unique and diverse spectrum of spaces and to allow for diverse expansion in crowded cities.

This project tackles the issues of space and the development of the British Film Institute at Waterloo Bridge, London. The Institute is currently hidden away in a cramped site tucked under the bridge, in or-

der to expand without relocating from this exclusive site the space surrounding it needed to be manipulated.

This building does not rely upon the laws of gravity to fuel its construction; instead it works on a 3D space frame with the ability to design from any 3D coordinate. The building is designed as a lightweight structure to allow for prefabrication and construction to occur at any point at any time. The laws of gravity are eluded.

Laura Lockwood Designing in Space

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Sometimes unearthing the chain of influence can lead to unexpected places. This thesis is an attempt to trace the chain of influence and discover why certain things have come to be as they are.

In developing knowledge, understanding, skills and judgement, in order to contribute responsively to the world, this piece of work began, simply by looking for meaning in automatic observations.

I have looked hard at two places to try to gain an understanding of the reflexive reaction that they provoke, the aim is the question what I know. When looked at comparatively I feel that these places can reveal meaning in each other, the two places encompass a range of contrasts and contradictions and include a mass of multi-contextual weight and potential.

Of monumental and with a weight cultural heritage I Bonded Tobacco

monumentality of immoveable introduce the Warehouse at

Elizabeth McHugh In the presence of absence

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Stanley Dock, Liverpool. With ordinariness in epic proportions I present the launderettes of the Associated Liver Launderettes, the largest operator of launderettes in the UK. Both have a presence in the City of Liverpool.

I started by trying to understand the history and significance of the Tobacco Warehouse and the role of the launderette as part of a study of the habitual, the everyday and the individual in the city. I have attempted to combine these two elements into a proposal that will recharge the derelict warehouse.

Post Office: New perspectives in DipArch - Thesis Projects

Communicative space

Is Architecture a communicative medium? In the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’, Hugo describes his antogonist Frollo holding up a book to the cathedral and stating - ‘This will Kill that’. ‘This’ being the book, ‘That’ being Architecture. Before mass literacy, architecture was one of the principle means of communicating mankind. Hugo was right, Architecture now exist as signs, heiroglyphs to be decoded by a minority.

After Baudrillard: ‘Every transition from a system to another better intergrated system, every communtation within an already structured system, every functional synthesis, precipitaes the emergence of meaning’ This project looks to the hermenutic ideals of the moribund Royal Mail to redefine an Old Post Office in the City of Newport, Wales . By taking ‘Orality’ as a principle object to design around, Can a reinterpretation of the Postal system deliver identity and meaning through architecture?

Could the translation of the system deliver space in a new way?

A new Royal Mail? A new perspective in communicative space?

Owen Pritchard

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Yifan Qui

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

DipArch - Thesis Projects Berlin is an extreme example of a city shaped by the vicissitudes of fate; the changes it has it has experienced in its seven-hundredyear history explain its present appearance better than any functional analysis. On its conception, Berlin consisted of two cities; one for fishers and the other for merchants.

Soon it became a market town of free citizens, then an aristocratic and the seat of the king, who transformed it into a military stronghold, the capital of his realm and finally a fortification. Berlin then grew into the imperial city of a new empire, and then into one of the greatest industrial centres in Europe. It be-

came a metropolis and the capital of the new, ‘thousand year’ Reich.

Its reduction to rubble at the end of the Second World War was followed by a division into east and west in the Cold War. Now it can become a metropolis once again and, for the third time, a capital of a reunified Germany.

Lucy Richardson BERLIN// Written into the Void

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Sivashankari Sivanathan

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DipArch - Thesis Projects The Pumphouse, 5 The Ropewalk was the first in a series of Victorian pumping stations to extract clean water from artesian wells in the porous sandstone to supplement the city’s water supply. It later became ‘Hooley’s’ garage. This beautiful building is currently derelict and in a state of repair. It is an important part of the city’s heritage, and should be brought back to life.

Health and hygiene was a major concern for the Victorians. This

indicated the new programme for The Pumphouse: a holistic health centre with ‘restorative’ water. The centre will include a Victorian Turkish Suite, lap pool, saunas, steam rooms and a natural outdoor pool.

The Victorian Turkish Baths will be the main facility at the centre.

They played an important role in the health of the Victorians and it seems appropriate and relevant to revive these on the site of a Victorian Water Pumping Station. These will be situated in the new stone

building, which will be connected to The Pumphouse by a glazed link.

As visitors bathe, specific details of The Pumphouse will be revealed through carefully framed views causing people to engage with the site’s history.

The water will restore both the body and the mind, improving the general well-being of its visitors as well as restoring the existing Pumphouse.

Holly Stanton Restorative Water: The Pumphouse, 5 The Ropewalk

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DipArch - Thesis Projects The ‘Kinesthetic Interaction Space’ is conceived as an interactive architectonic intervention aimed at children with autism, providing sensory stimulation to assist with intervention methods and aid interaction with other children through shared kinesthetic experience. The focus of the thesis is on the development of dynamic material systems that could enable new forms of interactive environment. Architecture is conceptualised as an embodied interface and physical space has been fused with digital media in order to stimulate the imagination of inhabitants. K.I.S. is intended to facilitate playful explorations and fluid dialogues between people. The user learns to interact with their environment through an intuitive process, engaging the physical presence of inhabitants and forming spatial narratives.

The system is flexible, transformable and fully demountable, meaning that the same kit of parts can be assembled to adapt to a range of spatial requirements. Rather than one design solution, an infrastructure has been designed for the creation of architectural space, centred upon environmental experience. The thesis was developed through a full-scale prototype that was constructed to enable the experience of the qualities of the surface, both visual and tactile, and the observation of its use, including people’s responses.

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Steve Townsend Digital Intimacy

Blackburn, therefore DipArch - Thesis Projects

I am

Sophie Waterhouse

Blackburn is apparently in her second heyday. It is as economically successful as it was when Cotton was King and is currently undergoing a radical transformation. The council are desperately trying to create a unique Sense of Place in the town centre in the hope that it will attract investment to the town.

But with blearing poster of shoddy CGI’s advertising that a Primark is to replace Blackburn’s only Art Deco Building is Blackburn going to get its sense of place? Is the placement of a Primark within this industrial townscape just part of the natural evolution of a town that is based on mass production?

The thesis is a search for Blackburn’s sense of itself which is found in the everyday ordinary awkward identity of this former mill town and is celebrated in a proposal for the Blackburn Spa. This Spa creates a narrative of the town allowing a tourist an insight into a town which celebrates Primark and the omnipresence of beauty parlours, indulges in its rich food heritage in the Lancashire Café and gives a warm northern welcome in the Blackburn Guesthouse.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects

Peter Williamson Revaluing the Vague

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A creek wall repair facility and metal working school, embedded within a salvage yard for Deptford.

The oscillating nature of the vague shifts material from one form to another, echoing the lost materiality of an industrial era that once relied on every quality the creek had to offer; water, energy, land, transportation...carving the landscape mechanically to better serve the goal of production and efficiency.

The periphery has afforded itself to opportunity, to experimentation and to chance; now we see the emergence of craft and beauty, both man made and physical. This landscape is one of reflection, but also one of making, of production and investigation.

Safely hidden away from the toil of the mechanised city, the project

offers a space where the periphery becomes a “factory” of unique education and exploration that offers a complete experience. There are no audio visual screens hidden away in darkened rooms, there are no predetermined decisions to be made... the flaneur wanders from the street through an all encompassing body of earth, water and fire, to eventually descend into the mud and a landscape that absorbs one in an environment never before delivered to the passing stranger.

Here past, present and future flicker in the limelight; juxtaposed against the crystalline labour of others, the forum offers a place to reflect upon one’s own position within society, their own skills and their own capabilities.

DipArch - Thesis Projects Starting with an interest in Baroque ecclesiastical architecture, this investigation encountered man ‘decentered’ from his geocentric home by the post Copernican revolution – a shift made manifest in the proliferation of perspectival distortions in the Baroque arts.

Simultaneously, the unifying capacity of the Baroque (the gesamtkunstwerk) – especially seen in the light of the dualism of subsequent enlightenment thinking – fuelled an interest in architecture as a mode of reconciliation.

Sited at Greenwich, my proposal attempts to reinstate such a mode, echoing, yet attempting to visually break down such dualism through their respective embodiments in an Archive and Chapel. The Archive, containing the written word embodies reason, whilst the Chapel, containing the Word of God,

embodies faith. In each case, the programme is concerned with the making visible of the word.

Similarly, and in a more contextually ‘apt’ manner, the Renaissance understanding of the book as containing the World (‘hic liber est mundus’), is echoed in the architecture of the Church – a system of cosmological order. Both are fuelled by the now redundant site whose purpose was once the mapping of the ‘heavens’.

The proposal develops through a blurring of the ‘horizon of visibility’ – the dividing line between earth and the ‘heavens’, representing the limits of human understanding – acting to bring together earth and sky.

Dominic Wilson The Greenwich Archives

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Dance and Well-being Centre, DipArch - Thesis Projects

Macao

Vivien Wong Sitting in the context of modernism in China, the design thesis questions the limit of Western modernisation. Having been absorbed into a Portuguese colony, the popular religious cult among the Chinese community on Taipa Island in Macao has put a limit onto western influences. Their traditions manifest in local neighbourhood shrines and in festival celebrations have made Taipa Village a place of resistance in the age of modernisation. As a result, there is an interesting contrast between the old & new on the Island’s urban landscape.

The proposed Dance and Well-being Centre (DWBC) locates in Taipa Village will employ universal techniques to cultivate a resistance, identity-giving culture. The Centre will become a permanent station on the dance parade route to support local celebrations. It will define the northern corner of the Village and upgrade its fronting square.

The DWBC will become a magnet that brings the community together and raise the sense of belonging .

In response to Macao’s hot and humid climate, the building is designed to be naturally ventilated in the mild winters, and is cooled by a ground-air heat exchange system during hot summers. The design of the façade inspirited from Chinese paintings will allow the ventilation strategy to work.

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DipArch - Thesis Projects A number of factors influence a person’s mental health and wellbeing, and among them are individual attributes such as heredity, luck, knowledge, attitude and skills.

However, there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates social, economic and environmental conditions also play an important role.

University is an organization for group of people pursuing academic achievement and many of universities has been designed for its specific purpose. Students spend most of their time within university, as they are affiliate with university while academic years it is a very important place where students develop their identities and prepare for broader social network. Despite of importance of university as so-

cial living space it seems that there is a certain lack of focus on student well-being quality of student life when university is designed – especially those which are built in early 1960s.

The aim of the thesis is to build social interaction platform for university students. It is a spatial structure to pursue the communication/ collaboration/ harmony among university students. It is an open public space to provide a meeting (waiting) area/ performance, event area / free speech etc as a plaza/ square in cities/towns traditionally do. It is a building wholly engaged to students and for students wellbeing. In order to pursue with this idea, the following issues must be addressed through architectural ambition.

Young Cho Student Community Centre

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RESEARCH AT THE SBE The School of the Built Environment aims to be an international centre for interdisciplinary research excellence with particular strengths in the area of sustainable development. The School includes 36 research active staff spread across four Institutes: Architecture; Building Technology; Sustainable Energy Technology; and Urban Planning. The School also enjoys the support of a distinguished group of Industrial and Practice Professors.

Research in the School covers five key subject areas: - Building Services - Sustainable Energy Technologies - Environmental Design and Tectonics - Urban Design - Architectural Humanities This structure reflects the breadth of specialist interests to be expected within a large community of architecture and built environment researchers. Interdisciplinary collaboration is also strength of the School’s approach, and many staff contributes to work in more than one research area.

Staff are also involved in a number of interdisciplinary research groupings with other Schools around the University, including: Energy Technologies Research Institute (led by the School of Chemical, Environmental and Mining Engineering) comprises a multidisciplinary team of more than 100 engineers and physical and social scientists working on projects totalling more than £8 million. It is supported by industrial partners in the energy sector, including e.ON and Rolls Royce, collaborating on projects funded by the UK research councils, the DTI and the EU. A full-time Research Administration Manager maintains and develops the School’s links with architectural and engineering practice, the construction sector and related industries, as well as promoting technology and knowledge transfer. Since RAE2001 the total resources available to the school have increased significantly, allowing a major improvement in the physical infrastructure and a corresponding expansion in the recruitment of staff – including three new full-time Chair appointments.

Centre for the Environment provides a focus for developing interdisciplinary approaches to environmental research and teaching within the University. It brings together seven Schools and Institutes spanning the natural, physical and social sciences, including: China Policy Institute; Schools of Built Environment, Biology, Biosciences, Chemical, Environmental and Mining Engineering, Civil Engineering and Geography.

Centre for Research in Architectural Culture set up by the Architectural Humanities Group provides a platform for interdisciplinary research in the areas of visual, spatial and urban culture studies. It involves staff from: Critical Theory/ Cultural Studies; History and Art History; Computer Sciences; Visual Culture and Film Studies. It has recently attracted funding from the University’s Humanities Research Centre in two areas: The ‘Images Project’on the impact of new visualisation technologies; and the ‘Pervasive Media Group’ focused on ubiquitous computing.

Integration of research and teaching is achieved throughout the School and is particularly evident in the current portfolio of successful taught masters courses, including: MSc in Renewable Energy and Architecture; MSc Energy Conversion and Management (also offered at the University’s Ningbo campus); and the MSc in Sustainable Building Technology which is co-taught with one of five collaborating institutions in China. In addition to the general advanced level Master of Architecture in Design the School runs a number of other research-led taught postgraduate programmes that encourage progression to MPhil and PhD. Scholarship funding is available from both School and University sources.

Collaborative links exist between the School and Cambridge Architectural Research.

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MASTER COURSES The School runs a number of innovative taught postgraduate courses based on its research expertise and most of the design modules undertaken on these Masters courses are shared with the Diploma in Architecture [RIBA 2] course.

Admission: Applicants should hold a good first degree with at least a second class honours, or an equivalent qualification. Two references are required for each application.

International students whose first language is not English must have an appropriate level in an approved English test before they can register at the School. For further details: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/courses/postgrad/index.html For the current fees for the courses please visit: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ fees/2008-09/pgt-fees2008-09.htm A limited number of School Scholarships are offered for Postgraduate Taught Courses. These are awarded on a competitive basis to applicants based on academic record and financial circumstances. Additional scholarships are available for International Students through the University’s International Office: www.nottingham.ac.uk/international

MArch in Design Concentrates on architectural design, humanities and technology to an advanced level through a broad range of studio-based exploration and innovation, while also encouraging the development of sophisticated communication skills.

Course director: Jonathan Hale.

MArch in Urban Design Understands the complex relationship between spatial and design issues and social and economic urban processes. Addresses urban design as research and practice that shapes urban environments and responds to urban problems.

Course director: Katharina Borsi

MArch in Theory and Design Explores the potential contribution to the design process of an advanced theoretical input, drawing upon knowledge from other disciplines and introducing a range of critical techniques from outside the traditional domain of architecture.

Course director: Dr Laura Hanks.

MA in Architecture and Critical Theory Interdisciplinary programme that focuses on the interface between architectural theory and contemporary philosophy / cultural studies.

Course director: Jonathan Hale.

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MArch in Technology Focuses on the role of technology in contemporary architecture; it explores integrated environmental strategies and the latest advances in materials including digital fabrication, contributing to the design of zero carbon architecture.

Course director: Prof Michael Stacey

MArch in Environmental Design Provides training in integrated environmental design in architecture and builds on a project based approach where technical and theoretical knowledge is well integrated. Aimed to practitioners in architecture and building industry in general.

Course director: Benson Lau.

Msc in Renewable Energy and Architecture Examines the integration of passive and active renewable energy systems into the fabric of buildings. Students are introduced to the use of simulation techniques and laboratory/engineering methods for analysing environmental performance.

Course director: Dr Mohamed Gadi

MSc in Sustainable Building Technology Tailored towards graduates of building services, architectural environmental engineering and other related disciplines. Focuses on the successful integration of renewable and sustainable energy technologies into buildings.

Course director: Dr Xudong Zhao

MSc in Sustainable Energy and Entrepreneurship Provides students with advanced skills in Renewable Energy Technology and Business.

Graduates from the course will be well placed to pursue careers in renewable energy technology industries.

Course director: Dr Yuehong Su

MSc in Energy Conversion and Management Strong emphasis within the context of renewable & sustainable energy technologies in the built environment. Provides effective management skills and an understanding of the current policies and regulations widely applicable.

Course director: Dr Matthew Hall 266

INDUSTRIALLY SPONSORED STUDENTSHIP SCHEME The MSc in Energy Conversion & Management is an exciting and timely new course that covers all forms of energy conversion including renewable energy technologies, biomass & combustion, heating & cooling technologies, materials science and CHP systems. This coincides with the huge demand for young, highly trained engineers who have a strong enthusiasm for sustainability and the environment.

The industrial studentships are sponsored by several market leading companies working in this field and are each worth £3,000 towards the tuition fee costs for the student. This also offers the unique opportunity for the student to work closely with the company sponsor over the Easter and summer periods on an individual dissertation project connected with the company’s current research & development activities. The scheme has proved highly successful amongst students and sponsors alike.

During the 2007/08 academic year these sponsor companies have awarded industrial studentships:

E.ON UK are part of the E.ON Group; the world’s largest investorowned power and gas company.

They are the UK’s largest integrated energy company, generating and distributing electricity, and retailing electricity and gas.

ProLogis is the world’s largest owner, manager and developer of distribution facilities such as manufacturing plants, retail outlets and transportation complexes

A large UK-based consulting engineer company offering fully integrated structural, building services, infrastructure and environmental engineering solutions.

Kingspan Group plc is a building products business focused on establishing leading market positions by providing innovative construction systems and solutions with a global reach.

The Brian Warwicker Partnership PLC provides sustainable and intelligent award-winning designs and innovative engineering consultancy solutions.

The Austin Company UK provide a broad range of Consulting, Design, Engineering, Management and Construction services, producing solutions for complex and challenging projects

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DIPLOMA STUDENT BURSARY SCHEME Scheme coordinated by Professor Michael Stacey.

Since the academic year 2006-07 the School of the Built Environment at the University of Nottingham established a student bursary scheme. The aim of this scheme is to forge closer links between the school and practice whilst supporting selected students through the final stages of their education to become architects. The practices range is scale and approach, some are local and many practice architecture internationally, but all are committed to architectural education.

Student Bursary The basic bursary offered by all practices in the scheme is £1000 per year for students undertaking fifth year and sixth year at the School of Built Environment, Nottingham. Each practice also offers

Architectural Practice of the Year (Building Awards 2007) and winner of the Low Energy Building the Year (Sustainability Awards 2006), PRP is the UK’s most renowned practice specialising in residential design. Our 360 employees work in four offices in London, Surrey, Milton Keynes and Manchester to deliver projects across the UK as well as in Russia, Spain, France, Montenegro, Ukraine, China and India. We also design care homes, schools, health facilities, leisure complexes, mixed use and commercial buildings. We are accredited as an Investor in People and offer a unique learning and development programme to help staff develop their careers and skills at PRP.

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An 80+ strong London-based practice with a national and international portfolio. The practice is well known for its skilful integration of new buildings within historic environments, and for its expertise in high-end residential, commercial and mixed-use projects. The firm’s long experience of designing award winning buildings and creating master plans for many of London’s historically important central areas has proved invaluable for developers seeking to create appropriate and sustainable new developments in historic cities around the world.

Paul Davis + Partners is currently working on substantial projects in London, Japan, Hong Kong, St Petersburg and Italy.

employment during the summer vacation between these two years.

If the bursary recipient is successful in their studies and within the practice it is the intention of the practice to offer the bursary recipient a salaried position and support them through Part 3. For many practices the preferred starting point is to engage a Year Out student from Nottingham and then nominate them for a bursary at the end of their successful year out on their return to Nottingham. The scheme is also open to students joining the School of Built Environment to undertake their Diploma [Part2].

The specific offer of each practice may vary and will be made explicit during the application and interview process. Application forms available at www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe.

Hopkins Architects has been at the forefront of British architecture since we started in practice in 1976.

Our design approach combines creative imagination and rational logic with empathy for our clients’ needs. We have pioneered and developed a series of strategies in relation to: membrane architecture and lightweight structures; energyefficient design; the inventive use of traditional materials; the re-use of existing structures in conjunction with new buildings and the regeneration of derelict urban areas.

Our practice, of 100 people, works from a studio campus in London.

In addition to our large portfolio of work in the UK, our international work is increasing rapidly.

We are a well-established award winning international architectural practice with 130 staff in London plus 60 split between our New York and Melbourne offices. We care passionately about the craft of building. We also try to advocate the green agenda with our increasingly aware clients.

Our growing New York and Melbourne offices are an integral part of our organisation, not separate worlds. By discussion placement in either location could form part of the year out experience should bursary students so wish.

Building Design Partnership (BDP) is a firm of professionals in building design, embracing all the skills needed to provide an integrated, comprehensive service.

Our key disciplines are architecture, civil, structural and building services engineering; other professions include town planning and urbanism, transport planning, landscape architecture, interior, product and graphic design, lighting design, acoustics and sustainability.

BDP has over 1000 people in the UK and Ireland, making the practice the largest architect-led firm in the UK.

Westfield is one of the leading retail development groups in the world.

With assets of some £23 billion it’s behind some of the most exciting initiatives in the UK today.

Working with the best architects from Michael Gabellini, to Martha Schwartz, Westfield is at the forefront of design innovation, and, with eight major development initiatives across the UK, including regeneration projects in Nottingham, Derby and Bradford, provides its people with the chance to work at the very cutting-edge of retail architecture.

Benoy is an international architectural practice specializing in regeneration and mixed use development. Our work takes us across the UK, Europe and further a field. With offices in Nottinghamshire, London, Hong Kong and India, Benoy has established a worldwide reputation for creative solutions, borne out of a real understanding of clients needs and responding with a fast moving, collaborative working style. We constantly seek input from all our designers, encouraging them to explore new ideas, use initiative and grasp responsibility.

Benoy is a great environment for self-expression, fast learning and career building.

Scott Brownrigg is an award winning architectural practice, that is consistently rated in the UK’s top 20. We provid architecture, specialist town planning, urban design, masterplanning and interior design services across a variety of sectors including business space, residential, transport and hospitality and leisure. We also have extensive public sector exposure with a number of schools within the BSF programme and the two largest PFI contracts in the UK for the MoD. We offer the opportunity to work on some exceptional projects within a supportive, creative and design focused environment.

We have recently been short listed to design the new Media Centre at the heart of the 2012 Olympic games, which reflects our progressive approach to what we do and how we do it.

After more than 170 years in business we have established a solid commercial portfolio with Clients who return to us again and again.

By continuing to attract commissions for some of Britain’s most ambitious and high profile projects we are able to develop more diverse and challenging areas of expertise that makes us stand out from the crowd.

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SCHOOL STAFF ACADEMIC STAFF Heath, Tim Prof Riffat, Saffa Prof Stacey, Michael Prof Architecture

Ford, Brian Prof Oc, Taner Prof Etheridge, David Dr Farmer, Graham Mr Gadi, Mohamed Dr Gan, Guohui Dr Gillott, Mark Dr Hale, Jonathan Mr Hanks, Laura Dr Platt, Stephen Dr Rutherford, Peter Dr Wilson, Robin Dr Yan, Yuying Dr

Altomonte, Sergio Dr Borsi, Katharina Ms Boukhanouf, Rabah Dr Cooper, Ed Dr Deane, Darren Dr Guzman, Guillermo Mr Hall, Matthew Dr Lau, Benson Mr Liu, Hao Dr Lu, Sean C Mr Omer, Siddig Dr Riganti, Patrizia Dr Samant, Swinal Ms Starkey, Bradley Dr Su, Yuehong Dr Tang, Amy Miss Wang, Qi Dr Wu, Shenyi Dr Zhao, Xudong Dr Zhu, Jie Dr Zhu, Yan Dr

Bromley-Smith, Liz Ms Gerber, Nicola Ms Friend, Adrian Mr Howarth, Andrew Prof Edmonds, John Mr Nicholson-Cole, David Mr Short, David Mr

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Head of School Director of IBT & ISET, Chair in SET Director of the Institute of Architecture, Chair in Professor of Bioclimatic Architecture (IA) Emeritus Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Associate Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Associate Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IA) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Associate Professor (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (Whitbybird) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IA) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IBT/ISET) Lecturer (IA) Studio Leader Studio Leader Studio Leader Teaching Administrator University Teacher University Teacher University Teacher

RESEARCH STAFF Allinson, David Dr Dong, Bo Miss Elzaidabi, Abdalla Dr Khan, Naghman Mr Ma, Xiaoli Dr Ma, Yuan Mr Qiu, Guoquan Dr Rogers, Thomas Mr Spataru, Catalina Mrs Schiano-Phan, Rosa Dr Strielkowski, Wadim Dr Wang, Jing Miss Wheeler, Andrea Dr Worrall, Mark Dr Wu, Yupeng Dr Zhan, Changhong Dr Zhang, Wenbin Dr

Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Associate Research Associate Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Associate Research Associate Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Associate ESRC Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Fellow Research Fellow

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF Amante-Roberts, Zeny Mrs Astill, Donna Miss Aston, Angela Ms Boultby, Lucy Miss Clews, Emma Miss Dickinson, Stephen Mr Hardwidge, Claire Mrs Heery, Alyson Dr O’Reilly, Kim Mrs Shaw, Lyn Ms Thomas, Robert Mr

PA to Professor Riffat UNNC Liaison Officer PA to Professor Heath Administrative Assistant Office Manager, Exams Secretary Finance/Accounts Secretary P/T School Manager Admissions/Courses Administrator Secretary, Institute of Architecture, Part 3 Research Administration Manager

TECHNICAL STAFF

Blunt, Andrew Mr Clarke, Bob Mr Hodgkinson, Patrick Mr Moss, Jonathan Mr Oliver, Dave Mr Smith, Mark Mr Taylor, Dave Mr Wheaver, Scott Mr

IT Support Technician Electronic Hardware, AV Co-ordinator Senior Model Workshop Technician Mechanical Workshop/Laboratory Technician Mechanical Workshop/Laboratory Technician IT Support Assistant Mechanical Workshop/Laboratory Technician Mechanical Workshop/Laboratory Technician

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LONDON SHOW 2008 Scene:

At the RIBA café on a sunny Saturday morning.

Rogers:

“It’s graduation show time again this week. I’m looking forward to seeing the emerging architectural talent that is around. Which shows are you going to?

Hadid:

“Well the AA is always great and the Bartlett had a really interesting theme last year.”

Cullinan:

“I am off to Exhibit 08: The Nottingham Declaration.”

Hadid and Rogers :

“What? Since when has Nottingham exhibited work in London?”

Cullinan:

“Since this year, the London Schools have got some competition.”

Exhibit 08: The Nottingham Declaration An end of year show is always a hugh event at any school of architecture. Two end of year shows…. well that’s an entirely different kettle of fish. Exhibit 08: The Nottingham Declaration was the first Nottingham satellite show to hit London.. Ever! The questions had been brewing for a couple of years: How do we get our talent more exposed in London? How do we promote our selves at the highest level with the serious competitors? How do we celebrate our talent in one of the world’s most important design cities?

Answer: By standing up beside schools such as the AA, Bartlett, London Met and Westminster amongst others during graduation show week in London.

In May of 2008 the wheels were put into motion as we started to look for a venue for the satellite exhibition in London.

The Bankside Gallery was the perfect place, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Tate Modern on the banks of the Thames. We really would be in the thick of it! A team of committed students gave their time to gathering work and collating the exhibition graphics in order to present a curated exhibition of the prize winner’s work from the academic year 07/08.

Invitations were issued, the London Festival of Architecture was contacted and soon we were on the bill as one of a collection of exhibitions to visit as part of an international architecture event. After the success of a Nottingham show in mid June, this satellite exhibition was transported to London for the week. Down the M1 travelled two large vans, a handful of minibuses and a gaggle of students and tutors to help install the exhibition. Those volunteer’s commitment those days and weeks was truly admirable, dashing to Borough market for sausage baps covered in dust from assembling ply screens.

And then it was time! The opening night, filled with guests, family members and students. It was a fantastic night, punctuated with shrieks of students who were offered fantastic job opportunities, gasps of awe at the work that had been put in and sighs of disappointment when the exquisite canopies had been devoured.

Mario Cuccianella delivered a fantastic speech to sum up the achievements of the school and what a mile stone it was to have come to London.

The London show was a fantastic success, exposing the talent of the school to not only professionals and student’s families, but also to the wider public. But as is always this case with a School that has a heart and a community of students it would have been impossible without the dedicated help of all people involved in making it happen.

Bring on Exhibit 10!

Thanks to: Michael, Guillermo, Tim, Steven, Pat, Lyn, T&G, all the 5th year guys and gals who helped (you know who you are), and all those who came to London to help set up!

Lizzie Webster, May 2009

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EXHIBIT! 08 PRIZES AWARDED In recognition of the excellence of their work in 2007-8 the following students have won prizes

Winners

Year

official name of the prize

1

William Gowland

1

Dykes Associates Prize: Best 1st Year Design Portfolio

2

Jajer Karim

1

Hayman Graphics: 1st Year Drawing Prize

3

Joanne Edmunds

1

1st Year Prize: Contemporary Debates

4

Rebbeca Lee & Judith Poole

2

Michael Stacey Architects Prize: Best 2nd Year Design Portfolio

5

Helen Battison, Justin Chan, James Alder, Danny Fenster

2

Institute of Architecture Prize: Undergraduate Construction

6

Tom Surman

3

Scott Brownrigg Prize: Creative Integration of Innovative Environmental Design [3rd Year]

7

Aaron Holden

3

Westfield Prize: 3rd Year Excellence in Design

8

Michael Hawkins

3

Marsh Grochowski Prize for History and Theory

9

Daniel Dale

3

Institute of Architecture Prize: Best 3rd Year Portfolio

10

Alison Jane Clorley

3

Hadfield Cawkwell Davidson Prize: Management & Practice

11

Emma Penny

3

Institute of Architecture Prize: BA Architectural Studies

12

Emily Thurlow

3

The Beetham Organisation Prize: Undergraduate Structures & Construction

13

Aaron Holden

3

Paul Davis & Partners Prize: Use of Computers in Design [Undergraduate]

14

Sara Bertinussen

3

Best MEng Environmental Design Prize

15

Iona Campbell

3

UK national section of the International Isover PassivHaus Design Competition

16

Lucelia Rodrigues, Annie Marston, Richard Stokes

open

Paula Rosa Prize for Kitchen Design

17

Jonathan Davey , Matthew Kidner

5

North East Timber Trade Association Prize for Best Use of Timber

18

James Freeman, Matthew Gilbody, Simon Cheung

5

Stephen George Prize for the Integration of Renewal Energy Technologies in Architecture

19

Andy Chapman, George Chritdoulor, Yifan Qui, Geyang Guo

5

Canary Wharf Tall Building Design Prize

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20

Dominic Wilson

5

Halsal Lloyd Prize: Best 5th Year Design Portfolio

21

Jenny Routledge

6

Cadventure Prize: Best 3D Printed Model

22

Dana Halasa

PG

CPMG Architects Prize for Excellence in Urban Design

23

Asri Asra

5

Blueprint Development Finance Prize

24

Basma Abdallah

PG

Benoys Prize: Best Masters Design Portfolio

25

Esther Preeti Lall

PG

CAR Prize for Excellence in Architectural Research

26

Adam Chambers

6

Arup Prize for Excellence in Environmental Design

27

Jonathan Morrison

6

Grimshaw Prize for Excellence in Component Based Architecture

28

Alex Dale Jones

6

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Prize for Drawing/ Presentation [Diploma / Masters]

29

Tom Osborne

6

NDSA Prize: Best 6th Year Design Portfolio

30

Robert Starnes

6

Hegarty Family Prize: 6th Year Design Innovation

31

Adam Chambers

6

Scott Brownrigg Prize for Creative Integration of Innovative Environmental Design [6th Year]

32

Martin Spencer

6

Foster & Partners ‘Pushing the Envelope’ Prize

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277

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STAGE DESIGN John Edmonds RIBA K1BSC2 Exhibit Pavilion Project 2009 Within the Structures and Construction programme for Year 2 students are introduced to a more detailed investigation with the properties and application of key building materials, in particular timber, steel, concrete, brickwork and aluminium.

As part of this process, the Exhibit Project has evolved to enable students both to design and construct a small pavilion for the Institute of Architecture to showcase the best student projects completed over the course of the academic year. The end of year show attracts many guests from the construction industry and also includes a prize giving ceremony.

The activities are normally led by the Head of School (Prof. Tim Heath) and the Head of the Institute of Architecture (Prof. Michael Stacey) from a stand or podium, which is placed in front of a seated audience in the lawn quad between the SRB and the Marmont centre.

The structure will be predominantly made from timber of any kind e.g. sawn, round wood, ply, engineered timber etc. Additional materials such as steel connections; cables, ropes and fabric may be used as long as the structure can be classified as timber. Students were strongly encouraged to explore the use of timber in less conventional arrangements such as fabric structures, space grids, gridshells and tensegrity structures. One of the prime considerations has been the construction technique of the full size stand, either with the use of prefabricated modular components or construction on-site from basic parts.

The aim of this project has been to balance the requirements of structural stability, robustness, functional requirements, aesthetics and buildability. Additional criteria for 2009 included transportability (the components able to fit inside a Transit van) and sustainability with the use of recycled materials con-

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tained within the Schools Material Bank.

To undertake this project, Year 2 was organised into small selfselected teams, each with 3 to 4 members, initially to develop the designs in the form of drawings, calculations and specifications.

This eventually led to each team constructing a large scale (1:10) model of their specific pavilion.

James Correa, Daniel Ladyman, Madeleine Ike, Yi Yin Chow

The project was met with considerable enthusiasm by the students, which resulted in a series of comprehensive drawings and method statements, not to mention many exquisite designs and beautifully crafted models.

The spirit of competition was maintained with the initial selection of a nine commended entries by a panel of judges from the Institute of Architecture, The final choice was made by the Year 2 students themselves, using an on-line ballot system to declare the eventual winners. This project will be constructed by the students and form the backdrop for the 2007- 2008 prize giving ceremony this year.

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The Tongue & Groove Society!

The epitome of sobriety!

Each Thursday we arrange a talk, Afterwards we serve booze and pork (pies) And once a year we host a Ball Where a good time is had by all And when you’ve had enough of arty farty, Remember our legacy - the Christmas Party Ladies and Gentlemen, T&G 2007/08 have left the building, We’ll keep it short… it’s been emotional!

Thanks to all the speakers, all who attended and everyone who did something to help us on our way. The last year has been one of the most successful in the history of T&G. The blood, sweat and tears have been worth it!

Top 5 Moments: 1- Lyn Shaw… Architecture mum, thank you for everything.

2- The ‘legendary’ Christmas Party 3- Mr. Jaspal Gary Singh Johal 4- ‘The party that started a revolution’ – Ball 2008 5- Sophie’s frugal economic policies (yeah, we can afford more booze!)

T&G have been…

Kelsall – President (Director of mayhem/casualty of Ball) Pritchard – President (Chief Reindeer/swearing loudly) Sophie – Treasurer (The voice of reason – Reining us in/ papering over the cracks) Steve – Graphics and Publicity (Casanova of Solihull) Tim – Graphics and Publicity (Big Hair) Jaspal – Social Secretary (“I’m just getting my coat”) Hannah – Social Secretary (Mess Officer) Holly – Social Secretary (Fluffy Owl) Liz – Transport Secretary (The prettiest taxi driver you will ever encounter) Lucy – Transport Secretary (Shouting at British Rail) Shanka – Environmental Officer (Bottle Banker) Asri – Secretary (Lady of Letters) ‘If you can’t be a good example… serve as a terrifying warning’ xx

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SPONSORS & AKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to specially thank the following people: Prof. Michael Stacey and Lizzie Webster Ben Stuart and Tom Stroud for updating and implementing the on-line system to collect the student’s work and for the composition of their pages.

Eight days a week printing solutions Ltd. for their outstanding support in making possible the printing of this book with such short deadlines.

The School’s Academic and administrative staff that have contributed with information and extraordinary logistic support.

My family

The sponsors for this year’s prizes, whom all our staff and students would like to thank, include: Arnold Laver Timber Scott Brownrigg Cambridge Architectural Research Canary Wharf PLC Council for Aluminium in Building Concrete Centre E.ON Foster and Partners Stephen George and Partners Hadfield Cawkwell Davidson North East Timber Trade Association Marsh Grochowski Architects Saint-Gobain Isover Michael Stacey Architects John E. Wright

The Simon K. Hegarty Award for Design Excellence 2009 is the 10th anniversary of the untimely death of Simon Hegarty, an Architectural graduate of this University, and in his honour and memory his family fund the Simon Hegarty Prize for Design Excellence in Year 6.

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DESIGN YEAR BOOK 2009 The School of the Built Environment University Park Campus Nottingham NG7 2RD UK Tel: 44 (0)1159514184 Fax: 44 (0)115 9513159 architecture@nottingham.ac.uk www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe www.exhibitnottingham.com

EXHIBIT! 09 ONE PLANET: OUR SCHOOL

DESIGN YEAR BOOK

School of the Built Environment

text for the book spine: University of Nottingham