Talks & Workshops

Thesis Talks Peter Cody

In week one we were given the opportunity to hear from a number of students from the

years above who talked on the topic of thesis. This event was extremely beneficial as we got first hand information about what to expect from the coming semester.

It was interesting to hear from other students how best to tackle thesis formation, reviews and the overall workload. They brought up topics which I think otherwise we would not have thought about; such as, not getting too caught up in defining a thesis question early on, to let it evolve throughout the semester. They also gave tips on work methods such as audio recording your thoughts to come back to at a later date and noted that it is

always important to make sure your thesis is something you are genuinely interested in, to make sure you are excited about the topic makes the work much less daunting and more enjoyable. 'No man is an island'. We received a talk

from Peter Cody in week one which was in relation to the topic of islands which we would be exploring the following week.

The talk revolved mostly around literature and poetry as Peter read aloud a number of pieces in order to inspire us to think in an abstract and different way about the topic of islands. In the second half of the workshop Peter got us to respond through the use of words to a piece he had previously read out. I found this helpful as a new mode of thinking; in architecture we mostly think visually, with sketch and diagrammatic drawings being our main methods of communicating our ideas. It was interesting to test out and make use of a new way of doing this - through written word and poetry.

Peter also emphasised the importance of the idea that the project you are really making is yourself, by keeping your thesis closely related to what you are interested in you can ensure that it will be an enjoyable process.

Oliver Kinanne Climate Workshop

On Wednesday of week three Oliver Kinanne came to the studio to deliver a lecture

on climate change and sustainability in architecture. The lecture was in many ways relevant to the topics I have been interested in and so presented me with a lot of new information, as well as inspiration.

Oliver emphasised the need to switch to nonlinear systems and gave a number of valuable resources such as Stephen Bodesman's carbon to temperature rise equation and circular ecology's I.C.E. Database. The use of timber as an alternative to concrete construction

was explored and Oliver also talked in depth about the tendency for architects to design for permanence rather than adaptability and the huge negative effect this has on our environment and the levels of carbon released

into our atmosphere. A quote which stuck with me was that 70% of houses in the UK

go through destruction to enable growth - how can we reduce this by designing for adaptability? On the morning of the Friday of week three we all got together for a workshop on climate and architecture. We started the morning by calculating our individual yearly carbon footprints which came as a shock to many of us, particularly the impact flying can have on your personal carbon footprint. We continued the workshop by putting our names to a number of post-it notes and placing one under each topic which we deemed relevant to our current thesis questions; these included topics such as building, material, sustainability, cities, energy and many more. This process really helped me to define where I hoped to go with my thesis at the time and further informed my thesis question which we were given a few minutes to think through and write out ahead of our submission the following week.

The workshop ended with each of us choosing a topic which we thought best described our thesis formation to date, the topic under which i thought my thesis idea was best suited was that of 'resource efficiency'. This workshop was interesting as it gave us a chance to get to know the different directions other students were thinking of bringing their work and provided a lot of inspiration coming into week four.