The Bartlett Summer Show Book 2023

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Summer Show

6 Introduction

Professor Amy Kulper

10 Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Programme Director: Ana Monrabal-Cook

12

Year 1 / A World of Fragile Parts

Max Dewdney, Frosso Pimenides

24 UG1 / Common Ground: Effective Use of Land

Rosie Hervey, Margit Kraft, Toby O’Connor

36 UG2 / 1:1 Systems of Exchange

Jhono Bennett, Zach Fluker

48 UG3 / Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There

Ifigeneia Liangi, Daniel Wilkinson

62 UG4 / Antithesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

74 UG5 / FILTH

Patrick Massey, Bongani Muchemwa

86 UG6 / Calibrating

Stefan Lengen, Ben Spong

100 UG7 / Carbon Tectonic

Joseph Augustin, Christopher Burman, Luke Jones

114 UG8 / Up Close, at a Distance

Farlie Reynolds, Greg Storrar

126 UG9 / Festival

Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller

138 UG10 / Polyrhythms: Guyana

Pedro Gil, Neba Sere, Colin Smith

150 UG11 / Ghost Stories

Mani Lall, Matt Poon

162 UG12 / Settlement: Track and Trace

Hannah Corlett, Niall McLaughlin

174 UG13 / Agritecture

Maria Fulford, Jörg Majer

186 UG14 / Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be

David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata

198 UG21 / (dis)Continuity

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

212 Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Programme Director: Elizabeth Dow

226 Engineering & Architectural

Design MEng

(ARB/RIBA Part 1 CIBSE JBM)

Programme Director: Luke Olsen

228 Year 1 / Carnival: Moving Allegories

Barbara Andrade Zandavali, Klaas de Rycke

234 Year 2 / Re-ACQUAINT: Re-ADAPT

Philippe Duffour, Emma-Kate Matthews, Farhang Tahmasebi

242 Unit 1 / Urban Acupuncture

Dimitris Argyros, Agnieszka Glowacka, Anderson Inge, Vasiliki Kourgiozou

250 Unit 2 / Crimes of the Future

Shaun Murray, Colin Rose, Isabel Why

258 Unit 3 / Birth & Rebirth

Thomas Hesslenberg, Ifigeneia Liangi, Daniel Godoy Shimizu, Daniel Wilkinson

266 Unit 4 / Domestic Palaces of Care

Yasemin Didem Aktas, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Yair Schwartz

274 Unit 5 / Hyper-Production: From Quarry to Quantum

Matthew Heywood, Aurore Julien, Filip Kirazov, Luke Olsen

282 Unit 6 / Flow

Salam Al-Saegh, Simon Beames, Harry Betts, Michael Woodrow

290 Unit 7 / Unearthing New Ecologies

Francesco Banchini, Cristina Morbi, Yi Zhang

298 Unit 8 / Regenerative Shorelines

Jan Dierckx, Saud Muhsinovic, Annarita Papeschi, José Torero Cullen

308 Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Programme Director: Sara Shafiei

310 Year 1 / London Local/e

Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita Perez, Sara Martinez Zamora

316 Studio 2A / Age(S)

Johan Hybschmann, Matthew Springett

324 Studio 2B / Futurephobia

Hadin Charbel, Déborah López Lobato

332 Studio 2C / The Centre Won’t Hold

Olivia Marra, Jane Wong

340 Studio 3A / We Are Global (And Local)

Murray Fraser, Farlie Reynolds

354 Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Programme Directors:

Marjan Colletti, Kostas Grigoriadis

356 PG11 / Future Fictions

Laura Allen, Tom Budd, Mark Smout

368 PG12 / Architecture is a Time Traveller

Elizabeth Dow, Jonathan Hill

380 PG14 / Constructed Futures

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

392 PG15 / Expanded Ecologies

Egmontas Geras, Enriqueta Llabres Valls

400 PG16 / Towards an Architecture of the Poetic

Matthew Butcher, Nasios Varnavas

412 PG17 / The Dialogical Architect

Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Thomas Parker

424 PG18 / Generational Phantoms / Contextual Futurism

Isaie Bloch, Ricardo de Ostos

436 PG20 / Phygital Bodies, Cities and Architectures

Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

448 PG21 / (dis)Continuity

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

460 PG22 / The Urbanism of Friendship

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal

472 PG24 / It’s About Time

Penelope Haralambidou, Michael Tite

484 PG25 / What Is Your Measure?

Nat Chard, Emma-Kate Matthews

496 Design Realisation

Module Coordinators: Pedro Gil, Stefan Lengen

498 Advanced Architectural Studies

Module Coordinator: Eva Branscome

502 Thesis

Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

514 Our Programmes

515 Short Courses

516 Public Lectures

518 Conferences & Events

519 Bartlett Shows Website

520 Alumni

521 The Bartlett Promise

522 Staff, Visitors & Consultants

Introduction

Conventional wisdom holds that for every part of an iceberg that is visible, nine-tenths of its mass remains invisible, its underbelly hidden beneath the waterline. In introducing The Bartlett School of Architecture’s 2023 Summer Show book, I hope to make a similar assertion. Supporting each of the exquisite and eye-opening design speculations by our students featured throughout the following pages is a capacious undercarriage of care for, and commitment to, the built environment. Below this particular waterline of nearly 900 student projects exhibited both physically and virtually, and perhaps invisible to the naked eye, is the work ethic of our students, the dedication of our staff to experimental and innovative pedagogy, and the global web of families, mentors and supporters who have made an education at The Bartlett School of Architecture possible.

Over the past year the students on our Architecture BSc, Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc, Engineering & Architectural Design MEng, Architecture MSci and Architecture MArch programmes have tackled some of the most salient challenges to architects today. They have done so, secure in the knowledge that the best way to address contemporary issues impacting the built environment is to incentivise positive social, cultural and political change through the agency of engaged design. They have recognised the power of narrative to inclusively engage constituencies previously underrepresented in architecture, contributing to a more racially, socially and environmentally just built environment. Our students have approached this work with enthusiasm, empathy, skill and courage, and I want to congratulate them for their efforts in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

The academic and professional services staff provide another critical layer of support for the work. Our dedicated design tutors work closely with students to develop the tone, scope and detail of their projects. History and theory tutors, design technology tutors and skills tutors

inform the projects’ responses to broader historical, environmental and sociocultural contexts. Our education team support the students in the day-to-day pursuit of their studies, and our team of technicians and educators in B-made help students to materialise and fabricate their designs. And while the facilities team care for students across our four sites, our communications team keep them informed and share their achievements with the wider community.

The students whose work is featured in this book stand on the shoulders of a talented and committed body of alumni whose ranks they will join after their degrees are conferred. Last year, over 650 alumni joined us for the Summer Show, and we look forward to welcoming them back to this year’s celebration of our students’ work. The Bartlett alumni feature prominently in the offices of both our show’s headline sponsor, AHMM, and our supplementary sponsors, Foster + Partners and YOOPknows.

As evidenced by the quality of this book and the exuberance of the exhibition it parallels, Bartlett students are also supported by a capable exhibitions team under the guidance and intrepid leadership of our Exhibitions Director, Chee-Kit Lai. It is thanks to the herculean efforts of this team on behalf of our students that we have the privilege of enjoying this spatial imagery both as a book and an exhibition.

So, to mix metaphors for a moment, I encourage all readers to take a moment to look under the hood – or perhaps I should say bonnet – of our students’ work. There you will find a deep infrastructure of student, staff and alumni support that makes the many forms of excellence evidenced by this work possible. Or, stated more simply, the substantive projects contained within the pages of this book are just the tip of the iceberg.

Professor Amy Kulper Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture

Architecture

BSc

(ARB/RIBA Par t 1)

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Programme Director: Ana Monrabal-Cook

The Architecture BSc programme is designed to provide students with a solid foundation in architecture while nurturing their creativity and critical thinking skills. Over the course of three years students develop a deep understanding of the core principles of architecture and explore innovative design approaches. The programme emphasises design as its primary focus; it employs research-based teaching methods that encompass a wide range of practices, from participatory approaches to advanced simulations, material life cycle studies, experimental drawings and digital animations. By encouraging experimentation alongside a rigorous design approach, students are empowered to create complex and multidimensional architectural projects that push the boundaries of undergraduate-level design.

The exhibited design projects in this year’s Bartlett Summer Show showcase the programme’s commitment to addressing the complexities and pressing issues of the built environment. Students explored themes such as ecology, sustainability, spatial equity and the social potential of architecture. They conducted material life cycle assessments, utilised data-informed scripting and AI to analyse sites and employed advanced computation to gain new insights into natural processes. The use of digital technologies, including animation and game engines, allowed students to explore novel ways of enhancing interactions between humans and the built environment.

The return to in-person teaching has greatly benefited students by fostering a vibrant studio culture. Working in various spaces across UCL’s Central London campus and participating in architectural visits to buildings and cultural institutions in the UK and Europe has enriched their learning experience. The exposure to diverse sources and first-hand experiences has ignited students’ imaginations and nurtured their creativity. The remarkable rigour and innovation displayed in their research and design work exemplify the endless possibilities and opportunities available within the field of architecture, ready to challenge the boundaries of architectural education and the profession.

Architecture BSc revolves around four core streams: Architectural Projects, Building Technology, History and Theory, and Professional Studies, with an emphasis on design throughout the three years. The first year focuses on establishing architectural expertise through diverse experimentation and exploration. Students engage in both individual and group projects, experiencing the collaborative and iterative nature of architectural design. Concurrently they are introduced to different disciplines that enhance their understanding of the architect’s historical, social and environmental role, complementing and expanding their creative practice.

In the second and third years, students have the opportunity to select from a diverse range of design units that offer unique expertise and approaches to architectural design research. These units explore various themes and agendas, including the relationship between architecture and landscape, digital simulation and fabrication, and the role of narrative and political context in design. Furthermore, students engage in research practices that involve working with housing associations in the UK and studying architecture in the Global South. Each unit provides a distinct methodology that develops core skills and allows them to explore new directions, ensuring a well-rounded and diverse educational experience. By the end of their undergraduate studies, students are equipped to engage with architectural design in a sophisticated manner, situating their own practice and research within broader socio-political, historical and environmental contexts.

We would like to express our gratitude to the exceptional team behind the organisation and delivery of this programme. We extend our thanks to all our teaching staff and our dedicated administrative team, including our Programme Senior Administrator, Kim van Poeteren, and Teaching and Learning Administrator, Beth Barnett-Sanders, as well as to our committed and enthusiastic team of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants: Alena Agafonova, Yahia Ahmed, Paola Camasso, Kirti Durelle, Melih Kamaoglu, Ana Mayoral, Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira Da Silva, Petra Seitz, Elizabeth Selby and Alessandro Toti. Special recognition goes to Dr Luke Pearson, who has played a crucial role in co-directing the programme over the past four years and has contributed significantly to its ongoing development and success leading up to the academic year 2022–23.

Year 1

Students

Mariam Abbasi, Allysha Alaq, Alastair Ang, Sora Aoki, Khushi Arora, Hannah Bailey, Yury Balabin, Tianyi (Thomas) Bao, Yuan (Becky) Bian, Isabelle Borrow, Oscar Brice, Andi Cela, Yau-Yan Chai, Amal Chamathil, Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Yizheng (Ethan) Chen, Alexander Dean, Mia Deville, Jacob Dumon, Salma Elmi, Sofia Erpici Del Pino, Noel Angelo Ferrer, Maria Ferrer Ramon, Petra Garner, Pia Greenway, Alexander Harrison, Tsoi Wing (Vanessa) Ho, Rosina Hooper, Min (Kristine) Huang, Yang (Huang Yang) Huang, Kanwulia Ilombu, Bonnie Irvine, Trent Jack, Doh Young Jeong, Tahiyah Karim, Zareef Khan, Milda Knabikaite, Mai-Ling Mirei Kong, Karina-Ioana Lacraru, Nga Chi Gigi

Lane, Marisa Lau, Xin Heng (Maggie) Lee, Hei Lam William Li, Sofia Lima, Liana Lumunyasi, Stanislav Luo, Dhruva Menon, Louisa Neal, Ateh-Su Nkenganyi, Uliana Orlenok, Luke Osborne, Alexandra Pantouli, Alexandros Photiou, Irina Pirvu, Jatheep Raj, Abisola Rutter, Michael Kipkoech Sang, Anoushka Sarma, Jiahe (Ryan) Shao, Jan Siwicki, Oliwia Skakun, Chae Won Song, Charles Stone, Hoi Li Muraco To, Pimtong (Pink) Tongyai, Ngoc Chau Anh Tran, Oliwia Tys, Renu Uppal, Clara Varela Cuartero, Eleonora Vena, Odin Verden, Gracie Whitter, Harriet Wilson, Graeme Wong, Elliot Woolard, Yuhan Wu, Tingyi (Tina) Xian, Yumeng Yang, Fangbo (Brant) You, Yi Mun (Kristy) Yu

A World of Fragile Parts

Directors: Max Dewdney, Frosso Pimenides

The theme for the year addressed the increasing fragility of the world, focusing upon issues related to the environment and the material, cultural and political shifts that have forced architects to re-evaluate their agency and practice.

Year 1 is studio-based and embedded in the processes of drawing, making and crafting as a foundation for students to develop their own individual and collective approaches to the built environment and start to formulate their own critical practice.

The first project of the year, A World of Fragile Parts*, focused on an individual study of a cast selected from the V&A’s Cast Courts, which was first observed, then reinterpreted into something new through both technical and conceptual processes. The individual research from this initial project was then translated into a collective installation during the year’s second project titled Ritual & Translation, allowing students to explore architecture as a collaborative practice between colleagues, tutors, craftspeople and clients. Sited in St Pancras New Church, the project saw the design of six temporary 1:1 installations. These explored a series of episodic transformations between the body, the proposition and the site.

The main building project of the year was X-RAY: The Embodied City, sited in Whitechapel around the Royal London Hospital. This project investigated how the design of buildings can nurture health and wellbeing. Students considered elements of architecture that might encompass both medical and non-medical practices; they also practised alternative and lateral thinking to address some of the bizarre, mystical, profane and spiritual aspects of health. Students were asked to step into the shoes of the architect-surgeon to learn how to ‘diagnose the city’ through examining selected sites and surrounding environments. The project asked them to dream about alternative realities, envisioning what a site can host or become in order to help the occupants and the wider city. As further inspiration for the project, we travelled to Edinburgh for our field trip, studying the topography and the picturesque and medial fabric of the city.

Year

1

*The title was taken from the exhibition of the same name held in Venice in 2016 by the V&A and curated by Brendan Cormier.

Associate Directors

Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Isaac Simpson

Tutors

Alastair Browning, Ivan Chan, Nichola Czyz, Zach Fluker, Jack Hardy, Ashley Hinchcliffe, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Fergus Knox, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Siraaj Mitha, Emily Priest, Gavin Robotham, Khaled Sedki, Isaac Simpson, Colin Smith

PGTAs

Wojciech Karnowka, Hugo Loydell, Luke Topping

Critics: Laura Allen, Lucinda Anis, Felicity Atekpe, Clive Burgess, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Nat Chard, Tom Davies, Elizabeth Dow, Sophie Du Ry Van Beest Holle, James Green, Miles Green, Stanescu Ilinca, Steve Johnson, Syafiq Jubri, Wojciech Karnowka, Amy Kulper, Stefan Lengen, Ifigeneia Liangi, Hugo Loydell, Joe MacGrath, Benjamin Machin, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Jatin Naqru, Giles Nartey, Sophia Psarra, Akif Rahman, Peg Rawes, Sam Scott, Luke Topping, Yeena Yoon

Thanks to Laura Allen, B-made, Miriam Campbell, Brendan Cormier, Peter Cook, Nat Chard, Cong Ding, James Green, Srijana Gurung, Aocheng Huang and the Chinese Choir, Tom Henly, Lo Marshall, Elliot Nash, Anne Noble-Partridge, Aileen Reid, Sam Scott, Richard Stonehouse, St Pancras New Church, Relay Team, Viktoria Viktoria

Sponsor: AHMM

Y1.1, Y1.5 Alastair Ang, Hannah Bailey, Yury Balabin, Maria Ferrer Ramon, Tsoi Wing (Vanessa) Ho, Tahiyah Karim, Marisa Lau, Hei Lam William Li, Dhruva Menon, Uliana Orlenok, Clara Varela Cuartero, Eleonora Vena, Yuhan Wu ‘Bells-of-Seclusion‘. The installation brings the calm, meditative atmosphere found within St Pancras New Church out into the open. The project controls, alters and creates new sounds through a series of strings that act like chords. Sugar glass is used in the design of the funnels to create a green light that echoes the east-facing window of the church behind. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y1.2, Y1.4 Mariam Abbasi, Salma Elmi, Alexander Harrison, Milda Knabikaite, Xin Heng (Maggie) Lee, Ateh-Su Nkohkwo, Jatheep (Jay) Raj, Ngoc Chau Anh Tran, Tingyi (Tina) Xian ‘White Night‘. The installation explores the idea of transparency and fragility by creating a series of ephemeral structures and surfaces that replicate daylight within the site, bouncing light to combine it with texture and materials. The sugar stands act as a source of reflection, the ripples onto the Jesmonite resembling the church façade. A strung bow held in suspended tension casts symbols that mark out a musical score. The installation requires viewers to remain quiet, immerse themselves in the moment and experience how day turns into night in a new abstract way. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y1.3 All Students ‘A World of Fragile Parts‘. A series of new casts drawn from the V&A Cast Courts. Students selected a sculpture or fragment from the Cast Courts and studied it through drawings and casts. This study led to a translation into a new cast. Photography by Sophie Percival.

Y1.6 Tianyi (Thomas) Bao, Isabelle Borrow, Yau-Yan Chai, Amal Chamathil, Alexander Dean, Sofia Erpici Del Pino, Yang (Huang Yang) Huang, Kanwulia Ilombu, Karina-Ioana Lacraru, Louisa Neal, Luke Osborne, Michael Sang, Anoushka Sarma, Renu Uppal, Pimtong (Pink) Tongyai, Odin Verden, Harriet Wilson ‘OuterSanctuary’. A sanctuary is a space that helps the user relax by redirecting their senses. This installation creates that pleasant experience next to one of the busiest roads in London. It comprises three stations: standing to listen; sitting to look; and kneeling to touch. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y1.7 Allysha Alaq, Andi Cela, Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Mia Deville, Noel Angelo Ferrer, Petra Garner, Zareef Khan, Nga Chi Gigi Lane, Liana Lumunyasi, Alexandra Pantouli, Jiahe (Ryan) Shao, Oliwia Skakun, Chae Won Song, Charles Stone, Graeme Wong ‘Four Seven Six’. The installation focuses on a hidden element on the site: a metal grill leading to a set of stairs that descend into an underground crypt. It is believed that the crypt under the church used to house 476 interments between 1822 and 1855. The installation brings attention to this small opening on the ground. A series of movements reveal the entrance to the ‘underland’ hidden beneath the church. A series of 476 offerings are cast using ornaments from the site. The offerings are housed in wax for the public to break open. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y1.8 Yizheng (Ethan) Chen, Jacob Dumon, Pia Greenway, Min (Kristine) Huang, Sofia Lima, Stanislav Luo, Irina Pirvu, Jan Siwicki, Oliwia Tys, Gracie Whitter, Elliot Woolard, Yi Mun (Kristy) Yu ‘Trilogy’. The installation is a response to the site, resulting in a series of drawings centred around the theme of ‘carriage, pilgrimage, perspectives and thresholds’. Through material tests, mechanism experimentation and group construction, a three-frame interactive structure was created, one that could be lifted and carried to the site in a procession. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y.9 Khushi Arora, Yuan (Becky) Bian, Oscar Brice, Rosina Hooper, Bonnie Irvine, Trent Jack, Mai-Ling Mirei Kong,

Alexandros Photiou, Abisola Rutter, Hoi Li Muraco To, Yumeng Yang, Fangbo (Brant) You ‘Cascade‘. The installation is inspired by the weathered exterior wall of St Pancras New Church. The weathering is caused by the pollution from Euston Road’s traffic, which this north-facing wall fronts. The curve of the installation follows the shape of a 24-hour pollution graph of Euston and the contours of the landscape mimic an imagined topography where troughs and pathways represent areas of high pollution, such as roads, and peaks and hills represent the areas of low pollution. Photography by Richard Stonehouse.

Y.10 Yizheng (Ethan) Chen ‘Whitechapel Market Traders’ Club’. The proposal provides a communal space for the market traders of Whitechapel High Street. The space is conveniently located above the market and also provides a temporary canopy that extends over the street below. The building provides toilets and washrooms as well as a dining room, repair shop, cold store, social space and tatami room.

Y.11 Hei Lam William Li ‘From the Sewers: A Waste Cooking Oil to Biodiesel Refinery’. The project responds to the problem of the Whitechapel fatberg, a collection of solidified waste matter and cooking oil found in the sewer system below this area of London. The building is an exposed machine that allows its process to be laid bare in order to become an educational and preventative form of design that helps stops oil from reaching the sewers. It further embeds itself within the urban fabric, helping unclog London’s vital arteries.

Y.12 Rosina Hooper ‘An Architecture for Death: An Earth Morgue/Grieving Space in Whitechapel’. The design exists within the void that liminal souls occupy after death – bridging the gap between the end of life and the funeral process. Using light to guide the living through the building, moments of distance and closeness between bodies dead and alive are exaggerated, marking moments for final goodbyes within the death ritual.

Y.13 Tianyi (Thomas) Bao ‘Heroin Ward’. The project proposes a shared space for heroin users, patients undergoing opioid rehabilitation and the public. It exists as a place for healing as well as a site where life-saving medication can be distributed.

Y.14 Anoushka Sarma ‘Weaving Studio’. The scheme draws on the heritage of Whitechapel and its context for its programme and form, focusing on the layers of history hidden behind the urban landscape of the site. Research revealed the historical importance of Whitechapel in terms of its industrial past and migrant communities. The building addresses the wellbeing requirements of the brief by encouraging pocket weaving as a therapeutic and mindful exercise.

Y.15 Nga Chi Gigi Lane ‘Public Female Cleansing Facility’. The project is a reinvention of traditional Western public bathrooms and incorporates the idea of wudu – a cleansing ritual for Muslims before their five daily prayers. The proposed building will provide a space where the body can be thoroughly cleansed and help improve the wudu cleansing process for the residents of Whitechapel.

Y.16 All Students ‘X-Ray: The Embodied City, Whitechapel, London‘. Collective building proposal models. Photography by Sophie Percival.

Y1.4

Y1.8

Y1.9

Y1.6

Y1.7

Y1.10

Y1.12

Y1.13

Common Ground: Effective Use of Land

Rosie Hervey, Margit Kraft, Toby O’Connor

Buildings are typically made upon land and crucially (though we may sometimes forget) from land. Creating buildings involves the formation of new land in various ways. In the context of the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis, what kinds of architecture emerge when we investigate the most effective use of land?

Working towards a decarbonised future means using less resources and less space. If we adhere to this agenda while trying to preserve human resilience and enjoyable qualities of life, we must make every square inch we build work ten times harder. How can we lose the slack and maintain generosity? How can we make space and lose carbon?

This year UG1 have been investigating the design of effective, hardworking, mixed-use thresholds, rooms and buildings as the keys to unlocking radical arrangements for an urban block in London. Continuing our interest in designing for change over time, we have studied and imagined new kinds of layered and shared space in the particular context of Walworth Road, paying attention to shifts of use and microclimate according to daily and seasonal rhythms. While studying the area’s rich history and present, and engaging with current socially-oriented projects on the ground, we have worked across the scales of neighbourhood, room and body.

With each student developing an individual brief and architectural response, proposals imagine a future in which locally sourced and spatially intelligent architectural interventions radically contribute to our global future communities and ecosystems alike. Through experimentation with timber and clay, we have taken time to understand and engage with material properties and investigated how the sourcing, processing, assembly and finishing of materials can generate an architectural language that embodies ideas of effectiveness, coexistence and care.

Our field trip this year in southern England focused on Flimwell Park and the Woodland Enterprise Centre. Here we worked with expert foresters, makers and architects to understand how to design with local timber. We engaged too with ceramics by visiting the incredible factory of Darwen Terracotta in Blackburn and the studios of Rochester Square in London. We also participated in workshops facilitated by B-made which focused on the interplay between manual and digital methods and tools.

Year 2

Lucy Ayres, Mason Cameron, JoshuaJefferson Celada

Flordeliz, Delphi Fothergill, Jillian Mak, Caitlin McHale, Sneha Parashar, Iolo Rees, Jessica Richard, Sofie Stiekema, Lola Wilson, Min Yoo

Year 3

Sofia Forni, Gabriella Peixouto Bandeira Da Silva, Alara Taskin

Technical tutors and consultants: Ewelina Bartkowska, Martyn Carter, Tom Davies, Sienna Griffin-Shaw, Oli Haden, Danny Harling, Steve Johnson, Ben Lee, Wei Lim, Sharmada Nagarajan, Frankie Nowne, Josh Piddock, David Saunders, Jon Wilson

Critics: Joey Augustin, Chris Burman, Diana Cochrane, Tom Davies, Anastasia Glover, Jeremy Leach, Luke Vouckelatou, Rufus Willis, Sal Wilson

With thanks to the students of UG7 for our design co-reviews

Special thanks to: Walworth Garden, Walworth Living Room, Rochester Square, Darwen Terracotta, Flimwell Park and the Woodland Enterprise Centre

1.1, 1.4–1.5 Gabriella Peixouto Bandeira Da Silva, Y3 ‘Walworth Forest Garden’. The project investigates the adaptive reuse of a building fronting 60m of high street. Having identified a lack of ‘in between’ spaces in the neighbourhood, where people are free to linger or pass through, the proposal transforms the existing structure into a large semi-enclosed public garden. A space of great civic generosity is created by demolishing some of the hollow clay block floors and reusing them to form façades, seating and other elements. The refined façade and sweeping roof allow for urban furniture to be set in playful atmospheric conditions, creating a resilient city shelter which is empathetic to the public.

1.2–1.3, 1.24 Caitlin McHale, Y2 ‘Liberating Walworth’. Reconnecting the energetic Walworth Road with its former inhabited industrial yards and the recreational gardens behind the high street, this pilot for a series of community-funded projects carves a new courtyard for everyday community life into an existing urban block. A tessellation of buildings employing charred timber and thatch construction provides space for activities which are seasonal or require rented premises, creating a new multifunctional zone for residents to connect.

1.6–1.7 Iolo Rees, Y2 ‘Sleep’s Geometry’. Between the high street and railway line, a sleep clinic is set within a small forest and a series of gardens structured using slate stacks and a publicly accessible sheltered pathway. Here clinicians can empower patients to take control of their sleep across a range of open-air and enclosed sleeping spaces. Investigating adaptive reuse through the poetics and practicalities of material properties, the project formulates a highly sculpted and elemental environment which questions institutional assumptions and aesthetics around hygiene and comfort.

1.8 Sofia Forni, Y3 ‘Carter Place Creative Club’.

Responding to the redevelopment of Walworth Town Hall, the project investigates the performance of everyday life, transforming a supermarket car park into a new urban composition including homes, a theatre and a multi-use creative space. A focus building using straw construction and playing with chalk-white atmospheres provides a space for young entrepreneurs, an after school club, a community kitchen and a public living room.

1.9 Lucy Ayres, Y2 ‘Walworth Road Children and Parent Community Centre’. Investigating adaptive reuse, the premise retains the existing building where possible and only demolishes materials where necessary for connection points to the proposal, which tessellates with the first floor and roof. This creates a low carbon composition of timber framing, parquet flooring, existing 1950s brick and recycled woodchip and plaster interiors. Tiled walls reflect sunlight into the lower north-facing interior spaces, leading to a generous roof terrace offering a rare wide view over South London.

1.10 Sneha Parashar, Y2 ‘Towards Coexistence With Nature’. Sited in the Lea Valley, the project begins by adapting a concrete flood relief channel and carving out meanders for a new marshland. A two-phase building project reacts to the landscape in the form of a stilted timber structure with a flexible textile roof which accommodates a shift from industrial to monastic uses and where the migration of the environmental envelope welcomes willow trees into the building line.

1.11 Min Yoo, Y2 ‘The Walworth Community Kitchen’. Through the adaptive reuse of a supermarket building, the project provides space for small groups to come together and prepare meals, produce and products, encouraging the reuse of surplus foods to reduce waste and lower costs. Six main spaces are provided: a kitchen, fridge, restaurant, classrooms, terrace and garden –all for communal use. The kitchen speaks to its urban

context through its long, curved façade, which echoes the vertical rhythms of the surrounding architecture and bounces sunlight into the building and street.

1.12 Jillian Mak, Y2 ‘Walworth Community Centre’. Refurbished, partially demolished and re-clad with clay tiles, a large existing high street building is transformed in terms of function, energy efficiency and appearance, instilling a welcoming atmosphere and sense of civic pride through moments of spatial generosity and material atmosphere. Working playfully with programmatic connections and adjacencies, activity spaces are woven together, including a climbing wall, dance studios, study rooms, sheltered outdoor spaces and a courtyard garden.

1.13–1.14, 1.22 Lola Wilson, Y2 ‘Walworth Yard’. Inspired by the cottage industries that once occupied backyards and mewses, the project uses craft, both physically and metaphorically, to comment on wider social issues such as empowerment, law and the environment in the form of a centre for timber-based crafts. While the proposal’s shape sensitivity works around the existing building and yard space, the steam-bent timber façade demonstrates the technical skill and versatility of British timber species as both a craft and an architectural material.

1.15–1.16 Jessica Richard, Y2 ‘Walworth’s Family Centre’. The project proposes a building and urban intervention that brings people of all ages, religions, races, genders and sexual orientations back to the area. A rammed earth family centre and planted play street create a genuinely diverse and positive environment. The centre provides free childcare and counselling, enabling parents from all types of families to pursue an education or career if they wish.

1.17–1.18 Mason Cameron, Y2 ‘Bringing the Southern Light’. Animating spaces to reflect light and colour through material craft, the project enables a new Latin-American plaza to be illuminated with life, within climatic and seasonal UK conditions. An expansive and flexible hub of culture and celebration is created for Walworth’s diverse community on a ground floor made from brick and textiles, radiating colour and light while enabling on-site market workers to live in co-housing on the higher levels sheltered by hemp and thatch.

1.19–1.20 Delphi Fothergill, Y2 ‘Housing Connection: Civic Building Blocks’. Working with courtyard and street typologies, a playful composition of modular units of homes and bricks is set within the existing context, creating a new network of urban spaces and a diversity of thresholds between public, semi-private and private conditions. A new common ground of orchards, shops and workspaces is established through the phased transformation of an existing supermarket and car park. On the floors above this, an intergenerational co-housing typology affords opportunities for individuals to form relations through common social interactions.

1.21 Joshua-Jefferson Celada Flordeliz, Y2 ‘Active Walworth’. The project reforms a patchwork of alleyways, railway arches and playgrounds into a network of connected public spaces. A multi-sport building sits above and around this, inviting people of all ages and abilities to enjoy physical activity. The large-format timber building takes a prominent square form and plays with layering, transparency and sculpted voids, creating long views while activating nearby squares and streets.

1.23 Sofie Stiekema, Y2 ‘Walworth Community Kitchen and Garden’. Responding to the cost of living crisis, the project reclaims a supermarket car park to provide a landscape of allotments with buildings which play with the typology of the greenhouse. The main focus building integrates timber frame and rammed earth construction to create a symbiotic set of environmental conditions celebrating subtleties of thermal delight in architecture.

1.8 1.9

1:1 Systems of Exchange

Jhono Bennett, Zach Fluker

As spatial practitioners, we are intrinsically shaped by our situated experiences, knowledges, values and beliefs when called upon to design. The way we see, think and act in our built environments is fundamentally formed by the various reciprocal 1:1 exchanges that make up our contemporary built environment systems: our cities. These moments of exchange range from the items we buy at the nearby hardware store for home repair to the recommended content on social media platforms and the kind of dwellings we dream of occupying in the cities we aspire to inhabit. Such intimate, multi-scalar moments within the built environment reveal the ever-emerging dynamics of me:us, and offer the opportunity to inform a more grounded and critically contextually responsive approach to architectural design.

Urban crises of varying degrees are affecting many large cities worldwide. London now faces multiple socio-spatial challenges that are only worsening access to affordable living and housing. Despite the UK’s rich history of self-made actions, the potential of self-build practices to address the problem remains largely unexplored. As a unit, we are deeply interested in exploring the untapped opportunities that lie within the socio-technical dimensions of such systems. We believe in the power of grassroots processes that tread responsible lines between the individually made and mass-produced, the virtual and the physical, the small scale and large scale. Through these investigations, we seek to understand the role that contemporary designers can play in unlocking these large-scale, human-centred, community-based systems through very real exchanges of what the unit refers to as hand-made data and other contextually valuable resources.

During the first iteration of 1:1 Systems of Exchange, our focus was directed toward exploring methods that could leverage self-build practices as a means of furthering existing potential within communities of East London. At the same time we took into account the unique socio-spatial factors at play, including the positionality of the researcher/designer in framing these strategies. By concentrating on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, our approach involved developing our own documentation techniques to understand better the nature of the conflicts between urban systems of exchange in both physical and virtual realms. We questioned the concept of DIY culture and assessed the potential of self-build practices in empowering individuals to shape our cities.

Year 2

Maria Gasparinatou, Aryan Kaul, Shuheng Wang, Zhi Qi (Tina) Wu

Year 3

Magdalena Gauden, Zuzanna Jastrzebska, Fardous Khalafalla, Archie Koe, Arushi Kulshreshtha, Jack Powell, Rauf Sharifov

Technical tutors and consultants: Simon Beames, Beatrice De Carli, Alberto Fernández González, Tamara Khan, Jakub Klaska, Tony Le, Rowan Mackay, James Palmer, Thomas Parker, Liz Tatarintseva

Critics: Egmontas Geras, Sarah Harding, Margarita Garfias Royo, Elly Selby, Isaac Simpson, Liz Tatarintseva, Unit 21

2.1, 2.22–2.23 Aryan Kaul, Y2 ‘The Meanwhile Repair Collective’. In collaboration with Meanwhile Gardens Community Association, this project addresses a collapsing factory building through a self-build scheme. It rehabilitates existing spaces, such as offices, storage, workshops and meeting areas, and fosters social cohesion. Interviews, tours and volunteering inform the design process. Drawing inspiration from a Moroccan self-build practice, the project explores rammed earth construction in London and incorporates recycled materials. Digital fabrication simplifies construction, using timber columns for both structure and formwork. The incremental development process respects the site’s self-build community, minimising interruptions and preserving usable spaces.

2.2–2.3, 2.24–2.28 Jack Powell, Y3 ‘Bookbinding Vernaculars’. The LCBA Workshop is a public factory owned by the London Centre for Book Arts and serves as a hub for bookmaking, ideas and art. Built by independent thinkers in East London, the building reflects the craft of bookmakers while elevating materials such as paper and thread. It is part of a growing network of waterfront workshops, bridging canal-dwellers and bookbinders. These workshops and publishers protect against censorship, encourage free discourse and foster intellectual and artistic expression.

2.4–2.6 Archie Koe, Y3 ‘The Audiophile’s Sonic Sanctuary’. The Audiophile’s Sonic Sanctuary is a psychoacoustic therapy centre in Tower Hamlets that uses rain-generated frequencies for mental healing. By combining holistic sound therapy practices with scientific psychoacoustic research, the centre offers customised treatments for anxiety, depression and insomnia. The building’s design incorporates acoustic research and exoskeleton strategies to create isolated therapy spaces. It addresses the mental health epidemic among young individuals and helps foster a sense of hope and community.

2.7–2.8 Zhi Qi (Tina) Wu, Y2 ‘The Augmented Strayed Homes’. This project reimagines laundrettes as communal spaces through self-build methods. It combines a laundrette with shared areas to encourage social interaction and make laundry time more engaging. Inspired by Edwina Attlee’s Strayed Homes the project merges private and communal spheres, fostering user interaction and creating an immersive ambience. The architectural design defines the boundary between public and private realms in Limehouse, London.

2.9–2.10 Zuzanna Jastrzebska, Y3 ‘Urban Scout Centre’. The project draws inspiration from adventure playgrounds to celebrate self-build activities in urban environments. Focusing on a local Scout community in Whitechapel, the design is influenced by pioneering Scouting and utilises a round timber skeleton with a mass timber shell structure. 3D scanning and digital analysis enable the incorporation of natural wood qualities. The resulting Scout shed design combines hi-tech and primitive building methods to create an adaptable and engaging scout centre that brings the camp atmosphere to an urban context.

2.11–2.12 Maria Gasparinatou, Y2 ‘Putting on a Show for 45 Lark Row’. Why is dance often hidden? The project addresses this question by proposing a dance centre that operates throughout the day, offering classes, performances and club nights by Regent’s Canal. Located at 45 Lark Low, the building engages with the relationship between passerby and dancer. The design concept revolves around the interplay of skin and bone. A steel structure supports a draped wire mesh that creates varying levels of transparency, framing the building like an open theatre.

2.13–2.15 Shuheng Wang, Y2 ‘Metaphor of Mycelium’. The project looks at how a London community could work together to remediate heavily contaminated soil through collective production. The project involves soil removal and the subsequent construction of a self-build building with two functions: mycelium remediation of contaminated soils and a mycelium studio for nearby residents. The construction spans five phases over approximately eight years, engaging the local community and strengthening bonds. The project’s significance lies in its involvement of families to solve London’s soil pollution crisis through self-building.

2.16–2.18 Magdalena Gauden, Y3 ‘Baking Bonds Between Us’. This community-based project fills a void in interaction spaces by placing a bakery at its core. Through bakery workshops showcasing diverse cultural products, it fosters bonds among residents of various backgrounds. The community is involved in both the bakery and the building transformation, contributing to ceramic cladding production. Retaining onsite trees promotes wellbeing, while the building’s design encourages human interaction, relaxation and collaborative hand craft activities for passers-by.

Inspired by Gabriel Epstein’s Lansbury Estate, the project aims to bring delight and enjoyment to the local community.

2.19 Arushi Kulshreshtha, Y3 ‘Lights, Camera, Action!’. This project revitalises a neglected community garden near Regent’s Canal into a vibrant space for local businesses and aspiring filmmakers. It explores the intersection of theatre, film and architecture, incorporating stories and studio systems into the design. Located in Tower Hamlets’ Vyner Street, the building offers filming spaces, workshops, meeting rooms and flexible areas. It addresses sustainability by repurposing film waste into building materials, reducing carbon emissions and promoting a circular, self-build film studio and set construction workshop.

2.20 Rauf Sharifov, Y3 ‘Delivery Driver Union Hub’. The proposed project is a multifunctional centre for delivery drivers, constructed using self-recycled and self-manufactured polymer building materials. It provides a supportive and safe environment for drivers and addresses their neglected needs. The building incorporates a skill development scheme focused on plastic recycling and uses materials collected by drivers. It features a translucent façade, personalised spaces and an efficient flow to enhance driver comfort and create a sense of community.

2.21 Fardous Khalafalla, Y3 ‘If You Know, You Know’. This project focuses on the street fashion community of East London’s Brick Lane, catering to enthusiasts of the popular subculture of streetwear. Streetwear fashion emphasises exclusivity, limited edition releases and a direct-to-consumer approach. The project provides a dedicated space for urban creatives who connect through social media, showcasing their designs made in makeshift studios and photographed in makeshift sets. It recognises the need for infrastructure to support these designers and seeks to fill that gap through a centre that supports self-build fashion.

Where the Wild Things Are, Outside Over There

Ifigeneia Liangi, Daniel Wilkinson

UG3 explores and reconsiders the relationship that exists between architecture, its designers and its occupants. Each year the tone of the unit is defined by the identities, desires and personalities of our students. Working across multiple scales and in the links between space and style, we consider how buildings can have a more sensuous and innovative exchange with the environmental issues that threaten to consume them, positioning the practicalities of time, crafting and construction as parallel protagonists to our personal intentions. We also consider how buildings take on a life of their own and outgrow their architect, as a child does its parent.

The unit works with a foot in the magical and a hand in the practical, creating architectural fantasies that are grounded deeply in reality. We design expressively detailed buildings which aim to excite, perceiving the creative process as a wild rumpus across the messy and the refined; the mistakes and misfires that happen along the way become profound catalysts for wonder. Our unit is a work in progress which evolves each year. We invite students to experiment with different types of media, such as hand drawing, model making, rendering or a combination of methods.

This year our starting point questioned whether architecture can be autobiographical or take the form of a diary. While an autobiography is told from a fixed moment in time, the entries of a diary are recorded daily. We considered the social history of these art forms to assess their contemporary relevance as architectural concerns and to consider how architecture, or its design process, might respond to the fluctuating desires of its designers, builders and occupants.

For our field trip this year we travelled to Florence and Rome. We visited gardens that were sculpted as love letters to lost partners, landscapes that became sculptures and architectural illusions, while learning about their designers’ idiosyncratic tendencies as both human beings and architectural practitioners. Working between the individual and the communal, we addressed the personal and the political through nuanced proposals with a story to tell, the specifics of which were informed by our students’ diverse upbringing, heritage, interests and passions.

Year 2

Ifsah Chowdhery, Sarah Chuwa, Dahee Im, Lihui (Lily) Lin, Junjie Mei, Alex Perez Escamilla, Hui Ching (Alex) Yam

Year 3

Amy Bass, Grace Boyten-Heyes, Wai Ki (Winki) Chan, Yongjun Choi, Esme Dowle, Luke Gifford, Jazzlyn Jansen, Hui-Shan Low, Milen Purewal, Julia Specht, Chi Yung (Matthew) Wang

Technical tutor and consultant: Martin Reynolds

Critics: George Christofi, Naomi Gibson, Joe Johnson, Vsevolod Kondratiev-Popov, Matthew Lenkiewicz, Oscar Maguire, Natalie Rayya, Sayan Skandarajah

3.1 Wai Ki (Winki) Chan, Y3 ‘A Song of Ash and Fire’. The project traces back to the origin of the ‘Yellow Peril’ and tackles anti-Chinese sentiment in American history by proposing a monumental civic complex that worships the Queen Mother of the West in the ghost town of Bodie, a derelict gold mining town. The proposal acts as a form of redemption for victims of the past by treating the site as a site of sin; its remnants are cleansed through ritualistic acts of burning as an offering to the deceased over the span of 3,000 years.

3.2, 3.10 Julia Specht, Y3 ‘Silence = Death. Ignorance = Fear’. The project, situated in 1980s London, is a proposal for a cemetery and grief counselling centre for people in the LGBTQIA+ community affected by AIDS. The project provides a safe space for grieving. Relatives and friends can visit the graves of loved ones and commemorate their lives through a lasting AIDS memorial.

3.3 Lihui (Lily) Lin, Y2 ‘The Academia of Fresco Painting’. The Academia, in the Sant’Eustachio district of Rome, accommodates professional artists and students for a residency programme. To stimulate creative processes of artistic expression, interaction, and growth, the design explores the relationship between fresco and architecture. Proposed as a total work of art, the building promotes a multi-sensory experience which invites the audience to become part of the art itself.

3.4–3.5 Luke Gifford, Y3 ‘The Laurentian Dementia Centre’. The project proposes a new, demedicalised typology of a care centre for patients with dementia in the centre of Florence. The care centre evokes a fictional reality for residents and visitors, allowing those with dementia to live freely in a safe and controlled environment. This nostalgic fiction will be upheld by the carers who operate reconfigured stage machinery like a behind-the-scenes crew, with patients cast as ‘actors’.

3.6–3.7 Hui-Shan Low, Y3 ‘Stitching Stories’. Stitching Stories is a women’s textile workshop in Florence’s San Frediano neighbourhood. It promotes self-repairing garments to combat fast fashion and produces adaptive clothing for people with disabilities. The workshop’s architecture reflects tailoring techniques and inclusivity, with sections designed for specific garment needs. Inspired by corsetry, it addresses construction and inclusivity through meticulous craftsmanship.

3.8 Milen Purewal, Y3 ‘A Bhangra Studio for Birmingham’. Bhangra is the traditional folk dance of Punjab, originating from the movements of farm labour. This project proposes a dance studio and performance theatre in Birmingham city centre. Through an exploration into the history, aesthetics and movement of the traditional Punjabi folk dance, architectural elements have been reimagined and designed to support and encourage participation during performances and lessons. Dance is taught through three methods: visual, kinaesthetic and aural.

3.9 Junjie Mei, Y2 ‘Museum of the Mud Angels’. The Museum of the Mud Angels is designed in memory of a group of young people who voluntarily gathered to save the city’s artistic artefacts during the 1966 Florence flood. The museum is placed in Piazza dei Giudici, Florence. The building is designed around three principles: prevent, defend and escape. Lifeboats on docks act as private rooms for the restaurant on the west side of the building and the roof garden incorporates candle lights that flow with water, powered by a water clock, lighting the roof’s landscape of a miniature Florence.

3.11 Chi Yung (Matthew) Wang, Y3 ‘A Wild Celebration’. The project proposes a rehabilitation centre for juvenile offenders, disguised as an art school. Located in central Rome, the school is partly built by the children using soft materials that do not require sharp or dangerous tools. The process of building becomes the subtle driving force for cooperation, enhancing sociality and friendship.

Gardening, basketry, creating picturebook art, tending the building’s green spaces and encouraging imagination through making are the key activities that stimulate this self-driven rehabilitation.

3.12 Yongjun Choi, Y3 ‘In Bocca al Lupo’. The Wolf Discovery Centre is located in Montigiano, Massarosa, in the province of Lucca, northern Italy, on the outer edge of an area which was affected by a wildfire in November 2022. The purpose of the building is to protect the burned site from agents that could use it for economic gain while providing spaces for wildlife research. The building is made of wood, burnt wood and zinc obtained from wood ash. The construction is planned as a ten-step process, which is to take place concurrently with the gradual restoration of the forest.

3.13 Esme Dowle, Y3 ‘Impruneta Birth Centre’. The Impruneta Birth Centre is sited in a region renowned for its fertile ground of Galestro clay. The physically immersive experience of clay and ceramics encourages a greater awareness of tactile boundaries and the effect that contact with these surrounding surfaces has on our physical and emotional wellbeing. The sensory sets contained within the midwife-led centre encourage the birth participants to interact with each other and the tactile surfaces that envelop them.

3.14 Hiu Ching (Alex) Yam, Y2 ‘The Genderqueer Dressing Rooms’. Hidden behind a public clothing storefront, in Rome, Italy, is a transgender community centre that provides gender transition services. The project takes the idea of the ‘pronoun dressing room’ –an online forum that allows people who are questioning their gender identity to try out new names and pronouns – in a literal sense by allowing people to experience transitioning with various degrees of permanence through clothes, prosthetics, hairstyles, hormones and body parts.

3.15 Alex Perez Escamilla, Y2 ‘A Techno Club for Sinners’. Exploring historic connections between the body and sinful behaviour, Rome’s Catholic culture is challenged through the establishment of a techno club in Piazza Sant’Eustachio. The club plays on the strong Catholic influence of its site and is dominated by a dark contrast of religious imagery and a theatrical decorative interior. In blissful irony, the audience reveres music instead of God, and the boundaries of the sinful and the divine are challenged.

3.16 Amy Bass, Y3 ‘Deja-Brew: A Renaissance Coffee Lab’. Situated in Florence, the project reimagines the modern Italian coffee bar through an untold female trajectory. The kitchen, a space that was once a realm of labour and creativity for women, has been transformed into a radical construction site – a sustainable, utopian alternative. The project involved researching and creating various coffee-based materials such as caffeine bricks and coffee bio-leather, the process of which was recorded through ballpoint pen drawings.

3.17 Jazzlyn Jansen, Y3 ‘Pigneto Primary School’. The Pigneto Primary School uses the intersection between gymnastics apparatuses and the pedagogy of play to reinvent the learning landscape. A new flexible form of learning is therefore proposed, whereby the moving posture of the building facilitates a journey of experimental learning through the senses. Ultimately, the school is reconstructed as a place that fosters invention, connection and discovery.

3.12

3.14

3.15

Antithesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos UG4

Recent events around the world have revealed we are in an age of upheaval, facing abrupt changes that have left us feeling perplexed. Humanity finds itself placed in a difficult position in which truth and stability cannot be realised in simple terms, demanding that we instead find them in their very opposites. When complex and contradictory situations do not offer simple solutions the notion of duality proves itself relevant. It provides a perspective on life which embraces the tension in the paradox of human existence.

With growing access to knowledge follows an increasing awareness of the fact that the solutions to our problems lie not in a one-sided view, but in the interplay of contradictions. UG4 interrogated the paradigm of antithesis, an exploration into the concept of duality in theory, creative process and spatial formation. We rejected simple answers to what we acknowledged to be fundamentally complex issues. From a wide holistic conceptual dissection of the brief condensing down to specific material interrogations, we explored the implications of antithesis as a conceptual and methodological design contraption.

To remain relevant to the context of human existence, the architecture of today must also find truth and stability in opposites. Duality exists regardless of the state of its recognition. As a matter of fact, architecture could not exist without fundamental dualities. The potential of inverses is not simply realised by pairing their contrasting nature. We were interested not only in the obvious outcomes of these pairings, but also – and more so – in the friction and dialogue produced at its point of contact: the architectural and socio-political threshold. With a strong plea for civility and a demand for society to be inclusive rather than exclusive, we welcomed uncertainties by embracing the hybrid rather than the ‘pure’, accommodating as opposed to ‘excluding’, and in turn appealing to disorganised vitality over obvious unity.

UG4 brings a sense of theatre, playfulness, innovation and context to the design of spaces – manifested through rigorous thinking and analysis, alongside testing and making. We reinterpret materials, revisit old crafts and techniques and approach design through both analogue and digital mediums, excited by the complementation of the two.

Year 2

Nadiya Khan, Hashaam Khan, Lily Nguyen, Adam Raymond, Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich, Theodor Wolf

Year 3

Sara Abbod, Sean Abkhou, Fasai Chainuvati, Veronika Khasapova, Mikaella Konia, Chin (Shirley) Lam, Hannah Lingard, Maisy Liu, Esma Onur, Oyku Sekulu, Elina Seyed Nikkhou

Technical tutors and consultants: Simon Pierce, Kacper Chmielewski

Critics: Charlie Caswell, Kacper Chmielewski, Hannah Corlett, Maria Fulford, Neil Hubbard, Niall McLaughlin, Jörg Majer

4.1, 4.3, 4.14 Maisy Liu, Y3 ‘Unearthed Memories of the Forgotten: Reconstructing the Lost Narratives of the King’s Head Theatre Pub’. The King’s Head Theatre pub is an amalgamation of London’s past and future. As a microcosmic place of refuge, discovery, nostalgia and memory, the site reflects the historical culture and the expansive creative potential of fringe performance. To enhance the pub theatre experience, the project deconstructs the origin of the public house and tavern, creating a juxtaposition between the divisive and the inclusive, the intimate and the expansive. The intertwining of pub, studio and theatre spaces introduces the theme ‘see and be seen’.

4.2, 4.9 Hannah Lingard, Y3 ‘On Common Ground: Establishing an Urban Commons for the Precariat’. ‘Precariate’ is a portmanteau combining the words precarious and proletariat. It is a term employed in the fields of economics and sociology to describe a new social class comprising people who experience various forms of precarity. This project proposes a programme that focuses on providing a space for this social class, that enables the users to articulate their own identity and establish a form of representation. The programme facilitates the idea of philanthropic endeavour, through welfare and enrichment spaces which the visitor can transition between autonomously.

4.4, 4.25 Theodor Wolf, Y2 ‘Return to the Rails’. Based below the ground plane within the railways, the old Shoreditch Station will serve as a home for the Islington model railway club, and provide them with an all-new club headquarters. Situated directly over the railways, the accommodation will offer unprecedented views for trainspotters. The building reflects the ornamentation of industrial England railway stations on its façade.

4.5, 4.6, 4.24 Veronika Khasapova, Y3 ‘Planting Sensuality’. Situated in a former horticultural area of London, the building revives the connection between nature and medical expertise to enhance the psychological state of its guests. Naturopathy will be used as the system of treatment which discourages drug use and emphasises the practice of natural therapies, such as herbal medicine and horticultural therapy.

4.7 Oyku Sekulu, Y3 ‘St Bart’s Orthopaedics Clinic’. The site of an existing disused ambulance station close to St Bart’s Hospital is utilised to house a new orthopaedics clinic. Referencing Smithfield Market, the excess bone waste from the market is used as a bonding element for the creation of new bricks that are to clad the building, creating different textures and colours on its façade.

4.8, 4.18, 4.20 Elina Seyed Nikkhou, Y3 ‘Mint and Gospel Lighthouse Shelter’. Southwark has long been a deprived area of London. Current statistics reveal that 31% of its households live in poverty and 43% of its children reside in poverty-stricken households. Homelessness due to domestic abuse has also risen by 125%, as reported in 2019. In light of these challenges, The Mint and Gospel Lighthouse in Union Street, Southwark – a historical ragged school – will be repurposed to serve as a safe haven and shelter for women who have fled their homes due to domestic abuse.

4.10 Adam Raymond, Y2 ‘Camden Lock Spa’. Just a stone’s throw away from Hawley Wharf and a threeminute walk down the canal from the famous Camden Market lies a site that holds a significant piece of Camden’s history. This project proposes a unique spa that draws inspiration from the forgotten art of sponge making, which once thrived in this very area. From the laboratory situated in the heart of the building to the textures of the external façade, the structure is infused with a palpable sense of history and authenticity.

4.11, 4.13, 4.19 Fasai Chainuvati, Y3 ‘Reclaimed Haven’. Electrical lighting and urban development have allowed

us to colonise the night, driving out wildlife and astronomers who use the stars for navigation. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictable nature of this evolution, a small astronomical community is now facing insolvency. To tackle this challenge, the Haven will embrace environmental involvement and foster dialogue around ownership. The new proposal reintegrates wildlife and restores natural conditions while making the existing structure a highlighted part of the site.

4.12, 4.21 Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich, Y2 ‘The Convoys Wharf’. Research into the history of Lewisham informs the proposal, which works within the existing Grade II listed structures of Convoys Wharf in London. The project addresses the preservation of the 19thcentury cast iron structures on the site and respectfully integrates a secondary enclosure to house a new programme for a colour factory and learning centre, referencing the historical production of white and indigo pigments for paint. The programme challenges the future plans for the site by developers and creates an experimental space for local residents.

4.15 Esma Onur, Y3 ‘London College of Fashion: Mycelium Wing’. Situated in the former horticultural area of London, the building revives the connection between nature and medical expertise to enhance the psychological state of its guests. Naturopathy will be used as the system of treatment which discourages drug use and emphasises the practice of natural therapies, such as herbal medicine and horticultural therapy.

4.16 Mikaella Konia, Y3 ‘Café and Bio-plastic Cup Factory’. The self-sustaining factory functions by collecting sugarcane from the farm, processing it and creating bio-plastic cups for use in the café. The café sits alongside the factory, giving visitors an immersive experience of the production line. The project’s purpose is to enhance public knowledge of the use of bio-plastic in building materials and product design while experiencing and celebrating the material’s lifecycle.

4.17, 4.23 Chin (Shirley) Lam, Y3 ‘Finding the Light in the Dark’. The building’s primary use is a woodworking and lantern workshop, opened for the community to learn both traditional and modern ways of making paper lanterns. Lanterns are a vital celebratory element of many Asian festivals and are a symbol of luminance, luck, prosperity and longing. Through the celebration of light, this programme illuminates a path towards community unity and shared experiences.

4.22 Nadiya Khan, Y2 ‘The Mannequin Factory and Theatre Spaces’. Situated within the historical streets of London Bridge, the mannequin factory and theatre offer visitors a unique experience inspired by the origins of plastic surgery and the eerie phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’. The programme gives an insight into the world of mannequin production set alongside theatre experiences in the building’s two performance spaces. Visitors can witness the creation of mannequins by climbing ramps that surround the glass factory and observe every stage of production from the initial maquette to the hand-painted details.

FILTH

Patrick Massey, Bongani Muchemwa UG5

This year UG5 looked towards Hastings. The East Sussex seaside town has a fraught relationship with London, its larger, richer neighbour. Recent gentrification has caused an unmanageable situation for the local community, unbalancing the housing market and impinging on the distinctive cultural identity of the region. This imbalance has led to a growing antipathy for new arrivals from London who have been given the unfortunate moniker FILTH (Failed in London, Try Hastings).

Our aim for the year was to design locally integrated, resilient and uplifting spaces for residents, challenging gentrification and displacement. Students proposed new infrastructures that borrow ideas of integration from a number of different sources.

There is no silver bullet solution to issues caused by gentrification. UG5 has therefore sought collectively to exhibit a diverse collection of designs that, when viewed all together, represent the most exciting possibilities in rethinking the town, while acknowledging wider problems stemming from development.

Radical forms of architecture are born out of simple marks on paper, and the unit embraces experimental drawing techniques in search of such forms. Each student began the process by choosing an original artwork which itself has a strong link to our chosen site. These artworks formed the basis of a deeply contextual experimental drawing series which continued throughout the year, developing into a variety of meaningful architectural languages.

By critically examining these artworks, re-creating and extrapolating the marks that make them, UG5 students have created their own individual, unique drawing languages that have suggested entirely unexpected architecture with deep roots in the stories of Hastings.

Year 2

Maria Bystronska, Chi Yan (Jenna) Ching, Aocheng Huang, Kai Jackson, Chunyi (Sally) Sun

Year 3

Shujian (Bob) Bao, Zeynep Cam, Sally Kemp, Ayaa Muhdar, Rohini Mundey, Iga Najdeker

Technical tutors and consultants: Andrei Dinu, Mark Tugman, Sal Wilson

Critics: Rashad Al-Karooni, Josef Cassar, Jennifer Dyne, Niki-Marie Jansson, Glory Kuk, Joyee Lee, Chinmay Potbhare, Eric Wong

5.1–5.2 Rohini Mundey, Y3 ‘The Lost Creature of Hastings Coastline’. Challenging traditional views on the marine environment, the project proposes a museum that embodies fossils and natural history, revealing the untold tales of prehistoric times and the deep sea. The building itself becomes a palaeontological site, with limestonecast fragments forming the creature’s bestial shape, suspended within a thermoplastic net. The creature evolves into a cautionary ecological tale that grows and transitions over many years. Gradually, as it starts to weather, fragments of its limestone body fall away, exposing the plastic net signifying the start of the Anthropocene, a proposed new plastic layer on the geological epoch.

5.3–5.5 Ayaa Muhdar, Y3 ‘Regaining Identity’. Inspired by convalescence as a liminal period of uncertainty, a derelict hospital becomes a residency that counters the loss of identity due to the rapid transformation of Hastings. A sensory experience encompassing light and olfaction explores how a fragmented sense of identity can be restored. Drawing on the process of creating a social identity through categorisation, identification and comparison, the environment seeks to encourage the formation of a collective identity within Hastings. Furthermore, the once monstered tamarisk plant is revived and embedded within the building fabric, manifesting itself as an allegory for newfound unity.

5.6–5.8 Shujian (Bob) Bao, Y3 ‘Hastings Chronicle’. The project is a strategic programme for the regeneration of the English town of Hastings. The core of the project is based on an education centre with archiving, lecturing and exhibition functions, two workshops for disassembly and reassembly, and an experimental building yard. The site provides young residents with the opportunity to seek higher education in the construction industry. It also strengthens bonds with Hastings’s local community by providing renovation and restoration of old residential buildings, creating a public park and proposing a new network of public spaces in the residential area.

5.9–5.10 Iga Najdeker, Y3 ‘Hastings Sanctuary’.

The sanctuary is a building that nurtures mind, body and soul by taking you on a journey. It begins in an oasis of mindfulness and wellness serving those who wish to connect with their inner selves. Visitors can lose themselves within a forest of columns or find peace with the help of meditation pods. The next step in the journey is a hidden palace, open to those facing housing instability and offering an alternative way of living by drawing inspiration from the lifestyle of Buddhist monks. 5.11–5.12 Zeynep Cam, Y3 ‘Hastings’ School of Textiles’. The textile school nurtures a culture of togetherness through learning, making, teaching, sharing and exhibiting together. All of the textiles created by the students become symbols of this community web created through conversations. The new building contrasts with what is left behind by the old, displayed as tokens of the unsustainable consumerist culture that the shopping centre promotes. The fabric builds and mends, encouraging repairing and building relations between local people, leaving behind a legacy based on reuse rather than wasteful consumption.

5.13 Sally Kemp, Y3 ‘The Witches of Hastings’. The project draws inspiration from the belief that Aleister Crowley cast an evil curse upon the town of Hastings. With the design utilising the positive energy and healing properties of crystals, the building counteracts the alleged negative energy placed upon the town. The building is home to a coven of alchemist witches who actively cultivate salt crystals through lunar rituals. Crystal growth is supported in each ceremonial space, allowing the crystals to be charged under the moonlight. This process lifts the curse, harnesses the transformative power of crystals and infuses Hastings with positive energy.

5.14 Aocheng Huang, Y2 ‘Hastings Millennium Ski Jump’. Tourism is a vital contributor to Hastings’ local economy and yet exhibits significant seasonality throughout the year. This project mitigates the seasonal fluctuations in tourism and creates a shared space for tourists and residents. In addition to providing Olympic-standard skiing services and post-competition rest and recovery for athletes, the Millennium Ski Jump can also be converted into a shared recreational destination for locals and visitors while in legacy mode. The site includes a restaurant, bar, spa and sauna. The long-term redevelopment process, set to conclude in 2066, will feature contributions from both tourists and residents.

5.15 Maria Bystronska, Y2 ‘Hastings Women’s Refuge’. Services for women who have experienced domestic violence are chronically underfunded and simply do not exist in many parts of the UK. In the context of the housing crisis, any type of emergency or social dwelling is harder to find than ever before. This project tackles one aspect of the housing crisis by providing a high-quality refuge for victims of abuse. The focus of the building’s programme emphasises the importance of wellbeing, providing a safe environment to aid the process of recovery through water therapy and direct contact with nature throughout the building.

5.16–5.17 Chunyi (Sally) Sun, Y2 ‘Hastings Archive of Oral History’. Among its many consequences, William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings commenced the practice of archival in England. Embracing the archive as a dynamic space that continuously builds collective identities through assembling stories, the project responds to emotional displacement and the resulting loss of memories Hastings locals grapple with as a by-product of gentrification. Sited at the ruins of Hastings Castle, the archive celebrates diverse methods of storytelling. From an amphitheatre for Morris dancing to dedicated story-sharing halls, the project seeks to facilitate the dissemination of personal tales, bolstering collective identity and social cohesion in the process.

5.18 Chi Yan (Jenna) Ching, Y2 ‘Dreams, Lives and Memories’. Placed beside the famous Hastings fishing fleet is a rejuvenation of the past and a vision of the future of Hastings. This ship-breaking cluster focused heavily on its narrative of time and collaboration between humans and machines. The functional structure challenges inequality and fights for opportunity.

5.19 Kai Jackson, Y2 ‘Crépissage of Hastings’. Abandoned buildings in Hastings are left to decay without replenishment or demolition, highlighting the need for a temporary approach to architecture. Inspired by the Crépissage of Djenné, where an adobe mosque is restored annually, this project explores the value of replenishment and disintegration through the design of an administrative centre for Hastings’ festivals. The centre houses a council of chief festival organisers, providing support for planning, coordination and advocacy. Services include licensing assistance, venue selection, marketing guidance, logistics support and more. The centre features a public performance space, offices, purpose-built planning rooms and a layered landscape extending its festival utility. The initiative will strengthen the festival sector and attract year-round visitors.

5.7

5.6

Calibrating

Stefan Lengen, Ben Spong

This year UG6 explored the notion of calibration and pursued our interest in the latent qualities of London’s intermediate space, between rural and urban landscapes. We considered our architectures as ‘tuning instruments’ – responsive constructs that ask questions of our environment rather than seek to impose answers upon them. As such, our approaches were necessarily experimental, constructing the means to provoke and listen, suggest and adjust, posit and mutate, as we perpetually rediscovered the questions we asked. We also considered their relationship to the broader ecology of our site of Rainham and Wennington Marshes, just off the Thames Estuary. This held us throughout the year in the captivity and productivity of the uncertain as we created worlds that calibrated from, and towards, multiple origins.

We began the year by dissecting the site. To do so we built digital and physical instruments that aimed to reveal, accentuate and measure a site phenomenon. As we delved through layers of history, geology and environmental change, we repeatedly tested and refined both instruments and methods. Our instruments developed a specificity and precision that stored and produced knowledge through speculative interjection, experimenting with local materials and sensitive recording.

In the building project, our term one instruments were translated and developed into building proposals that adopted equally innovative, local and experimental construction methods and material choices for a range of diverse communities. While each project addresses its own specific context, they share a common ground in acknowledging the open-ended nature of something in the act of calibrating. Such a state is receptive and responsive to change and imaginative opportunities, pointing towards a more diverse and pluralistic built environment.

Our field trip this year was to Copenhagen and Aarhus. In these cities we shared, discussed and learned about the intersections of our research with the Aarhus School of Architecture, the Royal Danish Academy (CITA and Architecture and Extreme Environments) and the Danish architecture practice Vandkunsten.

Year 2

Clive Burgess, Ilia Cleanthous, Andrew Fan, Hsiang-Yu (Sean) Fan, Serena Haddon, Duncan McAllister, Bryan Png Yiliang

Year 3

Ana-Maria Cazan, Shouryan Kapoor, Zofia Lipowska, Alexandria Pattison, Nicolas Pauwels, Luke Saito Koper, Eoin Shaw, Thananan (Orm) Sivapiromrat, Jerzy (George) Szczerba, Kate Taylor, William Tindall

Technical tutors and consultants: Ivan Chang, James Della Valle

Critics: Jenna Alali De Leon, Dimitris Argyros, Joseph Augustin, Cephas Bhaskar, Theo Brader-Tan, Christopher Burman, William Victor Camilleri, Ivan Chang, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, Pedro Gil, Jessica In, Luke Jones, Kyriakos Katsaros, Paul Kohlhaussen, Chee-Kit Lai, Emma-Kate Matthews, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Ho-Yin Ng, Farlie Reynolds, David Shanks, Colin Smith, Greg Storrar, Isaac Palimiere-Szabo, Ivana Wingham

Special thanks to UCL Here East and the team at B-made, Alicia Lazzaroni and Chris Thurlbourne from the Aarhus School of Architecture, David Garcia and Tom Svilans from the Royal Danish Academy, and Thais Espersen and Søren Nielsen from Vandkunsten Architects

6.1, 6.18–6.19 Ana-Maria Cazan, Y3 ‘Embracing the Flood’. Water is the core design element in this therapy centre that is reactive, responsive and open to the natural tidal movement in Rainham Marshes. As tides reveal and flood the building and surrounding landscape, the building experiences dramatic transformation multiple times a day, blurring the boundary between the architecture and its environment.

6.2–6.3 Kate Taylor, Y3 ‘Laying the Groundworks: Designing the Unfinished’. Through a detailed exploration of mistranslated manufacturing processes, this project proposes the groundwork for an architectural testing site. Set in a desolate marshland, the manipulated landscape provides cues for locating permanence: at any one time there exists just enough design to enable future architectures but not enough to shut down potential.

6.4–6.6 Nicolas Pauwels , Y3 ‘Rainham ’40 from Pavilion2pix’. Situated on Rainham Marshes, a site soon to change, the project places a bid for Rainham Festival. Set to inaugurate the new phase of its development, it draws on the former structures along Coldharbour Lane and the Rainham landfill. Through live CGAN image-to-image conversion, the pavilions and constructions offer digital outputs through the navigation of physical inputs.

6.7–6.9 Zofia Lipowska, Y3 ‘Space Between’. In a place where a sunny landscape infused with a sweet rosehip smell can turn into grey, foggy scenery scented with algae stands a lonely building. Here architecture is a mise-en-scène for the play of shadows, based on film noir aesthetics and theatrical techniques tested through the material context of the marshes. It accommodates the surreal sensation of being in between two spaces: the space one is physically present in and the space in one’s memory evoked by scent.

6.10, 6.26 Shouryan Kapoor, Y3 ‘The Cacophonous Lies of the Sonic Realm at Rainham’. Through the creation of devices that augment sound waves from Rainham, the project is an investigation into acoustic control and transformation, and the sonic potential of architecture. An ‘impossible’ hotel is proposed where spaces accommodate visitors’ emotions through the use of sound and noise.

6.11–6.12 William Tindall, Y3 ‘Earthen Deliberation: A Tellurist’s Manifesto’. A prospective vision of architectural education is proposed. Achieved as a consequence of a profound understanding of material culture, the relationships created between material palettes and the building fabric they exist within, the project outlines the preparation and development of an extension to The Bartlett School of Architecture situated in Rainham Marshes.

6.13 Andrew Fan, Y2 ‘The Nestled Gallery’. Acting as a convergence point between the marsh and the River Thames, the building is enveloped in thick earth walls. It creates an enclosure that opens up spaces for lighting conditions and is calibrated to allow light to activate elements of art pieces.

6.14 Bryan Png Yiliang , Y2 ‘The Secular Burial Ground’. To deal with the rising demand for burial grounds in London, the project presents itself as a secular space that accommodates both secular and religious funeral practices. The project acts not just as a landscape for remembrance, but as a landscape that invites visitors to dwell within it.

6.15 Clive Burgess, Y2 ‘Prep: Optimistic Design for Degradation’. The project begins with performancebased research into stability on the foreshore. This provokes the design of an archive of subjective and objective readings of the site, designed to be forgotten and misremembered by a series of occupants over a long period of time. The building is an artefact, configured to take on new forms for new functions.

6.16–6.17 Eoin Shaw, Y3 ‘Are You Bewildered Yet?’. Approaching architecture from the position of unknowing bewilderment, an arrangement of stones topped with spiky and floppy metal hats sat on carbon fibre cushions is created. Clear classification is avoided. The architecture instead encourages users to embrace bewilderment, so the forms, spaces and constellations created can be enjoyed with minimal definition and therefore exclusion of what they are or are not.

6.20 Duncan McAllister, Y2 ‘Monument to a River Pebble’. The river pebble finds its resting place on the tidal beaches of Rainham. The building is a spatial transition from the mundane to the sacred, finding refuge in a sanctuary, where the river pebble is presented as a deity of the River Thames. The project emphasises the interplay between the grand scale of the Thames and the intimate scale of a pebble.

6.21 Jerzy (George) Szczerba, Y3 ‘Illusion of Site’. The work combines views of scenes around arbitrary axes on Rainham Marshes to test how alternative perspectives can reveal different parts of observed situations. Every constructed scene appears complete but, at the same time, can never provide total certainty about what is happening. These ideas are played out across the design for a music school and theatre.

6.22 Thananan (Orm) Sivapiromrat, Y3 ‘Junkology’. Landscape crafted by the act of child’s play. A collage of trained AI-studied images emerges from pattern and texture recognition based on children’s drawings of playscapes.

6.23–6.25 Alexandria Pattison, Y3 ‘A Ceramic Scape: The Anodyne Effect of Rainham Marshes’. In a picturesque aquascape beneath Rainham Marshes lies an abundance of London clay. The vernacular material inspires the programme, with its malleability offering a natural geometry which sits alongside robotic choreography. The project proposes an art therapy space for the locals of Rainham to immerse themselves in the healing nature of the marshland’s beauty.

6.27 Luke Saito Koper, Y3 ‘RNLI-239 Rainham Lifeboat Station’. A buoyant self-righting deployable for coastal and estuarine operation, calibrated to extremes in remembrance of the 1953 flood. Anchored to a turbulent history of defence, security and conservation yet erasing its presence among the fog and ever-changing waterline, the aluminium assembly acts as a sentinel to the portents of tidal cut-off and rising sea levels.

6.28 Ilia Cleanthous, Y2 ‘The Stage and The Staged’. Situated amid an industrial landscape, a landfill and the picturesque Rainham Marshes, the building assumes the role of a stage where the dynamics between the audience, actors and structure are continuously negotiated. Through an open-ended making methodology, the project embraces the process, allowing for the exploration and uncovering of hidden potential beyond its initial design intentions.

6.29 Hsiang-Yu (Sean) Fan, Y2 ‘Rainham’s Choreographed Dialogue’. This project proposes an architecture with moving systems integrated within its fabric to constantly calibrate to scenarios of various activities and occupations. It achieves this by choreographing meaningful relationships and dialogue between spaces, users and the Rainham landscape, resulting in an architecture that always responds with a purposeful outcome.

6.30 Serena Haddon, Y2 ‘Reedhouse’. The fundamental idea of the project was to design a well-crafted and appropriable timber framework that calls for continuous reinterpretation by the occupant with the use of reeds. This project imagines a meaningful vernacular for Rainham Marshes that behaves as an operable, outward-looking tool rather than an envelope.

6.11

6.25

6.23

6.24

Carbon Tectonic

Joseph Augustin, Christopher Burman, Luke Jones

This year UG7 has attempted to mobilise the tectonic as a connection between architectural design and the wider global project of environmental transformation.

Tectonics are the expression of construction: the connection between what a building literally is – its innate reality as an assembly of things, elements and products – and what it seeks to say about itself. Today the environmental damage caused by the construction industry is generally spatially distanced from buildings themselves. Only through an articulation of its materials and their global manufacture and dependencies can the connection between one and the other be firmly established. The question is not simply how architecture can contribute to necessary shifts in consumption, but also how larger processes of climate mitigation may shape its room for manoeuvre and its scope of possibility.

In term one students worked outwards from an existing built condition; they used the examination of current construction as a jumping-off point for the creation of a new materiality. By understanding how the urban fabric has arisen from global industries and supply chains, students began to propose how such systems might best be recomposed or reformed.

Our field trip was to Munich – a global nexus for contemporary building technology, the host of the world’s largest building fair and a site of emerging techniques and industrial and architectural experimentation. The trip included visits to Frei Otto’s Olympic Park, Hans Döllgast’s Alte Pinakothek and a lecture from Professor Florian Nagler on the work of the Einfach Bauen ‘Simple Building’ research centre at the Technical University of Munich.

After the trip, the unit’s focus shifted to the reintegration of this materiality into the fabric of a changing city. Working in sites around Old Oak Common, a new West London development zone at the intersection of Crossrail and HS2, students developed their material proposals into an exploration of new architectural expression or language.

What should a civic building in an age of ecological transition be like? How can it form a sustainable and humane urban environment? How can an understanding of time and future uncertainty be internalised as a creative and productive force? Using a timeline that stretches between the present day and 2050, the unit has attempted to address these questions from the simplest and most fundamental starting point – the materials at hand.

Year 2

Rosa Crossley-Furse, Natania De-Marro, Beatriz Goodwins Banuelos, Harshal Gulabchandre, Thomas Henly, Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung, Kullaphat (Elle) Ngamprasertpong, Charles Smare, Aleksandra Tarnowska, James Tyler, Alessandra Villanueva

Year 3

Dimitrios Andritsogiannis, Gaeul Kim, Yutong (Sabrina) Li, Kah Miin Loh, Riya Mamtora, Kai McKim, Yong (Benedict) Siow, Ilya Tchevela, Haodi (Hardy) Wang

Technical tutors and consultants: Anita Domke (Baufritz), Jerome Janke (Ilim Timber), Margit Kraft, Ryan McLoughlin (Baufritz), Professor Florian Nagler, Angela Schüler (Ilim Timber)

Critics: James Green, Denis Leontiev

7.1, 7.34–7.37 Yutong (Sabrina) Li, Y3 ‘Collective Rebuild’. Set within the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) scheme in West London, the project reinvents the furniture shopping experience by inviting consumers to recycle old furniture and make newly repaired furniture through a collective design process. The project re-examines the circularity of timber as a construction material and prolongs its ‘lifespan’ by repurposing waste timber back into circulation.

7.2, 7.25 Aleksandra Tarnowska, Y2 ‘Compost Station’. The project reimagines a petrol station in Acton Central Ward, London, as a community-led green energy hub. Repurposed petrol tanks house wormeries to digest compost, yielding biogas and fertiliser. Biogas generates electricity, while fertiliser nourishes the surrounding gardens. The building also includes a café, greenhouses and grow spaces. The project becomes an inclusive space for fostering social connections and promoting a pedestrianised city.

7.3, 7.5 Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung , Y2 ‘All-Ground:

An Intergenerational Community Hub’. Sited in a highly residential part of the OPDC, the project is an intergenerational community space exploring the benefits of integrating environments designed for the elderly with spaces tailored for children.

7.4, 7.21–7.24 Kai McKim, Y3 ‘Shrine of the Tellurists’. The project is a central hub bringing together no-dig farming practices, a retelling of a village blacksmiths and a union pub where a new DIY identity can flourish. This creates a fertile ground from which healthier social structures can emerge. The project recognises that we need to heal our relationships with each other before we can meaningfully fix our relationship with the Earth.

7.6 Beatriz Goodwins Banuelos , Y2 ‘The Cavern’.

A stone pub near Highway Western Avenue in North Acton. Vast slabs of structural stone create the façade of the building.

7.7–7.8 Riya Mamtora, Y3 ‘The Acton Exchange’. This project proposes a hub for learning and new civic space at the centre of the high street in Acton, West London. A local snooker hall, concrete post-war housing estate and museum will all undergo demolition in the next two years. The project ‘borrows’ the otherwise lost building components and reassembles them into a demountable collage of salvaged materials. Twenty affordable retail units, a library and shared workspaces come together in a location which promotes learning and green business.

7.9–7.10 Alessandra Villanueva, Y2 ‘A Human’s Nest’ A garden and community centre in an overlooked park on a triangular site in Park Royal. The project draws inspiration from bird nests and other natural forms and is constructed from engineered timber, wood fibre and shingles.

7.11–7.12 Thomas Henly, Y2 ‘The Trainspotters’ Library’. The Trainspotters’ Library at Acton Main Line houses a collection of books, maps, photographs and other design artefacts that hold value within British train culture and provides spaces for train enthusiasts to experience the rush of passing trains. The library overlooks the railway to the north and creates a new public plaza to the south.

7.13 Rosa Crossley-Furse, Y2 ‘The Sud Spill’. North Acton, the former ‘soapsuds island’ of London, was home to many local launderettes and cleaning services. Challenging the privatisation of cool air and public space, the project comprises a ‘social launderette’ that shelters people from the effects of climate change.

7.14 Natania De-Marro, Y2 ‘The Coffee Ground’. A new café and social space on the corner of Horn Lane, Acton, utilises waste coffee grounds as a building aggregate to create rammed earth walls.

7.15 Ilya Tchevela, Y3 ‘Industrialiving’. This project, based in London’s Park Royal, preserves the industrial area’s

character amid future development. The masterplan emphasises reusing existing light industrial structures with a key building developed as a case study. The programme revitalises a warehouse corner with a lively co-living tower for workers. Adhering to Module D of the RICS carbon assessment guidelines, the design showcases building connections on the façade while providing contrasting internal conditions for comfort.

7.16 Charles Smare, Y2 ‘Wickeryard’. The project transforms a series of underused garages behind Park Royal Station into compact, low-impact housing for the ‘new worker’ of London. It uses a permanent scaffold frame to create a grid-like face, designed to be customised by the occupant. The design is split between the existing masonry garages reinforced on the ground floor and lightweight timber on the first and second floors.

7.17 Yong (Benedict) Siow, Y3 ‘The Old Oak Clay Centre’. A ceramic workshop, library and outdoor garden are constructed using a range of earth and clay technologies. The site opens up the canal towpath, creating a new community asset which serves young people in the surrounding local area.

7.18 Dimitrios Andritsogiannis, Y3 ‘The Old Oak Classic Car Retro-Fit Centre’. Replacing petrol engines with batteries challenges the need for new electric cars and infrastructure. The project celebrates the process, acting as a community centre for enthusiasts that opens up for seasonal races in the street.

7.19 Harshal Gulabchandre, Y2 ‘What’s a Retrofill?’

An alternative playbook for urban development in industrial zones. A novel development typology, ‘retrofill’ fuses the methods of ‘infill’ and ‘retrofit’. A prefabricated kit of parts of mass timber and glass can be applied across a variety of post-industrial sites.

7.20 Haodi (Hardy) Wang , Y3 ‘The Hope’. The project retrofits an existing historical building in East Acton to store the UK’s endangered plant seeds and educate visitors on conservation. The design focuses on temperature control, energy efficiency and visitor interaction, allowing visitors to engage visually while learning about seeds.

7.26–7.27, 7.33 Kullaphat (Elle) Ngamprasertpong, Y2 ‘Acoustic Art Centre’. Located on scrubland between a major road and a railway in Park Royal, West London, the site is surrounded by high levels of air and noise pollution. The programme reduces pollution and increases sounds from nature to create peaceful art studios in the heart of a busy urban area. The building is shaped by the design of a range of distinct acoustic environments that amplify reflection, absorption and diffusion.

7.28–7.29, 7.32 Gaeul Kim, Y3 ‘Mycorrhizal Hub’. The project creates a symbiotic relationship between architecture and the environment, unveiling mycology’s mysteries and captivating the community. It serves as a vibrant hub for mycological exploration, making tangible connections between materials and experience. Living walls further introduce the mycorrhizal landscape to urban areas, fostering mycorestoration and a circular economy.

7.30 Kah Miin Loh, Y3 ‘The Acton Artists’ Assembly’. A remodelling and retrofit of an existing warehouse to create a place for visual artists, with workspaces, recreation areas, a café and exhibition space. Structurally independent modules are constructed from dowel-laminated timber, while balconies and pavilions create a new community outdoor space looking out on to Wesley Playing Fields.

7.31 All Students, Y2&3 ‘Group Photo of Tectonic Models’.

7.10 7.9

7.12

Up Close, at a Distance

Farlie Reynolds, Greg Storrar

UG8 welcomes curious students interested in prototyping. We work between the drawn, the made and the moving image to develop innovative architectural strategies that address the environmental challenges of our time.

This year the unit explored the architecture of sightseeing and sight making, reimagining the experiences of tomorrow’s tourist. We asked ourselves how much travel was ever really needed, and considered the different experiences we might construct now we are able to travel again. In doing so we addressed questions of architectural identity, authenticity, permanence and mobility, the provenance of materials and the skills and people that build.

Three ideas framed our thinking. Are we destined for surrogate tourism, simulated travels to another place (or time)? Or might we creatively rethink destination tourism, conjuring sustainable experiences capable of drawing footfall away from ravaged historical sites and sublime landscapes? Or are consumerist models of travel inappropriate in an age of climate catastrophe; should we instead embrace slow tourism?

The first design project of the year provided an immersion in craft and experimentation, training tactile and digital dexterity. Personal research agendas were established in response to the brief, using the concepts of surrogate, destination and slow tourism as a springboard. These methodologies informed and evolved into the building projects that followed.

Travelling from Rome to Venice, via Florence and Verona, our field trip was a journey between lesser-known experimental architectures and major cultural landmarks, finding sites for the building projects along the way. We visited Michelucci’s prototypical Autostrada, the churches of Borromini and the vast marble quarries of Carrara. Immersing ourselves in the work of Scarpa, we travelled across the north of Italy to explore Castelvecchio, Brion Cemetery, the Canova Museum, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and the Olivetti Showroom.

The building projects are located in constrained urban sites in central Rome. Projects include a ‘dead letter’ postal museum that takes visitors on journeys to faraway places, derived from the contents of lost post; a gravitationally disobedient performing arts centre, counterbalanced by the old Aurelian city wall; and a reinterpretation of the Roman columbarium, an experiment in cyclopean stone construction and ‘impossible casting’ techniques that considers the journey from one life to the next. In our work we learned the value of moving between the analogue and the digital, the spatial and the psychological, and the remote and the real, both up close and at a distance.

Year 2

Yufei Cheng, Pacharamon (Myla) Danwachira, Jessica Georgelin, To Yiu Marcus Lam, Laura Noble, Hannah Simon, Amelia Vera-Sanso Talbot, Peiyan Zou

Year 3

Jack Bowers, Adam Butcher, Edmund Flurry Grierson, Claudiu-Liciniu Horsia, Rabiyya Huseynova, Marike Jungk, Krit Pichedvanichok, Teshan Seneviratne, Adam Stoddart, Caitlin Wong

Technical tutor and consultant: Steve Johnson

Special thanks to Steve Johnson for his continued support of UG8, technical and otherwise. Thanks also to our skills tutors and guest reviewers: Neguin Amiri, Theo Brader-Tan, Tom Budd, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Nat Chard, Steph Crombie, John Cruwys, James Della Valle, Steve Johnson, Loukis Menelaou, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Cira Oller Tovar, Matthew Simpson, Ben Spong, Martins Starks, Negar Taatizadeh, Anthony Tai

8.1–8.2, 8.5, 8.26 Jack Bowers , Y3 ‘Dancing with Death’. Composed of several massive stones, the columbarium is a feat of choreographed megalithic construction that restores the ‘monumental openness’ that characterised Rome’s eastern periphery prior to the rapid urbanisation of the late 19th century. The building acts as a transitory space, bridging the gap between life and death, as well as that between the city and the ancient hinterland.

8.3, 8.12–8.13, 8.27 Adam Stoddart, Y3 ‘Rome’s Third City Wall’. Rome is founded upon stone. Known as the eternal city, its material permanence has left traces of past civilisations throughout the capital. From extracting to constructing to sculpting, there is a duality between resource and civilisation at all scales. Drawing upon this sentiment, this project proposes a performing arts centre that spotlights the importance of material heritage in architecture.

8.4, 8.30 Adam Butcher, Y3 ‘Musical Conservation Centre: Stability in Structure and Sound’. The project proposes a new centre for musical performance in San Lorenzo, Rome. The building acts as a structural and cultural stabiliser for its immediate context, forming a crutch between an unstable city block and the adjacent ancient Aurelian city wall. Seemingly gravity-defying moments of mass and volume oversail a delicate timber skeleton, within which the resolution of forces manifest in the physical pressing of vinyl records.

8.6 Hannah Simon, Y2 ‘Heritage Seed Exchange’. A heritage seed exchange and testing laboratory that weaves intertwined stories of travel and migration while promoting community-driven seed research, education and commercial opportunities.

8.7, 8.14 Claudiu-Liciniu Horsia, Y3 ‘The Elixir of Gods’. A small chocolate factory explores the formative role the chocolate-making process has had in societies throughout time. Located in downtown Rome, the building explores chocolate mould-making and casting techniques at an architectural scale.

8.8 Jessica Georgelin, Y2 ‘Mediateca En Parete, or the Library in the Wall’. A mediateca (multimedia library) in San Lorenzo brings together the disparate creative and digital faculties of the University of Rome under one roof. Filled with a lively mix of transient students, researchers and visiting academics, the building is a reinterpretation of the ancient forum, thrumming with debate and ideas.

8.9–8.11, 8.18 Peiyan Zou, Y2 ‘Verkehr mit Gespenstern’. The post office and ‘dead letter’ museum archives both contemporary and historical postal exchange. Through hybrid digital-physical reconstruction, the building brings to light the space of these otherwise hidden – and often lost – histories in a new immersive and surprising way.

8.15 To Yiu Marcus Lam, Y2 ‘House of Apicius’. A small complex of kitchens and culinary residences explores the subject of cooking as an important form of cultural preservation. The spatial design and material approach are fed by research into the acts of preparing and consuming food across different cultures.

8.16, 8.20 Caitlin Wong, Y3 ‘Masking the Mourners of San Lorenzo’. Located in the city of Rome, tucked away in an alley on the outskirts of the sacred ancient city boundary, sits a small building in a hidden site. Reflecting its proximity to the city’s Chinatown, one of the most ethnically diverse districts, and its rich contextual history of ancient funerary rituals, the proposed programme is a multi-faith funeral home.

8.17 Rabiyya Huseynova, Y3 ‘A Space to Read’. Designed, furnished and conceived as a ‘third space’, a new public library serves as a place of connection for the preexisting communities of migrant workers, students and tourists in the vibrant neighbourhood of San Lorenzo. Embracing the welcoming and warming qualities of natural light, the building is organised around the path

of the sun and the mass of an existing Roman aqueduct that sits on the site.

8.19 Krit Pichedvanichok, Y3 ‘The Inner Corner’. Following the principles of videogame preservation and environmental responsibility, a multifunctional gaming hub merges nostalgic enjoyment with ecological activism. Leveraging negative air pressure, the project pioneers a reusable, modular vacuum moulding system that enhances the resilience of vacuum-formed structures.

8.21 Teshan Seneviratne, Y3 ‘Saline Exposures’. Situated within the heart of San Lorenzo, a vibrant district popular with young creatives, a new photography gallery offers Rome its first dedicated space for photographic processing and display. Salt, a historical, and lost, means of negative development, becomes a construction material, manifesting as blocks, slurry and loose grain throughout the gallery to create novel viewing experiences.

8.22 Yufei Cheng, Y2 ‘Quo Vadis? A Museum of Rome’s Disrupted Narratives’. In this hybrid space between a museum and a traditional store, different versions of the founding myth of Rome are showcased, with the architecture forming the narrative of the exhibits. This museum–retail hybrid reconsiders the relationship between an object and its environment by re-establishing what is expected of a museum context, breaking away from traditional museology in search of new and curious experiences for the visitor.

8.23 Pacharamon (Myla) Danwachira, Y2 ‘Curating Meteorology’. Located on Tiber Island in central Rome, the Istituto Nazionale Di Statistica is a flooding regulation centre and meteorological data gallery, collecting weather data and regulating flooding on the banks of the river.

8.24 Amelia Vera-Sanso Talbot, Y2 ‘The Bristol Institute of Ceramics’. A ceramic crafts centre infills a longabandoned site on the historic narrow quay of Bristol’s city centre. The project responds to the decline of local craft by retaining, broadening and sharing ceramics expertise among the local population and visitors.

8.25 Laura Noble, Y2 ‘Osteria Del Curato’. A dual programme of art centre and osteria is proposed for a vacant site in San Lorenzo, Rome. The building resurrects an Italian tavern that sat on the edge of the city for a century before being abandoned in 2009, bringing it to new life and use.

8.28–8.29, 8.31 Edmund Flurry Grierson, Y3 ‘Disrupting the Tourist Gaze’. Exploring how the experience of the architectural space can be elevated through the careful manipulation of the visual gaze, the project proposes a factory and showroom for an Italian shoe atelier among the ruins of an ancient Roman aqueduct. The picturesque setting offers one of the earliest forms of the tourist gaze as an artificial construct, and building on these foundations, a contemporary spatial ‘frame’ is conceived. The architecture samples and manipulates fragments of the Italian landscape.

Festival

Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller

The festival has been a part of human life since antiquity. Reflecting the social and economic changes in our world, festivals consolidate social groups of all sizes from small (the family unit) to large (tribes and towns). They provide a temporal microcosm from which our relationships – between ourselves and with the spaces we inhabit – become distilled, intensified and amplified.

Recognising the intangible cultural heritage, practices, representations, knowledge and skills, as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated herewith, this year UG9 considered the festival as a transgressor of everyday routine. It is a departure from the ordinary that allows for requestioning of one’s individual and collective values.

In term one UG9 explored the festival theme through the design of an intervention on the site of the historic Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens; in doing so they considered the age of commercialised leisure and dedicated entertainment spaces and venues. Following the unit’s field trip to Berlin in term two, the festival theme was reconsidered alongside the German city which has cultivated individual expression yet also maintained a collective contribution to culture and society. Our architecture navigates the complex spatial conditions of the city and the opportunities that these relationships bring.

Drawing upon the unit’s continuing interest in ecology and technology, our architectural proposals address concerns around the climate crisis, urban development, culture and legacy through inventiveness and creativity, and by providing an active stimulus for the imagination.

Year 2

Nathan Cartwright, Wentong (Iris) Feng, Adam Klestil, Sean Ow, Kai Pentecost, Andrew Seah

Year 3

Myles Green, Ina-Stefana Ioan, Sze Chun Liu, Peter Moore, Roland Paczolay, Julia Rzaca, Yingqi (Izzy) Shen, Annika Siamwalla, Ilinca-Maria Stanescu, Mateusz Zwijacz

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Budd, Thomas Parker, Donald Shillingburg

Critics: Vitika Agarwal, Richard Aina, Bamidele Awoyemi, Alex Borrell, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Nat Chard, John Cruwys, Alex Fox, Maria Fulford, Grey Grierson, Tamsin Hanke, Will Jeffries, Kyriakos Katsaros, Andre Sampaio Kong, Constance Lau, Stephan Lengen, Anna Liu, Jörg Majer, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Doug John Miller, Giles Nartey, Elliot Nash, Thomas Parker, James Robinson, Narinder Sagoo, Ellie Sampson, Gurmeet Sian, Ben Spong, Tom Ushakov, Manijeh Verghese

Special thanks to Tonkin Liu Architects

Sponsor: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd

9.1, 9.23–9.26 Yingqi (Izzy) Shen, Y3 ‘The Supernatural’. The proposal questions the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, and asks to what extent a building can be ‘supernatural’. It uses Tegel, Berlin, as a testbed to explore innovative timber construction methods with the assistance of augmented reality technology. The data collected by the project will be fed into the 2050 Tegel Airport vision to create a sustainable transport hub for Berlin’s future.

9.2, 9.7 Adam Klestil, Y2 ‘Kreuzberg Fusion’. The project is a proposal for a compact nuclear fusion power plant within the urban context of Berlin. It speculates on the advancements in plasma physics research and the return of nuclear power as a base -load energy source for Germany.

9.3 Ina-Stefana Ioan, Y3 ‘Visualising Landscape(s) 2023–2423’. The project explores old visual crafts through new AI technologies, merging them into an art and research centre on a small island in north-west Berlin. A machine learning methodology is developed by collecting visual data about the site from the past and allowing AI to make predictions about what it may look like in the future. The future site predictions allow the building to adapt by relying on self-sustaining building technologies.

9.4 Mateusz Zwijacz, Y3 ‘The New Omelas’. Situated in Tempelhof, at the intersection of Berlin’s three greatest utopian projects, is a proposal for a heterotopian town that challenges the notion of space ownership. It instead suggests that the right to space can only be expressed through occupation. As time passes, the town, constructed with straw bale, gradually decomposes and enriches the former airport’s brown site, creating the groundwork for a future post-human era and site rebirth.

9.5 Myles Green, Y3 ‘The Sonic Motorcycle Centre’. Situated in the central district of Mitte, Berlin, the project brings together bikers and observers to engage in a celebration of the intense sounds of the motorcycle. The building proposes a new mode of motorcycle performance. Through the acoustic design of the motorcycle track that weaves its way through the structure, different sonic environments are activated by the rider for specific performative requirements. As the motorcycle travels through the building, the sonic environments respond to the bike and perform their own song.

9.6 Kai Pentecost, Y2 ‘The Loophole Cemetery’. The proposal provides a legal loophole, allowing ashes to be scattered back into German nature via a connection to the River Spree which runs through Berlin. 9.8–9.9 Sean Ow, Y2 ‘The Cloud Agenda’. Nestled on the eastern riverbank of Plänterwald, a forest in south-east Berlin, the Cloud Agenda offers a solution to the city’s water shortage crisis. Conceptualised as a performative ecosystem, the research centre is an architectural testbed for urban cloud seeding operations, merging ecological principles of the biotic pump with marvels of hygroscopic cloud-seeding technology to conceive an architecture that actively restores the climate and in turn constructs its own microclimate.

9.10 Roland Paczolay, Y3 ‘Reminiscing a Sensory Dreamworld’. The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens are brought back to life through dance accompanied by a caustic refraction light show. The illuminations invite participants to follow the lead of organic projections in the nostalgic steps of a Viennese Waltz.

9.11 Julia Rzaca, Y3 ‘Vogue: A Masquerade Armour’. Set in the past, the device creates a masquerade outfit for a character that would provide personal protection. In the present day, the project investigates facial recognition systems. The project considers the loss of

control over our own privacy and examines where, when and how we are captured and how our data is processed.

9.12 Andrew Seah, Y2 ‘The Hammam of Secular Non-Duality’. The proposed bathhouse hyperbolises and subverts the spatial syntax of gender stereotypes in traditional Turkish spaces. Sited in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and embedded in its landscape, the building is a field of relationships between plural circulations. Moments of intersection and the confluence of entwined paths provide avenues for interactions within an interconnected whole, responding to the German-Turk diasporic community’s growing desire for more inclusive spaces within traditional heterotopias.

9.13, 9.16 Annika Siamwalla, Y3 ‘Techno [re]Barn’. The project creates immersive dancefloors in an abandoned barn situated to the south of Berlin’s airport, blurring the boundaries between music, architecture and art. Techno music transforms the space, distorting perception and reconnecting people and places.

9.14 Wentong (Iris) Feng, Y2 ‘The Intertwined’. A culturally infused community centre in Berlin addresses the refugee crisis by fostering the integration of isolated refugees into the local community. Located in the heart of Berlin, it confronts trauma by establishing a multicultural haven that celebrates diversity and promotes healing and reconciliation among different ethnicities. It serves as a unifying space where cultures can converge, forge connections and mutually enrich one another through shared experiences and learning opportunities.

9.15 Peter Moore, Y3 ‘A Special Place to Bond’. The project, sited in Vauxhall, London, is a shrine that can facilitate an unprecedented festival of bodies that will rejuvenate a tired old garden. It is a symbol and it is symbolic. It is – and is a symbol of – the ultimate hug.

9.17 Nathan Cartwright, Y2 ‘A Post-Orgy Playground’. Decompression emerges within Berlin’s counterculture as an opportunity to challenge the tenets of capitalism, offering a primal landscape for recalibration within the club scene. By bridging hedonism and post-consumption ideologies, this project explores the concept of a post-capitalist comedown while immersing individuals in a progressively natural and sensory-specific environment, suggesting new socio-spatial typologies in a speculative era beyond consumption.

9.18–9.20 Sze Chun Liu, Y3 ‘The Social Impetus’. Sport has long been acknowledged as an effective bonding medium between individuals. As people of contemporary societies become increasingly segregated, so does its relevance. Sited in Tempelhof, Berlin, the project speculates on the role architecture plays in encouraging social interactions between users. Rather than optimising athletic performances, this multi-sports centre focuses on maximising participation as a stepping stone to potential friendship.

9.21–9.22 Ilinca-Maria Stanescu, Y3 ‘The R43 Mesocosm’. Set in 2035, the proposed project is an ecological DNA research centre and manufacturing facility for robotic bees. While the spaces and programme aim to facilitate the manufacturing and testing of this new technology, the actual building façades, columns and structures will allow and encourage, through strategic design, the inhabitation of live bees, arguing for the importance of nature preservation and denying the ubiquity of the digital.

9.14

9.15

9.16

Polyrhythms: Guyana

Pedro Gil, Neba Sere, Colin Smith

UG10 is committed to exploring architecture as a vehicle for equity and social justice. We are interested in exploring themes of decolonisation and what this means in an architectural and social context through spatial concepts and tectonics. Students are encouraged to explore Indigenous architecture through an understanding and celebration of these construction techniques. The unit positions itself to learn from global cultural and social references that are delivered through physical and illustrative architectural propositions.

Each year UG10 selects a Latin American region to focus our investigations into typologies that include construction idioms and techniques, funding streams, design activism and material iterations. We promote speculations on radical ideas, design solutions, resilient futures and alternative visions. This year we looked to Guyana, situated in South America and bordered by the Atlantic and Caribbean Oceans to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Venezuela to the west and Suriname to the east. Guyana enjoys a mix of ethnicities including the African diaspora, Indian (South Asian), Amerindian (Indigenous Native Indian and European mixed heritage) and Chinese, among others. The country also possesses strong cultural and ethnic links with nearby Caribbean islands.

Guyana is predominantly an English-speaking country due to its history as a former British colony. It was colonised by the Dutch before coming under British control in the late 18th century, and was then governed as British Guiana until the 1950s. British Guiana was once one of the main colonial ports in the trans-Atlantic slave trade between Europe, Africa and Latin America. It gained independence in 1966 and officially became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1970. Geographically, Guyana is one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. Due to this low human densification, it enjoys a wide variety of natural habitats with high biodiversity, reflected within the vernacular construction typologies and materials.

UG10 design projects are situated in the London Borough of Lewisham, which has one of the highest populations of AfroCaribbean heritage in the UK. Named as the Mayor of London’s Borough of Culture in 2022, Lewisham is on the verge of widespread regeneration within which our students’ work sits. We have learned from, been inspired by and celebrate Guyana in our design proposals for the city.

Year 2

Siya Bhandari, Laura Dietzold, Holly Hunt, Allyah Mitra Nandy, Akif Rahman, Regan Reser, Hossain Takir

Year 3

Arnold Freund-Williams, Maria Hussiani, Giulia Mombello Perez

Technical tutors and consultants: Alberto Fernández González, Stephanie Poynts

Critics: Reni Animashaun, Jhono Bennett, Akua Danso, Alberto Fernández González, Colin Glen, Jemima Harold-Sodipo, Jakub Klaska, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Maxwell Mutunda, Giles Nartey, Stephanie Poynts, Jessica Tang

Sponsors: Karakusevic Carson Architects, HOK

10.1, 10.4 Arnold Freund-Williams, Y3 ‘Forest Kiln Gallery’. Fire, decay and regrowth. This project explores fire and its broader relationship with indigenous groups within the Amazonian region with a focus on a sustainable and circular way of occupying a site. It utilises lowcarbon materials to produce a building that embraces fire, using bundles of low-calibre elements to produce columns from lower-grade timber units. The programme of the building is centred around provision for local artists working with clay through the inclusion of studio spaces and provides the local community with a new park and community spaces.

10.2, 10.21 Maria Hussiani, Y3 ‘The House of Jewellery’. The project draws inspiration from the diaspora of Guyana. The country’s conflicting relationship with migration is reflected in its rich cultural heritage and architecture, which is also prominent in the country’s gold jewellery. The proposal is a jewellery-making workshop, exhibition space, jewellery shop (including a learning room) and nursery. There is a focus on enabling local migrant women to learn new skills so they can enter the job market. The project creates a new story for Lewisham’s proud history of activism, celebrating and providing the opportunity and space for developing craftsmanship and skills.

10.3 Hossain Takir, Y2 ‘Pepperpot House’. A cultural hub for the Guyanese community. The pepperpot is the national dish of Guyana. It is a stewed meat dish flavoured with Cassareep (a sauce made from the cassava root), often served during Christmas and special occasions. The design features multiple spaces, including a museum showcasing a collection of traditional indigenous cooking utensils from Guyana, a kitchen where visitors can actively engage and learn the cooking process, and a greenhouse dedicated to growing some of the ingredients needed. The central eating space is where users can enjoy their cooked pepperpot dish together. The project provides a platform for sharing and preserving Guyanese heritage, enabling the community to deepen their understanding and appreciation for their own culture.

10.5–10.8 Allyah Mitra Nandy, Y2 ‘The Ladywell Migrant’s Weaving Workshop and Community Centre’. Revitalising the play tower’s communal history through a decolonised lens that focuses on weaving as a celebration of immigrant identities. The programme is divided into two buildings: a community market hall situated within the existing play tower, and a newly designed weaving workshop which spatially contrasts with the existing form. At the core of the project is the question of how to decolonise community spaces such as museums through reinterpreting immigrant narratives and experiences via the language of fabric.

10.9–10.10, 10.20 Regan Reser, Y2 ‘Museum of Caribbean and West African Folklore’. The Caribbean has a rich tradition of oral storytelling that has its origins in West Africa. The museum enables the audience to engage with folktales and history via real-life sensory experiences that centre the visitor as the main character. The main exhibition space hosts a series of rotating folktales from Africa and the Caribbean. At the centre of the museum is the auditory atrium which guest speakers and local organisations can use. The use of rammed earth and timber construction is also firmly rooted in the vernacular architecture of the Caribbean and West Africa.

10.11–10.12 Laura Dietzold, Y2 ‘A Museum of Indigenous Guyanese Architecture in Lewisham’. The project is a celebration of the diversity of indigenous Guyanese architecture and will display vernacular architecture techniques such as thatch. Indigenous South American architecture has informed much of what we know about

architecture today, but the Western world tends to criticise and stigmatise this type of vernacular architecture by describing it as ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilised’, while European architecture is hailed as ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’. This museum will therefore not only exhibit indigenous Guyanese architecture but also demonstrate what can be achieved with these techniques to teach their possible application in this environment.

10.13–10.15 Giulia Mombello Perez , Y3 ‘Pottery Workshop and Exhibition Space’. A Tribute to Guyanese and Caribbean Art and Crafts. The project draws inspiration from Guyanese and Afro-Caribbean pottery art and artists as well as the traditional British use of terracotta to create a new community space for Lewisham. The building celebrates pottery through all its stages, from the materiality itself to the activities inside and the showcased exhibition. There is a focus on celebrating and supporting the local Afro-Caribbean community with a space that will serve as a platform to exhibit their artistic talents while providing an open pavilion for those interested in pottery.

10.16–10.17 Siya Bhandari, Y2 ‘Museum of IndoGuyanese Culture’. The project’s programme is inspired by the migration of Indo-Guyanese people from Guyana to Lewisham. The building is informed by studies of Hindu architecture within temples and comparison with the Lewisham Kovil Temple which is in close proximity. Instead of using stone material, straw bales are utilised to create a building that can be experienced from both the inside and the outside.

10.18 Holly Hunt, Y2 ‘Lewisham Museum of Indigenous Crafts and Textiles’. The project is located in the heart of Lewisham market, creating a new public space for Lewisham High Street which celebrates the area’s diversity, culture and community. The museum is the antithesis of the typical Western colonial model and instead focuses on ‘making’ activities from the Global South. The workshop where users can print their own fabrics is inspired by Ankara, a traditional wax-printing technique found in Guyanese and West African communities. These fabrics can then be exhibited or traded. This encourages users to craft their own narratives and elevates the cultures of Lewisham’s migrant communities.

10.19 Akif Rahman, Y2 ‘Lewisham’s Celebration of Performance’. The project celebrates the art of performance through various creative mediums that showcase a diverse range of artists. The building contains two large installation spaces, referencing the commune in indigenous architectural spaces. Spaces for a permanent collection of art display a wide array of films and artefacts from across the world. The building’s structure uses pleating in its roof structure and façade elements as a visual representation of the spirit of performance.

10.5

10.6

Ghost Stories

Mani Lall, Matt Poon

Narratives and stories surround us. We are embedded within and enriched through the stories of our lives, the memories we make and the places we inhabit and engage with. However, we are not always aware of the subtexts that influence our experience of the environment – the ideas and elements that make up the diverse nuances and implications of how we perceive, belong, live and work in this landscape of stories.

UG11 is interested in the notion of ghosts, understood as elements that are suggested and implied. These ghosts exist in the shadows as hidden background elements which were explored by the unit this year. Our exploration started with the lost and forgotten aspects of London’s Docklands, later expanding to encompass sites in and around the city.

With a focus on a continuing narrative, the aim was to reveal and propose moments, suggestions and ideas folded into the veneer of site and city. Exploring London through the lenses of the hidden and suggested stories of ritual and myth, students interpreted both implied and physical elements and ideas that occupy and weave stories. Through drawing, photography and modelmaking, students looked at the city and the waterfront, investigating how the hidden informs and relates to spaces and situations. The unit initially configured these explorations into layered and enfolded translations, then went on to develop exploratory proposals at various scales. Producing spatial artefacts, interventions in the dockland sites acted as interpretations of these stories.

Developing project narratives further, students explored ideas from the physical to the imaginary. They examined how we internalise and create our understanding of spaces and functions, and considered how the real and imaginary could inform functions and embed these stories into design ideas. This produced projects which in some cases are precariously balanced on the thresholds of reality. Students created their own stories, and in some instances languages. Their final projects ranged from observatories to futuristic body and mind hives to macabre memorials, and included many other deviations from our initial understandings of place and story.

Year 2

Charlotte Burden, Beulah Kuku, Yiwen (Yuna) Lee, Ryhan Sheik, Nikhita Sivakumar

Year 3

Nan-Hao Chen, Scarlet Fernandes, Ioi (Nicole) Tong Ho, Fatim Kamara, Emmanouil Konstantinou, Mayling Ly, Adriana Rodriguez-Villa Lario, George Sanger, Emily To, Nicole Zhao

Technical tutor and consultant: Egmontas Geras

Critics: Abi Cotgrove, Smaranda Ghinita, Clement Laurencio, Edwin Maliakkal, Matthew Needham, Olivia O’Callaghan, Louis Peralta, Charlie Simpson

11.1, 11.7, 11.9 Charlotte Burden, Y2 ‘Blood Must Have Blood’. Located above the Camden Catacombs, three artists operate a tattoo parlour that offers users the ability to change their fate – for a price. Inspired by the figure of the tragic hero at the mercy of the fates, Greek mythology and tarot symbology, the project takes the themes of navigation and observation and looks to the future. All manner of users are attracted to the parlour, having heard the old wives’ tales, and flock there to begin the lengthy process of changing their fate. The artists are open to the curious, but beware the point of no return, and remember to ensure you have paid your debts...

11.2–11.3, 11.5 Nikhita Sivakumar, Y2 ‘The Last Resort’. As the Earth’s climate falls into irreversible damage, humanity sets out in search of a new home. Building on the ideas of theoretical physics, technological innovation and faith in survival, the project proposes the creation of a black hole observatory and orrery to explore humanity’s place and survival within the universe. Set in Greenwich Park, home to the Old Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian Line, a focal point for themes relating to time, space and continuity, the project addresses the bridge between science and the spiritual, celebrating the hope that draws the two worlds together.

11.4, 11.6 Scarlet Fernandes, Y3 ‘Seven: For All Eternity’. The city is a coalescence of desires and fears, which accentuates our current culture of concealment and secrecy. The narrative of the project serves as a metaphor for our relentless and perpetual quest for knowledge, power and technological advancement, and humanity’s nature to stop at nothing to find answers even if it means committing mortal sins. The project proposes a research facility to explore the physical, metaphysical and spiritual ideas of existence and judgement. It explores the medical profession’s ambition to save, extend life and eventually escape death. Finally, it serves to appreciate architecture as an immortal echo of what humanity may be.

11.8, 11.11 George Sanger, Y3 ‘An Ode to the Backstreet’. What is the place of a leatherman in a city with no leather scene? The closure of London’s longest-running leather bar, ‘The Backstreet’, in 2022 represents an erasure of identity from the city’s urban politics. This project enacts the bar’s closure, alongside a trend of closing LGBTQ+ nightlife venues, as a form of future-looking to create a site of permanent sexual citizenship for London’s leather and fetish counterpublic. The proposal becomes an act of ‘intergenerational re-remembering’ and a rejection of sanitised, cosmopolitan modalities of queer culture.

11.10 Ryhan Sheik, Y2 ‘Secrets of the Silk Road’. Through the narrative of a Bangladeshi immigrant, the project reflects on how the rich tapestry of trade, immigration and history has informed the building’s design. Nestled within the culturally vibrant district of Whitechapel, London, the project is a silk production facility, an ode to the historical Silk Road. This edifice, taking inspiration from the metamorphosis of the silkworm, is not merely an industrial construct – it is the birthplace of dreams and a testament to entrepreneurial endeavours.

11.12 Beulah Kuku, Y2 ‘Hidden Justice’. The project explores the UK prison system and morality. An estimated 11% of inmates in the UK are incarcerated while innocent. A large number of prisons are chronically overcrowded and underfunded, leading to poor living conditions. In the design of the appellate court, an ex-judge turned clerk helps bring justice to deserving prisoners with the aim of sentence reduction and release.

11.13–11.14 Nicole Zhao, Y3 ‘Observatory for Omniscience’. In the bustle of King’s Cross, London, sits an archive as a sanctuary for harried commuters. Little do they know that the building was created to entice

passers-by for the purposes of surveillance, profiling the activities of humankind in order to gain omniscience. Through attracting the most vigilant, the architecture recruits human observers to carry on its system of archiving and recording visitors to the building.

11.15–11.16 Yiwen (Yuna) Lee, Y2 ‘The Judgement’. Inspired by the novel The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, the project explores and challenges the historical notions of power between the Church and parliament in a dystopian Westminster. The story imagines a near future where the Houses of Parliament grow envious of Westminster Abbey’s glory and wealth. The project creates a space for debate and judgement on these power dynamics.

11.17, 11.22 Nan-Hao Chen, Y3 ‘Reministopia: The Trades of Memory’. This project delves into a future where memory extraction and implantation technologies are commonplace. The rich exploit these advancements to cure their psychological ailments, while the impoverished sell their cherished memories to the highest bidders. Set in the desolate landscape of Dungeness, this multifunctional architectural endeavour serves as a poignant reflection of the unequal distribution of resources and power.

11.18 Emmanouil Konstantinou, Y3 ‘Why Do We Want to Live Forever?’ With developing technological advancements, transferring one’s consciousness to an artificial host may soon become possible. However, only the privileged 1% would initially have access to such facilities. The programme and building propose a facility for those wishing to achieve everlasting life, longevity and immortality through the stages and processes required.

11.19 Mayling Ly, Y3 ‘Murderous Intent’. Through the creation of the Museum and Gallery of Urban Homicide, the project explores the history of murder in London and examines how this hidden world is part of the city’s urban and social fabric. Taking inspiration from the Body Worlds art installation, the exhibition consists of cadavers and is a place where the darkest of art and reality meet.

11.20 Fatim Kamara, Y3 ‘Absence of Certainty, Certainty of Grief’. Not dead or alive – simply gone. A memorial for missing people acknowledges those that want to remember missing loved ones in a world that only recognises life and death. Within the limbo of the missing, grievers can visit the memorial where their emotions are transformed into art.

11.21 Emily To, Y3 ‘The Banquet’. You are cordially invited to join us for an evening of fine dining on the riverbanks of London’s forgotten first Chinatown – Limehouse. Earning its exclusive reputation for serving the highest grade of meat – monster meat – the restaurant reinvents the dining experience and explores the act of arrival and departure for both the food and its patrons.

Settlement: Track and Trace

Hannah Corlett, Niall McLaughlin

Track and trace technologies enable status to be captured throughout a value chain and paths to be retrospectively identified and verified. Within the built environment the assessment of value and path is essential; it enables practitioners to learn from example and evaluate costs, while implication of all kinds fuels innovation. We have examined traces in the landscape, material practice and in the history of architecture and settlement to help create a track that leads into a newly imagined future.

This year UG12 students began by selecting an innovative construction material and exemplar building related to our brief. They examined and tested them technically and philosophically to create their own engaged studies; these were subsequently developed through our technical modules and informed the students’ final designs. We then journeyed across Switzerland in a combined road trip with UG4, visiting exemplary architecture with particular emphasis on the relationship between material practice and the environment.

Working individually and collectively, we then designed a settlement and the buildings within it. In doing so we agreed upon a set of values that defined its character, arrangement, material culture and interaction with the ecology of the site. The year was one of continued negotiation, the establishment of relationships with the landscape and with each other and ensuring the balance of individual initiative and communal cooperation.

Our settlement exists on the defensive wall and sluice that separates the village and marshes of Cley next the Sea, Norfolk. An area with a long history of avian and human occupation, the sheltered town was once an important harbour. However, land reclamation silted up the chalk channels to the River Glaven, and rising tides now threaten the protected wetlands and villages beyond.

Our tutors are architects who are involved day-to-day in making buildings. With them our students learn how to draw, model and design based on a deep understanding of landscape and material practice. Taking the demands and opportunities of the climate emergency as a springboard, together we learn and imagine surprising futures based on a firm understanding of the conditions of society today.

Year 2

Salima Begum, Thomas Butterworth, Lok Chiu, Sammy Doublet, Libby Ko, George Perks, Arthur Ritchie

Year 3

Marco Carraro, Rebecca Criste, Fahad Zafar Janjua, Siqi (Suky) Ouyang, Keeleigh Pham, Sidre Sulevani, Amelia Teigen, Ziyan Zhao, Yanyu (Cici) Zhou

Thesis supervisor: Matt Driscoll

Critics: Katerina Dionysopoulou, Matt Driscoll, JY Khoo, Maria Fulford, Jörg Majer, Ellie Manou, Billy Mavropoulos, Andreas Mullertz, Eoghan Smith, Steve Webb

With thanks to the B-made team for the Exploring Design Through Lenses: Making, Measuring, Modelling and Manipulation workshops

A special thank you to those who presented in the UG12/UG4 lecture series: Bureau de Change, Fulford Majer, HNNA Ltd, Niall McLaughlin Architects, Webb Yates Engineers

12.1 All Students, Y2&3 ‘Settlement Models’. Looking to understand not just an architectural approach but how to design urban context while respecting each other and the landscape, students worked independently and cooperatively through ‘town hall’ gatherings, revising a large-scale model of the settlement that embodied their shared values as well as their individual achievements. 12.2–12.6 Marco Carraro, Y3 ‘The Inhabited Rubble Berm’. Grappling with the complexities of constructing affordable housing in sensitive sites, the project investigates the utilisation of waste material in a structurally integral way. Rubble is used in its raw form, with string to aid binding instead of adhesive or standard containment, allowing easy disassembly. The massive tapering columns rise out of the berm, an extension of the landscape, braced by a horizontal tabletop on which prefabricated timber boxes are cradled below and stacked above, creating a dense terraced wall of vertical housing typologies.

12.7–12.10 Sammy Doublet, Y2 ‘The Textile Factory’. The three core processes of textile manufacture, scutching, spinning and weaving, are each given a unit, and together these step down from road to river bank. Connecting them is a system of warps, threads and fibres that are lifted above the customers’ heads from the machinery in a tapestry of heddles, harnesses and shafts, carrying a continuous thread through the structure from the scutching unit through to weaving.

12.11–12.13 Lok Chiu, Y2 ‘The Tidal Market’. The market is made up of four structures: the beacon, which guides ships into port during evening high tide; the canopy, an open-air pier for docking and trading; the market, with individual kiosks and small stores; and the storehouse, which temporarily holds traded goods before these are transported inland. As a metaphoric act of mooring to European ideals, the tidal market’s architecture emerges from an amalgamation of archaic Greek agora and Oriental tectonics.

12.14–12.16 Thomas Butterworth, Y2 ‘The Antediluvian Printing House’. The printing house circulates EU stories, supported by its own paper production and printing press. It acts as a node of communication, playing with how to frame, hide and reveal different aspects of the building’s nature to different groups. A central concrete wall presents a misleading façade to the existing village of Cley next the Sea and supports the inhabited spaces oriented towards the new settlement.

12.17–12.18 Yanyu (Cici) Zhou, Y3 ‘The Chinese Medical Centre’. In an environment with an average humidity level of 80%, the design, through architectural skins, stacking and associations, manipulates existing conditions to create three treatment rooms with varying humidity and temperature levels to administer five different treatments. Lightweight architectural appendages reach out into the environment beyond from a heavy, earthen courtyard core.

12.19–12.20 Ziyan Zhao, Y3 ‘The Geo Theatre’. The theatre is an amalgamation of assembly room, photographic exhibition centre and amphitheatre. The textured stone shell of the exterior opens to a soft, colourful and highly ornate interior. The majority of the interior space is sculpted into the ground to immerse visitors in the ambience of water and plantation. Designed to withstand flooding, its stage is a floating island with views out to sea

12.21 Arthur Ritchie, Y2 ‘The Halfway House’. The entire construction is made of local Norfolk timber. The piles form a causeway space connecting and continuing into each room of the long-stay therapy centre to help those with anxiety and agoraphobia.

12.22 Rebecca Criste, Y3 ‘The Observation Room’. During the day, the building functions as a birdwatching library to observe without disturbing the natural habitat.

The dynamic façade, influenced by the woven structure of bird spectrograms, opens up, providing a visual connection to the marshes and offering a protective threshold for the privacy of nesting birds. As night falls, the façade and birds settle down simultaneously as the building transforms into a restaurant. The roofscape adapts, creating a contemplative space for dining under the stars.

12.23 Libby Ko, Y2 ‘The Hub’. The flotilla of timber structures integrates a café, public bathrooms, post office and bank, providing a convenient one-stop destination at the heart of the settlement and edge of the River Glaven, Norfolk.

12.24 Amelia Teigen, Y3 ‘The Trojan Horse Distillery’. A pub and distillery explore deception through scale, weight and layering. Internally split floors lead up to external terraces with views that wrap around the central still room with its reflective copper mechanics.

12.25 Salima Begum, Y2 ‘The Tonic Water and Glass Factory’. The infusion room exists beneath the embankment, seamlessly blending into its natural surroundings. Approaching from the town square, the public enter a covered platform overlooking a raised water table mirroring the skyscape, with views beneath that connect the infusion processes with the Cley tidal marshlands beyond. The glassblowing studio hovers above as a structural rhetoric – a glowing transparent beam on a Corten steel core.

12.26, 12.28 Siqi (Suky) Ouyang, Y3 ‘The Visitors’ Hotel’. The hotel provides three different styles of accommodation. A capsule hotel and larger-scale hotel rooms face onto the public square, supporting the transient freeport users and low-rise, detached cabins that dissipate into the picturesque marshland to accommodate bird enthusiasts. The construction utilises Ferrock as a cement substitute, reducing carbon emissions and ecological impact. The incorporation of rammed earth and cross-laminated timber (CLT) further enhances the hotel’s integration with the local environment.

12.27, 12.29 Keeleigh Pham, Y3 ‘The Whalebone Church’. The church has a binary nature in its form and material. The exterior skin has a monolithic language and geometric plan composed of rammed earth walls which conceal more organic forms within. Apertures connecting platonic spaces are softened through details mirroring the vertebrae pattern of Cley next the Sea’s Whalebone House.

12.30 Sidre Sulevani, Y3 ‘The Montessori Primary School’. The school’s architecture is tailored to the child and stands in celebration of vernacular building techniques. Its material selection is organic and welcoming and its orientation celebrates the path of the sun across the school day, starting with an east-facing entrance bathed in morning light. The school’s central courtyard captures local village life, framing views along the River Glaven to the adjacent textile, printing, distilling and trade industries. In each of the five huts, the internal space opens up to a sky of interwoven, exposed timber trusses balanced upon a domestic-scale plinth.

12.31 All Students, Y2&3 ‘The Settlement Plan’. A group of Norfolk dissidents, frustrated with rapidly deteriorating EU relations, create a freeport to reopen trade on the seaward edge of Cley next the Sea. A new settlement is founded whose buildings sit on the existing flood defence berms, creating an unusual border situation.

[A] Marco Carraro, [B] Sammy Doublet, [C] Lok Chiu, [D] Thomas Butterworth, [E] Salima Begum, [F] Siqi (Suky) Ouyang, [G] Yanyu (Cici) Zhou, [H] Amelia Teigen, [I] Keeleigh Pham, [J] Libby Ko, [K] Sidre Sulevani, [L] Ziyan Zhao, [M] Arthur Ritchie, [N] Rebecca Criste.

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12.4

Agritecture

Maria Fulford, Jörg Majer

‘The inevitability of total urbanisation must be questioned, and the countryside must be rediscovered as a place to resettle, to stay alive; enthusiastic human presence must reanimate it with new imagination.’

Rem Koolhaas, Countryside: A Report (Köln: Taschen, 2020)

If we are truly heading towards near total urbanisation, where does that leave the countryside? UG13 is interested in ruralism and the challenges and opportunities that this environment provides in the 21st century. The countryside has undergone seismic changes over the past 100 years through mechanisation, agrochemistry, land management, mass migration and new types of industry emerging. Despite these changes, rural environments are woefully underrepresented and misunderstood; it is time to shift our focus and examine the potential of this fertile territory.

Agriculture is broadly defined as the production of food and fibres through the explicit selection and husbandry of plants and animals. Ever since the first human settlements, architecture and agriculture have been dependent on one another. This year, as we experience food shortages caused by conflict, climate change and globalisation, UG13 looked to re-examine our relationship with agriculture and the countryside.

As a starting point, students were asked to plant a seed of rural conscience into the city by designing a monument in the form of a speculative structure, installation or device which might serve both humans, animals and plants.

For our field trip we travelled to the German state of BadenWürttemberg in Southern Germany to visit the fertile territory of the Black Forest. Until the middle of the 19th century much of the region was populated by small subsistence farming, carved out of the forest over centuries. Today Germany is one of the largest producers of agricultural goods in the EU; its farming is predominantly carried out by agribusiness consortia that cover vast territories.

It was François Cointeraux, a bricklayer from Lyon, who coined the term ‘agritecture’ as the cross-fertilisation of agriculture and architecture. He was an advocate for the countryside until his death in 1830 and sought to reunite building and farming skills. In their final build projects students were asked to design and cultivate their own ‘agritecture’ based on their research.

UG13 students are encouraged to be anarchists in the manner of Russian geographer Peter Kropotkin, who mused that ‘Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilisation’. In this sense, students need to collaborate and cooperate while simultaneously building self-reliance and independence.

Year 2

Beau Beames, Diego Carreras, Sophie Siney

Year 3

Lorenzo Angoli, Sarah Bibby, Amy Daja, Magdalena Herman, Shiwei Lai, Jatin Naru, Chisom Odoemene, Luiza-Elisabeta Oruc, Izzy Watson, Fangyi (Erica) Zhou

Technical tutors and consultants: Simon Beames, Tom Budd, James Green, Miranda MacLaren

Thank you to our critics: Kacper Chmielewski, Matt Driscoll, Tamsin Hanke, Sarah Izod, Carolyn Jackson, Philip Joseph, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Tim Norman, Caireen O’Hagan, Christopher Page, Matthew Page

Special thanks to Niall Hobhouse at The Drawing Matter Collection, Shatwell Farm

13.1, 13.6, 13.26–13.28 Jatin Naru, Y3 ‘The Stories in the Shadows’. As an ode to folktale collections of the Brothers Grimm, this project speculates an architectural revival of their philological tendencies in the depths of the Black Forest. An outpost for literature students of a nearby university, the building acts as an embodiment of the ‘Naturpoesie’ they study within, hidden in the shadows of the trees. It is synecdochic of the surrounding forest: dramatic monumentality is placed alongside individual retreats for literary introspection. Writings are inscribed into the pinewood walls, transforming the building into a literary archive unto itself.

13.2, 13.20–13.22 Magdalena Herman, Y3 ‘Die Zuckerrübe’. This diabetes and research centre is located outside Basel, Switzerland, providing care and treatment facilities while simultaneously performing experimental methods of insulin manufacturing using yeast and E. coli bacteria. The building materiality has its basis in sugar production waste products, utilising beet pulp, molasses and other materials to create various internal atmospheres.

13.3, 13.12 Diego Carreras, Y2 ‘Formosity’. A hikers’ retreat and fish farm situated in a remote part of the Black Forest, Germany. The vernacular design is inspired by the unspoiled beauty of the nearby glacial waters. The project enhances the hiking experience by capturing the essence of nature using found materials from the site and respecting the surrounding natural environment. The lakes and forest act as the foundation of the kitchen; visitors can dine from menus of foraged ingredients, such as fish and mussels unique to the area, as well as local mushrooms and herbs.

13.4, 13.5, 13.23 Sarah Bibby, Y3 ‘Shifting Spaces: Dementia Dwellings’. Inspired by the traditional agricultural practices within the Black Forest, the project is centred on a series of garden walls, combining a goat farm with a housing scheme for dementia sufferers. The building explores what it means to be lost, recognising the deterioration of the allocentric mind during the progression of dementia that removes one’s sense of place. The project seeks to reintroduce a sense of place by designing egocentric experiences. The wall becomes central to the residents’ understanding of the scheme, acting as a way-finding device that emerges and dissolves into the landscape to allow residents to wander through framed views and landmarks, experiencing the topography of the orchard.

13.7, 13.13 Beau Beames, Y2 ‘Preserving at Plaw Hatch Farm’. The site is a small biodynamic farm situated at the junction of agriculture and forestry. Fermentation and smoking preserve the farm’s produce in a performative process, celebrating our connection to agriculture and the seasons, with the building enclosing a space for performance and communal celebration. The spaces are surrounded by impermeable and permeable elements of filigree steel and solid clay. The metal’s simple form conceals poetic structures clad in clay which is dug, fired and glazed on site.

13.8–13.10 Amy Daja, Y3 ‘The Salt House’. Bathhouses are an integral part of German culture. This project proposes a bathhouse based on the ancient principles of Roman baths and features columns that harvest minerals to grow salt crystals from geothermal water. The resultant material has health benefits as well as providing a rich and atmospheric experience tailored to the various climates found within the building.

13.11 Sophie Siney, Y2 ‘Flies to Feathers’. Mudchute Park and Farm is an urban working farm on the Isle of Dogs. The proposal utilises pill-box bunkers found on site to provide the urban population with a place to engage with and enjoy agricultural farming practices. It features a black soldier fly tower which produces enough larvae to

feed London’s growing chicken population, a biofuel generator and a pancake house.

13.14–13.15 Luiza-Elisabeta Oruc, Y3 ‘Milking of the Bees’. This respite and treatment centre for Parkinson’s disease is located deep within the Black Forest, Germany. The building is developed around the process of extracting bee venom to treat Parkinson’s sufferers. The project also analyses the centrality of bees to agriculture, medicine and visual culture. The sounds, smells and rich materiality of the insects are harvested to treat the afflictions of the disease, while spatially, a symbiotic relationship between patients and bees is explored. The form of the building draws inspiration from the ‘Orgelfelsen’, a large rock formation adjacent to the site, which was explored through a series of rock portraits and digital collages.

13.16–13.18 Izzy Watson, Y3 ‘Lunarcy Settlement’. Set in a valley in the Black Forest, this farming commune shares a deep-rooted obsession with the moon. The farm is an anthropomorphic machine maintained, expanded and worshipped by its inhabitants. The inhabitants are a mix of ‘romantic’ thinkers, concerned with aesthetics and ‘classical’ thinkers concerned with the function of parts composing the whole. Towering mirror machines target circular moonlight towards the site to control work and play at the farm.

13.19 Shiwei Lai, Y3 ‘A Thousand Screens’. Cherries hold a special place in many cultures as a celebratory fruit, symbolising joy, abundance and the arrival of spring. The proposed café and bakery provide the town of Baden-Baden with a place to enjoy Black Forest gateau within a large cherry orchard. Recycled waste cherry wood, paper screens and ceiling lanterns create an atmospheric space for celebrating this classic cake.

13.24–13.25 Lorenzo Angoli, Y3 ‘Conserving Monastic Practices’. The monastic architecture in this project establishes a centre dedicated to botanical exploration and research, focusing particularly on Hypericum Perforatum (St John’s Wort) and its production in the form of oil and liquor. The building capitalises on the region’s abundant rivers, utilising them for irrigation and research purposes. Embracing an architectural language that reflects monastic traditions, the building provides an environment conducive to both education and contemplation.

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13.21

Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be

David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata

UG14 continued its studies into how societies remember and forget through the built environment. This year we focused on nostalgia –a particular manifestation of social memory which contributes to the collective identity. Nostalgia is comforting. In times of crisis, its psychological benefits for people’s wellbeing are undeniable; they act as a stabilising force in times of transition, uncertainty and change. But nostalgia is also dangerous. Throughout the world, we have witnessed how it has become a political tool to spread misinformation. It is the seed for powerful ideologies, a yearning for a different idealised time that only really exists in people’s imaginations.

The contradiction between two forms of nostalgia – the reflective and the restorative – formed the basis of this year’s investigations, in which we considered the benefits and dangers to the individual and collective psyche. UG14 explored how nostalgia can be utilised positively for the adaptive reuse of buildings while still being representative and relevant to a modern social identity.

We visited Serbia and explored Novi Beograd, a planned socialist city built with utopian ideals under communist rule in the latter half of the 20th century. On the trip, we experienced the cultural phenomenon of ‘Yugo-nostalgia’ – a longing for an era of unity and multiculturalism before the dissolution of the Yugoslav states. We toured the brutalist architecture built upon these principles – cultural establishments that radiated this yearning for the past – and the many spomeniks that memorialise events of World War II. We learned how this architecture fitted within the contemporary context of this polarised country and challenged ourselves to reimagine existing spaces as stages to newly-found events.

Today, in a world where economic factors require the changing of attitudes on a global scale and architecture is increasingly created in a vacuum through the selective synthesis of past data, we emphasise the importance of context and poetry in design, over the reproduction of a version of the ‘truth’. UG14 analyses what is left of the past, to decide how individual memories can fit within a wider societal framework for the future.

Year 2

Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Ibrahim Charafi, Kiran Gosal, Vladut Iacob, Laura Maczik, Jio Ryu, An Vu

Year 3

Ayisha Belgore, Zhun Lyn Chang, Phoebe Hampson, Katie Kamara, Jinyi (Athena) Li, Po (Tate) Yin Mok, Barbara (Basia) Nohr, Skylar Smith, Cosmin Ticus

Technical tutors and consultants: Loukis Menelaou, Danielle Purkiss, Josef Stoeger

Critics: Helen Floate, Stephen Gage, Kevin Kelly, Benjamin Lucraft, Carlota Nuñez-Barranco Vallejo

14.1 Jinyi (Athena) Li, Y3 ‘Living in the Moment’. Theatre typologies and philosophies are replicated at a retirement centre programme in Blok 28, Novi Beograd, to create a carefully evolving ‘set’ to cater for the residents’ needs. The project proposes to use hidden set designers to produce lightweight and mouldable wall panels on site out of paper-based materials to stimulate the residents’ experience within the building. It speculates on whether an adaptable architecture could aid in prolonging life.

14.2 Po (Tate) Mok, Y3 ‘Focus’. Inspired by traditional matte paintings in film production that create efficient and cost-effective solutions to constructing a scene, the project proposes a film school in Novi Beograd, adjacent to an existing drama school. The designs focus on applying concepts of image downsampling to architectural construction, as well as techniques of anamorphic illusions to curate a series of scenes that are revealed as users move through the building.

14.3–14.4 Barbara (Basia) Nohr, Y3 ‘Ederlezi:

A Bathhouse for the Unsettled’. The project proposes retrofitting an abandoned public bathhouse located in the Dorćol neighbourhood, to create a cultural hub for the Roma community living in squatter settlements across the city. The programme develops in three parts: sanitation provision through the baths; a workshop to convert waste materials into building components that could be reintegrated into the settlements; and a marketplace that transforms into a festival site dedicated to the celebration of Roma culture.

14.5 Kiran Gosal, Y2 ‘Lozionica Jazz Hub’. The building is a jazz performance space and set design workshops for choreographed performances, sited in an abandoned train depot in Old Belgrade. The original turntable becomes the area from which audiences can enjoy a dynamic choreographed series of performances, while the building is inhabited by the signature rhythms of Studentski Micky Jazz – Serbia’s first jazz band.

14.6 Laura Maczik, Y2 ‘Playground for Blok 63’. The project reacts to the architecture of the blokovi – a relentless landscape of Brutalist concrete high-rise housing in Novi Beograd – by creating a playground, nursery and café nestled at low level between the blocks. The building is placed atop an abandoned car park roof, creating a space where children can run around safely while pushing the boundaries of their physical abilities.

14.7 Ibrahim Charafi, Y2 ‘The Water Chamber’. The building project is a debate chamber and bathhouse underneath a bridge across the River Sava, where EU and local politicians can meet to discuss Serbia’s future with the EU under the watch of the constituents they serve. Bathing acts as a cleansing ritual to prepare for an honest environment within the debate chamber.

14.8 Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Y2 ‘Slušaj ‘Vamo (Listen Here)’. The punk-inspired youth music and cultural centre is a performing and practice space, with a procedural design based on the famous Serbian anti-war song ‘Slušaj ‘Vamo’ by Rimtutituki. The space revitalises the abandoned buildings underneath Branko’s Bridge, which connects Old and New Belgrade, and celebrates the temporal nature of music and culture.

14.9, 14.17 Phoebe Hampson, Y3 ‘Synthesising Earth’. Paul Pignon, a lynchpin of Belgrade’s electronic music scene in the 1980s, returns to the city to spread his experimental and liberal ethos to help people relieve their Yugo-nostalgia through unconventional musicmaking methods and underground events in an abandoned warehouse. The materiality of the architecture applies synthesiser ideology to the principles and techniques of rammed earth construction and sorting aggregates to create spaces with varying acoustic properties.

14.10 Katie Kamara, Y3 ‘Weaving Patterns’. The project is situated within the ruins of the old National Library of Serbia, which was bombed during the Second World War. It was a targeted attack on Serbian culture which destroyed important historical literature. As a reaction to the library’s demise, the project proposes an archive and workshop space for Pirot carpets, a traditional Serbian textile craft of woven motifs and stories. The architecture explores fire as a constructive application and translates the methodology of woven Pirot patterns into timber construction.

14.11 Zhun Lyn Chang, Y3 ‘An Alternative Chinese Embassy’. The project is sited within the ‘Chinatown’ market in Blok 70, Belgrade, which was destroyed by a fire in 2021. Mirroring the transitional status of the market and the migrants who work there, the proposed programme is a hostel and ceramic workshop to draw in visitors and facilitate cultural exchange. By incorporating both recycled plastic and handcrafted ceramics as materials in the building, the design facilitates dialogue between cultures and improves the image of China that the market currently portrays.

14.12–14.13 Cosmin Ticus, Y3 ‘Museum of the Revolution’. The site is a fragile reminiscence of an ambitious Yugoslavian 1940s project, left abandoned due to decades of financing and legislature change. The project draws attention to the local Romani people by celebrating their culture and addressing the censorship that they have historically faced. It takes a technical interest in the adaptive reuse of built heritage, creating three different lines of inquiry that investigate questions of authorised heritage discourse and preservation.

14.14 Skylar Smith, Y3 ‘Neo Borba Printing Press’. The building is primarily designed as a printing press and archive for the publication of Borba –a revived socialist newspaper that encourages the intergenerational exchange of knowledge in modern-day Serbia. Cycles of news are reflected alongside natural weathering rhythms, as the building is designed to slowly erode into ruins over the lifetime of a generation. Popular stories become catalysts for the automated creation of memorials, producing future representations of collective memory defined by the people, not by the state.

14.15 Vladut Iacob, Y2 ‘Amateur Film School’. The project utilises an existing abandoned structure located underneath Branko’s Bridge to create a space for budding filmmakers, actors and the public to congregate. Different user groups are directed to enter and move through the building separately before meeting in curated spaces designed to shoot recurring film scenes, inspired by the golden age of the Yugoslav film industry.

14.16 Jio Ryu, Y2 ‘Serbian Fruit Archive’. This project creates a national archive that represents Serbia through its national drink, Rakija. As an alternative archive of the country’s regional diversity, the materials and form of the buildings take inspiration from geographical maps and the vernacular architecture found in the countryside, to achieve the slow pace and peace that Belgrade is longing for.

(dis)Continuity

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

(dis)Continuity:

1. a state of stability and the absence of disruption 2. the maintenance of continuous action

In recent times, through pandemics and economic and social change, we have depended on systems of measurement and feedback to maintain a sense of continuity – keeping economies and society operating in the face of instability. Architecture both adapts to and resists these dynamic forces. Architects find themselves operating within one current system while always imagining and creating future alternatives.

This year UG21 considered continuity and discontinuity. How do we design with multiple systems that overlay, combine or break? Can architecture sustain and also rebel?

Throughout the year students were asked to develop their own design process using analogue or digital techniques, physical making, drawing and digital methods. Through their personal research, students identified combinations of continuous and discontinuous systems. These included explorations of time, materiality, data and perception. Areas of research were wide and diverse. We encouraged students to draw on personal interests, obsessions or topical subjects to narrow their focus. We celebrate the juxtaposition of a personal approach which might be intuitive and/or highly subjective against data or science that is objective or shared knowledge.

‘Florence is like a town that has survived itself.’

William Hazlitt, 1826

Our field trip this year took place in Florence, Italy, the iconic city of the Renaissance and home to scientific, financial and artistic revolutions. Historically Florence created a great discontinuity in thinking and ideas, but is now a city that is highly preserved and resistant to change. From the 13th century to the early 16th century, one bold experiment in the arts and sciences succeeded another: artists were thinkers and painters were mathematicians. Leonardo da Vinci had a plan for diverting the River Arno and Michelangelo imagined how a mountain could be turned into a piece of sculpture (Eve Borsook, 1981). After the dramatic flooding of Florence in 1966, the city incubated a series of radical design groups including the 9999, UFO, Archizoom Associati and Superstudio. They designed discos, guerrilla inflatables, jumpsuits and cities with continuous flows of information such as the No-Stop City and The Continuous Monument

Year 2

Ariel Alper, Mattia Salvadori, Yaowen Zhang, Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng, Deqing (Rachel) Zhou

Year 3

David Abi Ghanem, Sophie Du Ry Van Beest Holle, Chuhan (Paris) Feng, Natalia Michalowska, Ioana Oprescu, Shiyan (Jonathan) Zhu

Technical tutor and consultant: Tom Holberton

Critics: Jono Bennett, Julian Besems, Roberto Bottazzi, Ana MonrabalCook, Zach Fluker, Naomi Gibson, Melih Kamaoglu, Elly Selby, Jasmin Sohi

21.1 Sophie Du Ry Van Beest Holle, Y3 ‘After School Club!’. The building serves as an after school club based in Florence, Italy. Using parts from the old existing playground on the site, the programme design allows for more imaginative play by augmenting the existing pieces and using different, brightly coloured joints. 21.2, 21.8 Natalia Michalowska, Y3 ‘Parole Composte’. The project investigates how to ‘embody in architecture that which has never been embodied before’ (Junya Ishigami). In this instance, design is expressed through words. A process was developed which reconstructs words as forms and considers how architectural form can be influenced by typography. The designed building serves as a contemporary art centre with a focus on hosting digital art exhibitions and workshops – both centred around the themes of digital literacy, coding and teaching skills to bridge the digital divide by increasing access to technology.

21.3–21.4 Ariel Alper, Y2 ‘Excavating Rhythms: The Brain as a Drawing Tool’. This project explores using the brain as a drawing tool through a digital machine that generates line drawings from real-time brain wave data. The project connects to the history of Fiesole, Tuscany, visualising reactions to external stimuli and encoding human experiences into the landscape. Drawings are created based on ancient performances, capturing unseen elements. Respecting the site’s archaeological value, the project enhances what remains and uses the drawings as a guiding tool for design. It celebrates Fiesole’s history while staying true to the place’s behaviour, assembling hidden fragments to create a new narrative.

21.5–21.7 Chuhan (Paris) Feng, Y3 ‘La Marionettistica’. Nestled in Oltrarno, Florence, this project proposes a puppet workshop and theatre beside the River Arno. Inspired by the controller-and-controlled relationship found in puppetry, especially marionettes, the project seeks to develop a puppetry-like design process that can generate cause-and-effect outcomes. The ‘Puppetograph’, a digitally programmed drawing machine, facilitates reciprocal design at varying scales; it transforms one into another and forges both visible and invisible connections within the space.

21.9, 21.16 David Abi Ghanem, Y3 ‘The Heritage Database’. This project investigates the creative capacity of a heritage database, examining its capability visually to portray relationships between artefacts. This design tool enables the reinterpretation of cultural historical narratives, opening up discussions on the interconnected character of different cultures and their heritage. Moreover, the tool empowers the viewer/manipulator of the database by granting them curatorial control to express their own unique interpretation of heritage.

21.10–21.11 Deqing (Rachel) Zhou, Y2 ‘The Existential Barograph’. Inspired by the history of local weather research in Florence, this project takes the Fondazione Osservatorio Ximeniano and the Museo Galileo as its main references to envisage a new meteorological observatory and history archive museum on the north bank of the River Arno. In this vision, the centre would serve local residents, tourists, researchers and contemporary artists, responding to Florence as a tourist city while also incorporating local history.

21.12–21.13 Ioana Oprescu, Y3 ‘Look Up! Look Down’. This project explores ways to design architectural spaces that can replicate the qualities of astrophotography and satellite imagery. This is achieved by investigating the potential of lighting to recreate the immersive experience of imagery in a physical space. Art galleries transform in sync with the Sun’s movements, so that the building evokes the inhabitation of a painting.

21.14–21.15 Yaowen Zhang, Y2 ‘L’evoluzione: A Dialogue Between the New and Old Human Aesthetics’. Data can be used as a medium to record the human body from a medical perspective. This project uses data in architectural design to take human data in a new direction and to make architecture a new medium for human aesthetics. Four devices were created in order to collect data. Using Grasshopper, this data was then transformed into 3D models – aesthetic objects of data. The final arrangement of these aesthetic objects resulted in a museum and research centre for human body aesthetics.

21.17–21.18 Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng, Y2 ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’. This project utilises AI to provide an interactive relationship for users, engaging visitors in participating in a performance that brings Florence’s history to life. Using 3D models and 2D patterns, the project explores how collaborative communication and decision-making between designers and AI systems such as DALL-E 2 can find a common platform for a building.

21.19 Mattia Salvadori, Y2 ‘The Heroes Within’. On the grounds of Florence’s epicentre of sports, Campo di Marte, a new sports centre aims to take over or to ‘reshape’ the existing facilities better. By offering larger, more versatile spaces for skateboarding and sport climbing as self-organised and individualised sports, it seeks to establish greater recognition and accessibility to both activities following their debuts at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

21.20–21.22 Shiyan (Jonathan) Zhu, Y3 ‘Hidden in Stereopsis’. This project proposes a paediatric ophthalmology specialist research and treatment centre. It investigates the human act of looking at an ancient city wall site in Florence, a city and location obsessed with observation. The architectural outcome is designed with a bespoke machine-learning algorithm trained using binocular data that mimics human visual inputs. By excluding conventional monocular data used to train AI algorithms such as Midjourney and DALL-E 2, the design process exposes the rift between the humanoid publicity surrounding AI and its actual computational logic.

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21.21

The Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies Open Stage during The Bartlett Summer Show 2022

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Programme Director: Elizabeth Dow

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc is a degree that is not only unique within UCL but also across the UK. For over ten years the programme has been a forerunner in the UK education system. It offers an undergraduate degree within a school of architecture that demonstrates that architectural culture is not centred solely around the accredited profession. Our students are able to select their modules from the school of architecture elective options – including architectural research, architectural history and theory, design and creative practice, environmental design and greening cities, and professional practice and management modules. They are then able to tailor their studies further by selecting elective modules from across UCL, addressing a wider set of interests and specialties that both complement and inform the study of the built environment. Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies students can recognise and benefit from the practice of many other people working in related fields – film, media, public engagement, policy, conservation, curation, design and creative practice – who shape debates and ideas around architecture in significant and important ways. As a result they are able to participate actively in these conversations through their own studies and beyond.

The greatest strength of the programme lies in its interdisciplinary nature. We encourage our students to navigate their studies in a focused manner, choosing from a diverse range of modules from across UCL alongside their architectural studies. They develop a range of skills and build a unique knowledge-set tailored to their individual interests. This in turn empowers students to apply themselves to careers such as journalism, art, design and planning policy, activism, interiors and landscape design, and environmental and urban studies.

There are two specially tailored modules for Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies students: Design & Creative Practice and Architectural Research. Images from the resulting design projects and an excerpt of work produced on this year’s ‘Architectural Research III’ essay-based module can be found on the following pages.

Programme Administrator

Beth Barnett-Sanders

Architectural Research

Tutors and PGTA

Edwina Attlee, Brent Carnell, Kirti Durelle, Tom Keeley, Sophie Read, David Roberts, Maria Venegas Raba

Design & Creative

Practice Tutors and PGTA

Kirsty Badenoch, Giorgos Christofi, Elizabeth Dow, James Green, Kevin Green, Alice Hardy, Tom Kendall, Giles Nartey, Freddy Tuppen, Gabriel Warshafsky

Greening Cities Tutor and PGTA

Blanche Cameron, Carla Tosi Seppe

Computing for Design and Creative Practice Tutor

Bill Hodgson

Architectural Research III

Module Coordinator: Brent Carnell

Architectural Research III is an advanced module that allows students to work on an interdisciplinary architectural subject of their choice, undertake thorough primary research and compose an 8,000-word essay. In addition to individual research projects, students also work collaboratively on the production of a group output, presented in term three. This year this component took the form of a printed publication and website. The website is an online repository that compiles the work of previous Architecture Research III students. Students have acted as interdisciplinary detectives in researching the world around them. Topics include architecture and home, museums, psychology, AI, social media, sound and Lego. Read more at archresearch3.com.

Over the year, students hone their research methods skills while distilling the fruits of their own distinctive interdisciplinary education gained at The Bartlett School of Architecture and other departments across UCL. In so doing they develop a unique understanding of the complex ways in which architecture interrelates with society and the world. This year’s projects are truly interdisciplinary. They offer an impressive range of built environment investigations that demonstrate the strengths of the module and the diversity of the programme. The teaching team is profoundly impressed with the rigour, commitment and development of each study.

Students

Emilia Bryce, Katharina de Mel, Stela Kostomaj, Yuyang (Sunny) Li, Cecelia Liu, Christa Lockyer, Sean Louis, Katherine McClintock, Merle Nunneley, Elina Nuutinen Vera Tudela, Ning (Cristina) Su, Ionela (Mihaela) Suciu, Javas (Julae) Tan, Yifan Wang, Xiaoyan (Ivanka) Zhao

Module Tutors

Edwina Attlee, Sophie Read, David Roberts, Maria Venegas Raba

The Sensory Sacrifice Zone: Sacrificing Wellbeing at Home and School in Quintero-Puchuncaví, Chile

Elina Nuutinen Vera Tudela

Sacrifice zones are defined as ‘“hot spots” of chemical pollution where residents live immediately adjacent to heavily polluted industries’.1 The Quintero-Puchuncaví Bay was the first of five sacrifice zones in Chile. Developed in the 1950s with the goal of boosting Chile’s economic development, the bay’s Ventanas Industrial Park has over 15 plants in operation today, heavily contaminating Quintero-Puchuncaví.

The senses are the means by which our nervous system receives information about environmental factors in the form of sensations via the ears, eyes, nose and skin; they are the main pathway by which we experience the world around us. 2 The senses are also indicators of how our environment affects our wellbeing, responding to both positive and negative stimuli. The World Health Organization defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. 3 I conducted a focused case study to find how the physical, psychological and socioeconomic wellbeing of residents of Quintero-Puchuncaví is affected by the presence of polluting industries. The sensory experience of seven locals, specifically in the spatial contexts of home and schools, was investigated. The interviewees described experiences of being able to see, smell, taste and feel the environmental contamination, as well as revealing ways of coping with the air pollution in their quotidian routines.

Visual traces of contamination within the home such as the ‘dense and contaminated environment’ (interviewee 21), sulphurlike substances in patios and deteriorated belongings impact the psychological wellbeing of the people of Quintero-Puchuncaví. The industries’ toxic odours have a powerful impact on both homes and schools. They primarily compromise inhabitants’ physical, psychological and socio-economic wellbeing by provoking serious illness and unpleasant physical sensations. Finally, the contaminated taste of drinking water, seafood and crops in the sacrifice zone negatively impact psychological, physical and socio-economic wellbeing within homes.

Quintero-Puchuncaví is in dire need of legislation that allows for the gradual elimination of mass industrial activity. Residents of the area live with constant environmental warnings, mass intoxications and inconveniences brought about by industrial contamination, hindering their ability to live healthy lives. The promise of economic development does not justify sacrificing the health and wellbeing of the people of this sacrifice zone.

1. Bullard, R. D. (2011).

‘Sacrifice zones: The front lines of toxic chemical exposure in the United States’, Environmental Health Perspectives 119 (6). Available at: https://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC3114843/.

2. Bluyssen, P. M. (2013).

The Healthy Indoor Environment: How to assess occupants’ wellbeing in buildings (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/ 10.4324/9781315887296.

3. WHO. (2023).

‘Constitution’, World Health Organization. Available at: https:// www.who.int/about/ governance/constitution.

Design & Creative Practice

1, 2 & 3

Design & Creative Practice is a 15-, 30- and 45-credit module taught across Years 1, 2 and 3 of Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc. It is taken by Bartlett students and affiliate students, and may also be chosen as an elective by UCL students from other departments.

This year’s Year 1 students considered the surplus matter, energy and information in Islington’s Chapel Market. Through careful observation they worked to identify, document and collect the unseen, unnoticed and undervalued fallen by the wayside amid the market’s hustle and bustle, ranging from vegetable scraps to spilled light. This nuanced understanding of the site informed the development of new practices to harness and re-use surplus – not as a last resort, but as a first choice, rich with potential. Together the cohort brought their creative practices back to Chapel Market. They gave a performative demonstration of sustainable production cycles deeply rooted in the site, while simultaneously hinting at radically alternative futures.

In Year 2 students explored the outer limits of architectural design, reaching beyond the human and the built. They considered creative practice as listening, walking and cleaning; photosynthesising, repurposing and curating. They wrote new legislation for material re-use at The Bartlett, wove temporary studios onto their bodies and conducted public orchestras with hand-crafted instruments. Embracing the power of the collective and the strength of shared knowledge, students compiled common resources in the form of group encyclopaedias and field guides. Their work exists in conversations, workshops and walks as much as in the installations that they construct. Year 2 projects were displayed at two co-curated exhibitions, the first at The Bartlett School of Architecture and the second at Camley Street Nature Reserve.

The third and final year of the programme is driven by an interest in interdisciplinary practice that looks beyond the institution to promote public facing, socially engaged projects. Students experiment with strategies for creative practice that are sustainable within a wide cultural context, while collectively exploring a theme relating to architecture and the built environment. Term one is based around a series of short projects carried out in pairs or small groups. Students build upon the outcomes of these initial projects, developing their own briefs in response to a specific strand of research initiated in the first term. This year we explored the theme of ‘Improvisation’, considering it as a design methodology for resolving problems as well as a mode of group interaction. The students then embarked on an expedition of their own design, in which improvisation would be an inevitable and necessary response.

Year 1

Rushdania Iqbal, Jiahua (Cindy) Li, Lucy Linton, Sergio Lopez Borja, Grace McCready, Tian (Tina) Qi, Rita Tess Mihigo Uwera, Téa Texier, Xuanjing Wang

Year 2

Grace Bonham, Ipek Chakki, Nathalie Chieveley-Williams, Maria Corti, Mads Christoffersen, Imogen Dawe-Lane, Nina Hayes, Freya Leonard, Jiahong (Kingsley) Luo, Iona McVean, Nicole Onstad, Samuel Quaile, Harang Seo, Xinran (Paula) Shen, Marius Sidaravicius, Alexia Vela Akasaka, Jade Wong, Yiwen Zhao

Year 3

Emilia Bryce, Eric Castellarnau, Katharina De Mel, Daniela Isabel Gil Nieves, Patrick Howard, Stela Kostomaj, Yuyang (Sunny) Li, Cecelia Liu, Christa Lockyer, Sean Louis, Daniel McCarthy, Katherine McClintock, Merle Nunneley, Elina Nuutinen Vera Tudela, Ning (Cristina) Su, Ionela Mihaela Suciu, Javas (Julae) Tan, Yifan Wang, Xiaoyan (Ivanka) Zhao

Thanks to our critics, workshop leaders and consultants: Annecy Attlee, Bamdad Ayati, Nick Bennett, Blanche Cameron, Camley Street Nature Reserve, William Victor Camilleri, Tom Davies, Niamh Grace, James Green, Victoria Hogg, Japan House, Karolina Leszczynska-Gogol, Giles Nartley, J. J. Cliff Rogers, Anete Salmane, Joseph Sanchez, Nathaniel Telemaque, Motong Yang

DCP.1 Mads Christoffersen (affiliate), Harang Seo, Marius Sidaravicius, Y2 ‘Trespass Please’. Trespass Please is an infiltration of the building industry, an exploration of the limits of public space and an anarchic ecological overgrowth in London. The project challenges the British Standards Institution (BSI) Standard BS 7543, critiquing its ambition of a 60-year building design life. The simple organic building technology proposed surpasses current standards by degrading in a matter of days; it thus requires continual rebuilding and redevelopment. The group project was developed through multiple approaches: as a product, a set of sales documents and a performance piece.

DCP.2 Tian (Tina) Qi, Y1 ‘Whispers at the Market’. Piecing together reverberating whispers, hushed secrets shared between strangers and the crushed cigarette butts left behind after these fleeting conversations, a delicately sculpted hearing device allows visitors to gather the disparate sounds and strands of conversation from Chapel Market, Islington.

DCP.3 Grace McCready, Y1 ‘Sonic Salvage’. Meticulously sorting through the individual components which make up the soundscape of Chapel Market results in a musical score in perspectival projection. This project uses a process of sonic manipulation to draw out the tonal frequencies of selected sounds. Complementary chimes emphasise the harmonies among the seemingly discordant noise of the market and inspire a meditative state of listening.

DCP.4 Sergio Lopez Borja, Y1 ‘Towpath Footsteps’. The rocking of a loose paving slab on the Regent’s Canal informs an exploration of how excess kinetic energy can be captured, organised, distilled and translated into a sonic identifier for each passer-by.

DCP.5 Xuanjing Wang, Y1 ‘Condensing Chapel Market’. Treasuring a moment of pause, reflection and refreshment as the humidity of the corner café gathers in droplets on the surface of a cool can, a meticulously prototyped hand-held device seeks to condense, gather and preserve the liquid memory of this precious moment.

DCP.6 Lucy Linton, Y1 ‘Renewing a Lost Practice’. By harvesting the scraps cast off by market fishmongers, the project proposes the on-site production of fish leather in a holistic practice of parsing, preparing and using each part of the discarded carcass. Adhesives, jointing techniques and tools manufactured from each part of the fish form a kit and user guide that invites others to join in the craft of salvage.

DCP.7 Nathalie Chieveley-Williams, Nina Hayes, Samuel Quaile, Y2 ‘Unconflicted’. This project is an exploration into the ecological material processes of heaviness and fragility, slowing down long-geological timescales and speeding up fleeting ephemerality. Through the tactile matter of air and charcoal, a drawing workshop invites participants to experience moments of lift and collapse, leaving the softest yet sturdiest of traces.

DCP.8 Yiwen Zhao, Y2 ‘Symbolic Whispers of Nature’. Based on traditional Chinese calligraphy, this drawing machine expresses the desires of the natural world, capturing the spirit of the environment around us far beyond the aesthetic.

DCP.9 Imogen Dawe-Lane, Y2 ‘Atomic Mushroom Warrior’. Brought to us from humanity’s furthermost ecological horizon, the atomic mushroom warrior narrates his tales with care, communicating across multi-species generations in a language beyond words.

DCP.10 Jiahong (Kingsley) Luo, Y2 ‘A Poet’. This project proposes a site-responsive calligraphic apparatus to capture the tales of the trees within Camley Street Nature Reserve. The device was constructed using materials collected from the garden and recorded impressions drawn by the wind, budding branches and one another.

DCP.11 Xinran (Paula) Shen, Y2 ‘Think Like a Tree’. A prosthetic performance that slows down time and movement, creaking and swaying in a physical, empathetic and often deeply uncomfortable connection between the body of the human and that of a plane tree. The project explores touch, multi-species empathy, the power of the skin and air pollution.

DCP.12 Daniel McCarthy, Y3 ‘Mourning in Bytes: Cyber Pilgrims in a Hypothetical Hellscape’. This project explores the profound emotional significance of virtual connections within online fandoms. By examining parasocial relationships and the impermanence of idolised figures, the project delves into the experiences of loss and grief in these virtual communities. It sheds light on the interplay between fan perceptions and the constructed mythology surrounding musicians, investigating the process of idolisation and the creation of god-like narratives by fans.

DCP.13 Stela Kostomaj, Y3 ‘The Calthorpe Structure’. The project is made up of a series of ambiguous metal forms that function as intergenerational objects, stimulating play and community. The project is sited at Calthorpe Community Garden which hosts people from various backgrounds and ages within King’s Cross, London.

DCP.14 Sean Louis, Y3 ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief’. This project transforms The Landlord’s Game into a new social intervention – Equality Street: An Empathy Trading Game. By incorporating contemporary housing solutions and identity disparities, the game aids players in navigating political discourse surrounding the unequal distribution of wealth and cultural capital.

DCP.15 Patrick Howard, Y3 ‘Objects of Faith’. Faith systems often evolve or die out over time, leaving objects as evidence of their practices and beliefs. This project explores an understanding of faith as a form of support and guidance. The ceramic design process accompanies philosophical questions about insecurity, religion and digital dependence. The project questions whether faith can be instilled in a crafted object. If so, what can this tell us about faith we depend upon both now and in the past?

DCP.16 Daniela Isabel Gil Nieves, Patrick Howard, Merle Nunneley, Yifan Wang, Y3 ‘Rowan of the Woods’. This project sets out in search of the ‘best’ tree through the creation of ritual and folklore. Drawing upon traditional British mythology, the group devised the story ‘Rowan of the Woods’, which sees the character of Rowan – assisted by a unique set of tools and garments – heading into the forest in search of its finest tree.

DCP.17 Emilia Bryce, Y3 ‘The Green Wallpaper’. With the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and the phasing out of gas boilers, suburban Londoners are gradually being encouraged to reflect their political standings and environmental ambitions through the intimate and aspirational medium of home. ‘The Green Wallpaper’ is a short film that incorporates hand-painted backdrops and sinister soundscapes to encapsulate the eco-anxiety that accompanies inaction, as well as the struggle that comes with being on the brink of revolution.

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First-year students exhibit their work during the Engineering & Architectural Design Carnival, 2023

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng (ARB/RIBA Part 1 CIBSE JBM)

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng

(ARB/RIBA Part 1 CIBSE JBM)

Programme Director: Luke Olsen

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng spans the professional, pedagogic and cultural boundaries of the major disciplines that design the built environment, namely architecture, civil engineering and building service engineering. Our graduates can go on to careers in any one of these professions while also forging new practices that bridge between and beyond.

Hosted by The Bartlett School of Architecture, the programme is designed, developed and taught by architects, engineers and multi-disciplinary designers from three leading UCL departments: The Bartlett School of Architecture; the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering; and the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering.

This year the programme gained quadruple accreditation for its graduates, dating back to our first pioneering alumni of 2022. With accreditation from the Architects Registration Board (ARB Part 1), the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM), plus full validation by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA Part 1), the Engineering & Architectural Design MEng is one of the first programmes of its kind to hold accreditation from all four industry bodies responsible for the design of the built environment. The programme also won the CIBSE Happold Brilliant Award this year, in recognition of our excellence in the teaching of building services engineering.

At the heart of the programme is a three-tutor design studio. This forms a progressive laboratory of speculation, creativity and empirical analysis – synthesising engineering, architecture, maths, physics, computing, enterprise, art, culture, history, futures, theory and sustainability into every cutting-edge project.

Our Year 1 students operate within the speculative reality of 1:1 design and making, through the unlimited creative realm of the drawing and model. Their work is immersed within one of four design cooperatives that specialise in craft, digital fabrication, interactivity and art respectively. This year’s collaborative projects responded to the brief of ‘Carnival’ with a procession of pavilions dancing across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, starting from their built home in Here East and ending at Marshgate, UCL East’s brand-new building.

Year 2 students design within one of four design studios. Tackling a year-long brief to develop integrated building designs as spaces of environmental and structural mutability, this year’s projects move as nomads along waterways. From the Grand Union Canal in London to the canals of Amsterdam, their 1:1 interventions led to propositions that dissect futures, in the face of climate change and rising sea levels, for communities living at the water’s edge.

Finally, our Year 3 and Year 4 students work within one of eight vertical progressive design units. They develop their unique individual vision as integrated designers, harnessing robust knowledge in evidence-based engineering principles and analysis. Their openended creative design ideas tackle a range of complex, near-future issues. These include sustainability, climate change, zero carbon, inequality, food logistics, free clean energy, landscape, ecological, social and cultural regeneration.

We would like to thank our Programme Administrators, Dan Carter and Alice Whewell, as well as our team of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants: Alberto Fernández González, Masaki Hattori, Liana Hoque, Andreina Kostka, Elin Lund, Loukis Menelaou, Sanara Piensuparp, Malgo Rutkowska, Anna Wild and Tara Zadeh.

Year 1

Students

Darine Adel, Mohamed Aqeel Aziz, Valentina Ballesteros Coral, Philip Bauer, Adam Bigas, Eva Bruno, Iman Tamara Carty-Stewart, Mengyuan Chen, Chengin (James) Cui, Imaan Dadabhai, Sebastian Eisen, Neamat El-Fassi, Zhichun Jin, Aliza Kabani, Merve Kanidagli, Aasia Kazmi, Joowoon (Simon) Kim, Ramona Kingdon, Nadya Kumar, Ho Lam (Hilary) Law, Cosima Lindley Morodo, Liisa Link, Jingyi Lu, Leo Lu, Jianwei (Jerry) Ma, Xikun Ma, Valeria Miraglia del Giudice, Oliwia Miszczak, Hana Molokhia, Arina Pavlova, Sizhe Peng, Yazhini Poongundran, Yilei (Dora) Qiu, Mumtahina (Nuha) Razia, Barbie Santiago, Kai Sethna, Yue (Angel) Sheng, Emily Sturgess, Esme Thomas-Nicholson, Ahmed Sadi Urfali, Anna Van Gucht, Yufie (Flora) Wang, Zoe Warner, Sihan (Sean) Wu, Yiyang Xue, Ziyao Yu, Xuan Zhu

Carnival: Moving Allegories

Coordinators: Barbara Andrade Zandavali, Klaas de Rycke

First-year students from the Engineering & Architectural Design MEng programme are introduced to the design world through two modules: Design Make Live and Design Make Information. Both modules run in parallel with each other, integrating design, engineering, making and a wide variety of representation skills.

Every year the modules follow a central theme that is further explored by each studio. These projects are a culmination of their Design Make Live module – a microcosm for the construction industry which serves as a testbed for more detailed individual learning and critical inquiry.

This year the theme was ‘Carnival’, which saw students exploring colourful moving allegories from the diversity of carnivals around the world. The students worked collaboratively in eight groups, tutored by four studios. Students proposed a variety of designs and built them into full-scale pavilions combining making, architectural and engineering knowledge. The eight resulting projects were named FloToPo, Walking Tower, Spark of Life, The Weight of Water, Guiding Beacons, Cocoon of Intimacy, Caterpillar and Butterfly Suit. The students exhibited these projects in a parade from the Lee Valley Velodrome to the UCL East building in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, engaging with the carnival as a real festival open to the public. The pavilions perform and test engineering and architectural ideas to their limits.

In parallel, Design Make Information introduced students to methods used by professional design teams for the process of designing, making and evaluating the exchange of information to build. The module establishes a bridge between analogue and digital techniques, re-using traditional techniques as well as fostering cutting-edge technologies. After the installation, students proposed an individual iteration based on the pavilion designed and built by them. This project combined the techniques that students have gained in previous modules, translating the core concepts from temporary pavilions to permanent architectural proposals.

Year

1

Design Make Live Tutors

Bedir Bekar, Nico Czyz, Jeet Das, Dave Edwards, Jack Hardy, Oliver Houchell, Luke Lowings, Daniel Linham, Maria Moratta, Klaas de Rycke, Melis Van Den Berg, Michael Wagner, Andrew Walker

Design Make Information

Tutors

Pippa Cowles, Elizabeth Lemercier, Josep Mias, Jeanette Osterried, Thomas Parker, Sandra Smith, Andrew Walker

PGTAs

Alberto Fernández González, Liana Hoque, Andreina Kostka, Hatori Masaka, Sanara Piensuparp, Malgo Rutkowska

EAD.Y1.1 Mengyuan Chen, Sebastian Eisen, Aliza Kabani, Ramona Kingdon, Arina Pavlova, Anna Van Gucht ‘Flo-To-Po’. A tower is formed of five flexible hyperbolic units, with an ever-changing height and width. This project celebrates the arrival of spring with its blooming shape and in the form of a unifying ritual that shows how architecture can bond people together physically and emotionally. The bold and colourful structure has a maximum height of ten metres. The project investigates how hyperboloids can help us reach new heights by exploring all of their variations.

EAD.Y1.2–EAD.Y1.3 Philip Bauer, Adam Bigas, Ahmet Sadi Urfali, Liisa Link, Yazhini Poongundran, Ziyao Yu ‘Spark of Life’. The design project showcases humanscale mushroom-like creatures that represent various stages of nature’s seasonal cycles. These mushrooms were designed to capture the delicate growth of spring, the full bloom of summer, the bountiful harvest of autumn and the graceful wilting of winter. The pavilion creates an enchanted garden that invites visitors to step into a world where the rhythms of nature reign and the beauty of life and growth is celebrated in all its glory.

EAD.Y1.4 Nadya Kumar, Leo Lu, Sizhe Peng, Yiyang Xue, Xuan Zhu ‘Walking Tower’. The project designs a tower that performs both as a load-bearing construction and as an animated character while on parade. Drawing inspiration from the traditional Chinese dragon dance, the design captures the essence of its dynamic performance. In the dragon dance, the unity of the dragon allegory is seamlessly intertwined with the individuality of its performers, creating a harmonious spectacle. This same principle guides the tower’s design, where the collective efforts of a group are required to bring it to life. As one of the group members ascends to the pinnacle, the tower reaches its maximum height of five metres, showcasing the vital connection between the pavilion and its people.

EAD.Y1.5 Oliwia Miszczak, Hana Molokhia, Esme Thomas-Nicholson ‘Cocoon of Intimacy’. This project explores encounters in carnivals by translating their levels of intimacy through psychologies of enclosure and proxemics. The adaptable space embodies a gradient of intimacy to allow people with varying comfort levels to encounter each other in the same space without feeling out of place or overwhelmed. This is achieved by manipulating volume, proxemics and visibility with a flexible structure covered in a knitted membrane.

EAD.Y1.6 Darine Adel, Neamat El-Fassi, Cosima Lindley Morodo, Xikun Ma, Valeria Miraglia del Giudice, Sihan (Sean) Wu ‘Guiding Beacons’. The project unveils the hidden layers beneath a seemingly tranquil façade, revealing an undercurrent of instability that challenges the existing equilibrium. It comprises three vital organs: the inflatables at the heart, which dance through the wind when deployed and draw individuals towards its epicentre; an elevated curved platform, providing a haven of refuge and respite from the chaotic scenery; and lastly, a car-like mechanism that governs the behaviour of the inflatables from below, exploring the symphony of motion and detection of sound.

EAD.Y1.7 Zhichun Jin, Yilei (Dora) Qiu, Mumtahina (Nuha) Razia, Emily Sturgess, Yufei (Flora) Wang, Zoe Warner ‘Butterfly Suits’. The project’s goal is to maximise human body movement and visualise the invisible forces in nature. Inspired by carnivals from across the globe, the wearable suit captures motion and energy from the user’s movements and the wind. This captivating creation serves as a metaphorical representation of the butterfly effect, manifesting in a symphony of colour, sound and visual dynamics that encapsulate the lively spirit of the carnival. These elements come together to invite the audience to experience the essence of the carnival firsthand.

EAD.Y1.8 Merve Kanidagli, Joowon (Simon) Kim, Ho Lam (Hilary) Law, Iman Tamara Carty-Stewart, Kai Sethna ‘Caterpillar’. The pavilion is a portable and inhabitable structure which incorporates its occupant’s movement and interaction. It consists of five discrete frame modules connected by four hinged frames with handles. The chaotic behaviour embraced by human constraints was intended to reflect the nature of carnivals. The seemingly random movements of each section of a caterpillar’s body that result in purposeful navigation became an inspiration for the final pavilion.

EAD.Y1.9 Eva Bruno, Valentina Ballesteros Coral, Imaan Dadabhai, Aasia Kazmi, Jingyi Lu, Jianwei (Jerry) Ma, Yue (Angel) Sheng ‘Weight of Water’. The pavilion combines the concept of wind flow, water flow and sensory experience. Seven different objects are created using bio-plastic, fabric and recyclable steel sticks. It comprises eight cloud-like elements at different heights which vary from half a metre to 1.8 metres. The resulting pavilion is an eco-friendly installation whose materials are easily reintegrated into nature or can be reused.

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Year 2

Students

Lama Ahmed, Cameron Alexander, Duaa Alharbi, Ana Alonso Banez, Sadie Amini, Solomon Ayres, Oluwaseyifunmi (Esther) Babalola, Raja Saad Basharat, Estelle Beninger, Sofea Binte Shahrin, Sophie Binti Noor Irwan Junaidy, Louis Boucquillon, Ching-Tai Chang, Miao (Candice Dai), Eve Freeston-Chang, Grace Grambrill, Devlin Guthrie, Sarah Haydon, Tyanyu He, Isztvan Herczeg, Yaowen (Steven) Hu, Lilly Huber, Roy Ile, Xinzhe Jiang, Ines Kenny Rubiera, Chung Yan (Joanna) Lai, Yann Ling (Madeleine) Lee, Flaminia Liguori, Blanca Mercadal Sola, Louisa Merker, Marco Michel, Yik Lam (Karsten) Mok, David Morsel, Samuel Newbury, Soyoung Park, Louis Polturak, Audrey Samaha, Elisa Scalzone, Rei Sekiguchi, Yahvi Shah, Hagipan Sivathasan, Mary-Anthi Stratis, Sevde Tavasli, Jasper Tecklenberg, Erhang Wang, Yi Lam (Liz) Wong, Aohua Yang, Ruen Zhou

Re-ACQUAINT: Re-ADAPT

Coordinators: Philippe Duffour, Emma-Kate Matthews, Farhang Tahmasebi

Year 2

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng Year 2 focuses on investigating structures and architectures that can navigate states of constant change. The year began with a short design and build project called ‘The Nomad’, which navigates and observes a range of changeable conditions along Regent’s Canal. In so doing it forms a detailed cross-section of London and reveals the variety of physical and cultural conditions the capital has to offer. Students then turned their focus to Amsterdam, a city under constant pressure to adapt to climate change threats and rising sea levels. For both projects students proposed designs that can simultaneously examine a range of dynamic conditions and adapt to the changes they are tuned to observe.

The nomadic devices developed in term one form a series of curious characters that roam the city, making observations and discoveries while collecting data. Once they come to rest, they share and compare their many findings and insights with one another, contributing to a larger, richer and more diverse picture of their sites of exploration. The nomads explore different ways of moving to roam the route, such as floating, rolling, running, flying and bouncing, to name a few. The knowledge and methods gained from the nomads influenced the analysis of our building project sites in Amsterdam; they enabled students to observe and document observations in a range of ways, from the explicitly measurable to the more ephemeral and poetic.

During our field trip to Amsterdam, we undertook a series of 3D scanning workshops as well as a workshop at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) called ‘Under Construction’. In the latter, Bartlett students and students from the History Research programme at TU Delft presented their work-in-progress ideas and observations.

The final project of the year explored ways to design buildings for constantly changing environments caused by climate change. As rising sea levels and extreme weather events pose threats to the built environment, designers must engineer solutions to existing and future problems. Students took a multidisciplinary approach, combining their skills in structural, environmental and architectural design to produce complex proposals that address the challenges and opportunities of sites in flux.

Tutors

Fady Abdelaziz, Vasileios Bakas, Phillipe Duffour, Dave Edwards, Sam Esses, Mina Hasman, Matthew Heywood, Judit Kimpian, Olivia Riddle, Amelia Vilaplana de Miguel, Martha Voulakidou, Michael Woodrow, Barbara Andrade Zandavali

Structural, Environmental, Architectural Design Skills

Guest Tutors

Filipa Adzik, Francesco Aletta, Gabe Brown, Nat Chard, Alberto Fernandez Gonzalez, Cath Hassell, Jerry Tate, B-made

PGTAs

Masaki Hattori, Liana Hoque, Sanara Piensuparp, Tara Zadeh

Critics: Serafina Amoroso, Alberto Fernández González, Steve Johnson, Maria Novas, Luke Olsen, Panagiotis Papanastasis, Ralph Parker

Thanks to Abhijeet Chandel, John Hanna, Rachel Lee and Maria Novas from TU Delft for organising the ‘Under Construction’ workshop

EAD.Y2.1 Istvan Herczeg ‘Markplaats Food Market’. Located in Amsterdam’s former industrial area, NDSM, this project presents a food market where produce is prepared, cooked and eaten on-site. The roof structure plays a vital role in controlling light levels below, achieved through a blend of physical massing studies and digital daylighting simulations. The design concept revolves around a floating, accessible social open space, reachable by both land and water.

EAD.Y2.2 Hagipan Sivathasan ‘Fabrique Nouveau’. This project proposes a facility for exploring smart textiles for both design and consumerism purposes. The facility will also host physical, digital and hybrid runway shows. With a strong emphasis on social sustainability, the project fosters a sense of community by inviting locals to take part, consider their role within the fashion industry and create change, setting it apart from traditional fashion houses.

EAD.Y2.3 Yik Lam (Karsten) Mok, Y2 ‘The Green Teddy’. Anxiety disorders among adults in the Netherlands are reportedly higher than the EU average. Located on the banks of the River IJ in Amsterdam Noord, NDSM, this project creates a space where people can slow down, relax and take their time to appreciate what is around them. Set in a former shipyard, the project will most importantly help raise mental health awareness.

EAD.Y2.4 Grace Gambrill, Louisa Merker ‘LIQUIDAE’. Liquidae – a nomadic device of visual data – transports users into the depths of Regent’s Canal, an epitome of London’s infrastructure since the early 19th century. The experience is of a reality distorted and a view obscured. Liquidae’s internal experience is a tumultuous one, redefining concepts of spatial awareness, reality and trusted perception.

EAD.Y2.5 Sevde Tavasli, Jasper Tecklenberg ‘Symbiotic Revelations’. This project asks a number of probing questions: how do we articulate and maintain the arteries of the city as a collective organism? How do we create modern artefacts to remember a space? How can we bring back memories of subjective experiences? This wearable and performative project responds to such questions.

EAD.Y2.6 Mary-Anthi Stratis, Roy Ile ‘Anatidae’. This project is built from a skeletal composition of 156no. 3mm laser plywood bones and 84no. 35mm bolt joints. With six waterproof polyester fabric wings stitched to the arms and triple-layered legs, Anatidae’s top half can spin in gusts of wind while standing firmly on-site. Through the exploration of the body structures and wing mobility of the Anatidae subspecies, which includes ducks, geese and swans, the project is structurally able to respond to and record wind direction and wind-speed incidents on the London’s Regent’s Canal.

EAD.Y2.7 Soyoung Park, Chung Yan (Joanna) Lai ‘White Rain’. Regent’s Canal sees a lot of traffic from pedestrians and cyclists. This nomadic device monitors changes in body temperature while engaging in such activities. It focuses on three main parts of the body –the forearm, upper limb and back – to thermally actuate the communication between humans and the surfaces that surround them. The result is an illustration of varying physical changes in material character, following different scenarios of movement along the canal. A mechanism is created to explore and recontextualise the relationship between the invisible environment and its human occupants using thermochromic responses.

EAD.Y2.8 Yaowen (Steven) Hu, Marco Michel ‘Prisma Pearls’. This project studies water quality from an environmental perspective. The device can roam Regent’s Canal by land or by water due to its transformative nature. With integrated inflatable silicone air chambers, the structure is able to float as a form of

transport, as well as fold into a portable handheld device. Samples can be extracted from the nearby body of water and injected into the instrument for analysis.

EAD.Y2.9 Lama Ahmed, Blanca Mercadal Sola ‘Ambitus’. Regent’s Canal presents a rich cross-section of social environments, from rural to urban. The change in social environment can be seen to correspond with cleanliness along the canal, with certain stretches of water more prone to high levels of litter on the surface as well as deeper down on the canal bed. The proposed device observes the relationship between urbanisation and litter density to direct cleaning services to areas where rubbish has infiltrated more densely.

EAD.Y2.10 Yi Lam (Liz) Wong, Yik Lam (Karsten) Mok, Yann Ling (Madeleine) Lee ‘The Big Fish’. The overgrowth of duckweed in the canal blocks sunlight for organisms underneath, lowering the clarity and oxygen levels in the water. This project monitors the amount of sunlight that can penetrate different depths of canal water from the perspective of a fish.

EAD.Y2.11 Solomon Ayres ‘Bibliozeil’. This project proposes a modern library for the incredibly windy site of IJburg in Amsterdam. The building is shaped like an aerofoil to simultaneously harvest wind energy and create a sheltered area behind the building’s massing. Digital wind simulations were used to determine the external form of the architecture. The building is also constructed from resilient, sustainable and reusable materials.

EAD.Y2.12 Yi Lam (Liz) Wong ‘Drug Rehabilitation Centre’. This project creates a support system for aquatic species and drug users, especially teenagers, by utilising nature-based rehabilitation methods. The installation acts in response to sunlight. As the source of energy, light and heat, the amount of sunlight in the area determines the feasibility of various outdoor activities, the livelihood of aquatic species and the thermal comfort of people. By utilising both land and water areas, the building design also addresses the ever-growing issue of land scarcity in the region.

EAD.Y2.13 Blanca Mercadal Sola ‘Sana Aqua’. The proposed architectural project is a luxury wellness, relaxation and sports centre in IJburg, Amsterdam, that meets the increasing demand for healthy living and leisure activities in the area. The project prioritises natural light, scenic views and seamless indoor–outdoor transitions. Embracing sustainable practices, the building minimises energy consumption, optimises thermal comfort and employs water-efficient systems.

EAD.Y2.14 Erhang Wang ‘Obturaculum’. The NDSM area of Amsterdam used to host a number of shipbuilding companies in the 20th century. However, this practice was largely abandoned in the 1980s, and the area has since become a popular destination for creative communities and new independent businesses. This project recalls the district’s shipbuilding heritage by providing a boat park and maintenance centre for Amsterdam’s houseboat owners. The building has enough space to store and repair eight boats.

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Urban Acupuncture

Dimitris Argyros, Agnieszka Glowacka, Anderson Inge, Vasiliki Kourgiozou

Urban acupuncture is an alternative to conventional development processes. It represents an adaptable framework for urban renewal, in which highly focused and targeted initiatives help to regenerate neglected spaces, incrementally deploy urban strategies or consolidate the social infrastructure of a city. It is about seeing the city from a human perspective, engaging with the need of diverse communities and individuals to make the city more connected, inclusive and equitable.

This year Unit 1 travelled to Bilbao in Spain. This city, the largest in the province of Biscay, has a rich industrial history which is evident in its urban layout. The site for this year is Zorrotzaurre Island on the River Nervión. It was first formed as a peninsula during the 1950s and 1960s when a canal was built to facilitate navigation in the estuary of Bilbao. The site has a myriad of existing industrial buildings, many of them unused, with open space in between offering opportunities for urban acupuncture. A masterplan designed by Zaha Hadid was approved in 2012; it aimed to renew the neighbourhood with residential and business uses while demolishing most of the existing building stock.

The students began the year with a warm-up group project to propose an inhabited cycle and pedestrian bridge on Zorrotzaurre Island. The collectively designed buildings each provided a public amenity integrated with the bridge that caters for the health and wellbeing of the existing residents on the mainland; it also serves as a local catalyst for development of the island.

For their final project, students proposed schemes that interface thoughtfully with the existing buildings and the space around the island, aligned with the philosophy of urban acupuncture. They were asked to make a critical choice of whether or not to accept some of the masterplan proposal into their scheme. The detailed programmatic brief and agenda for the final project was developed by each student and includes a mix of community uses interlinked with the concept of care.

Unit 1

Year 3

Aretha Ahunanya, Leonie Bredenbals, Po-Han Chang, Marie-Sophie Chen, Myriam Chourfi, Luisa Groetsch, Michael Hammond, Clara Obeid

Year 4

Regina Dufu Muller-Uri, Joshua Labarraque, Ekaterina Lopatina, Sheung Yee Emily Tse

Technical tutor: Loukis Menelaou

Critics: Samson Adjei, Katherine Chimenes, Peter Goff, Yorgos Koronaios, Amy LeggettAuld, Ailsa Roberts, John Roycroft, Bahareh Salehi, Joao Sousa, Catrina Stewart, Harry Sumner

EAD1.1–EAD1.2 Regina Dufu Muller-Uri, Y4 ‘Erribera Grape Juice Production’. Inspired by the traditional viticulture that has existed in Bilbao, Spain, for thousands of years, this project invites locals and tourists alike to gather and enjoy the traditional Spanish grape juice drink, Mosto. By creating a new community identity around manufacturing Mosto and enjoying it socially, the community spirit between locals, tourists and immigrants is revitalised.

EAD1.3–EAD1.5 Ekaterina Lopatina, Y4 ‘Green Basque Gastronomy’. The project is a collection of buildings located on the island of Zorrotzaurre in Bilbao, Spain. The buildings are united in the purpose of developing vegetarian Basque cuisine through local food production, a culinary school and a restaurant overlooking the terrain. The project incorporates integrated design, adaptive reuse of existing industrial facilities and energy-efficient retrofitting.

EAD1.6–EAD1.7 Joshua Labarraque, Y4 ‘Zortziko Euskal Pilota Academy’. The project envisages a Basque pelota complex located within the vibrant Zorrotzaurre district of Bilbao, Spain. The academy stands as a testament to the harmonious coexistence of the old and the new, fostering the sustainable regeneration of this historical area while placing a special focus on empowering girls and women in the region.

EAD1.8–EAD1.9 Sheung Yee Emily Tse, Y4 ‘CONFLUENCIA BILBAO’. The historical Artiach biscuit factory is chosen as a site to foster social connections and urban value. This public space embodies the convergence of diverse elements, transforming the factory into a creative, interconnected environment that encourages collaboration and offers adaptable spaces that expand possibilities for users.

EAD1.10 Aretha Ahunanya, Y3 ‘Extea’. Characterised by extea (meaning ‘the home’ in Basque), this residentiallylocated community hub explores the relationship between Basque identity and belonging. Set amid the backdrop of a decreasing Basque-speaking population due to a history of forceful regimes, the project hosts a cultural celebration of the language, life and artistry that embodies Basque communities.

EAD1.11 Leonie Bredenbals, Y3 ‘Meanwhile in Zorrotzaurre’. In response to an environment where progressive flooding is inevitable, the proposed community archive creates spaces dedicated to people and nature. Linking back to Bilbao’s history of reinventing itself and using challenges as a catalyst for future developments, the presence of water is embraced and new ecosystems of culture where the city and nature reunite are explored.

EAD1.12 Clara Obeid, Y3 ‘The Island We Remember’. The project revives the collective memory of Zorrotzaurre by dedicating specific spaces to the clubs and carnivals once present on the now-deserted island and adaptively reusing a neglected industrial building. The design reflects the movement, playfulness and materiality of the carnival. The building also creates a public realm – an inhabitable structure – promoting public infrastructure via a green spine puncturing the building. EAD1.13 Myriam Chourfi, Y3 ‘Zorrotzaurre Gate’. The project serves as a point of connection both for sustainable transport, by providing infrastructure and facilities, and between the people on the island, through various public spaces: the assembly area for civic discussion, the workshops for the making of personalised mobility contraptions and exhibition galleries for inspiration and learning.

EAD1.14 Michael Hammond, Y3 ‘A Creative Reuse Centre: Repurposing and Reusing Materials’. This project promotes reuse among the island community and challenges the traditional one-use lifecycle in

construction: taking in materials, structures and objects to be reused and refurbished for new projects.

EAD1.15 Po-Han Chang, Y3 ‘Zorrotzaurre Elderly Recreation Centre’. This project reconnects the increasingly neglected elderly population of Zorrotzaurre with the community at large by creating a community centre and adaptively reusing an existing industrial warehouse. The design respects the original brick and concrete structure and utilises the warehouse bays to create internal courtyards, transforming the existing building into a series of recreational and social spaces for its occupants.

EAD1.16 Marie-Sophie Chen, Y3 ‘Zorrotzaurre Nature Nursery’. A retrofitting project proposes a nursery on weekdays and a marketplace on weekends, connecting current and future residents. The nursery promotes learning and engagement with nature by regenerating and creating connection with the island’s landscape. The marketplace features an allotment garden and a lively hub with a market and food stalls to cultivate stability and community cohesion.

EAD1.17 Luisa Groetsch, Y3 ‘Zorrotzaurre Circus School’. The island is subject to a new masterplan which is set to demolish most of the buildings, including two circuses. This adaptive reuse project provides a new home for them. It includes performance and practice spaces, including communal areas to encourage community growth. There is also a significant focus on the tram station and the integration of the surrounding greenspaces.

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Crimes of the Future

Shaun Murray, Colin Rose, Isabel Why

Unit 2

This year Unit 2 were invited to study the topic of ‘crimes of the future’ – environmental crimes that continue to have lasting detrimental impacts on a building’s future. Students unpacked the idea of buildings as sutures, meaning something that binds two edges together. In this analogy buildings have a dual function – one to hold together the tears in a city’s urban fabric and the other to explore the potential positive outcomes of an environmental crime.

Situated in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, student projects explore how a ‘torn’ environment might be repaired in order to re-establish existing, dormant connections or to create completely new ones. The urban tear is identified as part of the building, responding to the needs of the context and crimes of the present and leading towards insightful spatial solutions. The methods that the ‘suture’ deploys to rejoin the said urban fabric ranged from physical, tectonic solutions to programmatic propositions.

Third-year projects saw Orlando George-Ibitoye steal sleep in the design of a musical destination ‘grime island’; Erine Lellu dangle a birdcage over a car park as an integrated theatre of suspense; Xufeng (Styles) Li use a car wash as a pollution detector for the Waltham Forest pottery club; Malena Royo Rodic maintain calm in a landscape of therapeutic mental healing; Amane Ryomura educate children on the romance of steam and moisture control; Aya Souleimani support pioneering squatter artists; David Vincent Tornador introduce us to William Morris; and Borbála Zepkó capture and harness light in the cauldrons of the gasworks.

Fourth-year projects include Tara Abdol Hossein Zadeh stitching unorthodox energy transfers in domestic spaces with bed baths, radiator handrails and roof sinks; Eddie Jones’s chthonic architecture, made of wooden pallets that mark the community’s relation to Waltham Forest through their waste; Bihi Mohamed weaving the life of immigrants into a dynamic spatial architecture for new beginnings; and Sanara Piensuparp engineering a freshwater filtration landscape in Waltham Wetlands with wonderous fluid entanglement.

Year 3

Orlando George-Ibitoye, Erine Lellu, Xufeng (Styles) Li, Malena Royo Rodic, Amane Ryomura, Aya Souleimani, David Vicent Tornador, Borbála Zepkó

Year 4

Tara Abdol Hossein Zadeh, Eddie Jones, Bihi Mohamed, Sanara Piensuparp

Technical tutors and consultants: Melissa Clinch (Wilkinson Eyre), Nuno Correia (Wilkinson Eyre)

Critics: Samson Adjei, Katherine Chimenes, Peter Goff, Yorgos Koronaios, Amy LeggettAuld, Ailsa Roberts, John Roycroft, Bahareh Salehi, Joao Sousa, Catrina Stewart, Harry Sumner

EAD2.1, EAD2.9–EAD2.11 Tara Abdol Hossein Zadeh, Y4 ‘DIY Energy: Reimagining Domesticity through Craft’.

The proposal establishes a vibrant, productive and safe community of DIY engineering energy. Central to its mission is the belief that the advancement of engineering energy technology and fostering public awareness about it have the potential to benefit everyone. By empowering the individual through creativity, we can adapt and devise playful ways to source and use the energy we produce in our domestic spaces. From the heat of bath water to warm the bed, to foot pressure on the stairs giving light in the hallway – the project examines novel relational ideas to gain a better understanding of how we use domestic spaces.

EAD2.2 Orlando George-Ibitoye, Y3 ‘@140BPM’. Grime music scene, interior of a bunker room. The project facilitates the implementation of a methodology that utilises architecture as a means of capturing and synthesising sounds from the natural environment. The objective of this project is to foster the creation of innovative musical typologies, not only to augment the artistic excellence of sound engineering but also to strengthen the interdependence between human beings and their natural environment in a study of how different ecological systems feed into one another.

EAD2.3 David Vicent Tornador, Y3 ‘William Morris Archive’. Model of the archive. William Morris was a modern polymath who has been superficially reduced in the collective imagination. This comprehensive archive rectifies this by encompassing the vast range of disciplines to which he dedicated his life’s work, in order to remember the productive diversity of the man many view simply as a ‘wallpaper designer’. The design of the archive is interpreted as an archaeological excavation through the mnemonic ground to rediscover the forgotten memory of William Morris spatialised as the ruins of a memory palace.

EAD2.4, EAD2.6 Eddie Jones, Y4 ‘Future Waste Crimes’. A recycling centre which focuses on the reuse of wooden shipping pallets with exhibition spaces, workshops and a waste archive. The project speculates on how waste will become a valuable commodity in the future, when how we manage it will be considered a crime. The fact that fly-tipping is at a ten-year high indicates the societal disregard there is towards waste. By creating a strategy of recycling which shows the value in our waste, the project encourages people to reconsider their views.

EAD2.5 Bihi Mohamed, Y4 ‘Future Waste Crimes’. The Communal Suture project is a proposal which weaves together the empowerment of immigrant weavers as well as tackling Islamophobia and fascism in the heart of Walthamstow, London. This was triggered by Islamophobic marches which began in 2012 and which the community came together to help prevent. The proposal focuses on creating a village system to produce and sell woven goods in an underground market integrated into the terrain. The site morphs around the primary stakeholders – mothers from Islamic backgrounds – and accommodates children with the creation of an elevated play area. The play area and market serve as social integration spaces to tackle division by weaving people together. Both the play interaction points and the market stalls align, allowing the integration to happen. The spaces are designed with vernacular and morphed surfaces, imitating a variety of forms from different Islamic countries as well as those found in Walthamstow.

EAD2.7–EAD2.8 Sanara Piensuparp, Y4 ‘Water Wonderland at the World’s End’. The project covers a large, complex wasteland site in Waltham Forest that acts as a future engineered water energy centre. The image is of the waterside homes which mediate shifting water

levels within the scheme, revealing domestic water performance to users while retaining the very essence powering it.

EAD2.12–EAD2.13 Orlando George-Ibitoye, Y3 ‘@140BPM’. Grime music scene, the auditorium. As the water levels of the reservoir rise, the auditorium begins to flood, amplifying the resonance and transmission of sound across the room. When sound interacts with the surrounding water, it causes the space to vibrate and respond to the bass of the subwoofers.

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Birth & Rebirth

Thomas Hesslenberg, Ifigeneia Liangi, Daniel Godoy Shimizu, Daniel Wilkinson

Unit 3

In Unit 3 we are interested in environments that are embedded with wonder and fantasy, and in which the process of construction is embedded within the narrative of the portfolio.

This year students used ideas of birth and rebirth as drivers for their projects. Within this, the main theme was education. By considering how architecture might be taught and explored through acts of construction, experience and on-site performance, the boundaries between designing and making were blurred, as well as those between occupation and construction.

The concept of the designer-architect that exists today is relatively new, having come into existence around 500 years ago. Before that, architects were more hands-on in the construction process and tended to work in groups. The idea of the lone genius working in a studio and not getting their hands dirty on site did not exist. In addition, an architect was expected to be equally familiar with the designing of outfits, theatre sets, pyrotechnics and even snacks alongside the designing of buildings, as for centuries these activities were considered as inseparable. Bernardo Buontalenti, for example, while being a military expert, artist, theatre designer, engineer and architect, also found time to invent ice cream in the 16th century.

For all of the Bramantes, Borrominis and Berninis that make up the tourist trails of Rome, it was really in their ephemeral papiermâché structures, designed to be burned, that previously unimaginable worlds were to be found. Taking from these traditions, we designed characterful buildings from the detail outwards, expressing the theatricality of our programmes in our buildings’ structures and performance.

We also considered how the bringing about of buildings might become a more communal activity, with the structures that result being adaptable and flexible, according to the changing demands placed upon them. We travelled to Paris, Hauterives and Firminy, where we engaged with buildings full of stories and ornament.

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Gabriel Brown, Adam Ekin, Amaliyah Legowo, Juliette Loubens, Pedro Antonio

Merino Ramon, Gabriela Nycz, Maria Vogeler Balcazar

Year 4

Jamila Aboueita, Masaki Hattori, John Daniel Perski, Emily Wang

EAD3.1 Gabriel Brown, Y3 ‘Milestone’. Taking place over many centuries, the proposal looks to connect scientists and visitors with flora (as opposed to fauna) through a rewilding research ecology centre that includes a variety of habitats under different levels of control, with some areas wilder than others. It is suggestive of the past as well as the future and will move with the ever-changing climate.

EAD3.2 Adam Ekin, Y3 ‘Naturally Synthetic’. The project proposes an educational space specialising in fashion and textile design. It upcycles discarded garments to reclaim the intimacy between humans and textiles that has been lost due to fashion automation. Set on Fish Island, the project offers opportunities to students and the local community looking to repair clothes or learn the craft for future careers. Each season, fabric and natural dyes are used to redress the building as a way of creating adaptable spaces while evoking an academic ritual.

EAD3.3 Emily Wang, Y4 ‘Art of Joyful Being’. The project is a space for performance art that examines the role of architecture in accessibility by challenging normative standards where accessibility is often treated as an afterthought. The project questions traditional notions of infantilisation and pity by celebrating differences. It has a flexible design that addresses different needs and provides varying levels of stimulation, observation, rest and movement.

EAD3.4 John Daniel Perski, Y4 ‘Will You Remember Me, Vittoria?’. The project explores themes of gentrification, community and identity through the lens of memory and nostalgia and its translation into an architectural methodology. It considers how we might remember through spatial and environmental translation and investigates ideas of material reuse, self-build methodology and a layered building approach.

EAD3.5 Gabriela Nycz, Y3 ‘Hackney’s Collective Boat Dwellings’. The project proposes a new kind of housing by the River Lea in Hackney Wick, London. The self-build scheme sees houseboat owners given the opportunity to extend their homes onto the ground. Through cooperation and determination, boaters create a space which brings them together and creates a feeling of safety for those whose homes are situated on the River Lea and currently often lack a sense of privacy and security.

EAD3.6 Jamila Aboueita, Y4 ‘Hackney Settlements’. Narrowboat owners have long been developing new ways of living independently. Many original narrowboat inhabitants took on this way of living as a means of self-sufficiency in the face of a government that had failed them. In 2023, we find ourselves in a situation where the government has failed us once again. This project sees residents come together to create a community which reflects the narrowboaters’ self-sufficient mindset. The community includes allotments for residents to grow and trade with the narrowboat dwellers sailing along the River Lea.

EAD3.7 Amaliyah Legowo, Y3 ‘Alice’s Food Adventure Down the Rabbit Hole’. In the era of mass production, highly processed meals reign supreme. This has led to an unprecedented rise in food waste. What better way to educate children and young adults about this pressing issue than to invite them into Alice’s kitchen? Visitors take a trip down the rabbit hole and are introduced to the cookware and ingredients used to prepare a hearty meal. Within this whimsical space, educational areas are used to teach students about making seasonal dishes with locally grown ingredients and repurposing food waste. The final creations recall the fantastical banquets that Lewis Carroll concocted.

EAD3.8 Juliette Loubens, Y3 ‘Hackney’s Dancing Mice’. It is the year 2033 and Hackney Wick has been overtaken by the bleak, unaffordable cheerless constructions of property developers… Well, not entirely! A small group

of indomitable artists still hold out against the invaders. Settled on a little sliver of land in Hackney Wick, they make it their mission to celebrate and spread the joy of learning through creativity as they work towards their annual act of resistance: a loud spectacle floating down the Lea Navigation spreading havoc and wonder.

EAD3.9 Maria Vogeler Balcazar, Y3 ‘Kinderfabrik’. The education system is a large-scale manufacturing process. The project imagines a new ‘metabolism’ influenced by the industrial history of its site. The school is designed for children aged four to six and consists of interconnected capsules and an abstractionist playground. As the student body grows, classroom modules are added by expanding the box frame and lifting new capsules onto the structure.

EAD3.10 Masaki Hattori, Y4 ‘A Parliament-Archive for the Lee Navigation’. The voices of narrowboat dwellers often go unheard. The community face difficulties in accessing services alongside threats such as reduced mooring sites. The proposal provides a parliament centred around a debate chamber with auxiliary facilities such as a GP surgery and launderette. A processional staircase wraps around the chamber with areas that allow scrutiny and observation. A floor-reactive fabric façade system regulates internal daylighting and demonstrates the transparency that the government promotes. Pockets of space allow for recording and playback, with a broadcast centre, printing press and library all working together within the archiving process.

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Domestic Palaces of Care

Unit 4

Yasemin Didem Aktas, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Yair

Schwartz

It is estimated that most of the buildings that will exist in 2050 – the year of the UN’s net zero carbon emissions target – have already been built. With this in mind, Unit 4 focuses on adaptive reuse, retrofitting and reimagining existing building stock, and making use of the embodied carbon that has already been spent, while creatively engaging with heritage conversations.

This year students have been rethinking domesticity in the site of Can Ricart – a semi-abandoned complex of 19th-century industrial buildings in the neighbourhood of Poblenou, Barcelona. Students’ designs address not only future domestic lifestyles, but also how these environments will perform under climate change projections to ensure the resilience of these homes. Projects focus on bringing practices of care to the forefront of domestic design and developing a design ethos that regards housing for everyone as a field of high intellectual and design ambition.

The current housing crisis affects cities around the globe. What is remarkable, however, is that at a time of such intense discussion about housing, the tone of this discussion is for the most part quantitative. Conversations do not seem to question the design of these new homes, nor how they will respond to the diversity of lifestyles in future societies, nor whether the idea of the ‘family home’ needs rethinking entirely. Unit 4 proposes to move the entry point of our thinking on domesticity from numbers to lifestyles.

Across the West, the post-war decades were a golden age for mass housebuilding and, by extension, for housing standards such as the Parker Morris standards in Britain. In the years since, households have diversified significantly, whether in relation to gender roles, jobs or the environment and climate emergencies, yet our design standards remain stubbornly close to the post-war paradigm.

Care practice can be understood holistically as care for each other, but also for other species, our built heritage and the environment. The work of architects such as Izaskun Chinchilla or the Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative has prompted designers to bring care practices to the centre of housing design. Unit 4 makes a case for alternative forms of collective living that break the normative confines of the apartment building and cater for current and future diversity in lifestyles and projected environmental needs.

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Inaya Akhtar, AlexandruNicolae Iordache, Aleksandra Lemieszka, Samyuktha (Shakthi) Manoharan, Natasha Merricks, Marjoleine Mooijman, Nicolás Ortega Poblete, Latifah (Teni) Oyulana, Hanaa Yakob

Year 4

Kimia Alexis, Jessica Ho, Jing Chi (Jason) Li, Sara Sesma Costales

PGTA: Loukis Menelaou

Critics: Salam Al-Saegh, Simon Beames, Andrew Foster, Sara Godinho, Oliver Houchell, Jonah Luswata, Michael Stacey, Michael Woodrow

EAD4.1–EAD4.2 Aleksandra Lemieszka, Y3 ‘What if Freud was an Architect in Disguise?’. The mental health facility is designed as a modern-day Garden of Eden that heals and rejuvenates individuals with ADHD, depression and dementia. For children with ADHD, the facility creates a playful environment inspired by the garden’s four rivers. Adults with depression find solace in the nurturing and rejuvenating garden of life, mirroring the Tree of Life’s symbolism of growth and renewal. The facility offers a peaceful setting inspired by the Tree of Knowledge for elderly people with dementia, promoting reflection and learning.

EAD4.3 Natasha Merricks, Y3 ‘Montserrat Care Centre and Residencies’. This adaptive reuse project takes abandoned industrial buildings and creates a residential complex and care centre that focuses on creating housing for autistic people. The architectural elements incorporated into the space empower residents and enable them to live independently.

EAD4.4 Nicolás Ortega Poblete, Y3 ‘An Empowered Community of Immigrants in Poblenou’. This project retrofits the abandoned industrial buildings of Can Ricart in Poblenou, Barcelona. Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, each building serves a catered purpose to aid immigrants in Poblenou to become their best selves.

EAD4.5–EAD4.6 Kimia Alexis, Y4 ‘Ecostage’. The project serves as a permanent residence and infrastructure for year-round music festivals, reducing the wasteful carbon emissions associated with temporary festival setups. The building also functions as a hub for music practice and teaching when not hosting festivals. The festival accommodation incorporates elements of domestic comfort, including amenities like robes for showering and a laundry network spread throughout the building.

EAD4.7–EAD4.8 Sara Sesma Costales, Y4 ‘The Siesta Hub’. The proposed wellness district revolutionises sustainable living practices and sleep habits while preserving the city’s heritage. By retrofitting and expanding 19th-century industrial buildings, it creates a visionary ‘mansion of care’, harnessing social and personal rituals for self-care. The project envisions becoming a national model for improved sleep health, rallying government and industry experts to invest in state-of-the-art sleeping labs.

EAD4.9 Jing Chi (Jason) Li, Y4 ‘Poblenou Open Market’. Barcelona is a city proud of its network of over 50 municipal markets. This project proposes the latest addition to the networks in Poblenou. The open market breaks some of the conventions of the municipal market, bringing a more flexible structure of stalls and opening trading to smaller independent farmers. The overarching roof provides shade to the market and a number of associated public spaces.

EAD4.10 Alexandru-Nicolae Iordache, Y3 ‘Saxum Fissum: Biolab Poblenou’. The proposed architectural project involves the addition of new buildings around already existing listed buildings in order to create an enclosed campus for a university. The goal of this project is to create a cohesive and functional campus that integrates the historical and cultural significance of the listed buildings with the functional and technological needs of a modern university.

EAD4.11–EAD4.12 Inaya Akhtar, Y3 ‘Can Ricart Dressmakers’ District’. This project celebrates the history of Can Ricart as one of the major centres of textile production in Barcelona during the 20th century with the retrofit of ruins on the site. A textile factory is integrated into a neighbourhood of dressmakers, markets and workshops. The proposal uplifts skilled craftspeople that positively contribute to local culture and provides them with affordable housing that would typically not be available in big cities.

EAD4.13–EAD4.14 Hanaa Yakoub, Y3 ‘Upsizing: A Self-Build Community for Intergenerational Living’. This project focuses on designing upsized housing for elderly residents of Can Ricart, Barcelona, and introduces an intergenerational family home typology. By reintroducing the extended family living arrangement, it offers a solution that promotes independence for elderly residents while fostering connections between multiple generations. The apartments are intended to promote a great deal of user input through designing for self-build, as well as offering adaptable and extendable internal layouts and furniture. Traditional craftsmanship using local and Mediterranean techniques and materials invigorates the design.

EAD4.15–EAD4.16 Jessica Ho, Y4 ‘Crafting Domesticites for a Care Ecology’. The Can Ricart complex in Sant Marti, Barcelona, is one of the last remaining fragments of the district’s industrial past. Local planning issues have seen social activist movements mobilising cultural, educational, artistic and youth organisations to advocate for the conservation and community-oriented development of the historical site, resisting top-down efforts to enforce private residential gentrification.

EAD4.17 Latifah (Teni) Otulana, Y3 ‘Self-Built Mansions’. This project explores the development of a self-build system in the district of Poblenou. In order to empower former unemployed construction workers, the former factories of Can Ricart are refurbished into a set of construction skills workshops that support retraining as well as a community of self-builders.

EAD4.18–EAD4.19 Samyuktha (Shakthi) Manoharan, Y3

‘In Memory of Can Ricart’. The project explores a new typology of dementia care which supports those with dementia and their carers at each stage of the condition, exploring sensory therapies and designing spaces which adapt with the occupant. The concept of communal domesticity is applied to the design, considering how sharing domestic labour can aid independence for those suffering from dementia and ease the stress on their carers. The ergonomics of ageing bodies were also explored to ensure that each space was designed to be as comfortable as possible while not limiting independence to avoid faster deterioration. Considering the area’s rapidly ageing population, it is increasingly important that inclusive design becomes the norm.

EAD4.20 Marjoleine Mooijman, Y3 ‘All the Flowers of Tomorrow’. This project proposes a wellness-driven startup incubator in the remains of the former Can Ricart textile factory. The project prioritises wellbeing through the process of entrepreneurship by incorporating domestic programmes within the site.

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Hyper-Production: From Quarry to Quantum

Matthew Heywood, Aurore Julien, Filip Kirazov, Luke Olsen

‘There is no energy shortage, there is no energy crisis – only a crisis of ignorance.’ Buckminster Fuller

Over 250 years ago Britain’s Industrial Revolution began with steam, coal and innovation, causing a global ripple effect that has since launched us into the Anthropocene. Driven by new hydrocarbon energy sources, socio-political, economic and community structures were entirely re-established around harnessing energy and producing goods on a massive scale. An age of creative hyper-production and innovation never been seen before began. In Unit 5 we posit that those same raw ingredients of new energy forms and technological innovation are here again. However, this time we must design a cleaner, greener, brighter, more just and integrated community for an ecologically conscious and sustainable future.

In collaboration with the Norman Foster Foundation (NFF) and Advanced Nuclear and Production Experts Group (ANPEG), Unit 5 nurtures imaginative solutions to the challenge of net zero carbon for a new manufacturing revolution. This year each student was given a 10mW quantum cell to design a new, co-located industry in the heart of Harlech, North Wales. Their resulting projects combine entrepreneurial innovation and energy justice with a vision for making, fabrication, manufacture and assembly for a post-Industrial Revolution. Students reflected on the kinetic innovations of the past and looked to posit cinematic props for the future in the atmospheric, recently disused adult education college Coleg Harlech – to which we gained full access as a site for the projects.

High-value manufacturing and innovation is emerging across Wales in the form of global companies such as Airbus and General Dynamics. The UK company Space Forge is also headquartered in Cardiff, developing satellite factories able to produce materials in space that are impossible to manufacture on Earth. In Unit 5, drawing on nuclear power, we propose 21st-century net zero carbon industries that engage with the themes of energy justice, spherical economy, community empowerment, spaces of awe and spiritual or social gathering around a vibrant Protopian industrial ecology that empowers new ethical communities.

Year 3

Tiger Campbell-Yates, Reda Dbouk, Isaac Greaves, Bartosz Kurylek, Ina Natseva, Daveriel Purugganan, Martha Stevens, Gabriel Vollin

Year 4

Cheuk Yin (Chester) Cham, Andreea Dumitrescu, Young Choel Moses (Boguem) Jeon, Ciying Wang, Haoming (Isaac) Wang

Critics: Iain Durbin, Stephen Gage, Iain Taylor, Venetia Wolfenden

Partners: Norman Foster Foundation: Norman Foster, Richard Dilworth; Advanced Nuclear and Production Experts Group: Iain McDonald

EAD5.1 Reda Dbouk, Y3 ‘Box to See What You Can’t See’. The box under the black cloth contains supersaturated isopropyl alcohol-infused felt on two surfaces. This is placed over dry ice inside a clear cube to create a temperature gradient that reveals any electrically charged cosmic rays, such as muons, alpha or beta particles, that happen to pass through the planet, designer, box and site of Trawsfynedd nuclear power station, where the cosmic rays were less energetic than those outside 22 Gordon Street.

EAD5.2 Martha Stevens, Y3 ‘Blink’. The research began by asking the question, ‘How much energy is in a blink?’ How could something so reflexive be transformed into an energy that can assist us in our rapidly advancing modern world? This drawing shows the progression of frames in films from immediate moments to seconds, to hours. It shows how the various durations could affect the composition and form of the film institute being explored through the lenses of structural frames and environmental scenes.

EAD5.3 Daveriel Purugganan, Y3 ’Power of People’. An adjustable and easily replicable suit designed to harness energy from the heat of human breath and movement to recharge batteries. Fashioned out of cheap electronics, cardboard and foil, the suit is accessible for all body types so that everyone can become producers of clean renewable energy.

EAD5.4 Ciying Wang, Y4 ‘Interconnectivity’. Inspired by neural connections, the project involved designing an interconnected series of tubes and ducts to harness energy from liquid passing through the prop. The bursts of energy took the form of light. This went on to inform the design of a care home for the elderly and cancer patients and proposed a model where social care and radical research complement each other, with patients and researchers working together to improve social care.

EAD5.5 Martha Stevens, Y3 ‘Blink’. The prop is a mechanical system to harness energy from a blink, which in turn triggers an instantaneous image of the environment around the wearer so that their FOMO (fear of missing out) is curbed. The wearable device contains an AI narrator easily confused by nature and even more confused when the wearer finds inner peace without the need for this latest technology.

EAD5.6 Isaac Greaves, Y3 ‘Wind Energy’. The prop is a kite flown within the Coleg Harlech site using a suspended multiple-tether method. The building’s shelter makes for calmer wind conditions and a more elegant structure that can deploy as wind speeds increase, forming complex and beguiling geometries.

EAD5.7 Gabriel Vollin, Y3 ‘Sceptical Hand’. The prop expresses scepticism on the development of the fourth industrial revolution through haunting acoustic sounds powered by the movement of the sceptical hand. The means of expression are both visual and auditive to emphasise the duality of outcomes. The project is targeted at the general public, in light of climate change developments following the second industrial revolution.

EAD5.8 Young Choel Moses (Bogeum) Jeon, Y4

‘The Spiders’ Cocoon’. The project is an investigation into the occupation and expansion of a web of rope to create a space of peace, safety and excitement within a derelict building. The first site is the library of Coleg Harlech, which has a rich history of socialism and political action. Every movement in the web translates information in the form of vibrations to the walls, shelves and occupants in the cocoon.

EAD5.9 Cheuk Yin (Chester) Cham, Y4 ‘Gin Distillery Green House’. Two studies of the vaulted glulam greenhouse roof analysing the surface displacement of the ETFE roof (left), and modelling the stress in the glulam grid-shell beams (right). The greenhouse roof

has a passive design utilising the gradient of the local topography to create a series of different environmental zones for the optimised growing conditions for botanical plants, while filtered rainwater is harvested from the roof. The structure is as light as possible to minimise energy and carbon needs.

EAD5.10 Martha Stevens, Y3 ‘Film Institute’. Using the inherently collaborative process of filmmaking, the institute creates spaces for people to share, form cross-cultural connections and tell stories. In conjunction with creative energy, the project theorises the donation of a 15MW nuclear battery for the initial seven years, after which the site will transition to renewable energy forms. The new institute will distribute the nuclear battery’s energy to the local community, prioritising those experiencing fuel poverty, while unexpended energy will be sold back to the national grid.

EAD5.11 Andreea Dumitrescu, Y4 ‘AI Research Institute and Data Centre’. Located on the former site of Coleg Harlech in North Wales, the proposal is an AI research lab and data centre, contrasting and complementing the existing structures. It explores how AI can be used to collaboratively design a building that builds itself, learning from its surroundings and inhabitants to continuously adapt and improve. The building is composed of modular cubes organised through machine-learning algorithms to optimise environmental impacts and conditions. Powered by a 10MW nuclear battery developed by the Advanced Nuclear Production Energy Group, the building constantly evolves to meet the demands of the data centre within an intelligent and adaptable framework.

EAD5.12 Daveriel Purugganan, Y3 ‘Synergetic Architecture’. The project creates a modular form of architecture that latches onto old, derelict buildings, breathing life into them while giving back to the local community. It seeks to improve the energy efficiency of the region’s homes as a response to the recent rapid increase in energy costs. Through the combined use of prefabricated Light Gauge Steel, key clamp module elements and reclaimed construction material, the system is used to convert the building into a recycling plant and manufacturing facility that produces solar panel systems and mycelium insulation for Harlech homes in the community-led programme.

EAD5.13 Bartosz Kurylek, Y3 ‘Imagination Centre’. We are entering the imagination revolution, where creativity and innovation have become key drivers of the economy. The ability to imagine new products, services and business models has given rise to a wealth of new industries, fostering economic growth and providing opportunities for entrepreneurs and creative minds alike. This section shows the terraced zones of creative spaces designed to bring people and cutting-edge technologies together to share stories and develop new output.

EAD5.14 Tiger Campbell-Yates, Y3 ‘The Outcrop’. The project revitalises Harlech and the wider region through the insertion of industry and education. It imagines a future of interactive textiles and material development on-site, particularly of durable waterproof materials. It uses a palette of materials and forms inspired by the surrounding cliffs to create a series of enigmatic black boxes. Instead of the current global system that generates vast amounts of carbon in transporting products across the world, the proposal sees research, development, testing and manufacturing taking place all in one area, while also reintroducing the link between the designer and shop floor. The project explores the creation of passive material testing facilities on-site, using excess heat, collected rainwater and the negative space between buildings to create a range of microclimates.

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Flow

Salam Al-Saegh, Simon Beames, Harry Betts, Michael Woodrow

Unit 6

‘I am opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed in the construction of bridges lest the progress of improvement tomorrow might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the prejudices or errors of today.’ Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 1847

The English civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was opposed to the dogma of bridge design – should we be too? This was the question that provoked this year’s thematic exploration of bridging. It also set the unit’s overarching interest in finding relationships between the bridge as a life-supporting infrastructure at two scales: the microbiome and the biosphere.

Instruments of life

With the human body becoming a site for interrogation and response, students collaborated with a consultant gastroenterologist to design and engineer micro infrastructure to connect with the human microbial biome. Projects reworked a critical medical instrument with the purpose of bridging the gap between the tropospheric biome and the gastrointestinal biome.

Stream of consciousness

The infrastructures of London are vast, and are equally connected and isolated. The social and economic effects of infrastructure-led planning are key factors in the way London has grown programmatically, with the negative consequence of economic and social divides between the North and South of the Thames. While social and economic parity slowly improves, infrastructure continues to divide. Programmed public space is separated by five hundred metres of bridge. Narrow footpaths mean that bridge crossings are often parts of the city to endure rather than enjoy. It is time for private car-centric infrastructures and the city street to be reviewed, particularly in light of predicted changes to climate and the consequences of a wetter future city.

Following a field trip to Venice, Unit 6 have built a research position that explores alternatives to the singular function of the bridge as infrastructure – making speculative proposals for a new typology of bridge across the Thames. Projects present ideas for habitable bridges that deal with complex spatial, structural and environmental challenges and adapt existing structures. As precise as they are provocative, each building is speculatively and imaginatively designed for a wetter future.

Year 3

Shamsa Almehairi, Yan (Flora) Lam Cheung, Elisa Martini, Alessandra McCutcheon, Ananya Narendra Nath, Claudia Navarro Canovas, Maria Ariadne Ntoriza, Constantina Shiacola

Year 4

Tatyana Cheung, Maxime Ostroverhy, James Standing, Hetian Zhang

Thank you to our consultants and critics: Angela Crowther, Katy Ghahremani, Dr Benjamin Hope (Kings College Hospital), Jean-François C. Lemay, Ian Taylor, Claudia Toma, Adrienn Tomor, Melis Van Den Berg

EAD6.1 Group Work, Y3 ‘Flow’. A sequence of works in response to the prompt ‘flow’, showcasing habitable bridges across the River Thames.

EAD6.2 Constantina Shiacola, Y3 ‘The Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige’. The project proposes a multi-use bridge: a means of transportation, inhabitation and utilisation. The proposal exploits the sheer power of the River Thames but also utilises it as a connection point between north and south London, instead of a boundary for segregation. Electricity is produced by utilising the river’s intense tidal flow to fuel the building’s functional needs, as well as allowing the facility and the river itself to act as a source of energy for the surrounding area. For the Thames, the building is a machine; for the building, the Thames is the reason for its existence.

EAD6.3 Alessandra McCutcheon, Y3 ‘The Meridian Garden’. Nestled amid London’s vibrant urban landscape, the project transforms the city’s infrastructure and revitalises its declining high street. At its core, the project features a bridge with a transport storey, seamlessly integrating the movement of people and goods with commercial activity. Above, two levels of lush gardens and repurposed pavilions are transformed into vibrant shops to create a dynamic space that blends commerce, nature and community. The garden crosses the Greenwich Meridian to unite the city’s past with its future. The repurposed pavilions are used as retail spaces, extending their use and contributing to a more sustainable built environment. The project is a testament to London’s ambition, marrying functionality, beauty and sustainability in a transformative programme.

EAD6.4 Ananya Narendra Nath, Y3 ‘Park of Symbiosis’. The park is a zoological laboratory building that forms a bridge across the River Thames to study the impact of climate change on its fragile ecosystem. The project uses a recurring theme of intersecting and overlapping grids to inform the architecture and structure of the space. The building plays with the idea of creating harmony through collision by erasing parts of a structured, modernist building and invading it with elements of nature. This creates a habitat for a symbiotic ecosystem of scientists, plants, birds, animals and humans who all mutually benefit from each other’s presence.

EAD6.5 Shamsa Almehairi, Y3 ‘Regenerative Growth’. The project is driven by a vision to uncover the potential of plastic and turn the tides of environmental destruction. At the heart of it lies a revolutionary tube, inspired by Archimedes’ screw, strategically placed in the River Thames. The design harnesses the natural flow of the river, pulling plastic waste from its depths and depositing it within the laboratory. Scientists and artists collaborate to reimagine the destiny of this discarded material. In the hands of visionary artisans, plastic is reborn through thought-provoking art installations, sculptures that defy expectations and ethereal creations that challenge perception. Each masterpiece showcases the intrinsic beauty of plastic while confronting society with the consequences of its actions.

EAD6.6 Claudia Navarro Canovas, Y3 ‘All the World’s a Stage’. Located on Southwark Bridge, close to Shakespeare’s original Globe Theatre, the construction of five small wooden theatres is proposed. This concept offers a fully immersive experience where spectators journey through each theatre to witness different acts from a Shakespearean play while traversing the bridge from the South to the North Bank. Shakespeare originally only separated his play by setting; it was only after his death that they were structured into five acts. This immersive experience attempts to reintroduce the notion of changing locations within the play.

EAD6.7 Elisa Martini, Y3 ‘(RE)vaulting’. Building designers today face the challenge of not only achieving zero

carbon emissions but also rectifying the environmental harm caused by past construction. This can be achieved through carbon recapture and ecological restoration, sparking the idea of creating a ‘dynamic’ infrastructure that can grow its own construction materials. The concept consists of a permanent structural skeleton off which rooms can always be added or allowed to decay through the use of a movable partition system made from a mixture of algae-based tiles and glass. The skeleton itself is a matrix of vaults, built using Guastavino tiling made from algae tiles grown and fabricated on the bridge itself.

EAD6.8 Maria Ariadni Ntoriza, Y3 ‘The Worshipful Company of Boat Designers’. The project is a habitable pedestrian bridge – a new venue that will host the historical London Boat Show. Through the project, the connection between the local communities of the North and South Bank is achieved as well as the support of the large, London-based yacht design industry. The idea stems from the rapidly increasing risk of flooding in the city, with large areas predicted to be affected by flooding by 2080. The London Boat Show is of significant commercial, historical and social importance. Traditionally held in East or West London, this bridge centralises the show in an outdoor venue with open access to the public.

EAD6.9 Yan Lam (Flora) Cheung , Y3 ‘High Tea’. The project is a new landmark located along the River Thames. With an additional stop added at the top of each of the two main support towers, passengers can choose to get off the cable car on either one of the new stations sited on the main towers and walk to the new tea house. Once there, they can enjoy a 360-degree view of the River Thames and sample delicious teas from around the world.

EAD6.10, EAD6.13 Maxime Ostroverhy, Y4 ‘Floating Ceramics: A Sinking Auction’. This project is an auction house that sits on the River Thames near Tower Bridge. It highlights the imbalances and inequalities in the art world, where the artist is often overshadowed by the dealer. The symbolic bridging of inequalities is portrayed by bringing together the historically wealthier business district of the North Bank with the more industrial South Bank. The material aspect of this endeavour evolves around London clay, found on the shores of the Thames. Its properties as a building material are explored rigorously, while its therapeutic ‘muddying’ properties are also explored in a more conceptual manner.

EAD6.11, EAD6.14 James Standing, Y4 ‘Super Aquam: Thames Music Festival’. Amid a flooded landscape, the project introduces a new entertainment ground in the heart of London. The habitable bridge forms a nexus between the banks of the River Thames, with small-scale ticketed performance cocoons open day and night to showcase the diversity of London’s entertainment scene. Designed to be zero-carbon, the project utilises waves produced by river traffic and their distinctive wake patterns to power the bridge. The open timber structure allows wind to pass through the bridge, forming channels for pedestrians (above deck) and river traffic (below deck).

EAD6.12, EAD6.15 Tatyana Cheung, Y4 ‘ReFORM’. In an alternative timeline, the government has become a single unicameral entity through the elimination and dissolution of its political rivals. Unsurprisingly, they are more interested in extorting their citizens than in dealing with the city’s impending ecological deterioration. This ultimately incites a coup to depose all political figures and end their rule of corruption. In the aftermath of this turmoil, a new system is set in place – one that puts the government at the same level as its people.

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Unearthing New Ecologies

Francesco Banchini, Cristina Morbi, Yi Zhang

Unit 7

This year, starting from an understanding of the Anthropocene environment and post-Anthropocene aspirations, Unit 7 students were asked to re-imagine scenarios, test and implement proposals that explore changes in the current context and lay out a new design vision following the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s concept of the Symbiocene – an era of an increased relationship with and awareness of the environment.

The Anthropocene crisis is understood as not just a geological problem but also as an opportunity for mutualism and co-creation with nature and its phenomena. Symbiocene exploration was applied to sites representing the ruins of modernity, with brownfield lands offering an incredibly fertile resource to re-imagine symbiotic opportunities at different scales in the current ecological theatre. Those anthropised ruins of post-industrial leftovers acted as cathedrals for future manifestations of new ecologies, social engagement and neo-natures.

Students learned phytoremediation and phytomining techniques to remediate sites and repurpose the land. This unearthing resulted in an archaeological and geological act of discovery, bringing looming narratives and interpretations of the past to light. Through these the students gained greater understanding of the stratigraphical context of the existing architecture; they also observed and investigated the anthropogenic mass and its environmental impact.

Unit 7 explores possibilities of integrating architectural gestures in the built environment, rewiring softscape and hardscape as a new ecological compound and blending the boundaries between landscape architecture, architecture, engineering and environment. The unit also explores the dichotomy between mineral and vegetal, human and natural, culture and production. New functions and archetypes are examined: architecture as a pollinator, architecture as a phenological machine and architecture as a multispecies cathedral. By observing nature as a creator and learning to weave its tapestry in the minerality of leftover sites, students’ final projects integrate environmental and biological artefacts with architectural archetypes. Working on the timeframe of the site as a chronotopy (architecture as the symbiosis of time and space), students reimagined the timeframe of architecture and its performances, making it an environmental and phenological machine.

Year 3

Lola Artiles San Juan, Yu (Phoebe) Chen, Beliz Gurmen, Jun Sakamoto, Irin (Noey) Satheinsoontorn, Yumeng Shi, Eleonora Trotta

Year 4

Paraskevi (Vivian) Chatira, Andreina Kostka, Yuhan Liu, Cynthia Marjorie Luque Escalante

Critics: Alberto Campagnoli, Alichia Hidalgo Lopez, David Furnival Knight

Partner: Lendlease (Silvertown)

EAD7.1–EAD7.3 Andreina Kostka, Y4 ‘Inter-Habitat’. Millennium Mills, situated in the Royal Docks, can be considered an embodiment of the Anthropocene within the context of London’s industrial past. Like many disused post-industrial sites, nature is gradually starting to reclaim and repurpose the surrounding area. This project assesses the new flora and fauna attracted to the site and suggests a masterplan around a network of habitats specifically designed to serve its new needs with a focus on increasing the number of pollinators to the area. The proposed intervention – a research centre –intersects the multiple habitats and explores how different scales of pollinators can be integrated with the architecture, thus expanding the notion of the Symbiocene in the built environment.

EAD7.4, EAD7.11–EAD7.12 Irin (Noey) Satheinsoontorn, Y3 ‘Helios Haven’. The sunflower serves as a remarkable source of inspiration for a building programme that promotes sustainable practices and renewable energy. This project proposes a small industry focused on producing bio-based insulation panels from agricultural waste produced by sunflowers. The building harnesses renewable energy through sun-tracking solar panels, reflecting the sunflower’s ability to maximise solar energy conversion. The core objective of this project is to create a sustainable building that optimises the potential of sunflower seeds as a valuable resource. By using waste to manufacture bio-based materials, the programme reduces both waste and our reliance on non-renewable materials.

EAD7.5–EAD7.6 Paraskevi (Vivian) Chatira, Y4 ‘AgroTerra’. The project addresses the community’s needs with the site’s environment and the climate crisis. The building serves as a miniature masterplan, incorporating elements from the larger vision. It is strategically located at the connection point between the allotment and soil storage areas, focusing on the importance of soil for biodiversity and human life. Phytomining is used to remediate soil contaminated with heavy metals. Construction and material use have high carbon emissions, but the project explores sustainable earthen construction methods. With anticipated urbanisation and population growth, the development of environmentally friendly agricultural practices is crucial. The proposed research centre develops agricultural and construction techniques while involving the community in the masterplan’s progress.

EAD7.7 Beliz Gurmen, Y3 ‘Millenium Greens’. This project proposes the transformation of the old flour factory, Millenium Mills, into an innovative research lab centre. The building is situated on the north-west coast of Silvertown Sensory Scapes, an innovative and experimental community park project. The standout feature is the heliotropic arrangement of algae photobioreactor tubes that flow out from the roof through the southern façade. This design optimises solar energy absorption for the algae inside while creating a visually arresting composition and serving as an integrated environmental strategy. The project combines architecture, sustainability and scientific exploration through the potential of adaptive reuse.

EAD7.8 Cynthia Marjorie Luque Escalante, Y4 ‘Silotopia’. The term ‘third landscape’ defines land that has been forgotten by man but flourishes with unexpected life. This concept was the starting point for the redesign of Silo D, situated in the Royal Docks, one of the last remaining silos from Britain’s industrial era. This project conceives a new life for the abandoned structure which once held the seed that sustained life itself. Silo D is reimagined as a transitional space where humans and nature can cohabit and create a symbiotic relationship. Colonised by trees, ivy, weeds, mushrooms and lichen, the silo has been crafted to function as an art gallery with a coffee shop and studio spaces. Its most prominent features are the

bridges that spring out from the silo allowing visitors to walk among trees and plants. To minimise its carbon footprint, the design reuses the existing concrete structure and proposes a careful and efficient intervention to improve its thermal performance allowing the silo to run passively.

EAD7.9–EAD7.10 Jun Sakamoto, Y3 ‘The Royal Dock’s Brickmakers’ Grand Production’. The project revives the Royal Docks that were once the vital heart of London for trade and industries – not as a centre of growth and production of the ‘new’, but as a centre of waste regeneration. The facility explores the potential of what is considered waste by transforming it into bricks for use in the construction industry. The soil on site goes through the stages of de-paving, healing and rotational grazing through the years, while the waste materials produced through these stages (de-paved concrete, construction and demolition waste and cow manure) are transformed into bricks in the workshop. Over time, multiple recipes of waste bricks for a more sustainable construction industry will be developed and the soils of the Royal Docks will be transformed from concrete grounds into a healthier, greener landscape.

EAD7.13 Lola Artiles San Juan, Y3 ‘The Earth Eon Museum’. The museum invites visitors to embark on a captivating journey through the depths of time by carefully guiding them through the different strata of the Earth in chronological order. The journey begins on the ground floor, where they encounter the oldest stratum of the Earth’s history, the Hadean era. As they progress upward, floor by floor, they traverse the rest of the eons, encountering the various geological periods within them that have unfolded throughout time. Despite the narrow, cave-like and labyrinthine nature of the space, the route is carefully designed to make the experience intuitive to navigate. To represent the timescale of each of the spaces, the size of each eon correlates to the percentage of time that period spans within the history of the Earth.

EAD7.14 Yumeng Shi, Y3 ‘Habitat Height’. This project brings forests back to the city by planting a large number of trees on the site, particularly trees that are attractive to birds. When birds are attracted to the area they also spread seeds from other regions, thereby enhancing biodiversity and transforming the originally barren land into a green, urban forest. The architecture is multifunctional and includes gallery spaces, an auditorium and a bird laboratory. In addition, the top of the building houses a roof garden and an observation tower. The exterior is designed to accommodate various organisms coexisting, such as birds, insects and moss.

EAD7.15 Eleonora Trotta, Y3 ‘ Flesh and Bones’. This project heals the already present ‘bones’ (existing buildings) of the site by introducing ‘flesh’. The healing process starts by removing heavy metals from soil and water by using hyperaccumulator plants in the masterplan landscape. The cleaned soil will be used to create an agricultural landscape to grow produce that will be processed, prepared and served inside the new culinary school developed inside the mill’s skeleton. Reducing transportation reduces waste and enhances the symbiosis between students using the produce and the plants thriving both inside and outside the mill.

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Regenerative Shorelines

Jan Dierckx, Saud Muhsinovic, Annarita Papeschi, José Torero Cullen

Unit 8

As a consequence of the growing popularity of international low-cost travel, the past few decades have seen the British seaside face increasing abandonment and decline. Yet today’s ecological concerns have inspired a renewed interest in slow and local travel experiences with smaller carbon footprints, offering attractive alternatives to fast-consumption models of tourism. Overcoming the traditional one-size-fits-all offer and reconnecting on an individual basis to availability and demand have the potential to inject new life into this existing legacy of tourist facilities and its associated urban assets.

Studio 8 explores the radical re-imagination of the traditional British seaside resort. Taking the town of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk as a case study, our work draws on a post-humanist reconceptualisation of our relationship with the environment. Here a shift from the humancentred perspective entails an approach to space occupation as devised by the affective relationship of the multiple agencies of its living and non-living co-inhabitants.

An initial design workshop explored the theme of adaptive tectonics through material intelligence. Grouped in small research teams, students investigated how material behaviour might be affected by different environmental conditions, as well as the structural, environmental and space-making capabilities of a diverse range of material collaborations. A visit to Great Yarmouth offered the opportunity to engage with the local community through an intense programme of participatory activities. Working on ideas of emotional mapping, students collaboratively conducted augmented interviews via biometric sensing in Arduino. They produced a rich index of data visualisations that offered personal and localised insights into the area of study as the basis for generation of the individual design briefs.

Working with site materials, local technological solutions and cultural assets, proposals explore ideas of metastaticity and adaptability that seamlessly integrate environmental, architectural and engineering concepts. The resulting designs articulate speculative scenarios populated by transcalar programmable infrastructures which – as a response to the dynamic needs of new hybrid communities of locals and visitors – accommodate fluctuating programmes and usage of space. They also demonstrate affective, multi-agential protocols of space planning and occupation, and present architecture as a vehicle for regenerative change.

Year 3

Lavanan Ainkaran, Aaishah Ali, Arthur Camara, Ako de Siran de Cabanac, Victoria Ewert, Sara Motwani, Joel Muhangi, Iuliana-Andra Padurariu

Year 4

Phoebe Hensley, Liana Hoque, Logan Scott, Yueyao Wang

PGTA: Alberto Fernández González

Critics: Christian Dercks, Henry Luker, Maurizio Mucciola, Vincent Nowak

Partner: Fourth Portal

EAD8.1–EAD8.3 Aaishah Ali, Y3 ‘School of (Bio)rock’. An ode to Great Yarmouth’s history of beach spa therapies, the project addresses the present issues of youth unemployment and future sea-level rise with an ever-evolving thalassotherapy tourist retreat and teaching facility situated within the sea. The complex consists of steel modules that are electrified through wave energy, causing mineral accretion of biorock to develop over time and simulating biorock growth under different conditions. The ‘reclaimed land’ strategy works in harmony with the sea-level rise, rather than taking the conventional antagonistic approach. Land usage lost from the Great Yarmouth mainland will be relocated to the sprawling biorock reef.

EAD8.4–EAD8.5 Logan Scott, Y4 ‘Growing Great Yarmouth’. The project proposes a horticultural tourism destination on the Norfolk Coast showcasing a stock-free organic farm. The building uses a post-tensioned masonry system to form dramatic arch-like spanning ribs. The project addresses the issues of community health and seasonal tourism in the area by promoting horticulture and healthy living.

EAD8.6 Joel Muhangi, Y3 ‘The Seasonal Wellness Festival’. The project explores the deployment of a modular system in support of the array of local wellness facilities to form the offer of a travelling wellness festival in Great Yarmouth. This image illustrates the seasonal adaptability of the modular system.

EAD8.7–EAD8.8 Arthur Camara, Y3 ‘Create, Party, Sleep’. The project transforms a music school into a nightclub venue, offering students a platform to present their work to peers and the wider public. The building morphs throughout the day, adjusting pedestrian flow and the overall ambience to meet the evolving needs of its users. This transformation was explored with an agent-modelling form-finding exercise, essential in shaping the building’s organisation and the layout of the internal spaces.

EAD8.9 Sara Motwani, Y3 ‘The Creal Centre’. The project explores the establishment of an arts and creative therapies centre which doubles in winter as a retreat for artistic practices. Occupying a portion of the system of dunes neighbouring the centre of town, the project proposes low carbon building strategies for the reduction of its environmental impact.

EAD8.10–EAD8.11 Phoebe Hensley, Y4 ‘The Artist Exchange’. The project increases tourism, improves local business and provides a centre for the growing artist community in Great Yarmouth. The disused Victorian gas holders will be converted into a welcoming community space that houses a hub for locals to meet and spend time. It includes a gallery, art studios and a communal workspace. An ETFE grid-shell canopy arches the main buildings to create a semi-enclosed space that is passively heated in the winter and shaded in summer to create a public area with enhanced comfort conditions all year around.

EAD8.12 Yueyao Wang, Y4 ‘Sweet Moments’. The project leverages the cultural heritage linked to the local smoked fish production, combining traditional methods with ideas of vertical farming, to propose an integrated system that operates as both a production plant and a retail facility.

EAD8.13–EAD8.14 Ako de Siran de Cabanac, Y3 ‘Seasonal Tectonics’. This project looks at the potential regeneration of Great Yarmouth through the arts. The architecture intends to follow the seasonality of the town by pushing its adaptability to the limit. By reusing architectural fragments, artists can customise their exhibition, performance and living spaces to reflect the seasons and their activity. The first image shows a sectional perspective through the spring exhibition space.

In addition, the site landscape has been designed as a promenade towards the buildings and the river. Its materials are reminiscent of the town’s history.

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Xan Xacobo Goetzee-Barral, Studio Y3A, 2023

Photo: Xan Xacobo Goetzee-Barral

Architecture MSci

(ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Programme Director: Sara Shafiei

Architecture MSci is a new five-year programme that integrates the undergraduate and postgraduate study of architecture (ARB Part 1 and Part 2) and includes a final year on placement at an architectural practice. During the first four years of study, students explore design and construction challenges facing the future of the built environment and learn how to incorporate specialist disciplinary information with creative, sophisticated design. Students examine relevant world issues through an annual theme that consists of broad architectural and social issues, such as ‘Global Heath’, ‘Sustainable Cities’ and ‘Cultural Understanding’. These themes, which extend across all years and modules, are examined from a local and global perspective that encompasses historical, current and future challenges. The structure of the programme encourages creative research and close ties with practice, while the final-year placement gives students valuable opportunity to test their imaginative ideas in the real world.

As well as defining the relationship between students’ learning and their participation in research, the programme offers a holistic approach to education, encouraging connections between disciplines, years of study, staff (practice-based and academic) and students. It also encourages a collaborative approach to designing and shaping architectural education through dialogue and open discussion. Through interdisciplinary questions and challenges, staff and students interrogate the nature of evidence and knowledge production across different subject fields in our digitally mediated world.

This year saw the third cohort of Architecture MSci students welcomed to the school. For both students and staff, it has been a chance to explore something new and to break with traditions often considered fixed. The programme continues to challenge preconceived ideas of what architecture is and how we use and inhabit space. It encourages a culture of individual research, through testing and re-examining the fundamental elements of architecture. Students are asked to embark on a journey into the unknown and to embrace the experimental and forward-thinking through a global lens. The programme fosters a creative dialogue between design, digital and analogue representation, technology, history and theory, enabling students to make informed yet creative decisions that are grounded in a real-life context.

Our annual theme this year was ‘Cultural Understanding’. It has provided an opportunity for students across the programme to share ideas and research one of UCL’s six grand challenges. Platforms for collaboration across the programme have been situated in our ‘open studio’ events, which each term kicked off with a breakfast club. These spaces have been an opportunity collectively to create new formats for group discussions and to provide a platform for community spirit between years and studios. We would like to thank our incredible students for taking this journey with us.

We would like to thank our Senior Administrator, Alice Whewell; our Departmental Tutors, Sabina Andron, Megha Chand Inglis and Tom Keeley; our Year Directors, Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita Perez, Sara Martinez Zamora, Thomas Parker and Déborah López Lobato; as well as our PGTAs, Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Emily Wang, Ted Bosy Maury, Paul Kohlhaussen, Alb erto Fernandez and Harry Sumner for their invaluable contributions.

London Local/e

Directors: Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita Perez, Sara Martinez Zamora

Year 1

The Architecture MSci annual theme of ‘Cultural Understanding’ saw our first-year students embark on a journey of exploration and discovery by taking on two main projects.

The year began with an examination into the elements of architecture, in which students were introduced to architectural thinking based on case studies found around UCL’s Bloomsbury campus. From this starting point students went on to develop short, speculative projects which saw them engage with newly gained digital and analogue skills.

Building on this foundation, the projects took a shift in scale as students expanded their inquiries from the realm of objects to the dynamic fabric of the city. With a focus on the London neighbourhood of Brixton, students developed their first architectural interventions in response to the brief ‘London Local/e’. In this they were asked to critically contemplate the essence of ‘locality’ and to unravel the spatial and urban characteristics that define a ‘locale’.

Throughout the year students have been asked to study and respond to a series of complex site conditions. In so doing they have addressed the intricate interplay of social, historical, technological, political and cultural narratives that shape the fabric of Brixton. With both a firm grounding in understanding of the site and a unique and original personal lens, each student has crafted a building project that reflects their individual perspective.

Their projects, guided by classes in structural and digital skills, showcase an ambitious investigation into locality and ‘local’ elements as key drivers of the project’s programme and narrative. The result is a unique reflection on what it means to insert a project in a part of London that has undergone significant transformation in recent years.

Year 1

Hamzah Ahmed, Bianca Albeanu, Ruben Alexander, William Applegate, Maria Balanuca, Yohana Bekele, Amelia Blanksby, Yuxuan (Nemo) Cai, Jianhao Chen, Yi Zhen Chuah, Eunice Dingcong, Bingchen (Bruce) Duan, Annabelle Edwards, Rahul Faizer, Zihan Gan, Lele (Giovanna) Gong, Yi (Muvis) Xi Hui, Hafiza Hussain, Nadia Kwiecinska, Kim Lee, Daniel Li, Xiyi (Fiona) Lu, Ella Man, Ahsanul Momen, Sophie Murray, Oyindamolaoluwa Olunloyo, Amanda Paule, Lia Penela Failde, Chanunchida (Pung Pung) Phonoi, Charlotte Pike, Hanna Porooshani Nia, Eleanor Rudd-Jones, Enoch Senanu, Srishti, Ethan Starkey, Louis Thomas, Eva (Grey) Umoru, Victoria Wang, Yiting Wang

Design tutors: Egmontas Geras, Jessica In, Matthew Lucraft, Giles Nartey, Ellie Sampson

Technical tutors and consultants: Ruth Cuenca, Kostas Grigoriadis, Danae Polyviou, Ali Shaw, Andrew Whiting

Thesis supervisors: Megha Chand Inglis, Stelios Giamarelos, Guang Yu Ren, Maria Venegas

Critics: Krina Christopoulou, Egmontas Geras, Matei Mitrache, Guang Yu Ren, Paolo Zaide

Sponsor: Forterra

Y1.1 All Students ‘Drawing the Void’. This year, first-year students went on a field trip to Seville and Madrid to learn about contrasting architectures and buildings that respond to very specific climate conditions. When visiting such contrasting cities, they had the chance to explore different architectural projects from a range of periods, dissecting them and discussing them in situ. As part of their daily activities, the students were given short tasks to unpack some of the references they were visiting and to learn through drawing. In this image, the students are looking at the way light is being used as the main character in the Cathedral of Seville, where the final massing is a subtle translation of the climate conditions that carefully considers how to filter light into the space.

Y1.2 Eleanor Rudd-Jones ‘The Salvage Yard’. Astoria Walk, once a street fronted by yards, has been haphazardly filled. Extensions are piled up, slotted together and squeezed in, crowding the site to meet the ever-growing spatial demands of its occupants. On the street level it is used as an informal landfill by the community, the void crammed with waste. It is seen as an eyesore that needs rectifying; the project questions this normative standpoint. Instead of eradicating the function the community has carved for this site, how can we incorporate it into its design? Instead of a negatively perceived space, how can waste infill and material process become part of a design methodology and a way of devising architecture itself?

Y1.3 Daniel Li ‘Electric Lane Book House’. The building utilises an otherwise redundant enclave within an urban area, where every square metre of land is valuable, to create a beneficial space for the community. The final proposal is a multistorey library for the youth of Brixton built upon the concept of alternating stacked platforms that create intimate pockets of space. The building complements this concept by maximising the amount of natural light that reaches these spaces, taking advantage of the building’s south-west-facing orientation. Both these ideas are emphasised by the building’s materiality, which focuses on timber, glass and brick to create an ‘urban treehouse’.

Y1.4 Nadia Kwiecinska ‘Verdant Interlace House’. The project amplifies the inherent qualities of the location, inspiring meaningful interactions through the thoughtful integration of reading nooks and gardening spaces. By blending multiple generations, the public realm and residents, it becomes a bastion against loneliness. Its inviting, earthy materials and unconventional layout diverge from the typical urban housing model, inviting a gentle collision between the outside world and the sanctuary within. Drawing inspiration from the trees adorning the site, the building mirrors their permeability, creating a harmonious interplay of light with captivating glimpses that connect residents to the vibrant pulse of the city below. It becomes a haven of green where residents can find solace and become a part of the dynamic tapestry of life.

Y1.5 Ella Man ‘The Plant Kitchen’. Hidden within the residential streets of Brixton, the kitchen sits less than a ten-minute walk from the bustle of Brixton Market and Station. The project is a community soup kitchen that offers learning opportunities for locals. Revolving around the principle of local, seasonal and sustainable produce, the proposal brings people together in a shared harvesting, cooking and dining experience in the form of cooking workshops. The design of an interactive façade is implemented, providing a vessel for vegetation and encouraging interpersonal exchange.

Y1.6 Ethan Starkey ‘Temporal Synthesis’. The project begins by seeking to explore the intricate interplay of time, space and human movement within the context of Somerleyton Passage. In visualising the site as a series

of boundaries that directly or indirectly influence movement, it becomes possible to gain a profound understanding of the circulation flow of people while embracing the concept of fluidity and connectivity. These concepts, when applied to the site’s local community and Brixton’s market culture, direct a curiosity in the synthesis with its youth and the prospect of design integrating cultural identity with future development. The proposed architectural intervention is realised in the form of a youth centre situated within the tree canopy. Its primary function is to encourage adolescents to engage with the entrepreneurial culture of Brixton’s markets. Two workshops, a computer cluster and a meeting room supply the tools and inspiration needed for Brixton’s next generation to explore their passions through arts and crafts, synthesising this with the local community through markets.

Y1.7 Chanunchida (Pung Pung) Phonoi ‘Choreographing Decay’. Located in the bustling area of Brixton next to the tube station, the project proposes a material research facility which resolves the issue of postdemolition construction materials ending up in landfill. By encouraging the collaboration between scientists, craftsmen and artisans, the building plays a key role in the future of material development. The project changes the normal form of the research facility: rather than having the research and craft processes hidden, this facility opens it up, suggesting that the boundary between public and private, research and display will become intertwined.

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Age(S)

Johan Hybschmann, Matthew Springett

Studio 2A

Human existence is inherently intergenerational. We begin our journey in the world learning and benefiting from older members of society and the legacy they have created. Later in life this dependency becomes an exchange and eventually the order, in many cases, is reversed and a pattern of succession repeated. We are interested in this succession at both a human and an urban scale, and consider the ways in which this might influence how we design spaces for all ages, both now and in the future.

From multi-generational living to buildings with more complex functions, we can identify typologies that enhance the social benefits of age difference and succession. Housing, hospitals, workspaces, places of exchange, infrastructure and public space all exist in a state of flux and succession. It is critical that we design with change in mind, acknowledging that, as society adapts, so must the cities and functions that support it.

Architecture typically has a slow gestation. The fundamental evolution of known building typologies takes time to negotiate and establish. With this comes a responsibility to understand and interpret critically the way we live and want to live – and ultimately to leave the built environment greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.

This year Studio 2A explored notions of age, succession and intergenerational communities. We researched and designed for more sustainable living, working and recreational enjoyment, with age as a focus. This idea was read both as a cultural, social and environmental exercise and was seen in the context of the annual theme of ‘Cultural Understanding’.

We asked the questions: How do you want to live when you are 65+? What are the impacts of an ageing population and can we design the built environment to deal positively with this change? How would you like to connect with your contemporaries? How do we design to exploit the benefits of intergenerational exchange in the best possible way? Can you sow the seeds of new types of intergenerational communities, able both to work now and to adapt to the needs of successive generations?

Year 2

Jihoon Baek, Pauline Comte, Charles Hayles, Laura Lui, Ming Hei Leroy Ma, Nan (Esther) Mei, Matan Michaels, Sara Mir, Charles Timms, Thaleia Tsoutsos, Jennifer Yang, Yifei Yu

Technical tutors and consultants: Kevin Grey, Matei Mitrache

Critics: Hadin Charbel, Déborah López Lobato, Olivia Marra, Jane Wong

2A.1 Jihoon Baek, Matan Michaels ‘Filtered and Reclaimed to Recreate’. The proposal explores Hanwell’s lost water treatment practices and the generational value inherited from the Grand Junction Canal. It identifies the British canal waterways as an opportunity for community-led governance and cultural exchange. The word, filtration, connotes the town’s interest in harnessing the potential of canal water to support livelihoods and foster community growth through local involvement. The proposal includes an open community space connected to the council planning department that reforms the authoritative systems of the planningdecision process and makes them accessible and affordable to the public. Communications are mediated by openings along the filtration waterway, embracing the voices of the wider public as the catalyst to empower democratic authority in the community.

2A.2, 2A.5 Nan (Esther) Mei, Jennifer Yang ‘Lightscape in Landscape’. The primary objective of this project is to create a versatile performance space that can be appreciated during both the day and night. The building offers people the unique opportunity to connect with nature and their local community while fostering a deep appreciation for art and a heightened sense of security. The pivotal focus of this project revolves around the concepts of light and landscape. Meticulous studies of light and its interplay with the natural environment enable the architecture to harness its transformative power. Through a holistic approach that seamlessly blends architecture, nature and community, the project creates a haven where individuals can immerse themselves in the beauty of their surroundings, forge meaningful connections and find solace in the inspiring realms of art and nature.

2A.3 Charles Timms, Thaleia Tsoutsos ‘A Moment of Respite’. This proposal is a compendium of spaces oriented towards providing reintegrative respite areas for the healthcare workers of Ealing Hospital in Hanwell. Inspired by Finsbury Health Centre and its integration of intergenerational design into healthcare, the project applies this lens to the lack of regard for Ealing Hospital staff satisfaction and explores methods of mitigating this. With a sweeping canopy and timber structure swathed in the surrounding landscape, the scheme provides a series of programmatic spaces, each offering ‘moments of respite’ through their sensory experience but varying in degrees of interaction and privacy. Moreover, an open dialogue is cultivated, reconnecting the healthcare workers to Hanwell’s local community and potentially providing a more neutral environment to escape to.

2A.4 Pauline Comte, Laura Lui ‘Hanwell Food Hub’. The food hub enables and encourages safe multigenerational interactions and acts as a space that strengthens Hanwell’s culture of allotments, community gardens and orchards. The spaces in the food hub become a theatre, emphasising the culinary experience and providing a cinematic experience to visitors. Three main strands define the project: the unique reading of the site and analysis of its context; the social character of the programme; and the ambition for an environmentally conscientious design. With Hanwell’s strong sense of community in mind, it is important to build a facility that complements Hanwell’s identity and Ealing’s goal to be carbon neutral, as a borough and as an organisation, by 2030.

2A.6 Sara Mir ‘Hanwell Wildflower Lab’. The proposed wildflower lab will become a vessel for education, propagation and experimentation within Hanwell. Sandwiched between the bank of the canal and the bounds of Warren Farm, the site finds itself at a threshold between suburbia and a wildflower meadow under threat – a space that over the past decade has become

an area of contested land. This proposal respects and presents the relationship between land and human as an honoured symbiosis. There is a deep understanding that one must support and care for the other, in mutual preservation. The lab is designed as a building that melts into the landscape, delicately tapering to the rise of a wildflower meadow hill, creating an elegant alliance.

2A.7, 2A.8, 2A.9 Charles Hayles ‘The Wildflower Centre’. This architectural intervention provides an interface between nature and humans, or rather between rural and urban. Housing an archive, research facility and visitor area, the centre unapologetically strives to prioritise nature. It is dedicated to conserving the current ecological activity of the land it sits within and preserving the knowledge that comes from it. Rising from Warren Farm, the building slowly grows into a monolithic structure supported by six large, recycled gabion walls which contain the internal spaces. The bold nature of the building is in contrast to the delicacy with which it interacts with the surrounding ecology, providing the flora and fauna with as much space as possible to thrive.

2A.10 Ming Hei Leroy Ma ‘Social Warmth’. The project proposes a community space in the form of a canteen with a bookable multi-functional room. The building consists of a reception, serving area and kitchen. The building is also fully accessible, with ramps and the inclusion of disabled toilets. The project explores the height hierarchy between the spaces as shown in the plan, with the canteen – the most spacious of all the functional areas – at the building’s base. The large-scale plan also demonstrates how the grass roof is connected to the rest of the site, making it a welcoming space for people from the hospital and residential areas to inhabit.

2A.11 Yifei Yu ‘Windmile Community Centre’. This project is a community centre that improves a relatively closed environment by linking the interior and exterior through sound and visuals. The core design language is drawn from the original forested site to create a space in harmony with nature. The building is divided into two sections: the courtyard and the main functional area. The courtyard preserves its greenery and lawns, separating its spaces with horizontal and vertical corridors, while visual cues direct the flow of people towards the main section. This main section houses all the functional spaces and emphasises visual connections with the surrounding landscape where possible, providing the seamless experience of being immersed in nature.

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Futurephobia

Hadin Charbel, Déborah López Lobato

The history of our civilisation has largely been defined by the stability in weather patterns associated with specific geographic locations. Cities were often created and developed according to how agriculture, livestock, resources and habitable conditions intersected. Contrary to this, islands are often sites where the ‘uncommon’ exists, flourishes and evolves, often independently from the mainstream pattern. Some uncommon forms of wildlife, social structures and protocols and ecologies grow in isolation from the rest of the world. Others closely relate to questions of borders and sovereignty, or to other human constructs associated with fiction, cartography and computation.

Some examples are: the plethora of flora and fauna unique to the Galapagos; the distinct plant life of Socotra; land diving practices in the Pentecost Islands; the self-imposed isolation of the Sentinels of North Sentinel Island; the settlement of Neft Daşları, which was founded as an off-shore oil drilling platform; the obsessive archiving and monitoring activity in Svalbard; the legal protection and preservation of Skellig Michael, which doubles as Ach-To in Star Wars; the political division and 21-hour time difference of the Diomede Islands, only two and a half miles apart; or the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator that creates Null Island, and is in fact nothing more than a weather and sea observation buoy.

A new climate regime is currently playing out. What possible futures could be incubated and formed on these seemingly outlaw territories? What initiatives at architectural, infrastructural and ecological scales could suddenly appear on these new test sites? What purposes would they serve, who would manage them, and how would they be perceived by those looking from outside the island?

Studio 2B (‘to be’) uses Climate-Fiction (Cli-Fi) and world building as vehicles for exploring these new initiatives to be explored. In so doing they respond to questions of economy, ecology, society, technology, energy, infrastructure, media, AI and automation.

Studio 2B

Year 2

Rebeca Allen Tejerina, Temilola Animashaun, Jenny Cheng, Abdelrahman Eladawi, Anda Guinea, James Kennedy, Yan Yu Charisse Kwong, May Parkes-Young, Aiala Samula Lopez, Jasmine Shek, Gini Smart, Janssen Wong

Technical tutors and consultants: Sarah Akigbogun, Tony Lee

2B.1 Yan Yu Charisse Kwong, Janssen Wong ‘Against the Current’. The project speculates on the future relationship between people and an island both during its occupancy and after its abandonment. Chiswick Island has been preserved due to its perceived ‘natural beauty’; thus the architecture emerges as something that responds to ideas of ‘nature’ and ‘beauty’. It is formed of rammed earth and 3D-printed soil, replicating natural forms found through various environmental processes such as erosion.

2B.2 Anda Guinea, Jasmine Shek ‘Richmond’s Refuge and Renewal’. Glover’s Island, like most of the islands in the River Thames, will increasingly erode over time. In order to test for various possible scenarios, accelerated erosion over different periods and with different intensities is carried out, uncovering latent geometric potentials within the island’s underlying topography.

2B.3–2B.6 Yan Yu Charisse Kwong, Janssen Wong ‘Against the Current’. A child sits at the edge of one of the naturally formed pools, whose water is collected from the roof geometry and undergoes various treatment processes before finding its way back to the public. At this moment in time, the island is a popular destination for visitors. Section drawings reveal the multiple pools embedded within the cavernous formation which are either entirely covered, partially covered or entirely exposed. In the next image, the island is seen at a later moment, abandoned and in a state of decay; at this stage, few people, if any, will visit. The exterior render presents the beginning of nature’s reclamation of the island, combining processes of erosion and plant growth.

2B.7 Anda Guinea, Jasmine Shek ‘Richmond’s Refuge and Renewal’. Looking to engage with the local ecology, virtual environments were used to explore the relationship between the building, the landscape and the local deer population. The strategy allows for paths between the three networks to overlap, intersect and at times remain isolated. The building is read from afar, but from within the site merges into the island, providing a secondary landscape dotted with skylights providing natural illumination to the partially submerged dwellings.

2B.8–2B.9 Yan Yu Charisse Kwong, Janssen Wong ‘Against the Current’. The natural effect of the island is achieved in two ways. 3D-printed clay tests are explored as a means to test geometries, resolution and potential plant growth. In parallel to this, simulation software allows for various forms of erosion and geometric exploration. The two are explored in tandem and feed back into one another.

2B.10 Jenny Cheng, Aiala Samula Lopez ‘Let’s Rest Together’. The project explores the architecture of death and the politics of dying alone. Currently, those without loved ones to care for their funerary and crematorium arrangements undergo rather cold governmental processes. The project instead explores a more humanised approach, allowing individuals to opt in to a collective and shared scheme. Upon their death, they are transported to the island and undergo the same rites of passage afforded to others, being memorialised both physically through their ashes and digitally in a virtual afterlife.

2B.11–2B.12 James Kennedy, Gini Smart ‘Environmental Archive’. The project examines how architecture can serve as a measure of its environment. Intended as a repository and museum of climate change, the architecture records annual changes through panels that are imprinted with the island’s flora. This leads to the creation of fossils that are both decorative and able to be examined and compared over time.

2B.13–2B.14 Anda Guinea, Jasmine Shek ‘Richmond’s Refuge and Renewal’. The architecture is made primarily from a combination of wood and Portland stone, both

of which are sourced nearby. The architecture sits atop footings, affording minimal contact with the ground and minimising disruption to the local ecology. From a planning perspective, three housing units are joined together to form a small cluster, and several clusters are populated across the island. The scale is sensitive to what is commonly found in rural Richmond, balancing solitude and companionship.

2B.15 Jenny Cheng, Aiala Samula Lopez ‘Let’s Rest Together’. The curvilinear architecture is shaped around the logistics associated with the various processes bodies undergo from the moment they are recovered to after they are turned into ash. A combination of concrete, soil and brick is used where appropriate to form the floors and walls, while local branches from the site are reconfigured to form the substructure that supports the lightweight thin-shelled concrete roof.

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The Centre Won’t Hold

Olivia Marra, Jane Wong

Where the term ‘global warming’ focuses on the symptoms of a planetary ecological crisis, ‘climate emergency’ frames the crisis temporally, underlining the imminence of devastation. Between the speed of collapsing ecosystems, the paralysing ‘flow state’ of capitalist societies and the impasse that citizens experience on an individual level, the global and local perceptions of temporality have never been so contradictory or fraught.

Around the world, apparently idle land and leftover spaces have become places of resistance as occupiers self-organise through gardening, permaculture, foraging and other rituals of collective cultivation. Such activities create and reinforce interdependencies between ecological cycles and local communities. In their most radical manifestations these cultivate regenerative practices that prioritise legacy over progress and intergenerational consciousness over self-fulfilment.

With the reflection that ‘the gardener digs in another time’, filmmaker and writer Derek Jarman, who produced art on the margins of a society facing the fast disappearance of commons, refers to the deeper timescales with which a constant gardener engages: those that might go beyond immediate needs and serve those who would eventually inherit the earth. This year Studio 2C investigated how such practices can locally generate communal solidarity and speculated on how collectively they posit an alternative model of ‘co-agency in which the human and the environment are fostered through a fundamental interdependence in life.’ 1

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) give space and form to domestic collectivism within a city whose housing market is mostly ruled and shaped by financial interest. In doing so, these places pose alternatives to the status quo of real estate speculation. Our studio invites students to speculate alternative design frameworks and modes of collaboration between architects and local associations based on the principles set out by CLTs.

These frameworks would moreover be reconsidered as projects far beyond ‘housing’ in the conventional sense, as they address precarious living conditions within Greater London and inspire architects to rethink their practice. In this sense, the studio focused on schemes that include playgrounds, allotments, parks, forests, libraries, workshops and day care centres, among others.

Studio 2C

1. Ogude, James (2019). ‘I Am Because You Are: An interview with James Ogude’. Interviewed by Steve Paulson and Anne Strainchamps, Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. 21 June. https://chcinetwork.org/ideas/i-am-because-youare-an-interview-with-james-ogude.

Year 2

Jia Qi Chan, Divine-Dione (Nikki) Ifeobu-Zubis, Tate Kiveal, Jayne Lee, Ryan Long, Joseff Rowlands, Raihan Syed, Forrest Xie, Lizhe (Enrique) Zhang Zhuo

Technical tutors and consultants: Carolina Bartram, Samuel Coulton

Critics: Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Brendon Carlin, Hadin Charbel, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Murray Fraser, Johan Hybschmann, Déborah López Lobato, Maxwell Mutanda, Toby O’Connor, Thomas Parker, Elliot Rogosin, Sara Shafiei, Matthew Springett, Chen Zhan

2C.1–2C.3 Jia Qi Chan, Jayne Lee ‘It Takes a City: A Commune for Working Parents’. The design proposes an alternative paradigm of co-housing where a group of working parents form a community land trust (CLT) to share housework, childcare, space, parenting knowledge and other resources on land formerly occupied by a car park and community garden in Hackney Wick. The CLT manifests as a series of bands alternating between gardens and other domestic interiors, including open kitchens, laundries, workshops, libraries, playrooms and so on. All the spaces are built, maintained and shared by the CLT members, with bedrooms and bathrooms open to individualisation. The proposal questions conventional housing typologies, especially the refurbished terraced houses around London which constrain and prescribe domesticity according to heteronormative nuclear-family models. In the process of design development, the students have emulated the speculative role of the architect-cum-CLT member, who assists other residents in the community-led arrangement of spaces and construction. In this scenario, the principles of fluidity and flexibility are prioritised to embrace the transience and unpredictability of early parenthood, which in turn enables mutual support and solidarity.

2C.4 Raihan Syed ‘Hold on Too: Collective Enclosures for NHS Workers on Zero-Hour Contracts’. The scheme proposes a CLT as a support system for healthcare workers on zero-hour contracts at the Royal London Hospital. It provides essential facilities, including safe sleeping spaces at night, as well as areas for workers to socialise, combating the isolating aspect of their work. Additionally, shared bathing facilities help promote mental wellbeing among residents.

2C.5 Divine-Dione (Nikki) Ifeobu-Zubis ‘Found in The Forest: Foraging as a Mode of Building’. Existing on the cusp of Bostall Heath Forest in Greenwich, the project challenges the boundaries of foraging culture. This sloped site fosters synergy between the local community and the forest through its programme and materiality. Using organic timber and straw, the foraged forms facilitate post-foraging activities. The project progressively materialises in harmony with the forest’s timber resources.

2C.6–2C.7 Ryan Long ‘Sticks and Stones: Rethinking the Allotment Boundary as an Architecture of Solidarity’. Today, most London allotment gardens face the struggle of resisting council selloffs for either private or public housing development. This project imagines a scenario in which local plot-holders form a CLT to transform their allotment boundary into a tangible barrier against encroachment and, at the same time, a space of mediation between them and neighbouring residents. The strategy negotiates different conditions along the limits of the allotments, such as hedges and fences, by gradually reframing them with a community-led construction made of local-stone gabions supporting a modular structure of cross-laminated timber frames. This inhabitable wall is to be built, maintained and enjoyed by both parties, engendering new forms of mutual support. Over time, CLT members will assemble new amenity spaces for everyday rituals, including tool sheds, workshops, storage spaces, open kitchens with communal tables, seed nurseries, plant libraries and so on. As a new articulated and inhabited boundary, the architecture stands out from the suburban landscape, affirming and strengthening the CLT’s lobbying power against future encroachment.

2C.8–2C.12 Forrest Xie, Lizhe (Enrique) Zhang Zhuo ‘Neighbours for Two Weeks: Waterways as a Network of Repair, Maintenance and Ritual’. Located along the Hertford Union Canal next to London’s Victoria Park, the CLT acts as a semi-permanent space of resistance

for boat dwellers. It is a point of contact between the water-transient and the land-bound, providing space for repose and the sharing of collective knowledge –a localised social condenser for boat dwellers and residents. Furthermore, this community-led development challenges consumerist culture and provides support for those in precarious housing conditions by facilitating and advocating for repair, maintenance, reuse and the circular economy. The scheme views its members as dynamic and ever-shifting, allowing for flexibility in creating spaces that are collectively needed. Once it has served its purpose, its elements can be dismantled and relocated.

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We Are Global (And Local)

Murray Fraser, Farlie Reynolds

Architecture MSci’s third year is based on individual design research investigations around a specific annual theme. This year’s topic was chosen because London’s status and condition as a globalised city, while not new, is becoming ever more critical in its relationships to the rest of Britain and to the world. How does this affect cultural groups within London and what new or emerging architectural and urban potentials are being created by this globalising process?

There are of course many theories about globalisation, the most plausible being that it refers to the socio-economic, geo-political and cultural changes that have spread across the world since the end of the Cold War. Globalisation is not simply synonymous with neoliberal capitalism or digital communication networks, although those are obviously part of the condition. A broader definition is given by the German social philosopher Jurgen Habermas:

‘By ‘globalisation’ is meant the cumulative processes of a worldwide expansion of trade and production, commodity and finance markets, fashions, the media and computer programs, news and communication networks, transportation systems and flows of migration, the risks engendered by large-scale technology, environmental damage and epidemics, as well as organised crime and terrorism.’ The Divided West (Polity Press, 2006)

Cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall talk of alternative processes of ‘globalisation from below’, due to mass migration, whereas philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that we are only at the start of a globalising process that could take centuries to work through. It is also vital to note that, as geographers such as Doreen Massey point out, the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ are now interlinked in every place on earth – London included – and no amount of new building will alter this reality. As the philosopher Henri Lefebvre says: ‘No space disappears in the course of growth and development: the worldwide does not abolish the local ’. The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1991; original emphasis)

As a result of this dualistic interplay, London has already changed hugely over recent decades and seems set to do so further. What is the impact on architecture, urban forms and spatial practices, and how should architects analyse and respond to these transformations? Our Year 3 students selected their own route to explore this question.

Studio 3A

Year 3

Maria Paola Barreca, Tabatha Crook, Hanna Eriksson Södergren, Xan Goetzee-Barral, Salyme Gunsaya, Samuel Jackson, Ismail Mir, Alannah Nethercott, Dominic Nunn, Toby Prest, Hanna Sodergren, Yutong Tang, Hansen (Shuhan) Wang, Anna Williams, Jun Zhang

Critics: Hadin Charbel, Nat Chard, John Cruwys, Stephen Gage, Déborah López Lobato, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Kester Rattenbury, Sara Shafiei, Ben Spong, Sabine Storp, Ben Stringer

Partners: Peter Barber Architects, Jason Bruges Studio, James Capper, Piercy & Co Architects, Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners (Tracy Meller), Tonkin Liu Architects, Umbrellium (Usman Haque), Walters & Cohen Architects

3A.1 Tabatha Crook ‘Anansi and the Reincarnation of Achilles Street Estate’. In this research, the exploration of folklore, religion and fiction is a reaction to the pragmatic, uninventive strategies currently applied to London’s social housing estates. In a city that prioritises profit, estate strategies focus on adding as many units as possible while neglecting the broader needs of those reliant on housing support. By using fiction to discuss social housing more positively and laterally, a different conversation is created about improved living conditions, emotional intelligence, intercultural understanding and personal narratives. A storybook/animation mixes ‘new’ and ‘old’ in Lewisham’s Achilles Street Estate within the traditional folklore of its residents.

3A.2 Dominic Nunn ‘From Cradle to Grave to Cradle’. When confronting a site’s transition into a modernised landscape, how might we as architects retain a sense of place by creating what are conceptually seen as ‘ruins-to-come’? This study explores the deconsecrated Abney Park in Hackney as a location to imagine how the material resources of London’s Victorian cemeteries could be salvaged in a design approach which relies on predicted decay and collapse to stimulate a sense of curiosity and diversity within a public setting. A group of buildings are envisioned that use Abney Park’s copious cemetery stonework both for the mechanics of the construction process and as recycled material itself.

3A.3–3A.7 Toby Prest ‘The Woodland Street Manifesto’. This research investigation examines the role of the tree in London, critiquing current planting and maintenance strategies to propose productive urban forestry that benefits the city both ecologically and materially. How can London’s street trees be enhanced to create a sustainable source of timber which also empowers local communities? Hence, the focus is on the journey from sapling through to a building material as a process that helps to reintroduce London-based local resource systems and specialised architectural forms. Accompanying aims are to mitigate the inequity of street trees between wealthier and poorer districts, and to cut house construction costs.

3A.8–3A.10 Shuhan (Hansen) Wang ‘Liminal Dialogues’. Imagined for Camden’s Oakley Square Gardens is an interactive musical forum that aids dialogue between local communities through the spatial opportunities of liminality. Abolished is a top-down architectural narrative, and instead a more nuanced collaboration between architects, neighbourhoods and individual agendas is embraced. The research relies on Edward Hall’s ‘proxemics’ theory, which says we define our relationship to the world in liminal gradients, from (intimate) private space to (outermost) public space. Nuances in visual and acoustic conditions are interrogated via filmmaking, looking at windows and sounds in contemporary multicultural London. By examining environmental/human interactions, could liminality promote interpersonal connections and enable a more democratic social identity?

3A.11 Jun Zhang ‘Walk Up Village’. This investigation criticises efficiency and standardisation in London’s apartment buildings by arguing instead for wandering as a means to activate semi-public spaces. The project focuses on the Battersea Power Station area, as it has many mixed-use buildings with efficient spatial layouts in which different functions are placed into separate modules and connected in a rigid sequence. Semi-public spaces such as corridors and staircases are limited, restricting activities. The project maintains that there should be more variety in the types of apartments provided for global residents. Its design proposes a wandering experience between order and freedom, between following a path and discovering by oneself.

3A.12 Hanna Eriksson Södergren ‘A New Commons’. The project considers architecture’s impact at a local scale in London by asking: ‘How do municipal typologies interact with public space and development processes?’ Existing examples are interrogated for the purpose of reimagining functions of local government on two connected sites in Camden: a centre for planning and development debate on Prowse Place, and a meeting space for the council’s planning committee on the railway line above Camden Gardens. The programme also serves as a public open space that leads visitors onto the elevated railway, supporting the ‘Camden Highline’ initiative. As such, the project challenges the binaries of public/private and formal/informal

3A.13 Ismail Mir ‘Watching in the Rainham Wetlands’. This project researches access to and protection of priority species and habitats in London. It investigates how an architectural language/programme can be developed to attract visitors to natural assets as recreational and educative experiences. The study focuses on birds, recognised as a nomadic biological community which traverses London’s local-global threshold. Using an aesthetic language of neo-vernacular materials, the proposal also offers sensory engagement with the chosen site: the RSPB sanctuary at Rainham Marshes. The research examines the bird community as an integral component of London’s ecology and biodiversity, assessing their spatial distribution and relationship to surrounding wetland landscapes.

3A.14–3A.15 Maria Paola Barreca ‘Unearthing Bishopsgate Goodsyard’. As new developments take over London’s building fabric, its rich history is buried beneath glass towers and transport links. Disused brownfield sites become localities for housing and regeneration projects, and overlook the preservation of local character. This study radically rethinks construction on ex-industrial sites to protect and enrich urban memory. At the core lies Bishopsgate Goodsyard’s potential as a place where existing infrastructures, landmark buildings and spatial opportunities could be intertwined in a way that helps communities to thrive. These newly designed spaces interact with and are informed by the archaeology of the area, unearthing its history and preserving its future.

3A.16–3A.18 Anna Williams ‘Ceramic Reparations’. London’s manufacturing history has left behind a legacy of contaminated land and water, especially in the Lea Valley now its post-industrial brownfield land is being redeveloped. In response, this design research investigates the potential of clay-based site strategies to rethink the Lea Valley Filter Beds in an age of pollution and climate change. This theme is explored through site-specific ceramic prototypes, models and drawings which were created in liaison with the ‘Save Lea Marches’ pressure group. Tests were carried out into making ceramic glazes from locally foraged clay, applying this to design clay-brick structures within a new orchard landscape

3A.19 Xan Goetzee-Barral ‘Collective Jewellery Landscapes’. How can the relationship between the site of the body and of landscape manifest the collective nature of urban parks? The project investigates how the socio-cultural, material and tactile qualities of jewellery could help to enrich parklife in globalised London. Hackney Downs is explored to develop a site-specific understanding of what can be called ‘jewellery landscapes’. The research also considers how participation in craft manufacture can become a collective endeavour which promotes cross-cultural interaction. A series of pavilions and on-site production facilities are proposed as a design synthesis, with these constructed in locally sourced rammed earth and timber structures that support ground-/body-cast panels.

3A.4

3A.5

3A.16

3A.17

PG17 drawing project ‘Drawing in Dialogue’ at the Porto School of Architecture (FAUP). Photo: Thomas Parker

Architecture

MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Programme Directors: Marjan Colletti, Kostas Grigoriadis

This year saw an extraordinary achievement for one of our 2022 graduates at the annual RIBA President’s Medals. The RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards in architectural education; they are open to project entries from schools of architecture across the globe. Annabelle Tan’s fifth-year design project ‘Past, Present and PostTropicality: Viewing Singapore Through an ‘Infra(-)structural’ Field’ was awarded the RIBA Silver Medal for the best project of the year at Part 2, the Dissertation Medal and the RIBA Award for Sustainable Design.

Her Silver Medal-winning project, tutored in PG11 by Professors Laura Allen and Mark Smout, was a multi-dimensional and layered investigation into notions of ‘tropicality’ in the context of Singapore, encompassing sustainably generated housing, educational spaces and areas for civic engagement, and connecting a threatened forest to a national nature reserve. Her Dissertation Medal-winning thesis, supervised by Dr Tania Sengupta, focused on Singapore’s past, present and future urban landscape to unpack how notions of ‘tropicality’ have been used epistemologically in colonial, postcolonial and neoliberal infrastructures to describe the tropics as separate to the normative West.

Annabelle has become the most decorated student in the 186-year history of the RIBA President’s Medals after winning both the Silver and Dissertation Medals, and the Bronze in 2019. All staff and students in the programme are immensely impressed and proud of her achievement.

This year we organised, for the first time, a cross-unit event that aimed to connect our present with our recent past. Each unit invited an alumna or alumnus who graduated up to five years ago to present a past project and current or future agenda to inspire our community of students. The astonishing work presented ranged from Annabelle’s record-breaking fifth-year project to the design and construction of concert scenery at Glastonbury Festival; from the design of stone mason facilities to virtual reality interfaces for experiencing urban masterplans in the desert. Next year we will look deeper into the past, beyond the past five years, to delve further into the plethora of practice work and realised building construction projects undertaken by our graduates. Graduates from the Architecture MArch programme typically go on to be involved in all types of built and speculative projects and to occupy key positions across the building construction and creative design industries.

In order to enable connections and ‘porosity’ across units and programmes within the school, this year we consolidated the annual end-of-year unit presentations into a week-long event. These were open to all students and staff to promote the extraordinary work of our students to their peers and to encourage new discourses and discussions about contemporary design topics and methods. Looking forward, changes to the accreditation process and criteria by the ARB offer an opportunity to develop and adapt the content of the programme and to strengthen our work on sustainable design and inclusivity. Architecture MArch is in a great position to help shape the conversation across architectural education in the UK and globally, and we look forward to this imminent future.

Lastly, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to our Programme Administrator, Kelly Van Hecke, and all our PGTAs: Omar Abolnaga, Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Ana Moratilla Mayoral, Elizabeth Selby and Yichang Sun for all their work and input in helping to support and shape the programme.

Future Fictions

Laura Allen, Tom Budd, Mark Smout

How can architecture strengthen the bond between people and place, and the placelessness of homogenised cities? Australian environmental thinker Glenn Albrecht, seeing the links between human and ecosystem health, coined the term ‘solastalgia’ to articulate the emotional and behavioural consequences of climate change. ‘Eco-anxiety’ of this kind is an emerging phenomenon, triggered by both small-scale and global environmental challenges. This year PG11 focused on environment and future-thinking, imagined a new vocabulary for Generation Anthropocene and asked how architecture can respond to the emotional and environmental effects of the climate crisis.

Situating ourselves within a global context, this line of questioning has been interrogated through projects sited across the globe. Cities and their architecture are never finished and are by their nature experimental. With this in mind, we initially drew inspiration from Boston, USA, focusing on four stories in which interrelating narratives and histories gave both a provocation and a site for investigation. By exposing the complexity of human/ environmental relationships, the tales provide a physical, cultural and political context for the unit’s work. In response to readings of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, published in 1887, utopian thinking is understood as an extrapolation of the present, emerging out of a longing for change. What models for future life can be imagined in the 21st century?

In addition, the unit was also inspired by the radical transformations of Boston’s physical geography to enable the city’s rapid economic expansion. The draining of marshland and flattening of hills allowed the creation of territories for institutional, domestic and ecclesiastical development, alongside the Emerald Necklace of public parks, which emerged as the public realms of Bellamy’s vision. We then asked how future transformations in society and the natural environment might be reflected in the built environment.

These research strands have been adapted and challenged across the unit, resulting in a wide variety of proposals connecting people, place and the environment.

Year 4

Henry Aldridge, Jiawei Fan, Jennifer Oguguo, Zhi Qian Jacqueline Yu

Year 5

Harry Andrews, Emily Child, Ernest Chin, Chia-Yi Chou, Yu Ling (Pearl) Chow, Christopher Collyer, Ka Chun Ng, Charles Pye, Long Hin (Ron) Tse, Maya Whitfield, Chuzhengnan (Bill) Xu

Technical tutors and consultants: Rhys Cannon (Gruff Architects), Stephen Foster (Foster Structures Limited), Martha Voulakidou (Buro Happold)

Thesis supervisors: Carolina Bartram, Brent Carnell, Gillian Darley, Paul Dobraszczky, Murray Frazer, Daisy Froud, Stephen Gage, Polly Gould, Michael Stacey, Tim Waterman, Robin Wilson

Critics: Doug John Miller, Danielle Purkiss, Ellie Sampson, Tim Waterman, Sandra Youkhana

11.1 Long Hin (Ron) Tse, Y5 ‘Isle of Bamboo’. The project proposes a floating island that speculates an alternative approach to land reclamation in Hong Kong. By combining research on Very Large Floating Structure (VLFS) technology and the city’s folk traditions, the project explores a sustainable means of gaining ground that questions the role of land creation in the preservation of ecology, cultural identity and local heritage.

11.2 Christopher Collyer, Y5 ‘Ne(i)ther Regions: Boston Marsh’. Ne(i)ther Regions embrace softness. They dismantle rigid dualistic thinking and foreground performative and generative cyclical processes, generating new modes of ambiguous living. At Long Island, the cathartic processes of steaming, mud bathing and plunging engage with the soft material processes of the newly dredged Boston Marsh, thus renewing crucial solidarity between a local community and its swampy past.

11.3 Charles Pye, Y5 ‘Unclaiming the Land’. Utilising traditional drainage and land-forming techniques the project uses the flooding of the Ouse Washes to construct new higher ground to realign local communities and rethink the use of land within the fens. With the threat of rising sea levels and the inevitable un-claiming of land, the project realigns agricultural land use with conservation and recreational uses.

11.4 Henry Aldridge, Y4 ‘The Boston Snow Council’. With climate change, snowfall in Boston, MA is changing. The project places Boston politicians, to some extent responsible for changes to the local environment, inside a snow structure susceptible to the climate. The structure uses existing snow management techniques, with snow piled into a large mound before excavating an inhabitable space within. The structure only lasts half the year before melting, rebuilding and reconfiguration take place to suit different programmes.

11.5 Yu Ling (Pearl) Chow, Y5 ‘Re-shaping Boston: A Vision for Equitable Communities’. The project enhances the quality of life in Boston’s marginalised Roxbury neighbourhood by aligning it with the living standards of more prosperous areas such as Back Bay. Through architectural modifications and the centralisation of communal spaces within a community hub, an inclusive neighbourhood is created that bridges wealth gaps and preserves cultural and architectural heritage. This image captures a panoramic view of a model that depicts co-living experiences between citizens from opposite ends of the wealth spectrum; it portrays eight scenes of a hypothetical residence.

11.6–11.7 Ka Chun Ng, Y5 ‘The In-between Goodsyard Estate.’ The project challenges the orthodox master planning strategy that has contributed to the homogenisation of cities and displacement of local communities. Situated within the gentrified area of Shoreditch, the project redefines the roles of gardens, terraces, hedges, gabled walls and façades. It ultimately creates a new public-private gradient and urban scenery that embodies diversity and inclusivity.

11.8 Chia-Yi Chou, Y5 ‘Silvertown Battery Park’. Silvertown Battery Park is a scientific testing ground that portrays every possible and impossible technology. It is both an off-grid energy infrastructure and a vibrant public space for local communities. The techno-parkscape demonstrates bold and trivial science imagination in a playful and immersive manner, while the working infrastructure celebrates its industrial history and brings Silvertown into the next stage of transformation.

11.9 Chuzhengnan (Bill) Xu, Y5 ‘(Un)Folding Terra Incognita: Charlesgate Revitalisation’. Charlesgate in Boston, which connects the Back Bay Fens to the Charles River, forms the first link in the parkland chain known as the Emerald Necklace. The project explores ways in which the parkland could be restored and improved in a future

that has fewer cars and in which redundant expressways are removed. The proposal is an urban retreat landscape that documents the history of the parkland chain and includes spaces for public education. The architecture reuses remaining overpass piers as dominant structures, allowing the marshland to control the flow and cleanse the creek, creating a new blue-green infrastructure.

11.10 Harry Andrews , Y5 ‘Deconstructing Nostalgia’. Creating a new urban realm in harmony with the context of Brixham, the scheme blends the application of nostalgic architecture with a new local vernacular that operates as a catalyst for the growth of the town and its renewed sense of place in a climate of post-Brexit austerity.

11.11 Ernest Chin, Y5 ‘Idealistic Pragmatism’. In Singapore buildings are often prematurely demolished. Driven by the demolition of a childhood home, the project proposes ‘Immovable Social Objects’ and ‘Best Friends’ within a prototypical landscape. The former are protected everyday social spaces, while the latter consist of enveloping housing attachments that protect them. While redevelopment is an ever-present concern, one can consider radical possibilities to protect what remains dear.

11.12 Jiawei Fan, Y4 ‘Curating Landfills: Re-imagining Coastal Waste Landscape’. In response to the East Tilbury managed retreat plan, the project envisions a restoration facility which breaches the sea wall and acts as a buffer for the landscape behind it. Through repurposing inert building waste from this coastal landfill site, the proposal explores an alternative inhabitation of the interstitial zone between wet and dry.

11.13, 11.15 Maya Whitfield, Y5 ‘Traces of the Past; Forming Tiberias Field School’. As the historic city of Tiberias, founded in AD 19, continues to exist in a state of neglect and disrepair, this project proposes a restoration, learning and research facility, dedicated to improving and mobilising both the residents and the annual occurrence of visitors to the site. The project integrates community construction alongside an architecture that provides a performative dwelling; it is layered with fragments of the city, both old and new.

11.14 Zhi Qian Jacqueline Yu, Y4 ‘The Weathering Yard: Façade Prototype Testing Ground in Central London’. As we navigate the challenges of Generation Anthropocene, we must consider non-human agency in shaping our world. By embracing the idea of weathering, we can appreciate architecture as a dynamic, evolving entity – something influenced by both nature and human interaction rather than a static, unchanging object. The project is specifically interested in accelerated weathering testing for 1:1 façade prototypes.

11.16 Emily Child, Y5 ‘Form Follows Phygital’. This project is a climate change response strategy for MIT, USA against future flooding risk. It proposes digital circular management techniques of preserving cultural heritage by dismantling existing buildings threatened by flooding into a bank of ‘physical fragments’ for reuse. Parallel physical and digital modelling techniques were used to propose a flood-resilient structure that integrates with the residual campus buildings.

11.17 Jennifer Oguguo, Y4 ‘Islington’s Living Rooms’. Exploring the integration of feminist theory with architectural design practice, the project proposes ‘Islington Public Studios’, a live/work programme devoted to craft education. This axonometric summarises the central body, an interpretation of a Georgian terrace house, surrounded by public space; this is mediated through differing applications of public and private to create a craft-informed third space.

Architecture is a Time Traveller

Elizabeth Dow, Jonathan Hill

Assembled from materials of diverse ages, from the newly formed to those centuries or millions of years old, and incorporating varied rates of transformation and decay, a building can curate the past, inform the present and imagine the future, transporting us simultaneously to many different times. The stones of a building belong to the geological time they were wrought, the time they were quarried, the time they were integrated into a construction site, the ever-progressing time of subsequent environmental change, and the varied times they are experienced. We may seem to travel back in time, even as architectural materials and components have literally travelled forward to meet us.

A building does not just exist in time: it creates time, travelling forward as a message to the future. However, there is nothing as old-fashioned as a past vision of the future. We have all experienced the sense that time has reversed. An era that seemed to be in the past becomes the future. In the 21st century the environmental catastrophe of 20th century agricultural overproduction now sees hedgerows replanted, industrial pesticides discarded and farms rewilded. The low tolerance of complex building systems sees thermal comfort reassessed and traditional technologies revived. This year students in PG12 have designed for a future time and place, and creatively considered their relations with both past and present. Flowing incessantly back and forth but never remaining the same, the river is a metaphor for the passage of time. We began the year at the strategic regeneration site of Gravesham Borough Council at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. For our field trip we studied past visions of the future and imagined future visions of the past in Edinburgh and Glasgow along the Forth and Clyde rivers. Students have subsequently designed a new civic architecture, in a time and place of their choice, with the ambition that their building is inventive and bold, considering both the need for longevity and the ability to anticipate and respond to change.

Year 4

Maria Chiocci, James Hepper, Edwin Maliakkal, Naomi Powell, Alice Shanahan, Jiayi (Silver) Wang, Yuen-Wah Williams

Year 5

Ted Bosy Maury, Xinhao Chen, Giorgios Christofi, Bryn Davies, Silvia Galofaro, Pierson Hopgood, James (Kai) McLaughlin, Kwan Yau (April) Soo, Joe Watton, Yunshu (Chloe) Ye

Technical tutors and consultants: James Hampton, James Nevin

Thesis supervisors: Camillo Boano, Eva Branscome, Murray Fraser, Sophia Psarra, Guang Yu Ren, David Rudlin, Robin Wilson, Fiona Zisch

Critics: Sabina Andron, Felicity Atekpe, Kirsty Badenoch, Sabina Blassiotti, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Penelope Haralambidou, Jan Kattein, Constance Lau, Elliot Nash, Rahesh Ram, Tom Reynolds, Isaac Nanabeyin Simpson, Dom Walker, Tim Waterman, Alessandro Zambelli

12.1 Giorgos Christofi, Y5 ’Aphrodism: (Re)forming Cypriot Heritage, The Parliament of Social Affairs’. The project assesses the Cypriot buffer zone as an infrastructure of segregation between the two communities inhabiting the island. The project proposes transforming the buffer zone into a social affairs parliament, resolving frictions and promoting symbiosis between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots by enforcing a cultural merger through the cultivation of the Cypriot landscape.

12.2 Kwan Yau (April) Soo, Y5 ‘Architecture as the Guardian of Collective Memory’. Swimming is a seemingly innocent and mundane activity that is familiar yet cleverly allows for the congregation of people. The project takes the approach of being apolitically political and proposes peaceful collaboration to build an urban pool. It engages with significant buildings and explores previously unconsidered ways of interacting with water.

12.3 Alice Shanahan, Y4 ‘Playing Politics: A People’s Parliament’. The North Yorkshire coastline is being pushed to breaking point: environmentally, socially and politically. Realised through political, material and seasonal transitional timelines, the architecture responds accordingly. Community and the need for radical change are re-embedded into the landscape, redefining connections between land, sea and people.

12.4 James Hepper, Y4 ‘Building [Dwelling]: The Slow Build’. In the era of the instant, this project looks instead to wider timescales: tidal rhythms, seasonal cycles and the gradual accretion of the salt marsh. In the postindustrial waterfront of Gravesend, The School of Earthworks and Ecology celebrates slowness in its shifting, slip-cast spaces and remedial planting strategies.

12.5 Edwin Maliakkal, Y4 ‘An Architectural Palimpsest’. Mumbai has a remarkable history interwoven with the textile industry and its mills, many of which are now derelict. The proposal aims to capture the essence of Mumbai, demonstrating an admiration for its identity and cultural heritage. In doing so it evokes a sense of familiarity by encouraging memories of Mumbai to be inscribed and erased over time.

12.6 James (Kai) McLaughlin, Y5 ‘A Paper Architecture for Messy Hybrids’. The project tackles the fixed understanding of hybridity, investigating different types of cultural intersection and their manifestations. A squatting Paper School in the former Imperial Paper Mill becomes a site for messy, diverse identity production, usurping the imperialistic provenance of the mill. Paper’s material capacity is expanded to serve the processes of learning, testing, negotiating, building and rebuilding in a dialogue of collective cultural production.

12.7–12.8 Silvia Galofaro, Y5 ‘The Mud Dredger: Muddy Waters and the Unloved Spolia’. The proposal challenges the forgotten relationship between the City of London and the River Thames. A mud-dredging building is proposed that carefully selects and curates the river’s leftovers. The building contributes to improving the river’s health by simultaneously reconnecting the city to some of its lost or overlooked accounts.

12.9 Yuen-Wah Williams, Y4 ‘Coalhouse, Stiltbury: A Collaged Architecture’. Severe weather anticipated as a result of climate change means that much of Tilbury, Essex is at risk of flooding. This project collages together local architectures that are vulnerable to flooding and raises them on a reclaimed steel frame that sits over Coalhouse Fort. Tilbury’s large unemployed population will be offered the opportunity to retrain and learn construction trades to form the workforce that will carry out the project.

12.10 Naomi Powell, Y4 ‘Regenerating the Hoo: Creating a Symbiotic Relationship with the Thames Estuary’. Taking the stance that we must learn to live with flooding, climate

researchers and citizen scientists act as guardians of the river, establishing a hybridised wetlands centre. Through the cultivation of oysters and seagrass, and the harnessing and amplification of natural regenerative processes they learn and share vernacular construction skills to create an architecture designed to deteriorate.

12.11 Maria Chiocci, Y4 ‘Monumental Arcadia’. Based in Rousham House and Gardens, the project considers the construction of a monumental arcadia – a poeticshaped space associated with natural splendour in which animals and humans live in harmony. The proposal uses a scenographic approach to encourage moments of rest and contemplation, creating an architecture of Otium

12.12 Jiayi (Silver) Wang, Y4 ‘In the Presence of Absence’. Within their absence lies a reminder of the former prosperity of the River Thames’ downstream towns and the artistic finesse of Chinese artistic techniques. Inspired by the journey of a museum conservator, the project’s design unveils a silk painting restoration, transforming this hidden craftsmanship into a performance for all.

12.13 Ted Bosy Maury, Y5 ‘A Cornish Pixie: Reading the Witches of Boscastle’. The project embodies the theatricality of tarot readings. This is realised through performing a ‘reading’ of the North Cornish site of Boscastle; its attendant climate-precarity, history of salvage and magic, coastal liminality; and the collection of the existing Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.

12.14 Bryn Davies, Y5 ‘The Metamorphosis of St Luke’s: Resplendence, Ruination, Renaissance’. The project charts the inhabitation of St Luke’s Gravesend from its 1960s inception as a non-denominational place of worship on the banks of the Thames, through a steep period of decline and ruination due to dwindling passenger numbers, to its current day renaissance as a new school of fine art.

12.15 Pierson Hopgood, Y5 ‘White Mountain College: A Research and Rehearsal Library for the Dyslexic Arts’. This project imagines a Library for the Dyslexic Arts set in 1960s Ash, Kent. The library is an educational facility for painting, sculpture and architecture that utilises dyslexic thinking to further the art world and to drive research. The library’s collection continually evolves creating a dynamic interplay between artworks and architecture.

12.16–12.18 Xinhao Chen, Y5 ‘House of Spirits’. The project reflects on worship and ritual, questioning how spirits and the living might interact without the involvement of religion. Proposing an alternative worship ritual, centred on the harvest of sorghum, a set of built forms for human occupation are proposed, dedicated to the spirits of Dachuan, China.

12.19 Joe Watton, Y5 ‘Cliffe Fort: An Adaptable Monument’. The project imagines an alternative history for Cliffe Fort, an abandoned Victorian military site near Gravesend. Questioning Silkin’s post-war rehousing programme, the site is reappropriated as an experimental ninth new town for the capital; built interventions serve as monuments to the longlost qualities of life in the slums of wartime London.

12.13

12.16

12.17

Constructed Futures

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

At the centre of PG14’s academic exploration lies Buckminster Fuller’s ideal of the ‘comprehensive designer’, a master builder who follows Renaissance principles and a holistic approach. Fuller referred to this ideal of the designer as someone capable of comprehending the ‘integrateable significance’ of specialised findings and able to coordinate and realise the commonwealth potentials of these discoveries without disappearing into a career of expertise. Like Fuller, we are opportunists in search of new ideas and their benefits via architectural synthesis. We are seeking the new, leveraging technologies, workflows and modes of production seen in disciplines outside our own. Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonic constituents. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, generates new, unprecedented and spectacular proposals.

The focus of this year’s work evolved around the concept of ‘constructed futures’. The term aims to describe architecture and, as such, a fundamentally human future as the result of the architect’s highest degree of synthesis of underlying principles. Constructional logic, spatial innovation, typological organisation and environmental and structural performance are all negotiated in a highly iterative process driven by intense architectural investigation. Inspiration for inherent principles of organisational intelligence can be observed in both biotic and abiotic systems, and in all spatial arrangements where it is critical for the overall performance of the developed order. Through a deep understanding of constructional principles, students generated highly developed architectural systems in which spatial organisation arose as a result of sets of mutual interactions.

PG14’s methodology employs both bottom-up and top-down strategies to build sophisticated architectural systems tailored to individual problems. Pivotal to this process is the concept of practical experimentation: in this case, intense exploration through both digital and physical models that aim to assess system performance and its direct application to architectural space. In order to deliver multiobjective architectural propositions, we moved through the year in a precise trajectory, following a design process sequenced with defined milestones that gradually increased in complexity.

Year 4

Thomas Bird, Lorand Gonczol, Wen Hua (Michael) Huang, Cheolmin Kim, Betty Liang Peng, Ludmila (Ludka) Majernikova, Nikita Norris, Thomas Parry, Ayaka Sato

Year 5

Alysia Arnold, Dominic Benzecry, Sebastian Birch, Kin Yi Anson Hau, Joel Jones, Kishan Mulji

Technical tutors and consultants: Damian Eley (Expedition Engineering), Jakub Klaska

Thesis supervisors: Carolina Bartram, Stephen Gage, Filomena Russo, Michael Stacey, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Andrew Abdulezer (Sethstein Architects), Carlos Bausá Martínez (ZHA), Vishu Bhooshan (ZHA), Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange (UCL), Damian Eley (Expedition Engineering), Michael Forward (Populous), Charles Harris (ZHA), Jim Heverin (ZHA), DaeWha Kang (DaeWha Kang Design), Edward Meyers (Heatherwick Studio), Ho-Yin Ng (ALA), Benjamin Norris (Foster + Partners), Gerhild Othacker (ZHA), Charles Walker (ZHA), Daniel Wright (RSHP)

14.1, 14.3, 14.6 Ayaka Sato, Y4 ‘The Central Pier of Bangkok’. The project explores a timber structural system for a central pier-interchange hub in Bangkok. Sited along the city’s major river, the proposal revives the floating market culture in the urban context as a new typology, re-evaluating its connectivity with other modes of transportation. As the city approaches its 250th anniversary, the pier centre recreates Thai vernacular roofs that respond to the climate with contemporary timber construction technologies.

14.2, 14.17, 14.26 Lorand Gonczol, Y4 ‘Brasov InterCity: High-Speed Railway Station in Transylvania’. The project proposes a high-speed railway station in Brasov’s business district to better connect the country and encourage the distribution of economic growth. The structure gives a new identity to the place by recreating the complex geometry of Transylvanian vernacular roofs using contemporary timber construction methods. 14.4, 14.21 Betty Liang Peng, Y4 ‘Homage to Gastronomy’. The Institute of Catalan Culinary Arts in Barcelona is a celebration of Catalan gastronomy. Through notions of food and heritage, the design explores the relationships between food, people and space. Responding to local vernacular Gothic architecture, the building engages with its historical and present context to reimagine eating typologies and the Catalan style. Amid the urban fabric of the city, the building stands as a homage to Catalan heritage and identity.

14.5, 14.7, 14.19 Wen Hua (Michael) Huang, Y4 ‘Ascending Gardens’. The project explores a forthcoming scenario for the stations of Singapore by transforming them into garden stations. The project challenges the distinction between the man-made and the natural to revolutionise the identity of Singapore’s current Mass Rapid Transit network. The design focuses on natural cooling techniques to promote cross-ventilation that preserves balance within its botanical core while meeting contemporary transit needs and returning Singapore’s last mangrove reserve to the city.

14.8 Kin Yi Anson Hau, Y5 ‘Reimagining Chinatown: A Multicultural Hub’. The project imagines that New York‘s Chinatown returns to the ownership of the Chinese government in a mutual territory trade between the US and China. This exchange between two nations helps to improve an underdeveloped area within New York City, while also providing cultural and economic value for local communities. Colonies have resulted in many collisions of culture, resulting in interesting new topologies ranging from pop culture to architecture.

14.9, 14.12 Thomas Bird, Y4 ‘The Peak District Tertiary Assembly’. The project speculates on the decentralisation of the UK’s tertiary economic sector, proposing the introduction of high-quality service- and knowledgebased businesses into declining rural economies as an act of conservation. This breaks the reliance that existing practices in the primary and secondary sectors have on the cyclical development of the physical landscape. Sited on the eastern border of the Peak District National Park, the design proposes a new working lifestyle, focused on forging a connection between the user and the picturesque landscape.

14.10, 14.13, 14.14 Sebastian Birch, Y5 ‘Zippered Morphologies: Munich Philharmonic’. The project begins with a research phase investigating the architectural possibilities of the self-forming zip-bending method to develop new and tailored timber fabrication approaches. This knowledge of material behaviour informs the application of the system at the architectural scale, in the design of a new philharmonic hall, sited at the fringe of Munich’s old city.

14.11, 14.24 Thomas Parry, Y4 ‘Excavation Exhibition’. The discovery of ancient ruins in the urban centre of

Cambridge triggers academic and archaeological interest. In becoming an active dig site for educational excavation and public exhibition, the Accoya kit-of-parts building utilises a truss structural system that is elevated above the historically sensitive activity, giving a transparency that emphasises its significance. In this 25-year project, the newly discovered history is brought to the forefront of the community, allowing visitors to step into the past.

14.15 Joel Jones, Y5 ‘Quid Pro Quo’. The project addresses the high levels of substandard living and unemployment in Lagos, Nigeria. The scheme challenges the city’s dominant typology of new high-end development and instead exemplifies how a mutually beneficial mixed housing development could provide low-income residents with affordable housing and commercial space aimed at preserving the livelihoods and cultural identity of fishing communities.

14.16, 14.25 Cheolmin Kim, Y4 ‘K-Pop Learning Centre’. The project proposes a K-pop Learning Centre in Seoul to teach K-pop enthusiasts all about the music genre. By analysing folding architectural principles and origami, a gabled roof in Korean style was created. The main K-pop stage is surrounded by performance-related programmes and master rooms. Along with AI holograms, the K-pop learning space is supported by Samsung, and the group learning space accommodates fans who love and support K-pop.

14.18, 14.23 Ludmila (Ludka) Majernikova, Y4 ‘Bratislava Terminal: High-Speed Railway Station’. Set within the European project for high-speed railway development Magistrale for Europe, the proposal reimagines what infrastructure could look like through a more userfriendly, human-scaled approach. As a large urban intervention, it is both infrastructurally and socially transformative, creating an inter-mobility hub merging the railway, public transport and cycle infrastructure. The development interconnects the disjointed capital city and will help modernise the region.

14.20 Kishan Mulji, Y5 ‘Kathmandu Central Rail’. The project adapts and upscales the seismic-resistant principles of ancient Newari architecture in Nepal, in particular its prominent clay–timber hybrid vernacular. Programmatically, this is examined within a large-scale train station in the Kathmandu Valley, which behaves as a catalyst for infrastructural emergence and improved connectivity with neighbouring Himalayan nations. Through proposing a revival of Kathmandu’s abundant clay resource, the scheme speculates on its application within a region caught between the protection of its cultural heritage and the push of modernisation.

14.22 Nikita Norris, Y4 ‘Future of Siberia: Regional Government Cloister, Siberia’. For the past few decades, Siberia has faced a decline in investment and economic growth, leading to population decline and failing infrastructure. For prosperity to be achieved, this project proposes that the region of Yamalo-Nenets breaks away from the Russian Federation which has so far hindered its progression. Through architectural intervention, a new administrative building is conceived as the central body for autonomy.

14.27 Dominic Benzecry, Y5 ‘The Great Garden’. This project proposes a new town on the Scottish island of Lismore, centralised around a whisky distillery. The design methodology was rooted in critical regionalism, mediating research based firmly on the critical analysis of historical Scottish architecture (namely the broch and tower house), the idiosyncrasies of the site topography and geomorphology, and modernity in both material technology and conditions of living. Through algorithmic formalisation, the project exists as a hierarchical conversation between streetscape and landscape.

Expanded Ecologies

Egmontas Geras, Enriqueta Llabres Valls

A symbiosis between ecology and digital design methodologies has led to an emergent, fertile ground for design practice. PG15 feels the need to redefine and catalyse a discourse on the discipline and its relationships with the environmental challenges of this time, where both the old and even the near-future of design-thinking are incessantly entering obsolescence. The unit aims to question the viability of the Earth system while framing a discourse for an expanded ecology in the context of planetary urbanisation, in which global ecology has become a capital-driven process.

How is ecological knowledge produced, observed and culturally disseminated? How does our architecture learn, and what is its capacity to learn? We are interested in complex physical systems, morphogenesis and ecological dynamics. We engage with timeoriented modelling techniques and prospective design-thinking.

What is ecology? How do we understand it and how does architecture? This year students developed and informed their architectural research and design practice in relation to individual understandings of ecology. We asked questions such as: can soil be a living, live-in organism? Can it be an agent of our architecture? Can we design material systems to be responsive, informed and symbiotic with community desires and socio-economic and environmental agents? How can we be prospective, mindful of data-driven intelligence and poetically sensitive to the consciousness of potential ecological change? We have attempted to build antiglobally and have looked outwards anthropocentrically while simultaneously peeking into the haunted crevices of deep time.

Our sites this year have taken us from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam to an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea; from Dobrotino, Bulgaria to Southend in Essex, and back to London. Mapping, digitisation and simulation have been examples of instrumental processes to help express the extent of our research reach and tease at discrete student design methodologies. We will continue to explore digital intelligence, working towards informed, emergent architectures and expanding ecologies.

Year 4

Rio Burrage, Desislava Cholakova, Andrei Dinu, Josef Stoeger, Daniel Stokes, Karolina (Mylan) Thuroczy, Bianca Zucchelli

Technical tutors and consultants: Bedir Bekar, Jenna de Leon

Critics: Alessandro Ayuso, Nat Chard, Patch DobsonPerez, Laszlo von Dohnanyi, Freddie Hong, Nikoletta Karastathi, Emma-Kate Matthews, Nasios Varnavas, Ivana Wingham

15.1, 15.8 Josef Stoeger, Y4 ‘Emergent Ceramic Systems’. The project explores digitally fabricated ceramics as an emergent design methodology, integrated with supportive timber components. A focus on technology and craft drives the work, with particular importance paid to the longevity of material systems and thus the ecological impact of the proposed architecture. Feedback loops, responsive/adaptive systems and digitally intelligent workflows are explored to innovate a new-material practice. Timber is used as a carbon-sequestering structural element, while ceramics are used for their shielding, and exhibit functional capacities such as water collection, thermal mass and bio-receptivity.

15.2–15.3 Daniel Stokes, Y4 ‘A Parliament for the Posthuman’. Set in the year 2100, this project reanimates Southend-on-Sea’s coastal economy within a flooded landscape, utilising the existing flooded and decaying built infrastructure as a material ecology. By applying the posthumanist concept of curated decay, the work explores the continuity between non-human natural entities and human social heritage through maintaining physical relationships established over large temporal scales outside of typical human interpretations of time and through a reinterpretation of heritage frameworks, literally and figuratively, of existing material ecologies.

15.4–15.5 Desislava Cholakova, Y4 ‘Dobrotino: A New Culture of Building’. The project creates a dialogue between temporal, societal and material situations to inform a participative, multi generational, inhabitable architecture. Set among Dobrotino’s ruins, the nomadic residences utilise an architectural language and material sensibilities to compose and capture an amalgamation of curious ecologies that evolve independently, yet retain traces of their transient authors via weather patterns and human interactions. The work analyses objects that embody a relationship with time and that often transcend their practical agency, fostering an appreciation for a new cultural understanding and propositional, ecological expansion.

15.6–15.7 Rio Burrage, Y4 ‘Regrowing Providencia’. The work develops an architectural typology to help Caribbean communities improve their ability to adapt to the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by anthropogenic climate change. A materially and culturally sensitive response is combined with novel scripting methodologies that reveal a new digital context produced by the specificities of the site’s ecosystem. The proposal investigates how relationships between man-made structures and mangrove ecosystems can be mediated through this complex adaptive system to generate a new architectural typology that is symbiotic with the development of the local environment for the Raizal community of Providencia Island, Colombia.

15.9 Andrei Dinu, Y4 ‘Living with Soil’. The work explores digital manufacturing, multi-resolution computation and additive construction methods via clay printing as a practice. The project investigates the storage and spatial management of on-site soil in opposition to bulk off-site manufacturing. It develops high-rise earth construction techniques while working towards the bioremediation of London’s soil by integrating formal design systems with flora, fauna and people in a new urban soil ecology.

15.10–15.11 Bianca Zucchelli, Y4 ‘The Generative Stitch’. The project secures a future for the Doddington Estate, London, while emphasising material and social adaptability. The issue of conformity that arises in such tower blocks is tackled by providing a choice matrix defining new personalised outdoor ecologies. Integrated workshops suggest that residents will update their spaces over time, allowing the project to continue to evolve. The metaphor of weaving communities and social tension

serves as a driver for a parasitical and symbiotic intervention, woven into the old concrete structure. The stitch goes in, out and through the building, creating a sense of connection between residents and becoming a part of everyday life.

15.12–15.13 Karolina (Mylan) Thuroczy, Y4 ‘Tales of the Nine Dragons’. In the Mekong Delta, tidal ecology affects the agricultural output and daily activities of farmers. The project’s design focus examines how cultural production is embedded in the site ecology and questions how new developments can respect and encourage cultural practices without overlooking how local communities have already adapted to an amphibious way of living. The project proposes a travelling theatre that floats down the river to expand its cultural infrastructure. Instead of land-extractive practices, the project creates new islands for vegetation. The theatre is a public space for villagers to come together and learn through storytelling. Its transient structure ensures that more communities can leave their traces in the architecture, while the movement becomes a performance of the interconnected waterscape of the river.

Towards an Architecture of the Poetic

Matthew Butcher, Nasios Varnavas

The work of PG16 this year has focused on the exploration of an architecture that seeks to rediscover a more felt, emotional and physical engagement with the environments we choose to inhabit. To frame this investigation, students focused their explorations on the role of the poetic in architecture and the forms this can take –specifically its role in determining how buildings and landscapes should be formed and understood in relation to the current climate crisis. We have sought to explore how an architectural poetic can help to mediate the experience and meaning of matter manifested in the spaces, objects and materials that frame and formulate our understanding of urban, suburban and rural contexts, as well as to define our relationships with each other.

The poetic, derived from the ancient Greek notion of poiesis, can be broadly understood as the act of creating, imagining and making. It is often aligned with the creation of poetry, whether manifest in the written word, images or even architecture. Central to much investigation into, and understanding of, the poetic is the desire to find, through poetry, a means to celebrate the human ability (or spirit) to conceive, write, discuss, draw and build as a means to interpret and comprehend the world.

To understand the purpose and significance of the poetic in architecture in response to the current climate crisis, students undertook two main enquiries. Firstly, they explored ways in which the poetic can manifest in architectural design and consider how it can be an interface, acting as a political bridge to create a more emotional relationship between ourselves, and with the natural environment, as well as enhancing our understanding of objects and materials. Secondly, they sought to understand how processes of making, including the exploration of both the rigidity and indeterminacy of materials, can be understood as poetic and can form a greater reciprocity between us as individuals, other people and with the physical world.

Year 4

Niamh Cahill, Isobel Currie, Alastair Manley, Sharon Tam

Year 5

Muhammad Fazeel Babur, James Della Valle, James Eaton-Hennah, Amy Kempa, Olga Korolkova, Francis Magalhaes Heath, Kyle McGuinness, Julia Remington, Alasdair Sheldon, Joshua Snell, Hester Tollit

Technical tutors and consultants: Will Jefferies, Ollie Wildman, Sal Wilson

Thesis supervisors: Paul Dobraszczyk, Stephen Gage, Christophe Gerard, Polly Gould, Jane Hall, Tim Lucas, Anna Mavrogianni, Shaun Murray, Michael Stacey, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Felicity Atekpe, Ebru Bingol, Graham Burn, Ana MonrabalCook, Sam Coulton, Tom Coward, Maria Fedorchenko, Egmontas Geras, Will Jefferies, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Lorenzo Perri, Chris Pierce, Dan Pope, Era Savvides, Sebastian Tiew, Manijeh Verghese

16.1, 16.3

James Eaton-Hennah, Y5 ‘The Frontline’. The project addresses the ongoing coastal threat to Pagham, West Sussex, reflecting the need to radically redefine and prioritise current preservation methods. Faced with a need for urgency and survival, the project embraces Pagham’s uniqueness and historical resilience. A series of proposed interventions sited within a protective frontline merge the familiar and unfamiliar, strengthening the site’s character and community agency.

16.2, 16.22 Julia Remington, Y5 ‘Furusato Nojo’.

To address Japan’s threatened agricultural heritage, an experimental rice-based demonstration farm is proposed to frame a traditional past in the dystopic modern present. Playing with notions of furusato, a collective nostalgia unique to Japan, the project stages, re-enacts and transforms pieces of land, creating an active museum to rehabilitate the landscape.

16.4, 16.20 Sharon Tam, Y4 ‘Rivers of Albion’. Located on chalk grounds, the institute serves as a mitigator against the current threats faced by chalk river ecosystems, and consequently water sources. Interactions between chalk and water give rise to an architecture that transcends its functional role of river restoration, to instil an ecological agenda into the everyday.

16.5 Isobel Currie, Y4 ‘Care Without Conservation’. By repurposing the ruins of Tide Mills, East Sussex, as platforms for artistic expression and research, the proposal offers a provocative approach to conventional heritage conservation. Embracing deliberate decay, the project explores how a paradigm of acquiescence – when managed with care – can lead to a form of preservation that considers the futures of both humanity and the environment.

16.6, 16.12 James Della Valle, Y5 ‘Land Grab’. Located in Cornwall’s clay county, the historical china clay pits serve as the backdrop to a collection of proposed cottages that embrace a forgotten Cornish vernacular to safeguard the forgotten mining landscape. The new communities revive traditional Cornish craftsmanship and ornamentation while incorporating innovative autonomous technologies.

16.7 Olga Korolkova, Y5 ‘House for Seaweed’. Responding to the current climatic damage of coastal landscapes, the speculative proposal employs seaweed as an intrinsic material shaping the architecture’s construction, functionality and phenomenology. This mixed-use intervention combining an anaerobic digestion plant and thalassotherapy centre serves two key purposes: generating sustainable power, while reimagining the Irish tradition of seaweed bathhouses to reinstil a distinct sense of place.

16.8–16.9 Hester Tollit, Y5 ‘Fen Odyssey: The Tale of the Drifter’. Fen Odyssey reveals the social, historical and surreal dimensions of Stow-Cum-Quy Fen through a drifter’s tale. Divided into two parts, the tale delves into the physicality of reality alongside the imaginative realm of perception. Re-wetting the landscape through a series of metaphorical memories and dreams, a more human approach to agriculture is promoted, challenging the Fenlands’ prevailing industrialisation.

16.10–16.11 Amy Kempa, Y5 ‘A Field of the Political’. In a challenge to our anthropocentric political model, the project proposes a decentralised court for the performance of environmental hearings. Understood as a multiplicity of assembled architectural characters, the court’s form resembles a ‘field’. Architecture mimics and augments existing ecological dynamics, envisioning spatial forms as temporal: breathing, growing, evolving and ultimately decaying in harmony with the non-human.

16.13 Alastair Manley, Y4 ‘The Greenbelt Development HQ’. The project brings together public, consultative, developmental and contractual bodies to facilitate

greenbelt development. Its provocative architecture challenges traditional notions of ‘new-build’ construction, reusing buildings, materials and programmes while fundamentally questioning the concept of a homogeneous greenbelt.

16.14 Francis Magalhaes Heath, Y5 ‘Myth, Ritual and Performance in the City’. Inhabiting the alleyways of the City of London, a proposed set of modern guilds celebrate the enablers of street activities. Alternative occupations include street therapy, busking and borrowing, and seek to restore ownership of a societal structure that once served London’s working classes.

16.15 Muhammad Fazeel Babur, Y5 ‘A&Co House’.

A&Co House is an exploration of cultural identity and its integration into daily life through theatrical architecture. The proposal conserves and registers family history by examining the identity of existing dwellings, household objects and the nuances of our everyday environments, utilising theatre and performance as a means of architectural expression.

16.16 Niamh Cahill, Y4 ‘Tottenham Hale’s Dryhouse’. A large proportion of UK housing lacks the appropriate space and ventilation for passive clothes-drying at home. By examining the clothes-drying process, the traditional focus of laundry is reframed, allowing for a reimagination and revitalisation of public facilities. A new typology of dry house supports the laundry practices of UK residents in a social, sustainable and affordable manner.

16.17–16.18 Kyle McGuinness, Y5 ‘A Sanctuary for Dying Crafts’. The project offers a refuge for the preservation of craftsmanship and intangible heritage in the UK. Designed as an extension of the consecrated ground beside Christ Church in Spitalfields, London, sacred spaces pass down endangered crafts through the facilitation of rituals to ensure their future survival.

16.19 Joshua Snell, Y5 ‘Upcycling the Ledbury’. The project explores an alternative approach to redeveloping the structurally compromised UK stock of 1960s Large Panel System social housing towers. By selectively dismantling, collaboratively designing and radically reusing materials, the project enables architects and residents to showcase the abundant technical utility and sentimental value of currently disregarded materials.

16.21 Alasdair Sheldon, Y5 ‘No Active Intervention: Fairbourne 2054’. By 2054 the Welsh town of Fairbourne, under imminent threat from coastal flooding, is set to be ‘decommissioned’. In contention with the government directive, the project provides a platform for residential protest through a framework of hydrologically activated architectures. As a culmination of past protests, the town hall becomes an iconographic archive, with its permanent ruination framing the ultimate crescendo of protest performances.

16.2

16.6

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16.12

The Dialogical Architect

Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Thomas Parker

This year PG17 explored Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and the potential of his philosophy of language and ethics in architecture. Dialogism is determined by the capacity of an author to integrate other positions of self and unresolvable dialogues in their work. Many of our limitations in making a caring, enjoyable and sustainable world, both as architects and as citizens, can be overcome by developing and using creative processes that are truly dialogic.

Architects engage with a vast spectrum of environments and are asked to accommodate an unending array of different desires and needs. Responding to this complex reality, we have become sceptical of monologues and the monologic design narratives that dominate our discipline and profession; instead, we aim to practice as dialogical architects. The dialogical architect fosters an empathic self who attends to manifold perspectives, cultures and histories, even when these are contradictory, and who embodies multiple positions and counter-positions within a single project.

We have sited our projects in Porto and the Douro Valley, responding to a range of individual interests: prehistory and the fossil fuel age; river and coast ecologies; stone assemblages; architectural ceramics; purification in housing; migrating communities; scripting histories; sound in architecture; unfinished building; mental health and the representation of multiple realities; mobile structures; and the life cycles of materials. Each project is research-based and constructs an architectural thesis that is explicitly manifested in the design proposition. The proposed buildings are contextual and interplay with the social and political facets of place. Iteration, experimentation and improvisation are balanced by traditions and continuities.

In addition, this year we developed a one-day drawing project together with students and staff from the Porto School of Architecture, also known as FAUP. Our shared work, called ‘Drawing in Dialogue’, explored how the buildings and landscapes of FAUP, designed by Álvaro Siza, have been populated by multiple intentions and experiences during the last 40 years. We responded to FAUP’s stories – told by the gardener, the carpenter, the engineer, the historian, the architect, the teacher and the student – with numerous hand drawings, the making of a collaborative intersectional topography and a machine learning drawing process.

Year 4

Patricia Bob, Jeff Qu Liu, Heba Mohsen, Nicholas Phillips, Kevin Kai Yin Poon, Thibault Quinn

Year 5

Daeyong Bae, Ceren Erten, Matthew King, Desire Lubwama, Karin Kei Nagano, Vilius Petraitis, Malgorzata Rutkowska, Anton Schwingen, Tia-Angelie Vijh

Technical tutors and consultants: James Daykin, Sophie McCracken, Ioannis Rizos, Jose Torero Cullen

Thesis supervisors: Hector Altamirano, Matthew Barnett Howland, Brent Carnell, Jane Hall, Guang Yu Ren, Tim Waterman, Oliver Wilton, Fiona Zisch

Critics: Jessam Al-Jawad, Nat Chard, Malina Dabrowska, Mary Duggan, Fernando Da Silva Ferreira, Anne Marie Galmstrup, Jonathan Hill, Clara Kraft Isono, Nikoletta Karastathi, Chee-Kit Lai, Alex Pillen, Sophia Psarra, Jonathan Tyrrell, Tim Waterman, Victoria Watson, Izabela Wieczorek

Workshop collaborators: Noémia Herdade Gomes with FAUP staff and students

Additional workshop support: Jose Pedro Sousa, Tim Waterman

Field trip collaborator: Fernando Da Silva Ferreira

Invited speakers: Joanne Chen, Ben Hayes

17.1 Group Work, Y5 ‘Dialogic Cube’. Sixty-four cubes carved to represent stories around Vila Nova de Foz Côa, where the palaeolithic open-air rock art is located.

17.2–17.3 Anton Schwingen, Y5 ‘Stone Operations’. The project investigates stone as a building material and as a vessel of collective memory. Porto is built from stone and rests on a solid granite massif. A new living quarter is constructed by quarrying space into the rock and rebalancing stone on the site. Stone forms an inhabitable geological stratum, serving as the foundation for multi-sited constructions in an ongoing assemblage. It combines inert local geology with nomadic light structures.

17.4 Vilius Petraitis, Y5 ‘Public Works: Performing the Backstage’. The project transforms construction and reconstruction processes into spatial experiences. It features three key elements – the backstage, reuse looms and a cork mason yard – existing at different timescales. The project reimagines the architect as a playwright, crafting dynamic performances of design that respond to the evolving needs of Porto. Through the project, we experience the city as a living, breathing assemblage undergoing perpetual change.

17.5 Matthew King , Y5 ‘Resonating Deep’. The Port of Leixões is expanding and its interests are diverging from those of adjacent communities and ecologies. How can architecture look to dismantle the monologic nature of the port, generating a dialogue between marine life, people and coastal infrastructure? This project looks at the convergence of coastal voices, stitching them together through a language of monolithic spaces and fractal surfaces. Beneath the tide, benthic life is encrusting and sediment is accumulating – processes that the architecture makes visible and explorable. 17.6–17.7 Tia-Angelie Vijh, Y5 ‘You Don’t Live to Work, You Work to Live’. The project intends to create a new and improved way of living for the people of Porto. It explores healthy living conditions through Portuguese textile heritage in conjunction with the current housing crisis. The project takes place in Porto along the banks of the Douro River, focusing on implementing a new housing scheme of white, biomorphic architecture designed as an extension of Porto’s industrial worker housing typology. 17.8, 17.10–17.11 Daeyong Bae, Y5 ‘Traces: Realisation of Deep Time’. The project explores traces in artefacts and architecture as a dialogue between the past, present and future. Inspired by palaeolithic engravings, it focuses on the Matosinhos oil refinery’s regeneration in Porto. During a four-year decontamination phase, the proposed architecture utilises cleaned soil for temporary buildings. These architectures symbolise the end of the fossil fuel era and mark the site’s history. Over time, the fragments of these buildings will remain, reminding us of the site’s past and the transition away from fossil fuels.

17.9 Jeff Qu Liu, Y4 ‘The Bonfim Detachment’. The project builds upon Claude Parent’s theory of the ‘oblique’ to create a dynamically unstable building. It incorporates an oblique economy of materials, promoting decay on the building components’ lifecycles, while perished materials are recycled into new components. The project, situated in the old industrial district of Porto, addresses housing shortages and conflict between locals and tourists through urbanism-centred workshops and repurposing what remains into a new living reality. 17.12–17.14 Ceren Erten, Y5 ‘Self/Other’. The project proposes a wellbeing facility run by a mental health charity in Porto. Catering to people in different zones of the cognitive spectrum, the scheme questions the perceived superiority of the shared reality of everyday life. Exploring societal tensions of experiencing otherness, the project creates a space for interaction between the perceived self and the other. It promotes openness and

acceptance, instead of avoidance and neglect in the context of mental health.

17.15 Kevin Kai Yin Poon, Y4 ‘The River Foundation’. The project challenges the existing large-scale river infrastructure, highlighting the irreversible damage caused by human intervention. Located in Foz Côa, Portugal, the proposal restores the scarred landscape and supports water-quality research. Utilising local materials and traditional techniques, the architecture sits in harmony with its surroundings. The site harnesses energy from the river through a decentralised, microrenewable approach. The project preserves the site’s significance, empowers the community and raises awareness around climate change and water management.

17.16, 17.19 Desire Lubwama, Y5 ‘Fabrica, Porto’. Fabrica takes the methodologies of both architecture and textile design in parallel to create a space with its own specific programme, fitted to its urban context. The project uses the graphical language of garment patterns, symbols and processes from both North African and Portuguese textiles, with space being transformed into structural garments. The dialogue between design control and losing control is explored through tailoring and surface dressing, which play as communicative capacities that inform the identity of the body.

17.17–17.18 Karin Kei Nagano, Y5 ‘Landscape of Excessive Labour’. The autonomous housing intervention in Campanhã celebrates non-standardised building tradition, emphasising expression, improvisation and agency. Situated in an abandoned industrial site, it reclaims embedded labour history. Addressing the global housing shortage, it provides a sustainable, affordable housing scheme for residents, challenging the rigid rhythms of working-class homes under the Estado Novo regime. Through the introduction of flexible fabric formwork and casting, it revolutionises construction methods.

17.20 Heba Mohsen, Y4 ‘Sit Tibi Terra Levis’. The project proposes a settlement and open-air museum on a rural Portuguese hillside. Using schema as a tool and representation as a strategy, architectural forms created from forgotten histories are recontextualised, distorting linearity and carrying characteristics from the original source to a new time. Ideas of singular authorship and the ‘definite’ hand of the architect are questioned as we examine what might happen to architectural practice if we allow self-organising worlds to bloom.

17.21–17.22 Thibault Quinn, Y4 ‘Mind the Gap’. This project proposes the reinstatement of Porto’s abandoned customs railway as a moving market, transporting goods and people in mobile carts which inhabit a framework perched on the Douro cliffside. Transcultural trade is reintroduced to an area where it has been forced out, with a system that also brings the market to new neighbourhoods along the line. An artery of import and export is reimagined with a migratory and reconfigurable architecture that adapts to the city’s social and geological flows.

17.23–17.24 Malgorzata Rutkowska, Y5 ‘The Part and the Whole: Layering Climate Conditions’. The project investigates the preconception of controlling thermal comfort through ceramic material innovations. It proposes a work/live community in a post-industrial site hidden in a backyard behind a bourgeois townhouse in the district of Bonfim, Porto. The city’s forgotten ceramic manufacturing past intertwines with communal living. The residents and visitors can explore spaces –private and public, indoor and outdoor – that create layers of intermediate climatic characteristics.

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17.9

Generational Phantoms / Contextual Futurism

Isaie Bloch, Ricardo de Ostos

How do we study and design architecture in places where we were not born or raised? Contemporary orthodoxy suggests leaving such places untouched or designed via the filter of localism. An alternative view is that the world is now more connected than ever via global networks, with ubiquitous technology enabling influencer trends and horizontal fabrication techniques as well as climate advocacy. Confronting both the gospel of localism and the global milieu, PG18’s brief titled Contextual Futurism asked students to consider civic spaces. How could civic projects suit pressing contemporary topics around culture and environment?

Using Cairo, Egypt as a research ground, students selected contemporary issues to explore. Instead of looking only for the genius loci – i.e. the spirit of place – they also conceived architecture as a transformative and disruptive urban practice. The unit promoted seminars and reading discussions on the concepts of modern tribalism, vernacular design and digital remixing. Between design workshops and reading seminars, students were invited to understand and develop their own approach to the balance of tradition and innovation. Beginning with a particular artefact, they drew inspiration from graphic novels and science fiction films such as Dune while addressing present-day realities of extreme climate and social change.

On the streets of Cairo, fifth-year student Ma Patricia Castello created a biophilic landscape that broke down the busy, car-centric city roads into green public landscapes. Exploring generative formfinding while following local garden and courtyard typologies, the project speculates on how new types of greenery may be introduced in urban centres.

Inspired by existing brickwork and ancient Egyptian monumentality, fourth-year student Momchil Petrinski articulates spaces in which water is used to bring relief and leisure to the outskirts of the capital. In maintaining a fine line between design and programme brief, the project celebrates the potential of civic spaces and enables accessibility to those in most need.

Contextual Futurism addresses the core of PG18 research into how innovation can take on architectural tradition and proposition can challenge contemporary strategies of decolonisation. Students learned the importance of thinking about architecture from the point of view of culture, seeing how it can lead to a critical but also optimistic approach both to the profession and to life itself.

Year 4

El Hadi Boudouch, King Long Chan, Ming Chun Chan, Silvan Cimpoesu, Tessa Lewes, Harrison Lovelock, Nada Maktari, Momchil Petrinski, Noah Robinson-Stanier, Madeleine RutherfordBrowne, Ben Smallwood, Robert Tang

Year 5

Ma Patricia Castelo, Jasper Choi, Tu-Ann Dao, Olivia Shiu, Olubiyi Oluwatosin Sogbesan

Technical tutors and consultants: Rob Haworth, Nick Ling

Critics: Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Mahala Attwell Thomas, Teoman Ayas, Paulo Estrada, Armor Gutierrez, Alexander Kolar, Jack Moreton, Yael Reisner, Andrei Zamfir

18.1 Momchil Petrinski, Y4 ‘The Obelisk, the Aqua and the Repository’. A clay brick civic centre of contextual futurism in the industrial area of Helwan, Cairo, explores the themes of ‘contextual disturbances’ as water scarcity, pollution, hydro-healing, disruptive structures and harsh climatic conditions transform the exploitative brick industry through water holism.

18.2–18.3 Olivia Shiu, Y5 ‘Transitioning Visibility and the Power of Choice’. The project’s ambition was to challenge the dynamics of gender equality in modern-day Cairo, where women face difficulties overcoming sociocultural barriers to personal and financial independence. By exploring what it means to be a contemporary Egyptian woman, the scheme is inspired by libertarian paternalism. The design features social dining areas that experiment with notions of privacy and exposure through sculptural brickwork, manifesting in a traditional ceramic craft school for local women and international students.

18.4–18.5 Madeleine Rutherford-Browne, Y4

‘Contemporary Sabil’. Situated in Al-Hattaba, the project explores harmonious solutions to Cairo’s water crisis and its difficult relationship with heritage. The sabil (fountain) is a contextualised response to confronting water scarcity and community needs through a filtration centre. Driven by the need for a sympathetic approach to the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s history, the project mediates between the industrial water filtration process and Al-Hattaba’s deep-rooted connection to water provision in ancient Cairo.

18.6 Ben Smallwood, Y4 ‘Outpost: Sahara Refugee Camp’. The project puts forward a formally planned community space that uses familiar yet abstracted geometric tribal patterns and Egyptian colours to dictate the design language and programme. The space is used to rebuild relationships and communities through social activities including teaching, praying, weaving and cooking while offering shelter from the harsh Saharan elements.

18.7–18.8 Ma Patricia Castelo, Y5 ‘Reclaiming Cairo: The Heliopolis Square Park’. A view from above the sprawling canopy of the urban park, reclaiming space lost to cars and returning it to the city’s inhabitants. The design creates liveable areas for humans and non-humans in the dense and hot city of Cairo, focusing on the creation of microclimates through textured forms, sunken gardens and sprawling canopies. A semi-enclosed space provides a peaceful refuge in a vendor’s garden. The project emphasises the importance of biodiversity in the city through the creation of sunken desert gardens, embedding the textures and forms of native Egyptian flora in the architecture of the park. 18.9–18.10 Harrison Lovelock, Y4 ‘Re:Thinking Plants’. The project addresses the misunderstandings regarding Cairo’s water scarcity and accessibility, focusing on the goal of bringing water equity to the city. Building on themes of water scarcity inspired by Dune (2021), the project draws parallels with the Egyptian government’s plans to build a new green capital within the desert.

18.11 Silvan Cimpoesu, Y4 ‘Markaz fan a’nazaha wa-tahtib: Tahtib for Social Cohesion – Permanent and Changing Memory of Identity’. Tahtib is the term for a traditional stick-fighting martial art. The project explores this art as a way to destabilise the divide between the isolated communities of Imbabah and Zamalek. By re-establishing a strong connection through a shared cultural identity, the project tackles aggression among the youth through the values of power and control, honesty and truth, and mutual respect for the ‘other’. 18.12–18.13 Nada Maktari, Y4 ‘Burying the Dome’. The project creates underground sanctuaries to congregate in, reviving freedom of speech through surrealist ideals and passageway interactions as a form of protest.

18.14 Tessa Lewes, Y4 ‘The Cairo Cancer Centre: The Nest’. The Nest is a support facility for cancer patients and their families. It tackles air pollution, cancer stigma and a crippled public health system in Cairo. This therapeutic space holds, comforts and offers hope for those affected by the disease.

18.15–18.17 Jasper Choi, Y5 ‘Sukhur Al’Amal: Boulders of Hope for the Old and the New’. The proposed concept provides a cultural complex, vocational facilities and open public spaces for youths and young adults from the informal community, Haggana, and the formal community, Gardenia City, to come together. The cultural complex celebrates Egypt’s stone-sculpting craftsmanship through its workshop, studio and research facility. Emphasising social and cultural engagement, the site allows the two communities to share and gain skills and experiences from each other. The design language, building placement and sculpted façade embody boulders of hope for Haggana and Gardenia.

18.18–18.19 Ming Chun Chan, Y4 ‘The Hull: Marine Cultural Exchange’. An amphibious crossover between a fishing village and an education centre in Warraq Island, Cairo. The project investigates the topics of mass eviction, industrial reform and production–education hybrids via multi-materiality and the tides of the Nile.

18.20 Robert Tang, Y4 ‘Farm Re(in)jected’. This project recontextualises informal settlements in peri-urban Cairo, by creating an urbanistic system that alters how the local context is perceived. Sampling the local vernacular of red brick housing blocks, the project utilises an irregular grid network to create a plateau that covers the entirety of the site, thus halting further uncontrolled informal expansion. This system creates sheltered areas of market space as well as reintroducing agriculture as the focal point of the community.

18.21–18.22 King Long Chan, Y4 ‘In Dialogue with Informality: Photojournalistic Hub in Downtown Cairo’. Based on the contradiction between informal street vendors and the local authorities, the project creates a photojournalistic hub in downtown Cairo. It provides spaces for photojournalism events that decode local stories and generate discussions between citizens and government parties. The project’s façade is made up of recycled plastic chain mail that acts as a drape, resembling the traditional Egyptian tent cloth, khayamiya, and moves according to internal activities.

18.23 El Hadi Boudouch, Y4 ‘Public?’. The project rethinks how public space relates to densely populated urban slums and how waste can be viewed as an asset in creating energy, producing building materials and giving inhabitants an economic incentive to innovate. Understanding how to incorporate waste within a multi-programme system that allows industrial, social and commercial interventions to develop is paramount.

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18.19

Phygital Bodies, Cities and Architectures

Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

PG20 embraces time-based design processes that allow designers to think of forms and spaces, as well as behaviours and events in constant flux – programmable, interactive and intelligent.

Some may argue that the future is ‘phygital’ – a combination of physical and digital experiences. As architects, we believe that architecture can provide key skills in theorising and designing phygitality as it understands both the physical environment (materiality, ecology, sustainability) as well as the digital environment (virtual realities, Metaverses, videogame worlds).

This year PG20 studied Venice, one of the best-known and most culturally active cities. Elegant and beautiful, simultaneously introverted and extroverted, secluded and yet overrun by tourists, the city in the lagoon is heavily endangered by rising sea levels. More must be done to preserve the city for future generations. Based on their research into Venice, students developed their own visions to turn it into a prototypical phygital city, taking into consideration both human and non-human components.

During our field trip we visited the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, titled The Milk of Dreams and curated by Cecilia Alemani. Its three main themes – the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies and the links between bodies and Earth – provided food for thought and a plethora of artistic phygital examples.

The Venice Biennale, established in 1895, today includes 29 national pavilions; in addition to the Giardini and the Arsenale sites, there are many more related venues. To make the Biennale more inclusive, students set out to re-imagine a new tradition, envisioning phygital pavilions beyond their scope of national representation and identity, activated not only during the Biennales, but all year long. The new pavilions were designed as flexible, adaptable and performative architectures; they catered for artists and architects exhibiting in loco, as much as for digital-native artists, architects and decentralised international collaboratives. By making them accessible to local physical visitors as well as to global digital audiences, these phygital pavilions may prove to be more equitable, inclusive and sustainable than the existing typologies.

Year 4

Andrei Bigan, Bianca Blanari, Chi Kit Matthew Choy, Yushan Jia, Chrysostomos Neocleous, Zaneta Ojczyk, Praefah (Muse) Praditbatuga, Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Kehui Wu

Year 5

Wojciech Karnowka, Paul Kohlhaussen, Isaac Plamiere-Szabo, Joseph Singleton, Luke Topping

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Clewlow (ARUP), Jeovana Naidoo (Atelier Ten), Michael Woodrow

Design Realisation practice tutor: Dave Edwards

Thesis supervisors: Roberto Bottazzi, Stylianos Giamarelos, Sean Hanna, Abel Maciel, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Andy Bow, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Kostas Grigoriadis, Hanadi Izzuddin, Clara Jaschke, Nikoletta Karastathi, Andreas Körner, Tom Kovac, Laura Nica, Theodore Tamvakis

Partners: Yasushi Ikeda (University of Tokyo), Tom Kovac (RMIT, CITYX), Dagmar Reinhard (University of Sydney)

Sponsors: The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation

20.1, 20.11, 20.18, 20.21 Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Y5 ‘Venetian Bladders’. The project tests the deployment of anaerobic digestion as a circular waste-to-resource system across the city at the scale of the body, the campo and the Giardini (mega-structure). It addresses sewage deposition in the lagoon by using bio-digestion to recirculate waste into electricity, heat and fertiliser. Infrastructure is devolved into the architecture as a generic strategy for all cities to become scalable, elastic and decentralised while connecting users to the built and natural environment. Using soft tectonics, the architecture convulses, changing the spatial character and programme in accordance with wider urban fluxes.

20.2 Y4 Pavilions ‘Venice Biennale 2029’. As part of the future architecture Biennale, fourth-year students envisioned a series of pavilion buildings situated in the Venetian Arsenale. These pavilions investigate the future curation of the Biennale and how it can be inhabited phygitally. The masterplan encourages each phygital pavilion to respond to the city’s contextual requirements, developing new design strategies to integrate flood defences, cultural spaces, clean energy, agriculture and smart infrastructure while tackling overtourism and refugee crises. Venice is transformed into an intelligent coastal hub by envisioning its future on multiple scales, from the micro-biological to the macro-urban.

20.3, 20.14 Praefah (Muse) Praditbatuga, Y4 ‘Symposia Zero’. This project proposes to establish an environmental forum in drowning Venice: inundated by the surging masses and rising seas, the city becomes the site for debating future challenges and opportunities. Symposia Zero interrogates crisis amid crisis by situating policyand decision-makers in the room – or the city – where it happens.

20.4 Bianca Blanari, Y4 ‘Cellular Venice’. This is a collection of modular cell prototypes that incorporate hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics as a medium for using salt and rainwater to grow crops as part of the Venice Biennale. These prototypes could be scaled up to a masterplan to address the city’s challenges in terms of flooding, food production and reliance on imports through its sustainable system integrated into the façade and floating foundations.

20.5 Chrysostomos Neocleous , Y4 ‘Self-Adaptive Research Facility’. The project explores the notion of an infrastructural ecology where architectural surfaces are transformed into architectural spaces of varied thicknesses, embedding structural, plumbing, lighting and HVAC systems within the building’s voids. Biological systems encourage the exploration of architecture in the phygital world to develop strategies and tools for a multi-layered integrated assembly that blurs the boundaries between infrastructure and architecture.

20.6 Andrei Bigan, Y4 ‘The Citadel of Venice’. The project takes a dual approach, establishing a permanent ‘national’ pavilion for stateless individuals at the Venice Biennale. This physical space offers a dynamic platform for artistic creation, exhibition and exchange. At the same time, a digital interface allows users to participate in co-embodiment, exploring the virtual pavilion alongside randomly paired companions. This immersive experience prompts reflection on identity, body perception and reality construction and fosters meaningful connections.

20.7 Chi Kit Matthew Choy, Y4 ‘Venice Mirage’. Responding to the Venice Biennale’s lack of infrastructure for digital mediums, the project proposes an immersive digital gallery for the event. Reflecting on the programme’s immense heat output, an aluminium skin with a simulated growth texture derived from existing site conditions acts as a heat dissipation device for the immersion pods throughout the gallery.

20.8 Zaneta Ojczyk, Y4 ‘Recrafting Venice’. The pavilion preserves community and cultural heritage by halting the displacement of the local population. With time, the pavilion will be augmented. Initially, the interior surfaces of the pavilion are blank; over time, they will be enhanced with physical and digital ornamentation by adding a digital layer of information into the physical fabric of the building through AR technology.

20.9 Yushen Jia, Y4 ‘Aqua Frontier’. This is an artist residency programme at the Venice Biennale that embodies the concept of the symbioscene and emphasises the dynamic interactions between built environments and biodiversity. Over time, the project will undergo a gradual transformation, reflecting the passage of time and the eventual reclamation by nature. It will be a designed ruin by the year 2100.

20.10 Kehui Wu, Y4 ‘Aural/Temporal Landscapes’. The project addresses how data-driven landscapes could become an integral part of the urban environment. By responding to the unique noise conditions of the site with masterplanning and the design of a phygital arts centre, it questions existing typologies while exploring relationships between sound, nature and the human body.

20.12, 20.15, 20.23 Paul Kohlhaussen, Y5 ‘Venetian Sand Engines’. In considering landscape and architecture as phygital bodies, hydrodynamic data is used to generate synthetically sedimented interventions that diversify the lagoon’s local geomorphology. Embedded within these, a decentralised research facility and educational campus are proposed for a new inter-institutional department of geosciences for regional universities. The project seeks to critique the anthropocentric relationship that the city has with its surroundings, and does so by functioning as a sand engine in an alternative approach to land reclamation that sustainably nourishes the lagoon’s starved sediment budget. Through its orchestrated deconstruction via controlled erosion, the dynamic system actively contributes to the regeneration of the wetland’s geomorphic diversity.

20.13, 20.19, 20.20 Wojciech Karnowka, Y5 ‘Ocular Envelopes’. The project navigates through body, vision and space, considering new paradigms of design through multi-dimensional technological and spatial protocols within the framework of virtual and physical reality. The visual perception data stream is processed to identify transient spatial perception voids and generates new spaces of collective consensus.

20.16 Joseph Singleton, Y5 ‘Inter-Grid’. Inter-Grid is a masterplan of Venice, morphing a physical, digital and diagrammatic 1:1 scale Venice into a system that enables new myths and futures for the city. A transitionary frame apparatus atop the existing system feeds into a community-led construction project, developed over the course of the lagoon’s encroachment into the city due to rising water levels.

20.17 Luke Topping, Y5 ‘Text in the Making’. Investigating spatial forms of text that have been overlooked in digital remediation, the project examines the potential of text to generate architectural mimesis. This concept envisions a situation in the text-driven AI world where a door is a page, a building is a book and a city is a library.

20.22 Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Y4 ‘Mausoleum of Flesh’. This project tackles the energy crisis affecting Italy by exploring innovative ways to address it. It experiments with the unconventional idea of converting the bodies of the deceased into an energy resource through the process of decomposition. Specifically, it proposes the design of a tomb that explores the cycle of life and decay through multiple bio-stages with machine pods embedded inside the wall of the mausoleum.

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20.21

(dis)Continuity

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

(dis)Continuity:

1. a state of stability and the absence of disruption 2. the maintenance of continuous action

In recent times through pandemics and economic and social change, we have depended on systems of measurement and feedback to maintain a sense of continuity – keeping economies and society operating in the face of instability. Architecture both adapts to and resists these dynamic forces. Architects find themselves operating within one current system while always imagining and creating future alternatives.

This year PG21 considered continuity and discontinuity. How do we design with multiple systems, that overlay, combine or break? Can architecture sustain and also rebel?

Throughout the year, students were asked to develop their own design process using analogue or digital techniques, physical making, drawing and digital methods. Through their personal research students identified combinations of continuous and discontinuous systems. These included explorations of time, materiality, data and perception. Areas of research were wide and diverse. We encouraged students to draw on personal interests, obsessions or topical subjects to narrow their focus. We celebrate the juxtaposition of a personal approach which might be intuitive and/or highly subjective against data or science that is objective or shared knowledge.

‘Florence is like a town that has survived itself.’

William Hazlitt, 1826

Our field trip this year took place in Florence, Italy, the iconic city of the Renaissance and home to scientific, financial and artistic revolutions. Historically Florence created a great discontinuity in thinking and ideas, but is now a city that is highly preserved and resistant to change. From the 13th century to the early 16th century, one bold experiment in the arts and sciences succeeded another: artists were thinkers and painters were mathematicians. Leonardo da Vinci had a plan for diverting the River Arno and Michelangelo imagined how a mountain could be turned into a piece of sculpture (Eve Borsook, 1981). After the dramatic flooding of Florence in 1966, the city incubated a series of radical design groups including the 9999, UFO, Archizoom Associati and Superstudio – designing discos, guerrilla inflatables, jumpsuits and cities with continuous flows of information such as the No-Stop City and The Continuous Monument

Year 4

Rory Browne, Zijie Cai, Ho Kiu (J effrey) Cheung, Ioana-Maria Drogeanu, Benjamin Faure, Austin McGrath

Year 5

Sebastian Coupe, Neelkanth Depala, Hugo Loydell, Oscar Maguire, Gia San Tu

Technical tutors and consultants: Brian Eckersley (Eckersley O Callaghan), Tom Holberton, Jeovana Naidoo (Atelier Ten)

Critics: Julian Besems, Roberto Bottazzi, Ali Eslami, Naomi Gibson, Kostas Grigoriadis, Melih Kamaoglu, Elly Selby, Jasmin Sohi

21.1–21.3 Oscar Maguire, Y5 ‘Probobli Boboli’. This project explores the potential of using probabilistic simulations as part of a creative process for design, rather than simply a tool for validation. The design process utilises probabilistic models to generate networks for the distribution of material across the site. The project reimagines the Renaissance garden and explores the interplay between man-made design and the chaotic forces of nature, looking into what this suggests about the relationship between architecture, probability and computation.

21.4–21.8 Hugo Loydell, Y5 ‘Reframing Florence’. Taking shape as a frame-making facility serving the galleries in Florence, the project explores the gaze as a tool. Utilising a bespoke eye-tracking headset, the gaze is integrated into the design process. A fixation capture system allows users to compose new architectures based on unique perspectives captured through experiences within the city. The results emphasise the significance of the individualised perspective, not simply the physical form.

21.9 Sebastian Coupe, Y5 ‘Isolotto Weir: Ephemerality on the Arno Riverbank’. Driven by pneumatics and powered by the Arno, the Isolotto Weir is a riverside piazza that morphs and transforms as it responds to pressure flows. Inspired by Florence’s festive tradition and the event architecture of its postwar radical architecture movement, this metamorphic piazza of fluidity and motion contrasts with the historical form of a city stuck in its past.

21.10 Gia San Tu, Y5 ‘Visualising the Intangible’. Up until the 1861 unification of Italy, the peninsula was divided into several different states, each with its own dialect. Today, only one-tenth of the population of Italy speak their regional dialetto. It is within this context that the project proposes the celebration of each region’s dialect, by pointing out similarities and differences between words to educate the younger generation of Italy about endangered languages. The architecture is therefore a collective of dialects translated into geometric forms to preserve the intangible.

21.11 Benjamin Faure, Y4 ‘Il Pellegrinaggio del Galluzzo’. The project finds inspiration in the historical significance of bells in shaping the identity and borders of Florence. In reminiscence of the marble-quarrying methods employed in Carrara, Italy, the intricate Florentine soundscape is translated into meticulously crafted cutting taxonomies. These gestures are then used to investigate the potential for sounds to play a primary role in carving an architecture. Expressed as a museum on a pilgrimage route from the noise-imbued historical gates of the city to the silent Certosa di Galluzzo, a Carthusian monastery in its periphery, the proposal extends the investigation with sound at all scales, from stone to space and building to landscape.

21.12 Zijie Cai, Y4 ‘Cimitero Della Montagna Verde (Chinese Cemetery in Prato)’. Prato, an Italian city known for textiles, has a significant Chinese population of around 45,000 Chinese residents. However, Chinese–Italian social relations have become tense in recent years. The project recreates the Via Pistoiese funeral procession through anamorphic distortions and blending cultures in 3D forms. The proposal extends to the Cava di Figline cemetery and promotes coexistence by offering space for diverse cultural, agricultural, national and religious events.

21.13 Neelkanth Depala, Y5 ‘Re-Dressing Florence’. The project used text-to-image AI technology to create a digital fashion line and architectural design within the city of Florence. The combination of new AI technology and existing fabrication techniques in the fashion and architecture realms has led to the emergence of a unique design approach.

21.14 Ioana-Maria Drogeanu, Y4 ‘To Design Through Gestures (A Cooking Academy)’. This project investigates the potential of virtual reality as a tool for comprehending spatial design across multiple scales. Using augmented reality in conjunction with a projector, the gestures performed by chefs during cooking were traced, scaled and integrated into the design as architectural elements. A TouchDesigner script facilitated the accurate reproduction of these rescaled gestures at 1:1 scale by projecting them onto walls with a delay of 10–60 seconds.

21.15 Ho Kiu (J effrey) Cheung, Y4 ‘The Guild of Plastics’. The project captures gestures from artisans and generates the movement into a 3D form by applying a computational weave inspired by the logic of a Jacquard loom and card. The construction combines the use of welding, sculpting, plastic 3D printing and gilding, bringing together several different craft disciplines reminiscent of the guilds during the Renaissance.

21.16 Austin McGrath, Y4 ‘The Florence Political Forum’. The project delves into the implementation of artificial intelligence in the design process while purposefully exploring the inherently weird, quirky and uncanny nature of near-perfect AI. Through this unique perspective, the project establishes a political education forum in the captivating city of Florence, Italy.

21.17–21.18 Rory Browne, Y4 ‘Scoring Florence’. Scoring Florence is derived directly from the rhythms, cycles and durations of the city. A contemporary art space on the River Arno, the gallery is developed through a reconstructed digital score of the city. The spatial score reflects the rhythms driving Florence. The architectural score is then ‘performed’ by the designer, working directly with time and duration. Scoring Florence suggests architectural scores can become a widespread notational method within the design process, resulting in a highly site-specific and personal architectural response.

21.15

The Urbanism of Friendship

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal

Infrastructures such as roads, buildings or transit systems have historically been the focus for most planners, designers and public and private bodies that commission our built environment. They are also the entry point into the design process for most planners and architects.

Lifestyles, however, are seldom studied as part of the design process. They are often regarded as of secondary importance – a mere consequence of infrastructure design, rather than its trigger.

This year PG22 students have been rethinking and redesigning cities from one specific lifestyle perspective: friendship.

The emergence, continuity and intensity of friendships in cities strongly depend on their material features, such as:

the ease and modes of mobility through the city and between neighbourhoods – whether this happens in private vehicles, public transport or active modes of transport such as cycling or walking;

building typologies – whether most people live in apartments or individual houses; whether uses are mixed in plan, in section or segregated by neighbourhood; the density of dwellings per hectare – how compact or how spread out the city is and how accessible its green and public spaces are.

Social and human factors such as citizens’ financial aspirations, the division of domestic labour or the age and ethnic makeup of the city are equally relevant.

City design and planning has evolved to cater for the needs of traditional families and business: housing is designed based on the model of the nuclear family and transport networks are optimised to take workers from their homes in the periphery to their jobs in the city centre. Other forms of organisation, activities or relationships, however, have been systematically marginalised. The work of the unit critically challenges this by designing urban pavilions, facilities, neighbourhoods and a visual manifesto of the ideal city driven by friendship.

We are conscious that by designing the city we are also configuring social networks, daily routines, meeting points and rituals. The unit has critically evaluated tools for design that go beyond the technological, geometric, visual or aesthetic, developing a common scale to measure the quality of architecture by how it is able to create inclusivity, civic culture, intimacy, soft normative values, social visibility, cultural mediation, ephemeral or long-term friendships.

Year 4

Cecilia Cappellini, Brandon Chan, Latisha Chan, Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Ching Tung Cheryl Lee, Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Yan Ching Ellie To, Ziyue Lorena Yan, Yue Yu

Year 5

Long Yin Au, Deluo Chen, Ayla Hamou El Mardini, Jack Nash, Hei Tung Michael Ng

Design Realisation Tutors: Felicity Barbour, Gonzalo Coello de Portugal

Structures Tutor: Roberto Marín Sampalo

Environmental Tutor: Lidia Guerra

Thesis supervisors: Camilo Boano, Stephen Gage, Guang Yu Ren

Critics: Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Fares Al Rajal, Stuart Beattie, Amanda Callaghan, Hadin Charbel, Carrie Coningsby, Naomi Gibson, Kaowen Ho, Marianna Janowicz, Alberte Lauridsen, Déborah López Lobato, Ana Mayoral, Matthieu Mereau, Oliver Partington, Alicia Pivaro, Yael Resiner, Lewis Williams, Simon Wong

22.1–22.2 Deluo Chen, Y5 ‘Let’s Play: Exploring Post-Covid Friendship through the Game’. During the Covid-19 pandemic, people lost connection with acquaintances and strangers, a connection as crucial for mental health as that between close friends. The project stages an immersive play in the neighbourhood of Shatou District, Guangdong, China. A section of a heritage building and an abandoned building in front of it are renovated in the centre of the play.

22.3 Ziyue Lorena Yan, Y4 ‘Shoreditch Urban Greenhouse’. The project takes inspiration from the study of traditional English gardens and steel structure greenhouses, merging them with a vision that reimagines London’s recycling system and city farm conditions. Repurposing the historical Shoreditch Goodsyard, the project creates a sustainable space for community engagement, urban agriculture and environmental consciousness.

22.4 Ayla Hamou El Mardini, Y5 ‘The People’s Congress’. This project proposes a market, town hall and food preservation and crafts workshops – all run by selffunded local civil society organisations. The project was initiated through the general critique of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, being a dramatically sectarian city, an aspect that is exacerbated by the city’s infrastructure.

22.5–22.6 Yue Yu, Y4 ‘Floating Farm’. The floating farm is a productive landscape reshaping the relationship of local neighbourhoods. Through the farm, residents can experience the impact that farm animals can have on an area like never before. The farm also serves as a centre for locals to gather and communicate, transforming the discrete social activities of local residents. The farm follows a carbon-neutral vision to build a sustainable community in which an organic waste recycling system and green energy are incorporated.

22.7 Hei Tung Michael Ng, Y5 ‘Absolute Obsolete’. This project empowers young adults in the city through a co-living lifestyle that encourages self-customisation of living spaces and self-expression, fostering collaboration in shared spaces. It revitalises a demolished To Kwa Wan industrial site in Hong Kong, serving as a testbed to reintegrate marginalised youth by equipping them with automobile and house repair skills.

22.8–22.11 Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Y4 ‘Timber Tinkerland School’. The project focuses on creating a timber school that nurtures friendship and creativity through architecture. The school provides a unique learning experience by encouraging children to engage in hands-on ‘tinkering’ through activities such as sewing and painting. Montessori pedagogies are integrated to offer diverse educational ways of connecting with the community through storytelling and theatre. The project emphasises the design of glulam columns and explores their adaptability to facilitate various forms of interactive play and engagement with the architectural structure.

22.12 Latisha Chan, Y4 ‘The Museum of the Oriental Odyssey’. This project is not simply a museum – it also takes visitors on a historic journey full of adventure through a series of immersive experiences that give an understanding of the history of Limehouse and that of Chinese settlement in London. Using the word ‘Oriental’, meaning ‘East’, allows the museum to be culturally inclusive and reflects the Chinese settlement in London which followed from the East India Company’s activities in the Far East.

22.13 Cecilia Cappellini, Y4 ‘The Paper Sail’. The proposal of the paper sail suggests a new form of urbanism of friendship in the context of Scampia, Naples. The design proposes a facility which redefines relationship dynamics in a context that, since the 1960s, has been extremely influenced by the hierarchical system of the criminal organisation, the Camorra. The building

design of the sail repurposes the empty lot of the knocked-down residential housing of the Vela Verde by exploiting paper construction in the envelope of the building and repurposing the construction material obtained by knocking down the Vela Gialla and Vela Rossa.

22.14 Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Y4 ‘Rethinking the Supermarket through the Dominance of Food’. The project is a pilot study run by a supermarket chain, looking to enhance the transition between the green belt and the city. The focus is to create a new approach towards the supermarket, reducing the distance between production and consumption. This will also enhance active governance and public engagement within the local community.

22.15 Jack Nash, Y5 ‘Vocation in the City’. The project takes a perspective on the crafters of historical urban centres, exploring how their collective dedication to the advancement of their craft, in learning, developing and exchanging skills, served as a catalyst for forging rich, close-knit communities.

22.16 Ching Tung Cheryl Lee, Y4 ‘York Road Poetry Station’. The project fosters friendship through retrofitting York Road tube station, an abandoned London Underground station on the Piccadilly Line, with poetry. The design makes poetry more accessible and engaging for the public while encouraging people to slow down and appreciate the beauty of art in everyday life. Sharing feelings through the medium of poetry allows people to feel closer to each other and more understood.

22.17 Yan Ching Ellie To, Y4 ‘The Kitchenless Estate of Friendship’. In the hope of creating a city of friendship, the project looks at improving relationships within an existing community, specifically within the housing typology. The project proposes a new type of housing estate management in Hong Kong, based on the idea of creating a close-knit community through a collective diet and collaborative housekeeping. The proposal puts forward a ‘kitchenless’ ideology to not only encourage bonds within the locality but also improve residents’ quality of living, restoring Cantonese home cooking into the daily diets of our fast-paced generation.

22.18–22.19 Brandon Chan, Y4 ‘Wardrobe Wonderland’. This project is based in the vibrant Shoreditch Brick Lane area, renowned for its rich fashion history. With a strong focus on sustainable fashion, the project creates a dynamic space that connects consumers, designers and ethical fashion brands, fostering meaningful relationships and friendships through fashion.

22.8

22.9

It’s About Time

Penelope

Haralambidou, Michael Tite

PG24 is a group of architectural storytellers employing film, animation, VR/AR and physical modelling techniques to explore architecture’s relationship with time. We are in search of bold new narratives to help us make sense of the complexity of today’s world. Despite its omnipresence, time is often sidelined in design thought – overlooked by more prominent questions of aesthetics, budget and risk. Introducing time as a fundamental agent in design thinking can unfold a chronicle of assembly; predict a structure’s response to weather; calculate future patterns of occupation; introduce sound and relink architectural composition with music; offer an amplified sense of inhabitation and empathy; and connect with history and imagine the future. Long-term thinking helps us to consider the entire lifecycle of a building, from its conception to its death. Moreover, our highly mediated and interconnected world appears to accelerate the need for urgent social and environmental action. A sense of crisis looms daily: we are too ‘slow’ in our response to the climate emergency; our ‘fast-paced’ lives are overly dependent on carbon-intensive activity; inequalities seem to be deepening ever more quickly. Are we simply running out of time?

This year PG24 questioned time and its scientific, philosophical, psychological and political constitution. Are our global conventions of measuring time entrapping us? Can we escape international time and the hegemony of the clock? Can we find alternative temporal systems and different ways of being in time? Can design help us become better attuned to planetary movements and the circadian rhythms of our bodies? What is the architecture of uchronia, the temporal utopia?

This year’s brief stops to reflect on how a deeper consideration of time, duration and speed might trigger bolder and more effective solutions to problems that confront our bodies, cities, landscapes and technosphere. In November we took a field trip to the Netherlands and visited the 10th Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, titled It’s About Time, from which we took our inspiration. The students’ work was informed by the exhibition’s formulation of three main designer strategies based on different velocities of change: the Ancestor, the Activist and the Accelerator. The unit defined 2072, 50 years from now, as a chronological orientation point that united all our projects.

Year 4

Maciej Adaszewski, Jean Bell, Weiting Chen, Zixi Chen, Ryan Darius, Beatrice Frant, Rachel Livesey, Yixuan Lu, Joshua Nicholas, Nikoleta Petrova, Ewan Sleath, Mārtiņš Starks

Year 5

Loukis Menelaou, Cira Oller Tovar, Joshua Richardson, Matthew Semião Carmo Simpson, Chak Ming Anthony Tai

Technical tutor and consultant: Matthew Lucraft

Thesis supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, Tim Lucas, Sophia Psarra, Oliver Wilton, Stamatis Zografos

Critics: Vitika Agarwal, Laura Allen, Uday Berry, Matthew Butcher, Nat Chard, Marjan Colletti, John Cruwys, Edward Denison, Camille Dunlop, Jack Holmes, Pedro Gil, Kostas Grigoriadis, Will Jefferies, Daniel Johnston, Matthew Lucraft, Emma-Kate Matthews, Matei Mitrache, Giles Nartey, Caireen O’Hagan, George Proud, Sophia Psarra, Elly Selby, Jonathan Tyrrell, Tom Ushakov, Sandra Youkhana, Fiona Zisch

24.1–24.2

Chak Ming Anthony Tai, Y5 ‘Kowloon Reimagined: Bridging Hong Kong’s Past and Future’. This research project explores the preservation of Hong Kong’s identity through the sustainable redevelopment and regeneration of 1950s tenement buildings. The city has faced a loss of identity due to increasingly largescale redevelopment and gentrification in local areas. These practices, accompanied by the constant demolition and profit-driven culture, have hindered the development of a distinct architectural identity for Hong Kong. The investigated district of Kowloon City was a vibrant neighbourhood where multicultural communities gathered. Currently, the area faces the imminent displacement of its ageing community to make way for large-scale housing developments. The project offers an alternative vision that prioritises local communities over corporate profits and develops a typology that conserves Hong Kong’s culture and identity through adaptive reuse. By exploring strategies that establish a symbiotic relationship with the existing fabric, this research revives materials associated with local traditions and history. Notably, timber emerges as a forgotten material with the potential to bridge Hong Kong’s future architectural identity with its pre-colonial past. By exploring new technologies in timber, this project ultimately develops a range of regenerative strategies across various scales. 24.3–24.6 Loukis Menelaou, Y5 ‘The Future Is in the Past’. The Palmscape Hotel has everything to ensure the most relaxing of holidays: seaside views, an infinity pool, a meze restaurant and direct access to the beach. Or so it seems... ‘The Future Is in the Past’ is an allegorical exploration of narrative-driven architecture, virtual world-building and the reinterpretation of history to shape our future. The narrative is led by the oral stories of displaced Cypriot people who in July of 1974 were forced to move away from their hometown and can now only access it through their minds and memories. The architectural intention manifests itself as a resort, located in the ghost town of Varosha in Cyprus. The design and materiality of the spaces are informed by the metaphors they carry and the actors in Cypriot history they represent. As an allegory of the displaced person’s mind, the Palmscape Hotel exists as a projection, haunted by the trauma of war. It serves as a reminder that history is a construction, urging the audience to embrace alternative readings and break away from a linear understanding of the past to shape a progressive future. 24.7–24.10 Matthew Semião Carmo Simpson, Y5 ‘The Devil You Don’t’. Drawing inspiration from Bergsonian theories of time and memory, the proposal examines the relationship between architecture, music and memory through the lens of dementia. Parasitising the infrastructure of the abandoned York Road tube station, the project creates an architectural promenade. The programme combines and spatialises the premises of patient-specific music playlists and sensory gardens, deploying virtual space to stimulate the senses and evoke specific memories of a fictional protagonist’s life. Brick, known for its nostalgic connection to British architectural heritage, was chosen as the primary material. Claybased ornamentation complements the brickwork, bridging tradition and innovation. The proposal introduces a proportional system based on musical notes and harmonies, translating musical form into architecture. The entire scheme’s development, from arrangement to detailing, was governed by this musical process. The interdisciplinary methodology incorporated hand drawing, digital modelling, rendering, film and musical composition. The film deploys music, moving images and architecture to depict the process of mental deterioration. What is being proposed is less the building itself and more a system for generating space – virtual or

otherwise – and a new niche in spatial practice. At the highest level, the proposal serves as a call for the profession to embrace its greatest good and essential purpose – its ability to bridge the disconnected. 24.11–24.14 Joshua Richardson, Y5 ‘Ontario, Archipelago’. 01 July 2067: Toronto, a city of 13 million people, becomes the host city for an international World’s Fair to commemorate and critique its own bicentennial. Five years after the 2067 expo, Toronto has cemented its status as the testbed for subversive and dynamic aquatic architectures. New ways of inhabiting the city emerge to reconcile past misdeeds with a new-found optimism for the future. The project concept is positioned as a housing commune born from this future Canadian expo, whereby aquatic architectures are explored and developed in tandem with a speculative future national identity. Akin to Montreal’s Habitat ‘67, the project addresses the challenges of a rapidly changing world. In response to a growing housing crisis in the Greater Toronto area as well as centuries-long tensions involving indigenous communities, these new homes propose an ‘ethical’ alternative to private landownership across Canadian cities. The ‘House Hippo’ and its associated extensions, accessories and pavilions exist to critique the widespread and popular models of suburban living for future generations while tacitly indulging the habits of an increasingly consumer-driven world. These aquatic architectures, modular both in their construction and symbolism, posit a unique architecture of ‘kit-Canadiana’ that organically multiplies across Canadian coastlines with cult-like influence and exuberance. Altogether, the project remains suspended between context-driven practice and satire to generate a series of regionally and culturally informed, joyfully humorous architectures fitted to re-envision the ‘Great White North’ of tomorrow. 24.15–24.18 Cira Oller Tovar, Y5 ‘ Cosmorama’. This project comprises an innovative research centre and museum dedicated to the study of architecture for endangered landscapes. Its name, derived from the Greek words kosmos meaning ‘world’ and orama meaning ‘scene’, aptly captures the essence and objective of this endeavour. Serving as a focal point for architects and scientists alike, the structure offers a distinct and immersive educational experience that transcends physical limitations. By harnessing state-ofthe-art technologies, it seamlessly unites remote locations within one captivating space. Beyond its capacity to generate and replicate extreme climates, the edifice assumes an instrumental role in disseminating real-time information by reporting on the prevailing conditions of the selected environments. Through the integration of live data feeds, monitoring systems and visual displays, it provides up-to-date climate parameters. This approach underscores the significance of faithfully representing the unspoiled magnificence of landscapes and presenting them within their rightful context, nurturing a profound understanding and appreciation for natural environments while emphasising the imperative of their conservation. In alignment with this ethos, the architectural design incorporates local materials, effectively mirroring the surrounding environment and engendering a harmonious coexistence with the site. The project transcends conventional notions of a museum or research centre, assuming the character of an ever-evolving landscape in its own right.

24.12 24.13

What Is Your Measure?

Nat Chard, Emma-Kate Matthews

Measurement is critical to architectural operations. The siting and location of parts depend on our capacity to register the geometry and nature of the materials we use and how to put them together. We do not dispute the importance of measurement, but we observe the cultural shift in the political agency of the measure and the consequence that this has had on architectural values.

In many realms within the politician’s reach, there has been an increasing tendency to measure what people do as a means of control and passing on responsibility. Consequently we live in a culture where things are valued because they can be measured rather than because they matter. Many of the attributes of architecture that elevate one project above another defy numerical appropriation, yet they register strongly in our experience. The reductive nature of conventional measuring can have a numbing and normalising effect on architectural production. PG25 looks at ways of valuing those dimensions that matter to each student and sit beyond conventional means of calibration.

PG25 is interested in the processes and methods of design. It explores how they can nurture ideas that go beyond the oftenreductive logic of programme and performance specifications. We are interested in the parallels between how the medium of design can inform the content of a project and how construction techniques can embody those ideas in the built work.

Our unit is interested in teasing out the particularities of each student’s concerns, and in finding ways to explore and realise those ambitions. Some students have developed media for exploration that translate directly into production; others focus on developing the medium for researching an idea or the techniques for realising their concerns.

This year PG25 travelled to Brussels and Amsterdam for their field trip to study examples of architecture where the architect was able to express their fascinations through their built works. These included the work of the Belgian designer Victor Horta. We visited museums where exhibits displayed a precise resonance between idea and technique, such as in the construction of musical instruments and anatomical models. We also studied techniques of display used in other museums to enhance the value of their objects’ content.

Year 4

Vasily Babichev, Samantha Dorrity, Simona Drabuzinskaite, Soyun Lim, Olivia O’Driscoll, Natalie Rayya, William Smith

Year 5

Theo Brader-Tan, Florence Hemmings, Hanna HendricksonRebizant, Yu-Wen (Yvonne) Huang, Joe Johnson, Ziwei Liu, Matthew Needham, Olivia O’Callaghan

Technical tutors and consultants: Bedir Bekar, Hareth Pochee, Jerry Tate

Thesis supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, Andrew Barnett, William Victor Camilleri, Paul Dobraszczyk, Shaun Murray, Sophia Psarra, Fiona Zisch

Critics: William Victor Camilleri, Peter Cook, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Alex Pillen, Jerry Tate

25.1–25.2 Ziwei Liu, Y5 ‘Rehearsing and Acting Architecture as a Design Process’. OMA is an architectural office that engages in the practice of physically acting out and rehearsing architecture. Through this process, the architects gain experience in learning to ‘be’ architecture. The project investigates a system of varying power and levels of responsibility between the body and architecture.

25.3–25.5 Joe Johnson, Y5 ‘Laminated Vessels: Moulding a Hostel from Flat Sheets’. This project explores the design and fabrication of moulded timber components –laminated geometries with curvature in more than one plane. The project examines how curvature can be drawn from developable sheets of veneer. Woodwind instruments were developed to explore how moulded timber shells could form enclosed vessels. These studies were then reimagined as inhabitable spaces.

25.6 Florence Hemmings, Y5 ‘Characters at the Hairdressers’. The project explores relational performances and interactions between invented architectural characters within the programmatic charge of a hairdressers, sited within a Brussels arcade. The characters are assembled under a series of mundane alibis, and their individual mannerisms are present as both drawing tools and machined pieces.

25.7–25.9 Theo Brader-Tan, Y5 ‘So Brick, Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want’. The project researches the methods by which architecture is typically practised. It investigates traditional methods of drawing through parallel projection and uncovers novel, alternative ways of arriving at architecture. This project renews a wholly masonry architecture. Clay is of particular interest due to its ability to be both plastic and hard, such as soft clay or rigid ceramic.

25.10–25.11 Olivia O’Callaghan, Y5 ‘Somewhere I Have Never Travelled’. Where do we go when we read? The project, designed for Amsterdam’s city centre, answers this by creating a bar residing in the metaphysical; its drawings invite you in, wherever you may be visiting from. The pencil artwork emerges from data collected within the site at dusk when the pub opens. Small devices constructed from black mirrors and poetic fragments were taken to the site at this time and created textual openings, using the fragments as locators.

25.12, 25.15 Hanna Hendrickson-Rebizant, Y5 ‘Bodily Aberrations: The Anatomical Bathhouse’. This project asks the public to suspend their beliefs and delve into sublime unreality, asking what if architecture could be a fleshy body – an autonomous body with hair, spots, stretch marks, flab and inner workings, much like our own bodies. A body capable of physiological responses such as blushing, getting goosebumps, sweating and excreting, as well as being capable of growing and metastasising.

25.13 Olivia O’Driscoll, Y4 ‘Orchestrating a Compassionate Travel’. This project proposes an acoustic orchestration of a Brussels metro station to momentarily accompany the lonely traveller on their daily commute. Instruments have been devised from the usual station infrastructure to bring metro travel to life. As the lonely traveller embarks on their daily commute through the city, moments of interaction between the traveller and the architecture of the station have been orchestrated to compassionately guide and accompany users through the space.

25.14 Natalie Rayya, Y4 ‘Bondage in Fifth Gear’. This project teases the boundaries of pleasure. It seeks new, unexpected pleasures by exploring the idea that stimulation could come from an architecture of sensation. It embraces otherness and provocation and gives architecture a surreal and sensual life. The proposal is a culmination of fetishistic poesies drawn from a tectonic, mechano-erotic investigation of pleasure and sensuality, a flirtation between speed and intimacy.

25.16 Simona Drabuzinskaite, Y4 ‘Artificial Womb Pregnancy Home’. Exploring the opportunities of prenatal architecture, the pregnancy home is a temporary residence where families cohabit with an artificial womb. The baby moves through five womb vessels correlating to the five stages of physical and sensory development. The family space is also rearranged in response to this. The architecture becomes a pregnant body, relieving the pregnancy apparatus from the burdens of physicality and freeing it to become a purely relational process. This new and improved body discusses ideas of the separation of subjectivities and softening of thresholds.

25.17 Vasily Babichev, Y4 ‘The Institute of Environmental Abstraction: Unmasking Catenary Architectural Abstraction’. This project investigates abstraction as a tool between technology and the more-than-human world. This term refers to our understanding of the processes that make up our ecological environment. Through developing methods of reflection and projection, the programme explores optics and catenary simulation as abstracted wonders of the physical world.

25.18 Matthew Needham, Y5 ‘Rue Du Départ’. This project investigates the potential of layering in architecture. Through the iterative deployment of analogue drawing, model-making and film animation, these methodologies reveal a series of layers within alternate architectural worlds. Using a cyclical process of filming, drawing and modelling, different spaces are re-animated, creating a constant feedback loop. This enables a method of flattening and stretching across different media, which reveals the many different spatial arrangements that can exist in the same instance.

25.19 William Smith, Y4 ‘The Erosive Musical Laboratory’. The project conceives an experimental space where music and erosion intersect with the exploration of unconventional musical techniques and compositions influenced by erosion. The project examines the morphology of erosion, investigating alternative architectural design and construction methods that harness its power. The project focuses on utilising rammed earth as a method to experiment with and construct an eroding architecture that can be adaptable, reusable and sustainable.

25.20 Soyun Lim, Y4 ‘The Embassy of the Anonymous’. This project explores an architecture of emotions, examining the possibility of fabric in curtains as an enclosure and tool to reveal and conceal privacy. This project looks at how the fabrics could function as a device to articulate the subtle psychology of fear and comfort as an extension of a personal experience with the object. Curtains mediate the residents’ presence, with light, shade and soft wind constantly breaking and establishing the threshold of privacy. Depending on the density of daylight and fabric textures, the project provides different atmospheric experiences, which are explored by a wide range of physical models and collages.

25.21–25.23 Yu-Wen ( Yvonne) Huang, Y5 ‘Bodies on Air’. The research begins with a choreographic method of design. By using a body as a spatial drawing instrument, the planar conditioning of bodily knowledge is challenged. To transgress this horizon(t)al framework, the project physically posits the body as the ‘degree zero of spatiality’ and explores the embodied experience of flying, using a series of experimental performances to speculate on what the altered spatial experience could potentially reveal and afford architecturally.

25.12

Design Realisation

Module Coordinators: Pedro Gil, Stefan Lengen

The Design Realisation module provides an opportunity for all Year 4 Architecture MArch students to consider how buildings are designed, constructed and delivered within the temporal context of the building cycle. It provides a framework to facilitate experimentation through the design of buildings and encourages the interrogation and disruption of technical ideas and principles. Students propose their ideas at a variety of scales and represent them using drawings, diagrams, animations, physical models and 3D digital models. They are encouraged to take risks in their design thinking and strategy.

The module bridges the worlds of academia and practice, engaging with many renowned design practices and consultancies. A dedicated practice-based architect, structural engineer, environmental engineer and fire and life safety design engineer support each design unit; they engage individually with students to develop their work throughout the module.

This year generated a wonderful array of projects that test, explore and innovate across a wide spectrum of principles and mediums. Students have developed typologies that push the boundaries of technical and professional practice disciplines. Projects include inventive structural systems, environmental strategies, buildings for challenging sites, community engagement proposals, infrastructural projects and entrepreneurial proposals, to name but a few.

Thanks to all the structural consultants who have worked with individual students to realise their projects; to Atelier Ten, Max Fordham and Sal Wilson, environmental consultants to all design units; to Professor José Torero Cullen and Dr Michael Woodrow for fire and life safe design support to all the units; to our practice tutors for their remarkable commitment and dedication; and to Oliver Wilton, Director of Technology for his continual support and guidance. Thanks also to our PGTAs, Omar Abolnaga and Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo.

Year 4

Image: Jiayi (Silver) Wang, PG12. ‘In the Presence of Absence: The Restoration of Chinese Silk Painting’. This project emphasises the importance of heritage preservation and the essence of modern Chinese architecture. It challenges traditional museum-viewing approaches by captivating the public with an immersive theatre experience that showcases the performative, hand-crafted silk painting restoration process after sunset. Through curated lighting conditions, the museum creates an enchanting ambience, evoking the sensation of stepping into a hidden Chinese garden.

Lecturers

Felicity Atekpe (The Bartlett), Nat Chard (The Bartlett), Pedro Gil (The Bartlett), Kirsten Haggart (Waugh Thistleton Architects), Tanvir Hasan (Donald Insall Architects), Farah Husayni (XCO2 Engineers), Stefan Lengen (The Bartlett), Yeoryia Manolopoulou (The Bartlett), Ho-Yin Ng (AL_A), Theo Obeng-Sackey (Symbolicspaces), Hareth Pochee (Max Fordham Engineers), Maia Rollo (UVW-SAW Universities Officer), Klaas de Rycke (Grohmann + Bollinger Engineers), Kat Scott (dRMM Architects), Will Stephens (UVW-SAW Universities Officer), José Torero Cullen (CEGE), Emanuel Vercruysse (AA School of Architecture), Nicki Whetstone (Donald Insall Architects), Rae Whittow-Williams (GLA London), Rachel Yehezkel (XCO2 Engineers)

Practice Tutors

PG11 Rhys Cannon (Gruff Limited), PG12 James Hampton (New Makers Bureau), PG14 Jakub Klaska (The Bartlett), PG15 Jenna de Leon (Cook Haffner Architecture Platform), PG16 Will Jefferies (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), PG17 James Daykin (Daykin Marshall Studio), PG18 Robert Haworth (Lineworks Architects), PG20 David Edwards (Dave Edwards Design Ltd), PG21 Tom Holberton (The Bartlett), PG22 Felicity Barbur (Jan Kattein Architects), Gonzalo Coello de Portugal (Binom Architects), PG24 Matthew Lucraft (Studio Jenny Jones), PG25 Jerry Tate (Tate Harmer)

Advanced Architectural Studies

Module Coordinator: Eva Branscome

The Advanced Architectural Studies module in the first year of the two-year Architecture MArch programme focuses on architectural histories and theories. It is a space where we reflect on architecture within a broader, critical, intellectual and contextual field –simultaneously producing and being produced by it. Here we try to locate architecture’s links to other disciplinary and knowledge fields – from the scientific and technological to social sciences and the humanities. We straddle empirics and theory, design and history, the iconic and the everyday.

The module seeks to engage students with architectural history and theory as a critical approach to augment design, as a parallel domain to test out approaches or as a discrete or autonomous domain of architectural engagement. It focuses on three key aspects: first, a reflective, critical and analytical approach; second, research instinct and exploratory methods and research as a form of practice; and third, skills of synthesis, writing and articulation. It also acts as foundational ground for the students’ final year thesis.

Our lecture series, entitled ‘Critical Frames’, introduces the students to the research of the module’s seminar tutors. This year the research covered a variety of topics such as the architecture of protest, the feminist history of laundry and architectural orthodoxy and divergence in European 18th-century taste-making.

These lectures were accompanied by the heart of the module, which is a set of themed seminars. The seminars straddle, geographically, the architectural histories and theories of multiple global contexts; thematically, they encompass buildings, urbanism, landscapes, design, art, film, ecology and climate crisis, politics, activism, technology, production, representation, spatial and material cultures, public participation and urban regeneration. At the end, drawing upon the seminars and lectures, the students formulate a critical enquiry around a topic of their choice and produce a 4,500word essay.

2022–23 Seminars

Architecture On & Off Screen, Christophe Gerard

Conversations About Change, Daisy Froud

Feminist Approaches to Text and Space, Edwina Attlee

Architecture, Commerce and the Global City, Nick Jewell

Insurgent Cities, Sabina Andron

Architecture, Art and the City, Eva Branscome

Architectural Splendour: The History and Theory of Ornament 1750–2021, Oliver Domeisen

Animal Architecture: Building for Co-habitation, Paul Dobraszczyk

Heritage Discourses and the City, Stamatis Zografos

Year 4

PGTA

Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo

Mythologies of Resistance

Rio Burrage

Tutor: Daisy Froud

Abstract: The Raizal ethnic group of the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina descend from the 17thcentury colonial population of Europeans, African slaves and Jamaican Freedmen. They have remained culturally distinct from the distant Colombian mainland throughout most of their history. However, recent policy making and private investment aimed at developing the archipelago’s tourism industry have resulted in significant immigration to this territory. Once landowning and self-sufficient, the Raizal people have been pushed into the service class of this new economy, while the process of ‘Colombianisation’ continues to erode their ethnic identity.

The Raizal Dignity Camp was established following the devastation caused by Hurricane Iota of Providencia Island in 2020. It sought to resist the state’s efforts to build a coastguard station on the ancestral landing place for Raizal artisanal fishers under the guise of reconstruction. This site of resistance has evolved into the Raizal Spring Movement, which advocates for the archipelago’s autonomy and the consolidation of Raizal ethnic identity.

This essay analyses meaning making within the movement’s activism by exploring how it has mobilised collective memory to create semiotic myths. It highlights the importance of grassroots perspectives in its analysis of the politics of place making and aims to contribute towards a more holistic understanding of the dynamics of Caribbean development.

Image: The Raizal Dignity Camp, Dr Ralph Newball, 2022.

History and Ornament: Case Study of the Midland Grand Hotel

Nicholas Phillips

Tutor: Oliver Domeisen

Abstract: Wracked by convulsions brought about by the rapid and inexorable march of industrial progress, Victorian Britain struggled to find an architectural panacea to reconcile atavistic yearnings for a pre-industrial age imagined by the Romantics with the Rationalists’ desire for order and logic. Into the breach stepped Sir George Gilbert Scott, Britain’s most prolific and decorated architect. He sought to assert that an eclectic and pragmatically manufactured Gothic style, devoid of purely Romantic and ecclesiastical associations, could become the defining style for the future of the nation.

This tale is written into the ornaments of the Midland Grand Hotel, an ambitious building that became Scott’s apogeic Gothic masterpiece. The Hotel exhibits a tentative negotiation between Romantic handcraft and industrial production. However, it also exposed the latent religious, moral and social vulnerabilities underlying the Gothic style that precluded such compromise. These vulnerabilities were written into the style’s foundational texts by the Gothic purist Augustus Pugin, along with confusing contradictions introduced by John Ruskin, the influential Romantic exponent of Gothic Revival. They came to a head in the stark juxtaposition of the Midland Grand Hotel with the conjoining St Pancras Railway Station, a paragon of industrial prowess, producing the clearest architectural manifestation of the debate between Romantics and Rationalists that dominated the age.

Images: (L) Design for St Pancras Station and the Midland Grand Hotel, London, 1860. Credit: RIBA Collections. (R) St Pancras Station train shed, 2023. Image by the author.

The Woman Bricklayer

Bianca Zucchelli

Tutor: Edwina Attlee

Abstract: Women have historically played a role on construction sites when a lack of manpower has required them to fill positions of skilled and unskilled labour. This participation has often been erased from written history, however, leaving the bricklaying industry with one of the biggest gender gaps in the building trades. Currently, only 1.5% of bricklayers in the UK are female.

This essay seeks to understand the reasons for the current low numbers of women in the field by looking at the history of the bricklaying profession from a gendered perspective. It supports the argument that the lack of archival records has perpetuated issues of gender and social disparity within the profession. The role of the ideal feminine, embodied in Victorian times by the silent

embroiderer, has been part of gendered stereotypes that influenced the way in which female bricklayers were depicted as alien to feminine norms. The spatial relationship of the construction site away from the home, intrinsically seen since the Middle Ages as a feminine responsibility, imposed a limit on their spatial bearings and freedom of movement. These views played an important factor on the social status and wage of the woman bricklayer, a role often associated with outcasts, vagrancy and prostitution. Waterloo Bridge, built during the Second World War by a mostly female workforce, was in popular accounts thought to have been built by ‘ladies of the night’.

The essay concludes with accounts of women bricklayers’ skilled work. It emphasises the recurring mental and physical challenges that are encountered daily on site – for example, the size of a brick is based on the width of a man’s hand.

Images: (L) Women and construction. Image from Matrix Open: Feminist Architecture Archive, matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk/construction. (R) Image by the author.

Thesis

Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

The thesis enables Year 5 Architecture MArch students to research, develop and define the basis for their work. In so doing they address architecture and relevant related disciplines such as environmental design, humanities, engineering, cultural theory, manufacturing, anthropology, computation, the visual arts, physical or social sciences and urbanism.

The year starts with a short study of research methods. Students then develop individual research proposals which are reviewed and discussed with module coordinators and design tutors. Following review, students proceed to undertake their research in depth. They are supported by specialist tutors, individually allocated based on each student’s stated research question and proposed methodology. The result is a study of 9,000 words or equivalent that documents relevant research questions, contexts, activities and outcomes.

The thesis is an inventive, critical and directed research activity that augments the work students undertake in the design studio. The symbiotic relationship between thesis and design varies from one that is evident and explicit to one situated more broadly in a wider sphere of intellectual interest. The thesis typically includes one or more propositional elements such as discursive argumentation, the development of a design hypothesis or strategy, or the development and testing of a series of design components and assemblies in relation to a specific line of inquiry or interest.

We anticipate that a number of theses from this year’s academic cohort will be developed into external publications or projects.

Year 5

Thesis Tutors

Hector Altamirano, Alessandro Ayuso, Andy Barnett, Matthew Barnett Howland, Carolina Bartram, Camillo Boano, Roberto Bottazzi, William Victor Camilleri, Brent Carnell, Gillian Darley, Paul Dobraszczyk, Murray Fraser, Daisy Froud, Stephen Gage, Christophe Gerard, Stelios Giamarelos, Polly Gould, Jane Hall, Sean Hanna, Tim Lucas, Abel Maciel, Anna Mavrogianni, Claire McAndrew, Shaun Murray, Sophia Psarra, Guang Yu Ren, David Rudlin, Filomena Russo, Michael Stacey, Tim Waterman, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton, Fiona Zisch, Stamatis Zografos

PGTA

Ana Mayoral Moratilla

Zippered Morphologies: Exploring the Architectural Applications of Zipper Bending Timber

Sebastian

Birch

Thesis tutor: Oliver Wilton

Abstract: Zippering is a method used in producing self-forming bent timber parts. It is a development of kerf bending, in which slots are cut into timber down to a bendable thickness. The amount of material removed defines a difference between an inner and outer surface, therefore defining a bending radius. Varying the angle of cut can define a twist in the member, creating out of plane bending.

Zippering is a potential structural application of this method; here two members marry up to form a stable bent piece. In contrast to existing research into this process, this thesis looks to develop an efficient and accessible method for programming and fabricating zippered shapes. It also looks to apply these methods directly to the creation of architectural forms, presenting a taxonomy of building components and assemblies suited both to the possibilities of zippering and timber’s inherent qualities. A dynamic methodology has been employed which shifts between digital and physical prototyping, design explorations and critical reflection. A literature review is used to contextualise the research in order to identify areas for further investigation in this field and to establish the potential of zippering to replace free-form glue laminated timber in some instances –

possibly as a more accessible and efficient method for producing curved timber.

The key outcomes of this research include a systematic exploration of the zippering process and the development of a novel method for generating and simulating zipper geometries digitally using the Grasshopper visual scripting interface and Kangaroo physics simulation plugin for Rhinoceros 3D. These digital methods are employed to design and construct a series of physical zippered prototypes as a series of architecturally relevant components. CNC machining is used in the prototyping, with a focus on the 3-axis CNC mill as a widely available tool that can make curved timber more accessible. The design studio project acts as a point of reference for the development of some of the physical prototypes at an architectural scale, in turn informing discussion on the broader applicability of the zippering approach. Two larger-scale prototypes, a bifurcating node and doubly curved ring beam assembly, are constructed from parts of the building, demonstrating their fabrication potential.

Image: A zippered taxonomy. This research is driven by physical prototyping, testing the viability of different approaches for zipper fabrication specifically in timber. Many different approaches were tested with different underlying logics including doubly curved members, members with high torsion and different forms of component jointing. This methodology sought to broaden the design applicability of this self-forming method in order to contribute to the field and inform the design studio project. Image by the author.

Form Follows Phygital

Emily Child

Thesis tutor: Professor Michael Stacey

Abstract: Construction is among the most resource-intensive industries in the world; it contributes 37% of CO2 emissions globally and 67% of waste generated in the United States. The circular economy can help to reduce these damaging results by maintaining ‘products, materials and components at their highest utility and value at all times’.1 Digital tools such as material passports and digital twins are now opening new circular management opportunities for materials by treating them as re-usable assets. However, current practice with such digital tools tends to remove the cultural and historical references of materials by stripping them down to their simple re-use value. To avoid losing a city’s cultural identity during deconstruction or demolition, and/or subsequent recycling or re-use, this thesis considers the potential of digital platforms to support the re-use of building fragments in a way that retains their historic features. Inspired by gaming platforms developed for smartphone applications, the project considers how virtual and augmented reality could be used to boost public engagement and crowdsource design ideas to facilitate the re-use of elements from buildings threatened by climate extinction.

The thesis takes the case study of the MIT campus in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA, which is facing anthropogenic-induced flooding. It undertakes a literature review

of the circular management of building materials and elements retaining cultural symbolism and considers current practices in smartphone-based virtual reality gaming building/construction applications. This informs a mixed method investigation of digitally enabled circularity and construction design using a gaming platform. A sociotechnical analysis is then undertaken in which the potential of such videogame design platforms to secure community engagement in implementing cultural and socially aware circular management of building elements is assessed. The thesis advances a conceptual framework to promote direct stakeholder involvement and ownership during the main phases of the design and implementation of building renewal projects, including rewards and incentives to adhere to circular management principles. Applying circular economy principles in construction represents a paradigm shift from considering only the economics of materials from the ecosphere to also integrating materials that already exist within the technosphere.

1. Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2015). ‘Towards a Circular Economy: Business rationale for an accelerated transition’. Available at: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ towards-a-circular-economy-business-rationale-for-anaccelerated-transition Image: Example of a view of collecting building fragments on MIT campus, with screenshot illustrations of its associated information in the game. Image by the author.

Ne(i)ther Regions: Soft Ontologies, La Frontera and the Swamp

Christopher Collyer

Thesis tutor: Tim Waterman

Abstract: Soft landscapes, borders and bodies have been routinely hardened, filled and levelled as rigid rational thinking solidifies across lived histories. Despite the diverse richness of wetland ecosystems, they have been continually drained throughout so-called anthropocentric progress, slicing sharp boundaries between land/water, solid/ liquid, life/death. Alongside landscapes, soft bodies and identities have been levelled or made straight by patriarchal and divisive modes of thought, thus hardening binaries between us/them, male/female, mind/body. The lure of softness draws us in toward blurred edges, mixed identities and unsettled terrain, thus generating alternative futures that gently yield to collective touch.

The thesis proposes that soft modes of thought immerse us in Ne(i)ther Regions – ambiguous territory situated at the intersection between key readings of borderlands (La Frontera) and cultural histories of the swamp. A primary literature review is used to interrogate these modes of thought, reframing traditional Western philosophy and the cultural history of landscape with contemporary readings of posthuman feminist and queer theory. Ambiguous bodies, both corporeal (mixed identity) and ecological (wetland), cite the research within two primary scales; they provide an investigative framework for

transcoding notions of gestation, queerness and gender among ambiguous landscape systems.

From these readings alternative imaginaries and spatial understandings emerge, thus projecting ambiguous soft futures for enacted borders and edges. The thesis discovers that soft modes of thought resist rational categorisation and identification. Instead they focus on the commonality found in enacted processes between mutual bodies. Such modes of thought are inherently generative, subverting heteronormative reproductivity with cycles of queer repetition that gestate ambiguous alternatives to dominant Western thinking.

The essay concludes with a speculative discussion towards a softening of our seemingly rigid built environment. It is proposed that as we seek to embrace ambiguous bodies and landscapes, we should suspend our cities and spaces breathlessly between their no-longerconscious (history) and not-yet-here (future) – even as we foreground generative cycles of maintenance and care in subversive commonality with the wetland, living and dying all at the same time. Countless imaginal and soft-built futures could perhaps then emerge from the slimy milieu, each radically different from the one before.

Image: Micro-topographies of the swamp puddle reveal ambiguous and blended soft territories. Image by the author.

How Can Dyslexic Thinking Be Re-Imagined As an Architectural Design Method?

Pierson Hopgood

Thesis tutor: Fiona Zisch

Abstract: Dyslexia has been labelled as both a learning difficulty and, more recently, as a strength. An observation shared by many is that high numbers of people with dyslexia often gravitate naturally towards typically creative industries and professions that involve producing imagery. It is therefore unsurprising that within the field of architecture dyslexia is rather commonplace. This thesis aims to explore potential neurological differences and break down a selection of specific symptoms of dyslexia –including movement and rotation of letters, as well as extreme brightness and contrast sensitivity – to determine whether they can be re-imagined and utilised within the field of architecture as a method that may be applied to the design process.

The questions of whether dyslexia can be simulated and whether its key characteristics can be applied to the design process are considered. This leads to an interrogation of how the work of dyslexic artists and architects can be represented, interpreted and applied to architectural design. Ways to advance architectural drawings are explored through the breakdown and analysis of past works by designers thought to have been dyslexic, for example, Pablo Picasso. Dyslexic thinking is visual, with stories and scenes generated in the mind’s eye. This can benefit a profession where the representation of ideas is achieved

largely through metaphor and allegory or colour, shape and space rather than in words. The author’s own explorations, experiments and original drawings stand adjacent to, and were produced in response to, established critical and neuroscientific theories. The author’s anecdotal voice and personal experience of having dyslexia are included, with the aim of establishing how dyslexic thinking can become a cherished asset when applied to design.

The thesis is structured in a way that supports neurodivergent ways of thinking when it comes to accessing text and optimal ways to process written information. For a dyslexic person, contrast between black and white text is heightened and it starts to amalgamate, therefore as a direct literary reference within this thesis, sentences are separated within paragraphs into shades of black and grey; a green overlay is also applied to reduce contrast.

Image: Examples of what a person with dyslexia may see when reading. Image by the author.

Nihon no Minka: Historicising Japanese Vernacular Houses Through Media Representation

Julia Remington

Thesis tutor: Paul Dobraszczyk

This thesis explores Japan’s historical relationship with its principal vernacular housing type, minka, considering how they have been recorded, regarded, portrayed and consumed. The study takes the form of a representational analysis, examining how minka have been depicted across significant moments of change in Japanese history: it ranges from ukiyo-e paintings in the early 19th century through first-hand surveys and documentation in the early 20th century to paintings and photography in the post-war era. In doing so, the thesis unveils intricacies in the nation’s shifting relationship with its vernacular architecture across time. In particular it reveals the changing nature of ‘value’ determined by the buildings’ contributions to shaping modern meanings. In any context, the study of vernacular architecture presents various problems. In the general absence of recorded histories or profiles of individual designers to define their nature, meaning or intent, vernacular architecture is susceptible to invocation. This may be either an interpretative ‘remembering’ of one’s past or the interpretive acquisition of another culture to use as a model or critique of one’s own. In the case of Japanese architecture, the latter has been evident within Western interpretations, as exemplified by Bruno Taut’s study in the 1930s. Here the

concern for Japan’s vernacular houses has often been interwoven with the notion of defining ‘tradition’ or a certain ‘Japaneseness’ in architecture. Such ties have continued into the contemporary era. Western understandings of Japanese vernacular architecture seem to be fixated on the idea of an ‘exotic’ Japan, thereby hindering the uncovering of its historical entanglements. Within Japan, the study of folk architecture takes its own course. Being confronted with a history characterised by multiple catastrophes and drastic social, political and economic changes, the study of the Japanese vernacular has often been driven by an attempt to define and preserve both local and national identities, reflecting the constant search for a home within a transitional society. Negotiating between internal and external perspectives mediated through the author’s Japanese and English bi-national background, the thesis recognises the need to acknowledge the status of minka and the overall vernacular environment as events rather than dead objects, by virtue of interpretations that constitute an ongoing history of cultural transformation. In doing so it probes for a continuous interpretation, re-reading and re-contextualising of vernacular forms, in order to negotiate knowledge between past, present and future.

Image: 上水内郡南小川村夏和 松本源太氏宅 [House of Genta Matsumoto in Minamiogawa Village], from 民家図集 第十二輯 長野縣 [Minka Picturebook Volume 12, Nagano Prefecture] by 緑草会 [Ryokusō-kai] (1930), p.12. The image takes a page in a 12-volume picture book series that documents minka across Japan. The series was published during the early 20th century.

Soho Place, London

Photography by Timothy Soar

Tower Hamlets Town Hall, London

Photography by Timothy Soar

514 Our Programmes 515

519 Bartlett Shows Website 520 Alumni 521 The Bartlett Promise 522 Staff, Visitors & Consultants

Our Programmes

The Bartlett School of Architecture currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students across 29 programmes of study and one professional course.

You will find below a list of our current programmes, their duration when taken full time and the directors. More information, including details on open days, is available on our website.

Undergraduate

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Three-year programme, directed by Ana Monrabal-Cook

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 & 2)

Five-year programme with a year placement in practice, directed by Sara Shafiei

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Three or four-year programme, directed by Elizabeth Dow

Engineering & Architectural Design MEng (ARB/RIBA Part 1, CIBSE, JBM)

Four-year programme, directed by Luke Olsen

Postgraduate

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Two-year programme, directed by Professor Marjan Colletti & Dr Kostas Grigoriadis

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

12-month programmes, directed by Philippe Morel and Manuel Jiménez Garcia

Architectural Design MArch

12-month programme, directed by Tyson Hosmer and Gilles Retsin

Architectural History MA

One-year programme, directed by Professor Peg Rawes

Architecture & Digital Theory MRes

One-year programme, directed by Professor Mario Carpo & Professor Frédéric Migayrou

Architecture & Historic Urban

Environments MA

One-year programme, directed by Professor Edward Denison

Bio-Integrated Design MSc/MArch

Two-year programmes, directed by Professor Marcos Cruz & Dr Brenda Parker

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch

A new one-year programme beginning in

2023–24, directed by Professor Penelope Haralambidou and Dr Luke Pearson

Design for Manufacture MArch

15-month programme, directed by Professor Peter Scully

Design for Performance & Interaction MArch 15-month programme, directed by Dr Ruairi Glynn and Dr Fiona Zisch

Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

One-year (MA) and two-year (MLA) programmes, directed by Professor Laura Allen & Professor Mark Smout

Situated Practice MA

15-month programme, directed by Dr James O’Leary

Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities

MSc/MRes

One-year programmes, directed by Dr Kayvan Karimi Urban Design MArch 12-month programme, directed by Roberto Bottazzi

Advanced Architectural Research PG Cert

Three-month programme, directed by Professor Nat Chard

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme, directed by Professor Jonathan Hill

Architectural & Urban History & Theory

MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme, directed by Professor Sophia Psarra

Architectural Space & Computation

MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme, directed by Ava Fatah gen Schieck

Architecture & Digital Theory MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme, directed by Professor Mario Carpo & Professor Frédéric Migayrou

Architectural Practice MPhil/PhD

Three to four-year programme, directed by Professor Murray Fraser

Professional Studies

Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 3)

10 to 23-month programme, directed by Felicity Atekpe

Short Courses

The Bartlett School of Architecture welcomes young students from around the world to participate in summer short courses. Our summer school also offers a large number of scholarships aimed at assisting students in their studies.

The Bartlett Summer School 14–16-year-olds (on campus)

Our summer school for children aged 14–16 has been designed for younger students looking for a brief introduction to The Bartlett School of Architecture and to develop their understanding of architecture at university level. The one- to two-day courses offer an introduction to the specific skills an architect needs, while also allowing students to work collaboratively.

The Bartlett Summer School 16–18-year-olds (on campus and online)

Our short courses for 16–18-year-olds introduce students to the study of architecture and creative practice at degree level. On campus students visit architectural exhibitions, offices and sites of interest before working on a collaborative drawing

or model, informed by their experiences. Online students work in groups and individually under the instruction of The Bartlett’s highly skilled teaching staff, using online drawing platforms and collaborating with students from around the world.

Year 12 Sutton Trust Summer Schools (on campus)

This Access and Widening Participation UCL short course is free of charge. It is run and organised by the widening participation team in UCL and the Sutton Trust. The course is delivered in collaboration with a team from The Bartlett faculty. It is a fully immersive student experience with participants spending five days learning and socialising together. Students undertake a critical investigation of their daily routines in an architectural context through walking, looking, drawing and making.

Visit our website to find out more and to see this year’s pop-up workshops.

Contact bartlett.shortcourses@ucl.ac.uk

Public Lectures

Visit our Vimeo and YouTube channels to watch a selection of our recorded lectures – search ‘Bartlett School of Architecture’ to find us.

The Bartlett International Lecture Series Attracting guests from across the world, our International Lecture Series has featured almost 600 distinguished speakers since its inception in 1996. Lectures in this series are open to the public and free to attend.

Lectures this year featured:

Image and Making: Ten Years of Process, from Milan to Mars

Asif Khan (Asif Khan Studio)

The Caring Exception: Building the Oasis in the Concrete Jungle

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Machine Intelligence and Practice Futures

Phil Bernstein (Yale School of Architecture)

David Olusoga – MoHoA Conference

David Olusoga (Broadcaster, Filmmaker and Historian)

— Empty Space

Carla Juaçaba (Carla Juaçaba Studio)

Continuous State of Reinvention

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen (Snøhetta)

In the Black Fantastic

Ekow Eshun (Curator)

F51 Urban Sports Park –Generational Regeneration

Guy Hollaway (Hollaway Studio)

— A Human Approach to Design

Lisa Finlay (Heatherwick Studio)

— End Time: Reflections on Design, Modernities and the Anthropocene

Edward Denison (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Continuity and Discontinuity in Colonial and Postcolonial Modernity

Nnamdi Elleh (University of Witwatersrand)

Prospectives

The Bartlett’s B-Pro history and theory lecture series continued to offer a platform for the presentation, discussion and theoretical reflection on the links between digital thought, architecture and urban design. Speakers included:

Matias del Campo (University of Michigan)

Maurizio Ferraris (University of Turin)

Anna Longo (Collège International de Philosophie)

Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Lea Sattler (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris La Villette)

— SKYGGE – Benoit Carré (Musician)

Landscapes in Dialogue

Landscapes in Dialogue is a public lecture series from the Landscape Architecture programmes. The series comprised curated but informal talks from practitioners and academics. Speakers from a range of disciplines were invited to reflect on their work in progress, working methods and the process of working with landscape. Speakers included:

— Martí Franch Batllori (EMF Landscape Architecture)

— Céline Baumann (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

Joost Emmerik (Amsterdam Academy of Architecture)

Jonathan Evans (MASS Design Group)

Liza Fior (MUF Architecture/Art)

Cannon Ivers (LDA Design)

Thierry Kandjee and Sébastien Penfornis (Taktyk)

— Tiago Torres-Campos (Rhode Island School of Design)

Situating Architecture

Situating Architecture is an architectural history lecture series affiliated with The Bartlett’s renowned Architectural History MA. It is open to both current students and members of the public alike and explores the powers and effects of architecture today. Invited speakers show how historical and theoretical practices materialise different architectural meanings from poetics to ethics, housing to infrastructure, politics to technologies.

Luca Csepely-Knorr (Liverpool School of Architecture)

Sam Grinsell (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Ievgeniia Gubkina (UCL)

— Jonathan Hill, Megha Chand Inglis and Stelios Giamarelos (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Léopold Lambert (The Funambulist)

Frank Kelsall (Historian) and Timothy Walker (Historian)

Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett Research Conversations series featured research presentations from students undertaking the Architectural Design or Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD programmes. Students were joined by senior academics from across the school, including PhD programme directors and supervisors, alongside members of the wider Bartlett and UCL community. This year research was presented by:

Omar Abolnaga

— Yichuan Chen

Zhenhang Hu

— Jessica In Ryan Kearney

— Te-Chen Lu

Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira Da Silva

Elin Söderberg

Mike Tanaka

Jonathan Tyrrell

— Sandra Youkhana

Space Syntax Laboratory Research Seminars

This academic seminar series featured researchers sharing their findings, discussing their ideas and showing work in progress from The Bartlett’s Space Syntax Laboratory. Guests to the series included:

Siqi Chen (Shanghai Institute of Technology)

Fánel Contreras (Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería)

Martin Fleischmann (University of Strathclyde) and Dani Arribas-Bel (University of Liverpool)

— Michal Gath-Morad (ETH Zurich)

— Daniel Koch and Ann Legeby (KTH School of Architecture)

— Gustavo Maldonado Gil (Rappi) and Christina Lenart (KTH Stockholm)

— Burcu H Ozuduru (Gazi University’s Faculty of Architecture)

— Kerstin Sailer and Rosica Pachilova (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Yao Shen (Tongji University)

Yichang Sun (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

IIgi Toprak (Istanbul Technical University)

Gözde Uyar and Åsmund Izaki (Woods Bagot)

Soungmi Yu (Zaha Hadid Architects)

Exhibitions & Events

The Bartlett plays host to a variety of events, ranging from conferences and book launches to workshops and international symposia. In addition, a vibrant programme of exhibitions runs throughout the year. These events offer a diverse exploration of innovative ideas and current issues, with inspiring speakers from across the globe.

Structural Stone Renaissance Symposium, 12 October 2022 organised by Klaas de Rycke and Oliver Wilton saw innovators in the field of stone come together to discuss the re-emergence of the material’s use in architecture.

The Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene Symposium, 26–28 October 2022 was co-organised by The Bartlett’s Professor Edward Denison and Professor Ola Uduku, Head of the University of Liverpool’s School of Architecture, along with partners at the University of Cape Town and the Africa World Heritage Fund as part of the Modern Heritage of Africa (MoHoA) global collaborative. The three-day global symposium addressed decolonising, decentring and reframing the recent past to achieve equitable and sustainable futures.

The Architectural History MA student-led symposium, Missing Links, 19 November 2022 examined the missing links in relationships between histories, theories and the practice of architecture.

A series of in-person events took place around this year’s Fifteen show, marking its return to campus for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The Design for Performance & Interaction Project Fair and Situated Practice Live, 9 December 2022 showcased ground-breaking work from their respective cohorts. The Design for Manufacture Conference 2022, 13–14 December 2022 saw students present research projects formed around the starting point of architectural ceramics. The two-day event included a keynote lecture by architect and innovator Paul Michael Pelken.

The seventeenth annual PhD Research Projects Exhibition, 21 February – 7 March 2023 featured the work of students from across the faculty developing or concluding their doctoral research. The LAMSA crochet pop-up led by PhD candidate Natalie Garland ran concurrently, raising funds for those affected by the Turkey-Syria earthquake

In association with King’s College London and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, the Films for Ukraine roundtable and fundraiser took place on 29 March 2023. The discussion focused on women, cinema and the city, reflecting on gender in Ukraine and Eastern Europe during wartime.

Book Launches

Resisting Postmodern Architecture, 31 October 2022

Professors Jonathan Hill and Megha Chand Inglis joined Dr Stelios Giamarelos to discuss his new book, published by UCL Press. This event was part of the Situating Architecture lecture series.

Monumental Wastelands, 14 November 2022

Déborah López Lobato and Hadin Charbel launched the first two volumes of Monumental Wastelands, a bilingual publication for the research and investigation of contemporary spatial practices and their contingencies.

Animal Architecture, 23 March 2023

Author and lecturer Dr Paul Dobraszczyk was joined by panellists Tom Dyckhoff and Professor Nathalie Pettorelli for the launch of Animal Architecture. The launch was co-hosted by the ISRF and moderated by Professor Christopher Newfield, ISRF Director of Research.

Brutalist Paris, 27 April 2023

Author Dr Robin Wilson and photographer

Dr Nigel Green introduced their new book Brutalist Paris, a unique photographic record of over 50 brutalist buildings across the French capital.

Bartlett Shows Website

In September 2020, the school launched its bespoke digital exhibition environment, presenting The Summer Show 2020. Since then, thirteen further student shows have been shared digitally, including The Summer Show 2022 and The B-Pro Show 2022. Each digital exhibition has attracted thousands of online visitors from across the globe, with the Summer Show 2022 content viewed over 250,000 times.

The digital exhibition space was designed by creative agency Hello Monday, working together with the school’s exhibitions and communications teams, to create a unique online experience for the visitor. Hello Monday delivered a virtual show space that allows the user to explore the work spatially, within exhibition rooms, and in detail, on student project pages. Students have the opportunity to display their work using video, high-definition imagery and 3D models alongside detailed narratives.

With each exhibition, the digital environment is being refined to improve the visitor experience and to encourage greater engagement with the student work displayed. Projects are now searchable by thematic concern with all previous shows available to browse from a single landing page. In line with our commitment to inclusivity, we are actively working towards making the website more accessible to a wider audience.

The Bartlett’s digital show environment has won web design awards at both the Awwwards and Favourite Website Awards and has been shortlisted for the prestigious Archiboo and D&AD Awards in the Digital Design category. This year the website picked up two additional awards, a Silver Lovie and the People’s Lovie in the Schools & Education category. The Lovie Awards, named after Ada Lovelace, recognise European Internet excellence in the fields of culture, technology and business.

www.bartlettarchucl.com

Alumni

The Bartlett’s diverse and vibrant alumni play a vital role in the life of the school, as staff, visiting lecturers, mentors, sponsors, donors and participants.

This year saw the formation of the alumni group ‘The Friends of The Bartlett School of Architecture’. Their inaugural social event took place at the end of April and was hosted by alumnus Joe Morris at the East London offices of Morris + Company. Over 100 former students came together with current staff to enjoy refreshments provided by the hyper seasonal, low-impact restaurant Edit. The evening was chaired by Paul Monaghan Director of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.

We invite alumni to join us at The Bartlett Summer Show for an exclusive Alumni Late drinks reception.

Alumni interested in running events should email architecture.comms@ucl.ac.uk to discuss how we can help you.

All Bartlett School of Architecture alumni are invited to join UCL’s Alumni Online Community to keep in touch with the school and receive benefits including special discounts, UCL’s Portico magazine and more.

Registered alumni have access to:

Thousands of e-journals available through UCL Library

— A global network of old and new friends in the worldwide alumni community

— Free mentoring and the opportunity to become a mentor yourself

— Jobs boards for the exclusive alumni community

aoc.ucl.ac.uk/alumni

Summer 2022 Alumni Late

The Bartlett Promise

Across higher education and in industry, the built environment sector is not diverse enough. Here at The Bartlett, we promise to do better.

The Bartlett Promise Scholarship was launched in 2019 to enable UK undergraduate students from backgrounds under-represented in The Bartlett Faculty to pursue their studies with us, with the aim of diversifying the student body and ultimately the built environment sector. In 2020, it was widened to include Masters and PhD scholarships, and in 2021, internationally, to Sub-Saharan Africa master’s students. We want a Bartlett education to be open to all, regardless of means.

The scholarship covers full tuition fees for the degree programme, plus an annual allowance to cover living and study expenses. All Promise scholars will also receive ongoing academic and career support during their studies. In addition, The Bartlett Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Scholarships provide a comprehensive support package, including travel to and from the UK and study visa costs.

Sara Shafiei, Vice-Dean of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at The Bartlett says:

The award is a promise from The Bartlett faculty to future generations of scholars of the built environment – that we are wholeheartedly committed to taking bold and innovative steps in addressing underrepresentation of students from diverse backgrounds within built environment higher education and industry.

We are delighted that The Bartlett Promise continues to grow and play a significant role in attracting the very best students, who continue to enrich our community in extraordinary ways.

To be eligible for a scholarship, candidates must have an offer of a place on a Bartlett degree programme. When selecting scholars, we consider the educational, personal and financial circumstances of the applicant, and how these relate to the eligibility criteria.

Full details of the application process and eligibility criteria can be found on our website.

ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/bartlett-promise

Students at 22 Gordon Street, The Bartlett’s Bloomsbury home.

Staff, Visitors & Consultants

A

Ana Abram

Vasilija Abramovic

George Adamopoulos

Ava Aghakouchak

Visiting Prof Robert Aish

Roslyn Aish

Yasemin Didem Aktas

Alejandra Albuerne

Rodriguez

Wardah Ali

Laura Allen

Salam Al-Saegh

Carlos Alvarez Doran

Arveen Appadoo

Dimitris Argyros

Azadeh Asgharzadeh Zaferani

Abigail Ashton

Felicity Atekpe

Edwina Attlee

Annecy Attlee

Joseph Augustin

Karen Averby

B

Julia Backhaus

Kirsty Badenoch

Francesco Banchini

Matthew Barnett Howland

Beth Barnett-Sanders

Sarah Barry

Carolina Bartram

Stefan Bassing

Paul Bavister

Simon Beames

Richard Beckett

Bedir Bekar

Jhono Bennett

Julian Besems

Harry Betts

Vishu Bhooshan

Peter Bishop

Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Isaie Bloch

Eleanor Boiling

Paolo Bombelli

Iain Borden

Alex Borrell

Roberto Bottazzi

Visiting Prof Andy Bow

Matt Bowles

Eva Branscome

Albert Brenchat Aguilar

Alastair Browning

Jessica Buckmire

Tom Budd

Rosalind Burkett-Wenham

Christopher Burman

Mark Burrows

Matthew Butcher C

Blanche Cameron

William Victor Camilleri

Alberto Campagnoli

Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange

Ben Campkin

Brent Carnell

Mario Carpo

Martyn Carter

Daniel Carter

Luciano Caruggi de Faria

Tommaso Casucci

Tsz Long Chan

Megha Chand Inglis

Hadin Charbel

Nat Chard

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno

Tung Ying Chow

Krina Christopoulou

Sandra Ciampone

Mollie Claypool

Marjan Colletti

Michael Collins

Emeritus Prof Peter Cook

Hannah Corlett

Samuel Coulton

John Cruwys

Marcos Cruz

Rut Cuenca Candel

Nichola Czyz

DChristina Dahdaleh

Amica Dall

Tiffany Dang

Satyajit Das

Peter Davies

Tom Davies

Edward Denison

Ricardo de Ostos

Klaas de Rycke

Pradeep Devadass

Max Dewdney

Ilaria Di Carlo

David Di Duca

Jan Dierckx

Visiting Prof Elizabeth Diller

Katerina Dionysopoulou

Paul Dobraszczyk

Patrick Dobson-Perez

Oliver Domeisen

Elizabeth Dow

Sarah Dowding

Philippe Duffour

Shyamala Duraisingam

George Dwyer

Tom Dyckhoff

E

Dave Edwards

Samuel Esses

Ruth Evison F

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

Donat Fatet

Laura Fawcett-Gaskell

Timothy Fielder

Lucy Flanders

Zach Fluker

Emeritus Prof Adrian Forty

Alice Foxen

Murray Fraser

Daisy Froud

Maria Fulford

G

Emeritus Prof Stephen Gage

Gunther Galligioni

Christophe Gerard

Egmontas Geras

Christina Geros

Octavian Gheorghiu

Stelios Giamarelos

Pedro Gil

Agnieszka Glowacka

Ruairi Glynn

Daniel Godoy Shimizu

Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita

Perez

Jon Goodbun

Polly Gould

Niamh Grace

Kevin Gray

Kevin Green

Emmy Green

James Green

Sienna Griffin-Shaw

Sam Griffiths

Kostas Grigoriadis

Samuel Grinsell

Eric Guibert

Srijana Gurung

Seth Guy

H

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Sean Hanna

Penelope Haralambidou

Jack Hardy

Alice Hardy

Ben Hayes

Thea Heintz

Colin Herperger

Rosie Hervey

Thomas Hesslenberg

Danielle Hewitt

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Parker Heyl

Matthew Heywood

Jonathan Hill

Ashley Hinchcliffe

Bill Hodgson

Tom Holberton

Seyedeh Tahmineh

Hooshyar Emami

Tyson Hosmer

Delwar Hossain

Oliver Houchell

Johan Hybschmann I Jessica In

Anderson Inge

Bruce Ivers J Benjamin James

Clara Jaschke

William Jennings

Nicholas Jewell

Manuel Jiménez Garcia

Steven Johnson

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Luke Jones

Nina Jotanovic

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Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

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Alvaro Lopez

Déborah López Lobato

Luke Lowings

Tim Lucas

Matt Lucraft

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M

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Shneel Malik

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Tom Mole

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Cristina Morbi

Philippe Morel

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Saud Muhsinovic

Shaun Murray

Maxwell Mutanda

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Tetsuro Nagata

Giles Nartey

Filippo Nassetti

Tsing Yin Ng

O

Aisling O’Carroll

Toby O’Connor

James O’Leary

Andrew O’Reilly

Visiting Prof Femi Oresanya

Luke Olsen

Daniel Ovalle Costal

P

Igor Pantic

Annarita Papeschi

Thomas Parker

Claudia Pasquero

Jane Paterson

Luke Pearson

Visiting Prof P. Michael Pelken

Alan Penn

Barbara Penner

Emma Perry

Guillem Perutxet Olesti

Drew Pessoa

Frosso Pimenides

Alicia Pivaro

Ruth Plackett

Maj Plemenitas

Danae Polyviou

Lyn Poon

Matt Poon

Andrew Porter

Rebecca Preston

Emily Priest

Arthur Prior

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

Sophia Psarra

Margaret Rawes

Sophie Read

Aileen Reid

Guang Yu Ren

Jane Rendell

Gilles Retsin

Farlie Reynolds

Julie Richardson

David Roberts

Felix Roberts

Gavin Robotham

Daniel Rodriguez Garcia

Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

Colin Rose

S

Visiting Prof Jenny Sabin

Kevin Saey

Kerstin Sailer

Diana Salazar Morales

Anete Krista Salmane

Eleanor Sampson

Tan Sapsaman

Edward Tristram Scott

Peter Scully

Yair Schwartz

Khaled Sedki

Tania Sengupta

Neba Sere

Sara Shafiei

David Shanks

Alistair Shaw

Bob Sheil

Visiting Prof Wang Shu

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Gareth Simons

Isaac Simpson

Yip Siu

Colin Smith

Paul Smoothy

Mark Smout

Valentina Soana

Joana Carla Soares Goncalves

Jasminder Sohi

Amy Spencer

Ben Spong

Matthew Springett

Michael Stacey

Tijana Stevanovic

Rachel Stevenson

Sabine Storp

Greg Storrar

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Ignacy Styszko

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Philip Temple

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Andrew Thom

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José Torero Cullen

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Samuel Tuppen

Samuel Turner-Baldwin

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Melis Van Den Berg

Kelly Van Hecke

Kim van Poeteren

Nasios Varnavas

Tasos Varoudis

Laura Vaughan

Hamish Veitch

Maria Venegas Raba

Viktoria Viktorija

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Michael Wagner

Andrew Walker

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Gabriel Warshafsky

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Isabel Why

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Oliver Wilton

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Michael Woodrow

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Sandra Youkhana

Michelle Young

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Barbara Andrade Zandavali

Emmanouil Zaroukas

Yi Zhang

Fiona Zisch

Dominik Zisch

Stamatios Zografos

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