The Bartlett Summer Show Book 2024

School of Architecture,

Bartlett Summer Show

Director: Amy Kulper 6 Remembering Jonathan Hill (1958–2023)

10

Architecture BSc

(ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Programme Director: Farlie Reynolds

12 Year 1 / About Time

Max Dewdney

24 UG1 / Mud City: Bioregions, Ecotopes and Atmospheres

Margit Kraft, Toby O’Connor

36 UG2 / Radical Repair: Designing Through Self-Build Practices

Zachary Fluker, Jhono Bennett, Hannah Corlett

48 UG3 / Zero Carbon Judy Garland

Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk

60 UG4 / Unearthing

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

72 UG5 / Loot

Patrick Massey, Bongani Muchemwa

84 UG6 / Registration

Stefan Lengen, Ben Spong

96 UG7 / Critical Paths

Joseph Augustin, Christopher Burman, Luke Jones

108 UG8 / Weathering Time

Maria Fulford, Jörg Majer

120 UG9 / Land

Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller

132 UG10 / Welcome to the Multiverse

Pedro Gil, Neba Sere

144 UG12 / Settlement: Island Mentality

Hannah Corlett, Níall McLaughlin

156 UG13 / Cut it at the Table:

An Architecture of Consumption

Laurence Blackwell-Thale, William Victor Camilleri

168 UG14 / Skopje 2024: AuthentiCity

David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata

180 UG21 / Sequential

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

194 Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Programme Directors: Sophie Read, Elizabeth Dow

208 Engineering & Architectural Design MEng

(ARB/RIBA Part 1 CIBSE JBM)

Programme Director: Luke Olsen

210 Year 1 / Equinox Festival: Architecture of Rebirth and Renewal

Barbara Andrade Zandavali, Klaas de Rycke

216 Year 2 / Aperture

Graeme Williamson, Philippe Duffour, Farhang Tahmasebi

224 Unit 1 / School of London, a.k.a.

We Don’t Need No Education

Dimitris Argyros, Agnieszka Glowacka, Anderson Inge, Vasiliki Kourgiozou

232 Unit 2 / GeoFutures in Beckton Alps

Shaun Murray, Colin Rose, Isabel Why

240 Unit 3 / Deptford Creek –Intertidal Investigations

Thomas Hesslenberg, Daniel Godoy

Shimizu, Graeme Williamson

248 Unit 4 / Flooding

Yasemin Didem Aktas, Arianna Guardiola-Víllora, Alexis Koufakis, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Santiago Vélez

256 Unit 5 / Renaixement of a Remote Villa

Luke Olsen, Matthew Heywood, Filip Kirazov, Aurore Julien

264 Unit 6 / SHOCK: Design Resilience for Dynamic Environments

Simon Beames, Harry Betts, Kostas Mastronikolaou

272 Unit 7 / Amphibious Thresholds: More-Than-Human Habitats

Francesco Banchini, Cristina Morbi, Yi Zhang

280 Unit 8 / Responsive Tectonics: Brixton

Jan Dierckx, Samuel Miselbach, Annarita Papeschi, José Torero Cullen, Julia Torrubia

288 Architecture MSci

(ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Programme Directors: Murray Fraser, Alicia González-Lafita, Sara Martínez

Zamora, Sara Shafiei

290 Year 1 / Building 2030

Alicia González-Lafita, Sara Martínez Zamora

296 Studio 2A / The Co:Lab

Abigail Ashton, Laurence Blackwell-Thale

304 Studio 2B / Reasonably Absurd

Haden Charbel, John Cruwys

312 Studio 2C / After the Party: Reclaiming Architectural Knowledge and Re-Signifying Leftovers

Olivia Neves Marra, Jane Wong

320 Studio 3A / Technification and Atmosphere

Murray Fraser, Michiko Sumi

328 Studio 3B / Old Knowledge

New Knowledge

Nat Chard, Emma-Kate Matthews

336 Studio 3C / Reclamation and Regeneration

Kirsty Badenoch, Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi

344 Studio 4A / Selfish

Johan Hybschmann, Matthew Springett

356 Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Programme Directors: Matthew Butcher, Kostas Grigoriadis

358 PG11 / Super Wicked

Laura Allen, Mark Smout

370 PG12 / Continuous Construction

Jonathan Hill, Elizabeth Dow, Barbara Campbell-Lange

382 PG14 / Crafted Horizons

Jakub Klaska, Dirk Krolikowski

394 PG15 / Entanglements

Egmontas Geras, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

406 PG17 / For Things to Remain the Same, Everything Must Change

Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Nasios Varnavas, Tamsin Hanke

418 PG18 / Generational Phantoms / East–West Deviations

Isaie Bloch, Ricardo de Ostos

430 PG20 / Neo-Agility (Neo-Aesthetics and Antifragility)

Marjan Colletti, Tony Le, Javier Ruiz

442 PG21 / Sequential

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

454 PG22 / Rites of Passage

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal

466 PG23 / Bound to Fail

Farlie Reynolds, Ben Spong

478 PG24 / Adaptation

Penelope Haralambidou, Michael Tite

490 PG25 / Wild at Heart and Weird on Top

Ivan Chan, Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi

502 Design Realisation

Module Coordinators: Pedro Gil, Stefan Lengen

504 Advanced Architectural Studies

Module Coordinator: Eva Branscome

508 Thesis

Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

522 Our Programmes

523 Short Courses

524 Public Lectures

526 Exhibitions & Events

527 Bartlett Shows Website

528 Alumni

529 The Bartlett Promise

530 Staff, Visitors & Consultants

Introduction

‘The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.’ Chris

Ofili

A show build is, to a school of architecture, what a cascade of autumnal leaves or the first verdant shoots of spring are to the seasonal cycle. It is both evidence of an iterative process and the restless anticipation of what is to come. It is an assault on the senses – the smell of spackle intermingled with fresh paint, the visual chaos of simultaneous constructions, the hurried nervous energy of people interacting in a familiar choreography, all with the din of power tools humming in the background like a soothing architectural muzak. And yet, somewhat miraculously, each year this commotion and turmoil coalesce into that most beautiful progeny of a school of architecture – the show.

This catalogue represents the work of over 900 projects from students in our Architecture BSc, Architectural and Interdisciplinary Studies BSc, Engineering and Architectural Design MEng, Architecture MSci and Architecture MArch programmes, represented both physically and virtually in The Bartlett School of Architecture’s 2024 Summer Show. Architectural design is a continual process consisting of experiments, conjectures and speculations yielding an impressive array of material and spatial propositions. And as British artist Chris Ofili states, an exhibition is the result of this never-ending process of experimentation. The very idea of architectural practice emanates from this commitment to iteration, exploration and experimentation – our students will continue to engage, to realise and to practice their ideas in the built environment. They will do so with an ethos of responsibility, accountability and care because they understand their obligation as stewards of the natural and built environment. Our students have created this incredible work with grace, empathy and humility because they are cognisant of the challenges they face as designers, hoping to contribute to a more just environment.

The academic and professional services staff provide another critical layer of support for the work in this catalogue. Our dedicated design tutors work closely with students, developing the tone, scope and details 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 supports

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 our facilities team care for our students across four sites, our communications team help share their work with the wider world.

The students whose work is featured in this catalogue stand on the shoulders of a talented and committed body of alumni whose ranks they will join after their degrees are conferred. Last year, it was a pleasure to see so many alumni join us during the Alumni Late, and we look forward to welcoming them back to this year’s celebration of our students’ work. Our alumni feature prominently in the offices of both our show’s headline sponsor, AHMM, and our supplementary sponsors, Fosters + Partners and LEOS. We are also delighted to welcome alumnus Narinder Sagoo MBE to open this year’s show and address students, staff and guests at the launch party.

As evidenced by the quality of this catalogue and the exuberance of the exhibition it parallels, our students are also supported by a capable exhibitions team under the guidance and intrepid leadership of our Exhibitions Director, Chee-Kit Lai. In close collaboration with our Project Manager, Synnøve Fredericks, Chee-Kit leads a dedicated team that includes Thomas Budd, Max Fletcher, Gabriele Grassi, Fatima Issa, Vanessa Lafoy, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Sophie Percival, Sam Van Strien, David Shanks, Matthew Bowles, Michael Wagner, Srijana Gurung, Mark Cortes Favis, Yossie Olaleye, Abi Luter and Gen Williams. It is thanks to the herculean efforts of this team on behalf of our students that we have the privilege of enjoying this spatial imaginary both as a catalogue and an exhibition.

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s 2024 Summer Show offers compelling evidence that an exhibition is not a conclusion. For our graduating students it is a commencement, for our returning students it is a springboard, for our dedicated staff it is a cyclical source of pride and inspiration, and for our alumni it is a warm welcome home.

Professor Amy Kulper Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture

Remembering Jonathan Hill (1958–2023)

On 1 November 2023, The Bartlett School of Architecture lost a beloved teacher, researcher, colleague and friend –Professor Jonathan Hill. After decades of building, influencing and leading the school, intellectually and creatively, his loss is felt profoundly by students, staff and alumni. Equally renowned for his provocative, discipline-influencing texts as he was for carefully nurturing students’ creative and intellectual endeavours, Jonathan always had time for a story, a conversation or a laugh. To the world he will be remembered as an influential and substantive presence in architectural pedagogy and scholarship. At The Bartlett he will be remembered as a person of substance, but equally, as a gentle, thoughtful, collaborative colleague, mentor and teacher who was taken from us too soon. Jonathan was a prolific writer and his use of prose was widely admired. We would like to remember him by reflecting on his own words, drawn from a selection of his books and articles.

Drawing Forth

Jonathan Hill was a Professor of Architecture and Visual Theory at The Bartlett School of Architecture for 34 years. He joined UCL in 1989, and his unique research and teaching contributions included the leadership of the Architecture MArch PG12 unit and his directorship of the Architectural Design MPhil/PhD programme. Jonathan’s leadership of the renowned Unit 12 and one of the most influential doctoral programmes dedicated to architectural design globally have one thing in common – both begin from the premise that the drawing of a line is simultaneously the drawing forth of an idea.

The conception of design established with the promotion of disegno in the Italian Renaissance states that an idea is conceived and drawn before it is built. To design is, therefore, to draw forth.

Jonathan Hill, Immaterial Architecture (2006)

Drawing the Line

While this idea of disegno as the drawing forth of an idea operated synthetically in Jonathan’s pursuit of design research, other areas of his intellectual and creative inquiry compartmentalised architectural production, critically drawing the line, for example, between the discipline of architecture and the profession. The critical distance in between became the territory for the reimagining of the figure of the architect, inspiring future design researchers to explore the subversive and transformative capacity of that space.

The Illegal Architect is a proposal for a different type of architectural producer. The illegal architect questions and subverts the conventions, codes and laws of architecture... For illegal architects, the aim must be to design space and to think spatiality, suggesting a spatiality of product as well as process.

Jonathan Hill, The Illegal Architect (1998)

Photos: Sam Coulton (left), Paul Smoothy (right)

Drawing Out

If Jonathan’s teaching and research questioned the figure of the architect, he was equally invested in probing the tacit potential of the user. His design research surfaced the often-neglected figure of the architectural occupant, imbuing inhabitation with a powerful sense of creative agency, as well as the capacity to co-design.

In this book I question the authority of the architect, state that use can be a creative activity through which each user constructs a building anew, and argue for an architecture aware of the creativity of the user. I argue for a new architect as much as a new user, both having a role in the creation of architecture.

Jonathan Hill, Actions of Architecture (2003)

Drawing

Attention

Consistently, Jonathan’s design research engages its object – the illegal architect, the user, the weather, the ruin – probing its speculative capacity to imagine possible alternative futures.

The ruin draws attention to what is absent and was once whole, and implies a possible return to that condition. Alternatively, the ruin is a precursor to innovation and change. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, the ruin indicates that the present situation is not inevitable and implies an alternative future.

Jonathan Hill, The Architecture of Ruins (2019)

Drawing Together

Throughout his work there is a palpable appreciation for the interconnectedness of the media for the dissemination of architectural ideas. It is this fluidity that validates design research as a pursuit and fuelled Jonathan’s engagement with it. A similar appreciation continues in the work of the Unit 12 students, past and present, and his MPhil and Doctoral students in architectural design.

Often a design does not get built and an architect must be persuasive to see that it does. Sometimes building is not the best means to explore architecture. Influential architects tend to write, draw and publish as well as build... drawing may lead to building, writing may lead to drawing, or building may lead to writing and drawing. Listing the architectural works that inspire us, some would be drawings, some would be texts and others would be buildings either visited or described in drawings and texts. An interdependent, multi-directional web of influences, drawing, writing and building have together stimulated architects’ creative development for over 500 years.

Jonathan Hill, ‘Design Research: The Next 500 Years’ (2022)

UG12 students working on a collective drawing during a settlement ‘town hall’ meeting on Three Mills Island, East London, 2023. Photo: Hannah Corlett

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Par t 1)

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Programme Director: Farlie Reynolds

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 and fabrications, 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 programme fosters a vibrant studio culture with students working across UCL’s Central London campus and participating in architectural field trips, visits to buildings and cultural institutions in the UK and abroad, enriching 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 critically challenge the boundaries of architectural education and the profession.

Architecture BSc revolves around four core streams: Architectural Design Projects, Building Technology, History and Theory, and Professional Studies, with an emphasis placed 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 sociopolitical 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 wellrounded 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 sociopolitical, 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 Senior Programme Administrator, Kim van Poeteren, and Programme Administrator, Beth Barnett-Sanders, as well as to our committed and enthusiastic team of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants: Maciej Adaszewski, Elena Agafonova, Paola Camasso, Isabelle Donetch, Kirti Durelle, Melih Kamaoğlu, Ryan Paul Kearney, Nathanael Myers, Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira Da Silva, Petra Seitz, Daniel Stokes, Sharon Tam and Katerina Zacharopoulou.

Year 1 Students

Patience Omolola Adediran, Ibtihaz (Rihan) Mahir Ahmed, Mia Alian, Seran Allen, Maryam Alqassim, Hiroha Aoki, Tomi Balogun, Noelia Banuelos Jechiu, Mattia Bertone, Elizabeth Bronstein, Judith Brown, Emily Browne, Mia Burgess, Joseph Burt, Inés Camba-Young, Clara Castellano Burguera, Sze Ho (Louis) Chan, Matthew Chan, Siyi Chen, Wing Yuet (Valerie) Chen, Jiayi (Charlie) Chen, Tsun Hei (Ernest) Cheung, Connor Chiew Weng Sheng, Dominic Coles Saffirio, Anika Deb, Tim Deleu, Airelle Diestro, Rosie Dymock, Dzifa Dzah, Diala Farmer, Carissa Fong, Katerina Goebel, Alexis Granzo, Olga Grogolova, Aiden Hodgson, Syed (Mahe) Hussain, Warutch

Ingwattanapoka, Isaac Insley, Leonardo Iovino, Evelyn Jeffery, Jiawei (Charles) Jin, Yui Kato, Noel Kim, Alby Lau, Kin Gi (Kenny) Lau, Kirsty Shi-Yue Liang, Haena Lim, Sophie Link, David Lirio, Xingjian Liu, Oscar Loo, Vincent Luc, Ayla Maydanchi, Melisa Melinte, Hannah Miller-Forkin, Kimie Nakano, John Ogunyiluka, Polina Parshyna, Gia Reehal, Conrad Robinson, Caleb Shiota Sertsay, Youyou (Fi) Shaxu, Isabelle Shirley, Ethan Sim, Paramveer Singh, Antonia Szlosarek, Songyan Tan, Hanxiang (Christopher) Tao, Musab Bin Umair, Neha Vasoya, Zikun (Jason) Wang, Mushili Wilkie, Xiaojing (Nicole) Xu, Yuejia (Cassandra) Yan, Haojia (Yuan) Yuan, Xinyu (Eva) Zhang, Yingtong Zhou, Sofia Zontone

About Time

Director: Max Dewdney

This year's theme, ‘About Time’, delves into the essence of time as a fundamental component interwoven with the fabric of the universe, marked by cosmic events, celestial motions and the unfolding of existence. Time transcends cultural boundaries, influencing our perception of the past, present and future. Its enigmatic nature continues to captivate scientists, philosophers, poets and architects, fuelling fascination and inquiry.

Year 1 students embarked on their academic journey by engaging with the Petrie Museum at UCL, home to an extensive collection of 80,000 Egyptian and Sudanese artefacts. This initial project served as a reflective exploration of deeper historical periods, aiming to inform our understanding of contemporary and future challenges, such as material scarcity amid climate volatility. Students were prompted to consider how architectural craftsmanship could integrate preservation, reuse and adaptation while also innovating and creating new materials to craft spaces and reshape our environment. Each participant crafted their own ‘Atlas of the Future’, comprising drawings, models and catalogues.

For the second project, ‘Otherlands’, students collaborated on a group initiative to create six installations inspired by 12 Ancient Egyptian deities. The installations examined various dimensions of time, including daily rituals, fictional and mythical narratives, and the storytelling inherent in choreography and everyday activities. Collaborating with museum curators, conservationists and the public programme team, the installations were precisely placed within the Petrie Museum’s collection to reactivate the artifacts, while engaging the public.

The field trip to Rome, the ‘Eternal City’, became the subject for a sketching project that explored seven elements: Time, Topography, Vistas, Water, Light, Geometry and Erosion. These elements were integral to the development of the third and final project.

The building project investigated the theme ‘About Time’ through various sites in and around Clerkenwell, London. Students explored diverse sub-themes such as Dynamic, Animated, Static, Timeless, Forthcoming and Future Time, each tailoring their project briefs to their selected sites, offering new perspectives on the temporal dimensions of architecture.

Year 1

Associate Directors

Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Isaac Simpson

Tutors

Alastair Browning, Ivan Chan (Studio Manager), Nat Chard, Nichola Czyz, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Synnøve Fredericks, Jack Hardy, Ashley Hinchcliffe, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Fergus Knox, Matei-Alexandru Mitrache, Emily Priest (Head of Media Studies), Gavin Robotham, Kay Sedki, Isaac Simpson, Colin Smith

PGTAs

Maciej Adaszewski, Elena Agafonova, Nathanael Myers, Daniel Stokes, Sharon Tam, Katerina Zacharopoulou

Critics: Laura Allen, Abigail Ashton, Felicity Atekpe, Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Blanche Cameron, Fabrizio Cazzulo, Giorgos Christofi, Krina Christopoulou, Elizabeth Dow, Rayan Elnayal, Maria Fulford, Murray Fraser, Harshal Gulabchandre, Charlie Harris, Tom Henly, Steve Johnson, Stefan Lengen, Louise Linthwaite, Sara Martínez Zamora, EmmaKate Matthews, Agata Murasko, Jatin Naru, John Ng, Folasade Okunribido, Edie Parfitt, Thomas Parker, Divya Patel, Polina Pencheva, Barbara Penner, Sophia Psarra, Akif Rahman, Rahesh Ram, Peg Rawes, Farlie Reynolds, Tadeas Riha, Martin Sagar, Robert Schmidt III, Neba Sere, Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves, Sally Sun, Izabela Wieczorek, Sal Wilson, Elliot Woolard, Yeena Yoon

Thanks to guest lecturers Richard Abetokunbo Aina, Nat Chard and Michael Woodrow, and to the Petrie Museum and B-made

Y1.1 Dominic Coles Saffirio ‘Smithfield Fleshworks’. This project combines a leather tanning facility, a glove-making workshop and a bacterial leather producer. It uses both traditional artisanal methods and new emerging material practices to revive and preserve ancient crafts that are slowly fading from London’s streets. The kombucha material possesses an extraordinary translucency with naturally occurring imperfections that act as patternation, and is used as an experimental material within the interior of the building.

Y1.2, Y1.4 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘The Seen and Unseen’. The installation draws inspiration from celestial elements, specifically the phases of the moon, to symbolise the connection between Horus and Amun, the gods of sky and air. This project explores the dynamic interplay between distances, blurring the lines between visible and invisible realms, and inviting participants on a sensory journey through a ritual. This journey aligns them with the moons, brings them closer to the earth and prompts awareness of tangible and intangible elements while emphasising the significance of air in our lives. Photography by Reliant Imaging.

Y1.3 Selection of Y1 Works ‘Atlas of the Future’. This project asked students to select an object from the Petrie Museum at UCL, home to an extensive collection of 80,000 Egyptian and Sudanese artefacts. This initial project served as a reflective exploration of deeper historical periods, setting out to inform our understanding of contemporary and future challenges, such as cultural interpretations and material scarcity amid climate volatility, involving drawings, models and catalogues. Photography by Sophie Percival.

Y1.5 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘Emeritus Gods’. Retired gods, no longer worshipped but not yet forgotten, exist only as museum artefacts, revered only by academics, but not worshipped. One such symbol, a crescent moon, is associated with Thoth, representing his role as the god of time and cycles. Thoth regulated the cycles of the moon and its phases as well as the measurement of time. We have two halves of a moon facing away from one another, with light illuminating from within. Photography by Reliant Imaging.

Y1.6 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘Osiris and Isis: Sanctuary’. The installation involves a carefully curated performance, leading up to encasing oneself in darkness, reminiscent of Osiris’s incubation ritual. The sequence of steps illustrates the reconstruction of the body, symbolising the eternal cycle of life. Held together by a steel frame, each component speaks of the narrative sequence. Four mechanical arms, designed with acrylic, open and close the cocoon structure, mimicking the cyclical nature of the Osiris myth.

Photography by Reliant Imaging.

Y1.7 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘Tapestry of Being’. The installation intertwines Nephthys and Anubis, Ancient Egyptian deities of the dead, to convey a narrative of life, death and the afterlife. Nephthys, depicted mourning, invites user interaction by kneeling, mirroring the sombre aspect of death. The pivoting installation mirrors Anubis’s scale, symbolising life’s delicate balance tied to everyday actions. Photography by Reliant Imaging.

Y1.8 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘Ra/Set’. The sun is a marker of different activities, seasons or rituals for different people. However, what remains constant among all organisms is a routine that follows the cycle the sun performs. Ra, the god of the sun, provides this constant resource that will reliably set and rise again. Set, the god of the desert and chaos, introduces unpredictable variables that can threaten the security a routine provides. Photography by Reliant Imaging.

Y1.9 Otherlands Group Installation in Petrie Museum, UCL ‘Rain, River, Flood’. The installation explores a design constraint of museum spaces. Based on the Egyptian deities Tefnut and Khnum, each representing rain and flood respectively, the piece creates the effect of water without holding any. Instead, the cycle is started by human intervention, spinning the handle and beginning the slow thrum of rain, with the installation generating and playing with different tempos of the sound of water.

Y1.10 Kin Gi (Kenny) Lau ‘Activating the Glitch / Farringdon Film House’. The project uses the language of film to design a series of spaces for a film house located on the edge of the station in Farringdon, London. The Glitch is a pivoting frame that interferes with the production of film, creating glitches when the film is played back, and serving as a record of inhabitation.

Y1.11 Conrad Robinson ‘Ground and Water Bathhouse’. The project is sited in the old services room opposite Smithfield Market and proposes a bathhouse that cleanses and cleans through its relationship to the ground, tapping into the hidden River Fleet that runs below.

Y1.12 Seran Allen ‘Calthorpe Street’s Bespoke Hairdressers’. Through the design of a hairdresser’s, the project explores how buildings architecturally advertise themselves. Sited within an old shop in Clerkenwell, near the Mount Pleasant old postal office, the layers of time are revealed and added to through the experience of space.

Y1.13 Judith Brown ‘Institute for Writing’. This writer’s living and working space has a public area on the ground floor for writing workshops and readings from the current writer in residence. The design process includes timebased drawings that document how the daily time patterns of the postal worker, commuter and local resident could overlap. Layered on top of this is a representation of how another protagonist – a writer –would pass their time during the day.

Y1.14 Xinyu (Eva) Zhang ‘A Community Room’. Originally an abandoned and unnoticed courtyard space on the borders of Clerkenwell, the site has been transformed into a collaborative ecosystem through the architectural proposal. By exploring the in-between spaces of private and public areas, the project passively encourages the formation of a close community.

Y1.15 Maryam Alqassim ‘The Children’s Library on Owen’s Row’. Amid the bustle of city life, the library offers a space where younger and older children can enjoy both learning and exploring. With the purpose of reintroducing green spaces and highlighting their benefits for learning, the library provides a sanctuary where children can ignite their curiosity and spend time discovering the various areas within the building.

Y1.16 Project 3 Group Model Shot ‘About Time’. The building project investigated the theme ‘About Time’ through various sites in and around Clerkenwell. Students explored diverse sub-themes such as Dynamic, Animated, Static, Timeless, Forthcoming and Future Time, each tailoring their project briefs to their selected sites, offering new perspectives on the temporal dimensions of architecture. Photography by Sophie Percival.

Y1.4

Y1.8

Y1.9

Y1.6

Y1.7

Y1.10

Y1.12

Y1.13

Mud City: Bioregions, Ecotopes and Atmospheres

Margit Kraft, Toby O’Connor

UG1 investigates the processes of natural and local material construction. We work on developing timelines, settlement structures, building types and material strategies that respond to a specific ‘ecotope’: a distinct landscape condition.

This year we investigated and interpreted the specific conditions of the River Roding in Barking, East London, focusing on tectonics and atmosphere in the design of future-proof dwellings. What could our cities look and feel like if we embrace and celebrate our urban rivers and clay-rich ground?

Earth can be made up of many things, including clay, silt, sand, gravel, stone, chalk, not to mention waste from construction and industrial processes like concrete, glass and chemicals. Earth components can be processed and combined with an infinite variety of other ‘natural things’ like plants, timber and mycelium, plus animal and insect by-products.

However, the subsoils where most potential earthen building materials are found also support topsoils. Through important practices like regenerative land management, it is now understood that about 25% of biodiversity lives in our soils – and that they are the largest terrestrial store of carbon. What is the new architecture that springs from a critical and creative attention to this incredible resource?

We began the year with a programme of physical experimentation, combined with an ambitious collective precedent study of 24 earth-related buildings, in collaboration with our sister unit Y3S3 at the University of Cambridge. In the course of site identification and analysis, we gained first-hand experience of river catchment maintenance through a day of reed harvesting with the charity Thames21.

On our field trip to Brussels, Paris and Lyon we visited historic, modernist and contemporary places, buildings and practices, including a tour of the landmark building Victoria with architecture collective 51n4e, and a workshop with earth experts BC Materials.

From this collective knowledge base students launched their individual projects and have developed a great diversity of inventive and meaningful design investigations, ranging from the sensitive repair and rearticulation of existing council estates to the conception of bold new typologies for new ways of living on a variety of town-centre, industrial and wildlife sites.

Year 2

Sofia Erpici Del Pino, Pia Greenway, Trent Jack, Stella Ladanyi, Louisa Neal, Alexandra Pantouli, Abisola Rutter, Yi Mun (Kristy) Yu

Year 3

Beatriz Goodwins

Banuelos, Hannah Simon, Alessandra Villanueva

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Davies, Nicholas Jewell, Wei Lim

Critics: Anastasia Glover, Rosie Hervey, Olivia Neves Marra, Hugh Queenan, Tim Waterman

Partners: Unit Y3S3 at the University of Cambridge

Sponsors: Thames21, Land & Water at Rainham, Rochester Square in Camden, Panopus Printing, Earthborn Paints

Thanks to Jan Opdekamp and Jasper Van der Linden

1.1 Hannah Simon, Y3 ‘A Light Touch for the Symbiocene’. The project explores how locally sourced light earth materials can be used to improve and transform a housing estate in Barking and Dagenham to meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs. Its structural and material strategy shows how a traditional interwar London terrace can be remodelled to deliver medium-density housing that accommodates a wider range of household sizes, while also introducing much-needed social and environmental connections. To stimulate participation and agency, it adopts a ‘case study’ approach with one pilot street featuring an urban room as the starting point, which can be replicated by residents across London and beyond.

1.2–1.3 Pia Greenway, Y2 ‘Beckton Levels’. The project proposes a home for the elderly on the Barking side of the River Roding and a children’s education centre across the river within a nature reserve. A new raised pedestrian route across the river connects the two sites, addressing the threats to biodiversity and many species caused by the current sprawling public paths. The home for the elderly and the children’s centre are designed to be soft, comfortable and warm environments made from natural materials and bathed in sunlight. This creates a calm, secure and peaceful space connecting the residents and visitors to the site’s natural beauty.

1.4–1.5, 1.7 Alessandra Villanueva, Y3 ‘Navigable Native Nexus’. A four-span undulating timber bridge provides the Barking community with a new access route to a nature reserve across the River Roding and beyond East London. To ensure continued maintenance and care, carpenters and their families are provided with a new settlement with homes, gardens and workshops as part of the new route across the river. Utilising the prevalent local materials, such as reeds for railings and building insulation, the project fosters a more connected and sustainable urban environment, emphasising the significance of community stewardship in maintaining and preserving our built environment.

1.6 Beatriz Goodwins Banuelos , Y3 ‘Wattle and Daub in a Modern Existence’. Located on a former industrial site in Barking, the project uses sustainable materials and building practices to reinvent affordable housing. Using prefabricated wattle and daub cassettes as a contemporary construction material, the project re-envisions the ideals of farms: practising sustainable agriculture and living within nature despite the industrial surroundings; promoting resource efficiency by growing the building’s own materials and having allotments on site; and bringing communities of families together through communal activities and cluster living, thus enabling a better quality of life.

1.8–1.10 Alexandra Pantouli, Y2 ‘On Thresholds, Climate and Delay’. This project envisions a town square on the bank of the River Roding, complemented by a public living room, a laundrette and homes of different sizes. Embracing the notion of thresholds, the design bridges the current gap between land and river, integrating the houseboat residents into the wider Barking community. While delaying the flow of rainwater to avoid flooding, the proposal also slows down the everyday life of the residents and passers-by. This new place encourages them to engage positively with their built environment and each other, as well as fostering a deeper connection to the river itself.

1.11–1.12 Trent Jack , Y2 ‘How to Grow Heirlooms’. Harts Lane Estate is an old heirloom with a questionable legacy. This project inserts a fragmented ceramics hub into the leftover spaces to address the issues of cramped use, monoculture and asbestos-contaminated soil. A kiln sits at the physical heart of the space, becoming a fiery rallying point for a blossoming cooperative. A café and laundrette complement it as extended living rooms

for this new community, promoting social activity and personal safety, day and night. Residual soil from the ceramics processes is layered across the estate, forming new safe ground for residents to play and garden on, re-establishing authorship in a space that previously seemed to be built against them.

1.13–1.14, 1.16 Abisola Rutter, Y2 ‘Barking Water Retreat’. The project integrates advanced clay tube filtration systems into the River Roding, London’s most polluted river. This design provides a cleaner habitat for the river’s ecosystem and cold water swimming pools for human visitors, seamlessly converging the realms of ecological remediation and recreational repose. The architecture also filters sound, such as bird songs and the river’s flowing water, by providing areas with obscured views and amplified auditory experiences. Housing for scientists and visitors serves as a threshold between the natural environment and the built landscape, with views focused on the water.

1.15, 1.17 Yi Mun (Kristy) Yu, Y2 ‘Layers of Care and Repair’. Located on the banks of the River Roding in Barking, the project provides affordable self-build housing for families who have agreed to build and maintain their own homes and wider communal areas using shared tools and materials available for free near the site. This ongoing relationship transforms the site into an intermediate public space that pedestrians can use as they like, depending on the tidal river, which floods part of the site daily. Expressing construction processes that respect the surrounding natural environment as much as possible, the project proposes a new form of selfmaintaining architecture.

1.18, 1.21 Sofia Erpici Del Pino, Y2 ‘Growing a Community’. The programme consists of an evolving journey, where two buildings, their inhabitants and a lush forest gradually grow in size and diversity, starting with plantations, a crèche, a kitchen and a workshop. Offering affordable, flexible and partly communal housing, the units within the building feature doubleheight ceilings and mezzanines, which residents can extend to expand their homes in the future. Inspired by the Chinese Fujian Tulou, the material strategy proposes hyper-locally sourced rammed earth and timber from the home-grown forest, ensuring resilient maintenance and use for future generations.

1.19 Louisa Neal, Y2 ‘Marsh Island’. Embracing a riverside condition, the project proposes an elderly home that enables residents to engage with local biodiversity, including the site’s vast birdlife. Most elderly homes are more hotel-like than home-like, lacking individuality and a sense of ownership for the residents. Inspired by villages and towns and how they create communities, this project proposes a building that gives care home residents pride in their living space and direct access to nature. The surrounding landscape is flooded to restore its pre-existing wetland, creating a resilient, beautiful and calm peninsula for the residents, surrounded by reeds and birds.

1.20 Stella Ladanyi, Y2 ‘Palimpsest, Layers of History in Barking’. A palimpsest is a type of manuscript that gets reused many times, bearing visible traces from earlier use. The programme focuses on celebrating and preserving Barking’s own rich palimpsest while creating new memories too. The activities include performance, collective storytelling and a communal kitchen encouraging Barking’s diverse community to share their cultures through food, memory and rituals. The organic shapes of the new buildings sit within the grid-like framework of the existing structure on site, creating a layered composition with a main ceremonial route leading to the adjacent River Roding.

Radical Repair: Designing Through Self-Build Practices

Zachary Fluker, Jhono Bennett, Hannah Corlett

Our rapidly urbanising world will require more material resources than are currently available in our planet’s already fragile ecosystem. Driven by this need to reconsider resource use in line with pressing environmental, social and economic considerations, built environment practice is on a path towards radical change in how we produce and, more importantly, repair and maintain our built fabric.

This shift in how we make requires more inventive means of material reuse, existing building reconfiguration and a critical rethink on how we work together as spatial practitioners. UG2 embraces this dynamic challenge and works to develop architectural interventions that respond to the contextually nuanced needs of the people and the communities who make up our cities. From user-centric built-in furniture to high-level spatial strategies, the unit’s projects explore the potential for how repair could empower and support new relationships between individuals and the city.

On-site research and first-hand experience on how acts of repair have shaped and impacted architecture and the city were gathered during the unit trip to Berlin. While there, we visited the reconfigured Neues Museum, Neue Nationalgalerie and the retrofitted Tempelhof Airport. Back in London, the unit explored the district of Limehouse where a dense urban environment in the former docklands provided fragments of latent land and defunct infrastructure. Unravelling the potential of these sites through careful analysis and documentation has led to proposals that integrate multiple layers of natural and built infrastructures. By adopting a critical position on repair, each project identifies how actions of re-cycling, re-configuration and re-use can drastically re-shape the spatial context of Limehouse.

For UG2, ‘radical repair’ represents a design methodology that anticipates the future and provides a framework for transformation that positions people and their relationship to the city at the forefront of design. Within this framework, each project identified a user group within Limehouse that guided the building programme and nature of the intervention. This outlook on developing human-centred design leads directly into the unit’s interest in self-build construction and the role that co-produced architecture plays in a more equitable urban future for our planet.

Year 2

James Tyler, Odin Verden, Graeme Wong

Year 3

Jaeho (Leo) Cho, Laura Dietzold, Harshal Gulabchandre, Esin Gumus, Regan Reser, Nora Seferi, Chunyi (Sally) Sun, Lettie Vera-Sanso Talbot

Technical tutors and consultants: Wolfgang Frese, Alberto Fernández González

Critics: Katerina Dionysopoulou, Maria Fulford, Billy Mavropoulos, Maxwell Mutanda, Jörg Majer, Thomas Parker, Elly Selby, Mira Yung

2.1, 2.14, 2.18 Harshal Gulabchandre, Y3 ‘The Kitchen Estate‘. Commercial Road High Street in East London has a range of socioeconomic and ecological disparities which require urban repair. The diasporic Bangladeshi community residing on this high street face a multitude of intersectional housing and food insecurities. The project addresses these systemic issues through a community kitchen, vertical farm and social housing. Using selfbuilt rammed earth construction as a vehicle for sociotechnical community engagement and material localism on the high street, the building repairs local disparities and empowers local people.

2.2–2.4 Chunyi (Sally) Sun, Y3 ‘Tailor Made’. This project proposes a new site of craft for a sewing community of migrant women in Limehouse. The buildings are based on a self-build modular system derived from the women’s working patterns and the grid of old concrete foundations. Engaging with reuse and reconfiguration, the design features timber elements and adjustable footings for disassembly, adapting to community fluctuations. Leftover concrete foundations are repurposed into landscape elements, maintaining a connection to the site’s history. Textile waste is upcycled using the women’s skills to create light baffles. The site is divided into production, education and retail areas, with sewing workshops, classrooms and public-facing shopfronts. Small, configurable units create intimate spaces, emphasising the community’s familial nature.

2.5, 2.7 Jaeho (Leo) Cho, Y3 ‘Upcycling Playground’. The project creates a spatial intervention in Limehouse, involving repair through the upcycling of waste materials. Inspired by a child’s ability to transform seemingly worthless items into personal treasures, the project begins by creating a catalogue of handmade papers using tools and waste paper found at home. On-site research leads to the development of leaf bricks, which became the focal point for the repair intervention. Based on interviews with locals, the project provides an educational playground for children at the local nursery. The design focuses on making the upcycling process accessible and inviting for children to interact with voluntarily. The project’s aesthetics, user interface and scale are shaped by its educational aspect and exclusive use by children.

2.6 Nora Seferi, Y3 ‘Loafers Lair’. This project investigates how the principles of spectral light can be applied to the design of a therapy centre that utilises this type of light therapy to trigger serotonin and melatonin production in the body. Digital tools are used to craft and create layered façades that regulate the amount of natural light and urban vegetation growth the building will have. Additionally, internal conditions are created where these qualities can be altered to benefit the mental health of users, accommodating their varying waking times and working hours.

2.8 Lettie Vera-Sanso Talbot, Y3 ‘Rogue Histories’. In London’s East End, where historical erasure is a pressing issue, this project proposes a civic space called the Centre of the Unconventional Historians to research and celebrate the city’s past. The project focuses on hobbyist historians who scavenge the Thames to uncover lost relics and give voice to underrepresented lives. These unconventional historians provide a more egalitarian account of London’s past that is overlooked. The project investigates how reuse methods can support a space for these historians and the public to share local histories of the Thames and surrounding areas. The architecture embodies a three-fold register of the city’s past: a repository of ‘lost’ artefacts, a platform for previously unrepresented lives and a structure built from waste material found within the Thames.

2.9–2.10 Laura Dietzold, Y3 ‘An Act of Continuous Repair’. Significant sea level rise in London is predicted under high emission scenarios, affecting infrastructure and the built environment in flood-prone zones near the Thames. Current flood defence infrastructure takes a simplistic approach, attempting to ‘design our way out’ of the challenge with walls and barriers. This project proposes a retrofitted form of flood defence infrastructure that encourages controlled flooding, allowing the city to make use of water as a precious resource. By focusing on retrofitting existing infrastructure and adapting it to future needs, the proposal creates a symbiotic relationship between the built and natural environments, rather than relying on complex and expensive infrastructure that disconnects us from water.

2.11–2.12 Regan Reser, Y3 ‘The Ritual’. The project is a spa for Limehouse Basin boat dwellers. It fulfils the basic human need for bathing while aiding mental and physical health through relaxation rituals. Inspired by the stages of water purification and the site’s historical accumulator tower, the spa filters wastewater supplied from the boats. This creates an off-grid water recycling system that mimics the boat dwellers’ lifestyle and alleviates the burden on London’s sewage system. The building utilises both mechanical and ecological forms of purification, with wetland roofing as the first level of filtration before the water enters mechanical processes for use in cleaned pools and steams. Black water is used to create biogas to power the spa. The project combines a study of historical infrastructure, consideration of users’ needs and innovative water recycling.

2.13, 2.16 Graeme Wong, Y2 ‘Avian Arcadia’. This proposal for E1 Waterbird Welfare, a community group in Limehouse, presents a sanctuary for injured waterbirds that serves as a symbol of renewal. Beyond rehabilitation, the building provides a space for education where volunteers and students learn about safeguarding urban wildlife. The design, echoing a bird’s wing, symbolises the journey to recovery and return to the wild. The project embodies self-build and repair, empowering individuals to actively restore their environment and foster stewardship. Together, the community works to rescue, save and rehabilitate urban wildlife, ensuring a thriving ecosystem for the future.

2.15 Esin Gumus, Y3 ‘Thames Interpretation Centre’. The project explores Limehouse’s vanished maritime history through its shoreline, focusing on Limehouse Hole Stairs. Inspired by the scattered rubble and remnants along the shore, a pier design incorporating an exhibition space is proposed. The pier’s accessibility changes with the tides, creating a dynamic interaction with the site’s historical narrative, allowing people to engage with and learn about Limehouse’s past. The project also includes a Thames interpretation centre, showcasing the river’s historical significance and its evolving relationship with communities. It promotes river restoration, rewilding and the use of materials dredged from the river in traditional crafts. The centre fosters skill sharing and strengthens community ties through these activities.

2.17 Odin Verden, Y2 ‘Velo Hub’. The project interprets repair as enhancing performance in cycling by balancing speed and comfort. By making changes to the bike and body, the project improves overall performance. When introduced to a site, the same methodology is applied to identify interventions that can increase the area’s performance. Just like in cycling, any intervention will involve a trade-off, but the project resolves both issues while encouraging the development of new skills in documentation and modelling. The ultimate goal is to use this repair-for-performance methodology in future projects, optimising systems by addressing multiple factors simultaneously.

Zero Carbon Judy Garland

Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk

UG3 works with a foot in the magical and a hand in the practical, developing architectural fantasies grounded ten feet deep in reality. The tone of this is defined each year by the interests and personalities of our students.

This year our starting point was The Wizard of Oz, a dream of an alternative world and a sociopolitical critique. Dorothy, the main character, is led through a technicolour reworking of reality that is different and better than her home. We looked at Oz as an example of how serious issues can be dealt with in engaging and popular ways. We asked our students to explore the concerns they feel architects should be addressing. The Wizard of Oz, a film that speaks to exile, shows that the shortcomings of reality can be the catalyst that makes us take control and imagine.

Oz was considered as a place that has existed in the breakwaters of fact and fiction. We researched and met some of the designers who have enabled the illusion of Oz on both stage and screen. We also considered what happened to these real places and objects after the cameras were turned off and the doors to the theatre were shut. From David Lynch to Salman Rushdie, Oz has been reimagined and reused by many kinds of artists over the past 100 years, resulting in wildly different types of work.

The unit is interested in building as a verb and a noun. We looked at those whose own work is tied to key moments and stages of their lives, including Niki de Saint Phalle’s use of construction to interrogate her social responsibilities as a designer; Günther Domenig, who believed his Stonehouse could never be finished due to his love of translating drawings into buildings; Fusions Jameen, who, inspired by Walter Segal, collectively built a street as a response to the inequities of London’s housing; Christine de Pizan, who imagined a feminist utopia. This year was no different, there’s no place like UG3.

UG3 is a result of the impact and influence of the late Professor Jonathan Hill.

Year 2

Yizheng (Ethan) Chen, Ifsah Sabah Chowdhery, Dahee Im, Pimtong (Pink) Tongyai, Chau Anh Tran, Renu Uppal

Year 3

Ariel Alper, Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Grace Boyten-Heyes, Holly Hunt, Vladut Iacob, Peter Moore, Andrew Wai Kit Seah, Ryhan Sheik, Nikhita Sivakumar, Kwong Yin (Christine) Wong

Technical tutor and consultant: Martin Reynolds

Critics: Ivan Chan, Winki Chan, Naomi Gibson, Thomas Parker

3.1, 3.16 Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Y3 ‘Ad Hoc Nexus: Exarcheia Police Station’. The project reimagines the traditional police station as a place where the principles of adaptability, collaboration and empowerment converge. Developed over a period of 50 years, the station serves not only as a centre for law enforcement but also as a catalyst for positive change and justice within Exarcheia’s police–community relationship. Through its iterations and social predictions, the design explores power dynamics, tension and protest, with spaces that strengthen trust and transparency and redefine the role of law enforcement within Exarcheia.

3.2, 3.10 Ariel Alper, Y3 ‘Lexicon: Language as a Drawing Tool’. The project identifies a link between language grammar and architectural space. With the creation of a visual lexicon, made using linguistic descriptions of spatial experiences, a new type of architecture is created where words and their rhythm help to define the building at multiple scales. Situated in Athens, Greece, the project encompasses a language centre and translation library. It embodies the design process itself while serving as a community hub where individuals can engage with language learning, global media and diverse cultures in Greece and beyond.

3.3 Vladut Iacob, Y3 ‘The Spectacle of the Sporting Body’. The project provides a mixed-use sports facility that encourages physical health along with mental fortitude, achieving harmony of body and mind that shapes young people into assured adults. Martial arts, based on Taoist philosophy, stand as a central pillar to the proposal, recognising the sporting body as an alternative tool for design and expression. The architecture is an assembly of training spaces, separated by turns and movement, echoing the sport itself.

3.4 Yizheng (Ethan) Chen, Y2 ’Exarcheia Anarchist Parliament’. The parliament facilitates discussions for any unofficial building decisions in the anarchist neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens. The parliament is progressively constructed while design decisions are made inside the building over the course of its gradual construction. By valuing darkness as a key quality that draws people into discussions, the building creates ‘tenebroso’ lighting conditions for political rituals and consensus decision-making to be performed.

3.5 Chau Anh Tran, Y2 ‘Metamorfosi Graffiti’. Derived from the Greek word graphein, meaning ‘to write’, graffiti has evolved over time to represent anarchy and rebellion in the Exarcheia neighbourhood. The project questions the morality of graffiti and redefines the word’s purpose. The project therefore proposes a space that combines theatre and craft-making – two forms of artistic political expression from Ancient Greece and modern Athens –to create a space for young misfits and craftspeople. The building forms a creative playground and a space for freedom of expression to tackle the ongoing issues of mass protests and oppression in Exarcheia

3.6 Ryhan Sheik, Y3 ‘The Architecture of Protest’. In reimagining Cable Street in 1936, the project encapsulates themes of historical resilience, community fellowship and political activism. The right to protest and the actions related to demonstrations of defiance are deeply rooted within its architectural context. As such, the project responds to ideas of political activism, with the gradual construction of these architectural bastions spanning decades, mirroring the nature of political evolution. Materiality, composition and function become integral threads woven into the fabric of each fortress, serving as tangible means of expression and communicating ideology.

3.7 Nikhita Sivakumar, Y3 ‘An Architecture of Gathering Thoughts’. In response to political concerns surrounding mass migration and asylum-seeking, the Navarinou

Registry Office exists as a growing set of archives. Maintained by an architect, writer and gardener, they craft a space upon the forgotten stories of Athens’ refugees. The project addresses the cultural chasms between refugees and the Greek community, emphasising the importance of storytelling in bridging these two worlds.

3.8, 3.13 Peter Moore, Y3 ‘Manufacturing Harmony’. Through grubby, messy experimentation and precisely manufactured prototyping, the parts of a garden centre and CNC workshop along the River Ravensbourne are designed for decomposition. Once parts have their initial life ended by natural decay, they are repurposed as urban furnishings and natural habitats. The architecture is selfsufficient, non-toxic and subject to the cycles and whims of nature. In this way the project functions as a polemic against current trends in greening, offering, facilitating and manufacturing harmony with nature instead.

3.9 Grace Boyten-Heyes, Y3 ‘I’d Go Orange’. Facing corrupt estate regeneration, this project looks to an agency-based, self-build scheme to improve and protect tenants’ existing homes in London’s council estates. Based on an experimental post-occupancy analysis (POA) of Weedington Road Estate, a prototype flat situated on the corner of the estate applies the same adaptive reuse scheme. However, this time, it is used to physicalise the existing residents’ oral histories and daily anecdotes discovered from the POA.

3.11 Holly Hunt, Y3 ‘Gaia’s Garden of Healing’. The project is a sexual health clinic that harnesses the benefits of floral therapy to improve the lives and medical experiences of Athenian sex workers. Located in a self-managed park in the Exarcheia neighbourhood, the building uses the existing orchard and local flora to produce flowers for community floral therapy workshops. These include the meditative act of floral arranging and gardening, as well as the herbalist science of floral distillation to create healing aromas and ointments.

3.12 Renu Uppal, Y2 ‘The Cross-Cultural Kitchen’. The project is a cross-cultural restaurant that houses migrant workers who work on site harvesting herbs. The restaurant is designed to facilitate movement and interaction among workers, while providing a relationship between indoor and outdoor dining spaces. The intention is to encourage people from a wide range of cultures in Greece, who would not typically interact, to integrate and share their individual experiences through food culture. Drawing inspiration from both Greek and Punjabi cultures, the design encourages exploration of Sikhism within the Greek community.

3.14 Kwong Yin (Christine) Wong, Y3 ’The House of Sleep’. Unveiling the hidden restorative powers of salt and water, this architectural marvel creates a sanctuary of rejuvenation and serenity. Reflecting Ancient Greek sleep incubation rituals, salt and water are used to appeal to the senses, record the passage of time and draw on restorative qualities that promote a healthy sleep schedule.

3.15 Andrew Wai Kit Seah, Y3 ‘The Ceramic Kitchen of Exarcheia’. Firing transforms raw ingredients into delicacies, dirt into delights. With a kiln and an oven as the building’s spine, the design revolves around a ceramic studio and a bakery, creating a circular flow of resources. The building serves as a third space for the Greek-Chinese community to negotiate new meaning from the inherited material culture of two ancient civilisations. Traditional materials are transmuted and then reassembled in the architecture and furniture, accommodating new rituals of consumption and production.

3.13

3.14

Unearthing

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Amid the clamour of modernity’s ceaseless march, there exists a lamentable loss, one not often heard but profoundly felt – the gradual fading of the architectural narratives that once wove the tapestry of humanity’s existence. Much like the diminishing echo of an ancient myth, our lineal heritage has been eroded, obscured and, in some cases, obliterated. This lost narrative is not merely a compilation of bricks, mortar and ornaments, but also a chronicle of human dreams, aspirations and our ceaseless crusade for meaning in the spaces we create to inhabit.

Just as an archaeologist delves into the depths of the earth to unveil the mysteries of civilisations long past, architects too are excavators of the human experience. We sift through the strata of time to bring to light the buried treasures of our collective memory. This year UG4 has been unearthing the intrinsic properties and potentials of stone and steel, listening to the whispers of humanity’s antiquities and tales from beneath our feet, gleaning from our forebears the authentic craftsmanship and processes pertaining to spatial formation.

In our relentless pursuit of progress, we have too often bulldozed these architectural storytellers to make way for the new, forsaking the wisdom and beauty they once held. The act of concealing or destroying such artefacts is occasionally compelled by necessity rather than being a deliberate choice, often framed as a measure of protection rather than erasure. In doing so, we risk severing our connection to the past and blinding ourselves to the lessons it offers.

We forsake the opportunity to draw from the rich reservoir of human experience, to learn from its triumphs and tribulations. It reminds us that we are part of an unbroken chain of generations, each contributing to the unfolding epic of human history. The accumulated achievements of mankind necessitate a process of rediscovery, examination and thoughtful assimilation within contemporary frameworks, continuing our search for better ways of living.

Year 2

Khushi Arora, Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Luke Grbesa, Hei Lam William Li, Liana Lumunyasi, Gideon Mbowa, Chae Won Song, Brant You

Year 3

Sara Abbod, Siya Bhandari, Natania De-Marro, Chanya (Miu) Ieosivikul, Junjie Mei, Jessica Richard, Zaynah Younus

Technical tutors and consultants: Kacper Chmielewski, Uwe Frohmader

Critics: Jhono Bennett, Charlie Caswell, James Christian, Holly Cowan, Zachary Fluker, Bethan Kay

4.1, 4.3, 4.10 Chanya (Miu) Ieosivikul, Y3 ‘St. Mary –Centre for Casting’. St Mary Aldermanbury is a historical church reconstructed by Christopher Wren in 17thcentury London. The church was ravaged by the Blitz, and, to save the structure, a plan to move it to the US was set in motion. The church’s life through three distinct historical epochs unfolds a captivating narrative, eliciting intrigue into themes of reconstruction. The proposal speculates a fourth life, marking the third intervention on the site. It emerges as a distinct entity while acknowledging the sensitive history and knowledge transfer inherent in the church’s lineage.

4.2, 4.5 Jessica Richard, Y3 ‘The Glassworks’. In the remains of Holywell Street lies the abandoned 152–158 Strand. Stained glass is an endangered craft experiencing rapid decline. The project brings back the life and light that once existed. Its decorative façade and brightly coloured windows draw attention, housing a bar that recycles its waste glass into stained glass windows. The project reinvigorates this lost trade in new ways, providing opportunities for young people to learn historical skills that are on the brink of extinction.

4.4 Junjie Mei, Y3 ‘St Luke’s Community Centre’. This project stands on the former site of St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics and assumes the responsibilities of the old asylum. As Islington has the highest rate of mental health issues in the country, this project provides the community with a space in which to work and live together. It inherits the old functions of the courtyard, which offered space for sports and children’s play. The building is a ‘quiet newcomer’, maintaining a low stance above the ground.

4.6, 4.20 Natania De-Marro, Y3 ‘The Panatorium Project’. Located on 12 Whidborne Street in Camden, the project renews a piece of its history, directing its purpose towards the young people of the area. The clients, London Music Fund and The Actors’ Children’s Trust, desire a building that caters to the largest demographic in the area: children aged 7–13. This project has multiple auditoriums for productions, plays and musical endeavours. The reuse of bricks as building aggregate in the façade allows a proposal that is homogeneous with its surroundings, assimilating to the existing context.

4.7, 4.25 Gideon Mbowa, Y2 ‘Staging Recovery’. Brixton has historically faced challenges related to drug abuse, underscoring an urgent need for support services in the community. Brixton also has a rich history in the performing arts, which have been proven effective in aiding individuals with substance addiction recovery. The building therefore bridges the personal and private journey of rehabilitation with the social and expressive nature of performance, providing a safe space for addicts to better themselves and their community. This project redefines traditional materiality through a more contextual response.

4.8, 4.15 Liana Lumunyasi, Y2 ‘Heritage Waters’. This project creates a fusion of contemporary bathhouses with Roman ruins. Visitors can enjoy the tranquil experience of a modern bath while exploring the archaeological remains below, providing a unique experience. The building represents a blend of practicality and cultural preservation, inviting visitors to appreciate the seamless union of different eras. The project emphasises a commitment to sustainability and history.

4.9, 4.11, 4.18 Hei Lam William Li, Y2 ‘From the Ground Up: The Excavation Exhibits’. This project retrofits the existing building’s shell structure. It unearths and displays the hidden medieval archaeology revealed by projected railway excavation works near Holborn station. A grid formation based on the Wheeler–Kenyon method is employed to create unexpected viewing experiences. The building showcases geometric, guided views designed

through bespoke displays, creating a labyrinth where the viewer’s experience becomes an excavation.

4.12, 4.14, 4.16 Brant You, Y2 ‘The Leather Development Centre’. The existing building sits along a historical alleyway that connects Bow Lane and Queen Street in the City of London. The project fosters connectivity and attracts people to this hidden location by cutting through the building to create an external pathway. The programme is influenced by the Cordwainer Technical College, a school that focuses on leather-making. The external design was inspired by historical decorative elements from the surrounding buildings.

4.13 Chae Won Song, Y2 ‘Return of Bozier’s Court’. The project restores the demolished building, Bozier’s Court, which was best known for its bookstores. Located near Tottenham Court Road station, the client is Hoxton Mini Press, an independent publisher that focuses on photography books centred on niche topics in East London. This small extension of their main building in Hackney helps them expand their presence to other areas of the city.

4.17 Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Y2 ‘Unearthing Memories of the Docklands Area’. The site is located on Narrow Street in the Limehouse district of East London. The project revives the rich cultural history of the area, which was shaped by the multicultural community of sailors and their interactions with Limehouse Chinatown in the late 19th century. The programme is an extension of the developing public art exhibition in Canary Wharf, attracting more local and global artists to showcase their works through indoor and outdoor exhibitions.

4.19, 4.23 Luke Grbesa, Y2 ‘Verdant Refuge: A Rejuvenation of the Union Jack Club’. Based in Waterloo, the project retrofits and redevelops the Union Jack Club, which currently serves as a military membership club and accommodation. The proposal transforms the club into a mental health care and gardening centre for veterans of the armed forces, creating a therapeutic journey of healing.

4.21 Khushi Arora, Y2 ‘Healing with Clay: Therapeutic Pottery for Stroke Recovery’. The programme combines traditional pottery-making techniques and modern rehabilitative methods to treat patients who have recently suffered a stroke. Engaging with ceramics has many benefits, such as improving fine motor skills and stimulating neural pathways through the sensory experience of using clay.

4.22 Siya Bhandari, Y3 ‘The Refuge’. This site lies on what used to be Holborn Court, one of the biggest slums in the 1880s. Slum eviction schemes left 45,000 people without a home. Refugees today face a similar plight. The project supports female refugees in particular, empowering them to become independent while fostering a sense of community among those who feel alone.

4.24 Sara Abbod, Y3 ‘Institute of Urban Exploration’. The project retrofits the derelict Tate Institute building in East London to create a home for the urban explorer. It includes a research department with digital and physical archives, among other spaces.

Loot

Patrick Massey, Bongani Muchemwa UG5

This year UG5 has looted the British Museum.

Loot refers to cultural artefacts that have been uprooted from their context and play a significant role in the complex act of reassessing the past. This year UG5 explores the role that architecture plays within the rapidly evolving global discussion centred around cultural disputes. Within this framework, we investigate ways to appreciate, share and borrow, as well as establish a dialogue with the forms, symbols and narratives of cultures foreign to our own.

Radical forms of architecture are born out of simple marks on paper. UG5 embraces experimental drawing techniques in search of such forms.

Each student began this process by choosing an object from the British Museum. By examining their artefacts UG5 sought to understand them through a combined process of research and experimental drawing, viewing them both as documents of social worlds and bearers of meaning.

UG5 students created their own individual, unique drawing languages that suggest entirely unexpected architecture with deep roots in the stories of their original artefacts.

For their building projects, UG5 students explored the possibilities of the embassy typology. This building type is a site of diplomacy and a representation of a foreign country or group within a host nation, but what else can an embassy be in relation to our evolving understanding of appropriation and interpretation?

UG5 examined certain themes inherent to this building type: extraterritoriality, diplomacy, refuge, integration, cultural dialogue and defence, and explored whether these functions could be achieved through openness, storytelling, ceremony, protection, teaching and craft.

Our mission this year has been to engage with new cultural worlds, avoiding appropriation and embracing the moment of the unknown so that we can learn by asking questions. Our task has been one of interpretation, allowing the looted objects to tell us more about a culture, and represent it as best as we can.

Year 2

Mariam Abbasi, Marim Abohendia, Sally Kemp, Sofia Barbosa Lima, Anoushka Sarma, Oliwia Tys, Clara Varela Cuartero, Hiu Ching (Alex) Yam

Year 3

Charlotte Burden, Akif Rahman, Charles Smare, Hossain Takir, Tsz Yung (Vivianne) Wong

Technical tutors and consultants: Rio Burrage, Oliver Houchell, Mark Tugman

Critics: Finlay Aitken, Rashad Al-Karooni, Dennis Austin, Giorgos Christofi, Sunshine Dlangamandla, Vandana Goyal, Freddie Jackson, Steven McCloy, Rohini Mundey, Melissa Rezaei, Evita Spyropoulou, Aleksandar Stojakovic, Eric Wong, Kelvin Zhang

Sponsor: McCloy + Muchemwa

5.1, 5.3–5.5, 5.13 Charlotte Burden, Y3 ‘Let Sleeping Giants Lie’. This project imagines an alternative outcome to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and proposes the first Scottish embassy in Greece, celebrating the nation’s unique mythology. The embassy is erected where leylines cross and the space between worlds grows thin. Inspired by the poems of Ossian, the building itself tells a myth through a series of intricate historical Celtic codes. The columns represent oaks, rooted in the mountains of the stone floor, while the occupants become those ‘striding from hill to hill’. The ‘presence’ of giants evokes the Scottish landscape itself, in an embassy dedicated to preserving and proudly performing Scottish heritage.

5.2 Hossain Takir, Y3 ‘Recolouring the Gods’. The project is a collaboration between Japan and Greece to reconstruct and repaint Ancient Greek sculptures using advanced imaging technologies, such as multispectral and hyper-spectral imaging, to discover their true colours. The project developed through an investigation into these imaging technologies. The building’s programme has evolved to accommodate the analysis, processing, reconstruction and repainting of the sculptures. The design creates a space for the reconstruction, painting and display of these Ancient Greek sculptures.

5.6–5.8 Tsz Yung (Vivianne) Wong, Y3 ‘The Wounded Priory Meadow’. This project, based in Hastings and centred on the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre, addresses the adverse effects of gentrification on living standards and mental health. It offers a comprehensive solution, starting with on-site greenhouses cultivating calming plants and herbs. These botanicals are processed into soothing shampoos and conditioners, used in an on-site salon and café. The architectural elements enhance its therapeutic goals, with hair ropes casting dynamic shadows for an immersive experience. At the heart of the shopping centre, a garden provides a tranquil retreat where visitors can reconnect with nature. The project highlights mental health through the integration of architecture and nature, fostering a healthier, more connected community in Hastings.

5.9, 5.12 Anoushka Sarma, Y2 ‘The Theatre of Shadows’. This theatre reinterprets the art form of shadow puppetry known as wayang kulit, found on the Indonesian island of Java. The project explores themes of political satire, religious texts and the interplay of light and shadow. The embassy compound is transformed into a shadow puppet theatre adjoining a temple and two residences. The temple extends the stories of Hindu mythology told in traditional wayang kulit performances, catering to a specific diaspora. The project uses varied levels of permeability and transparency to guide light into the space, creating unique patterns.

5.10–5.11 Clara Varela Cuartero, Y2 ‘The King of the Bird Catchers Arrives: “Ea mai ke ali’i kia manu ”’. This embassy serves as a sanctuary for Native Hawaiians and activists in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, providing a space to gather, reclaim and celebrate traditions that were once actively suppressed. The design of the structures draws heavily from the dimensions, appearance and texture of garments worn by Hawaiian chiefs, particularly feather capes, or ahu ula. These garments are emblematic of Hawaii’s rich cultural heritage, representing traditions and craftsmanship integral to Hawaiian society before the United States annexed the islands in 1898.

5.14–5.16 Charles Smare, Y3 ‘Eridanos Reservoir’. With heatwaves, droughts and wildfires on the rise, the need for disaster infrastructure has increased. This project serves as a middle step between a hidden water source and the Athenians. The Eridanos Reservoir is a district

centre that educates Athenians on water conservation and filters water from the Eridanos River beneath Mount Lycabettus. During drought, the facility holds water for rationing and treatment. In times of need, Athenians can ascend the mountain for shelter and water. The project uses interpretive pieces to communicate this threat, incorporating the Epic of Gilgamesh to represent the looming presence of disaster.

5.17–5.18 Akif Rahman, Y3 ‘Return to Babel’. This multilateral mission caters to a group of international artists interested in collaboration and teaching through art practice. The building contains a gallery, residence, library and workspace, private studios and a communal studio. The programme is inspired by the Rosetta Stone and builds on themes of cultural and information exchange through multiple senses and pedagogies. The final design becomes a multi-layered means of transmission.

5.19 Marim Abohendia, Y2 ‘The Embassy of Blue and White China’. The project takes inspiration from the David Vases, a pair of renowned Chinese porcelain vases from the Yuan dynasty, and the transformative nature of a craft adapted to the style and culture of the markets it aimed to serve. The building programme for this embassy creates a space for the exchange of skills, where the ancient technique of making blue and white ceramics can be taught, and, in return, many of the variant techniques can also be learned by the ambassador. Ultimately, in a greater context, this trade and union of shared skills and experiences reflect the wider desire for countries to establish a deeper understanding of each other’s history and culture.

5.20 Oliwia Tys, Y2 ‘The Olmec Refuge’. The mission of this embassy is to act as a refuge for extraterritorial refugees, taking inspiration from the story of Julian Assange and his time in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The theme of protection is inspired by the Olmec Stone Mask, an ancient artefact from the Olmec civilisation, which served as a protective pendant for an Olmec king. These themes inform the spatial design and material choices.

5.21 Sofia Barbosa Lima, Y2 ‘Mesoamerican Embassy’. Since the 1500s, Ancient Mesoamerican artefacts have been looted and distributed around the world. This project, ostensibly a consulate attached to the Mexican Embassy, investigates representations of loss in architecture through carving, casting and reproduction techniques.

5.22–5.24 Hiu Ching (Alex) Yam, Y3 ‘A Ritual for Catharsis’. Inspired by a Mayan stone tablet depicting a royal bloodletting ritual between King Shield Jaguar and Lady Xook, the project re-enacts Mayan and modern pain rituals to understand the relationship between pain, hallucinations and elation. Using fabric, paints, embroidery and beading, the act of piercing is recorded through drip patterns. The final artefact recreates and renews traditional pain rituals through tactile and interactive means, subverting traditions into therapeutic methods. The project draws on Mayan bloodletting rituals from over a thousand years ago, applying them to modernday issues.

5.25 Sally Kemp, Y2 ‘The Witches of Hastings’. The occultist Aleister Crowley suggested that the Haestingas, an early tribe from the area, are bound to remain and will always return unless they carry a hag stone from Hastings Beach with them at all times. In response to this curse, the concept of this building focuses on harnessing the positive energy and healing properties of crystals to counteract the perceived negativity. The building is home to a coven of skilled alchemist witches who specialise in the cultivation of salt crystals. For these witches, growing crystals is not merely a scientific process but a deeply spiritual and symbolic practice.

5.7

Registration

Stefan Lengen, Ben Spong

UG6 is fascinated by the reciprocity between methods of architectural design and production and the worlds they give rise to. By engaging the poetic with the practical, and the conceptual with the constructed, we seek to discover a wider range of spatial, material and temporal possibilities for architecture that are more attuned to the sensibilities of our ecological condition.

Our theme for the year was ‘Registration’, a process for determining the relativity of things. Consider an artist who performs a form of geometric registration by marking the surface of their drawing to determine the spatial difference between features in a landscape. This type of registration attempts to offer certainty over an otherwise changing landscape by figuratively clamping it in place. The impact of this reductive form of registration is felt across architectural production, from the site survey through the design process to the placement of materials in the form of a building and its eventual occupation.

While recognising this utility, this year UG6 was captivated by the idea of registration as a form of enquiry that can draw out worlds rather than impose order upon them. By recognising the unique position the register holds – it is explicitly between things – we developed tools, methods and processes that acted as intermediaries between us and the agencies, environments and materials we wished to engage. In this light, the act of registration doesn’t cull differences, but provides the ground for differences to play out, which in turn holds the potential to produce radically new ways of practising, building and occupying architecture.

At the beginning we acted on hunches to build digital and physical instruments that speculatively probed at our site for the year, the Epping Forest District in Essex. As the work progressed these were translated, transformed and extended into sensitive building proposals that were acutely aware of the ecology in which they are situated and participate.

Our field trip this year was to Copenhagen and Aarhus where we learned about the intersections of our research with the Aarhus School of Architecture, Royal Danish Academy (CITA and the Architecture and Extreme Environments programme) and the Danish architecture practices Vandkunsten and pihlmann architects.

Year 2

Sora Aoki, Jacob Dumon, Yang Huang, Min (Kristine) Huang, Jiahe (Ryan) Shao

Year 3

Thomas Butterworth, Diego Carreras, Pacharamon (Myla) Danwachira, Rhiannon Howes, Aryan Kaul, Laura Noble, Sean Ow, Eden Robertson, Jerzy (George) Szczerba, Shuheng Wang, Zhi Qi (Tina) Wu, Peiyan Zou

Technical tutors and consultants: Ivan Chan, Alex Fox, James Della Valle, Nicolas Pauwels, Lynn Qian, Eoin Shaw

Critics: Abigail Ashton, Mark Bagguley, Laurence Blackwell-Thale, William Victor Camilleri, AnaMaria Cazan, Nat Chard, Peter Cook, James Della Valle, Florence Hemmings, Joe Johnson, Nikoletta Karastathi, Kyriakos Katsaros, Chee-Kit Lai, Isac Leung, Nicolas Pauwels, Lynn Qian, Farlie Reynolds, Luke Ryuichi Saito Koper, Eoin Shaw, Colin Smith, Sarah Stevens, Kate Taylor, William Tindall

Special thanks to B-made, Alicia Lazzaroni and Chris Thurlbourne (Aarhus School of Architecture), David Garcia and Tom Svilans (Royal Danish Academy), Thais Espersen and Søren Nielsen (Vandkunsten Architects), Søren Pihlmann and Isabella Priddle (pihlmann architects)

6.1, 6.17 Aryan Kaul, Y3 ‘Hyper-localising the Tilt’. The project explores the production and demonstration of cast-in-ground, in-situ tilt-up architectural components, using materials that are hyper-local to the context. The architecture is established for a perpetual feedback loop between silvicultural research and intervention, bespoke component fabrication and spatial assemblies.

6.2, 6.13 Shuheng Wang, Y3 ‘Time Magnificents’. The term ‘architectural scale’ assumes that a building will inevitably impact its site. This project re-examines the interaction between a building and its surroundings in an ‘aggressive’ manner. Wind, a significant natural phenomenon, serves as a crucial medium for this project to achieve its goal of interacting with nature. It also provides the means of the programme: a geological research centre.

6.3–6.4 Zhi Qi (Tina) Wu, Y3 ‘The Stretch Lab’. The project, situated in the outer ring of Epping Forest, London, explores the potential of applying inflatable soft robotics technologies in architecture to enhance the relationship between the body and architecture. Given that the building serves as a physiotherapy rehabilitation centre, the theme of recovery is central. In the context of recovery and the body, inflatable soft robots are integrated into the architecture as soft machines, actively participating in the recovery process.

6.5, 6.8 Laura Noble, Y3 ‘Can You See the Birdsong?’. Sited in Epping Forest, this project embeds a postoperation rehabilitation centre organised around the concept of sonic spatiality for the benefits of recovery. Using form (from diffusive to directive) and materiality (from absorptive to reflective) to create a variety of sonic conditions, the project amplifies the soundscape of the forest.

6.6 Yang Huang, Y2 ‘Vocal Library’. This project is located in Loughton, Essex, in a disused parking lot. The project proposes a sonically charged library with several functions to improve the relationship between different generation groups in the local area.

6.7, 6.9 Pacharamon (Myla) Danwachira, Y3

‘Choreography of the Rewilding’. Situated on Chingford Plain, the project attempts to blur the boundary between the community and the woodland, proposing an invitation to reimagine the cohabitation of cattle, forest and humans. Drawing on the lost ancient tradition of Epping Forest and its 21st-century ecological consequences, the project rewilds the ecological mosaic while reviving its ancient traditions.

6.10–6.12 Peiyan Zou, Y3 ‘Digital Penumbra’. The project was designed through the ‘inappropriate’ use of 3D scanning, iterating the design based on voids and glitches in the scans. The indeterminate elements of everyday life captured in the scans are where the designer’s authorship is integrated with the hyper-precise scanner. This approach synthesises perception, memory and time, proposing an unprecedented architectural conservation technique in response to the consultation between the residents of Waltham Abbey and the council over the refurbishment of the area.

6.14 Min (Kristine) Huang, Y2 ‘The Shape of Light’. Situated on a lakeside plain within Epping Forest, the sculpture museum celebrates Isamu Noguchi’s legacy by exploring the interplay of light and sculpture. Inspired by the philosophy of ‘giving shapes to light’, its architecture allows light to emanate from and shape spaces, turning them into sculptural forms.

6.15 Thomas Butterworth, Y3 ‘The Epping Commons: A Centre for Regenerative Deliberation’. The Epping Commons is an exploration of the architectural mediation of people, politics and time. The project proposes design strategies that anticipate change over time, establishing the cyclical ritual upkeep of the architecture through collective participation.

It uses hyperlocal materials, contributing to the regeneration of the surrounding natural environments.

6.16 Jacob Dumon, Y2 ‘Under the Knife’. This project explores the role of boundaries, examining their different scales within a plastic surgery clinic. Understanding the uncertain boundary of a tree burl has led to a developed interest in how manipulated bodily boundaries can extend to and alter experienced architecture.

6.18 Rhiannon Howes, Y3 ‘Broaching Boundaries: Reframing the Stewardship of Allhallows Marshes’. The project serves as a settlement on a tidal Allhallows Marshes, redefining boundaries historically shaped by industry and perception, negotiating and curating the site’s inherent liminality. Ground conditions inform form, while function serves stewardship, as herders, thatchers and builders manage the marshy landscape of their surroundings.

6.19 Eden Robertson, Y3 ‘Vanitas: Women’s Health Centre’. Set adjacent to the border of Epping Forest, this project investigates the extent to which architecture can be used as a medical tool for healing and caring for women’s bodies. It activates the art-historical term ‘vanitas’ to explore women’s symbolic relationship with morality and architecture’s discomfort with degradation.

6.20 Jiahe (Ryan) Shao, Y2 ‘A Momentary Retreat at Connaught Water’. This project stemmed from an interest in the space that drawing occupies during its creation. The spatiality of drawing was investigated through a drawing board charged with the topography and water movement on site, interpreted intuitively by the drawing hand. This established a ‘momentary retreat’ that hosts dialogues between visitors and the landscape.

6.21 Sora Aoki, Y2 ‘From the Ground Up’. Situated on the edge of Walthamstow Wetlands, this project serves as an urban extension of Epping Forest, accommodating a community of artists and their sculptural creations. An earthy architecture, camouflaged in the manipulated landscape, evokes a thematic experience where the movement of terrain manipulation is palpable.

6.22 Diego Carreras, Y3 ‘Echoes of the Silver Screen’. Through the lens of a film school, visitors to Epping Forest reframe their understanding of the forest’s landscapes. The film school acts as a theatre for multiple spatial experiences to simultaneously unfold. Visitors explore stage sets in which they navigate roles of acting and viewing the performance taking place. Metal surfaces are treated as actors in the scene, as their tailored finish dynamically transforms the spatial boundaries of the landscape.

6.23–6.25 Sean Ow, Y3 ‘Generative Morphologies’. Under the guise of a field centre for Natural England, the project situates itself within a peri-urbanisation masterplan that stretches across Epping Forest. Inspired by the design practice of ruination, the building forms the backdrop of an architecture that ‘humanises nature’. It embodies and registers the calibrated and arbitrary nuances of weathering and habitation through the poetics of additive decay.

6.2

6.10

6.21

6.20

Critical Paths

Joseph Augustin, Christopher Burman, Luke Jones

This year UG7 explored questions about decision-making and creativity in circumstances beyond our control. In hindsight, a completed project often seems to have come into being as a singular, brilliant idea — but in reality it’s never that simple. Everything we do today is constrained by all the decisions that came before. How should we make best use of this limited and situated agency?

Our brief, ‘Critical Paths’, explored architecture as a process of decision-making, both collective and individual, in the face of extenuating circumstances. We started the year with a series of rapid-fire, stand-alone architectural briefs, prioritising experimentation and the quick production and communication of ideas. These six mini-briefs explored fundamentals of spatial design, material thinking and ecological necessity, generating an archive of over 100 projects as paths for future exploration.

The field trip was to the Rhône valley in France, a historic centre of stone and earthen architecture, with ancient cities alongside novel infrastructures and contemporary laboratories of material research. Moving from Lyon and Grenoble to Arles, we visited numerous sites and contemporary practices, including CRAterre (The Center for the Research and Application of Earth Architecture), Atelier LUMA and Les Grands Ateliers in Villefontaine.

Returning to London, we explored three sites marked by ongoing urban change and renewal, identifying the potential for civic design, small-scale urbanism and an architecture situated in an understanding of material flows and carbon economies.

UG7 prioritises engagement with the material reality of building. We seek to be as literal as possible. We see this as a way to realise an architecture which is contemporary, innovative, sensitive to its local and global context, and which understands its place in a material system as a key aspect of its social purpose.

Year 2

Allysha Alaq, Tianyi (Thomas) Bao, Noel Angelo Ferrer, Kanwulia Ilombu, Stan Luo, Dhruva Menon, Jatheep Raj, Jan Siwicki, Oliwia Skakun, Harriet Wilson

Year 3

Joshua-Jefferson

Celada Flordeliz, Sammy Doublet, Sophie Hoet, Derek Lee, Jillian Ching Lam Mak, Sophie Siney, Kateryna Skiba, Oscar Wood

Special thanks to Stéphane Sadoux

Thanks to the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Grenoble, Philippe Garnier, Carine Bonnot, Cédric Avenier, Nicolas Dubus, Eric Ruiz, Pascal Rollet, Justine Zante, Maria Lisogorskaya, Sandra Revuelta Albero and team at LUMA Arles

7.1, 7.30 Stan Luo, Y2 ‘Playing with Fire: The Carbon Positive Cooking School’. This building accommodates a cooking school for children, reevaluating the use of fire in an age of climatic disarray. It does this through recycling food waste from vegetables grown on site into biochar, a carbon-rich aggregate and the project’s key ingredient, as a strategy for carbon sequestration. The material expression of biochar, through its combination with 3D printing technology, complements a new model of carbon-conscious culinary education in East London.

7.2–7.5 Derek Lee, Y3 ‘Retrofitting Arcadia: Headquarters for the Campaign for Wool’. Retrofitting and expanding a 1950s commercial block, the proposal experiments with unfired wool-brick composites and large tree-like glulam structures. It examines the future of wool and the viability of urban sheep in the city.

7.6 Jatheep Raj, Y2 ‘Take a Listen: ADHD Therapy and Meditation Centre’. The building creates various auditory environments, where children are free to wander and learn. Users are encouraged to create as much noise as possible using instruments, allowing the building to generate its own atmosphere as a base for meditation and provide therapy spaces for young children with ADHD.

7.7 Noel Angelo Ferrer, Y2 ‘Bayanihan’. The project is an ethnocultural nexus, celebrating Filipino heritage in London. Inspired by traditional rattan architecture, the tree-like columns create an arboreal atmosphere, paying homage to Filipino craftsmanship.

7.8, 7.16 Jillian Ching Lam Mak , Y3 ‘Holst’s Concert Hall’. Catering to the young population around Stepney Green, the project provides a civic space for rehearsals, musical and social events designed around the seven-movement orchestral suite The Planets by Gustav Holst. The seven spaces respond to each movement, including an auditorium, bar and roof garden, each characterised by a material reading of its corresponding planet.

7.9 Kanwulia Ilombu, Y2 ‘Diagramming the Hyper-local Neighbourhood’. An exhibition centre that also doubles as a research space and auditorium, this project questions urban planning and building applications. It presents district schemes in a user-friendly manner to the public, who may feel disconnected from them. The auditorium and large-scale urban model of Poplar spark discussion and future planning.

7.10 Kateryna Skiba, Y3 ‘The Architecture of the Bard: Artificial and Hyperbolic Histories’. The project reimagines Crisp Street market as a site for civic exchange and cultural engagement. A theatre and marketplace provide a new urban gateway to the square.

7.11, 7.26 Dhruva Menon, Y2 ‘Needs Fixing: A Deep-Time Auction House’. The site becomes a time capsule for the community of Poplar. Donated artefacts are housed in an archive, slowly appreciating in value before being sold at auction. The building is composed of a range of spaces constructed from materials of differing durability, from aluminium-framed polytunnels to the longest-lasting archive granite drywall.

7.12, 7.28–7.29 Joshua-Jefferson Celada Flordeliz, Y3 ‘Aquatherapy Centre for the Bereaved’. This project creates a space to assist people in navigating through the five stages of grief. The centre houses a sauna and uses water as a catalyst for contemplation, helping people to rebuild their lives.

7.13, 7.31 Tianyi (Thomas) Bao, Y2 ‘The Work in Progress’. The project explores the idea and the rich tradition of the pub as a vehicle of social cohesion. Using self-build techniques, the project is gradually built up and expanded by the hands of the community.

7.14 Oliwia Skakun, Y2 ‘Hat, Boots, Dance: East London Body Movement Centre’. This project comprises three key elements. ‘Hat’ entails the protection of rammed earth in the form of a roof. Fluid in design, it portrays the

movement of dance. ‘Boots’ involves the protection of rammed earth in the form of foundations. Rigid in their shape, they foreground the importance of stillness and relaxation. ‘Dance’ is the connection between the two in the form of a building that houses practice, performance and community spaces.

7.15, 7.17 Jan Siwicki, Y2 ‘Sacred Spaces of the East London Sober Monastery’. This monastery and sober living facility share the same building, constructed from rammed earth and chalk. The proposal blends these two seemingly contrasting programmes by finding common ground in the concept of sobriety. The project draws from the rich tradition of asceticism and minimalist communal lifestyles centred around principles of material, technological and organisational simplicity.

7.18, 7.20–7.21 Sammy Doublet, Y3 ‘The Dust Theatre’. This project comprises an experimental playhouse in East London that explores why people gather and come together. The act of gathering large, monolithic stones runs parallel with the human instinct to gather and tell stories. The project researches experimental construction methods that gather waste stone dust. Cast-in-situ columns form a structural grid and serve as backstage tunnels, supporting two core stages at opposite ends of the site.

7.19 Oscar Wood, Y3 ‘Walter CNC-gal’. This prototype is of a community-built housing system using localised digital fabrication methods. The project enables young people to collaboratively build their own customisable homes, with the aid of modern localised digital fabrication techniques.

7.22–7.23 Harriet Wilson, Y2 ’The Augusta Street Milk Bar’. This proposal blurs the boundaries between agriculture and urban space, encouraging unique interactions between the residents of Poplar and a herd of ten dairy cows, with whom they now share a newly expanded public green. The project proposes an unusual new relationship with the production and consumption of milk, celebrating its versatility as both a nourishing liquid food source and a constituent of construction materials, old and new.

7.24 Sophie Hoet, Y3 ‘Bethnal Green Refugee Women’s Centre’. The site provides a space for a network of refugee and asylum-seeking women to develop their confidence and skills through a programme of empowerment activities. Providing a welcoming and supportive space promotes community integration and offers the opportunity to begin rebuilding life in the city.

7.25 Allysha Alaq, Y2 ‘Retrofishing: Fish Market and Food Hall’. This project proposes the transformation of a garage in Bethnal Green into a fish market and food hall, supplying fresh seafood. Through adaptive reuse it rehabilitates nearby street market stalls, creating a cleaner, localised centre that improves residents’ health through increased fish consumption.

7.27 Sophie Siney, Y3 ‘The Campus of Poplar: An Allegorical Philosopher’s Library’. The project proposes an educational campus, with a quartet of buildings dedicated to unique branches of philosophy, namely metaphysics, ethics, theology and epistemology, acting as a hub for intellectual exchange and scholarly discourse. Designed around a central debate chamber, it helps facilitate the exchange of ideas and the cultivation of new knowledge.

7.3

7.4

7.18

Weathering Time

Maria Fulford, Jörg Majer

All buildings are subject to time. As part of an ongoing interest in materiality, light and space, this year UG8 students examined how the built environment responds to the passing of time and, by extension, how buildings can amplify or alter our perception of time and place.

Time is not passive. It is a constant that acts upon the natural world with variable force and speed, though it may not always be perceptible. The physical weathering of buildings can be a visible force revealing the effects of environment, material properties, fabrication processes, cultural change and events. By contrast, geological changes can happen at minuscule increments over millennia. Though imperceptible, they gradually shift our landscape and therefore the way we build and inhabit space.

The weathering of buildings is inevitable, whether this is through ambient phenomenon such as wind and rain or events that are natural or social, accidental or planned. It is both subtractive and additive; it can distort and reveal. It cannot be stopped, only delayed or redirected. If this process is inevitable, why resist? This year students began by examining the effects of weathering and designed a meticulously made instrument, installation or structure that explored the potential to alter the effects of time, whether these are physical, metaphorical or imagined.

At the beginning of term 2 we travelled to Iceland, the volcanic island of fire and ice. Here we experienced a shift in our diurnal rhythms and submerged ourselves into the stories and myths of time. An ever-shifting landscape, Iceland is one of the youngest land masses on the planet. Students were asked to select a site and a public programme based upon their observations of Iceland and a time-based phenomenon.

In UG8, material, space and atmosphere are the foundations of our explorations in architecture. We believe in the thoughtful making of space. We encourage both intuitive and academic responses through making and drawing, which blend the physical and digital world. We look to create spatial compositions based upon an understanding of materials, tectonics and dream-like atmospheres.

UG8

Year 2

Vanessa Ho, Ella-May Levi, Michael Sang, Muraco To, Eleonora Vena

Year 3

Lucy Ayres, Salima Begum, Nathan Cartwright, Delphi Fothergill, Adam Klestil, Marcus Lam, Arthur Ritchie, Lola Wilson, Min Yoo, Rachel Zhou

Technical tutors and consultants: Alex Fox, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Miranda MacLaren

Critics: Jessam Al-Jawad, Kacper Chmielewski, Matt Driscoll, David Flook, Tamsin Hanke, Philip Joseph, Miranda MacLaren, Andreas Müllertz, Jack Newton, Caireen O'Hagan, Oliver Parkinson, David Pierce, George Proud, Danielle Purkiss, Farlie Reynolds, Anne Schroell, Colin Smith

Special thanks to Tamsin Hanke for her Icelandic insights, the Drawing Matter Collections, the Norðurál aluminium plant and Basalt Architecture

Sponsors: DGS Fabrications, Holloway Li, P Joseph, Tigg + Coll Architects

8.1, 8.32–8.33 Nathan Cartwright, Y3 ‘The Prosthetics Atelier’. Situated in East Reykjavík, the project creates bespoke ‘experience enhancers’, tailored prosthetics that embody personal narratives. It explores the intersection of prosthetics and landscape, transcending image–culture associations. Through expressive details, it reveals the synthesis between synthetic objects and the environment, influencing contemporary popular culture. Drawing from Iceland’s cultural and natural contexts, it articulates critical concepts of experiential prosthetics, enriching the evolving discourse in body extensions.

8.2, 8.10–8.11 Delphi Fothergill, Y3 ‘The Reykjanes Institute of Volcanology’. This institute provides vital information and resources, including housing for evacuees and displaced communities affected by ongoing volcanic eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula. It serves as a refuge for locals and a spectacle for volcanologists and tourists. Essential research, including monitoring seismic and volcanic weather systems, will be conducted. The facility features an events space and a viewing deck, embracing the ever-present threat of lava flows. This dynamic landscape showcases the drama of spectacle, longing and emergency, encapsulating the architecture of the event.

8.3, 8.15–8.16 Rachel Zhou, Y3 ‘Allegro Agitato’. Inspired by the Montessori education pedagogy and the Icelandic film Noi the Albino, this project proposes a Montessori school located in Reykjavík. The project responds to policies such as ‘school without segregation’ and changing social circumstances due to increasing numbers of people from other countries settling in Iceland. Counteracting the current options of segregated learning institutions for children with physical and mental difficulties and attendance at regular schools, this project provides a third option for children in Iceland, allowing them to experience sensory-led learning.

8.4–8.5 Muraco To, Y2 ‘Njord’s Legacy: Sailing through Time’. This project establishes a Viking boat museum to restore historical fishing vessels and preserve the shipbuilding craft. Inspired by Njord, the God of the Sea, it rejuvenates old vessels and tells Viking maritime stories. The museum examines the Icelandic fishing industry, bridging past and present through informative exhibits. The building’s design draws from timber vessels, using copper and blackened steel for intricate aesthetics and techniques.

8.6, 8.8–8.9 Arthur Ritchie, Y3 ‘The Smelter’s Singing Bowl and Bathhouse’. The project is situated in Akranes, Iceland, and provides a communal space for aluminium smelters to relax and socialise. Over the last 25 years, Akranes has tripled in size due to the smelting plant workforce. This bathhouse offers a place to unwind with bathing and communal singing. Built with local concrete and aluminium, it transitions from thick, soundproof walls to thin, porous ones, enhancing intimacy.

8.7, 8.24 Marcus Lam, Y3 ‘Njord House’. A café by day and a high-end restaurant at night, this project explores Icelandic drying techniques with drying racks incorporated as part of the structure.

8.12–8.14 Adam Klestil, Y3 ‘Project M(iðsandur): The Carbon Institute’. This experimental carbon-capture institute focuses on injection into porous basalt formations. Captured carbon volumes are tracked and traded as environmental commodities. Scientists from various fields conduct research, contributing to the development of the institute. Central to the site is an injection well, an inverted dome, which counteracts the release of atmospheric carbon dioxide by injecting it underground.

8.17, 8.25 Ella-May Levi, Y2 ‘Warp and Weft: The Reykjavík Weaving Institute and Women’s Refuge’. This project combines healing and community, providing a sanctuary for women recovering from trauma through weaving.

It also serves as a hub for local textile artists, offering space for creation and exhibition. The building uses woven screens and vertical separation to balance public and private spaces, creating a dynamic environment that evolves and holds the stories of its residents.

8.18–8.21 Lola Wilson, Y3 ‘Arctic Arbor’. This field station monitors reforestation efforts and assesses impacts on soil health, biodiversity and climate resilience. The building adapts materially and functionally over time, reflecting Iceland’s transient typology and culture. Featuring a photography lab and archive, it reintegrates forest conservation into Icelandic culture. Overlooking declining whaling practices, the site repurposes existing buildings, shifting focus to sustainable ecological restoration.

8.22–8.23 Lucy Ayres , Y3 ‘The Pigment Factory’. Inspired by Iceland’s vibrant landscape, this proposal envisions a pigment production facility, art gallery, artist studios and gift shop in a quarry on the Hvalfjörður fjord coastline.

Abandoned buildings are retrofitted into a pigment factory, extracting pigments from local rocks, shells and minerals for use in studios and commercial distribution. Local artworks are showcased in the gallery, with excess materials used for display pigment baths. Angled windows and surfaces reflect light, capturing Iceland’s colour palette and emphasising the landscape’s preciousness and the site’s materials.

8.26 Salima Begum, Y3 ‘Trollheim: A Sculpture Museum’. Inspired by Icelandic folklore, the building proposes a sculpture museum reflecting on the tales of trolls. Within Icelandic culture, it is believed that rock formations are petrified remnants of trolls, as suggested by the figurative nature of these formations. The museum is dedicated to the culture of art in Iceland, conveying rich and profound emotions while guiding visitors on a curated journey.

8.27 Michael Sang, Y2 ‘Bird Sentry’. This bird observation centre and research lab in Hafnir, Iceland, focus on the area’s diverse birdlife and the relationship between humans and nature. Constructed with a lightweight CLT timber and leather fabric structure, the building extends into the rocky coastline, allowing users to observe birds closely without disturbing them. The design respects both humans and birds, blending past, present and future.

8.28 Eleonora Vena, Y2 ‘The Living Sculptures’. The project envisions a horse stable near Reykjavík, offering horse riding and conserving the Icelandic horse breed through controlled breeding. Open to tourists, locals and breeders, the facility educates and entertains with events. The site explores the relationship between landscape, people and architecture, using light and reflective materials to frame the horses, emphasising their unique rhythm and movement.

8.29 Vanessa Ho, Y2 ‘Aurora Observatory’. This project combines architecture, nature and mental wellness. Situated on the coast of the island of Grótta, Iceland, it offers unparalleled views of the aurora and stars while providing a sanctuary for mental well-being.

8.30–8.31 Min Yoo, Y3 ‘Sonic Sanctuaries’. Inspired by Iceland’s surreal landscapes, this project proposes a psychoacoustic meditation centre that embodies the fusion of sound and space. Through selective acoustic and colour design choices, the space is created for various practices of sound therapy and meditation, enhanced by moments of synesthesia. This creates an unsettling, surreal convergence of time and space, enhancing the spirit of Iceland’s mesmerising landscapes.

8.2 8.4

8.12

Land

Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller

Land is carved, compressed, sold and exploited – and the scar tissue is always visible. As a great shared medium throughout architecture, land is nebulous in scale and influence. It is essential to consider architecture as part of a landscape manipulated by politics, ownership and climate so that in a time of environmental crisis and socioeconomic upheaval, we can speculate practically about the future.

This year UG9 considered land as a medium to design architecture. The year began in Thamesmead with a series of experimental installations and research projects, establishing numerous dialogues between the cast concrete architectures and its softly fluctuating landscape condition. Our net was cast wide –playing with a choreographed interplay of shadows, stripping back and reconfiguring filmic representations of the town, and creating architectural narratives around the local effects of the climate crisis and ongoing protests.

Seeking to better understand the extremes of land, water and architecture, our field trip took us to the Netherlands. Here we explored its experimental buildings and famously mechanised landscape. We saw how mechanisation in the landscape, often an easy shorthand for control and exploitation, is undergoing a revolution. The Dutch defences are being tactically softened, while a greater focus is now being placed on ecological diversity, social engagement and long-term development of landscape stability. Eventually centred around Rotterdam, the sites for the year were varied, engaging in numerous ways with the intersection of ecology and technology. From the engineered docklands and dams to the soft flooding forests, we ventured to ask: how can we, as architects, engage with the future of our local landscapes?

Year 2

Alastair Ang, Marisa Lau, Irina Pirvu, Tina Xian

Year 3

Mason Cameron, Andrew Fan, Kiran Gosal, Aocheng Huang, Libby Ko, Lihui (Lily) Lin, Roland Paczolay, Besim Smakiq, Yaowen Zhang

Technical tutors and consultants: Alexander Fox, Donald Shillingburg

Critics: Richard Aina, Vitika Agarwal, Laura Allen, Bamidele Awoyemi, Ivan Chan, Jin Chan, Nat Chard, Robert Donnelly, Ben Foulkes, Alexander Fox, Will Jefferies, Karolina Kielb, Andre Sampaio Kong, Constance Lau, Isac Leung, Oliver Parkinson, Lynn Qian, James Robinson, Guang Yu Ren, Dougal Sadler, Isaac Simpson, Narinder Sagoo, Sayan Skandarajah, Ben Spong, Greg Storrar, Manijeh Verghese, Jane Wong

Special thanks to Amin Taha (Groupwork), Andre Sampaio Kong (Heatherwick Studio), Arthur Wong (OMA)

Sponsors: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd

9.1, 9.22–9.25 Yaowen Zhang, Y3 ‘Land, Building and Dwelling’. This project develops and tests experimental construction methodologies for housing in the context of Martin Heidegger’s concept of learning to ‘dwell’. Sited in Rotterdam, the project begins with detailed analyses of the local marine clay deposits and proposes innovative modular construction techniques using these local materials. On a local scale, the scheme develops continuous interaction between building, land and resident. Ultimately, traditional ‘linear’ models of construction are replaced by a series of circular processes that feed into a masterplan comprising factory, landscape and housing units.

9.2–9.4 Lihui (Lily) Lin, Y3 ‘The Ship Spolia Performance Art Theatre’. Situated in Delfshaven, Rotterdam, this communal theatre involves the retrofitting of the shipyard and dock along the Nieuwe Maas River. The project proposes the concept of ‘metal spolia’, which develops a continuous cycle of dismantling and assembling metals that once operated as ship components and now serve as building structures on site. Simultaneously, the building acts as a testing ground for the phenomena of metal deterioration, fatigue and rusting, embracing construction techniques that extend the material lifespan.

9.5–9.6 Aocheng Huang, Y3 ‘Ecoblade Haven’. As wind turbines undergo much-needed maintenance at the end of their designed lifespan, the recycling and reuse of turbine blades in the Netherlands is a growing concern with huge potential. This project proposes a self-constructing wind turbine blade structure that develops specialised joints and automated construction techniques, while also providing space for material research. The building and its construction processes showcase wind turbine blades as a valuable building resource and emphasise research-driven design to shape Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven urban landscape.

9.7–9.9 Libby Ko, Y3 ‘The Water Experience Centre’. Embedded on the riverbank in Rotterdam, this centre blends into the city’s distinctive hardscape. Its curved form and sunken profile soften the urban landscape, creating a natural integration with the surrounding environment. Water takes centre stage, domesticated and made visible through the design, transforming public perception by revealing hidden infrastructure and various water conditions through a series of time-regulated water clock courtyards.

9.10 Irina Pirvu, Y2 ‘Restore, Repair and Recharge’. This community forest centre is hidden within Stormpolder Forest, a landscape that floods twice a day. Constructed from timber grown in the forest itself, the building educates local communities on the forest’s ecology while teaching them valuable building techniques. Offering a nest within the deeper parts of Stormpolder, the centre creates an unusual atmosphere, aligning with and restoring nature rather than harming it.

9.11 Alastair Ang, Y2 ‘The Rijnhaven Glass Crucible’. This glass-making migrant integration centre is located on the reclaimed urban beach of Rijnhaven, Rotterdam. Arrayed around a central glass furnace, the reclaimed beach site provides sand for the community-run glass workshop. The building encourages the establishment of rituals by the migrant communities, allowing them to shape the building themselves. The centre is a nexus where migrant and native cultures come together to create a new future and common destiny.

9.12 Marisa Lau, Y2 ‘Merwe-Vierhaven Recycling Arts Centre’. This project is a hoarding hub based in Rotterdam, collecting waste from art exhibitions and festivals and transforming it into new artistic creations. The building’s carefully designed studio spaces provide room for the community to create, collaborate and learn. The recycling centre is designed to constantly adapt to

the life of Rotterdam, reacting to the environmental crisis and serving as a living example of sustainability and creativity in action.

9.13–9.14 Tina Xian, Y2 ‘Rijnhaven Water Performance Centre’. Located in Rijnhaven, Rotterdam, the proposed building serves as both a water research station and a community centre, focusing on innovative filtration systems, improvement of water quality and the use of sustainable building materials. The architecture engages the senses with water and is anchored in the constant tidal fluctuation, providing a rhythm for the water performance central to the structure and its occupants.

9.15 Andrew Fan, Y3 ‘Analogia in Sienne’. This communal stop motion film centre thrives on the collaboration of artists and the community, engaging them in the stop motion process from pre- to post-production. Drawing inspiration from the meticulously composed scenes in De Hooch’s and Vermeer’s paintings of domestic life, strategic lighting and framed views are tactically designed throughout the building. These spatial systems guide the visitors’ attention to film-making activities through focused perspectives between the boundaries of public and private.

9.16 Besim Smakiq, Y3 ‘Butts Canal Algae Apparatus’. Sited in Thamesmead’s canal system, the project creates a passive device that collects algae by harnessing wind power to float across the waterways. The collected algae is used as biofertiliser for an adjacent allotment, reducing the dependence on carbon-intensive processes used to create fertiliser through the Haber–Bosch process. The device acts as an interface between the wind, the land and the water, allowing the three to interact with one another, giving life to the soil and protecting life in the water.

9.17 Roland Paczolay, Y3 ‘Fleerakker’s Arc’. Speculating on a future in which the Netherlands is flooded by rising sea levels, this project tackles the unfavourable farming conditions of flooded land by harnessing the primary cause of plant growth inhibition: salt. Accumulated as a byproduct of water and soil desalination, this resource is implemented in the permanent and temporary construction of the building, livestock farming and leisure activities.

9.18–9.20 Kiran Gosal, Y3 ‘Submerging Soundscapes’. Sited in Rotterdam within the Stormpolder Forest, which floods twice daily, this project develops a bioacoustics research centre and frequency archive. Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology, ecology and acoustics. By manipulating and changing the frequencies on site, the building tackles Rotterdam’s port noise pollution problems. Architectural bioacoustic design is used to induce an acoustic gradient through the building, affecting the human user experience, vegetation and animals on site.

9.21 Mason Cameron, Y3 ‘Vierhaven’s Play Laboratory for Bodily Recalibration’. Playing on the heteronormative barriers of the Netherlands’ red light districts, this laboratory explores the architecture of the skin as a sexual organ. It seeks new and transgressive ways of testing LGBTQ+ landscapes through humanised spaces that require the body to mimic its material surroundings. With latex forming the basis of an architectural language for the body and building, categories of queer pleasure provide a role play between bondage and queer anarchism.

9.7

9.8

9.10

9.18

9.19

9.20

Welcome to the Multiverse

UG10

Pedro Gil, Neba Sere

This year UG10 explored the concept of the Multiverse.

We asked our students to imagine universes rooted in alternative visions for our world. Drawing inspiration from cultural and social references spanning the globe, our students were urged to envision universes that could be radically different from our own. These were inspired by diverse sources such as science fiction (and fact), Afrofuturism, eco-futurism, history, politics, art, fashion, television, film and more. These could have been multiverses where superheroes are real, or popular figures are deified, or regions like Africa and Latin America were never colonised.

Students were asked to design and construct architectures, proposals and buildings that are both responsible and responsive. They were encouraged to use naturally occurring or grown materials like timber, stone and earth, which have a low carbon footprint, and to consider the natural environment as a key stakeholder in their designs. This approach is both a response to resource scarcity and a responsible commitment to sustainable architectural design.

UG10 studied and drew inspiration from the Latin American country of Mexico. Our field trip to Mexico City provided our students with a chance to delve into the city’s rich history and culture, meet incredible Mexican architects such as Tatiana Bilbao, Alberto Kalach and Leticia Lozano, and explore local construction methods and materials as well as alternative narratives and folklore. Along with their own interests and knowledge gained from their studies, these experiences informed a range of innovative design projects that spanned from Mexico City to London.

UG10 is committed to developing architecture as a vehicle for social justice through the lens of decolonisation and decarbonisation. We are excited to present new visions for the world that are more equitable, sustainable and just.

Year 2

Xander Dean, Alexander Harrison, Xin Heng (Maggie) Lee, Ateh Nkohkwo, Luke Osborne, Joode Umweni, Gracie Whitter

Year 3

Laura Diekmann, Jio Ryu

Technical tutors and consultants: Ruth Cuenca, Alberto Fernández González, Stephanie Poynts

Critics: George Aboagye Williams, Prince Henry Ajene, Eman Alamin, Abigail Ashton, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Remi Connolly-Taylor, Hannah Corlett, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Tom Holberton, Gwenaël Jerrett, Paul Karakusevic, Seun Keshiro, Níall McLaughlin, Maxwell Mutanda, Giles Nartey, Stephanie Poynts, Arturo Reyes, Isaac Simpson

A very special thanks to our supporters: Paul Karakusevic, Femi Oresanya, Marsha Ramroop and everyone who contributed to our field trip fundraiser

Thanks to our contributors for their amazing workshops and seminars: Dele Adeyemo, George Aboagye Williams, Andrew Clarke, Olalekan Jeyifous, Allyah Mitra Nandy, Arinjoy Sen, Isaac Simpson

Thanks to our wonderful hosts in Mexico City: Miquel Adria, Tatiana Bilbao, Juan Carlos Calanchini Gonzáles Cos, Alberto Kalach, Leticia Lozano

10.1, 10.4–10.6 Jio Ryu, Y3 ‘Growing Absolute Immunity: Plant Urban Immunity Research Lab’. Since the Covid-19 pandemic (2019–2022), humanity has prioritised disease research. Inspired by their ancestors’ struggles with European diseases, modern Mayans, with their deep knowledge of agriculture, have partnered with London scientists in a long quest (2024–2049). Their solution: boosting plant immunity. This has resulted in pesticidefree crops that have strengthened human immune systems too. Pioneered in London’s Stratford district, this ‘absolute immunity’ system is now being implemented worldwide. This project marks a turning point in human health and stands as a testament to Mayan knowledge and international collaboration.

10.2, 10.12–10.14 Xin Heng (Maggie) Lee, Y2 ‘Sylvan Synthesis’. The project reimagines urban resilience through a botanical solution. This community garden and botanical centre showcases alternative building methods that can reduce the impact of earthquakes, such as the devastating 1985 Mexico City quake. By cultivating a local ecosystem in previously dry, post-earthquake zones, the project harnesses the power of plant roots. These roots trap moisture and bind the loose lakebed soil, improving stability. Additionally, the programme focuses on cultivating plants suitable for timber construction, promoting an undervalued yet sustainable building material that aligns with South America’s rich biodiversity.

10.3 Joode Umweni, Y2 ‘The Afro-Mexican Dreamscape’. This project celebrates Afro-Mexican culture through a vibrant outpost designed for the Coyolillo festival, a celebration with roots in Veracruz’s Afro-Mexican community. Inspired by the festival’s colourful costumes, the architecture utilises the costumes as a material palette, with the structure representing the body and materials adorning it. This fusion of tradition and innovation creates a culturally significant space that transforms throughout the year, becoming an art studio and exhibition space for pre-teens, particularly the children of Black Mexicans navigating life in central Mexico.

10.7–10.8 Alexander Harrison, Y2 ‘Limbo’. The project fosters a connection between Tlatelolco residents and their patron saint altars. It functions as a one-stop shop, offering a florist, dye and recycling workshop, as well as a public garden. Residents can purchase fresh flowers for their shrines and rejuvenate old ones by recycling them into vibrant face paints for Day of the Dead celebrations, upholding local tradition. The design adapts to Mexico’s hot climate; ventilation blocks and movable screens regulate airflow, offering shade and privacy while converting into indoor furniture pieces.

10.9–10.11 Gracie Whitter, Y2 ‘Re-saturating Mexico City: Lake Xochimilco Nature Park’. The project proposes amphibious architecture for a flooded future, drawing inspiration from Aztec chinampas. It addresses environmental challenges stemming from the draining of the city’s lakes. Lake Xochimilco, a remaining fragment, is transformed into a nature park and visitor centre. Here, design coexists with humans, animals and plants, fostering interaction with five key species: great egret, axolotl, Mexican mud turtle, tree frog and free-tailed bat. Reconnecting with water offers a sustainable, decarbonised and decolonised future for Mexico City. 10.15–10.17 Luke Osborne, Y2 ‘House of Muxe’. In a future celebrating LGBTQ+ expression, the Muxe people of Mexico establish cultural hubs globally. London’s ‘House of Muxe’ features rotating Muxe residents sharing traditions such as craft embroidery and a shimmering sanctuary garden inspired by Derek Jarman. The building itself reimagines church architecture, transforming spaces of fear into havens, echoing the Muxe message of acceptance that empowers LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

10.7

10.8

Settlement: Island Mentality

Hannah Corlett, Níall McLaughlin

A settlement suggests a community of buildings in a particular place, drawing characteristics from the landscape, the environment, the activities of people or the materials available. It is a situation with its own origins, which grows and develops over time. It is also an agreement that, once debated, is settled in a way acceptable to all parties. Both meanings depend on each other. To live together we must understand values and how to cooperate. On a personal level, settling belongs to our oldest animal instincts and is at the heart of the architectural experience. Buildings themselves also settle. They wear and weather. People develop habits around them; they acquire histories.

This year UG12 students created a constitution for a new settlement. Agreeing upon shared values as a tool, each student then designed an individual building on a shared site. We reviewed each other’s designs as they developed via town hall meetings, generating a sense of our own power as a collective and our priorities as individuals. Our reviews focused on understanding the environmental significance of power, waste, culture, process and time.

This year we were interested in the concept of island mentality. We explored how it might hinder critical thinking and influence the idea of community. Our settlement was located on Three Mills Island, embedded in the River Lea in East London. It is one of London’s oldest surviving industrial centres, supported by dichotomous energy provision from the world’s largest Victorian gasworks and a surviving tidal mill. The students collectively created a linear, analogue settlement straddling the Channelsea River and the Prescott Channel. Within this self-supporting community, industrial processes and human life cycles were designed for through integration and evolution.

In term 1, exemplar buildings from the construction practices of Cast, Construct and Fabricate informed the design of a building element, which were then developed further through technical modules and integrated into final design proposals. Our journey through Palma, Barcelona and Oløt further inspired our focus on material practice, studying buildings by Mies van der Rohe, Jørn Utzon, Flores & Prats, RCR and H Arquitectes.

Year 2

Isabelle Borrow, Andi Cela, Yau-Yan Chai, Petra Garner, Bonnie Raphael Irvine, George Perks, Charles Stone

Year 3

Ani Begaj, Thomas Henly, Fahad Zafar Janjua, Lily Nguyen, Adam Raymond, Iolo Rees, Sofi Stiekema, Theodor Wolf

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Davies, Nicolas Pauwels, Ben Spong

Thesis supervisor: Matt Driscoll

Critics: Negin Amiri, Freddie Armitage, Pedro Gil, Angel Montero, Adam Price, Neba Sere, Eoghan Smith

Additional thanks to the following people for presenting as part of our ‘Occupation’ lecture series: Ben Addy, Anthony Boulanger, Katerina Dionysopoulou, James Llewellyn, Alexandru Malaescu, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos, Maurice Shapero

Sponsors: Assorted Skills + Talents Architects, Fallen & Felled

12.1 Collective student work coordinated by Iolo Rees ‘Settlement Masterplan’ etched onto slate.

12.2–12.4 Charles Stone, Y2 ‘The Pottery’. Revolving around the kiln’s central axis, three distinct forms constitute the project. Lying one upon the other, each responds to the tiered intersection of the existing land, water and rail infrastructure. The factory, constructed of tiled rammed earth, acts as formwork for its own growth, exhibiting cast glazed tiles that weatherproof the earth walls. At water level, timber scaffolded workshops jetty out of the factory spine, hovering above both water courses. A thin glazed studio and exhibition hall, oversailing the other buildings, is suspended between the rail lines of the existing steel bridge. The building’s relationship with its landscape and the ritualised nature of its construction create a landscape of expressive labour that equips residents with skills to adapt materials readily available on site.

12.5–12.8 Thomas Henly, Y3 ‘The Glassworks’. Located on the site of the former Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks, the project comprises three main components and contributes to the industrial landscape of an alternative community wary of technological innovation. The gallery exists as a timber warren truss, hovering above the surface of Bow Creek, creating a beacon of transparency. The linear workshops line the edge of the existing railway and create a terrace of sectional spaces crafted for specific functions. In the landscape between these two buildings, a series of glass pavilions grow to showcase and house the expanding community of craftspeople. Inspired by the notion of perpetual construction, the seasonal recycling of the construction’s aspects becomes a central narrative, bonding users through collective construction and responding to environmental change and adaptability.

12.9–12.10 Theodor Wolf, Y3 ‘The Dementia Centre’. Integrating the senior population into the fabric of the settlement, and inspired by the dynamism of the film studios to which it is attached, the project uses the typology of the theatre to retrofit the existing brick structure of the bottling plant. The existing structure is inverted to create a walled garden surrounded by the resident accommodation. The exoskeleton of the new building appears as a floating adaptive curtain overlooking both the high street and the studios. The typologies of the curtain, stage and theatre box create an unprecedented approach to care through views, immersion and integration into both reality and fantasy, challenging the stigma surrounding institutional care. 12.11–12.14 Adam Raymond, Y3 ‘The Distillery’. The Jake ‘e’ Boy Distillery sits at the northernmost point of the settlement, at the confluence of the River Lea and the Three Mills Wall River Wier. The distillers harvest their crops on Channelsea Island, which are then processed sequentially through the distillery. The two distillery buildings share a permeable plinth that connects the locked and tidal watercourses and transfers heavy material through processing. A large-scale gridded brick and steel structure sits above the plinth and is cloaked in an external steel skin crafted from the recycled London canal barges that previously occupied the site’s waterways. The roofscapes of each are undulating landscapes of northlights, formed of welded barge bows and sterns.

12.15–12.18 Isabelle Borrow, Y2 ‘The Public Private House’. As the settlement expands, the inhabitants seek pleasure and social interaction. The project comprises a public bar and exclusive members’ club. The pub forms a singular open volume, wrapped in intimate poche spaces for shelter and sitting. In contrast, the club reinforces its exclusivity with a deliberately labyrinthine interior, composed of a series of domestic-scale rooms

one must navigate through before reaching the central bar. The three staggered masses of the club, pub and dock form a courtyard in the negative space they leave. Their unadorned, unfinished skin conceals a richly embellished interior, which emerges and retreats within the primary façade.

12.19–12.22 Iolo Rees, Y3 ‘The Saltline’. Located on Three Mills Island, a linear network of structures creates a metaphoric city wall to the north of the settlement. In response to a growing community embracing isolation, the seaweed and salt farm reclaims land from potential future inhabitants, returning it to nature. The farm is built along an east–west walkway; an ephemeral spine, from which several structures branch southwards. Weaving among a treeline, these structures form a division between tide and community. Within these buildings, marine ecology is processed, documented and shipped. The processes of wading, collecting, washing and drying are ceremonial to the inhabitants.

12.23–12.24 Yau-Yan Chai, Y2 ‘The Market Theatre’. In a world dominated by technology, theatre and prop-making are dying arts. Established by the last surviving theatre company within the House Mill, a multi-purpose building is driven by the tides of the River Weir. During low tide, the building façade opens, unveiling a thriving marketplace, a cultural hub for trading community crafts and goods, and workshops in prop-making. As the tide rises, the market disappears. Utilising the abandoned mechanics of the House Mill, a stage moves onto the river, its façade acting as a fly system, unveiling the secrets of the stage for an audience lining the market piers. As the tide recedes, so does the theatre. The two operations of the building are interchangeable and fleeting, like the tides.

12.25 Lily Nguyen, Y3 ‘Adaptable Housing’. Responding to the pressing demand for housing in this growing community, these dwellings line and straddle the varied conditions along the Bow waterways. They create a linear network, shielded from the busyness of urban life yet accessible via a network of public and private landscaping and jetties. Fuelled by the need for communities and homes to morph over time, the houses are easily individualised and changed; they utilise a kit of prefabricated construction elements made of timber and stone, held together using post-tensioning. A sustainable building system emerges, ensuring ease of assembly, consistency in construction and adaptability, allowing for relocation or transformation. Supported on the riverbeds, the housing can also adapt as water levels rise. 12.26–12.28 Ani Begaj, Y3 ‘The Steam Room’. The mill is located on the site of the former Bromley-by-Bow gas pressure reduction system and repurposes its significant infrastructure. By incorporating the abandoned pipework into the steam-bending process, the mill restores purpose to this unused space in an age of sustainable energy. The building’s structure is formed of steam-bent, loadbearing columns. The design ensures structural stability while infusing the interior spaces with column-centred light. A regimented grid of columns sits across the site, straddling the existing infrastructure and underpinning a staggered canopy. The plan shapes separate functions internally in a linear arrangement with an external perimeter colonnade and a central courtyard.

Cut it at the Table: An Architecture of Consumption

Laurence Blackwell-Thale, William Victor Camilleri

If materials, sites and narratives are ingredients, architecture is the food, and its inhabitation is the feast day. The food/architecture metaphor is abundant with promise and adaptation, enabling us to become chefs of space, with the workshop as our kitchen. Consciously playing with the delineations of this metaphor, the studio's methodology allows programme, spatial inhabitation, performance and entropy to play out through shifting arrangements of architectural assembly.

UG13’s outlook hybridises the material with immaterial, haptic fabrication with ephemeral experience. Driven by a relentless pursuit for all things exquisite, the unit explores iterative and collaborative processes at the cross-section of performative architecture, landscape sensibility and workshop prowess. This principle allows us to work at the junction between the analogue and digital, where three-dimensional fabrication techniques are combined with precision drawing methods, yielding designs that convey their spatial logic and experiential qualities through careful detailing. The studio is therefore not driven by a sense of any end result, rather arriving at a point of proposition through rigorous testing and sensitive appraisal.

The architecture of consumption is an exercise in relocating resources. Assemblies are metabolised elements of a previous whole; energy is transferred from one vessel to another, levying a new potential rather than reverting to base materials. Our definitions of consumption are deliberately varied and vast, its role in architecture encouraging us to question material cycles, embodied energy, wastage and reuse.

Like the making of a meal, consumption is a performative process where materials change state and form, an experience which should be enjoyed and rendered visible, both to educate as well as encounter. We savour the tactility of the object and the ceremony of the method; a metal connection informs the timber frame, a skin is invited to join the assembly, and the architecture makes contact with the ground. Ingredients may be materials, narratives or cultural influences. Once assembled, these arrangements are then interrogated, inhabited and fundamentally consumed.

So please, join us for dinner.

Year 2

Hannah Bailey, Rosina Hooper, Juliana Orlenok, Elliot Woolard, Yuhan Wu

Year 3

Beau Beames, Ilia Cleanthous, Hsiang-Yu (Sean) Fan, Serena Haddon, Laura Maczik, Duncan McAllister, Kai Pentecost, Bryan Png, Julia Rzaca, Aleksandra Tarnowska

Guest Design Critic: Tamsin Hanke

Technology Tutors Year 3: Anja Kempa, Jack Newton

Technology Tutor Year 2: Sal Wilson

Digital skills: Pete Davies, Jo Johnson, Amy Kempa

Making consultancy: B-made

Critics: Kirsty Badenoch, Tom Budd, Ian Chalk, Nat Chard, Florence Hemmings, Colin Herperger, Jo Johnson, Elin Eyeborg Lund, Robin Mather, EmmaKate Matthews, Ashwin Patel, Farlie Reynolds, David Shanks

13.1, 13.5 Ilia Cleanthous, Y3 ‘Ungdomshuset 66’. The project revives the historical landmark Ungdomshuset (’the Youth House’) in Copenhagen, known for its rich legacy of activism and community engagement. The building reimagines and reconstructs a series of integrating architectural fragments from the original structure, creating dynamic, multi-functional spaces which honour the site’s legacy while serving contemporary community needs.

13.2–13.4 Bryan Png, Y3 ‘The Copenhagen Moving School of Conservation’. An emphasis on architectural innovation, sustainability and conservation in Copenhagen sets the context for the project. Situated between the existing conservation sites at the Børsen and the Nationalbanken, the proposal explores the integration of a school-cum-worksite. This positions itself as part of the restoration timeline, allowing continued occupation, alternative educational spaces and a fluid outlook towards building permanence.

13.6–13.7 Aleksandra Tarnowska, Y3 ‘Distilling Memories’. This building improves the quality of life of people with dementia by curating sensory experiences, primarily olfactory, to help individuals maintain their cognitive skills for as long as possible.

13.8–13.9 Kai Pentecost, Y3 ‘How the Earth Shapes You’. This therapy centre addresses Copenhagen’s inadequate support for PTSD psychiatric care. Situated on an ex-military island, pattern-making and fabric tailoring inspire an architecture of active healing and exposure therapy.

13.10–13.11 Laura Maczik, Y3 ‘The Wind Catcher’. This project harnesses and accelerates air speed through wind tunnels, which inflate balloons set within the building form. The released air then ventilates the building and is also used to shield nearby marine ecosystems through sonic bubble curtains.

13.12 Serena Haddon, Y3 ‘The First Frame is an Excavation’. The project questions inhabiting archaeological dig spaces based on a mothballed development site in Southwark. The ground is reopened, allowing archaeological dig ‘furniture’ to be shifted to provide new opportunities to read and re-read the multiple histories of a blurred ground condition.

13.13–13.15 Hsiang-Yu (Sean) Fan, Y3 ‘Museum for a Migrating Dune’. Situated next to the moving lighthouse at Rubjerg Knude, in the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, the project acts as an archive and instrument that measures the movement of shifting dunes using intricate, incrementally sheet-formed façades.

13.16–13.18 Beau Beames, Y3 ‘Reading Light’. Emerging from the sea and the sand, the project is inextricably linked to site conditions through the use of glass as a hyper-local articulation of fluid motion and saline caustics. The building is an architectural instrument derived from and set within the sea, fragmenting the shoreline while creating spaces that form an intimate relationship with the water.

13.19–13.21 Duncan McAllister, Y3 ‘Never Ever Forever’. The project focuses on the intermediate construction phase of the building’s timeline. Typical construction equipment such as cranes and tarpaulin are employed as permanent fixtures. Structural precariousness is used as a method of highlighting the liminal state of the building under deconstruction, using equipment such as acro-props and fragile handmade ropes as load bearers.

13.22 Hannah Bailey, Y2 ‘A Stage for the Storm’. Situated on the northern tip of Denmark by Old Skagen, an existing house is battered by storm winds and waves. A new building enwraps the old, protecting, enclosing, mediating and accepting the sea. During storms, an influx of water becomes both a performative experience

and an instrument for recording and analysing environmental conditions.

13.23–13.24 Julia Rzaca, Y3 ‘The Astral Mechanics of Celestial Architecture’. The City of London has a rich history with the astral, allowing a new building to create inclusive environments for both the art of astrology and the science of astronomy. The project examines how ornamentation can be used for structural purposes, thus making it not just an aesthetic choice but a necessity within the architectural typology.

13.25–13.27 Yuhan Wu, Y2 ‘A Circus of Subversive Performances’. The project investigates how circus acts transform architecture, questioning the conventions between performers and space, creating an architecture that fosters intimacy between spectators and performers. This is achieved through meticulously crafted ‘skins’ that both obscure and unveil, facilitating subversive observation and teases of voyeurism.

13.28 Juliana Orlenok, Y2 ‘A Deceitful Civic Structure’. Set in Copenhagen’s Freetown Christiania, the project explores how the police, narcotics pushers and local residents can be physically manifested within the design and occupation of a civic building. Its programme provides meeting rooms, preparation spaces and a debate chamber for discussing local area issues, while cuts and precise angles create visual transparency as well as hidden areas.

13.29 Rosina Hooper, Y2 ‘The Observer’s Set’. Sited in northern Denmark, the project is a voyeuristic film set designed to interrogate the notions of cinematic and temporal spectacle through the lens of the camera. The architecture creates an aspect ratio where the unaware are filmed and the aware remain hidden, so that the building itself becomes a stage for a performance of spectacle and voyeurism.

13.30 Elliot Woolard, Y2 ‘Ballonparken Logging Company’. In response to developments in the area and the destruction of the forest, the community of Ballonparken in Copenhagen begin to inhabit the forest and care for it. Their building is hidden from observation by remaining disguised within the existing tree canopy, below which an architecture becomes part of the woodland ecology. It uses trees as structure, increasing biodiversity and providing sustainable lumber to the local community through balloon logging, community workshop sawmills and composting zones.

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Skopje 2024: AuthentiCity

David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata

UG14 continued its studies into how societies remember and forget through the built environment. This year we studied what we can learn when architecture has been exploited for the purposes of identity politics, becoming a propaganda tool to force new values on an unknowing public.

‘Skopje 2014’ was a project enacted by the then-ruling North Macedonian government, which transformed the country’s capital through the construction of new buildings, monuments and statues in neoclassical and baroque styles. The government’s ambition was to create a new national identity by rewriting history and claiming ancient figures like Alexander the Great for itself. It looked to its distant past – a time before anyone living today could remember, utilising collective amnesia to skip over its recent history.

We visited the city to experience the aftermath of the project and understand how divisive it has been for the community. Within architectural circles, Skopje 2014 may appear as a distasteful and insensitive project to create a kitsch postmodern fantasy. As designers, we are encouraged to find authenticity in our work by allowing natural and cultural forces to shape our buildings. However, the new identity introduced to the capital’s centre has arguably helped produce an upturn in tourism for North Macedonia.

As we live in an era of ‘fake news’ and AI-produced visualisations, questions of authenticity are now a reality of our day-to-day lives. This year we considered how our attitudes to the ‘truth’ can vary depending on the framing in which it is presented to us, and used this understanding to create a more democratic and genuine architecture. In designing our buildings, we aimed to allow its users and observers to construct new understandings and knowledge from the stories we tell.

On the tenth anniversary of the project, and with monuments already beginning to crumble, we looked to reuse and adapt the existing structures of Skopje 2014 to imagine evocative and innovative futures for the city and nation. As the boundaries between what is ‘real’ and ‘not real’ becomes increasingly blurred, we aimed to find space for both, to tell new untold truths in a knowingly fantastical world.

Year 2

Yury Balabin, Yuan (Becky) Bian, Oscar Brice, Tahiyah Karim, Gigi Lane

Year 3

Maria Bystronska, Lok Hang Chiu, Shu Yi (Sarah) Chuwa, Rosa CrossleyFurse, Kai Jackson, Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung, Nadiya Khan, Allyah Mitra Nandy, Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng

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

Critics: Stephen Gage, Damian Iliev, Kevin Kelly, Christopher Lees, Benjamin Lucraft, Carlota Nuñez-Barranco Vallejo, Farlie Reynolds

14.1, 14.4 Allyah Mitra Nandy, Y3 ‘The Faculty of Macedonian Folklore’. Bridging the faculties of History and Literature at the St Cyril and Methodius University, the project addresses North Macedonia’s complex historical identity by presenting folklore as an alternative, authentic strand of history. Recreating moments of the fairytale forest in spatial fragments, the design restores an innate and long-lost connection between the writer and nature. Informed by the rich tradition of mythical birds in Macedonian folktales, the design also considers birds as users of the building.

14.2–14.3 Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng, Y3 ‘Skopje 2034’. This project is a court and archive for the Skopje 2014 statues that encourages citizens to participate in deciding the destiny of the monuments of disputed Macedonian figures. The building catalyses the revitalisation of Skopje’s public spaces by repurposing these statues into architectural components and playground furniture. Children’s activities within the landscaped playground feed back into the bronzecasting process, creating a circular approach that enhances the public’s sense of ownership and pride in the built environment.

14.5–14.7 Rosa Crossley-Furse, Y3 ‘Phoenix’s Courthouse’. On a retrofitted fake ship, the trial of the government of Nikola Gruevski, former prime minister of Macedonia, continues. Luring the fugitive back under the guise of national forgiveness, Phoenix’s Courthouse offers ex-leaders a false comfort as their Skopje 2014 architectural creations are reflected back at them. The monumental trial swings the scales of democracy back into balance, as court proceedings now lie in public hands.

14.8 Maria Bystronska, Y3 ‘Algal Retreat’. North Macedonia is considered the most polluted country in Europe. Located in the biggest park in Skopje, this project addresses the pressing environmental and health problems in the city by integrating algae into the architecture of a green sanctuary where residents can enjoy breathing crystal-clean air.

14.9 Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung, Y3 ‘Speak Your Pattern of Skopje’. The building repurposes an abandoned folk clothing factory into an oral history archive with a textile workshop. Here, folktales and personal stories are shared and transformed into tapestry patterns, rebuilding the lost link between generations and preserving the authenticity of Skopje within the collective framework of the Macedonian community.

14.10 Lok Hang Chiu, Y3 ‘Accession or Hell’. The project explores an architecture that would violently decay within Skopje’s formal brutalist language, subverting expectations and introducing new perspectives. A North Macedonian EU Accession campaign centre is constructed with a designated lifespan of 10 years. Once obsolete, the ruins of the headquarters are designed to be repurposed by an expanded film school to further promote the nation’s modern identity.

14.11 Kai Jackson, Y3 ‘Polystyrene Densification Centre’. The building critiques the approach of the Skopje 2014 polystyrene façades by exploring the theme of authenticity through the lens of lost potential. Utilising the immense mass of marble to transform lightweight polystyrene into a stone-like material, the project underscores the irony of Skopje 2014’s decision to use cheap veneers instead of the locally abundant marble. This absurdly intensive process questions the logic of using one material to mimic another that would have been better suited for the original purpose.

14.12 Oscar Brice, Y2 ‘The Blue Sky Initiative’. The project imagines a future where an ‘airpocalypse’ has resulted in a humanitarian emergency in Skopje’s heavily polluted environment. In a bid to shift the city’s trajectory towards

sustainability, a clean air sanctuary is designed in the abandoned Central Post Office, alongside a new bicycle network and hub. This city-wide initiative becomes an act of protest, proposing methods through which the residents of Skopje can travel, educate and ultimately live sustainably.

14.13 Yuan (Becky) Bian, Y2 ‘Rehabilitation Treska’. As part of North Macedonia’s efforts to join the EU, the project constructs a rehabilitative facility for non-violent female inmates as a pioneering model of improved prison infrastructure. The prison focuses on reintegration into society by providing education and woodcrafting skills. Given the constantly changing prison population, the modular timber frame structure allows for future adaptations, addressing the evolving functions of the facility.

14.14 Tahiyah Karim, Y2 ‘Pagoda Lakewood Studios’. Examining the perceived authenticity in the architecture of the Pagoda in Victoria Park, London, the project explores issues of orientalism, the strategy of positive cultural exchange and the integration of communities within a creative environment. The workshop teaches woodworking traditions that may have been forgotten and implements them into new designs for the local multi-ethnic community.

14.15 Gigi Lane, Y2 ‘Imitation Skopje’. The project builds upon the existing structure of Skopje’s Old Railway Station, which was substantially destroyed by the 1963 earthquake and stands as a testimony to the city’s history. Imitation Skopje is a dementia care home for the elderly and a youth workshop, both benefiting mutually from a memory theatre. As a component of reminiscence therapy, the theatre presents daily plays using sets of Skopje’s historical architecture to trigger further memories for the patients.

14.16–14.17 Yury Balabin, Y2 ‘Institute of Preservation of Fragmented Brutalism’. The project envisions a future where Skopje’s Brutalist heritage is at risk of being lost, and proposes to physically preserve it in a new museum. The institute occupies the currently abandoned parts of the iconic Central Post Office, designed by Janko Konstantinov. A newly created structure, perched upon the bank of the Vardar River, acts as a space for the processing, remaking and documentation of architectural fragments.

14.18 Nadiya Khan, Y3 ‘Fit Fortune’. Targeting compulsive behaviour associated with gambling in Skopje, the programme rehabilitates users by replacing negative behaviours with healthier, long-term habits. Central to this is a commitment to progression and recovery, harnessing the power of gamification to reward positive behaviour. The integration of rock climbing and halotherapy creates an immersive fitness journey that forges a deep connection between the body and the mind.

14.19–14.20 Shu Yi (Sarah) Chuwa, Y3 ‘The Skin School’. The project is a college focusing on arts education where students are taught to embrace a new and alternative identity for Skopje. Inspired by the layers of mould growing over the Skopje 2014 polystyrene architecture, the building is an inhabitable skin combining mycelium and ceramics, constructed over the existing 2014 structures. The students are taught to craft artworks and ‘edit’ monuments using these materials to reveal an identity of the city true to their generation.

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Sequential

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

Architecture is often seen as creating final outcomes as an embodiment of an initial diagram or idea. However, this can disguise the sequence of actions and reactions during the design process. When we make, draw or model, each step influences the next.

Large language models, such as ChatGPT, work by simply predicting the most probable next word from the previous string of words. They know nothing but sequences, but by using these patterns they can convincingly explain, narrate and converse with humans. Every sentence unfurls as a succession of probable words, as a form of strange machine intelligence without any ideas of its own. Yet this sequential way of ‘reading’ the world is proving to be a powerful new tool, with the potential to influence how we create the future.

Our perceptual models constantly compare what is sensed to a parallel inner prediction. How something looks and feels, and what draws our attention, is a game of sequential probability. Our shifting focus is in dialogue with the architecture we create and the relative difference between what we see and what we know.

Modern construction relies heavily on systems of standardised parts that are planned in advance. Yet different forms of scanning, sensing and manufacturing could allow construction to be a more agile, continuously reactive craft – one that is more dynamically responsive to materials. This is ever more urgent in a climate crisis that must reuse and repurpose to conserve embodied energy.

This year UG21 students have worked both physically and digitally, between the analogue and the digital, and their process has been a continuous chain of consequences. They have developed their own evolving method that creates, fixes and reacts to itself –embracing operating in the moment, without necessarily knowing the end, or even remembering the beginning.

We travelled to Barcelona, a continuously changing city, and explored various projects by Antoni Gaudí, Enric Miralles, Ricardo Bofill and RCR Arquitectes. Our unit operates a vertical studio culture that combines all years, from Year 2 to Year 5, supporting each student to develop their own unique design approach, and placing a value on the process throughout the whole year.

Year 2

Milda Knabikaite, Karina-Ioana Lacraru, Alexandros Photiou, Yumeng Yang

Year 3

Jack Bowers, Yufei Cheng, Wentong (Iris) Feng, Jessica Georgelin, Yiwen (Yuna) Lee, Kullaphat (Elle) Ngamprasertpong, Sneha Parashar, Alex Perez Escamilla, Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich

Technical tutor and consultant: Tom Holberton

Critics: Julian Besems, Roberto Bottazzi, Pedro Gil, Farlie Reynolds, Elly Selby, Neba Sere, Ben Spong, Jasmin Sohi

21.1, 21.26–21.28 Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich, Y3 ‘Terra-Scape’. This therapeutic ceramic workshop synthesises landscape within 3D-printed bespoke terracotta brick systems. The scheme develops the building as part of a green network for Barcelona, providing an alternative to the monotony of conventional urban planning. It bridges the gap between traditional craftsmanship and digital tooling, retaining the materiality and reimagining Barcelona.

21.2–21.4 Wentong (Iris) Feng , Y3 ‘Untitled Monuments’. Situated at Barcelona’s 1888 Universal Exposition, this project is a cultural centre for film conservation. Using images as script inputs, it generates complex geometric columns from 50th-anniversary film footage. The process is integrated throughout the building, from structural supports to interior details, crafting an unpredictable and dynamic space.

21.5 Alexandros Photiou, Y2 ‘Corazón De La Comunidad: Sequential Generation’. Located in Aguas Park, within the sequentially created Eixample district of Barcelona, this project proposes a new community centre. It revolves around the creation of a space to support the integration of children and the elderly. Focusing on the dialogue between the designer and AI, it also proposes a new architectural design methodology, resulting in the creation of a design that bridges the hand drawn and the digital.

21.6–21.7 Yiwen (Yuna) Lee, Y3 ‘Whispers in Shadows’. Located at Park Güell in Barcelona, the building includes an archaeological forensics institute, a museum and an auction space. It focuses on preserving artefacts and tracing their origins to offer insights into historical living conditions. The dynamic façade provides a unique backdrop for visitors and photographers while fostering learning and cultural engagement in the community.

21.8–21.10 Karina-Ioana Lacraru, Y2 ‘Learning the Ropes’. The project explores the enduring relationship between sea and land, situating the Barcelona Port Vell along the coastline of the built-up landscape. Utilising a design methodology that tracks light reflecting off hand movements and spatial action notations, the proposal starts with a visualisation of the sea landscape. The challenge lies in designing a building, anchored on stable land and surrounded by calm waters, that could offer experiences reminiscent of the unpredictability found in the middle of the open sea.

21.11 Sneha Parashar, Y3 ‘Resonant Geometries: Metal, Music and Movement’. This project uses isolated recordings from flamenco performances to generate resonant metal geometries throughout the building. Serving as a music and dance department extension for the Maristes La Immaculada school in Barcelona, the building’s centre is a resonant metal fissure running through all the floors. This atrium acts like an instrument, resonating with performances occurring at either end. It pays homage to the mining and ploughing roots of flamenco songs.

21.12 Jack Bowers, Y3 ‘Bury Me Like Trimalchio’. The columbarium is designed using monotype printmaking. The drawings are scanned, processed, digitally manipulated and ‘re-printed’ before being reconstituted into new forms. The prints are based on the relationship between the city and the hinterland, as well as referencing traditional burial rites and Augustan-era columbarium design strategies.

21.13–21.14 Jessica Georgelin, Y3 ‘Metamorph’. The Centre for Lepidoptera Research is located on the Turó de la Rovira hill, overlooking Barcelona. A feedback system was developed to rethink rapid prototyping tools, where the final product is a result of the tool’s process, rather than a predetermined outcome. The maker–object system involves objects that are both observers and observed, such as the interpreting apparatus that

translates the maker’s movements into usable data for the 3D printer to interpret. This medium acts like a transect, the method of collecting voltine data for lepidoptera, where species are repeatedly counted within a specified area. The printed transects form the basis of a building system with ecology at its core.

21.15–21.16 Alex Perez Escamilla, Y3 ‘La Nova Generalitat Catalana’. Set in Barcelona, La Monumental, an unused bullring, has been transformed using historical texts and a letter frequency analysis into ‘La Nova Generalitat Catalana’, a new hub for the Catalan government. The site combines design and structure in its creation of a ‘political forest’, which symbiotically integrates its environment to flourish and grow. This building utilises both the environmental and political climate for its prosperity, and maintains the Spanish–Catalan tension within the proposal. With the dichotomous distribution of space, from the auditorium to the private quarters, La Monumental becomes a haven for the new Catalan government and its people.

21.17–21.19 Milda Knabikaite, Y2 ‘Pocket Space Community Garden’. The project is an extension of an experiment called ‘Dynamic Square Metre’. It involves analysing key stages of Barcelona’s urban development. From this analysis, a set of elements or ‘powers’ of the city, referencing the concept from Charles and Ray Eames’ documentary Powers of Ten (1977), are identified. These ‘powers’ are brought together on a small scale, or ‘pocket space’, to create a new way of looking at urban gardening. This approach is tailored to both the needs of the broader city and the specific local environment.

21.20–21.21 Yumeng Yang, Y2 ‘Re-weaving Can Batlló’. The project proposes a series of workshop and leisure facilities for the recycling and repurposing of textiles, contributing to the revitalisation of the reclaimed factory and celebrating its cultural heritage. Driven by the simulation of trees’ mycorrhizal networks, the digital machine guides varying forms and the aggregation process in building elements. The growing pattern informs iterative generation that weaves spatial connections between the building and its context, integrating the compound area with surrounding communities.

21.22–21.23 Yufei Cheng, Y3 ‘El Gòtic Plays Itself’. Situated in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, this project proposes a centre for Catalan theatre and craft as an ode to the theatrical essence of the site’s fabric. Inspired by the Spanish affection for theatricality and festivals, which transform ordinary street life into stage sets, a bespoke script documents and recomposes sequences of theatrical plays, festivals and urban fabric. This script translates these elements into stages of digital manipulation, which shape the building in a processional form, resulting in the concept of ‘the city as a stage and the stage as a city’.

21.24–21.25 Kullaphat (Elle) Ngamprasertpong, Y3 ‘Swimming Landscape’. Located in Jardins d’Hiroshima, Barcelona, and adhering to the principles of ‘human viewing angle’ and ‘sunlight reflection’, the project creates an adaptable architecture for different times and seasons. The ceiling of the main pool is designed with ceramic tiles of various colours and gloss levels. This not only creates special moments for swimmers but also helps them identify their location within the pool.

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A shelter made of repurposed tents from the Glastonbury Festival, designed by students of the Design & Creative Practice module, 2023. Photo: Maria Corti

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Programme Directors: Sophie Read, Elizabeth Dow

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc is an undergraduate degree that is completely unique within UCL and across the UK. For over ten years the programme has been a forerunner in the UK university system, offering an alternative form of architectural education which demonstrates that architectural culture is not centred solely around the accredited profession. Our students select modules from across the Faculty of the Built Environment – including in architectural research, architectural history and theory, design and creative practice, environmental design and greening cities, and professional practice, planning and management. They are then able to tailor their studies further by selecting elective modules from across UCL, addressing a wider set of interests and building expertise that directly informs their study of the built environment and the architectural practitioner they will become.

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies students interact with and benefit from the practice of many other people working in related fields – film, media, public engagement, policy, conservation, ecology, curation, design and artistic practice – each of whom shapes debates and ideas around architecture in significant and important ways.

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 across UCL alongside their architectural studies, such as in geography, politics, biology and anthropology. They develop a range of skills and 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 tailored module streams for Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies students running across the three years of their degree: 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.

This year we would like to congratulate Blanche Cameron for winning UCL’s esteemed annual Sustainable Education Award for her leadership of our Greening Cities module. Students take this exciting module in the second year of their studies, exploring biodiverse, nature-based climate adaptation for cities.

Finally, we would like to thank Professor Elizabeth Dow for her inspiring leadership over the past decade until earlier this year — growing and shaping the programme and its unique curriculum and pedagogy, mentoring our staff, and supporting and nurturing our students in profound ways.

Programme Administrator

Beth Barnett-Sanders

Architectural Research

Tutors and PGTA

Edwina Attlee, Brent Carnell, Kirti Durelle, Tom Ó Caollaí, Sophie Read, David Roberts, María Venegas Rabá

Design & Creative Practice Tutors and PGTA

Kirsty Badenoch, Elizabeth Dow, Beatrice Frant, Kevin Green, Alice Hardy, Tom Kendall, Elly Selby, Freddy Tuppen, Gabriel Warshafsky

Greening Cities Tutor and PGTA

Blanche Cameron, Merve Okkali Alsavada

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 rigorous primary research and write an 8,000-word essay. In addition to individual research projects, students also work collaboratively on the production of a group output for dissemination in term 3. This year this component took the form of an exhibition, some digitised readings, a collation of essay excerpts and a website. The website adds to the work of previous Architecture Research III student work. 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 wonderfully 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 Grace Bonham, Connor Cartwright-Larkin, Ipek Chakki, Nathalie Chieveley-Williams, Maria Corti, Mahika Gautam, Freya Leonard, Jiahong (Kingsley) Luo, Iona Mcvean, Yaya Ernest Yaya Mfor Mpecassah, Muinot (Angel) Quadry, Ha Rang Seo, Xinran (Paula) Shen, Marius Sidaravicius, Tom Skoulding, Alexia Vela Akasaka, Jade Lok Yu Wong, Yezhen (Enid) Zhang

Module Tutors

Danielle Hewitt, Sophie Read, David Roberts

A Social Construction of Wembley Stadium: Large-Scale Event Venues as Micro-Utopian Liminal Space

Freya Leonard

It was only in the late 1990s that urban researchers noted a post-industrial shift from the production of goods and services to that of experiences.1 London’s experiential economy is reflected in the prominence of large-scale music and sporting events, as well as the eminent architecture in which they take place. The growing popularity of communal events illustrates an ‘inherent need for collective involvement’, which has numerous psychosocial benefits. 2 In fact, sociological studies have noted a positive correlation between the frequency of events and the mitigation of stress and loneliness in cities. 3 By offering a heightened experience of public encounter for varied demographics, event venues foster conviviality through ‘social bonding and camaraderie’. 4 Stadiums thus support new practices of sociocultural organisation, accommodating individual and collective experiences that transcend the ‘more mundane spaces of everyday life’. 5

Informed by an experimental mapping methodology, my dissertation explores the ways in which stadiums are spatially transformed during events, both at a physical and social level. Wembley Stadium has been selected as a case study, in which football fixtures are analysed through two theoretical frameworks: Victor Turner’s notion of ‘liminality’, 6 and Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘microutopia’.7 In a 1974 essay, Turner defines the

‘liminal’ as a threshold region in which people undergo personal transformation, feeling comfortable to suspend normal social boundaries. 8 I suggest that Wembley Stadium is not only transformed by a physical influx of spectators on match days, but also the social changes in attitude, status and behaviour that occur as attendees cross the liminal threshold. By embodying ritualistic behaviour and symbols of solidarity, the venue adopts liminal qualities which enable it to facilitate temporary moments of micro-utopian community. Through ethnographic field research and qualitative, semi-structured interviews with sport attendees, I reveal unseen spatial practices at urban event venues and offer an in-depth inquiry into the liminal dimension of the contemporary city.

1. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, ‘Welcome to the experience economy’, Harvard Business Review, 76, no.4 (1998).

2. Merrill J. Melnick, ‘Searching for sociability in the stands’, Journal of Sport Management, 7, no.1 (1993): 47–9.

3. Vera Toepoel, ‘Ageing, Leisure, and Social Connectedness: How could leisure help reduce social isolation of older people?’, Social Indicators Research, 113 (2013): 355–72.

4. Vassilios Ziakas and Nikolaos Boukas, ‘Contextualizing phenomenology in event management research’, IJEFM, 5, no.1 (2014): 59.

5. Jodie Taylor, Andy Bennett and Ian Woodward, The Festivalisation of Culture (London: Routledge, 2014), 2–3.

6. Victor Turner, ‘Liminality and communitas’, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).

7. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Presse Du Reel, 1998).

8. Victor Turner, ‘Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual: An essay in comparative symbology’, Rice University Studies, 60, no.3 (1974): 53–92.

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 explored the creative potential of habits: the seemingly minor, semi-conscious activities that animate and generate so much of the city around us. Developing a keen awareness of automatic processes of sensing, moving through and encountering the urban environment – as well as trying on the habits of other creative practitioners for size – enabled discovery of the extraordinary within the everyday. By conceiving and cultivating their own creative habits with deliberate intent, students speculated about the bold spatial impact of persistent incremental actions on the delicately poised ecologies of Tavistock Square.

In Year 2 students looked upwards, acknowledging and aligning our school calendar with the rotation of the Earth, the sun, the climate and the cosmos. From September to December, as the days shortened, we prepared for the winter solstice; seeking refuge through folding origami memories, scrubbing cow spines for ritual sacrifices and playing instruments to converse with underwater creatures. From this point of darkness, we emerged to greet the spring equinox in March with a ceremony of mythological frogs and goats, made offerings to purge our indulgences and found new ways of naming the budding plants emerging from the cold ground. Together we co-curated two celebrations of thanks, sited at The Bartlett and in Culpeper Community Garden.

Year 3 is driven by an interest in interdisciplinary practice that looks outside of the institution and promotes public-facing, socially engaged group and individual projects. We 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. This year we were inspired by Simon Starling’s project ShedBoatShed in which he disassembled an old wooden shed, built a boat from the material and paddled it down the Rhine before reassembling it into its original form. We explored the various ways that materials can be reconfigured from one form to another and in doing so investigated themes of sustainability, circular economies and material culture. Working with broken tents recovered from Glastonbury Festival, the students designed garments that were in turn disassembled and used to build shelters on Global Generation’s Floating Garden on the canal in King’s Cross.

Year 1

Nadia Afrin, Nicole Au, Nicole Chan, Tracy Cui, Saskia Diplock, Daniela Ghinda, Yunxin (Fobby) Han, Fearne Harris, Sattvika Konic, Grace Mccready, Jimingyuan (Angela) Shi, Arisa Shiraishi, Zaiyu (Oscar) Tian, Haowei (David) Wang, Kyiga Wilberforce

Year 2

Nia Ahad, Maya Herman, Rushdania Iqbal, Doh Young Jeong, Jiahua (Cindy) Li, Lucy Linton, Tess Mihigo Uwera, Zeynep Okur, Tian (Tina) Qi, Téa Texier, Xuanjing Wang

Year 3

Grace Bonham, Connor Cartwright-Larkin, Ipek Chakki, Nathalie Chieveley-Williams, Maria Corti, Freya Leonard, Jiahong (Kingsley) Luo, Iona Mcvean, Yaya (Ernest) Mfor Mpecassah, Nicole Onstad, Ha Rang Seo, Xinran (Paula) Shen, Marius Sidaravicius, Tom Skoulding, Alexia Vela Akasaka, Jade Wong, Yezhen (Enid) Zhang

DCP.1 Maria Corti, Yaya (Ernest) Mfor Mpecassah, Iona Mcvean, Marius Sidaravicius, Y3 ‘Tent-GarmentTent’. This shelter is designed by repurposing tents from the Glastonbury Festival. It was made for Global Generation’s ‘Floating Garden’ on Regent’s Canal.

DCP.2–DCP.3 Nicole Au, Y1 ‘Woven Automatism’. The project translates the anxious gesture of twisting a pendant into collective well-being, encoding unconscious thought into textile through knot-making and weaving.

DCP.4 Martina Ceccarelli, Y1 ‘My Mark’. A collection of wearable metal apparatus shapes a practice of assertive feminine flânerie inspired by Virginia Woolf. Its components variously restrict the body and record its movement through abrasive mark-making, creating physical trophies of the wearer’s walking route while projecting a defensive, armour-like appearance.

DCP.5 Saskia Diplock, Y1 ‘Inflating the Habit’. A lightweight, mobile architecture supports the emergence of a deeply personal daily habit of observing and documenting the sunrise in a public space. The proposal uses fragile, inflated membranes to cushion and support the body while asserting personal space for this valued and vulnerable moment.

DCP.6 Kyiga Wilberforce, Y1 ‘To Weigh Light’. Drawing on an analysis of the subtle qualities and intrinsic values of filtered light in domestic and sacred spaces, the project proposes the suspension of accumulated textiles in Tavistock Square to create a space for shared reflection.

DCP.7 Tracy Cui, Y1 ‘Luxuriating in Material Tension’. Using stretched ropes, inflated latex and inks, the project embodies social tensions within an elastic material palette, exploring the subversive pleasures found at their breaking points.

DCP.8 Tess Mihigo Uwera, Y2 ‘Agaseke Kacu: Our Little Basket’. In response to the acts of violence and murder committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, Tutsi women created a community and spaces geared towards other women – victims of sexual and physical violence, widows and orphans. Here they were taught different crafts, including basket-weaving and coiling, to make, sell and become self-sufficient. This project brings this historically significant practice into the modern day. With the help of other invited women, a space will be created to talk and build a community around shared experiences of womanhood.

DCP.9 Anna Joung, Y2 ‘Untitled’. Anthropogenic labels denote power and authority over a changing environment. The project explores ‘naming’ as a changing form of communication and connection. Unconventional labels catalogue the overlooked aspects of Culpeper Community Garden in a sensorial language.

DCP.10 Maria Kinoshita, Y2 ‘Equinox Rebirth: An Overindulgence Rite of Release’. This project offers participants a transformative journey towards selfawareness and renewal. Rooted in the celestial significance of the equinox, this ritual invites individuals to confront their past overindulgences and embrace a path of healing and balance.

DCP.11 Lucy Linton, Y2 ‘Frog Man’. This transformative installation immerses the wearer in the senses and stories of a frog, allowing them to join the annual migration in Culpeper Community Garden located in Islington, London. This transformation invites the wearer to consider an alternative perspective and inspires new forms of environmental stewardship and preservation of our natural world for future generations.

DCP.12 Xuanjing Wang, Y2 ‘The Goat-Bot’. The ecological physician Goat-Bot is a half-human, half-goat caretaker of the Culpeper Community Garden. Through the lens of Goat-Bot, the project draws attention to nature as an urban fragment that humans often overlook.

DCP.13 Gemma Villoresi, Y2 ‘Restricting Extraction’. Exploring human access to natural resources and the need for a balanced and respectful approach to gathering and harvesting, this series of ‘boxes’ calls attention to the need for humans to get more in touch with the natural rhythms of plants and resources. Each mechanism explores forms of interaction, empathy, coexistence and restricted extraction.

DCP.14 Alexia Vela Akasaka, Mahika Gautam, Tom Skoulding, Harang Seo, Xinran (Paula) Shen, Y3 ‘Group Project’. This collective project repurposes materials from waste streams to create a modular structure designed for screening films at Global Generation’s ‘Floating Garden’. Global Generation is a UK-based charity focused on environmental and social sustainability through youth engagement and community projects. The project unfolds in two phases: phase 1 involves converting unused tents collected from the Glastonbury Festival into unique garments. In phase 2, these garments are further transformed into a structure that meets the site’s specific requirements and limitations.

DCP.15 Freya Leonard, Y3 ‘(De)coding the Stitch’. This project explores the translation and encryption of urban resources into a delicate textile language. It responds to the question: how can sewing practices facilitate a discrete transferral of information? The work is situated in a contemporary context of women’s refuge, culminating in the creation of an embroidered garment that reveals crucial resources to the wearer as they navigate to safety. It thus reflects a need for both creative material experimentation and social sensitivity, demonstrating the power of unspoken codes in providing aid to high-risk demographics in the city.

DCP.16 Nathalie Chieveley-Williams, Y3 ‘From a Field To’. The garment attempts to elevate the classic raincoat in unexpected ways by addressing two existing issues: running in the rain and in the dark. The jacket’s front is covered in origami-inspired textile squares that open with the movement of the runner and air resistance. Once opened, a dual layer of reflective material acts as high-visibility clothing to alert cars and bikes to the runner. At the back, an extra cube of material inflates as the user runs, drawing added attention to the runner.

DCP.17 Xinran (Paula) Shen, Y3 ‘Lotus Root Farming’. Combining tradition with innovation, this bionic garment inspired by frogs is designed to enhance the age-old practice of lotus root cultivation. The half-body waterproof suit provides stability in muddy waters for digging and features a handy storage bag for convenience.

DCP.18 Marius Sidaravicius and Harang Seo, Y3 ‘The Waste Show’. This project explores the use of imaginative thinking in storytelling to propose the implementation of ‘The Waste Show’ within The Bartlett School of Architecture. This festival celebrates the waste materials that are in constant flow within the school. Through this, systems that manage and process waste materials, such as the facilities team and B-made workshops, are transparent about how waste is reactivated as a resource.

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Engineering & Architectural Design MEng Equinox Festival, 2024.

Photo: Richard Stonehouse

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 is an integrated master’s degree, triple accredited for the professional, pedagogic and cultural incubation of interdisciplinary, cutting-edge designers. The programme is designed, taught and nurtured by the three major disciplines responsible for the design of the built environment, namely architecture, civil engineering and building service engineering. Our graduates enter the professions of architecture and engineering while also joining new practices that bridge between and beyond conventional professional roles, forging a novel practitioner who is skilled in a number of disciplines.

Hosted by The Bartlett School of Architecture, the programme is designed, developed and taught by architects, engineers and multidisciplinary designers and academics 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.

Last year we gained quadruple accreditation for all graduates, including 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 interdisciplinary programmes of its kind to focus on sustainable, cutting-edge and integrated design, holding accreditation from all four industry bodies responsible for the design of the built environment. It also won the CIBSE Happold Brilliant Award for best overall programme, recognising our excellence in the teaching of building services engineering.

Numerous graduates earned internal and external accolades. For example, Martha Stevens won the Sustainability Prize for The Bartlett Summer Show 2023, and Sheryl Wylie received the New Civil Engineer ’s Graduate and Apprentice Award for Outstanding Contribution to Digital Engineering thanks to her work at Laing O’Rourke. By September of last year, 52 pioneering graduates secured employment across all fields within the built environment sector, both in the traditional domains of architecture and engineering, as well as in the new areas of cutting-edge design. The programme was also the subject of two published papers. Authored by Luke Olsen, Liora Malki-Epshtein, Dejan Mumovic, Dina D’Ayala and Sonia Oliveira, one paper titled ‘Transcending disciplines in architecture, structural and building services engineering: A new multidisciplinary educational approach’ appeared in the International Journal of Technology and Design Education. A subsequent paper, featuring interviews with select graduates and their employers, is slated for publication in July 2024.

At the heart of the programme is a three-tutor design studio from the three disciplines. This forms a progressive laboratory of speculation, creativity and empirical analysis – synthesising engineering, architecture, maths, physics, computing, enterprise, art, culture, history, theory, social science, sustainability and regenerative futures into every forward-looking 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 five design studios that specialise in craft, digital fabrication, interactivity, art and performance, and metrology respectively. This year’s collaborative projects responded to the brief of ‘Equinox’, culminating in 11 interactive pavilions in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Our 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 began in the waterways of Deptford with a series of 1:1 interventions leading 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 Administrator, Dan Carter and the whole administration team, as well as our team of Postgraduate Teaching Assistants: Alberto Fernández González, Henry Aldridge, Busra Berber, Gabe Brown, Isaac Greaves, Juliette Loubens, Sara Motwani, Nathanael Myers, Mylan Thuroczy and Maria Antonia (Mat) Vogeler Balcázar.

Year 1

Students

Angela Abo, Lila Acanal, Khadija Ahmed, Sin Hang (Ella) Au, Lisa Bianchi, Estera Bita, Alexander Chammas, Cynthia Chen, Zui (Zoe) Chen, Delphine Damiens, Bianca Daniele, Omar Gamil Dawoud, Alec De Trogoff Du Boisguezennec, David De Wolff, Amika Denvir, Boniface Fraikin, Chun Hei (Rex) Hau, Rebecca Hood, Sude Iseri, Shahir Jadhakhan, Gruff Justice, Hansini Kammila, Seungmin (Alex) Kang, Romesa Kashif, Bisni Khaibakh, Dohun Kim, Rhea Kochhar, Ga Tsung (Gabriel) Lam, Hei Chit (Ivan) Law, Sze Ching (Crystal) Lee, Ling Leelarasamee, Guangwei Li, Zhiyan Li, Yanwei (Jack) Liang, Chunxiao (Helen) Lin, Siyu Liu, Chun San (Carroll) Luk, Maria Maciejewska, Aishah Maqbool, Dasan Matthews, Maudie Miles, Shayna Naik, Ishaan Priyadarshi, Mingyu Ren, Emilia Santamaria-Crew, Joanna Sebastine, Amelia Semkowicz, Ahmed Soussi, Ann Stevens, Adriana Trueba Garcia, Rhys Williams, Thomas Wynne-Baerwald, Jianing Xu, Defne Yalcinkaya, Trevor Yu, Greta Yue, Lookkaew Yu-Prapai, Manqi (Claire) Zhang, Chentao Zhao, Huan (Frank) Zhao, Zhuoer (Dora) Zhao, Terry Zhong

Equinox Festival: Architecture of Rebirth and Renewal

Coordinators: Barbara Andrade Zandavali, Klaas de Rycke

Year 1

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. These run in parallel, 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. This year’s theme was ‘Equinox Festival: Architecture of Rebirth and Renewal’, which explored the contrasts between 12 hours of light and dark in 24-hour installations at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. In groups, students proposed designs and built them to full scale, combining making, architectural and engineering knowledge. The students then exhibited their ten pavilions in the park for an entire day to the public. The pavilions performed and tested engineering and architectural ideas to their limits. The ten projects were tutored by five studios and were named Mission Impossible, Interference, Equinox Disco Pavilion, Liminal Projection, Self-Orchestrated, Empathy, Reaping, Sowing, Journey and The Cube. These projects are a culmination of their Design Make Live module, a microcosm for the construction industry which serves as a test bed for more detailed individual learning and critical inquiry.

In parallel, the Design Make Information module 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 established a bridge between analogue and digital techniques, combining traditional approaches with cutting-edge technologies. Following the installation of the ten pavilions for the Equinox Festival, the students proposed individual iteration proposals based on the pavilions. These are the students’ first design proposals, combining most of the techniques they were exposed to in previous modules and translating the core concepts from the temporary pavilions into more permanent and ambitious architectural proposals.

Design Make Live Tutors

Annecy Attlee, Bedir Bekar, Jeet Das, Klaas De Rycke, Dave Edwards, Synnøve Fredericks, David Gardner, Jack Hardy, Oliver Houchell, Christopher Leung, Daniel Linham, Luke Lowings, Maria Moratta, Edward Tristram Scott, Melis van den Berg, Michael Wagner

Design Make Information Tutors

Pippa Cowles, Josep Miàs (MIAS Architects), Jeanette Osterried, Thomas Parker (ScanLab), Sandra Smith (Slade), Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu (Tonkin Liu)

PGTAs

Gabe Brown, Isaac Greaves, Juliette Loubens, Sara Motwani, Nate Myers, Maria Antonia (Mat) Vogeler Balcázar

EAD.Y1.1 All Students ‘Engineering & Architectural Design Equinox Festival’. Open to the public over a 24-hour period, students designed and showcased ten pavilions in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

EAD.Y1.2 Zui (Zoe) Chen, Amika Denvir, Ga Tsung (Gabriel) Lam, Ling Leelarasamee, Ishaan Priyadarshi, Huan (Frank) Zhao ‘Mission Impossible’. Composed of a suspended pyramid structure, this pavilion symbolises the feeling induced by the spring equinox. The inverted pyramid creates a tensegrity structure suspended solely by cables from the base and anchored into the ground. The vast and imposing silhouette imposes the supernatural feeling emanated by the actual equinox.

EAD.Y1.3 Angela Abo, Lisa Bianchi, Bianca Daniele, David De Wolff, Guangwei Li, Adriana Trueba Garcia ‘Interference’. This pavilion takes an in-depth look at the concept of balance in relation to structure and the equinox. During the equinox, geostationary satellites are overwhelmed with solar radiation and are disrupted or temporarily stop working. The project disrupts the user’s ability to traverse the space by creating an uneven and unstable floor for them to navigate.

EAD.Y1.4 Cynthia Chen, Gruff Justice, Maria Maciejewska, Mingyu Ren, Trevor Yu, Terry Zhong ‘Equinox Disco’. This sun-tracking pavilion harnesses the dynamic interplay of sunlight and colour to create compelling visual illusions. It invites interaction, allowing individuals to engage with its mechanisms to suit their preferences. The design intrigues and entertains, as well as deepening the connection between the observer and the ever-changing qualities of natural light.

EAD.Y1.5 Boniface Fraikin, Rebecca Hood, Sze Ching (Crystal) Lee, Aishah Maqbool, Defne Yalcinkaya, Chentao Zhao ‘Liminal Projection’. This pavilion celebrates the rising and setting of the sun while also having a nocturnal impact. The final outcome is akin to a flower, functioning as a light filter mechanism. The pavilion consists of an assembly of 15 ribbons perforated throughout. Each ribbon recreates the effect of closure, allowing sun paths to pass through, creating shadows and light effects.

EAD.Y1.6 Omar Gamil Dawoud, Sude Iseri, Hansini Kammila, Bisni Khaibakh, Dohun Kim, Jianing Xu ‘Reaping’. The primary objective of this pavilion is to raise awareness about the detrimental impact of human activity on the natural environment. The proposed tunnel is roofed by a complex system of hanging limbs, the number of which increases as one progresses through the space. The pavilion encourages a return to a more symbiotic relationship with the Earth by demonstrating the consequences of our actions.

EAD.Y1.7 Chun Hei (Rex) Hau, Hei Chit (Ivan) Law, Dasan Matthews, Thomas Wynne-Baerwald ’Cube’. This pavilion serves as a space to appreciate the passage of time and create a moment of calm in the hectic, changing period that comes with the vernal equinox. The pavilion predominantly consists of cubes constructed from cardboard, featuring large slots at the top and bottom to vertically connect neighbouring cubes. The material and the arrangement of parts temporarily create silence and confinement by extinguishing external human interaction.

EAD.Y1.8 Sin Hang (Ella) Au, Alec De Trogoff Du Boisguezennec, Romesa Kashif, Emilia SantamariaCrew, Zhuoer (Dora) Zhao ‘Sowing’. This project displays 20 eggs across the site, symbolising the displacement of inhabitants due to the ecological impacts of human intervention in the environment. The eggs represent life’s fragility and potential. As they guide visitors, they metaphorically emphasise humanity’s responsibility for environmental protection while creating a narrative journey through the landscape.

EAD.Y1.9 Estera Bita, Alexander Chammas, Zhiyan Li, Yanwei (Jack) Liang, Chun San (Carroll) Luk, Maudie Miles, Amelia Semkowicz ’Self-Orchestrated’. This pavilion allows the audience to orchestrates sounds made by three towers. Each tower plays different notes of varying pitch and has the capability to play in harmony with itself as well as with the other two towers by responding to the audience. When more than one person is in the space, they will have to cooperate to understand how they work together to create a composition.

EAD.Y1.10 Lila Acanal, Delphine Damiens, Shahir Jadhakhan, Rhea Kochhar, Chunxiao (Helen) Lin, Ann Stevens, Rhys Williams, Lookkaew Yu-Prapai, Manqi (Claire) Zhang ’Journey’. A composition of two symmetrical tunnels, this pavilion represents the balance of the equinox between night and day, connected by a central dome and oculus. They symbolise the connection between humans and nature, inspired by ancient celestial rituals. This entire pavilion corresponds to the ‘Journey’ of the equinox, a celebration of nature and life, but also a renewal of ourselves through the central dome.

EAD.Y1.11 Khadija Ahmed, Seungmin (Alex) Kang, Siyu Liu, Shayna Naik, Ahmed Soussi, Greta Yue ’Empathy’. This project creates a scenario where one person’s decision directly influences the environment of another. The design addresses the unequal access to resources and opportunities that comes with having or lacking a view of the outside. This pavilion creates two spaces with adaptable walls that can either grant or deny a person’s view of the outside world.

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Year 2

Students

Darine Adel, Aqeel Aziz, Valentina Ballesteros Coral, Philip Bauer, Adam Bigas, Nadim Bin Nazri, Stavros Borovas, Eva Bruno, Mengyuan Chen, Chengbin (James) Cui, Imaan Dadabhai, Sebastian Eisen, Victoria Goraca, Zhichun Jin, Aliza Kabani, Merve Kanidagli, Aasia Kazmi, Joowon (Simon) Kim, Ramona Kingdon, Nadya Kumar, Eunbae Lim, Cosima Lindley Morodo, Liisa Link, Jingyi Lu, Leo Lu, Jianwei (Jerry) Ma, Xikun Ma, Marco Michel, Valeria Miraglia Del Giudice, Oliwia Miszczak, Hana Molokhia, David Morsel, Arina Pavlova, Sizhe Peng, Yilei (Dora) Qiu, Mumtahina (Nuha) Razia, Emily Riley, Barbie Santiago, Kai Sethna, Yue (Angel) Sheng, Emily Sturgess, Esme Thomas-Nicholson, Sadi Urfali, Anna Van Gucht, Yufei (Flora) Wang, Zoe Warner, Sihan (Sean) Wu, Yiyang Xue, Jianwu Zhao, Xuan Zhu

Aperture

Coordinators:

Graeme Williamson, Philippe Duffour, Farhang Tahmasebi

We are living through a time of increasingly erratic and unpredictable weather events, from widespread wildfires to global flash floods. The design of our architecture, building systems and structures must therefore aim to be responsive to this critical emergency with ingenuity and conviction. What makes a building design responsive lies in its ability to control or deflect the elements. To develop adaptive or responsive systems, we first need to understand how to mediate our increasingly challenging environmental context. The external envelope of a building is the site of this exchange, marking the starting point of our work for Engineering & Architectural Design MEng Year 2.

Student output is divided between an introductory project in term 1 and a building project delivered over terms 2 and 3. The first project brief, titled ‘Aperture’, explores the concept of openings in a building envelope. These apertures let light in and frame views beyond the building line. They also create a momentary glimpse of occupation, and structurally, can be the spacing between load-bearing elements. From an environmental perspective, apertures determine solar control and comfort performance on a larger scale, and air permeability or acoustics on a more micro level. The project encouraged students to explore these multiscaled and ambiguous aspects, with focus on the Fish Island area in Hackney Wick, where they developed site-specific responses to phenomena around the canal-side area.

The focus of the year then shifted to the Spike Island neighbourhood in Bristol, specifically three sites around the M Shed museum along Museum Street and towards the canal basin. Known for its rich history in the visual arts, Bristol’s harbourside area and Spike Island provided the ideal site for the students to develop cultural programmes. This was done either through adaptive reuse strategies at M Shed or as a new-build proposal in the nearby vicinity.

Year 2

Tutors

Fady Abdelaziz, Yota Adilenidou, Sophie Collier, Philippe Duffour, Dave Edwards, Sam Esses, Matthew Heywood, Michał Kierat, Judit Kimpian, Sahar Nava, Olivia Riddle, Martha Voulakidou, Barbara Zandavali

PGTAs

Maria Antonia (Mat) Vogeler Balcázar, Gabe Brown, Isaac Greaves, Juliette Loubens

Critics: Luke Olsen, Annarita Papeschi, Danae Polyviou, Samuel Stamp

EAD.Y2.1 Nadim Bin Nazri, Aliza Kabani ‘Aperture: A Wildlife Corridor’. The project emerges from a comprehensive exploration of Hackney Wick, focusing on biodiversity and ecological dynamics. Interpreting the theme ‘Aperture’ as an opening facilitating the passage of environmental elements, the proposal conceptualises an aperture as a bridge connecting two spaces. Focusing on insects and micro-organisms, the prototype envisions a fractal framework of tension and compression members, utilising fabric as a conduit for their unrestricted movement between two distinct zones.

EAD.Y2.2 Anna Van Gucht ‘Reading Between the Tides’. This library was initially inspired by architectural interventions on water, such as floating pavilions. However, floating requires lightness, and a library is not a particularly light structure. This dichotomy between heavy and light was further inspired by Salvador Dalí’s paintings of elephants supported by awkward, bending stilts, as well as the image of a huge balloon dirigible supporting only one person in the air.

EAD.Y2.3, EAD.Y2.10 Nadim Bin Nazri ‘Spike Island Youth Centre’. Located at the core of Bristol’s floating harbour, the project proposes a youth rehabilitation centre for young offenders. Participants engage in sculpture and art therapy, with their works displayed to the public. Studio and exhibition spaces weave and interlace, forming a journey through the building that promotes phased integration between the users and visitors.

EAD.Y2.4 Kai Sethna ‘Relax, Reflect, Re-emerge’. The permanent spaces of this project run parallel to the River Avon in Bristol, with the temporary performance venue to the south. With contrasting themes of permanence and ephemerality, the idea of modelling with cuboids and balloons became a logical starting point.

EAD.Y2.5, EAD.Y2.21 Yiyang Xue ‘81 Percent’. This project celebrates Bristol’s vibrant drinking culture, where 81% of citizens enjoy a daily drink. Floating by the River Avon near Spike Island, this crystal sky pub has a space frame structure allowing for a bold, wild shape, while the double-skin design offers both semi- and fully conditioned areas, giving patrons the freedom to choose their drinking environment. The pub seamlessly merges with art galleries, featuring artworks on the upper level and eclectic paintings on the lower, transforming the drinking experience into an artistic journey.

EAD.Y2.6 Valeria Miraglia Del Giudice ‘The Geode: Intruding Performance Spaces’. This adaptive reuse project transforms the M Shed in Bristol. This initiative began with the realisation that the 100m-long building served as a barrier between the canal-side promenade and the inner stores and shops. Increasing porosity and facilitating pedestrian flow, the building’s function is reimagined from a museum to an artist residence and performance spaces, thereby fostering local community and culture.

EAD.Y2.7 Cosima Lindley Morodo ‘Twisted Connections: Spike Island’s Bridge and Hub’. This project is a multifunctional structure on Spike Island, an area rich in cultural and historical significance. A central feature is a bridge inspired by the double helix structure of DNA. This bridge not only enhances connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists but also serves as a striking visual landmark combining functionality with aesthetic appeal. Environmental sustainability is at the project’s core, with strategies emphasising natural ventilation, thermal comfort and efficient use of daylight.

EAD.Y2.8 Yufei (Flora) Wang ‘A Garden Art Gallery’. The design integrates gardens and galleries for exhibiting works by Bristol artists, creating a complementary tourist attraction near M Shed. Responding to local needs and incorporating the ‘Co-Op Principle’, the building will provide essential public facilities, including toilets, cafés,

workshops and residential spaces. This approach enhances the harbour’s public amenities and fosters community engagement.

EAD.Y2.9 Ramona Kingdon ‘Bristol Food and Civic Centre’. This project is home to an accessible food bank, an affordable food court and a commercial kitchen for meal kits. It also houses the headquarters for the Bristol Local Food Fund, a public library with study and lounge areas, kitchen-based classrooms and a multi-use community hall. The design integrates the four core values of work, comfort, education and food justice to create a bustling, multi-purpose community centre.

EAD.Y2.11 Lissa Link ‘Paths to Baths’. In response to concerns about a disconnected community and the need for wildlife protection in Bristol’s Floating Harbour, the project proposes a community sauna, wellness centre and water garden. Inspired by ancient Roman baths, known not only for saunas and baths but also for their social and recreational elements, this project creates a vibrant community hub.

EAD.Y2.12 Zoe Warner ‘Bristol Bazaar’. The project proposes a public marketplace on Spike Island to house local craft produce. The curved timber roof structure provides a canopy over the marketplace, controlling light and thermal comfort, while craft market stalls spill out into the surrounding public space.

EAD.Y2.13 Mengyuan Chen ‘Sail’. Adjoined to the existing M Shed, the project proposes a space for miniature shipbuilding enthusiasts. A large roof canopy provides environmental comfort to the workshop and communal spaces below, while a bridge connects the workshop spaces to the upper level of the M Shed.

EAD.Y2.14 Eunbae Lim ‘Horticulture’. The project creates an architecture that connects people with plants by housing flora and fauna in a greenhouse conservatory environment. It extends the garden’s ability to undertake research, conservation and educational activities, demonstrating the beauty, variety and complexity of the plant world.

EAD.Y2.15 Hana Molokhia ‘The Bristol Makers Club’. The project offers a community hub that honours Bristol’s culture of making through craftsmanship workshops and residencies. No community centres in the UK currently offer glass-blowing and pottery workshops for young people. This commemoration of Bristol’s culture of making will bring people from all over the country to celebrate their rich history.

EAD.Y2.16–EAD.Y2.17 Stavros Borovas ‘Cultural Centre’. A dynamic and adaptive space allows installation artists to create a unique experience where the art and the environment work together as one collective unit. Instead of a traditional open-plan area, this project creates infrastructure to meet the specific spatial requirements the artists need, essentially creating the art through the space.

EAD.Y2.18–EAD.Y2.19 Adam Bigas ‘Polyplasma’.

The project takes advantage of the busy harbourside waterfront by integrating a self-purifying harbour bath and a socially responsible visitor centre. The building spills out into the wharf, exploring the spatial and thermal transitions between indoors and outdoors with a novel multi-storey stone vaulting system.

EAD.Y2.20 Sebastian Eisen ‘The Connector: Tensioned to Connect’. The project is an alien-like link between Spike Island and Bristol’s north bank. Its multitude of axes are interconnected pathways for travelling to, from or through Spike Island. As the axes converge, the paths evolve into a mass. The central volume spikes out of Bristol’s Floating Harbour and houses an event space. This expands the city’s cultural offerings, providing local artists with a stage and a multi-use space accommodating everything from yoga classes and seminars to an adjacent café and an apartment, inviting tourists to stay at Bristol’s new landmark.

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School of London, a.k.a. We Don’t Need No Education

Dimitris Argyros, Agnieszka Glowacka, Anderson Inge, Vasiliki Kourgiozou

Unit 1

Education in schools in the UK has not changed much since Shakespeare’s time. Formal classroom arrangements are divided by age and taught through dictation and memory, with little opportunity for the self-led exploration, enquiry and debate that Plato dreamed of in The Republic. Unit 1 asks, ‘What is a school in the digital age, and what is the architecture that supports it?’

Our site is the former home of the Museum of London in the City of London. For nearly half a century, this building designed by Powell & Moya has hosted groups of school children, local adults and tourists from around the world to reveal the objects and stories behind the phenomenon of London.

As the museum is migrating to its new home at Smithfield Market, the existing building has been slated for demolition. Unit 1 proposes an alternative scenario: keeping the existing building and converting it into an educational facility.

The students began the year with a warm-up project to design a seasonally adaptive temporary learning facility on the site of the rotunda, to support continued educational events while the museum is relocating.

The detailed programmatic brief and agenda for the final ‘School of London’ project were discovered by each student during the registration phase. Each one aims to push the boundaries of what education means and how it is delivered, in the context of existing theory and future innovations. Student schemes seek to thoughtfully interface with the existing building and its wider context.

Students have each developed their project based on research and their own passion for educational strategies. This included exploring traditional versus progressive pedagogy and contemporary modes of learning such as Montessori and Steiner education; formal versus informal learning spaces; public versus private boundaries; digital versus haptic approaches to learning, as well as the increasing use of AI and what this means for the future of learning.

Year 3

Duaa Alharbi, Estelle Beninger, Ching-Tai Chang, Istvan Herczeg, Hagipan Sivathasan, Ruen Zhou

Year 4

Aretha Ahunanya, Marie-Sophie Chen, Luisa Groetsch, Amaliyah Legowo, Natasha Merricks, Joel Muhangi, Clara Obeid, Teniola Otulana

Technical tutor and consultant: Mylan Thuroczy

Critics: Anna Bardos, Ruth Chislett, Peter Goff, Elyse Howell-Price, Tatiana von Preussen

EAD1.1 Marie-Sophie Chen, Y4 ‘Refabric London School of Architecture’. This architecture school promotes hands-on learning by engaging students with the existing fabric of the Museum of London. Demolition, reconstruction and repurposing are integral to their experience, facilitated by large-scale external and internal workshops that enable transportation of material on site, experimental façade zones and dedicated studio spaces.

EAD1.2–EAD1.3 Joel Muhangi, Y4 ‘A Repurposed AI Art School’. The former Museum of London site, designed by Powell & Moya, is set for redevelopment into an educational facility. This project focuses on repurposing materials, minimising carbon emissions and improving systems. It fosters interaction between the public, art students and AI for a new form of art creation and exhibition.

EAD1.4 Natasha Merricks, Y4 ‘The Handicraft Hall Emporium’. Situated on the historic Museum of London site, this emporium celebrates local craftsmanship and sustainable consumerism. It feature products from small craftspeople and tells the story of their origins. The adaptive reuse of the old site honours the original architecture, preserving its connection to the Barbican Estate. Like historic guilds, it offers workshops and masterclasses to reconnect people with traditional crafts. This project counters mass production, valuing quality, sustainability and artisanal beauty.

EAD1.5 Teniola Otulana, Y4 ‘The Museum of London CleanTech Academy and Incubation Centre’. This project integrates a sixth form offering vocational courses in renewable energy engineering and a cleantech start-up incubator, focusing on collaborative learning. With extensive breakout workspaces and an open makerspace, it accommodates diverse learning styles and supports London’s zero-carbon goals, preparing the next generation with essential skills for a sustainable future.

EAD1.6, EAD1.10 Aretha Ahunanya, Y4 ‘The Narratives of Britain: Supplementary School’. Re-examining the layers of political, economic and musical history without its colonial lens, this school encourages students to grasp a deeper understanding of diverse British history. Inspired by the Pnyx and Agora typologies of Grecian debate, this institution boasts private debate spaces, focused teaching rooms and acoustic pods, all tied together by a grand debate hall.

EAD1.7, EAD1.9 Luisa Groetsch, Y4 ‘Montessori for All Ages’. The project creates an exchange and connection between the young and elderly generation through Montessori. Children can benefit academically and behaviourally by learning from people with more life experience, while the elderly often gain a new sense of purpose when taking care of them. As such, this project proposes an elderly centre in combination with a Montessori school.

EAD1.8 Duaa Alharbi, Y3 ‘Al Ruwya (Vision)’. The Museum of London retrofit transforms itself into a creative hub for young adults. The design includes 3D printing and textile design spaces, fostering innovation. The entire downstairs becomes a virtual reality zone, enhanced by a distinctive barrel roof that echoes the iconic Barbican style, creating an immersive, architecturally harmonious experience.

EAD1.11 Amaliyah Legowo, Y4 ‘GreenPower HQ: Innovation in Motion’. Inspired by Formula 1 and historic teams like McLaren and Williams, this project tackles the theme of education. It introduces and promotes STEM to children and young adults by using the Museum of London as a retrofitted space for building electric go-karts, addressing the city’s lack of communal spaces for those passionate about racing.

EAD1.12–EAD1.14 Clara Obeid, Y4 ‘Forging London’s Thinking Dancers’. The project reimagines the reuse

potential of the Museum of London as a school of performing arts. Beyond creating spaces for students, the proposal links the site to the wider context by creating new plazas and access routes in a once very uninviting and impermeable site marked by fascinating historical landmarks.

EAD1.15 Hagipan Sivathasan, Y3 ‘Montessori of London: Wander, Discover, Aspire’. Reimagined as a Montessori school, the former Museum of London centres around a timber diagrid structure. Three blocks connect via vertical learning project spaces suspended by bridges, demonstrating reciprocal bending. This architecture fosters curiosity and engagement, reflecting Montessori principles in a structure that appears to hover and invites exploration.

EAD1.16 Istvan Herczeg, Y3 ‘Uniq-ly Giftd’. Having a learning disability is not a limitation; it’s a unique gift that unveils countless opportunities waiting to be explored. The project is at the heart of these explorations, creating an environment where students are supported to see the world through a lens of creativity and innovation, and to realise the boundless potential that resides within their unique gifts.

EAD1.17 Estelle Beninger, Y3 ‘Mindful Muses’. Offering a new outlook on traditional aspects of the education system, this project provides a collaborative painting and pottery workshop space focused on holistically improving users’ mental health by creating a serene, positive learning environment.

EAD1.18 Ruen Zhou, Y3 ‘Idea Living Room Barbican’. This retrofit of the Museum of London creates an integrated public educational space that adapts to contemporary and future lifestyles, while maintaining its foundation as a library with a diverse collection of books and multimedia. It offers a comfortable environment with public and private areas for reading, communication, learning, working and socialising.

EAD1.19–EAD1.20 Ching-Tai Chang, Y3 ‘Mending London’. This project stitches the patchwork of people and cultures that make up London through an educational experience. One building is retrofitted to become a gift for the community and stands as a beacon of everyday sustainability. Through the architecture, both the public and students gain a deeper understanding of upcycling fashion and learn how to transform existing textiles into new, attractive clothing. As the clothes are being mended, so is the community.

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GeoFutures in Beckton Alps

Shaun Murray, Colin Rose, Isabel Why

Unit 2

London is experiencing a shortage of space, demanding new typologies of construction and spaces for speculative developments. All the projects for Unit 2 were based in Newham and specifically on Beckton Alps, a toxic spoil heap that was turned into a dry ski slope in the late 1980s, and where Londoners actually went skiing. Students were tasked with finding gaps or discreet opportunities where proposals could be developed from existing site conditions. The constraints of the building as an ecological landscape on a steep hill, on unstable ground, and with polluted air, generated a range of architectural and engineered opportunities for a project that spans from 2024 to 2050.

GeoFutures is a study of architectural possibilities using buildings to reveal, unpack and communicate how we understand physical phenomena based on fields. Fields can be electrical, thermal or acoustic; they resonate, and we can tune into them for designing a building as an ecology. Field theory explains physical phenomena in terms of a field and the way it interacts with matter or other fields. Fields can resonate to alter the density, viscosity and fluidity of matter. In architecture, the field could be considered when there is a demand for new spaces and construction beyond their physical form. As we move through space, we use these ‘fields’, leaving absences that can be detected and unpacked to discover how we can occupy and use space differently. As architects and engineers, we can deconstruct sites as a rich mix of speculative and evidential parts of an ecology to design a building. The way these elements are measured and evidenced can serve as tools for students practising and designing engineered architectures. Students were tasked to consider a building as a ‘design ecology’, to produce a building that better represents how space is not neutral in how we occupy and inhabit it.

Third-year projects include Erhang Wang’s tornado institute; Karsten Mok’s health clinic; Madeleine Lee’s bike workshop; Louisa Merker’s performance spaces; and Devlin Guthrie’s micro-greens training restaurant.

Fourth-year projects consist of David Vincent Tornador’s integrated ecological housing factory; Erine Lellu’s energy ski school; Malena Royo Rodic’s granular Newham archive; Orlando George-Ibitoye’s tacit architecture school; Arthur Camara’s blurred market council; Bartosz Kurylek’s incubator start-up village; Nicholas Ortega Poblete’s sports centre; and Ariadne Ntoriza’s tailored flooded workshops.

Year 3

Devlin Guthrie, Yann Ling (Madeleine) Lee, Yik Lam (Karsten) Mok, Louisa Merker, Erhang Wang

Year 4

Arthur Camara, Orlando George-Ibitoye, Bartosz Kurylek, Erine Lellu, Ariadne Ntoriza, Nicolas Ortega Poblete, Malena Royo Rodic, David Vicent Tornador

PGTA

Henry Aldridge

EAD2.1 David Vicent Tornador, Y4 ‘Site (Adaptable/ Context) Specific’. This is a model of the integrated structure for a prefabricated housing factory, proposed as a solution to the housing crisis. The prefabricated structure can adapt to the topography of the site and the trees.

EAD2.2 Erhang Wang, Y3 ‘Wandering Earth: Pre-Braking Era’. Interior view of the main testing chamber. The project is set to commence in 2075 with the aim of preserving mankind as the sun approaches its demise. The Earth’s surface will be exposed to extreme weather conditions such as storms, tornadoes and flooding. This project investigates designing engineered architecture to effectively respond to, anticipate and mitigate future extreme weather phenomena, particularly tornadoes and storms. In this tornado testing chamber, building prototypes or existing structures are tested to their limits under a simulated tornado created by the fans and vortex generator. Visitors can study the future of extreme weather and building technology.

EAD2.3 Louisa Merker, Y3 ‘Invisible Strings’. Beckton illustrates a visible lack of community and cultural celebration venues. This implies a necessity for a performing arts venue due to Beckton’s cultural, religious and ethnic diversity to unite the residential community surrounding the Beckton Alps. This project is a performing arts venue featuring immersive theatre and puppetry for a diverse range of people, with dance performances catered to adults, and puppet theatre catered to children. The project adapts to exacerbating climate conditions from 2025 to 2050 through its roof design, and additions of green façade systems.

EAD2.4 Orlando George-Ibitoye, Y4 ‘Trial and Error: Beckton Alps School of Architecture and Timber Design’. Interior view of the workshop spaces where students learn through tacit knowledge. The use and study of recycled timber and aluminium casting is explored in a series of engineering sessions that integrate ecological ideas to understand the full range of consequences for materials, use and occupation over time.

EAD2.5–EAD2.6 Erhang Wang, Y3 ‘Wandering Earth: Pre-Braking Era’. The hypo surface stilts system is designed to distribute the weight of the building across the soil without penetrating deeply into the toxic underground waste. Using a layered strategy with rain fuel technology, the façade panels can be adjusted to various angles to regulate solar gains and harvest energy.

EAD2.7 Ariadne Ntoriza, Y4 ‘Bespoke Shoe Making Workshop’. The project is conceived in 2024 with the boom of AI. Despite being in the foreground of discussions for decades, its introduction into our daily lives through online platforms raises concerns that humans will lose once-common skills, and with them a rich array of pleasures stemming from the celebration of uniqueness and imperfection.

EAD2.8–EAD2.9 Malena Royo Rodic, Y4 ’A Net Zero Archive Spolia Amid the Alps’ City for Culture’. Engaging Newham’s community with the borough’s collective memory, this project creates an ecology between the architectural performance of the building and the site. By storing and displaying objects, photography and drawings from Stratford Archives, it develops a forwardthinking methodology of revitalisation. The proposal uses the wood and the clay from the site as its main construction materials. Through the life cycle of wood, from the early stage of planting a seed and its use as sequestered wood to its reuse to create paper and therefore books transferring knowledge, the architecture per se is part of a sustainable circular economy –reducing carbon emissions and prioritising the community’s memory within its ecology.

EAD2.10 Erine Lellu, Y4 ‘The Algae Slope’. The project is a training centre and a skiing resort, set on Beckton Alps, promoting and encouraging an active lifestyle in a future context. By creating an interaction between the building envelope and the algae distributed around the site, the project facilitates air purification and energy generation in symbiosis with the athlete user.

EAD2.11 Orlando George-Ibitoye, Y4 ‘Trial and Error: Beckton Alps School of Architecture and Timber Design’. The building proposal reforms architectural education by placing ‘Design Through Making’ at the heart of its curriculum. Students use Beckton Alps as a training ground to explore this ideology and are fully integrated in the RIBA plan of work through the construction process of their architecture school. They engage with various metric systems that buildings provide, from the design of the structural system to that of the components, fittings and fasteners of their architecture school.

EAD2.12 Devlin Guthrie, Y3 ‘SymbiOASIS’. This project is designed to attract and unite people from all financial backgrounds by raising awareness about food insecurity and the human right to nutritious food. Users are enticed to dine in the restaurant and experience the different modes of how the food was grown and how the building performs for horticulture purposes. The workshop enables people to formulate potential urban farming solutions in the unique microclimates, empowering themselves by reducing food insecurity. Through donations and support from the community, a symbiotic relationship has been formed, overcoming social and financial barriers between community members and the building itself.

EAD2.13 Erhang Wang, Y3 ‘Wandering Earth: Pre-Braking Era’. Located on the southern slope of the Beckton Alps, this project comprises various building typologies to research future weather conditions and building technologies. The market stalls and gardens at the foot of the hill encourage people to make the most of their time on Earth by gathering in this hyperphysical space, where the flow of nature is exaggerated to the limit. The laboratories and testing chambers focus on simulating different future weather conditions at various scales and their effects on existing building structures and new prototypes. The workshop at the top of the hill uses the research outcomes to manufacture building fragments for renovating and adapting local buildings or iterating the market stalls at the foot of the hill.

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Deptford Creek –Intertidal Investigations

Thomas Hesslenberg, Daniel Godoy Shimizu, Graeme Williamson

As weather extremes become more frequent and rising sea levels in tidal areas more apparent, Unit 3 is interested in situating projects within the context of these novel and challenging parameters.

How do we as designers begin to engage proactively with this problem, seeking to explore adaptation rather than defence as a primary response? Our field trip this year to Rotterdam, a city with a complex relationship to water, provided valuable insights for our investigations.

As designers we understand that a significant proportion of the carbon generated through concrete in construction is embedded underground. The studio asks whether it is also time to seek out new ways of grounding our ideas and our buildings. Can we use water as weight rather than concrete? This year the unit is interested in lightweight/low-carbon construction techniques (e.g. timber) allied to experimental materiality.

The site for these investigations was Deptford Creek, a historic inlet with tidal fluctuations adjacent to Greenwich, known for its rich maritime history through the Royal Dockyard. The creek edge, marked by equal parts redundancy and progress, provides a contrasting context of dereliction and development where we can propose new ideas. Students were given four sites along the creek edge of varying scales and were encouraged to incorporate fluctuating water levels into their design schemes.

The year began with a short introductory project to create an ‘armature’ or a section of the building envelope at a suitable scale. This brief explored different states such as Open / Closed, Concealed / Exposed, Floating / Moored, Stable / Unstable, Static / Animated and so on. Students were also encouraged to conduct tests and experimental modelling to guide and inform their subsequent building projects.

We commend our students for their dedication and energy, demonstrated by a variety of innovative self-directed projects. These included a Mudlarks Museum, referencing those who scavenge the banks and shores of the Thames; a flooded debating chamber for discussions on public space; a museum for Mary Lacy, the first female shipwright; a boat-building school; and an independent cinema facility with self-build housing.

Year 3

Sophie Binti Noor Irwan Junaidy, Tianyu (Tony) He, Louis Polturak, Aohua (Daniel) Yang

Year 4

Gabriel Brown, Yan Lam (Flora) Cheung, Myriam Chourfi, Adam Ekin, Gabriela Nycz, Jun Sakamoto, Maria Antonia (Mat) Vogeler Balcázar, Gabriel Vollin, Hanaa Yakoub

Thesis supervisors: Haden Charbel, Daniel Dream, Oliver Houchell, Christopher Leung, Samuel Stamp, Nick Tyler, Stamatis Zografos

Critics: Francesco Banchini, Oliver Houchell, Cristina Morbi, Shaun Murray, Samuel Stamp, Yi Zhang

EAD3.1, EAD3.6 Maria Antonia (Mat) Vogeler Balcázar, Y4 ‘Mnemonic Museum of Shipbuilding’. The rich shipbuilding history of Deptford Creek has long been forgotten. This museum acts as a mnemonic device for the construction of a collective memory of Deptford’s shipbuilding history. The building revolves around Mary Lacy (1740–1795), a carpenter and shipwright. It is divided into a chronological succession of galleries representative of the 16th to 21st centuries, and a private residence for Lacy, who, as the museum’s carpenter, crafts a new apparatus every high tide. Visitors build a collective memory of Deptford’s shipbuilding history by revisiting the museum and encountering artefacts.

EAD3.2–EAD3.3 Gabriel Brown, Y4 ‘Flotsam and Jetsam’. This exhibition space adopts a local approach, grouping washed-up discoveries from the Thames while providing space for discussion, teaching and historical research. Its activities are guided by the moon and tidal fluctuations, enabling a mudlark walk that stretches the length of the creek. Its internal path is shouldered by rammed earth walls, contributing to its structural stability while regulating internal temperature through high thermal mass. Similar to its artefacts, its material pallet is varied and sourced locally with the reuse of local materials and earth from a nearby dig site.

EAD3.4 Jun Sakamoto, Y4 ‘Story Depot’. This project provides a space for the local community of Deptford to tell (Storytelling), store (Archiving) and revisit (Replaying) the stories of the community from the past and present. With rapid gentrification and private housing estates replacing council homes, the soaring rent of the area is gradually transforming the demographics of Deptford. A slow but steady loss of identity in Deptford is inevitable. The site on the edge of Deptford Creek will remain in the years to come as the last ‘piece’ of Deptford that continues to tell and archive the stories of the community.

EAD3.5 Gabriela Nycz, Y4 ‘Deptford’s Boat-Building Academy’. The project specialises in traditional timber boat-building techniques. It draws from local rich shipbuilding history that used to be strongly integral to Deptford’s identity. It is situated by the creek and conforms to the daily rhythm of the tide. The project is deeply embedded in its site context through the retrofit of two existing buildings and the reuse of materials on site. In addition to reviving the lost craft of boat-building, the purpose of Deptford’s Boat-Building Academy is to restore the sense of belonging among the community.

EAD3.7–EAD3.8 Adam Ekin, Y4 ‘The Intertidal Protest’. A decaying community forum space mediates communications between the community, local authority and architects about enhancing the local ecology on existing and future developments around Lewisham. The building revolves around Deptford Creek’s intertidal ecology, using the architecture to foster it as an act of protest towards the industrialised site and local authority. The demolition of it could cause greater harm to the creek’s biodiversity. The project intends to challenge flood strategies by accepting the tide and responding to the events of the Old Tidemill protest.

EAD3.9 Gabriel Vollin, Y4 ‘A Haven for Neurodivergence’. This project is a residential and activity centre for adults with extensive mental disabilities and high care needs. It tackles two problems for neurodivergent individuals: an acute hypersensitivity to an overwhelming environment, and fear of difference resulting in exclusion. These are approached through a gradient between privacy and exposure, expressed as an axis between the road and the canal. The buildings are divided by gardens that harmoniously separate their different functions. Spaces are connected by transition spaces to create soothing environments.

EAD3.10 Hanaa Yakoub, Y4 ‘Reimagining the Crossfields Estate: Valuing Domesticity in New Housing Typologies’. Housing design often overlooks the potential and value of existing council housing stock and its communities. The project proposes a new retrofit typology that celebrates acts of domestic labour as a means of re-establishing pride and joy in homes and shared spaces that serve the community. The project proposes a deeper retrofit of the estate with added wrap-around structures and new floor plates for residences and workspaces, as well as a family-centred annex with a vault motif taken from adjacent railway arches.

EAD3.11 Yan Lam (Flora) Cheung, Y4 ‘Laban Dance School Welfare Centre’. This innovative architectural project in Deptford is designed to support and enhance the well-being of dancers. It consists of two distinct buildings, each meticulously crafted to serve the unique needs of the dance community.

EAD3.12 Myriam Chourfi, Y4 ‘Taste the Creek’. This project shapes the future of bioregional food in Deptford through an integrated series of production and consumption practices, linked to the changing environmental conditions of Deptford Creek. The consumption spaces are organised as three courses: the Appetiser, the Main and the Dessert, with production spaces such as gardens and greenhouses serving as the palate cleansers between them. The creek is ‘tasted’ through the alchemist’s lab, a boat that travels along the creek, exploring its bioregional tastes, bringing them back to the permanent Dessert and contributing to the development of a dynamic food system.

EAD3.13 Aohua (Daniel) Yang, Y3 ‘Verdant Oasis’. This project consists of a global food market, a vegan restaurant, a culinary school and a student dormitory. The building is formed by a timber structure and a mixture of steel and timber frames. The project creates a food market and court for local residents. A roof garden provides some of the restaurant’s ingredients. The buildings are shielded with a glass envelope to create a façade and shading.

EAD3.14 Louis Poulturak, Y3 ‘Loci Studios’. These studios are designed to bolster the cultural presence of music in Deptford Creek. The building provides versatile spaces for creating, performing, broadcasting, pressing and distributing music, thus offering robust support to local artists. The project explores the interplay between natural and anthropogenic sounds in the local environment. The building’s façade provides habitats for birds to roost and nest within its perforations, as well as absorbing unwanted frequencies in the creek’s soundscape.

EAD3.15 Sophie Binti Noor Irwan Junaidy, Y3 ‘The Soap Kitchen’. This project is a mixed-use community centre focused on soapmaking, both physically and metaphorically, as a cyclical interaction. Soap workshops and dining spaces are nestled in bubbles carved out of a rigid mass, inviting young people to create their own experiences. A communal kitchen and an informal ‘living room’ become hallmarks of the impromptu connections between hostel guests and friends. The community garden serves as a source of produce for cooking, additives in soapmaking and rainwater harvesting –thereby completing the cycle.

EAD3.16 Tianyu (Tony) He, Y3 ‘Deptford Island’. Establishing an integrated community at Deptford Creek, the four buildings for this project serve as two residential apartments, a school and an office building. Residents of Deptford, with their different ages and cultural backgrounds, will all benefit from learning, living and cooperating in such a community.

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Flooding

Yasemin Didem Aktas, Arianna GuardiolaVíllora, Alexis Koufakis, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Santiago Vélez

Last year was the hottest on record, with historically high temperatures being registered across the world in just the summer alone. If the data were not alarming in itself, these temperatures were accompanied by wildfires and flooding in many parts of the world. Experts note that the devastating events of last summer are but a preamble to even more challenging scenarios to be brought about by the climate crisis.

In this pressing context, the evolving agenda of Unit 4 aims to involve students in all forms of built heritage. This is achieved through adaptive reuse and a focus on designing inclusive, comfortable spaces that enhance quality of life in a changing climate, especially in areas susceptible to the devastation of increased flooding.

The Belgian cities of Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges have been identified as having the highest flood risk in all of Europe. The proximity to navigable freshwater and the sea, along with the flat and easy-todevelop terrain, brought wealth and prosperity to this part of Europe for centuries, making this region one of the continent’s main hubs for trade and a cornerstone of Belgium’s colonial endeavours. With prosperity, wealth and empire also came richly designed buildings and sophisticated water management infrastructure. These form the bulk of the built environment heritage of this region, with ten UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the cities of Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges alone.

Unit 4 was encouraged to think of heritage as an act of stewardship, in which local communities are empowered as agents for the preservation of their own heritage, in dialogue with local, national and global institutions.

The students rose to the challenge of exploring innovative flood-resistant and low-carbon measures that not only safeguard the historic character of their chosen sites but also enhance its resilience against climate change-induced threats.

Year 3

Lama Ahmed, Cameron Alexander, Grace Gambrill, Blanca Mercadal Sola, Wenting Zhao

Year 4

Inaya Akhtar, Ako De Siran De Cabanac, Claudia Navarro Cánovas, Alexandru Iordache, Aleksandra Lemieszka, Juliette Loubens, Samyuktha (Shakthi) Manoharan, Marjoleine Mooijman, Irin (Noey) Satheinsoontorn

Thesis supervisors: Andrea Botti, Esfandiar Burman, Klaas De Rycke, Daniel Dream, Del Hossain, Aurore Julien, Farhang Tahmasebi, Stamatis Zografos

Critics: Jan Dierckx, Matthew Heywood, Oliver Houchell, Aurore Julien, Michał Kierat, Filip Kirazov, Samuel Miselbach, Luke Olsen, Annarita Papeschi, Michael Stacey, Baran Tanriverdi, José Torero Cullen, Elliott Wang

EAD4.1–EAD4.3 Samyuktha (Shakthi) Manoharan, Y4 ‘Flanders Council for Flood Restoration’. The project narrates the story of a political squat created by a climate and restoration collective. Through the occupation of the historical butcher’s hall in the city centre, they begin to build a community parliament using reclaimed and recycled materials. The debate chamber uses periodic flooding to reflect the immediate issues of pluvial flooding, controlling the debate timings like the Klepsydra, or water clock, of the Athenian Courts. The proposal incorporates various flood mitigation techniques such as soil remediation, water run-off basins and rainwater harvesting roofs.

EAD4.4 Claudia Navarro Cánovas, Y4 ‘Community Haven’. In late medieval Belgium, béguinages were communities of single lay women who lived religious lives together, away from men and the Church’s hierarchy. The project proposes to transform an abandoned béguinage church into a sanctuary for asylum seekers. The central nave is envisioned as a vibrant communal dining area, serving both asylum seekers and the students of a nearby music school relocated to the park surrounding the premises.

EAD4.5 Blanca Mercadal Sola, Y3 ‘Loodswezen’s Retrofit’. This project envisions the rewilding of an abandoned site on Antwerp’s waterfront. Loodswezen once sat at the core of the city’s commercial harbour, but the land has become a disused expanse of concrete since the harbour moved downstream, leaving the old port authority building abandoned in the middle. The project incorporates well-being pavilions and walks that adapt to sea level rise and tidal rhythms. The old port authority building is retrofitted into a well-being facility, including a hotel and spa, to fund the rewilding of the site.

EAD4.6 Alexandru Iordache, Y4 ‘Groot Vleeshuis’. The project promotes the integration of sustainable agriculture and leather crafts within a circular economy, where every component interconnects to minimise waste and foster a thriving community. The system incorporates floating cattle farms, which respond to the rising sea levels and high risk of flooding in Flanders, along with a modern guild house in the historical city. This holistic approach redefines how artisans live, work and interact with the environment, promoting sustainability, craftsmanship and well-being.

EAD4.7 Ako De Siran De Cabanac, Y4 ‘Flooded Habitat’. This project explores the transition and adaptation of communities, buildings and biodiversity to flooding and rising water levels. Located in Antwerp, a city predicted to be two metres below sea level by the end of the century, the site features a repurposed medieval church with 15 treehouses in its forested churchyard to accommodate climate refugees. Throughout the project, the history of the church and forest are celebrated through a heritage mnemonic device, preserving and passing along the threatened heritage of the site.

EAD4.8–EAD4.9 Aleksandra Lemieszka, Y4 ‘The Anatomy of Propaganda’. The project addresses the fight against misinformation by creating unbiased, free media. The proposal is to retrofit an old meat market building into a printing hall. An extension hosts a museum of propaganda and a school of journalism. The project also proposes residential units for journalists, hidden around the city and linked to its canals, allowing articles to be transported by boat while maintaining anonymity.

EAD4.10 Lama Ahmed, Y3 ‘Antwerp Maritime Academy’. In educational settings, an escape is essential to balance health, well-being and the learning environment. The precious landscape at the bend of the Schelde River is harnessed to merge well-being with education, using nature’s potential to create barriers against rising waters and establish new, thriving habitats. Nature guards the

heritage and history of the Antwerp Maritime Academy, while the heart of the project blooms to offer new educational opportunities.

EAD4.11–EAD4.12 Irin (Noey) Satheinsoontorn, Y4 ‘Mussels of Ghent’. This project combines cultural heritage with modern sustainability practices through two strategic sites: a revitalised market hall in Ghent and an innovative mussel farm in the Western Scheldt. The project creates a landmark destination for gastronomic tourism that also introduces eco-friendly aquaculture techniques. The Ghent market hall serves as a dynamic community hub where residents and visitors can engage with the local food culture, while the Western Scheldt mussel farm produces high-quality mussels with minimal environmental impact.

EAD4.13 Grace Gambrill, Y3 ‘Let Them Eat Cake’. This project is a retrofit of Ghent’s Butcher’s Hall, normalising a nutritionally dense, indulgent diet by making fresh food and produce more accessible to local residents. On the ground floor, an open market operates daily, providing fresh food and produce directly from farms, while cooking classes and consultations are available in designated pods. Atop the existing structure sits a housing extension, offering communal living opportunities for people to be involved with and support the building’s programmes, boosting community health.

EAD4.14, EAD4.16 Juliette Loubens, Y4 ‘Building Bread’. The National Association of Master Bakers has derived a formula estimating the average bread consumption of a typical Flemish city block. Set in East Antwerp, the project revolves around the reopening of a bakery, using the rooftops of the urban block to reposition bread production closer to home. Having explored in detail at the scale of a single bakery, the idea expands beyond this city block to consider how a network could start to relate and depend on each other to ensure a sustainable, efficient and net-zero harvest.

EAD4.15, EAD4.17– EAD4.18 Cameron Alexander, Y3 ‘The New Ghent Theatre Company’. Theatre serves an integral role in our culture by providing entertainment, fostering community, allowing individual expression and embodying our collective ideals, but it is increasingly imperilled. With Belgian cities facing spiralling housing crises and precarious conditions in the performing arts, the system is increasingly inaccessible to performers, craftspeople and the everyday person. A new model is necessary to provide affordable facilities, safeguard workers’ homes and improve their quality of life.

EAD4.19–EAD4.20 Inaya Akhtar, Y4 ‘Coupure Jewellery Quarter’. Located in Bruges, this project is an ethical and sustainable jewellery space that embodies circularity and metal conservation while approaching heritage through the principles of craft, reuse and repair. The proposal outlines the retrofit of an abandoned 18thcentury mansion along the Coupure Canal into a jewellery quarter hosting metal collection, extraction labs, jewellery workshops, exhibition spaces and dwellings for goldsmiths. The approach aligns with the principles of kintsugi, using a design language of ornate gilded forms to distinguish the additions from the existing structure.

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Renaixement of a Remote Villa

Luke Olsen, Matthew Heywood, Filip Kirazov, Aurore Julien

Unit 5 engaged in research by designing an ‘Atlas of Sustainable Nuclear Islands’. This year’s brief was to design a regenerative gift for future communities in the remote region of Mas Morrell, Garraf, near Barcelona, Spain.

‘Renaixement’ is a Catalan term meaning rebirth or renaissance. Unit 5 explores, develops and designs the architecture and engineering required for the ‘renaixement’ of future communal needs on remote edges beyond cities, this year from the ruins of Mas Morrell.

Our students investigate the re/generation and growth of communities, studying and developing how buildings, villages and particularly villas in very small population centres are able to maintain sustainable biodiverse environments.

The number one cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, contributing to an estimated 75–80% of our carbon footprint. With little sign of this abating, we need to radically adopt clean technologies and protopian principles of ‘energy justice’, which includes integrating nuclear energy with renewable energy sources. Unit 5 tackled 80% of the decarbonisation challenge by designing with clean energy sources such as the 5–15 megawatt nuclear battery. Working closely with cutting-edge, nuclear energy industry leaders such as the Advanced Nuclear and Production Experts Group (ANPEG) through regular seminars and reviews, our students were emboldened to design a zero-carbon, free-energy future. They incorporated nuclear batteries and other sources of green energy into their villas to revitalise the ruins of Mas Morrell.

Unit 5 embraces the cinematic and sci-fi aspects of integrated design with cutting-edge, time-based technologies. These are deployed to reimagine the integrated-design drawing as an x-ray, revealing the multidisciplinary layers of information in one place, from the micro to mega scale. We tell the story of regenerative environmental design, portraying the forces of structural design and evoking an architecture with a protopian past, present and future.

Year 3

Ana Alonso Banez, Sadie Amini, Louis Boucquillon, Aidan Davies, Eve Freeston-Chang, Lilly Huber, Roy Ile, Elisa Scalzone, Yahvi Shah

Year 4

Tiger Campbell-Yates, Isaac Greaves, Antonio Merino Ramon, Borbala Zepko

PGTA

Alberto Fernández González

Critics: Julia Barfield, Klaas De Rycke, Stephen Gage, Will Mclean, Josep Miàs

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

EAD5.1 Borbala Zepko, Y4 ‘Hemp Clothing Factory: From Seeds to Dress’. This project addresses the urgent issue of ‘fossil fashion’. The textile industry consumes 2.2% of global gas and oil, producing 33 million tonnes of plastic-based fabric annually, with less than 1% of clothes being recyclable. In Catalonia, this sector contributes 6% to the local industry. This project, powered by a 10MW nuclear battery, proposes a regenerative clothing factory utilising hemp, timber and earth. It covers the entire production process: hemp cultivation, yarn production, natural dyeing with locally grown plants, fabric-making and garment production. The factory uses sustainable materials like rammed earth and glulam. A nuclear battery powers the site with zero carbon output. An innovative shading system adapts to seasonal and daily changes, enhancing comfort and efficiency. The community building hosts weaving and knitting workshops, with expandable space for summer activities. By combining traditional methods with modern sustainability practices, this project offers a model for eco-friendly textile production, fostering community engagement and industry transparency.

EAD5.2 Lilly Huber, Y3 ‘Retirada Als Arbres’. Located in the tranquil and picturesque setting of El Garraf Park in the Barcelona Province, this project (’Retreat to the Trees’) embodies the energy and beauty of its surroundings. The calming silence, sea views and mountainscape inspired the creation of a parental burnout retreat in this remote location, addressing a pressing demographic need. The design was carefully developed by adhering to the six biophilic principles, with a primary focus on daylight design, integration with nature and fostering environments for two main processes and aims for all occupants: regeneration of the parents’ mental health and reinforcement of the relationship with their children. The building facilitates personal activities like therapy and sports while also strengthening parent–child relationships through collaborative activities such as cooking and sports. Central to the retreat’s aesthetic and functional appeal are the detailed structural columns that mimic the form of trees, supporting the expansive canopy that spans both interior and exterior spaces.

EAD5.3–EAD5.4 Tiger Campbell-Yates , Y4 ‘Ministry of Rural Catastrophe’. This new specialist research body advises the Catalan Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, an overburdened department located in the city centre of Barcelona. The proposal forms a research community in the hills of El Garraf for developing new techniques in disaster response and recovery, finding novel ways to mitigate the harmful effects of major natural catastrophes. The site has experienced numerous agricultural challenges typical of rural Catalunya, including forest fires, blight, plagues, lack of surface water, flooding and seismic activity, while still being relatively close to the region’s political centre of Barcelona. The community welcomes the challenges of climate change and the destruction they bring as a source of research for disaster recovery, using traditional experience and modern simulations to develop a framework for rural disaster recovery that can be replicated across the region, while training first responders in full-scale test beds of catastrophe. Powered by a 10MW nuclear battery, the community and laboratories have a net-zero carbon footprint and share the excess energy to power the local community with free energy while safely removing all waste.

EAD5.5–EAD5.6 Aidan Davies, Y3 ‘Camp Batlló!’. Twenty years ago, a cooperative providing services to residents of the Sants district in Barcelona occupied an abandoned textiles factory called Can Batlló. They self-organised construction of their homes and

workplaces inside the old factory. Among the services they offer are workshops and summer camps for children, with an emphasis on learning through leisure. The programme offers the community a site for these summer camps around a ruined farmhouse in a national park, while the rest of the year it serves as a test bed and school for self-build constructions. The building project grew from a smaller design initiative in which an abstract strategy game and two chairs were installed on a footbridge in North London. Both projects focused on designs that encourage play and adaptive use.

EAD5.7 Sadie Amini, Y3 ‘Diamonds are a Ghost’s Best Friend’. Inspired by the local ghost story ‘The Girl on the Curve’, which explores the afterlife of a farm daughter through physical matter transformations and as an eternal store of memory, the resultant proposal is for ghosts, and indeed soon-to-be ghosts, to spend eternity as data diamonds. Located in Mas El Morsell, the repurposed cooling tower structure, relocated from the nearby Ascó power plant, contrasts with the wild landscape of the Garraf nature reserve. Aquamation, the green alternative to cremation, is used to break down the deceased, before carbon is extracted and purified, ready to be placed in HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) machines for the diamond growth to occur. After that, the diamonds can be input with a lifetime of data using lasers. The final data diamond can be used to project the information it stores, so friends, family and ancestors can watch back over the lives of their loved ones. A nuclear battery provides the constant energy source ideal for growing diamonds and meeting the energy requirements of the building for generations to come.

EAD5.8–EAD5.10 Isaac Greaves, Y4 ‘Revitalisation of Farming in El Garraf, Barcelona’. Following the degradation of farmland in the El Garraf region of Barcelona, a novel approach to farming is explored: combining real-time environmental data collection with strategic planning and microclimate analysis. Promoting climate change resilience and localised food production, this radical and experimental proposal offers an alternative to traditional farming practices. The building design is similarly innovative, developed through a series of bespoke optimisation processes, and crafted to dynamically respond to changing microclimate conditions, benefiting from these interactions rather than opposing them.

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SHOCK: Design Resilience for Dynamic Environments

Simon Beames, Harry Betts, Kostas Mastronikolaou

This year Unit 6 has refined its interdisciplinary approach to resilient architecture, drawing from previous studies on construction within the complex dynamics of Earth system science. Our primary goal has been to understand and navigate the intricate interactions and feedback loops involved in addressing physical, environmental and social dynamics, particularly those associated with earthquakes. Building on earlier explorations of transportable biomes and habitable bridges, we have sought a holistic comprehension of the diverse challenges and opportunities in resilient architecture.

Our research focused on Istanbul, a city near the active North Anatolian Fault and highly vulnerable to seismic risks. Historical earthquakes in the region have demonstrated the potential for devastating loss of life, infrastructure damage and mass displacement. Compounding these challenges, Istanbul hosts a significant refugee population from conflict-affected regions, notably Syria. This influx strains the city’s educational infrastructure, particularly impacting school-age children and young adults.

In response, we explored strategies to repurpose abandoned buildings to provide education for this vulnerable demographic. Refugee communities in Istanbul face language barriers, limited access to education and social integration challenges. Establishing secure and inclusive learning environments is crucial for their integration. Our design projects addressed these needs, proposing solutions to potential conflicts, natural disasters and societal upheavals in this megacity.

Our research underscored the urgent necessity to fortify Istanbul’s structures against seismic threats. We envisioned upgraded buildings serving as educational institutions with central assembly halls designed for refuge during crises. Our engineering innovations ensured these structures were safe, functional and resilient.

Our first project, SUDDEN MOVEMENT, focused on the potential of pneumatic architecture in a low-carbon future. We presented hyperefficient inflatable devices for community engagement in Istanbul. Exhibited at the Turkey Design Council, these proposals led to workshops with local architecture students, fostering collaboration and innovation.

Our second project, SHOCK PROOF, centred on designing a multipurpose school hall as a safe space. In collaboration with the NGO Children on the Edge, we developed educational programme briefs emphasising the importance of central assembly halls as shelters during seismic events. These halls were equipped with essential features for disaster relief and community support.

Each project highlighted the critical intersection of architecture, societal resilience and environmental challenges. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative design solutions, we aimed to create safer, more inclusive built environments for all.

Year 3

Sofea Binte Shahrin, Magdalena Kolarska, Flaminia Liguori, Rei Sekiguchi, Sevde Tavasli

Year 4

Lavanan Ainkaran, Aaishah Ali, Shamsa Almehairi, Lola Artiles San Juan, Po-Han Chang, Elisa Martini, Alessandra McCutcheon, Ananya Narendra Nath, Ina Natseva, Constantina Shiacola

PGTA

Büşra Berber

Consultants: Claudia Toma, Melis van den Berg, Hamish Veitch

Critics: Mo Bala and Annelie Kvick Thompson (Grimshaw), Rachel Bentley and Ben Wilkes (Children on the Edge), Bruce Danziger (Arup), Mehmet Kalyoncu (Turkey Design Council), Melis Koyuncu, Sana Unver

Partners: Children on the Edge, Grimshaw, Arup

EAD6.1 All Students ‘SHOCK’. A sequence of individual responses to this year’s theme.

EAD6.2 Constantina Shiacola, Y4 ‘The Artisan Harbour’. This project emerges as a captivating blend of tradition and modernity within the historical embrace of the Haydarpaşa Silos in Istanbul. The existing industrial character of the site becomes the canvas for a transformative educational and entrepreneurial facility. Artisans and visionaries come together, dancing on the threshold of tradition and modernity, and redefining the cultural and economic landscape of Istanbul.

EAD6.3 Shamsa Almehairi, Y4 ‘A Gathering Place’. Embracing the essence of human connection –conversation – the majlis (or ’gathering place’) is a sanctuary for transporting conversations, stories and dreams. This transformation unfolds through the integration of a vibrant coffee house majlis, symbolising the nexus of culture, community and communication. Beyond its communal nature, the site embraces innovation and sustainability through a material innovation lab exploring the reuse of coffee waste.

EAD6.4, EAD6.6 Rei Sekiguchi, Y3 ‘Hanging Gardens of Istanbul’. This adaptive reuse project proposes the renovation of Metrohan, an operating historical funicular station in Istanbul. The proposal provides a Syrian culture centre and a place for people to learn about the gardening and plantation of jasmine, the national flower of Syria. The new resilient structure will integrate a zigguratshaped timber space frame roof with an area to grow jasmine inside.

EAD6.5 Aaishah Ali, Y4 ‘All the Word’s a Stage’. The project is a staging device to introduce Turkish language and culture in a safe environment for Syrian refugees in Istanbul. The design revolves around a central courtyard, ‘The Neuroplastic Zone’, which provides passive cooling, acoustic enhancement and seismic structural integrity while delivering a multi-functional space conducive to immersive learning.

EAD6.7 Lavanan Ainkaran, Y4 ‘Bridging the Gap’. This retrofit project transforms the Ziraat Bank in Karaköy, Istanbul, into a safe space for debate and non-violent protest. It addresses the challenges encountered in designing a densely occupied zone within an earthquake-prone location. Drawing inspiration from traditional Arabic wind-catching devices, the centrepiece of the design is a hybrid steel and fabricbased windcatcher, serving a dual purpose as a tuned-mass damping system.

EAD6.8 Alessandra McCutcheon, Y4 ‘Anatoliae Pharus’. The project is located at Ziraat Bank in Karaköy, Istanbul, creating a beacon of seismic safety that marries engineering and architecture. The net-zero energy consumption tower is a visible symbol of safety, operational and reassuring during crises. Contrasting with Istanbul’s skyline, it complements landmarks like the nearby Galata Tower. The museum educates the public on seismic design principles.

EAD6.9 Sofea Binte Shahrin, Y3 ‘Lileppo’. This botanical school and community centre for the children of Istanbul is deeply rooted in Syrian heritage and values. The urban orchard is a new home for the Aleppo pepper ( pul biber) and also serves as a key grower and exporter of the Turkish fig. In this way, both cultures become intertwined, cultivating a ‘Little Aleppo’ in the heart of Istanbul.

EAD6.10 Po-Han Chang , Y4 ‘Kinship: The Memory Archive of the Displaced’. This project transforms the existing Ziraat Bank in Karaköy, Istanbul, into an archival repository capable of withstanding significant seismic crises. This is achieved through the integration of structural extensions utilising a unique alternating timber and steel-based bracing system.

EAD6.11 Flaminia Liguori, Y3 ‘MINGLE’. The project is not only an architectural fusion, but also a friendly way to encourage people to engage and interact with each other.

EAD6.12 Sevde Tavasli, Y3 ‘Dugumlerin Hikayesi’. Haydarpaşa Port has remained abandoned for the past 20 years. The dormant silos are ready to awaken, becoming the frontier for threads of cultural revival. Envisioned as inclusive spaces, they invite everyone to actively create and engage with traditional Turkish crafts. The port’s heritage is transformed into a vibrant tapestry, ushering in a new era where the silos serve as dynamic hubs for the intersection of tradition and progress.

EAD6.13 Elisa Martini, Y4 ‘Le Bazaar Suspendu d’Istanbul’. The building functions as a vertical high street, celebrating the commercial spirit common to Aleppo and enhancing the concept of ‘accidental therapy’. Built on the retrofitted Metrohan, the vertical bazaar creates a safe and quiet haven amid the busy streets of the Beyoğlu area. It provides workshop spaces where Syrian refugees can integrate with locals and learn trade crafts.

EAD6.14 Ina Natseva, Y4 ‘PlayHaven’. This project can be summed up in four words: play, community, learning and ‘shock’. It is a unique grand space that is owned by the locals, bringing people together for play and learning as well as serving as a refuge when necessary.

EAD6.15 Magdalena Kolarska, Y3 ‘Echoes of Transit’. This adaptive reuse proposal transforms an office building in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, into an Alzheimer’s and dementia research centre, addressing the pressing issue of Alzheimer’s-related mortality in Turkey.

EAD6.16 Ananya Narendra Nath, Y4 ‘Weave-a-Tale’. This design proposes an extension for Haydarpaşa station, featuring a workshop-museum with a folktaleinspired courtyard that guides users through an immersive hero’s journey. The project also explores the use of carbon fibre in lightweight structural design.

EAD6.17 Lola Artiles San Juan, Y4 ‘The Amalgam Han’. This project reimagines Büyük Yeni Han as a contemporary han (a traditional Turkish inn) that revitalises the lost craft of traditional Turkish metalworking. It also serves as an incubator of trades for the increasing refugee population in Istanbul. The project is driven by traditional metalworking methods and displays the craft through the architecture, becoming an amalgam of copper and ageing stone.

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Amphibious Thresholds: More-Than-Human Habitats

Francesco Banchini, Cristina Morbi, Yi Zhang

This year Unit 7 was tasked with working on the River Yare, a tidal river within the Broads, Britain’s largest protected wetland. Historically the area consisted of vast grazing marshes and peatlands, later transformed through anthropisation (i.e. the large-scale transformation of the environment by human activity) for agricultural development. Along the River Yare, disused mills define the landscape, reflecting past drainage practices that transformed marshland into cultivated areas.

Wetlands were traditionally seen as marginal or solely valuable when drained for agriculture. However, they offer diverse resources and benefits, including biodiversity, water purification, flood protection and overall human well-being. Recent efforts aimed to restore wetlands for carbon sequestration, biodiversity and community welfare, recognising their cultural significance.

Students worked along the river to revive Yare and to propose an integrated intervention to revitalise ecology, enhance human experiences and engage with local communities and history. Projects aimed to manifest new ecologies and social spaces, integrating with derelict mills for ecological benefits.

Moreover, Unit 7 emphasised reimagining the built environment by learning from botanical phenomena and integrating natural materials with existing sites. This approach aimed to create adaptable structures reflecting the cyclical and fluid use of spaces, fostering symbiosis between humans and nature.

Students learned about amphibious and flood-resilient strategies in their field trip to Venice, recognising wetlands’ importance for biodiversity, community and cultural heritage. Their projects sought to blend ecological restoration with innovative architectural solutions, envisioning a harmonious relationship between built environments and natural ecosystems.

Unit 7

Year 3

Miao (Candice) Dai, Xinzhe Jiang, Soyoung Park, Mary-Anthi Stratis, Yi Lam (Liz) Wong

Year 4

Leonie Bredenbals, Reda Dbouk, Beliz Gurmen, Xufeng (Styles) Li, Sara Motwani, Daveriel Purugganan, Amane Ryomura, Martha Stevens, Eleonora Trotta

Consultant: Riccardo Pellizzon

Critic: Michael Howarth

Partners: Norfolk County Council, Interreg EXPERIENCE

EAD7.1, EAD7.13 Xufeng (Styles) Li, Y4 ‘Norfolk’s Ark’. Defining existence is a timeless philosophical pursuit and the approach to preserving it varies depending on one’s perspective. In the context of a landscape destined to be submerged, the fundamental question arises: how do we preserve the existence of a place, and which aspects should be preserved? What sets this project apart is its departure from conventional approaches like building museums or cultural centres. The rationale behind this distinction lies in the historical neglect of this area. Museums and cultural centres typically focus on tangible elements of a region’s heritage, such as artefacts or historical documents.

EAD7.2–EAD7.3 Daveriel Purugganan, Y4 ‘Beyond the Broads’. The project honours the naturalist science culture of Norfolk and the Broads by proposing a multi-use garden and eco-burial centre, which uses compost from naturally decomposed deceased bodies to grow phyto-remedial plants that help improve the health of the River Yare and its ecosystem. Large vertical timber frame canopies act as waypoint beacons across the site’s waterways from which memorial spaces, scientific exhibitions and observation spaces as well as funeral care propagate.

EAD7.4 Beliz Gurmen, Y4 ‘Alchemy of the Yare’. The project proposes a self-sustaining creative ecosystem where materials are sourced and processed on site, allowing a blend between traditional and experimental artistic expressions. The atelier and its grounds have a symbiotic relationship with the River Yare landscape; the surrounding nature becomes the source and inspiration. Beyond the creative studio aspect, the project enhances a sense of community and exploration, inviting individuals to participate, learn and experience the ongoing narrative of artistry.

EAD7.5 Yi Lam (Liz) Wong, Y4 ‘Reedham Brewery’. Norfolk was known for its beer-brewing industry, which involved over 900 pubs across the county. Unfortunately, during the 1960s, the industry died down, and the times of providing jobs to thousands of men and women came to an end. This masterplan explores the revival of this industry, creating an industrial space to support local businesses and utilising local agricultural methods to encourage new beer formulas. The site also involves a touring circulation that allows visitors to learn the rich history of Norfolk breweries.

EAD7.6 Martha Stevens, Y4 ‘Tidal Archives’. Situated in the marshlands of the River Yare, the project is dedicated to the creation, dissemination and protection of future knowledge. In addition to workshops and libraries, it features exhibition areas and an amphitheatre that adapt to the changing tides and floodplains, embodying performing architectures. With predictions indicating that this area will flood by 2050, the Tidal Archives employs a modular, weather-resistant design to ensure its longevity and the safeguarding of its contents. It is more than a repository – it is a dynamic hub for the evolving pursuit of knowledge and community connection.

EAD7.7 Miao (Candice) Dai, Y3 ‘Symbiotic Cycle’. This centre integrates advanced water filtration technologies and innovative algae cultivation methods to offer a comprehensive hands-on learning experience. With modern classrooms, interactive exhibits and outdoor learning spaces, the centre educates and inspires visitors about sustainable water management and the ecological significance of algae. Through research, community outreach and practical demonstrations, the centre not only fosters environmental stewardship but also contributes to scientific advancements and sustainable practices.

EAD7.8 Leonie Bredenbals, Y4 ‘15-Minute City’. The concept of the 15-minute city revolves around urban planning, envisaging a city where essential services like

work, shopping, education and leisure are conveniently accessible within a 15-minute walk, bike ride or public transit journey from anywhere in the city. This approach reduces reliance on cars, fostering a lifestyle that is healthy and sustainable. Realising this concept requires a multidisciplinary strategy that encompasses transportation planning, urban design and policymaking. The goal is to establish thoughtfully designed public spaces, streets conducive to pedestrians and mixed-use developments.

EAD7.9 Xinzhe Jiang, Y3 ‘Algogenic Flux’. The area between Berney Arms and Reedham, near the River Yare, traditionally used for functions such as grazing and boating, faces overlooked ecological deficiencies including the proliferation of Myriophyllum aquaticum. This project proposes a public exhibition and algal bio-research centre to promote carbon-neutral algal biofuels. It utilises local vegetation resources to integrate large modular algae farms and research laboratories. These will operate with algae production facilities to develop bioenergy and material systems for buildings and cities.

EAD7.10–EAD7.11 Soyoung Park, Y3 ‘Casa della Ceramica al Tocco della Natura’. This innovative clay and pottery workshop is set on the River Yare in Norwich. It immerses visitors in local culture and the natural environment through pottery-making experiences. The site is divided into three soil-type zones, each offering unique textures and colours to enhance the sensory experience. Buildings align with these soil types, promoting an appreciation for natural materials. Pathways, including ground-level, elevated and second-floor bridges, ensure accessibility and inspire creativity, while facilitating a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor spaces.

EAD7.12 Mary-Anthi Stratis, Y3 ‘Interwoven’. This fibre craft workshop and exhibition space celebrates the rich history of trade and art along the River Yare. Enhancing local environments by strengthening native reed habitats, the reeds are spun into fibres that can be transformed into captivating artworks. The project enriches the local community and shares knowledge of the fibre arts passed down through generations. The internal concrete structure follows a radial woven pattern. The lightweight timber roof, resembling fabric with loose threads, flows around the building. The reeds grow with it, creating a symbiosis where nature intertwines with artificial construction.

EAD7.14 Amane Ryomura, Y4 ‘Whispers of Time’. This project explores the contrasting importance of preservation of heritage or memory, and the value in preserving nature in Norfolk. A rising awareness in sustainability has led architecture to focus on biodegradability, while remaining heritage and memories carved in buildings are of great significance. The preservation of memory is explored through workshop spaces, focusing on enhanced sensory experiences. Visitors are to wander through the proposed building with heightened senses, where the visiting experience itself is carved as a memory of one.

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Responsive Tectonics: Brixton

Jan Dierckx, Samuel Miselbach, Annarita Papeschi, José Torero Cullen, Julia Torrubia

The dynamics of urban expansion and decadence mark the fabric of our cities, leaving behind layered patterns of scars as complex spatial organisations that structure the way in which cities perform as social and physical constructs. Embracing neo-materialist theory, Unit 8 explores the idea of urban complexity as shaped by the interchanges of its living and non-living co-inhabitants. This constitutes the entry point for the development of responsive space-making ideas that, emerging from a deep understanding of place and context, explore more resilient and sustainable models for regenerative urban interventions.

With the aim of establishing a better sense of the interaction between animate and inanimate agencies, during term 1 the group explored the performance of a diverse range of three-dimensional natural and artificial assemblages and the correlation between their morphology and the range of static and dynamic spatial phenomena they enable. A study visit to Florence offered the students the opportunity to continue to study the performance of form as enabled by manmade structures, exploring first-hand the classical compositional techniques pioneered by Filippo Brunelleschi and their environmental and structural performances. The tasks were undertaken in parallel, exploring the making of two-dimensional and three-dimensional diagrams as a means of expanding the cohort’s representational and digital modelling skills.

The unit then shifted its attention to London, selecting the area around Brixton Market as the focal point for our main design inquiry. In addition to representing governmental datasets and open online information, the group experimented with psycho-geographic mapping, experiential site analysis and diagramming, before developing individual building briefs for the social revitalisation of the site and surrounding area. The outcomes, developed through an iterative process that seamlessly integrates core environmental, architectural and engineering principles, depict speculative scenarios featuring hybrid building typologies and transcalar organisational principles, exploring ideas of regeneration through adaptability and plasticity.

Year 3

Solomon Ayres, Chung Yan (Joanna) Lai, Samuel Newbury, Audrey Samaha

Year 4

Bianca Bodo, Michael Hammond, Haiyun (Isabella) Long, Iuliana Padurariu, Yumeng Shi

PGTA

Alberto Fernández González

Critics: Jake AttwoodHarris, Angela Crowther, Andrew Jackson

EAD8.1–EAD8.2 Haiyun (Isabella) Long, Y4 ‘Co-working Office Building’. The proposed building is specifically designed to cater to the ever-changing requirements of contemporary professionals while considering the lively urban setting of Brixton. It optimises the utilisation of natural light and encourages open, adaptable workstations that foster cooperation and creativity. This co-working space not only meets various functional and aesthetic criteria but also enhances the social and economic fabric of Brixton Market. Structurally, the building is stacked using a triangular cone structure to create a stable, material-efficient modern build. Image 8.1 is an overview of the proposal. 8.2 shows building construction details, such as stairs, floor build-up, insulated roofs and glass curtain walls.

EAD8.3 Chung Yan (Joanna) Lai, Y3 ‘Exhibit A’. This project is situated in the heart of what was Brixton Market. By playing with airflow, moisture and envelope, the space is redefined using the soft spatial boundaries of a ‘smellscape’. An expression of fluid movements is created by the unfolding dispersion of smell, which either opens a space or creates a barrier that changes the user’s direction, resulting in a tangible and temporal experience. This image shows the ground floor plan.

EAD8.4 Bianca Bodo, Y4 ‘The Research Centre for Neurodiversity’. The project’s objective is to provide Brixton residents with respite from the overwhelming sensory experience of the local street environment. The proposal is structured around three main stems, with leaves of different heights covering the space, creating the sense of being in a forest. Each leaf is made from ETFE panels that are either open or closed, allowing daylight to come through. Spaces such as an exhibition area, an indoor sensory garden, a café and a research lab have been organised underneath the leaves. This image shows a rendered bird’s-eye view.

EAD8.5 Samuel Newbury, Y3 ‘Brixton Graffiti Gallery’. Drawing inspiration from the artistic prospect of impermanence and adaptability, the project represents a new kind of gallery. Rather than protecting art behind bulletproof glass, the openness and architecture invite visitors to leave their own mark on the gallery walls, creating a haven for street art and self-expression. This results in an ever-changing, evolving piece of art and architecture that fills the void between buildings in Brixton. This image shows the first floor plan.

EAD8.6–EAD8.7 Solomon Ayres , Y3 ‘Brixton Park’. This social regeneration project presents a comprehensive response to the housing crisis by embedding a homeless shelter, transitional housing, affordable flats, shared urban greenery and commercial space into the heart of Brixton. Care has been taken to ensure the development maintains its vital link to the surrounding urban fabric, opening up key circulation routes and presenting a complex façade that celebrates the pioneering and eclectic nature of Brixton. These images show an initial study of turbulence as an illustration of pedestrian flow.

EAD8.8 Michael Hammond, Y4 ‘Learning and Study Community Centre’. Building on the success of local education projects, the proposal provides accessible study areas and an auditorium for Brixton locals of all ages. Due to the public nature of the building, the project opens up the ground floor for pedestrian access, suspending the building over an internal street to provide a new public area and encourage the wider community to engage with the new community space. This image shows the classrooms suspended over the internal pedestrian street.

EAD8.9–EAD8.10 Yumeng Shi, Y4 ‘Healing Oasis’. Situated in the area currently occupied by Brixton Market, the building is designed to serve as a multi-functional psychological clinic and conference hall, strategically

separated to ensure a serene environment for both therapy and gatherings. Crafted from natural wood, the buildings offer a warm and inviting atmosphere. Surrounding the main blocks, meticulously planted green areas harmonise with the architectural forms, creating a natural oasis in Brixton’s urban centre. This integration of nature enhances users’ mental well-being, offering a tranquil retreat that fosters healing and rejuvenation. The project is dedicated to providing a holistic approach to mental health, combining modern therapeutic practices with the restorative power of nature. Images 8.9 and 8.10 show a bird’s-eye view of the project and the environmental section respectively.

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MSci Year 1 students looking at the Bourse de Commerce during their field trip to Paris, 2024. Photo: Alicia González-Lafita

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 and Part 2)

Programme

Directors: Murray Fraser, Alicia González-Lafita, Sara Martínez Zamora, Sara Shafiei

Architecture MSci is a 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 a leading architectural practice. During the first four years of study, MSci 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. They also examine relevant world issues through an annual theme that raises broad architectural and social issues, such as ‘Global Health’, ‘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.

As well as defining the relationship between students’ learning and their participation in design research, the MSci programme offers a holistic approach to education, encouraging connections between the sub-disciplines of design, digital/analogue representation, technology, sustainability, professional practice, and history and theory, as well as between the different year cohorts and staff members (both practice-based and academic). To do so, the programme is structured to encourage creative design research and close links with architectural firms, with the final-year placement giving students an unparalleled opportunity to test out their imaginative ideas in a real-world environment.

This year saw the fourth cohort of Architecture MSci students welcomed to the school. For both students and staff, it has been a chance to start something new and break with traditions often thought of as 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 in an interdisciplinary manner, through testing and re-examining the fundamental elements of architecture. Students are asked to embark on a journey into the unknown and embrace the experimental and forward-thinking through a global lens.

Our annual theme this year was ‘Transforming Technologies’. It has provided an opportunity for students across the programme to share ideas and research on one of UCL’s Grand Challenges. Platforms for collaboration across the programme have been provided by our ‘open studio’ events, which each term kicked off with a breakfast club. These events 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 also like to thank our Senior Administrator, Alice Whewell; our Departmental Tutor, Tom O Caollai; our Year Directors, Alicia González-Lafita, Sara Martínez Zamora, Thomas Parker, Déborah López Lobato, Jane Wong and Dimitris Argyros; our Stream Directors, Matthew Barnett Howland, Guang Yu Ren, Haden Charbel and Sabine Storp; as well as our PGTAs, Bianca Bianari, Desislava Cholakova, Alberto Fernández González, Yushen Jia, Chrysostomos Neocleous and Alice Shanahan for their invaluable contributions. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to Sara Shafiei for her pioneering leadership as the Programme Director since the inception of the Architecture MSci. Along with Professor Stephen Gage, Sara was instrumental in developing and proposing the programme in 2019. Her vision and dedication have laid a strong foundation, and her impact will continue to be felt for years to come.

Year 1

Abenezer Abebaw-Mesfin, James Matthew Alfonso, Luz Alvarez De Estrada Ortuzar, Connie Attwood, Hannah Bryce, Freya Caine, William Cardoso, Oliver Chandler, Ryan Chen, King Clarin, Rapha De Segundo, Thomas Dodd, Mlak Elbuzidi, Sara Escalona Briceno, Tomas Gaunt, Hisham Ilyas, Taslima Islam, Rosemary Jones, Hugh Kilvington, Chenhe (Will) King, Amelia Kong, Neueland Lesdema, Hiro Matsuzaki, Elisha Morales, Mei Xin (Jennifer) Ooi, Teeannon Quarry, Noor Shahzad, Haoyu (Howard) Shen, Keye Shen, Xiaotian (Walter) Shui, Noah Spain, Yuichiro Tomita, Naomi (Grey) Umoru, Katherine Varaksina, Victoria Wang, James Wilson, Landuoduo Wu, Tianhao (Steven) Xi, Chuqin (Jenifer) Yang, Shang-Ju (Sean) Yang, Courtney Yau, Zeynep Yesildag, Zhiyu Zhang

Building 2030

Alicia González-Lafita , Sara Martínez Zamora

Year 1

The MSci Architecture annual theme of ‘Transformative Technologies’ framed the design journey that our first-year students experienced this year, organised around two main projects.

The year began with a group project situated inside the City of London, in the Barbican Estate, where architectures from different periods coexist. The students examined architectural elements, exploring how technological changes were intertwined with production methods across different historical periods. Through this process the students gained analytical and surveying skills, which were translated into speculative three-dimensional pieces that combined digital and analogue techniques.

This initial group project and design exploration set the foundation for the students to develop a small building proposal sited on the eastern edge of the City of London. Anchoring the initial premise of their project on the study of the city edge, they researched their sites from a range of perspectives – historical, environmental and social. In their building projects, the students were encouraged to speculate about architecture in the near future of 2030. Proposals envisioned the use of new technologies, decentralised construction processes and innovative materials showcasing a plethora of design approaches. Small-sized buildings became testbeds for 2030, drawing from the context of the eastern edge of the City of London and from the spatial needs of their building programmes.

Their design enquiries showcase an ambitious investigation into transformative technologies which expanded on knowledge acquired in the structural and digital skills modules during the year. The result is a broad range of work that asks unique questions of what architecture can address in the not-too-distant future of 2030.

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

Technical tutors and consultants: Finbar Charleson, Krina Christopoulou, Sam Coulton, Ruth Cuenca, Christina Dahdaleh, Aurore Julien, Matei Mitrache, Harry Sumner, Andrew Whiting

Thesis supervisors: Megha Chand Inglis, Olivia Neves Marra, Kay Sedki, Maria Venegas Rabá

Critics: Felicity Atekpe, Mark Burrows, Krina Christopoulou, Max Dewdney, Amy Kulper, Evonne Mackenzie, Elliot Nash, Dan Tassell, Alice Whewell, Guang Yu Ren, Paolo Zaide

Y1.1 Tomas Gaunt ‘MSci Y1 Building Models’. A selected range of models from the Year 1 design project were set out and photographed, highlighting the many different approaches to making that are evident throughout the work. Spanning from the developmental to the final stages of the project, the showcased works create an intriguing scene of architectural features and material usage. The models contrast and complement each other, altogether establishing a coherent language between them, while each individually represents a unique approach to designing for a site.

Y1.2 Mei Xin (Jennifer) Ooi ‘Plant’s Plant: The Plant Where Planted Plants Go’. Set between residential grounds and the Goulston Street Market, this herb factory envisions a future of inter-community relations. Projecting into 2030, the site is speculated to have an overgrowth of herbs in residential gardens, leading to a bustling exchange of ingredients and warm food between residents and market food vendors. Following the theme of ‘Transformative Technologies’, the structure is designed around its internal processes, where form follows process and movement follows form. Herbs circulate through levels on lines, a fully customisable thermal envelope regulates the temperature and a water-collecting roof expands beyond the site. These processes are integrated into the form itself. As people move through the circulations, their actions extend the structure, choreographing a dance as the factory comes alive.

Y1.3 Freya Caine ‘Urban Botanical Garden’. This project is dedicated to showcasing mosses, lichens and fungi, celebrating the everyday ecosystems that are often overlooked. In addition to serving as a botanical garden, it functions as a research centre for in-depth exploration of these species. The garden features four enclosures with removable exterior panels set into wooden frameworks. Made from sandblasted sandstone, these panels cultivate moss both inside and outside, creating an immersive environment for the public. This drawing shows the interior view of the enclosure.

Y1.4 Noah Spain ‘Goulston Street Rains’. The project is a rainwater treatment plant and experiential bathhouse. Driven by the theme of ‘Transformative Technologies’, it explores the role of sanitation from both a historical perspective, with respect to the bathhouse that once stood on the site, and a future outlook, where by 2030 rainwater will require treatment for human use due to contamination with PFAs or ‘forever chemicals’. The process of reverse osmosis that the water undergoes is paralleled by the experience of the bathhouse visitor, who flows through the various stages of filtration in each room until ultimately submerged in the final body of water. The structure simultaneously feeds and recycles water used by the neighbouring market, creating an integrated connection with the social and cultural context of the area.

Y1.5 Ryan Chen ‘Cowcross Capsule’. Situated within Cowcross Yards, an enclosed courtyard space historically known for its food markets, the building is merely five minutes from Farringdon station. Its primary purpose is to provide a permanent area for market stalls and sheltered seating in a site otherwise exposed to the elements. It also serves as a capsule hotel, providing overnight accommodation for commuters frequently passing by the station. The front façade of the building is highly dynamic, with moving shutters, staggered floors and timber fins, creating a balance between transparency and privacy. Due to rapid urbanisation and the collapse of ecosystems from urban sprawl, the building intentionally maintains a small surface area, maximising vertical space. In compliance with future carbon standards, most of the upper floors are composed of timber elements, reducing embodied carbon.

Y1.6 Chuqin (Jenifer) Yang ‘The Square on Goulston Street’. This project is designed for local residents, food market workers and office workers who frequent the market. The ground floor serves as an extension of the food market during lunch and daytime hours, featuring two food stores, a sink, storage space, toilets and a shelter for eating. It also includes a central square for socialising. The upper floor consists of more private spaces such as a yoga space, a garden, a community library, a small meeting room, a chat room and a small museum, functioning as a community centre. Addressing the future needs of 2030, this structure combats the issue of decreasing public spaces and encourages community gatherings. The building’s form is influenced by human activity, the function of small-scale spaces and three views that maintain the openness of the site. It plays with enclosure and openness using windows and screens. These screens are designed to mimic the site’s brick aesthetics but are made from wood to keep them thin and easy to construct.

Y1.7 Neueland Lesdema ‘The Salvage Keep’. The drawing shows a 1:100 ground floor plan of the project, which is a multi-material sculptural workshop. The building addresses the accumulation of materials and items deemed as ‘waste’, embodying sustainable behaviours. The dynamic interiors are multi-functional and adaptable, encouraging a responsible culture of reuse as well as collaborative practices and community engagement. Nature-based materials, communal gardens and reclaimed resources transform this neglected corner site, enhancing community well-being. The façade, containing a number of donation points within its walls, collects and divides the view into the space, creating an ordered and disordered concealment.

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The Co:Lab

Abigail Ashton, Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Studio 2A

The term ‘peri-rural’ refers to the transitional area between urban and rural regions. This year Studio 2A examined the future of communal living in these spaces. Much of our inhabited rural land now represents a threshold condition, situated between urban centres and highly unnatural industrial processes. Within these sites, land is disputed, resources are political and space is held in tension between natural forces and human interventions.

The proliferation of developer-led construction and councilfunded schemes in the peri-rural environment continually place community at the centre of their ambitions. Social value, community engagement, co-collaboration – these terms are now commonplace in the dictionary of local authority frameworks and development brochures. However, all too often the nuances of what a community needs, and how a specific place can be developed while retaining its character and individuality, are value-engineered out of the proposals, leaving an existing community isolated, new residents misinformed and a society fractured by what should otherwise be a positive architectural intervention.

Grays Beach in Essex is located at such a junction of the urban and rural, its character both industrial and domestic. The community is surrounded by fields earmarked for large-scale development, while dredging vessels move silt out from the Thames, and Tilbury, London’s main port, shifts 16 million tonnes of goods per year. Within this place of transfer, an existing community has evolved since the early 19th century with common space at its heart. Historically, lidos were dug and then later refilled, parkland was formed and lost, and the foreshore was altered to create a public beach and yachting club.

As London’s boundaries spread further, the semi-rural nature of this site is surrounded by possible futures. With the onset of mass development, the common spaces at the centre of this longstanding community is more precious than ever. Our studio’s projects explored how peri-rural communities can be galvanised together through collective ideals, innovative technology and circularity in architectural production. Our architecture uses these ideas as its foundation, exploring what the future of commonality and collective enjoyment might look like.

Year 2

Hamzah Ahmed, Bianca Albeanu, Jianhao Chen, Eunice Dingcong, Annabelle Edwards, Zihan Gan, Tate Kiveal, Dongheng (Daniel) Li, Xiyi (Fiona) Lu, Sophie Murray, Chanunchida (Pung Pung) Phonoi, Charlotte Pike, Ethan Starkey, Louis Thomas

Project Book Tutor: Danielle Purkiss

2A.1, 2A.17 Chanunchida (Pung Pung) Phonoi ‘Navigating Nostalgia’. Grays’s connection to water inspires an architecture fostering social interaction and intergenerational activities, with a focus on sailing. With flooding of the Thames predicted by 2050, the design adapts by using repurposed sailboat materials and modular structures that can shift inland or be disassembled as needed. Local materials like silt blocks and thatch ensure integration with the landscape, preserving Grays’s heritage while creating a resilient, community-centred hub.

2A.2 Ethan Starkey, Jianhao Chen ‘Cultivating Community’. The project is a revised garden pavilion typology centred around community engagement and a reciprocal relationship with the landscape, serving as an exemplar for the Grays community. It introduces a new approach to allotments, aiming to regenerate the landscape through community stewardship by utilising four seasonal pavilions set within an irrigation network. This becomes a valuable asset to the community, fostering greater care for the tidal environment and encouraging broader external engagement, making it a prototype that can be applied on multiple scales.

2A.3–2A.6 Charlotte Pike ‘Nature Nursery’. The project reimagines Grays Beach’s scrapyard as a vibrant natural landscape. By strategically planting trees and wildflowers, the building and its surroundings are designed to encourage children to play in nature, promoting positive development. The columns mimic tree trunks while the timber roof structure creates dappled light reminiscent of a tree’s canopy. The project is envisioned as an extension of the natural environment.

2A.7–2A.9 Eunice Dingcong ‘From the Ground Up’. With carefully crafted atmospheres throughout, the building is designed to create an immersive experience. Adjacent to a football pitch, this public house and changing room complex emerges from a playful undulating landscape, forming ribbons of roofs and elevated pods. The level changes allow for diverse journeys as one traverses the upper deck of the pods, the oscillating landscape and the roof shells.

2A.10 Bianca Albeanu ‘Reflective Art Centre’. Built from rammed earth and timber, this unique space seamlessly blends art studios, the surrounding landscape and architecture to promote mental well-being through art and nature. Handmade artworks in a serene gallery lead to studios bathed in natural light from large, north-facing roof windows, fostering a tranquil creative environment.

2A.11 Annabelle Edwards ‘Community Regrowth’. The project restores the socially deprived area with a community kitchen and growing space. This initiative focuses on embedding circularity in its design while planting the vital roots to regrow a sense of community. The design includes a growing space, kitchen, dining room and compost room, encapsulating a fully circular programmatic approach.

2A.12–2A.13 Zihan Gan ‘Where Urban Beats Meet Natural Rhythms’. This project is a multi-functional building that integrates a recording studio with a skate park, designed to primarily serve the children and young people of the community. Its design concept comprises a site topography that blends the building with the surrounding landscape, preserving the original green spaces as much as possible while simultaneously revitalising the area. It fosters a dynamic fusion of youth culture and nature.

2A.14 Louis Thomas ‘All Aboard’. The project transforms Grays Beach’s exclusive yacht club into an inclusive sailing school for the youth-rich local community. Existing members act as custodians who passin on their sailing expertise. The design is subtle and sensitive, using

recycled boat materials, such as sails for fabric-cast concrete, to create its components.

2A.15 Dongheng (Daniel) Li ‘Grays’s Skate and Climb’. This materially complex building creates a much-needed recreational space for Grays’s youth.

2A.16 Xiyi (Fiona) Lu ‘Resonant Concrete’. This new recording studio uses sounds from the site to shape an undulating form.

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Reasonably Absurd

Haden Charbel, John Cruwys

This year Studio 2B is considering the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Well, at least our failure to fully comprehend it all. Luckily, we have a weapon at our disposal – the absurd.

As a philosophical, artistic and theatrical practice, absurdism holds up a mirror to reality. It exposes and performs the ridiculous contradictions of our modern world that we’ve come to normalise. If successful, a role reversal occurs; the absurdist piece appears increasingly sane next to its original subject, which begins to sweat uncomfortably under the spotlight. Absurdism disrupts the urbane and offers fresh worldly perspectives.

Through design, we investigated existential conflicts and contradictions under our noses. Conflicts between intention and outcome, between reality and imagination, between rational thought and an irrational universe. Conflicts of authenticity, mortality, identity, purpose, freedom, the endless complexity of nature and far beyond. These conflicts seeded a new hybrid architecture of ‘both-and’ rather than ‘either-or’, where logic goes awry and comes back again.

The year began by studying key areas along the periphery of West London where absurdity is seeping into/from the built environment today; unresolved sites where borders are contested, remnants are left exposed and dissonance rings true. The research was distilled into artefacts which embody, facilitate and disrupt the local paradigm. Eventually evolved into building proposals, the absurdities exposed are kept on the fringe, rendering them believable and reasonable, while retaining the absurd conditions of their genesis.

Inspiration was drawn from those working at the fringes of architecture: artists, filmmakers, playwrights, activists and speculative designers whose practice brings hidden aspects of reality to the surface, such as William Kentridge’s charcoal animations, drawing and erasing the sinister transformation of urban histories; Greta Gerwig’s subversive blockbuster Barbie; the guileful collection and sale of ‘unuseless’ empty lots in Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates ; and David OReilly’s madcap worldbuilding, to name just a few.

Studio 2B is driven by narrative first and foremost. With a combination of various time-based software at our disposal for animating, rendering and simulating, each proposal is a plausible reality, provocation and a reflection of the everyday conditions we have come to accept.

Studio 2B

Year 2

Ruben Alexander, William Applegate, Yohana Bekele, Yuxuan (Nemo)

Cai, Bingchen (Bruce) Duan, Abdelrahman

Eladawi, Rahul Faizer, Hafiza Hussain, Nadia Kwiecinska, Kim Lee, Ahsanul Momen, Amanda Paule, Joe Rowlands, Yiting Wang

Technical tutors and consultants: Tony Le, James Palmer

Critics: Camille Dunlop, Aya Jazaierly, Ness Lafoy

2B.1 Joe Rowlands ‘Reel Estate’. In the expanding universe of Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, a juxtaposition emerges between cinematic illusion and reality. The project envisions a scenario where Pinewood, in an effort to grow, strikes a Faustian bargain with the surrounding residential neighbourhood, offering patchwork fixes to ageing housing stock in exchange for liberal filming rights. The project observes hyper-reality within a suburban landscape, where residents become extras and their houses are ‘Frankensteined’ to form ad-hoc micro film studios.

2B.2, 2B.5 Nadia Kwiecinska, Ruben Alexander ‘The Day Doula’. Nestled within the suburb of Ruislip, this proposed building stimulates the senses through absurd interventions such as a cold plunge that simulates shock or the mud baths designed to release the inner child. It serves as a place to release the stresses of everyday life, or better yet, strengthen tolerance against them. Responding to one’s circadian rhythms, the building educates its inhabitants on methods of decompression through novel modes of dwelling. Each space is organised around the harvesting, management and reuse of four fluids related to the site and user rituals: water, mud, urine and sweat.

2B.3 Hafiza Hussain ‘Project-ish’. Derived from a series of experiments that rethink the affordances offered by the mundane, inaccessible landscape of Iver Heath, ‘Project-ish’ is an absurd approach to design aimed at creating a new typology of recreational space, halfway between a community centre and a playground. It is a space where opportunities for play are provided to everyone. By incorporating play into the design process, the project is planned on a large scale using a game board, as well as through a series of phygital material transformations to modify qualities such as scale, texture and solidity. In other words, it simplifies the absurd-ish and absurdifies the simple-ish.

2B.4 Abdelrahman Eladawi ‘Resilient Botany’. This cutting-edge research facility simulates extreme weather conditions in self-contained micro-climate chambers. The project future-proofs plant adaptation through plant engineering in preparation for various climate scenarios.

Sited on Corporation Island, within the Thames near Kew, the building embraces an adaptable architecture that dynamically transforms and adjusts in response to everchanging environmental conditions, serving as a reflection of Richmond’s evolving ecology and biodiversity.

2B.6 Amanda Paule ‘Monument’. Inspired by the idea that people are ‘forced to mourn’ the death of a monarch, rather than having the freedom to express and share their grief on their own terms, the project imagines an alternative arrangement for the passing of King Charles III. A death ritual featuring a parade float will transport the deceased monarch’s remains to the site, enveloped in a shroud of polyethylene netting that displays 2.5D scenes of royal life. The ceremony concludes with the float being tipped vertically to form a monument that houses a system of alkaline hydrolysis devices. These are designed to liquidate the entombed remains and feed them to a surrounding garden.

2B.7 Kim Lee, William Applegate ‘Cladogenesis’. Referring to the splitting of evolutionary lineages, cladogenesis is the process responsible for the formation of new and distinct species over the course of evolution. In contrast, Black Park, nestled in Wexham, Buckinghamshire, is the product of human intervention that has resulted in a manicured, picturesque forest. The project reverses this direction by creating an inverse environment within the forest designed to aggressively un-domesticate fauna – an accelerated version of rewilding that instils self-sufficient animal traits that are passed down to future generations.

2B.8 Ahsanul Momen ‘Uxbridge Takeover’. Drawn from early investigations questioning the hospitality of Uxbridge’s high street, the project proposes a new approach to reoccupying public space with the aid of an underserved demographic – skaters. The ‘takeover’ exists in two stages: initially, as a temporary event where large balloons suspend and connect lightweight timber skatepark modules. As the event concludes, the second stage is enacted, utilising the balloon modules as formwork for shotcrete, creating a series of vast domes that form enclosures for a number of permanent skateparks dispersed throughout the city.

2B.9–2B.10 Bingchen (Bruce) Duan, Yuxuan (Nemo) Cai ‘Dreamscapes’. Conceived as a neighbouring attraction to Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, the project enhances traditional film experiences using Extended Reality (XR) and AI technologies. It offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in a limitless, digital open-world environment. The building employs a system of mobile inflatables, allowing spaces to transform in real-time according to narrative needs and breaking the constraints of fixed seating and linear storytelling found in traditional cinemas. These inflatables vary in size and function, with small and medium spaces suspended from the roof and large spaces moving along tracks on the ground. This setup enables visitors to freely explore and interact with the dynamically changing environments and virtual characters.

2B.11–2B.12 Yiting Wang, Rahul Faizer ‘Flux Fashion Terminal’. By 2040, RAF Northolt, a Royal Air Force station in West London, will have gradually transitioned into a commercial model known as Northolt Airport. To mitigate the increase in pollution, traffic and noise, a tax-free zone is introduced along with other measures aimed at appeasing the airport’s neighbours. This project pioneers a new airport typology, emphasising the luxury and experience of flying without the necessity of a destination. Customer satisfaction is paramount; through reconfigurable units and an overhead rail system, the terminal offers highly customised boutique shopping experiences, child and pet care, live music and more.

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After the Party: Reclaiming Architectural Knowledge and Re-Signifying Leftovers

Olivia Neves Marra, Jane Wong

The theme ‘After the Party’ contemplates the nature and potential of the architectural project today. It is a process increasingly compromised by market forces and property speculation, leaving little room for the political agency needed to imagine and advance more equitable values and alternative spaces for social organisation. This includes the sharing of resources, communal living and other modalities marginalised by the neoliberal agenda, which has permeated nearly every aspect of life.

Architectural culture and industry are not immune to its ubiquitous influence. Architects and architects-to-be often find themselves involved in modern-day rococo exercises that explore the frontiers of technological innovation, formalist revisions of standardised ‘architectural products’ and disingenuous visions for ‘communities’ that fail to reflect the diverse range of subjectivities present in their contexts.

In the context of London, ‘party’ refers to the historical conditions of land and property ownership, such as the parcelisation of land since the Norman conquest and the enclosure of commons. These factors fundamentally determine the value of development, even before the laying of bricks and mortar. Nowadays this results in significant social inequalities, not least the housing crisis, and poses considerable challenges for public life and space. ‘Party’ also refers to the last two centuries’ excesses that have left a wake of environmental degradation, with the architecture and construction industry being largely complicit.

We ask what might remain – residual spaces, discarded offcuts, abandoned skeletons – and how we might foster new attitudes and values of care and frugality. We speculate on spaces of care (to acknowledge and redistribute care work equitably), restoration (and resistance) and public luxury (and pleasure). Responding to the annual MSci theme of ‘Transformative Technologies’, the studio explores the paradox of technological innovation and stagnation of its largely unfulfilled emancipatory potential in societies it serves. By reclaiming architectural knowledge against technology as a means to an end and re-signifying material leftovers in alternative building processes (e.g. retrofitting, maintenance and repair), the studio seeks to propose radical alternatives to the realities of the architectural project today.

Studio 2C

Year 2

Amelia Blanksby, Yi Zhen Chuah, Alice Covernton, Ilia Dynkin, Giovanna Gong, Yi Xi (Muvis) Hui, Phoenix Koo, Ella Man, Oyindamola Olunloyo, Lia Penela Failde, Hanna Porooshani Nia, Nell Rudd-Jones, Enoch Senanu, Srishti

Technical tutors and consultants: Carolina Bartram, Sam Coulton

Critics: Abigail Ashton, Laurence Blackwell-Thale, Matthew Butcher, Haden Charbel, John Cruwys, Monia De Marchi, Murray Fraser, Chee-Kit Lai, Toby O’Connor, Thomas Parker, Sara Shafiei

2C.1–2C.4 Yi Xi (Muvis) Hui, Oyindamola Olunloyo

‘Transcending Divisions: Community-led Reinvention of Hadley Road Allotment into a Garden Park’. The proposal challenges the static nature of the existing allotment boundaries. Currently, these boundaries limit circulation and social interaction among plot holders, hindering the celebration of shared gathering interests. To counter this, the project proposes an alternative approach that redefines these familiar thresholds, prioritising shared experiences and connections over rigid property lines. Inspired by the notion that ‘each plot is a personal project’, the approach also encourages self-sufficiency and shared stewardship. It offers collectively owned yet individually maintained easement gardens along subdivision lines to decentralise reliance on financial organisations within communities.

2C.5–2C.9 Amelia Blanksby, Yi Zhen Chuah ‘Back Garden Collective’. The project begins with a masterplan for the Hadley Road Community Allotment, selectively opening parts of the existing site to the local neighbourhood. The first intervention wraps part of the site with a U-shaped courtyard made of reclaimed timber, incorporating a pergola system to ensure permeability and visibility. This structure also serves as a backbone, supporting allotment gardening and shared maintenance. In this sense the open courtyard emphasises temporality and adaptability, welcoming changes driven by the community’s evolving needs. By creating a fluid and adaptable design, the proposal promotes shared ownership and use.

2C.10–2C.12 Lia Penela Failde, Nell Rudd-Jones ‘Disturbing the Current: An Alternative Water Infrastructure for Mitcham’. Located on a piece of wasteland caught between residential and industrial estates in the suburb of Mitcham, the project proposes an alternative water infrastructure to form a park for the cultivation, collection, filtration and water use. This park develops through a strategic alternation of spaces for gathering, assembly, recreation, bathing and cultivation. It gives form and space to new alternative relationships between community, water, land and infrastructure. All interventions punctuate a central pathway through a soft yet complex topography to establish a spatial network, shared and maintained by local associations and public stakeholders.

2C.13 Ella Man ‘Ripple: Water Gardens for Socio-ecological Repair and Reciprocity’. Industrial interventions, such as the Southern Thameslink, establish harsh boundaries across the landscape, fragmenting Mitcham and its nature reserve. Hackbridge Corner in Beddington Farm is effectively a transitional wasteland. As it straddles two juxtaposing biomes, it is rich in biodiversity and has the potential to offer locals a new perspective on the seemingly dense urban fabric of Mitcham. This project conceptually reconciles the nature reserve with the city and restores their respective ecologies. The project proposes a scheme of landscape nurturing through active stewardship and education. The scheme revolves around reciprocity between humans and flora, built and unbuilt, open and enclosed. It develops through a grid of strips alternating between interior spaces for education, workshop areas, steward cabins and gardens.

2C.14 Hanna Porooshani Nia ’Above and Beyond: Garage Roof Extensions for Anti-Nuclear-Family Domesticities’. Mitcham has large green spaces, like the Common and Cricket Green, but lacks a comprehensive system of smaller public outdoor and indoor spaces. This proposal addresses this issue by redefining alleyways and garage rooftops as a shared domestic realm. Drawing from the Greek archetype of the stoa, the proposal frames the alleyway on the ground floor with a tall covered colonnade for public use. On the upper floor,

the same structure allows for roof extensions of the existing garages that currently flank the alleyway. A series of modular panels enables these extensions to either remain small private spaces or become extended living rooms, workshops or greenhouses, to be shared by residents willing to self-organise. If applied and used as a model for other alleyways in Mitcham and elsewhere, these ‘domestic stoas’ could become an alternative approach to living and building in the suburbs.

2C.15 Srishti ‘Seeds of Love: Reclaiming a Forsaken Orchard as a Space for Sharing Seeds and Joyful Solitude’. The design proposal starts with a linear park along the railway between Mitcham and Beddington Farm. The park minimally intervenes in the existing reserve through a series of small enclosures, strategically stationed along ‘the line’, creating spaces for learning, rest, play, foraging and gardening. An abandoned orchard, once flourishing but now derelict due to a lack of custodianship, will be revitalised. The project recuperates this space for community-led horticulture by introducing new features like an apiary, bee houses, garden sheds, a compost hub, pickling pavilions, a community café, classroom pavilions, a seed bank and sheds for volunteering custodians.

2C.16 Enoch Senanu ‘Shelter from the Storm: A Forest Pavilion for Cooking and Reading in Beddington Farms’. Comprising a perennial garden, open courtyard, educational kitchen and library, this community centre sits within a series of spatial interventions along the railway between Mitcham and Beddington Farm. It invites visitors to meander through the existing woods via a free-plan walkway pavilion whose organic shape takes inspiration from Anne Holtrop’s Trail House. The collective experience of the building is shaped by the omnipresent view of the open courtyard, which provides a calming sense of belonging, inwardness and spatial finitude.

2C.17 Phoenix Koo ‘In Praise of Idleness: Occupying the Alleyway to Celebrate Architecture Freed from Value and Productivity’. Within London’s neoliberal economy, planning and architecture can only be justified by generating value, i.e. by being ‘productive’. In other words, capitalism demands that architectural design work for capitalism itself. Idleness, on the other hand, according to Bertrand Russell, is about doing something for the sake of doing it. It is not about laziness or inactivity but the joy of experience without the burden of productivity. This project is a provocative design proposal where pavilions and urban furniture occupy and redefine Mitcham’s alleyways as open interiors, celebrating the innate uselessness of architectural form.

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Technification and Atmosphere

Murray Fraser, Michiko Sumi

Architecture MSci’s third year is based on design research investigations around a specific annual theme. This year’s topic was ‘Transformative Technologies’, which was chosen to encourage the understanding of technology as something culturally produced, rather than an abstract entity that occurs outside or irrespective of human life. It is concerning when technology is discussed in a way that idealises – indeed reifies – specific materials, processes, devices or objects. Instead, architects must realise that even the concept of transformative technologies is rooted in longstanding building traditions globally, and hence what is often perceived as new is in fact very old. Furthermore, the impacts of transformative technologies, architectural or otherwise, rely on sufficient social agreement that they are indeed useful: as soon as people stop using any technology, it becomes obsolete. What appears innovative is often not, as older technologies continue to play their roles.

In thinking about transformative technologies, it is important not to envisage them as distinct, individual forces. No technology is an island unto itself; all are connected to the mainland. Gernot Böhme argues that today’s technologies function as part of dispersed and interconnected networks, a condition he calls ‘technification’. The uses of technology are not predetermined, as people often develop completely different applications that contradict or contest the creators’ intentions. Böhme also reminds us that technology is not only about something outside of ourselves: given the ways it intersects with human bodies, we are also transforming into what Donna Haraway terms ‘cyborgs’.

Böhme suggests that due to the uncontrollable and invasive impact of technification, contemporary architecture is now about the ‘aesthetics of atmospheres’ it creates both externally (sociourbanistically) and internally (socio-psychologically). Building exteriors transmit symbolic messages, while the emotive atmospheres of interior spaces, technologically enhanced, mix visual/objective and spatial/subjective feelings into bodily sensory experiences. Böhme claims that everyday aestheticisation under capitalism results in a new architectural paradigm of designing ‘stage settings’. These are manipulated by various groups to affect how audiences perceive and receive visual/spatial atmospheres. Our Year 3 students have chosen their own route to explore this topic.

Studio 3A

Year 3

Jihoon Baek, Salyme Gunsaya, Matan Michaels, May Parkes-Young, Charlie Timms, Thaleia Tsoutsos, Forrest Xie, Yifei Yu

Critics: Kirsty Badenoch, Nat Chard, Daniel Dream, Stephen Gage, Ifigeneia Liangi, Debórah Lopez, Emma-Kate Matthews, Sara Shafiei

Partners: Dimitris Antonakakis, Stelios Giamarelos, Jon Goodbun, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates; Níall McLaughlin Architects, Piercy & Company Architects, Manolis Stavrakakis, Amin Taha (Groupwork), Kostas Tsiambaos

3A.1, 3A.3–3A.4 Jihoon Baek ‘Rejuvenating the Veins of Tidal Marsh’. The project envisions retrofitting London’s postindustrial waterfront landscape into an inhabitable energy reserve that can mitigate social isolation and fuel poverty. The Greenwich Peninsula exemplifies current urban regeneration practice where homes are isolated sanctuaries and the River Thames’s ecology is engaged with passively. By reshaping the emotive language of London’s vanishing coal-gas technology into a new ‘third landscape’, this riverside rewilding proposal embodies a marshland blanket that embraces humans, non-human organisms and energy, holistically creating a symbiotic community mediated by the Thames’s daily tides. The scheme incorporates reused industrial infrastructure integrated with an anaerobic digesting system and water-source heat pump chain, fostering a lifestyle of responsible sustainability.

3A.2, 3A.5 Forrest Xie ‘London à la Carte’. The current food system within the UK is severely broken. From the mid-17th century, the Agricultural Revolution shifted production methods and efficiency processes to reduce labour costs and make foodstuffs more affordable for end consumers. However, the costs of producing food were transferred from monetary to environmental. In this design research project, a new link between rural and urban is explored within the context of London, reinterpreting the centuries-old practice of nomadic pastoralism and communing. The investigation reveals how a now-urban model of transhumance can serve as an educational link between consumption and production, unlocking unused land within a dense metropolis and feeding those who need it most.

3A.6, 3A.8 Matan Michaels ‘This Market Has Been Murdered’. This study investigates the transformative potential of community-driven approaches, reenvisioning the use of London’s council-owned vacant land. By examining the architect’s role in mediating between diverse stakeholders and design ambitions, it advocates for a shift towards inclusive practices by engaging local communities in all design decisions. This methodology focused on retrofitting Watney Market and surrounding estates in Tower Hamlets. It proposes a new market concourse, courtyards for community gatherings and a new entrance to Shadwell underground station. Dialogues with stallholders, residents, visitors and the borough council revealed untapped conversations. Visits to the London Metropolitan Archives assisted in designing an up-to-date retrofitted building that is sensitive to Watney Market’s historical legacy.

3A.7, 3A.9 Yifei Yu ‘Abbey Mills Regeneration Project’. As pressure on London’s sewer system increases, especially on heavy-rain days, raw sewage regularly spills into the Thames. In response, the UK government is actively implementing and constructing a ‘super-sewers’ programme under the Thames to cope with the discharge of mixed sewage from London’s sewage and rainwater systems. To reduce the pressure on the mixed sewage discharge, a new deep tank has been built at Abbey Mills, one of the most famous pumping stations in the city, to store surplus water. This project seizes on this new semifreshwater natural resource to create a new water cycle within an eco-park. It both renovates the buildings of the old pumping station and provides a flower market, studios, greenhouses, communal spaces and filtration centres.

3A.10–3A.11 Charlie Timms ‘Industrial Histories’. The theme ‘Transformative Technologies’ implies the discovery or introduction of game-changing and era-defining technologies. What’s more interesting is the impact on older technologies that have often been discarded, abandoned and forgotten. How can such spaces be retrofitted and re-inhabited while preserving their collective history? We are familiar with spaces like

the oil tanks at Tate Modern, which, although unique and well-suited to their current role, bear no resemblance to their past. This project investigates how retrofits can incorporate these forgotten legacies, preserving them through future use. The study proposes the reuse of an abandoned reservoir in Finsbury Park, revitalised by recreating communal brick-making kilns. These can also be used as communal kitchens as part of the reservoir’s repair.

3A.12–3A.13 May Parkes-Young ‘The Weight of Water’. The project uses poetry and various forms of illustration to offer new ways to reimagine abandoned or derelict urban spaces. Its three research threads include humanitarian architecture, handmade drawings and the concept of architectural utopia. Each is explored by combining illustrations with ideas on retrofitting abandoned urban spaces. The culmination of this work is a graphic novel based on a collection of poems, The Weight of Water, which tells the story of a Polish girl migrating with her mother to a derelict flat in Croydon. Black-and-white hand drawings are accompanied by a utopian version of the story, told through illustrative coloured renders of a revived Croydon housing block, highlighting the impact of proper design.

3A.14–3A.15 Salyme Gunsaya ‘House of the Street’. In earlier times in London, street and domestic spaces were an indivisible entity, as compact living conditions made public interaction inevitable. Rapid growth and social change led to a separation between the home and the public realm, severely impacting community bonding. Amid the current cost-of-living crisis, this project explores a new urban model that mediates between domestic comforts and public interactions. It focuses on Bethnal Green’s Boundary Estate, London’s first social housing scheme. Engagement with local residents is central to the study, with St Hilda’s East Community Centre serving as the focal point for redevelopment. Interviews and workshops were conducted with residents and community members aged 23 to 93, using models and drawings as tools for consultation.

3A.16 Thaleia Tsoutsos ‘Revitalising Smithfield: A Restoration of London’s Architectural Soul’. Within the City of London, numerous listed buildings have lost their original design intent amid rapid redevelopment. Smithfield Market stands as a testament to London’s social history, its architectural narrative bearing witness to transformations over the centuries. However, recent redevelopment plans threaten to obscure the market’s original character. This project examines Smithfield’s history to explore how reusing older buildings can enhance social and community facilities. Rooted in Smithfield’s historical response to Victorian-era food shortages, the intervention addresses the NHS’s current imperative for social care spaces. By examining Smithfield’s intrinsic characteristics and exploring revitalisation strategies, a design intervention emerges, emphasising atmospheric and sensory experiences. Leveraging lightweight, adaptable materials and structures, it orchestrates a narrative journey within the old meat market, from open ground-floor public space to intimate spaces dedicated to social care above.

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Old Knowledge New Knowledge

Nat Chard, Emma-Kate Matthews

The third year of MSci provides an opportunity to develop research methodologies, and this year we explored how architectural knowledge is made. While some architecture sub-disciplines rely on explicit knowledge, especially regarding technology, designing relies heavily on personal experience and tacit knowledge. To construct this knowledge, we engage in a variety of poetic and practical acts where we test our speculations. While this is a faster way of constructing knowledge, there is another method where ideas are developed incrementally over generations. Here, architecture begins to embody a knowledge of place, available materials, climatic and cultural conditions, and an evolving skill base. One of the thrills of architecture is how it gathers numerous individual ideas and attributes from various disciplines in a way that others can comprehend.

To help students gain a foothold we examined the acoustic character of their chosen sites in Hastings. They designed and built instruments to activate their sites while attempting to uncover their potential. Others developed acoustic strategies to understand their sites. In constructing these pieces, we were interested in the assembly of old and new knowledge in whatever discipline the instrument might fit, an interest we pursued in the subsequent building projects.

We saw how these individual pieces and their performance could become part of a larger ecology with each other and the place in which they are situated. Once ideas are formed in this context, the pressures of translating them into architecture are also reduced as they necessarily require poetic leaps that go beyond the lessons learned in the research. At the beginning of term 2, we travelled to Barcelona to see examples of where new and old knowledge coexist. We also observed fabrication technologies, both old and new. For instance, we visited the studios of the musical group Cabo San Roque, renowned for their experimental instruments, which include a repurposed washing machine and a cello made from a suitcase. We also visited many of Antoni Gaudí’s buildings to understand how analogue and digital methods of modelling and fabricating space have developed concurrently during the lengthy and ongoing period of their construction.

Studio 3B

Year 3

Rebeca Allen Tejerina, Pauline Comte, Anda Guinea, Charlie Hayles, James Kennedy, Yan Yu (Charisse) Kwong, Jayne Lee, Raihan Syed, Janssen Wong, Jennifer Hong Chi Yang

Critics: Mark Burry, Laia Torrents Carulla and Roger Aixut Sampietro (Cabo San Roque), Florence Hemmings, Joe Johnson, Perry Kulper, Barak Schmool, James Wilkie

Special thanks to Richard Moore and staff at Source Park in Hastings, and to Simon Daw and Alex Giles at OBX for the tours

3B.1–3B.2 Anda Guinea ‘Translation and Transposition of Sound: Site Calculus and its Parametric Paraphernalia’. This architectural programme explores a boat-building and integration centre through a unique approach that transposes site notation into a speculative building method. It suggests that knowledge is embedded within the colour-coded transcript, which is dimensionalised through 271 bespoke tools and uses. This parametric interpretation of object relationships quantifies them numerically, turning each tool into a repository of the site’s hidden calculus. The research methodology and its studies using clay and light mediums could potentially be used widely in architectural practices during the initial stages of design inception.

3B.3 James Kennedy ‘The World Shall Come to Me’. This project explores the human auditory experience in Hastings, using self-made tools to study site acoustics. It focuses on sound within three spaces: emission, reception and the threshold space in between. The project raises several research questions about the potential, existence, manipulation and impacts of non-linear sonic and visual thresholds. It also explores their social significance and the role of transformative technology in connecting distant spaces and altering the listener’s perception and understanding of their surroundings.

3B.4–3B.5 Raihan Syed ‘A Jig for a Jig’. This project researches the conceptual and practical role of the jig in manufacturing and architecture, focusing on body contact and resonance. The study led to the creation of a custom musical instrument and a plan for a choreographed building. The project developed through the learning of different traditional woodworking skills and digital processes, combining traditional workmanship with new and emerging fabrication techniques, demonstrating the jig’s capacity to translate resonant activity and inform architecture.

3B.6–3B.8 Charlie Hayles ‘Found in Translation’. Architectural traditions and the acoustic characteristics of buildings have fundamentally developed in tandem with the music played within them. Jazz, for example, has significantly influenced the design of jazz clubs as the genre evolved. This project proposes an adaptable, beach-sited jazz club as an architectural embodiment of music that changes and evolves with the music itself. It explores modes of translation between audio and spatial realms as a design methodology. Additionally, the project develops a series of construction tools for reshaping the ground and materials needed to create these spaces.

3B.9 Janssen Wong ‘Chasing Phantoms’. This project started by exploring the acoustic characteristics of various sites in Hastings, with a focus on sound perception, distortion and ambient music properties. The Brassey Steps, with its intriguing echo, was a particular area of interest. The project then explored concepts of imitation using software and physical prototypes to recreate and manipulate sound. The final phase of the project involved developing a brief for a more physically tangible architecture that synthesises the requirements of a luthier (a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments) and a small observatory, thereby exploring the parallels between light and sound.

3B.10–3B.11 Jayne Lee ‘Collective Reciprocities’. The building project developed from an initial study of the Chinese dizi flute, transforming this solo-played instrument into a collaborative ensemble. A three-vessel instrument, made from draped polymer clay and housing pipe configurations, requires responsiveness to water and cooperation between players to modulate pitch. The building programme is a workshop as well as a rehearsal and performance space for local Hastings musicians. Its architecture balances the need for

acoustic isolation with acoustic projection. Rooted in ‘collective reciprocities’, each component functions independently, yet is crafted with precision and mutual consideration to form a cohesive whole.

3B.12–3B.13 Jennifer Hong Ci Yang ‘Sensory Symphony Space for the Visually Impaired’. The project begins with an exploration of musical definitions, patterns, players and instruments. Starting with the morin khuur (a traditional Mongolian horsehead fiddle), it examines cultural and historical influences on musical instruments. A visit to Hastings expands on this by considering how local ground conditions shape our sonic environment. This results in a record-player-like device that excites a series of cast ground surfaces. The project evolves into an architectural proposal for a social space for visually impaired people, using materiality and tactility to guide users throughout the building.

3B.14–3B.15 Yan Yu (Charisse) Kwong ‘Somatic Synergy’. This proposal comprises two projects that explore relationships between the body and space. The first utilises the sonification of space and tactile vibration to establish an intimate relationship with the built environment, transforming barriers into communicative bridges. The second project, an architectural proposal for a ‘Balance Spa’, challenges inhabitants to recalibrate their sense of balance, promoting self-exploration through movement and a state of hyper-awareness. Both projects highlight the potential for architecture to engage with the body in novel ways.

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Reclamation and Regeneration

Kirsty Badenoch, Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi

Studio 3C

This year Studio 3C used the ideas of reclamation and regeneration to propel a diverse set of research projects. We explored the multifaceted nature of these terms: reclaiming can mean reuse, recycling or taking back something like land, power or collective narratives. Regeneration can encompass social, political and physical considerations as well.

Students delved into the work of idiosyncratic practitioners whose practice blurs disciplinary lines, such as designing, publishing, making and building. Our references included Niki de Saint Phalle, who explored political ideas through sculpture, architecture, drawing and the production of luxury consumer goods, living on a construction site for many decades while creating her work. We also studied Walter Maria Förderer, who practised at the intersection of sculpture and architecture; Luigi Serafini, an architect and ceramicist who documented imaginary worlds; Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison, who use photography to build fantastical dreamscapes; Sandy Skoglund, a fellow constructor of the otherworldly; and the wordless stories of David Wiesner. These references framed discussions on how space, form and experience can be explored beyond conventional buildings and how complex political issues might be addressed through popular and engaging methods. Around this, we considered the role that everyday objects might play in the communication of poignant and critical narratives.

Throughout the year, we encouraged design research in any medium that suited the specific moment of a given exploration: hand drawing, rendering, picture book formats, digital drawing, prototyping and more. Switching between different scales and approaches helped us to consider how reclamation and regeneration can be simultaneously explored through diverse objects and processes. Ideas of function and performance were considered through a poetic lens, alongside the capacity of symbolism and decoration to act as tools for communication. Innovative approaches to assembly and reassembly were also explored.

In relation to adaptive reuse, heritage and memory, the unit looked to both the past and future, examining the role of various technologies in enabling these themes. We explored how different materials, components and contextual factors can be handled and assembled in imaginative and symbolic ways, holding the potential for practical and social change.

Year 3

Jia Qi Chan, Jenny Cheng, Nikki Ifeobu-Zubis , Laura Lui, Nan (Esther) Mei, Sara Mir, Aiala Samula Lopez, Jasmine Shek, Gini Smart, Lizhe (Enrique) Zhang Zhuo

Critics: Hadin Charbel, Nat Chard, Egmontas Geras, Murray Fraser, Déborah López Lobato, Emma-Kate Matthews, Thomas Parker, Sara Shafei, Michiko Sumi

3C.1 Jia Qi Chan ‘The Conserved Theatre’. Set in the year 2124, two centuries after the ‘golden age’ era of the Peranakans, the scenario portrays a heritage shophouse undergoing multiple transformations to align itself with the functions of a community-driven Peranakan cultural hub. Here, visitors and shophouse keepers engage in shaping their own interpretation of authenticity through a blend of cultural hybridisation, curation and conservation, perpetually keeping the shophouse in a state of continual evolution. The notion of authenticity is redefined as a collaborative effort within the community, where cultural hybridisation is embraced, traditions evolve and reverence is paid to the Peranakan heritage.

3C.2 Lizhe (Enrique) Zhang Zhuo ‘Reclaiming Spolia’. This project reintroduces architectural knowledge into a productive space where the building process is celebrated. It challenges the current context of the built environment, where buildings are instruments of financial accumulation, and transforms it into a social ritual. The performative nature of this cycle forges a new identity for the Gibraltarians. The project explores a hypothetical scenario where Gibraltar, as it existed in 1969 and facing isolation, is forced to rebuild itself, where new resources cannot be extracted but only unearthed from previous construction. This will cultivate a new material culture and a landscape that is in a constant state of building, where waste materials are cannibalised and metabolised into the system.

3C.3 Nan (Esther) Mei ‘Moments of Multiples’. This project revolves around the remodelling of historically symbolic structures in Haggerston Park, London, from the last century. It explores the mechanism of interaction between plush toys and people within a modern recreational context, aiming to revitalise the park’s relics and enhance human interaction. The design investigates the visual impact of cuteness and combines different textures to engage sensory perceptions, stimulating the production of oxytocin to improve interactions between people and the park as well as among individuals. The various structures in the park serve as both the main spatial elements and enlarged parts of toys. By continuously altering scales, the design immerses people in an architecture of magical realism.

3C.4 Jenny Cheng ‘Long Shui (Dragon Water)’. Based on feng shui principles related to therapeutic architecture, this project proposes a healing retreat located on the terraced rice paddies in Southern China. Visitors will experience a cleansing ritual from the rainwater falling and dripping from the undulating roofs, which act as a filter and storage system, diverting and controlling the flow of water. As dragons in feng shui fly from the top to the bottom of the mountain and, in this case, through the building, the collected rainwater is considered blessed with good fortune. Throughout their six-month stay, visitors will go through the laborious and yet peaceful motions of growing, harvesting and eventually consuming the rice.

3C.5 Gini Smart ‘More Is Enough’. This project responds to the rapidly growing demographic of the ‘Mixed’ category in the 2021 UK census. Personal racial self-identity is explored through filmmaking and world-building to navigate the vulnerabilities and sensibilities of my lived experiences. Because I am both Korean and British, this project traverses two spheres acting in conjunction, looking at the interactions and tensions of my racial and cultural heritage.

3C.6 Nikki Ifeobu-Zubis ‘The Afro Odyssey’. Rooted in destabilising the ‘bad hair’ narrative and addressing the erasure of African social consciousness embedded in Afro hair culture and rituals, this project is framed at the intersection of adornment, identity, folklore and rituals. The Afro salon is envisioned as a shrine to the Black body

and its adornment, with community as the cornerstone of this space. The project examines how the rituals of care in Afro hair styling can extend beyond the intimate interactions between stylists and clients to influence a broader community and urban environment.

3C.7 Laura Lui ‘Tidal Euphonies’. Traditionally a fishing village, Hong Kong has transformed into a global metropolis. During this transition, the Tanka people, an indigenous group of boat-dwellers, faced significant discrimination and attempts at assimilation. This project features a series of structures – the dock, the pontoon and the boat – that embody the life of fishermen, bridging land and water while amplifying the ocean’s sounds and knowledge. By integrating musical instruments, the ocean plays a tune, connecting people with the sea. This project celebrates and preserves Tanka heritage, fostering appreciation for their cultural contributions and promoting sustainable coexistence with nature.

3C.8, 3C.10 Jasmine Shek ‘The Migrating Archive’. The project unfolds in a suburban house in Vancouver, home to a migrant Hong Kong family. At its heart is the grandmother, who transforms an unused room within the house into a vibrant cultural archive for both her family and her neighbourhood. Shaped by five decades of changes, the project challenges the fragility of traditional archives by encouraging the exchange of tales and objects, weaving cultural rituals and old traditions into the fabric of the family’s diasporic lives. Using furniture, lighting and inanimate objects, the project narrates the grandmother’s efforts to preserve stories and heritage amid Hong Kong’s cultural shifts. By embracing the blending of old truths with new alternate realities, the future of this dynamic archive remains open-ended and ever-evolving.

3C.9 Aiala Samula Lopez ‘This Land, I Call My Own’. This project centres on exploring the differences between cultural preservation and conservation, examining how drawings can be used as a communicative tool to deploy a human-led narrative of architectural processes through storytelling and world-building.

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Selfish

Johan Hybschmann, Matthew Springett

Studio 4A

In our digital lives we are more connected and more self-aware than ever before. Modern communication streams have enhanced our broader cultural understanding of the world, but this has also brought with it greater self-reflection, self-obsession, self-deprecation, bullying, misinformation and paranoia. In this context the idea of the self appears to be shifting, at least online. Is there an argument to be made for a new ‘radical humility’, where ideas of authorship, credit, autocratic decision-making and self-motivated advocacy are rejected, giving way to the possibility of harnessing the enormous democratic potential of the information age in creating places which are truly in the best interests of everyone encountering them?

Throughout history, societies have explored many ways of bringing people together, ranging from individualistic to altruistic ideologies, with architecture and planning often being used as tools for testing/promoting these ideas and recalibrating mistakes. The role of the architect/planner has been to make decisions about how to balance the self-interest of the individual against the collective good of the community, but where are we heading now? And what is the impact of a ‘self-obsessed’ mind in the generation of new architecture for our own communities? Is the decision-making process of the architect inherently ‘selfish’, and, if not, how should we demonstrate real connectivity to the communities we design for? Can architects become less ‘selfish’ and have more social awareness through the design processes and strategies they adopt?

Studio 4A explored the idea of self in the context of designing for the greater good. We pursued routes to better futures and encouraged the exploration of the counterarguments to ‘selfishness’. Can ‘selfobsession’ be steered to become ‘design obsession’ for the wider good so that our designs as architects are meaningful for us all? We wanted to emphasise cultural, social and environmental sustainability by working with existing buildings, infrastructures and communities. We looked at how building typologies conceived through a personal agenda can promote more altruistic architecture and public spaces for us all. The studio also fostered altruistically designed buildings that improve their context and the lives of the people who inhabit them.

Year 4

Maria Paola Barreca, Xan Xacobo Goetzee-Barral, Samuel Jackson, Ismail Mir, Dominic Nunn, Toby Prest, Hanna Eriksson Södergren, Shuhan (Hansen) Wang, Anna Williams, Jun Zhang

Technical tutor and consultant: Kevin Gray

Critics: Dimitris Argyros, Doron von Beider, Kenneth Fraser, Thomas Parker, Kay Sedki, Jane Wong

4A.1, 4A.22 Toby Prest ‘The Manchester / Peak District Dialectic’. The project explores the dialectical relationship between Manchester and the Peak District. Historical pressures for industrial development have resulted in mutual colonisation, with resource generation and population creating a nuanced interdependent relationship. Recently, southern pressure for a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ threatens to expand and homogenise the city with little consideration for the countryside, which risks severing these numerous links and silencing the northern voice. Through themes of translation, the project interrogates the local identity of these interconnected places and proposes twin buildings that span both sites, hosting an array of debates and providing space for research and offices for trade unions. Consequently, the proposal becomes a symposium of the local landscape and heritage contexts providing a backdrop for conversation.

4A.2, 4A.16–4A.17 Anna Williams ‘Barrington North: The Geology of a Village’. The project explores concepts of transplantation, both of identity and material. It envisages a future design strategy for the rapidly changing parish of Barrington in response to an influx of 15 million tonnes of urban soil. The project follows the journey of the incoming urban soil from the high-speed railway network, High Speed 2 (HS2), through its infilling of a local quarry to its role in the creation of a new village typology. It narrates the potential of Barrington North if an opportunistic approach is taken towards the current context, thereby fostering a unique sense of place derived from two intertwined material systems: that of extraction (Barrington Cement Works) and that of infilling (HS2 landfill). The project proposes a design that respects their legacy and supports everyday life within a new artificial topography, using the incoming soil for practical advantage and in forging a new identity for the parish.

4A.3–4A.4, 4A.18 Maria Paola Barreca ‘Transitional Dwelling’. Located in Hackney, this project addresses current housing disparities and instability in an evergrowing urban context. It recognises the housing crisis and the challenges faced by the local authority in providing sufficient housing, offering a solution that does not just serve as a transient dwelling but fosters a sense of permanence and stability for its inhabitants. Through the architecture, a sense of shared belonging to the community is created as well as social housing that can focus on creating spaces of care and encounter. At its core the project is a study on community impact, leveraging efficient design, careful consideration of materials and simple yet effective construction techniques. It explores how urban interventions on otherwise disused sites can make housing schemes viable and sustainable options in unequal urban environments.

4A.5–4A.6, 4A.19 Shuhan (Hansen) Wang ‘Communal/ Sacred’. The rapid development of the London Borough of Hackney often leaves many of its communities neglected. The project celebrates the overlooked by transforming local social rituals into physical spaces. These facilitate dialogue and interaction between community members, reviving and projecting Hackney’s unique community identities into the wider city. A semidisused bus garage in the neighbourhood, the Ash Grove Bus Garage, is retrofitted into a terminal where a variety of communal functions can converge, forming a cathedral that celebrates the value of the community.

4A.7–4A.8, 4A.23 Jun Zhang ‘Deptford Creekside Centre’. This project is located next to a tidal creek on the south bank of the River Thames in southeast London. It focuses on nature, education, community and leisure, aiming to become a visitor attraction that benefits the local economy and highlights the area’s artistic, natural and industrial characteristics. The centre sits within a

carefully designed landscape that capitalises on its waterside location, featuring algae and wildflower scenery. The buildings are used as a lens to enhance the viewing experience, creating moments of escapism and celebrating the industrial context.

4A.9–4A.11 Dominic Nunn ‘Between the Becoming’. This project is based in Euston, specifically on the demolition land left in the wake of the national infrastructure project HS2, and the indefinite delay of the new Euston Station. The proposed ‘Euston Safeguard Centre’ intervenes in a place which has been interrupted in its process of becoming. Using architecture assembled from stockpiled out-of-use construction materials, the proposal is designed to undergo processes of expansion and contraction in synchrony with the overtaking of the territory for the future construction site. The scheme consists of a new local civic centre and hostels for construction workers based at the other HS2 construction site at Old Oak Common. This programme fosters a dialogue between those who are ‘delivering’ HS2 and those who are ‘receiving’ it.

4A.12–4A.13 Ismail Mir ‘Battersea Maker’s Guild’. This project proposes the creation of a 21st-century guild building for Battersea’s Design and Technology Quarter development. The guild will serve as a hub for designers and the public. A makerspace combines with an exhibition space, with an intertwined programme whereby makers can benefit from both spaces to design, create and exhibit their work. The building is organised around a public courtyard where makers and public visitors can interact, fostering a greater relationship between Battersea’s maker community and the area’s wider inhabitants.

4A.14, 4A.20 Xan Xacobo Goetzee-Barral ‘Liminal Intimacies’. Clapton Community Screen exists as an archive of the ‘queer gaze’, commemorating the journey of intimacy between strangers through a series of staged liminal encounters. Those privy to the arcane phenomena of the queer gaze (If you know, you know ... you know?), explore an increasingly intimate metallic architecture of intersecting sight lines. Otherwise (If you don’t know ...), Clapton Community Screen preserves Lower Clapton Road as a high street and reinforces the building as a community node, through the provision of cultural spaces and a cinema programme. A steel structural framework allows for a reconfiguration of the building framework to accommodate alternate programmes once the archive ceases to exist.

4A.15, 4A.21 Hanna Eriksson Södergren ‘(Un)Conditional Landscape: Augustus Street Horticultural Centre’. The project explores how public eating can be conducted in a more unconditional way in a landscape impacted by the current cost-of-living crisis and food insecurity. It uses research influenced by ideas around the body occupying conditional territory during a meal in the food landscape and to develop it as a programme and brief. The programme is a children’s centre and horticultural centre that share one site just beyond the edge of the HS2 construction site in Euston, nestled in Regent’s Park Estate. The project contributes to the community through its food cultivation, as well as its learning and vocational opportunities, and creates a public eating space that is more unconditional than conventional.

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PG17 students drawing in response to selected original work from the Drawing Matter Collections. Special thanks to Niall Hobhouse and Matthew Page. Drawing Matter, Somerset, 2023. Photo: Yeoryia Manolopoulou

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Programme Directors: Matthew Butcher, Kostas Grigoriadis

The Architecture MArch is one of the leading, professionally accredited Part 2 Architecture programmes in the UK and a pivotal stage in the educational journey of aspiring architects. The programme offers a comprehensive and rigorous curriculum designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills and creativity necessary for successful careers in architecture. At its core, it focuses on advancing students’ understanding of architectural design, theory and practice. Building upon the foundational concepts introduced in the Part 1 programme, students delve deeper into complex architectural issues, exploring innovative design solutions and refining their creative processes.

Teaching in the programme is structured around 12 design units, each with a specialised approach to design and architecture. Historical, theoretical, professional and technical teaching complements and adds to the design units, with modules in the fourth year focusing on building design and realisation and those in the fifth being research-oriented. Students effectively provide content and context to their academic efforts by writing about and designing architecture, as well as scrutinising it as a discipline, practice, culture and career choice.

Our historical success with the annual RIBA President’s Medals continued this year with Kai McLaughlin being awarded a commendation for his fifth-year dissertation. His thesis, supervised by Professor Murray Fraser, investigated his personal heritage and domestic spaces as a biracial individual to expand notions of ‘Japanness’ – a term typically instrumentalised by the Japanese state to essentialise and exclude.

This year we organised, for the second time, an inter-unit event that celebrated diversity in architecture and aimed to connect our present with our past. Each unit invited an alumna or alumnus who graduated between five to ten years ago to present a past project and current/future agenda to inspire our community of students. The very rich work presented ranged from theatre sets in the Royal Albert Hall to timber construction research, and from drawing and painting practices in art and architecture to the design of a housing development in south-east London. Next year we will look deeper into the past, beyond the past ten years, to delve further into the plethora of practice work and realised building construction projects by our graduates. In fact, graduates from the Architecture MArch programme typically go on to be involved in all types of built and speculative projects and occupy key positions across the building construction and creative design industries.

Aiming to also enable connections and ‘porosity’ across units and programmes within the school, this year we again consolidated the term 3 presentations taking place in units into a week-long presentations event. These were open to all students and staff, with the idea being to expose the extraordinary work of our students to their peers, and to enable new discourses and discussions about contemporary design topics and methods.

This work and our overall programme activities would not have been possible without our Programme Administrator, Kelly Van Hecke, our Departmental Tutor, Azadeh Asgharzadeh Zaferani, and all our PGTAs whose work and input help support and shape the programme: Omar Abolnaga, Elizabeth Selby, Ana Moratilla Mayoral, Yichang Sun, Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira da Silva, Tumpa Fellows and Rana Zein. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to them all. Special recognition also goes to Professor Marjan Colletti who has co-directed the programme for the past seven years, contributing to its growth and continued successes leading up to the 2022–23 academic year.

Lastly, all our students and staff would like to dedicate the following pages and this year’s work to Professor Jonathan Hill (1958–2023). His passion for architecture will continue to inspire generations of students in our programme and beyond.

Super Wicked

Laura Allen, Mark Smout

PG11 explores the philosophical and practical overlaps between land use and its associated architectures, technologies, infrastructures and ecologies in both spatial and conceptual dimensions.

These relationships are exemplified by the term ‘Wicked Problems’. These are issues that lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and which are inherently complex, multifaceted and entangled. The ‘Super-Wicked’ dilemmas of climate change consist of problems nested within problems, as well as interactions between natural, designed and social systems. Acting on the consequences of climate change, characterised by high stakes, limited timeframes and moving targets, means continually adapting to their changing nature.

Architecture is intricately linked to both the causes and potential remedies of climate change through the flow of materials and energy. This relationship results in some startling statistics – e.g. buildings consume 36% of the world’s energy and cement production alone causes 8% of global emissions. While the design of buildings and city planning needs to be reimagined, the more revolutionary task is rethinking what and why we build.

To examine the complex relationships between human life and natural environments, we based our studies on the Thames Gateway. Despite the regeneration ambitions of successive governments, this area has not achieved its potential. Students were challenged to propose new urban and landscape environments that are a dynamic outcome of the interplay of cultural systems and this complex territory, which is further complicated by environmental change and an uncertain future. We asked: ‘How can the estuarian exurbs connect the past and present with the most pressing issues of tomorrow?’ and ‘How can the interaction of social, ecological and commercial needs respond to those of the environment?’

We then travelled to Barcelona where the impacts of climate stress are obvious. Practice visits to Flores i Prats and their Sala Beckett restoration project, as well as Ricardo Bofill’s office, inspired students to make design choices that extend beyond ‘drawing board radicalism’. They were motivated to contextualise their work within a global setting of super-wicked circularities, uncertainties and conflicts which are never completely solved, but “at best they are only re-solved – over and over again.” 1

Year 4

Xintong Chen, William Hodges, Jane Li, Sarah Nolan, Freya Parkinson, Wing Tin (Cyrus) Shek, Ian Wille

Year 5

Henry Aldridge, Bianca Blanari, Rio Burrage, Jaiwei Fan, Jennifer Oguguo, Madeleine Rutherford-Browne, Sharon Tam, Ziyue Lorena Yan, Jacqueline Zhi Qian Yu

Technical tutors and consultants: Jennifer Dyne (David Kohn Architects), Stephen Foster (Foster Structures), Martha Voulakidou (Buro Happold)

Thesis supervisors: Paul Dobraszczyk, Daisy Froud, Stephen Gage, Jan Kattein, Anna Mavrogianni, Guang Yu Ren, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Tom Budd, Kostas Grigoriadis, Luke Pearson, Naomi Rubbra, Marc Williams, Max Willing

1. Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, 4 (1973), 155–169.

11.1 Henry Aldridge, Y5 ‘The Chalk Institute: Growing a Stone Architecture’. Chalk extraction for concrete production has resulted in chalk pits with unrealised ecological potential. This project uses waste concrete to precipitate stone – much like stalactites – to produce an architecture of growth in quarries, both in stone and flora. The proposed Institute, which researches chalk ecologies and slowly grows in size, is made of chalk and concrete runoff, and becomes a history of the site, reflecting both its history in extraction and its future growth.

11.2 Rio Burrage, Y5 ‘Flooding and Dwelling’. Following a century of neglect of UK flood-mitigation infrastructure, large areas of settlements in the Thames Estuary are submerged due to rising sea levels and extreme weather. A reinterpreted Tilbury emerges within the tidal marshland, typically hostile to human occupation. By re-evaluating British cultures of building and dwelling, the ‘wicked problem’ of urban flooding becomes an opportunity for reconciliation between the urban and the natural.

11.3 Bianca Blanari, Y5 ‘The Greenhouse Archipelago’. Exploring the horticulture of greenhouses, the project critically assesses both the Dutch model and Almeria in Spain. Using greenhouses as the urban fabric, the design confronts monocultural landscapes, addressing pivotal social and environmental concerns. It delves into issues of food security, resource management, cultivation practices and cultural identity, while also scrutinising the conditions of greenhouse workers and users.

11.4 Sharon Tam, Y5 ‘Neutral Waters’. In an era marked by geopolitical tensions, ‘neutrality’ represents a peaceful and pragmatic approach to navigating the complexities of global discord. Neutral Waters transforms Foulness Island into a neutral venue for international conferences that crave a landscape for the pursuit of common ground. The design serves as a canvas for the synthesis of opposites, inviting delegates to walk its paths, where each step embodies negotiation and moderation.

11.5 Jennifer Oguguo, Y5 ‘Fort Bec: Cultural Backdrops for Hybrid Publics’. This project stages a creative park in Becontree, wearing the guise of an industrial estate. A ‘cultural wall’ transforms Parsloe Park into manifestations of cultural stewardship, envisioning painting halls with picnic spots and local storage with prop archives. If home is one’s castle, Fort Bec is a public fortress, carving public territory into the changing landscapes of the Thames Gateway.

11.6 Wing Tin (Cyrus) Shek, Y4 ‘Bake and Blossom in Swanscombe Quarry’. This project transforms an abandoned chalk quarry into a self-sustaining ecosystem, rebuilding connectivity to the town and integrating an orchard, a compost facility and a flour mill with a bakery school. Emphasising sustainability, community involvement and ecological restoration, the project creates a dynamic model of environmental innovation.

11.7 Ian Wille, Y4 ‘Ceded Eden’. The project imagines a future of political turbulence, climate change and coastal towns out of luck. The Sheerness Urban Marsh Council, established in the year 2061, selectively recycles houses and uses their materials to create the council building, factory and a materials store. These facilities manufacture and deploy infrastructure to produce urban marshes. Decorative columns embellish the building and embody the area’s collective memory.

11.8 Freya Parkinson, Y4 ‘False Dawns’. The Thames Gateway, plagued by half-baked promises, consists of a series of isolated developments along the Estuary. It offers no long-term solution for locals or the estuary. Theme park proposals at Swanscombe are endemic of the ‘super-wicked problem’ of profit and policy over quality of life. This project deters short-term gainers from inhabiting land for ‘new beginnings’ by creating spaces for people and wildlife.

11.9–11.10 Ziyue Lorena Yan, Y5 ‘Managed Retreat: Innovating Sustainable Polder Communities on Swanscombe Peninsula’. This project establishes a test bed and natural reserve on the isolated and windswept Swanscombe Peninsula to experiment with landscape creation and community design. Challenging traditional land-sacrifice histories, this regeneration initiative redefines flood risk management. Resilient polders are created that utilise the incoming floodscapes to accommodate scientific communities.

11.11 Jaiwei Fan, Y5 ‘Artificial Washland’. This project proposes a flood-management landscape that embodies an alternative approach to addressing coastal erosion. A layered model integrates various scales and inspires a playful and participatory design process where a dialogue can unfold between biodiversity hotspots, flood infrastructures and a network of public buildings.

11.12 Jane Li, Y4 ‘The Wasteland Reclamation Facility’. Perched atop the toxic spoil heap of Beckton Alps, the facility explores the integration of ecological rehabilitation and educational functions via the process of myco-remediation. Utilising locally sourced materials, including remnants of former ski infrastructure, the project highlights the transformative potential of brownfield sites and a future where industrial relics become foundational elements for resilient landscapes.

11.13 Jacqueline Zhi Qian Yu, Y5 ‘The Flooding School for Amphibious Living’. Harnessing the precarious liminality of flood-prone quarry sites along the Essex Colne Estuary, a matrix of floating and anchored structures, including habitable vessels, gardens, reservoirs and environmental systems, serve as sponges and playscapes. This architectural landscape experiments with adaptability to enable living with water as a response to an increasingly changeable environment.

11.14 Xintong Chen, Y4 ‘Breached! A Meanwhile Marsh School’. This project provides an immediate solution to the lack of social infrastructure. It reconnects Beam Park in Dagenham back to its peatland origins through interventions that gradually decay and breach the surrounding landscape. The building remains atop a reclaimed permanent marsh landscape that accepts and adapts to an inevitable future of flooding.

11.15 Sarah Nolan, Y4 ‘Letting the Landscape In’. This flood refuge proposal speculates on the use of land and its inundation by future flood events. It rethinks the protection of the vulnerable landscapes of Benfleet and Southend Marshes, as well as their inhabitants during weather emergencies. Paper models are used to explore the process by which building edges can be dissolved into the landscape.

11.16 William Hodges , Y4 ‘In Search of Sand and Slowness’. The project synthesises anthropic activity with natural ecological cycles, utilising solar systems as a method to radically decarbonise intense industrial processes. It transforms an existing sand and aggregate depot into a ritualistic landscape focused on material exploration and production. This newfound regenerative industry seeks to augment the fourth industrial revolution.

11.17 Madeleine Rutherford-Browne, Y5 ‘A Toolkit for Retrofit’. As the largest housing estate in Europe celebrates its centenary, how will the Mayor of London’s so-called ‘retrofit revolution’ impact Becontree’s quirky character? This drawing represents a manifesto through a patchwork of interventions, advocating for mass retrofitting techniques and a sustainable way of living. The estate’s architectural homogeneity makes it the perfect testbed for pushing the limits of what retrofit can achieve.

Continuous Construction

Jonathan Hill, Elizabeth

Dow, Barbara Campbell-Lange

The climate has stimulated architectural, artistic and literary imaginations for centuries. In response to climate change and the need to creatively reuse scarce material resources and to consider how our buildings age, our premise this year is that buildings are always in continuous construction. Building sites often appear ruinous; excavation and demolition are essential to construction. Buildings are most fascinating when they are building sites, offering material, social, environmental, aesthetic and poetic potential. Rather than occurring in a linear sequence, PG12 has been considering how design, construction, maintenance, repair, ruin and demolition can occur simultaneously while a building is in use.

Our unit trip this year was to Venice, where we visited and were inspired by the 18th International Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, a theme which coupled decolonisation with decarbonisation. It was curated by Lesley Lokko, a graduate and a former tutor of PG12. Venice has been the site for many of the unit’s projects this year and has acted as an initial inspiration for others. We explored a certain irony in imagining the future in Venice, a city that is dominated by visions and narratives of its past and forecasts of its doomed future. By connecting the past, present and future, the PG12 students proposed varied, relevant and enjoyable design projects throughout the year. They designed buildings that thoughtfully explore the idea of continuous construction, with the ambition of providing their location with a new future – or even, new evolving futures.

We started the academic year with our dear friend and tutor, Professor Jonathan Hill, but tragically ended it without him. His guiding hand and indomitable spirit has nonetheless been with us along the way.

Year 4

Karolina Adamiec, Hoi Long (Adrian) Lai, Lok Yan (Ryan) Leung, Jordan Panayi, Anna Pang, Hanlin (Finn) Shi

Year 5

Maria Chiocci, Isobel Currie, James Hepper, Edwin Maliakkal, Alastair Manley, Heba Mohsen, Naomi Powell, Alice Shanahan, Jiayi (Silver) Wang, Yuen-Wah Williams

Design Realisation

Practice Tutor: James Hampton

Design Realisation

Structural Engineer: James Nevin

Thesis supervisors: Peter Bishop, Daniel Dream, Murray Fraser, Polly Gould, Jane Hall, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

Critics: Kirsty Badenoch, Laurence Blackwell-Thale, Matthew Butcher, Nat Chard, Marjan Colletti, Sam Coulton, Max Dewdney, James Hampton, Luke Jones, Jan Kattein, Amy Kulper, Chee-Kit Lai, Constance Lau, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Lesley McFagyen, Sophia Psarra, Rahesh Ram, David Shanks, Ro Spankie, Oliver Wilton

12.1 Jiayi (Silver) Wang, Y5 ‘The People’s Opera: Subdivision, Resistance, Resilience’. ‘Life as an opera’ is a profound cultural metaphor in China. This project evaluates the significance, evolution and meaning of Sichuan opera within an interdisciplinary context of art, collective memory, local mythology and history in Sichuan over generations. By proposing landscape theatres in both urban and rural Sichuan, the opera presents itself as a template that frames the daily practices and rituals of the people across the past, present and future.

12.2 Edwin Maliakkal, Y5 ‘The Story Untold’. Influenced by Adrian Forty’s The Art of Forgetting, this project records and narrates the culture and heritage of Fort Kochi in Kerala, India. Situated in a disused 18th-century warehouse, the architecture captures momentary glimpses of the city’s rich cultural narrative. It inspires a new approach to preserving and regenerating abandoned warehouses in Fort Kochi.

12.3, 12.5 James Hepper, Y5 ‘Taking Time: For an Island of Reciprocity’. Embedded in waste-dredged sediment, The School of Tresse Island stays with the trouble. By listening to the landscape and aligning the process of construction with the gradual accretion of sediments, it celebrates slowness in its shifting earthen spaces. Allying with phyto-remedial plants, colour blooms in ash glazes, revealing contamination as much as remediating it.

12.4, 12.7 Isobel Currie, Y5 ‘The Arctic Landscape Assembly’. This project is a reimagining of anthropocentric governance models emerging in the Arctic’s most vulnerable regions, enabling political actors to engage directly with the landscapes and communities they impact. The assembly aligns with the slow, unpredictable rhythms of the seasons and melting ice as parliamentary chambers stage, measure and remediate ecological dynamics across the landscape.

12.6 Lok Yan (Ryan) Leung, Y4 ‘The Venetian Compost Garden’. This memorial is a terramation necropolis that encapsulates the material transformation of human bodies into the ever-changing tidal landscape. The project proposes a new set of funerary rituals that work alongside the burial process of human composting, creating a collective living memorial that evolves with the tides. It redefines the distance and connection between the living and the departed.

12.8 Karolina Adamiec, Y4 ‘Teatro del Popolo’. This project is a theatre assembled by residents using waste materials produced by the Venice Biennale. It serves as temporary storage for the waste and creates a flexible space for the residents. It is also used for existing events and holiday celebrations. At the end of its lifespan, the materials are reused by the residents and become embedded in Venice.

12.9–12.10 Alice Shanahan, Y5 ‘A Gallery of Paint and C(aer)’. Through an atmospheric garden that caters to both people and architecture, this project is an act of care towards the overlooked constituents of architectural space. These include the caretakers who meticulously maintain and care for buildings, alongside the architectural surface and its treatment. The garden is defined by protection and enclosure, while gardening activities are a curatorial act of care.

12.11–12.12 Naomi Powell, Y5 ‘Piccola Scuola di Cinema: School of Composition’. In this polycentric film school, students are invited to imagine multiple futures for Venice. These consist of spaces ranging from the ephemeral to the more permanent, where filming and education are staged. They are intended to act as a catalyst for change while reframing the sustainability of the Venetian social fabric. Set design students construct follies and host a film festival, capturing an archive of its inhabitants and the city’s fading glory.

12.13 Jordan Panayi, Y4 ‘Theatre of Maintenance: An Act of Acqua Alta’. This project celebrates the slow process of a multigenerational stone construction. Acting in accordance with the good neighbour principle, the craftsmen of Venice Backstage supplement the proposed Biennale’s materials to aid in the management of high waters. In reciprocity with the maintenance of Venice, the local Venetians rebuild their diminished societal presence from its very foundations through the act of making.

12.14, 12.20 Yuen-Wah Williams , Y5 ‘Docklands Heronry’. Today Canary Wharf’s tenants are choosing not to renew their 25-year leases, and it is likely that their office blocks will become obsolete, forcing the Docklands into a second dereliction. This project is a fantastical redevelopment of Canary Wharf, focusing on several strategies for regeneration. It repairs the relationship between residents and the wharf, while also future-proofing it.

12.15 Hoi Long (Adrian) Lai, Y4 ‘Legacy of Neglect: Waste Paper Preservation’. This project explores overlooked elements in Venice, including the vanishing art of papercraft, abandoned islands and discarded waste. Drawing inspiration from the principles of bookbinding – protection, unification and restoration – the project intertwines the cultural and historic fabric with wastepaper architecture. It fosters a new community through the production and preservation of paper, celebrating the once-flourishing practice of papercraft.

12.16 Alastair Manley, Y5 ‘Burgess Park Peposo’. In this project, food and social infrastructure pieces are spread across strips of Burgess Park in South London. This helps alleviate the crises of food deprivation and loneliness in the city by enabling commensality (the social practice of eating together) while also promoting civic participation.

12.17, 12.19 Maria Chiocci, Y5 ‘Staging Nostalgia’. This project is an exploration of nostalgia, memory, identity and place. It reclaims Venice’s essence, offering solace to those estranged by the city’s transformation. Using two productions, cinema and theatre, it restores the identity of Venice through a transformative journey across time and scale. Both its function and structure are intricately scenographic and theatrical.

12.18, 12.21 Heba Mohsen, Y5 ‘Tuáth: A New Irish Corpus’. This project creates community-driven infrastructural solutions in rural Ireland by establishing alternative organisational structures. Focusing on autonomy with connection, its spaces enhance local knowledge and practices. Deterritorialising governance and merging oral histories and written policy, the project draws on the Irish language to find new relationships between rural and urban conditions, thinking and operating between Ireland’s split cultural identities.

12.22 Anna Pang, Y4 ‘The Tales of Liminality; Strands of Venetian Red’. This project revives the Scuola Grandi di Misericordia as a Venetian craft school, highlighting the endangered nature of velvet-weaving at Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua. Past and present narratives are intertwined through structures of red silk to envision a place of productive liminality, teetering between the heritage of East and West.

Crafted Horizons

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 somebody who is capable of comprehending the ‘integratable significance’ of specialised findings and able to realise and coordinate the collective potential 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.

As such PG14 is a test bed for exploration and innovation, examining the role of the architect in an environment of continuous change. Our propositions are ultimately made through the design of buildings and through the in-depth consideration of structural formation and tectonics. This, coupled with a strong research ethos, will generate new and unprecedented, one-day viable and spectacular proposals. They will be beautiful because of their intelligence, extraordinary findings and the artful integration of them all into architecture.

The focus of this year’s work revolves around the notion of ‘Crafted Horizons’. The term aims to highlight the architect’s fundamental agency and core competency of the profession to anticipate the future as the result of the highest degree of synthesis of the observed underlying principles. Constructional logic, spatial innovation, typological organisation, environmental and structural performance are all negotiated in a highly iterative process driven by intense architectural investigation.

Year 4

Sarah Hassan M. Alsomly, Gyuhyeon Choi, Peter Garfath, Kei Käppeler, Christopher Langford, Leo Kauntz Moderini, William Pope, Yunzi Wang, David Wong

Year 5

Thomas Bird, Lorand Gonczol, Wen Hua (Michael) Huang, Betty Liang Peng, Ludmila Majernikova, Thomas Parry, Ayaka Sato

Technical tutor and consultant: Damian Eley (Expedition Engineering)

Thesis supervisors: Andrew Barnett, Peter Bishop, Tim Lucas, Filomena Russo, Michael Stacey

Critics: Andrew Abdulezer (Seth Stein Architect), Dennis Austin (daab design), Saman Dadgostar (Zaha Hadid Architects), Nils Fischer (Zaha Hadid Architects), Michael Forward (Populous), Will Jefferies (RSHP), DaeWha Kang (DaeWha Kang Design), Natasha Marks (NK3), Ho-Yin Ng (ALA), Johannes Schafelner (Zaha Hadid Architects), Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid Architects), Petr Šuma (Boele Architects), Ondrej Tichy (Heatherwick Studio), Daniel Wright (RSHP), Heidi Au Yeung (Studio Egret West)

14.1, 14.6 Thomas Bird, Y5 ‘The Northern Spine’. This project introduces a connective urban tissue into Manchester’s postindustrial landscape. It complements a new northern rail network and provides a hub for the regional government to integrate infrastructure upgrades into a holistic intervention. The spine caters to a central neighbourhood and mediates the fragmented inner city with a raised linear park that connects to the nearby Medlock Valley.

14.2, 14.20, 14.23 Ludmila Majernikova, Y5 ‘Rural Monumentality: Štrbské Pleso Cultural Centre’. Situated in the context of an ongoing cultural crisis, the proposal merges representational and infrastructural programmes, reimagining the civic folk monument. Featuring a folk performance hall, exhibition spaces and a transport interchange, it becomes both infrastructurally and socially transformative – a showcase of contemporary architectural expression rooted in its folk tradition.

14.3, 14.24 Yunzi Wang, Y4 ‘Re-imagination of the Tea Horse Road’. Situated in the historic city of Pu’er, China, this project is inspired by the ancient Tea Horse Road, a trade route that historically connected China with the rest of Asia. The project rejuvenates this cultural legacy by combining a tea culture centre with a train station. Utilising bundling bamboo construction methods, the design reflects traditional vernacular architecture while incorporating contemporary design principles and sustainability.

14.4, 14.8 Wen Hua (Michael) Huang, Y5 ‘Agronomy Strata’. Located amid the mountains of Sapa, the project transforms Vietnam’s agricultural sector, incorporating drone technology to create a symbiotic relationship between nature and civilisation. The architecture re-adapts vernacular methods of construction to build large-scale cantilevered floor plates that extend from the slopes, creating a seamless connection between the built environment and the surrounding landscape.

14.5, 14.29 Betty Liang Peng, Y5 ‘The East Iberian Company’. The project is centred around cultural exchange and trade, proposing a Chinese opera house on the coast of Barcelona. In the ever-present discourse between tradition and novelty, the project engages with the dualities of its themes: East and West, past and present, culture and identity. The building reimagines traditional Chinese architecture and brings it into the context of contemporary European design.

14.7, 14.11, 14.30 Ayaka Sato, Y5 ‘Figures Play: The Mind Sports Stadium’. The project explores the structural principles of flexible construction in traditional Japanese timber structures and their application in designing a large-scale stadium in Tokyo. Sited in Odaiba, a hightech entertainment zone, the project proposes a stadium that integrates mecha robots with mind sports as a new entertainment typology, providing Japan’s hyper-aged society with new opportunities.

14.9, 14.12 Lorand Gonczol, Y5 ‘State of the Union Hall, United States of Europe, Paris’. Inspired by François Mitterrand’s Grandes Opérations d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme, this project creates a European assembly hall and intercity transport hub. It hosts debates on the EU’s federal transition, ensuring easy access and public participation. Timber-concrete composite technologies will create an iconic structure symbolising progress, unity and an optimistic outlook towards the future.

14.10 Leo Kauntz Moderini, Y4 ‘Fleet Gin’. This project is a distillery in Farringdon that fulfils three functions. It is a distillery with its stills, infusers, condensing columns and storage tanks, spanning from the basement to the first floor. It is also a bar where visitors can engage with the distilling process and taste the gin. Lastly, it is a roof garden providing a new public space for Farringdon.

14.13, 14.18 Thomas Parry, Y5 ‘The Automotive Renaissance: British Leyland Rebuilt’. Following the UK’s need to reclaim its lost manufacturing sector, the revival of British Leyland sparks an automotive renaissance. As a historic automotive centre, Birmingham is the natural home for the new British Leyland headquarters. Partnering with HS2 and Formula E, the building becomes a gateway hub into the city, with its timber structure reflecting the contrast between nature and machinery.

14.14 David Wong, Y4 ‘Unity Hub’. This project revitalises the communal spirit of Toa Payoh, Singapore, by addressing cultural erosion from rapid urbanisation. Using sustainable cross-laminated timber from rubberwood, it features community-centric spaces like a hawker centre and intergenerational learning areas. The project supports urban sustainability, respects the past while engaging the present, and enriches Singapore’s communal fabric.

14.15, 14.26 Sarah Hassan M. Alsomly, Y4 ‘Bait ElDiriyah’. This project honours the heritage of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, by embracing Najdi architecture and traditional rammed earth construction methods. It also envisions a more sustainable and vibrant future through the design of a metro station. Above the station lies a women’s club – a modern take on women’s majlis, a space for local women to congregate and network.

14.16, 14.25 Peter Garfath, Y4 ‘Letlhakane Mine’. This project repurposes a depleted diamond mine in central Botswana. By capitalising on the unique site conditions, it transforms the landscape through bioremediation and addresses contamination in the mine’s naturally water-filling basin. Designed as an exhibit and educational hub for Botswana’s mining industry, the project primarily uses underutilised Acacia trees as an architectural material, giving it a defining characteristic. 14.17, 14.22 Kei Käppeler, Y4 ‘The Black Forest House’. This project strengthens the identity of the local community by creating spaces which enhance the culture and traditions of the region. It simultaneously serves as a brewery, beer hall, festival centre, farm, garden and river stadium. The large, spanning gable roof, supported by tree-like timber structures, is set into the edge of a mountain, drawing inspiration from vernacular Black Forest architecture.

14.19, 14.27 Gyuhyeon Choi, Y4 ‘Hyundai Seoul Transport Hub’. The project reimagines Korean timber framing for a new central transport hub in Seoul. It improves transportation through the diverse, forward-looking transportation systems of the Great Train eXpress (GTX), Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Purpose Built Vehicles (PBV), while robotic Taekwondo entertains the community and tourists. A supersized set of gong-po provides shelter for the transport systems and re-routes the transit experience, all while celebrating Korean heritage.

14.21 William Pope, Y4 ‘Cissbury Vineyards’. The winery and vineyard at Cissbury Ring is a contemporary take on the traditional English walled garden. It incorporates post and beam vernacular and the stone buttressing of medieval monastic buildings, synthesised in a dynamic way. All programmes of the scheme face into the garden as a uniting element while retaining their own technical function. The massing of the proposal is terraced so that it plays with the landscape and emerges from the hillside.

14.28 Christopher Langford, Y4 ‘Serneus Community Station’. Situated in the Swiss Alps, this contemporary interpretation of alpine architecture reimagines the role of civic infrastructure in community building. Inspired by the local vernacular, notions of the traditional domestic chalet roof, hearth and attic are merged into the civic scale. The duality of the transport infrastructure alongside the cultural spaces forges a new synthetic convergence between the domestic and civic.

Entanglements

Egmontas Geras, Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

PG15 engages in a comprehensive exploration of the symbiotic relationship between ecology and architecture. This endeavour is informed by an evolving discourse surrounding ecological principles, aiming to elucidate how architectural practices have been shaped by an understanding of ecological dynamics. Focusing on the post-Great Acceleration era, students undertake a rigorous examination of the challenges and opportunities arising from the Anthropocene epoch. Through a contemporary lens, students engage in discussions concerning the hyper-dimensionality of objects within the framework of Anthropocene challenges. This intellectual inquiry prompts critical reflections on the intricate interplay among architecture, society and the environment, thereby catalysing innovative approaches to tackle complex contemporary issues.

Central to the unit’s objectives is an investigation into the historical trajectory of ecology’s integration into architectural discourse. By analysing case studies and theoretical frameworks that exemplify the intersection of ecology and architecture, students gain insight into the evolution of architectural methodologies. Moreover, they develop a nuanced understanding of how architectural interventions can positively contribute to ecological resilience, stewardship and sustainability.

Students are exposed to consolidated and emerging concepts that deepen their comprehension of the socio-ecologicaltechnological dynamics of specific locales. Emphasising the role of place as a catalyst for local stewardship, belonging and biophilic architecture, students explore how architecture can seamlessly integrate with and enhance the natural and social fabric of communities.

In the thematic exploration of ‘Entanglements’, inspired by Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, students embark on an illuminating journey into the intricate dynamics of fungal life. Sheldrake’s narrative unveils the intricate web of information exchange, cooperation and solidarity inherent in the natural world, offering a profound perspective on the interconnectedness of all living systems. Through this lens, students are encouraged to reimagine architecture’s role within this complex ecosystem, fostering a deeper appreciation for symbiotic relationships and envisioning transformative design interventions that resonate with ecological dynamics and resilience.

Year 4

Raphael Barber, Tania Farcas, Lavinia Fairlie, Kieran Hayes, Bohdi Horton, Lily Kerr, Catriona Ng, Rebecca Radu, Adrian Truta

Year 5

Desislava Cholakova, Andrei Dinu, Josef Stöger, Daniel Stokes, Mylan Thuroczy, Bianca Zucchelli

Technical tutors and consultants: Daryll Brown, Brian Constant, Martha Voulakidou

Thesis supervisors: Edwina Attlee, Alessandro Ayuso, Polly Gould, Jan Kattein, Oliver Wilton, Guang Yu Ren

Critics: Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Nat Chard, Haeseung Choi, Tom Cubitt, Patch DobsonPerez, Alicia GonzálezLafita, Joe Johnson, Mary Konstantopoulou, Sonia Magdziarz, Tom Svilans, Ivana Wingham

15.1 Bianca Zucchelli, Y5 ‘Cyanobacteria, Doilies and Seamstresses’. This project envisions a new future for the fishing town of Comacchio, Italy, introducing a new element: the cyanobacterial bloom. A new world is reimagined where hierarchies between human and ecological characters are blurred, giving equal importance to forgotten seamstresses, heroic poachers and the lagoon’s ecological reality. An open-air algal textile factory lives through its infrastructural cyborg, boundlessly taking over the town and its waters.

15.2 Andrei Dinu, Y5 ‘Learning to Draw the Deep Sea’. The proposal explores how architectural intelligence can be extrapolated by drawing deep-sea organisms, helping us understand their thought processes. The project focuses on byssus threads and sponge structures, digitally simulating them to examine shading, wind resistance and growth properties. The project encourages new ways of responding to a site – by creating a ‘living’ design.

15.3–15.4 Josef Stöger, Y5 ‘Ceramic Futures’. The project explores 3D-printed, post-tensioned ceramics, which have the potential to be made from the 7,000 tonnes of ‘waste’ clay sent to landfill from excavation and construction projects in London. By deeply understanding the material and digital fabrication process, the system pushes towards a future where we can translate nature’s intelligence through data-driven design methodologies to create buildings in harmony with our world’s ecology.

15.5–15.6 Lavinia Fairlie, Y4 ‘Constructed Landscapes’. This project questions the meaning of nature and how our culture influences our perception of it. Landscape paintings were used to explore how Western culture understands nature, not merely as metaphors but as informative elements that enrich design. Situated on Southbank, the programme is a seed bank and research centre that sits below an undulating public park roof. These functions work to regain city-dwellers’ connection to the natural world.

15.7 Adrian Truta, Y4 ‘Museum of the 366’. Naples is home to countless monuments. The city sees them appear and dissolve, leaving behind a fabric of memories, such as the largely decayed Cemetery of the 366 Fossae. A proposed museum at its heart blurs life, death and stone, distorting the courtyard that once separated them. The cemetery housed over 100,000 souls during its existence. The project pays homage to them, exploring the idea of the contemporary monument and its place in the city.

15.8–15.9 Kieran Hayes, Y4 ‘TimberID: Aggregations for the Forest Library’. Using glued-laminated timber as a research topic, the project explores a new material system, the branching frame, as a series of adjustable components to produce aggregations reconfigurable for reuse. Parallel to this, the project imagines how the timber life cycle may be digitally tracked within a cradle-tocradle framework, proposing a digital twin of the forest and the libraries’ embedded material.

15.10 Catriona Ng, Y4 ‘A Parliament of the Sea’. This project advocates for the sea’s rights and tells the story of plankton. It tackles plankton’s fluctuations by providing a visitors’ centre, research facility, a plankton capture station and buoy maintenance platform on the coast of Dale Fort in Wales. These facilities use old ship parts as a main material source. The project encapsulates the intricate relationship between plankton, humans and the human-made.

15.11 Lily Kerr, Y4 ‘The Migration Hub’. This project transforms an abandoned building into a sanctuary for both migrating immigrants and birds, using sustainable adaptive strategies and biophilic design principles. Incorporating bio-receptive materials and adaptable spaces, it nurtures human well-being and ecological diversity. By reducing infrastructure and enhancing

natural elements, the project creates a harmonious space that supports both displaced people and wildlife.

15.12 Tania Farcas, Y4 ‘HydroRevive: Cultivating a Modular Aquahoja Hydropower Ecosystem Using Water Based Processes’. Set within the Iron Gates I Hydropower Plant in Romania, the project employs bio-polymer hydrogels adaptable to external stimuli, creating responsive architectural elements that regulate the building’s internal environment. By leveraging water processes at both macro and micro levels, industrial and ecological systems coexist harmoniously, setting a new modular ecosystem prototype for hydropower plants to merge social, cultural, ecological and technological elements.

15.13 Bodhi Horton, Y4 ‘The Glass Isle’. This project examines the intersection of mythology and morphology in Somerset. Based around the revered Glastonbury Tor, the project proposes a structure carved into the landscape. It is embedded between ancient natural forces and an uncertain future of flooding and decay. The narrative follows an alternative society situated in a context of change, where the island above them becomes ever more important.

15.14 Rebecca Radu, Y4 ‘Dark Ecology of Middle Peak Quarry’. This project provides a platform for exploring human roles in environmental dynamics. By reimagining disused quarries as dynamic environments where natural and synthetic elements intertwine, the project acknowledges and celebrates the quarry’s historical depth. Rejecting the human/nature dichotomy and anthropocentrism, it proposes humans as integral parts of a larger ecological entity, challenging traditional perceptions of nature and industry.

15.15 Raphael Barber, Y4 ‘Sub_Terra Synapse’. Situated in the post-anthropocentric realm, this project raises the awareness of non-human entities and engages nonhuman actors in the architectural evolution of the project. It acts as a blueprint for future urban developments that nurtures coexistence between humans and the natural world. By using AI, the project simulates insect vision, challenging human-centric perspectives and creating habitats that foster local urban biodiversity.

15.16 Desislava Cholakova, Y5 ‘Intra-Animate Encounters’. The project preserves the disappearing physicality of the Bulgarian periphery through animation. A timber-pewter composite serves as a foundation for an architecture where abandoned objects are buried in the earthen programme of a school. These ‘fossils’ are given the opportunity to resurface over time, and encounters happen at multiple scales.

15.17–15.18 Daniel Stokes, Y5 ‘Lover’s Landscape: A Story of the Volcano, the Temple and the Mollusc’. Set within a ficto-critical future volcanic landscape of the Phlegraean Fields, Naples, the project explores the physicality of lava as a conceptual representation of more-than-human agency. Three non-human protagonists – Solfatara Volcano, the Temple of Serapis and the Mollusc – become points of departure to explore a more-than-human re-inhabitation of the volcanic landscape.

15.19 Mylan Thuroczy, Y5 ‘To Fields Where Frogs and Rabbits Leap’. The project explores the complexities of a multicultural experience revealed through the built form. The methodology draws from the importance of personal possessions of displaced individuals in the spatial acts of reconstructing their homes. The proposal is a dwelling for a Vietnamese-Hungarian family in Budapest, which invites others to experience cultural differences through a curious lens.

For Things to Remain the Same, Everything Must Change 1

Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Nasios Varnavas, Tamsin Hanke

While buildings are rooted in place, they are planetary creations, embedded in a global tangle of relations. Architecture can no longer be conceived as purely site-specific. It intertwines with the local, yet it must evoke a planetary imagination and set planetary boundaries to care for the Earth as our client. Ultimately, buildings need to be gentle with the places they belong to and the Earth system as a whole.

The Earth’s crust is the thickest physical palimpsest of time, accumulating fossils, minerals and natural resources while also tracing an overpowering Anthropocene. Most importantly, this ‘underland’ stores the sediments of human creations, our memories and hopes, and the secrets and failures of our ancestors. As architects, we are in the midst of making ‘the palaeontology of our present’. 2

This year we considered how our creations weigh and form strata for the future. We questioned the relationships between contemporary life and the passage of a longer time, entombed beneath our feet and released by building processes. We imagined buildings as vessels for living and, at the same time, thought of them and the tools of their making as fossils-to-be.

Our field trip to Sicily raised opportunities for an architecture that engages with contemporary forms of cohabitation, history, myth, migration and settlement, resources, the climate and a magnificent natural world. We created projects that are based on a deeper understanding of doing and undoing architecture, the rise and fall of cities and infrastructures, village depopulation and development, temporality, ecology and adaptation, plant and animal habitats.

For PG17 the architect mediates and works dialogically in an emergent culture. Dialogical architects develop processes of design rather than single products. They weave together a creative web of connections so that architecture can benefit from chance encounters, negotiations, and the shared proximity between materials, ideas, social realities and desires.

Year 4

Panagiota Grivea, Peter Holmes, Sarah Kay, Richard Kirk, Ying Tung (Ruby) Ng, Eleanor Pavier, Amy Peacock, Georgie Stephenson, Zekun Tong, Giacomo Francesco Vinti

Year 5

Basil Babichev, Rory Browne, Tessa Lewes, Jeff Qu Liu, Kevin Poon, Thibault Seiji Ryba Quinn, Ben Smallwood

Technical tutors and consultants: James Daykin, Sophia McCracken, Ioannis Rizos, Michael Woodrow

Thesis supervisors: Hector Altamirano, Kelly Alvarez Doran, Jane Hall, Joshua Mardell, Oliver Wilton, Stamatis Zografos

Critics: Jessam Al-Jawad, Felicity Atekpe, Kirsty Badenoch, Colin Herperger, Madhav Kidao, Guan Lee, Francesco Moncada, Will McLean, Thomas Parker, Lorenzo Perri, Sophia Psarra, Mafalda Rangel, Edoardo Tibuzzi, Mike Tonkin, Victoria Watson, Mika Zacharias

Partners: Drawing Matter, Lucia Pierro

1. This title is from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (London: Vintage, 1958).

2. Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2019).

17.1 Jeff Qu Liu, Y5 ‘Engraved Cycles’. Inspired by Sicily’s interdependent scales and geology, the project weaves the life cycles of a marine, human and regenerative lithosphere using local limestone and granite. Located in Addaura, the proposed design features a marina complex and a civil registry, revitalising the old port’s industrial remains. The proposal integrates Sicilian human and material timescales into a sustainable architectural possibility.

17.2 Thibault Seiji Ryba Quinn, Y5 ‘Fragmenting and Condensing Civic Space’. This project reinterprets civic space in the context of dynamic sociopolitical and geological forces shaping Palermo. The revealing of hidden underground waterways and railway tracks overlaps with the connection between institutional power and local people. The fragments of the jigsaw of diverse public spaces are condensed as a common ground for the multicultural people of Palermo.

17.3 Zekun Tong, Y4 ‘Water Field Islands’. An open kindergarten is proposed within a public landscape on a reclaimed coastal habitat in Palermo. The landscape negotiates digital scripting and physical modelling in the abstraction of water. The buildings provide various children’s learning spaces for the nearby marginalised community. A playful, light and airy environment is created through the use of wooden trusses and waterreed cladding, locally sourced.

17.4 Peter Holmes, Y4 ‘All That’s Left Behind’. Many buildings in Prizzi stand abandoned due to depopulation. Should we preserve the hill town as an edifice, or extract its stone to build anew? Prizzi is carved up, exploited for its material resources and renewed to meet the challenges of its reduced population. What is justified when all gains are tied to a material loss?

17.5 Eleanor Pavier, Y4 ‘Welfare Island Hostel’. This project explores the retrofit and reclamation of Giarre’s 1985 abandoned Olympic Polo and Athletics Stadium. Addressing unprecedented environmental and agricultural challenges, this hostel sits on a key migratory path for tourists, refugees and job seekers, and uses the stadium’s foundations to emerge as a testbed for radical agrotourism and revolutionary education.

17.6 Ying Tung (Ruby) Ng, Y4 ‘Casting, Imprinting and Constructing’. The project explores material contingencies through the construction of physical models. The collection of models demonstrates the experimentation process of a new casting method that uses an elastic membrane to enhance material performance and capture the expression of materials as they transition from a liquid to a solid state.

17.7 Ben Smallwood, Y5 ‘The Notifier of the Anthropocene’. The project is located in Sicily, specifically at the island’s largest landfill. The building serves as an archive that interacts with the worsening conditions of flooding, material extraction and waste. The structure adopts the haphazard Sicilian tiled roofs to house proxy records and apparatus that naturally scar, stain and erode the building, recording the worsening climate.

17.8 Tessa Lewes, Y5 ‘Hades and Persephone’. This project is a spatial manifestation of the Sicilian myth of Hades and Persephone. The architecture is an extension of the landscape, offering a poetic spatial journey through a landscape of divine ritual. A farm adapted to a future climate sits above an excavated myth-telling theatre. The project preserves the divine, dramatic and eternal narratives of Sicily’s mythical past.

17.9 Sarah Kay, Y4 ‘Incompiuto’. This project engages with an incomplete building, ‘the palace of concrete’, in the unfinished town of Librino. It explores material reuse through processes of carving and demolition, allowing light, air and space for gathering. The building builds and unbuilds itself, mirroring the cycles of construction and demolition seen in many of Sicily’s cities today.

17.10 Richard Kirk, Y4 ‘The Hill of Shame’. In Pizzo Sella, a mountainside is scarred by illegal mafia construction. Imagined in phases, temporary architectural installations of a living herbarium provide infrastructure for both the demolition of politicised ruins and a simultaneous cultivation of restorative gardens. Grounded in a culture of site-specific reuse, material reclamation defines the architecture, allowing the materials by which the mountain was defaced to enact its restitution.

17.11–17.12 Rory Browne, Y5 ‘Towards Slow Heritage’. The project proposes minimal landscape infrastructure within the Necropolis of Pantalica’s UNESCO buffer zone. A typology of platforms and plinths enhances visits to the site while small-scale archaeological, film and music festivals activate it seasonally. The phased proposal nurtures a slower connection to the land, offering a temporal recognition of the site and the dynamic rhythms that drive it.

17.13 Georgie Stephenson, Y4 ‘Born From Ashes’. Influenced by recent effects of deforestation, Sicily‘s dramatic climate has led to numerous wildfires spreading across the region. At the heart of Monte Pellegrino, the project bridges the often blurred boundaries between architecture, landscape and fire. Reflecting the revival of the fire-damaged forest, the project illuminates the potential timber architecture can have in wildfire-prone areas, reimagining the fire to protect and preserve.

17.14 Basil Babichev, Y5 ‘The Proportional Path: Sowing Seeds of Coexistence’. In Sicily, the borghi are villages built in the early 20th century to politically indoctrinate rural populations. Today, many remain in ruins due to decolonisation, tourism and rural marginalisation. This project addresses attempts at reviving these villages as tourist centres by occupying an incomplete viaduct and using salvaged borgo materials that are consolidated to liberate areas of land.

17.15 Panagiota Grivea, Y4 ‘Life in Common: Past and Future Realities of a Ruin’. This project approaches Western Sicily’s fragmented context through the life of Poggioreale, an abandoned town. The proposed re-inhabitation uses urban collaboration, cooperative structures and reconstruction as strategies for communal living in a cooperative housing scheme. The project recognises the cyclical nature of human migration by using movie-making to communicate the town’s past and present realities, as well as alternative futures.

17.16 Giacomo Francesco Vinti, Y4 ‘La Pescheria’. The project entails the design of a fish-storing unit in Palermo’s traditional market. A 1:5 sectional model of La Pescheria’s fish-storing unit demonstrates the key mechanisms and systems involved in fish preservation. At this scale, the elements showcase the true materiality and construction processes involved in a 1:1 structure. The model featured has thus been used to illustrate functionality in real life.

17.17 Amy Peacock, Y4 ‘Palermo Citizen’s Advice Bureau’. This project investigates the potential of knitting as an architectural response to the urban neglect of the Albergheria neighbourhood of Palermo. Using the skeleton of an existing building, knitted structures and enclosures form a centre to help local inhabitants in navigating the legal and bureaucratic systems of Palermo.

17.18 Kevin Poon, Y5 ‘Beyond Surface’. The project investigates the reuse of discarded marble, utilising marble ‘waste’ as a primary building material, and embracing the raw and unrefined qualities of stone. Inspired by photographic work of marble quarries, the design uses remnants and ongoing construction processes to add layers to the architecture. It is presented as timeless groundwork that resembles geological formations.

17.7

17.9

Generational Phantoms / East–West Deviations

Isaie Bloch, Ricardo de Ostos

Why should architecture students travel? Some might say it’s to learn from other cultures, but what can they do with that knowledge if they live in places different from their travel destinations? Aren’t the piazzas, temples, boulevards, cafés and sacred domes specific to their local foreign context? We instinctively know the answers to these questions. Learning is not about memorising and repeating, but rather about interpreting, transposing and reconnecting. Deep learning involves weaving one’s own tapestry of ideas, interlinked by the threads of places, impossible structures and characters. This year PG18’s brief was to explore Eastern and Western values as well as the ideas prevalent in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul.

We visited Istanbul to learn from its historical legacy, as well as its modern cultural context and complex urbanisation. Both ancient and modern Istanbul are still home to a wide array of historical and contemporary migratory cultures that share public space and ritual times.

Based on the context of Istanbul, students worked with both intellectual and creative tools. After reading seminars and discussions the unit created an initial platform to challenge contemporary dogmas of cultural appropriation and academicism. Digital tools were utilised to both draw the existing environment and work with concepts of layered syncretism and material hybrids.

One of our students, Edward Chan, designed a building using quarry leftovers and mining paraphernalia, creating an architecture where refined materiality emerges from material waste. Serving as a mental health clinic with semi-public spaces, the architecture offers care through tactility, light and material history. El Hadi Boudouch questioned whether a five-star hotel can be formally exclusive and spatially inclusive. He worked with hand drawings and digital models across scales to design a luxury hotel along the Bosphorus that encourages diverse social encounters. Momchil Petrinski, responding to a massive canal project, proposed an ecological citadel that minimises the impact of megalomanic state projects, where colonnades of flora and fauna blossom among market spaces and community areas.

Studying a multilayered city like Istanbul offered students the opportunity to see culture as dynamic and active, providing a tremendous boost for an architecture that drifts between East and West.

Year 4

Andia Chan, Adnan Demachkieh, Erica Hawking, Ik Hui Lam, Omar Latif, Yi Heng (Zero) Lim, Ioana Petre, Jordan Stulich

Year 5

Heather Black, El Hadi Boudouch, King Long Chan, Ming Chung (Edward) Chan, Silvan Cimpoesu, Nada Maktari, Momchil Petrinski, Noah Robinson-Stanier

Technical tutors and consultants: Rob Haworth, Nick Ling

Critics: Teoman Ayas, Niran Buyukkoz, Peter Cook, Marcoz Cruz, Irem Dökmeci, Jack Moreton, Viviana Muscettola, Yael Reisner, Nic Stamford, Andrei Zamfir, Nicholas Zembashi

18.1, 18.5 Momchil Petrinski, Y5 ‘The Citadel of Alluvial Sanctuaries and Exchange’. The proposal investigates the repurposing of scarred landscapes to challenge contemporary dystopias in the context of Istanbul’s peripheries. It uses the controversial Istanbul Canal megaproject as a base to facilitate cultural exchange, ecological sanctuaries, a market and an exchange hall. The main enclosure constitutes a hybrid building typology of human and ecological inhabitation, facilitating a terraced market, workshops, caverns, internal ecological sanctuaries, congregation spaces and atrium gardens.

18.2 El Hadi Boudouch, Y5 ‘In-between the Sultans Gardens’. The project rethinks the relationship between public and private space within Turkey’s luxury tourism sector. It revisits the city’s Ottoman palaces to contextualise the cultural hybrid that is Istanbul. This image shows how level changes, gardens and strategically placed pathways create spaces used by private guests and outside visitors.

18.3–18.4, 18.11 Ming Chung (Edward) Chan, Y5 ‘A Stone is an Onion’. Rapid urban expansion and excessive quarrying in suburban Istanbul have led to an abundance of ‘leftover’ industrial towns and unresolved mental distress among their inhabitants. Beyond the façade of monumentality and aesthetics, various stone tectonics can diversify the audio-visual qualities of this proposed therapy centre for different sensitivities. Taking cues from Ottoman kiosks, Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and suburban houses, this project’s geometry encourages subtle movement and interaction. From raw stone to rammed walls and translucent veneer, tectonic gradation provides a starting point for patients to explore their relationship and connection with the city.

18.6, 18.22 Nada Maktari, Y5 ‘The Theatre of Myths and Tragedies’. Inspired by legends of Medusa heads in the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, visitors arriving by boat are welcomed with a corridor integrating columns of a hybridised Corinthian and muqarnas structure. The storyteller greets visitors here and guides them. The theatre is inspired by classical Greek architecture. Performers descend from the midst, and plays unfold according to tidal times, flooding the orchestra pit in reflection of the ruin. From the theatre seats, the Asian side of Istanbul is framed, with the axis pointing towards the Maiden Tower, a historic structure steeped in tales of tragedy.

18.7, 18.12 King Long Chan, Y5 ‘Reinterpreting Oil Wrestling’. The project spaces accommodate a variety of activities, allowing for exercising with sports equipment and performances to take place simultaneously. The roof mechanisms enable visitors to rotate rock pieces, altering platform positions to facilitate different events.

18.8 Heather Black, Y5 ‘The Museum of Now (MoN)’. The project challenges the rigid museum typology seen within Europe, which often associates object ‘value’ with subjective ephemeral tastes. It represents an archival and exhibition centre housing artefacts of today. It raises questions regarding how we value artefacts through curating and narrating them into architectural forms.

18.9 Noah Robinson-Stanier, Y5 ‘[UN]Break The Ground’. The project addresses the displacement of the Bostan market farmers from the land surrounding the Theodosian Walls in Yedikule, Istanbul, and to repair the depleted soil condition.

18.10 Jordan Stulich, Y4 ‘Xurtkirin: A Kurdish Record Label’. The project counters the suppression of Kurdish cultural expression in Istanbul by creating XK Records, an electronic record label and nightclub. ‘XK’ stands for xurt (strong) and kirin (action) in Kurdish, symbolising a cultural stronghold and beacon within the city’s urban landscape.

18.13 Adnan Demachkieh, Y4 ‘The Sino-Turkish Exchange Programme’. The renovation of Büyük Yeni Han in Istanbul merges the historic structure with the surrounding cityscape. Featuring restored stone façades and arches, the redesign includes contemporary walkways and public spaces, enhancing accessibility while preserving cultural heritage and creating a blend of tradition and modernity.

18.14 Omar Latif, Y4 ‘Cultivating ‘“Heterochronotopia”’. This project highlights the interaction between building elements and excavated volumes, revealing the exposed limestone wall of the existing structure. It illustrates how structure and inhabitation extend from the limestone wall to the natural park. Exterior activity permeates the building, and the façade and walkway undulate to create interstitial spaces and thresholds.

18.15 Erica Hawking, Y4 ‘The Microcosm for Anthroaquatic Learning’. This educational facility uses the lens of deviation to formulate an architectural response that fragments existing barriers between land and water, density and openness, and human/non-human relationships. By responding to current marine ecology and urban threats, as well as the city’s traditional fishing culture, it introduces a new floating typology for the city.

18.16 Ik Hui Lam, Y4 ‘A Living Heritage Approach to the Yedikule Bostans in Istanbul’. The project investigates architectural solutions to sustain historical alignment and geographical placement between bostans, the endangered historical market gardens in Istanbul, and the Theodosian Walls, the ancient defensive walls of the city, with strong awareness of their UNESCO status and existing cultural heritage.

18.17, 18.20 Silvan Cimpoesu, Y5 ‘Co-located Augmented Hans’. Addressing the politically infused art scene of Istanbul, this prototype highlights the capability of digital technologies to transcend traditional barriers within sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. It advocates for technology integration in revitalising cultural heritage sites within contemporary urban settings. The project proposes digital realms coexisting with physical spaces as new hybrid social infrastructures, reinstating artistic freedom based on a system to present art and share information in an untraceable, decentralised way.

18.18 Yi Heng (Zero) Lim, Y4 ‘StrataMaritime’. This journey through time is not just chronological but also emotional, where intact and damaged artefacts evoke a sense of loss or hüzün. The water feature skylight, casting a reflection line dividing the east and west display zones, accentuates the passage of time and the historical divisions that have shaped the city’s identity.

18.19 Andia Chan, Y4 ‘Parallel Lives’. The Şeker Han, a historical landmark in Istanbul, remains in its existing site, serving as a base for new timber architecture that rises above it. Cutouts are made in the historical structure, exposing passers-by to a scandalous array of life that is typically hidden from public view, all to frame a glimpse beyond.

18.21 Ioana Petre, Y4 ‘The Cihangir Community Health Hub’. The project offers a place to shift the focus back to health in the context of a fast-paced, ever-changing urban environment where green spaces are rapidly diminishing.

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18.5

18.6

18.11

18.12

18.13

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18.20

Neo-Agility (Neo-Aesthetics and Antifragility)

Marjan Colletti, Tony Le, Javier Ruiz

PG20 adopts time-based design processes, enabling designers to envision forms, spaces, behaviours and events in a state of constant transformation. Programmable, interactive and intelligent, this approach does not require any prior expertise. It views architecture and its design as a sequence of interplaying time-based systems. Consequently, our designs manifest as 4D, perpetually evolving scenarios created with advanced computational tools and cinematic techniques, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. We embrace the simulation paradigm, speculating about future architectures and conveying our concepts through time-based cinematic presentations. These are where the realms of poetry and immersive technology converge to craft unprecedented contemporary spatial experiences and strategies, emphasising individual empowerment while honouring collective values. The goal is to provoke critical discourse, incite curiosity and inspire new perspectives on the purpose of architecture.

This year PG20 embarked on a design journey centred on the concepts of ‘Neo-aesthetics’ and ‘Antifragility’. The first suggests a departure from established architectural styles towards innovative and potentially transformative design paradigms. The latter introduces the notion of bio-agile architectural strategies, indicating a shift towards responsive, resilient and adaptable architectures in the face of dynamic environmental and societal challenges.

In term 1, we delved into the ‘neo’ in architecture. Now that sustainability and social justice have gained importance, new architectural paradigms are being developed, breaking free from the rigid boundaries of stylistic ‘isms’ and aesthetic monopolies.

In terms 2 and 3 we explored architectural concepts that merge adaptability with nature-inspired ‘post’-fragile design principles, aiming to create resilient, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing buildings. Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’, we sought to develop design strategies that thrive under stress, becoming stronger and more adaptable over time. Our building proposals, mostly sited in Sweden, were envisioned as living entities with life-cycle phases integrated into their design. They embodied bio-agility through flexibility, sustainability and technology integration. We believe that these principles ensure that our architecture remains relevant and resilient amid unpredictable environmental challenges.

This research-led brief encouraged students to explore, blend, remix and innovate without the burden of 20th-century ‘authorship’ preconceptions. Deliverables included 2D drawings, 3D models, 4D animations and simulations, as well as interactive and immersive environments.

Year 4

Christopher Baker, Ben Carpenter, Rares Comanescu, Edward Garton, Jina Gheini, Yuto Ikeda, Ye Ha Kim, Alina Von Olnhausen, Yue (Alexa) Wu, Antonio Yang

Year 5

Andrei Bigan, Matthew Choy, Yushen (Harry) Jia, Chrysostomos Neocleous, Zaneta Ojczyk, Muse Praditbatuga, Kehui (Victoria) Wu

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Clewlow (Arup), David Edwards, Jeovana Naidoo (Atelier Ten), Michael Woodrow (UCL)

Thesis supervisors: Stephen Gage, Anna Mavrogianni, Michael Stacey, Tim Waterman, Fiona Zisch

Critics: Andy Bow, Kostas Grigoriadis, Damjan Iliev, Nikoletta Karastathi, Tom Kovac, Alexandra Lăcătușu, Sophia Psarra, Valentina Soana, Seda Zirek

Partner: CityX Virtual

Special thanks to Annika and Jonas Knutsson, Tess Johansson and Nacho Ruiz for their help and support during the student field trip to Hällesdalens Gård, Sweden

20.1, 20.12 Matthew Choy, Y5 ‘The Anthropogenic Leech’. Addressing pollution in our built environment, this decentralised community hub in Hong Kong converts carbon emissions into renewable energy. It attaches to energy-inefficient buildings, systemically exploiting their resources and operates as a holistic system, serving beyond its boundaries.

20.2 Chrysostomos Neocleous, Y5 ‘Bionic Constellations’. The project reimagines the Swedish fishing town of Astol into a bionic, net-zero and autonomous island. It transforms centralised housing into dynamic, decentralised and responsive units that adapt spatially and energetically to user needs, creating an agile network that merges structure and infrastructure. This approach fosters independent yet collaborative living, ensuring energy circularity and collective habitation.

20.3 Antonio Yang, Y4 ‘Lichenic Synthetica’. Situated within the industrial city of Gothenburg, this project investigates the symbiotic relationship between the project programme – a brewery – and its architectural skin. Influenced by the cellular configuration of lichen, the project proposes a photosynthetic algal skin interlaced within an assemblage of technical system networks that utilise brewing by-products to encourage algal growth.

20.4 Edward Garton, Y4 ‘The Language Machine’. Near Valhal Atestupa, Sweden, this project blends mythological symbolism, advanced technology and sustainability to create an antifragile data centre. Addressing Moore’s Law, it uses robotics to upgrade and recycle outdated components, with a visitor centre showcasing old technology.

20.5 Yue (Alexa) Wu, Y4 ‘Sarek Alpine Retreat’. This project in Sarek National Park, Sweden, combines biological motifs and Scandinavian themes to create climate-resilient structures. Inspired by comb jellies and the Norse serpent Jörmungandr, it uses phase change materials and 3D-printed façades with integrated fluid systems to optimise heat retention and energy efficiency.

20.6 Christopher Baker, Y4 ‘A Fleet[ing] Feeling’. The project is a shipwrights’ workshop for beautifully crafted wooden sailing boats, exploring neo-styles by fusing the legacy of ornate Scandinavian shipbuilding and the sacred geometry of Gothic cathedrals, set in Sweden’s western archipelago.

20.7 Kehui (Victoria) Wu, Y5 ‘[Re]claiming Wastelands of Extraction’. Identifying mining sites as conflict centres, the project tackles waste logistics and proposes a spatial solution for the fragility of Swedish mining settlements. Through interscalar design, it envisions resilient urban typologies bridging artificial and natural realms, crafting a landscape and urban framework for sustainable mining communities in Sweden.

20.8 Ben Carpenter, Y4 ‘Forging Feral Landscapes’. In the Torslandaviken Ecological Research Colony in Gothenburg, Sweden, a small community of 200 residents studies reciprocal relationships with new ecologies. The project encourages natural re-inhabitation by breaking large concrete surfaces, erecting flexible structures, focusing on sustainable stewardship and utilising ecological systems for improved ecosystem services.

20.9 Alina Von Olnhausen, Y4 ‘Delskär Marine Laboratory’. This marine biology research centre on Delskär Island addresses climate change impacts on the Swedish Baltic Sea. Inspired by local medusae and coastal architecture, the design emphasises antifragility. Prefabricated panels ensure ease of construction in the remote location, blending resilience with traditional design elements.

20.10 Yuto Ikeda, Y4 ‘Nordic Eco-Metabolism’. Inspired by antifragility and the Metabolism movement, the project on Gothenburg’s coast dynamically adapts to environmental changes, embodying regenerative,

adaptable architecture that continuously evolves with its environment. Floating bio-receptive rooms, prefabricated and made of recycled timber waste turned into bioplastic material, are designed to naturally degrade, fostering carbon sequestration.

20.11 Yushen (Harry) Jia, Y5 ‘How to Harvest a Crater’. In the year 2100, humanity sets its sights on the ice-filled craters of Mars, where pioneers, alongside AI-driven robots, transform ice and regolith into the building blocks of a new world. By melting out sub-ice colonies, the colonisers connect sprawling networks of transportation tunnels. A thriving underground civilisation flourishes, where human determination and technological innovation create a new frontier beneath the Red Planet’s surface.

20.13 Muse Praditbatuga, Y5 ‘Bio Genesis’. While the creation of organic shapes is variously approached in architecture, in biology there is only one system for generating environmentally stable bodies: morphogenesis. In strict adherence to the laws of science, this project operates at the intersection of biology and computation to imagine speculative architectures and inhabitable bodies that stem from a single strand of DNA.

20.14 Rares Comanescu, Y4 ‘Modular Metamorphosis’. The project envisions a deployable rehabilitation centre for patients suffering from various types of addiction, such as alcohol and substance use disorders. By rethinking the modular nature of the Metabolist movement, it creates adaptable, reusable and sustainable designs.

20.15, 20.20 Zaneta Ojczyk, Y5 ‘Museum of Multi-Realities’. The project de-stigmatises and re-engages the public with the layered history of London’s Crossness Pumping Station and Water Treatment Plant. A multi-reality project, made possible through emerging XR technologies, creates a novel spatial user experience enhanced by physical and phygital augmentation, hybrid reality and interactive architectures.

20.16–20.18 Andrei Bigan, Y5 ‘Fenestra Mentis’. Using brain–computer interfaces and biosensors, the project captures occupants’ real-time cognitive and emotional states, exploring the intersection of neuroscience and architecture and offering a new approach to designing spaces. ‘Fenestra’ visualises neural responses to visual stimuli while ‘Mentis’, a VR experience across three timelines, offers a commentary on the ever-changing nature of architectural styles and domesticity.

20.19 Jina Gheini, Y4 ‘A Rococoesque Field’. Situated within the growing urban fabric of Mölndal in Sweden, this project is inspired by the dynamic curves of Rococo ornamentation. The design employs vector fields to create varied spatial experiences tailored to each space’s function, determining and modulating natural light intake and illumination levels.

20.21 Ye Ha Kim, Y4 ‘Subterranean Kiruna Data Centre’. The project addresses data storage needs with sustainable technology, utilising Microsoft’s Project Silica glass-plate encoding to minimise carbon emissions. Located in an abandoned Swedish mine, it leverages the cool climate and repurposes excess heat for a mushroom farm, achieving a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.01 and setting new standards for environmentally conscious data storage.

20.3

20.9

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20.19

Sequential

Abigail Ashton, Tom Holberton, Andrew Porter

Architecture is often seen as creating final outcomes as an embodiment of an initial diagram or idea. However, this can disguise the sequence of actions and reactions during the design process. When we make, draw or model, each step influences the next.

Large language models, such as ChatGPT, work by simply predicting the most probable next word from the previous string of words. They know nothing but sequences, but by using these patterns they can convincingly explain, narrate and converse with humans. Every sentence unfurls as a succession of probable words, as a form of strange machine intelligence without any ideas of its own. Yet this sequential way of ‘reading’ the world is proving to be a powerful new tool, with the potential to influence how we create the future.

Our perceptual models constantly compare what is sensed to a parallel inner prediction. How something looks and feels, and what draws our attention, is a game of sequential probability. Our shifting focus is in dialogue with the architecture we create and the relative difference between what we see and what we know.

Modern construction relies heavily on systems of standardised parts that are planned in advance. Yet different forms of scanning, sensing and manufacturing could allow construction to be a more agile, continuously reactive craft – one that is more dynamically responsive to materials. This is ever more urgent in a climate crisis that must reuse and repurpose to conserve embodied energy.

This year PG21 students have worked both physically and digitally, between the analogue and the digital, and their process has been a continuous chain of consequences. They have developed their own evolving method that creates, fixes and reacts to itself –embracing operating in the moment, without necessarily knowing the end, or even remembering the beginning.

We travelled to Barcelona, a continuously changing city, and explored various projects by Antoni Gaudí, Enric Miralles, Ricardo Bofill and RCR Arquitectes. Our unit operates a vertical studio culture that combines all years, from Year 2 to Year 5, supporting each student to develop their own unique design approach, and placing a value on the process throughout the whole year.

Year 4

Harrison Maddox, Charmaine Tang, Xavier Thanki, Weitse Wang, Yujie Wu

Year 5

Zijie Cai, Ho Kiu (Jeffrey) Cheung, Ioana Drogeanu, Austin McGrath

Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Holberton, Brian Eckersley (Engineer)

Critics: Julian Besems, Roberto Bottazzi, Pedro Gil, Farlie Reynolds, Elly Selby, Neba Sere, Ben Spong, Jasmin Sohi

21.1, 21.6–21.7 Ioana Drogeanu, Y5 ‘Towards a Non-Universal Architecture: 1:1 Scale Design Through the Lens of VR, AR and AI’. This project challenges the current design methods that are mostly used to create a ‘standardised‘ architecture that is not generally adaptable to each of its inhabitants’ individualities. Utilising VR as a tool at a 1:1 scale, in conjunction with machine learning, this method advocates a shift towards a customisable, ‘non-universal’ approach.

21.2 Austin McGrath, Y5 ‘Latent Cartography’. The Institute of Artificial Intelligence Education employs an innovative crowdsourced methodology, scraping tourist vlogs from the site to capture vernacular experiences. These ‘whispers’ form a hyper-contextual latent space, which is then used to remap a generative AI model, resulting in an architectural design that reflects the voiced sentiments and site-specific narratives.

21.3–21.5 Ho Kiu (Jeffrey) Cheung, Y5 ‘Parque Para Perros Español’. Dogs have been domesticated by humans for a long time, and their hidden talents continue to be discovered. This project adopts a precise framework for dog training, observing patterns while allowing for unexpected moments within the framework. These moments of spontaneity contribute to a co-authorship in building design, serving as a feedback mechanism of the two parties.

21.8–21.9 Zijie Cai, Y5 ‘Vivir la Utopia’. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), founded in 1910, ignited Spanish anarchism. Originally central to the urban development of Barcelona’s Eixample district, the former Can Baró quarry is transformed into a space that captures the spirit of anarchism. The design of the proposed Barcelona Anarchist Memorial transmits historical data from the city to the site using digital translation, offering visitors a dynamic experience and reinvigorating the profound legacy of Barcelona’s anarchist movement.

21.10–21.12 Harrison Maddox, Y4 ‘NEO-XANADU’. In the face of increasing climate instability, this project explores an alternative to existing political-economic structures by adopting a subversive ‘queering’ design methodology. It envisions a radical departure from traditional governance by adopting a fully automated, neo-decadent, ecophilic and metamodern anarchocommunist society. The project acts as a thought experiment to satirically engage in the critique of established architectural and political practices.

21.13–21.15 Weitse Wang, Y4 ‘The Infinity Valley’. The project tackles Spain’s rising energy costs and the demand for energy independence by transforming Barcelona’s Tibidabo into a ‘battery’ with one million cubic metres of water. By integrating pumped storage hydropower with a library and cultural centre, it blurs the boundaries between entertainment and energy infrastructure.

21.16–21.18 Yujie Wu, Y4 ‘Green-GAN’. The project explores generative design and machine learning techniques to facilitate sustainable architecture. It trains conditional generative adversarial networks (GAN, i.e. a class of AI algorithms used in unsupervised machine learning) to generate building layouts coupled with carbon-cost levels. These result from metrics for various materials and domains. By integrating colourcoded carbon-cost mapping into the building design process across multiple scale levels, the system provides real-time visual feedback on the carbon footprint of material choices during the conceptual design stages.

21.19–21.20 Xavier Thanki, Y4 ‘The Dune Catcher’. The project explores encrypting data into a site to address climatic instabilities, particularly flooding in the Ebro Delta. It proposes a ‘dunescape’ that protects the delta by harmonising natural rhythms

within climatic data. It integrates weather sonification to guide sand movement, blending architectural precision with the fluidity of nature. This innovative coastal management strategy transcends mere protection, merging nature and technology into a dynamic landscape.

21.21–21.23 Charmaine Tang, Y4 ‘Paintstrokes of Catalonia’. Inspired by contemporary Catalan politics, nationalism and the Modernisme movement, the project proposes an art restoration museum dedicated to preserving and memorialising artworks lost during the Spanish Civil War. To capture Modernisme’s adventurous spirit, the project explores an architecture made from paintings to celebrate Catalonia’s cultural identity and artistic heritage.

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21.17

Rites of Passage

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal

Commonly held belief often refers to the provision of shelter as the origin of architecture. However, a more nuanced and interdisciplinary approach, incorporating knowledge gathered by anthropologists and archaeologists, points towards the accommodation of rituals as another reason for humans to have started building.1

Rites of passage are defined as ceremonies, rituals or events marking an important stage in someone’s life. Key rites of passage have historically been collective, but in recent decades in the West, they have evolved into individual and more private affairs.

This year PG22 students have reflected, through architectural and urban design, on spaces that facilitate the communal and collective celebration of rites of passage, re-empowering their social dimension through three design exercises:

The Paper Theatre

Paper theatres are a form of miniature performance dating back to the early 19th century in Europe. For the experience of a rite of passage, spatial elements are as important as performance aspects. PG22 students have created their own versions of a paper theatre, representing how a selected rite is performed and gradually designing a stage for the socialisation of the rite.

The Produced Ritual Space

Buildings for rituals usually communicate their purpose on the outside through decoration and on the inside through spatial arrangements. PG22 students have developed their paper theatres into platforms for contemporary rituals, understanding that spaces of ritual are shaped not only by humans actions but also by their impact on the inhabitants’ agenda, an iterative influence described by Henri Lefebvre. 2

The New House Society

Lévi-Strauss defined the ‘house societies’ as communities linked not by blood bonds but by inhabiting a shared house, inherited by several generations in a cluster. 3 PG22 students have scaled up their projects into urban designs, creating communities with strong social links reinforced by the presence of shared facilities that actively contribute to a social network.

Year 4

Jiahan (Ada) Ding, Serim Hur, Gulcicek Karaman, Sarina Patel, Stefan Vlad Pista

Year 5

Long Yin Au, Cecilia Cappellini, Brandon Chan, Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Cheryl Lee, Harrison Lovelock, Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Yan Ching (Ellie) To, Yue Yu

Design Realisation Tutor: Han Hao

Structural Advisor: Roberto Marín Sampalo

Environmental Advisor: Ioannis Rizos

Thesis supervisors: Brent Carnell, Gillian Darley, Daisy Froud, Joshua Mardell, Anna Mavrogianni, Tania Sengupta, Tim Waterman

Critics: Omar Abolnaga, Sarah Akigbogun, Fares Al Rajal, Albert Blanchart, Louise Cann, Hadin Charbel, Han Hao, Déborah López Lobato, Ana Mayoral Moratilla, Mathieu Moreau, Martín Ocampo, Angelica Ponzio, Vidhya Pushpanathan, Elly Selby, Joshua Thomas

1. Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici, ‘Familiar Horror: Toward a Critique of Domestic Space’, Log, 38 (2016), 105.

2. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991).

3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Mask (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982), 194.

22.1, 22.3

Brandon Chan, Y5 ‘Peng-Chau: Aqua-Pelago’.

Along Hong Kong’s coast, thousands of fishing families known as the Tanka people, once called sampans (small wooden boats) their home. Land reclamation projects in the 1960s gradually displaced sampans, causing a decline in Tanka culture. This project develops a strategy that safeguards the distinct history and culture of Hong Kong’s smaller islands through architectural interventions, blurring the boundaries between urban and natural environments.

22.2 Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Y5 ‘Heritage Haven: Preserving Sikh Rituals in the UK Diaspora’. This project designs a site for a Sikh wedding week in the UK diaspora, preserving cultural traditions while catering to a diverse community. The design serves as a cultural hub, where the rich heritage of Sikh weddings is celebrated and passed down to future generations. The preparatory process involving fabric and floristry takes on added significance in the project as it serves as a bridge between the old and the new, connecting ancestral customs with contemporary sensibilities.

22.4 Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Y5 ‘Urban Banquets of Care’. The design project envisions a utopia consisting of a housing estate that revolves around the concept of care for one another, the environment and architecture. The overall purpose of this project is to bridge intergenerational gaps in the city, creating a communal, caring environment where residents of all ages can experience and celebrate everyday rites of passage that are often overlooked in fast-paced lifestyles.

22.5–22.6 Yue Yu, Y5 ‘Cultural Landscape: Rehabilitation Craft Community’. The ancient town of Shaxi in Yunnan, China, with a history of over 2,400 years, is the sole surviving market along the historic Tea Horse Road. It was designated as an endangered heritage site in 2002 and uniquely restored by a team of Swiss scholars. Building on the preservation of key historical sites, the project focuses on safeguarding local intangible cultural heritage. It revitalises Shaxi’s cultural landscape, encompassing performing arts, tea traditions, folk gatherings and traditional crafts.

22.7–22.8 Harrison Lovelock, Y5 ‘The Houses of Hireth’. This project explores domesticity in postindustrial Cornwall. Beginning as an investigation into homemaking and seasonal living, the scope expands to address Cornwall’s housing crisis, driven by second residences and tourism. The proposal responds to this crisis using the disused rail infrastructure left over after the 1960s Beeching Cuts. It re-injects life into the trade sector through the manufacture and maintenance of mobile housing that adapts to seasonal patterns of work and inhabitation.

22.9 Yan Ching (Ellie) To, Y5 ‘Redressing the Streets of Cheung Chau’. The project reflects on life post-Covid and post-protest in Hong Kong. These events have induced a wave of fatigue, prompting an outflow of residents to other countries, but also to quieter territories within the enclave. The design proposal retains the local material culture of these islands, using bamboo to develop new and original tectonics. This material choice allows for high levels of openness, blurring the lines between buildings and public spaces.

22.10 Long Yin Au, Y5 ‘The Circular City’. The project explores how Hong Kong can find alternative modes of socialising and friendship through upcycling and recycling activities, focusing on Sham Shui Po, a district in Hong Kong renowned for its fabric and plastic trade. The scheme is a multiscaled masterplan, introducing a series of pavilions, a circular skywalk and retrofitted tong laus (tenement buildings) to enable residents to recycle their old clothing and household items, and share their memories through crafting, exchanging and recycling.

22.11–22.12 Stefan Vlad Pista, Y4 ‘Treatin’ Love’. Parallel to the rise and decline of dating apps, there has been a disturbing rise in the ‘incel’ phenomenon – an internet subculture linked to toxic masculinity and extreme resentment towards those who are romantically successful. The project establishes a multi-functional therapy centre that supports individuals with relationship challenges. This environment promotes healing, social interaction and personal growth.

22.13–22.14 Sarina Patel, Y4 ‘Building a Woman’. Female genital mutilation remains a rite of passage for Maasai women, and the recent prohibition of the practice has been labelled as culturally insensitive, driving it underground. This project proposes an alternative rite of passage through the learning of the vernacular construction of Maasai homes or manyattas Working in partnership with a local institute, the proposed architecture is designed using vernacular systems and materials, adapted to meet the lifestyle changes among Maasai communities.

22.15 Serim Hur, Y4 ‘The Healing Loom’. An exploration of traditional South Korean funeral biers and their ornamental features extended into a study of wider cultural practices surrounding death, with a particular emphasis on the role of craft. Building on this research, the project proposes to merge the tranquillity inherent in traditional timber ideologies with the comfort of woven textiles and cords.

22.16 Cheryl Lee, Y5 ‘The Nostalgic Domesti-City’.

An investigation into the wave of migration from Hong Kong to the UK is the seed for this project. The proposal is a residential complex for Hong Kong migrants in the UK to celebrate Hong Kong culture. The scheme challenges typical British and Hong Kong housing, as well as the typologies of the Chinatown and disused mall, to create a new typology – the ‘Semi-DetachedShophouse’, which embodies the convergence of British and Hong Kong culture.

22.17 Gulcicek Karaman, Y4 ‘Women as Infrastructure’. During the Ottoman period, baths were used for social rituals such as birth, marriage and death. However, this role has declined in favour of a more commercial framework. This project produces a new ecological and technological bath model with a non-hierarchical network, combining baths in a ‘hydrofeminist’ network of water, soil and air which heals and rejuvenates.

22.18–22.19 Jiahan (Ada) Ding, Y4 ‘The Red Peach Cake Townhall’. The Shazhou area in Chaozhou is currently undergoing urbanisation and experiencing population decline in favour of bolstering tourism. The project is built on a site where villagers resist forced demolitions and serves as part of a community intervention. The architecture enables residents to participate in village governance through the baking of red peach cake, which acts as a ritual medium for preserving culture and political agency.

22.20 Cecilia Cappellini, Y5 ‘Rites of Passage in the Italo Disco’. This project focuses on Italo Disco music as a rite of passage from 1965 to 1990, which led to its recognition as a mass phenomenon shaping the collective memory of Generation X. The design is a refurbishment of the Complesso della Misericordia, an old convent in the historic centre of Pesaro, Italy, creating a cultural centre for music, design, gastronomy and nature. This development leads to an urban-scale project reimagining Pesaro as a music city.

Bound to Fail

Farlie Reynolds, Ben Spong

Interested in material, structural and spatial experimentation at a range of scales, PG23 champions innovative architectural strategies that boldly address the environmental challenges of our time.

Within architecture, the possibilities of failure are often confined within the laboratories and research centres of other disciplines –those of material scientists, acousticians, structural engineers and so on. From deep within their facilities, architecture receives determinate information through regulations, standards and conventions that govern the practice of architecture. While these tactics make valid and critical contributions to the safety of our built environment, the methods used to represent failure (or its avoidance) tend to numb any relationship architecture has to the phenomenon it should supposedly fear may fail. This year PG23 questioned the consequences that this reductive taming has for architecture’s own capacity to fail and seek out the possibilities that reside on the fringes of failure. We asked how architecture can reclaim and occupy this territory in more affirmative terms – to write its own experiments.

We journeyed across Sweden and Finland on our field trip to select the research sites for our projects, while immersing ourselves in Aino and Alvar Aalto’s experimental work, studying the master craftsmanship of the 18th-century Petäjävesi Church, and exploring the cutting-edge technologies deployed today at the Aalto University Wood Program. We also travelled to Pitkänen’s Chapel of the Holy Cross, Saarinen’s Helsinki Central Station, Lewerentz’s St Mark’s Church, and the Temppeliaukio carved deep into the city’s granite bedrock.

Failure became a mechanism to question our measurements of progress – did we really fail, or were the terms of our research too determined? Did we assume too much? We dared to approach architecture in novel ways that departed from each student’s personal interests, precisely balancing the utility and shortcomings of convention, and leading us beyond assumption into the world of the unexpected. Approaching our architectural projects in this way is not only more pleasurable but also holds the potential of establishing ways of building that are more sensitive to our ecological condition. It raises critical questions of architecture – its identity, authenticity, conventions and adaptability – and of the provenance of materials and the skills and people that make it.

Year 4

Mateusz Asmus, Grace Baker, David Byrne, Victoria Chan, Eleanor Crunden, Evelyn Jesuraj, Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang

Year 5

Niamh Cahill, Simona Drabužinskaite, Benjamin Faure, Cheolmin Kim, Soyun Lim, Nikita Norris, Olivia O’Driscoll, Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, William Smith, Robert Tang

Practice Tutor: Steve Johnson

Consultants: Brian Constant, Anthony Chilton

Thesis supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, Ian Birksted, Daisy Froud, Christophe Gérard, Jane Hall, Tim Lucas, Filomena Russo, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

Special thanks to Steve Johnson for his support of PG23, technical and otherwise. Thanks also to our collaborators and guest critics: Negin Amiri, Abigail Ashton, Tom Budd, Matthew Butcher, Barbara Campbell-Lange, James Della Valle, David Di Duca, Elizabeth Dow, Flurry Grierson, Kostas Grigoriadis, Florence Hemmings, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami, Joe Johnson, Nikoletta Karastathi, Kyriakos Katsaros, Chee-Kit Lai, Stefan Lengen, Sara Martínez Zamora, Nicolas Pauwels, Dan Pope, Vseva Popov, Eoin Shaw, Mārtiņš Starks, Greg Storrar, Anthony Tai, Kate Taylor

23.1, 23.26 Niamh Cahill, Y5 ‘[Re]Foresting Pihlajamäki’. Located in Helsinki’s forest suburbs, this project explores the evolution of suburban landscapes and the environmental and social impacts of modernism on the city’s edge conditions. Drawing on the sociability of historical vernacular timber construction, the project fosters an understanding of how an architecture of care can enhance community and environmental stewardship through the co-design and construction of housing.

23.2, 23.4 Eleanor Crunden, Y4 ‘Moments in the Frame’. Jutting off Helsinki’s shore line, this project explores the intersection of architecture and identity as it draws material and spatial ideas from the Kalevala, a collection of Finnish folklore tales. Through carved interventions, mythical narratives are woven into reality through analogue methods that challenge a world solely fixated on technological advancement.

23.3, 23.5–23.7 William Smith, Y5 ‘Pressed to Impress’. As an amalgamation of a contemporary angler’s guild and the fabrication rudiments of a fishing boat workshop on Helsinki’s granite coast, the project employs insights from local aluminium boat-building construction. It accommodates the application of metal-pressing techniques and manufacturing processes to explore relationships between timber formworks and aluminium sheet metal.

23.8–23.9 Benjamin Faure, Y5 ‘Waxen Woodlands’. Sited in Tyresta National Park, south of Stockholm, the proposed herbarium responds to a burnt forest landscape in constant ritualistic metamorphosis between life and death. By engaging with the ephemeral temporalities of the forest, a novel method of forest archiving, inspired by Roman wax death masks, is advocated. Ultimately, wax becomes a material ‘presence’ within the woodland, preserving fragile memories of death in life.

23.10 Grace Baker, Y4 ‘For Peat’s Sake’. Finland is facing the catastrophic effects of climate change due to mass deforestation and the harmful burning of peat. This project challenges how peat production at the scale of architecture might contribute to the active restoration of the surrounding landscape. It proposes an education centre alongside a private enhanced mineral weathering lab. The architecture stands in limbo; while speeding up peat production, it anticipates and mitigates a pending climatic disaster. 23.11, 23.21 Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang, Y4 ‘Silo Quarrying’. Located in a disused grain silo, extractive methods are deployed to surgically adapt this important part of Helsinki’s industrial legacy into a gallery housing Nordic art. The proposal equates the de- and re-construction of a building to a larger idea on the coherence of spatial experience, drawing on the displacement experienced in the incommensurable pictorial space of paintings.

23.12 Cheolmin Kim, Y5 ‘The Fabricated Forest: Advancing Finnish Timber Techniques’. Composed of advanced glued-laminated (glulam) timber structures bound by traditional Finnish horizontal log joints, the proposal is set within the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum in Helsinki. As a museum, the design hosts timber structures, fragments of buildings and traditional tools abandoned throughout Finland to preserve its rich timber architectural heritage.

23.13 Victoria Chan, Y4 ‘SnowBound: A Narrative of Finland’s Weather’. Celebrating the cultural significance of snow in Finland, this project explores the relationship between weather and architecture at the extremes. Within a dual programme of a sledding and community centre, the project deploys latent structures that are activated by the presence of snow, radically shifting the spatial boundary of the building.

23.14–23.15 Evelyn Jesuraj, Y4 ‘Didactic Construction: A Community Crafted Workshop’. This project envisions a multigenerational workshop, gallery and kitchen in a

residential area in East Helsinki that reintroduces craftsmanship into a neighbourhood to combat harmful consumer culture. Built through a phased didactic process using locally extracted materials, the building is crafted through workshops and courses. The architecture becomes more complex and crafted through its chronological sequencing as knowledge builds.

23.16–23.18 Olivia O’Driscoll, Y5 ‘Disrupting Anarchitecture’. This is a project of protest. Employing steel tube bending and lightweight skins bound by scaffolding constructions, the proposed architecture seeks new ways to inhabit the city. Set in Stockholm’s old town, the architecture bolts onto the traditional fabric to live literally against the existing urban framework.

23.19 Nikita Norris, Y5 ‘The Narration of Stories: The Helsinki Visual Library of the Kalevala’. As a study into how architecture can convey stories, the visual library of the Finnish mythological epic reinforces Finnish identity 107 years from independence. Through a modern reinterpretation of the Kalevala, this project endeavours to find methods for the visitor to assimilate meaning through experience in spatial and material design.

23.20 David Byrne, Y4 ‘RokApotek: Blackeberg Local Pharmacy’. Blackeberg, a suburb in Stockholm, and its opposing island, Lovon, are geographically split but visually connected. Through an exploration of film’s portrayal of identity and its role in the production of sociocultural imaginaries, the project proposes a community pharmacy that blurs these lines, fostering dialogue and hybridising static identities.

23.22 Soyun Lim, Y5 ‘Harbouring Impermanence’. Architecture has historically aimed for permanence, yet buildings are inherently impermanent. This project challenges the conventional focus on durability by embracing impermanence, integrating it into a proposal for a new harbour in Helsinki centred around swimming and sailing activities. Ultimately, the project reinterprets erosion and weathering as key design drivers.

23.23 Simona Drabužinskaite, Y5 ‘Flesh and Steel’. This project disrupts conventional design tools that are built around efficiency. The methods used pose the question: what if space was designed the way it is experienced – through our inefficient and wasteful bodies? The conjoined twin-like programme of the casino and the gym unleashes their labyrinths into an unlikely dialogue, exploring their own respective interpretations of excess.

23.24 Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Y5 ‘The Ghost That Sweats’. This project is a conversation between the concepts of the weird, the eerie and the uncanny in architecture. The project delves into the intangible and explores the limits of steam and fog –a byproduct of heat in bathhouses and saunas – as a form of materiality. Ultimately, ‘the ghostly’ alters our understanding of space and place, engulfing visitors in a formless bathhouse.

23.25 Robert Tang, Y5 ‘Embrace of Shadows’. This proposal investigates the potential of adapting to darkness in architecture and the subsequent ritualistic experiences it introduces into everyday life. It consists of a semisubterranean public bath, controlling aperture through a dual approach between granite excavation and built space. The resulting communal place cherishes the subdued Finnish daylight, particularly in the winter seasons.

Adaptation

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.

Adaptation is a term with a multiplicity of meanings. A key term in evolutionary theory, biological adaptation describes the mutations necessary for creatures to adapt to their environment. Adaptation in the arts has a long tradition of converting one type of work to another, from a novel to a screenplay. In architecture, it has gained prominence in the growing need for adaptive reuse of existing buildings, as a combination of urgent crises like climate change and resource scarcity makes building anew a thing of the past. Furthermore, developments in digital technology and AI demand a post-human, lightning-speed adaptation to a new hybrid physical/digital spatial order.

This year we made ‘adaptation’ our primary focus. We explored the material, philosophical and sociopolitical dimensions of adaptive reuse, by grafting new designs into the long history of older buildings and employing the storytelling potential of all other forms of adaptation in architectural design.

Our work was informed by three designer strategies: ‘Defining a Host’, a building, structure or urban spatial condition (existing, demolished or fictional) which was surveyed, filmed, occupied and subjected to a deep material and historical analysis; ‘Developing a Graft’, the introduction of a new programme, narrative, community or material into the host; and ‘Composing an Evolution’, combining traits of the host and the graft into a holistic design through long-term thinking and duration, allowing them to mutate into new adaptations unfolding in time.

From Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to Lacaton & Vassal, architecture in the Francophone regions of Northern Europe has a deep tradition of reuse and reinvention. In January, we travelled to Paris to examine historically important adaptive reuse buildings and their legacy.

Notions of adaptation eschew the idea of a single central master designer, requiring generosity and a willingness to engage with found conditions in a negotiation with the past. The ability to adapt could be the hallmark of all future architects.

Year 4

Daniel Collier, Joel Gallery, Tristan Hubbard, Jason Lai, Daniel Langstaff, Yuchen Wang

Year 5

Maciej Adaszewski, Jean Jacques Bell, Weiting (Terry) Chen, Zixi (Vito) Chen, Ryan Darius, Beatrice Frant, Yixuan (Aurelia) Lu, Joshua Nicholas, Ewan Sleath, Mārtiņš Starks

Technical tutors and consultants: Matthew Lucraft, Bola Ogunmefun, Julia Torrubia

Thesis supervisors: Alessandro Ayuso, Camillo Boano, Gillian Darley, Paul Dobraszczyk, Oliver Domeisen, Luke Pearson, Rokia Raslan, Oliver Wilton, Guang Yu Ren

Critics: Matthew Butcher, Krina Christopoulou, Marjan Colletti, Camille Dunlop, Paris Gazzola, Gabriele Grassi, Kostas Grigoriadis, Jan Kattein, Jakub Klaska, Greg Kythreotis, Tony Le, Stefan Lengen, Matthew Lucraft, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Sonia Magdziarz, Loukis Menelaou, Matei Mitrache, Luke Pearson, Joshua Richardson, Javier Ruiz, Matthew Simpson, Sayan Skandarajah, Jasper Stevens, Jonathan Tyrrell, Tom Ushakov, Nasios Varnavas, Tom Ushakov

24.1 Maciej Adaszewski, Y5 ‘The Testimony of Huaraz Valley’. The project explores legally representing non-human Andean entities – specifically the sacred Palcaraju glacier in Peru – through embodying local mythologies and architecture as magical realism. It examines the profound ecological impacts of land exploitation on communities facing environmental crises like global warming, glacier retreat, dangerous lake formation and water scarcity affecting the Huaraz Valley. By researching the history of Andean land extraction and translating insights into a fictional film across timelines, the project amplifies these communities’ scenarios and contributes to the discourse on pluralism and environmental reciprocity. The magical realist approach blends myth with the built environment to advocate for the legal rights and protection of sacred non-human entities.

24.2 Ryan Darius, Y5 ‘Batam’s Data Centre’. The exponential growth of digital data worldwide has driven an increasing global demand for digital data storage, leading to the construction of data centres in developing countries. Within the framework of a neoliberal economy, the intricacies of data storage manifest as a territorial dispute, hinging on the evaluation of which regions are deemed less valuable in terms of economic development.

Acknowledging the inevitability of globalisation, this project explores an innovative approach to modern data centre design by proposing a typological merging of traditional fishermen’s dwellings with modern data centres in Batam, Indonesia. By closely studying vernacular architecture and utilising simulation modelling to generate geometries based on the local climate, this project rethinks data centre design with a focus on local culture and passive design principles.

24.3–24.5 Jean Jacques Bell, Y5 ‘The Stewartby Printworks’. The project mourns the loss of the last four iconic chimneys of Stewartby Brickworks in Bedfordshire. Instead of demolishing the chimneys, the project proposes a new legacy for the site where developers, the community and the architect come together to create something meaningful for the adjoining model village of Stewartby. Critiquing current development methods and utilising emerging additive manufacturing technologies, a 3D-printed housing test bed is proposed to address the current challenges facing the UK housing sector. To facilitate this demand, the unique local clay was tested and printed to realign the site’s rich material culture with the modern age and develop a site-specific hierarchical block construction method.

24.6 Zixi (Vito) Chen, Y5 ‘Wuhan Archaeology for Revolution’. The future of Wuhan, China, lies in its ignorance of the world hidden beneath it. The scenes seen there today reside between reality and delusion; they are all built upon the ruins of the past. Soon, they will become part of it. Defining a Chinese city is a difficult task, but in this project, the adaptation to the history of Wuhan began by searching for lost memories. It has undergone demolition, just like the fate of the city. A revolution once reduced Wuhan to ashes. Whether such destruction will happen again in the future, the answer is hidden in the story that the final film of this project unfolds.

24.7–24.9 Weiting (Terry) Chen, Y5 ‘Finding Formosa’. This innovative architectural project, was developed as a ‘graft’ to both support and challenge the historic buildings on Dihua Street, Taipei. As preservation issues with the currently repurposed heritage site emerged, the architecture was redesigned to decolonise and safeguard Taiwan’s history. This is achieved by preserving and showcasing architectural remnants from various eras of Taiwanese history through diverse methods that enhance appreciation and interaction with the heritage.

The film chronicles a journey over the past year to learn more about Taipei and Taiwan, the birthplace of the protagonist. It takes place in the protagonist’s dream, where he is guided through the building by various voices corresponding to the spaces, each representing a distinct period of Taiwanese history.

24.10 Ewan Sleath, Y5 ‘IDEGO’. This isometric roleplaying game is set in a scavenger settlement built over a drifting oil platform after a global climate collapse. The player explores two realms within the game: the ‘Above’, a ruined reality of planetary flooding and scavenged architecture, and the ‘Below’, an ephemeral space embodying a psychic reflection of characters. Through in-game design and construction, the player’s creation of a salvagepunk vessel aboard the rig can be enhanced through a sequence of quests, leading them to the labyrinthine architecture below. There, they find clues about their fellow survivors, helping them to understand them better and ultimately earning their trust and help. The project reflects on the convergence of video game design with architecture and mixes handcrafted character creation with procedural generation.

24.11–24.13 Yixuan (Aurelia) Lu, Y5 ‘Kyoto’s Adaptive Reverie’. In response to the endangered status of Kyoto’s iconic timber townhouses, the project redefines the architectural typology of machiya (traditional Japanese wooden townhouses) and their dual role as both cultural heritage and residential dwellings. The housing initiative delves into the essence of machiya, while acknowledging modern-day challenges, and transforms these traditional structures into adaptable, sustainable and flexible solutions for urban living. The design narrative is steered by a fictional Japanese character in the year 2054, who spearheads a housing cooperative scheme in honour of her lost childhood home. By purposefully setting the timeline in the future, the programme is conceptualised retrospectively, with the narrative designed to revitalise machiya and ensure the typology remains relevant.

24.14 Beatrice Frant, Y5 ‘The Domestic Alien’. Developed as a three-act play set between Bucharest and London, the theatrical set defines the female psyche as a tangible way to inhabit domestic architecture. The project addresses the lack of belonging in familiar spaces, using ficto-critical narratives to visualise the alienating experience. It analyses sociopolitical situations in which women felt confined by their homes, combining transformative structures with accurate site portrayals. Additionally, the project proposes a visual reinterpretation of the female body as an othered ‘alien’ through the use of inflatables. By choosing the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom to depict the stage set, it questions whether buildings can respond to the specific psychological needs of a woman/alien.

24.15–24.18 Mārtiņš Starks, Y5 ‘An Ark of Us’. The project is an inquiry into architectural worldbuilding as a tool for weaving between local and global narratives. It traces the birth and decay of a fictional cosmic dream, emerging from Latvia on the fringes of the Western world. Navigating themes of Soviet heritage and post-Communist optimism, the Baltic Space Laboratory unfolds across both its Earth and lunar sites. Steeped in local folklore, the imagined moon base inscribes traces of its ecological and cultural origins into the barren landscape. The project envisions six lunar habitats, each centred around a totem symbolising the Earth’s essence, blending practical functions with spiritual elements. The mission focuses on preservation, reflecting the human drive for memorialisation and storytelling.

24.4

24.3

Wild at Heart and Weird on Top

Ivan Chan, Daniel Dream, Ifigeneia Liangi

Not so long ago it was expected for an architect to be as familiar with the design of outfits, theatre sets, pyrotechnics and even snacks, alongside the design of buildings. In addition to being a military expert, artist, theatre designer, engineer and architect, Bernardo Buontalenti also found time to invent ice cream in the 16th century. During this era such activities were considered inseparable.

This year our students reflected on this history from our current position in the 21st century. As such we considered how the slowness of building might be informed by quicker disciplines, such as entertainment and fashion. We looked into the lives and works of architects who have created with artistic concerns and explored contemporary social issues through practical and poetic positions. This included the design of furniture and everyday objects alongside the design of spaces that are inseparable from them. Central to this were interplays between the domestic and the civic, and explorations on how objects may enable domestic or civic rituals.

PG25 is interested in exploring hybrid forms of practice by learning from the methods of other disciplines and cross-pollinating them with architectural concerns. Examples of hybrid forms of practice can include painter-architects, geographer-architects, actor-architects, horseman-architects and everything in between. The nature of these hybridisations was determined by our students and the interests they brought to the table. Members of the unit developed autobiographical ways of working, while also speaking to wider concerns to develop personal, poetic and critical proposals that add to the available stock of reality.

The unit is interested in the weird, the wild and the otherworldly, and we value designs that are both spellbinding and critical. Going above and beyond the general expectations of architecture, our projects aim to suggest other worlds as critical reflections on our existing one.

PG25 is a result of the influence and impact of the late Professor Jonathan Hill.

Year 4

Finlay Aitken, Monica Burman, Shouhui Chen, Bianca Croitoriu, Kate Hargreaves Davis, Gabriel Edyvean-Heard, Ioana Enache, Kayley Gibbons, Eleanor Mettham, Zuzanna Rostocka, Seyedeh Rana Tabatabaie, Jiawei Yao, Kai Yi (Kelvin) Zhang, Shuming Zhou

Year 5

Latisha Chan, Natalie Rayya

Technical tutors and consultants: Bedir Bekar, Arturo Reyes, Martin Reynolds

Thesis supervisors: Christophe Gerard, Stamatis Zografos

Critics: Naomi Gibson, Vsevolod KondratievPopov, Martin Reynolds, Jonathan Tyrrell

25.1, 25.13

Natalie Rayya, Y5 ‘Bound (1987)’. Set in both fantasy and reality, this project investigates the layered desire between women, and the subsequent spatial reorientation of a semi-fictional 1980s Athens. A narrative written in the form of a love letter exchange guides the parameters of the project, which unpacks the idea of Athenian-Sapphic space, time(lessness), sensuality and individuation, and archives its material and conceptual history.

25.2 Finlay Aitken, Y4 ‘The Catford Commons’. This project is an alternative proposal to a planned redevelopment in Catford. Set within the old bounds of Elmwood Farm, the building uses and subverts the process of domestication to reimagine ways of urban living with nature. The horse is employed as informant and builder on this project; as creatures serving as both an instrument of power and unrepresented labourers, they share a complex history with humanity, underpinned by a process of co-domestication.

25.3 Zuzanna Rostocka, Y4 ‘Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?’. Catford City Farm is a negotiation of gentrification. The project introduces an alternative lifestyle to Lewisham by incorporating cohabitation with animals into a vertical city farm. The seductive building shape is inspired by automotive design and manufactured by local mechanics. The newly built high-rise residential towers see their brick-slip covered faces mirrored in the curvaceous body of this coquettish project.

25.4 Kate Hargreaves Davis, Y4 ‘The Catford Birthing Centre’. Until the 18th century, all women in Britain gave birth at home. The development of forceps was the catalyst for the mechanised conception of the maternal body. With birth integrated into medical discourse, the act of birth became absorbed by the infrastructure of the hospital. This project reimagines childbirth through the exploration of connections to others and the mother’s connection to her own body to empower the act of birth today.

25.5 Gabriel Edyvean-Heard, Y4 ‘Jack of all Trades’. This project revitalises Crossbones, a necropolis in Southwark, into a dynamic cultural nexus. The intervention implements commemorative elements that acknowledge the site’s rich symbols and material culture. The local community is empowered through educational workshops and a dedicated marketplace, ecologically sound methodologies for soil and atmospheric remediation, and design principles inspired by medieval pageant and polychromy aesthetics.

25.6, 25.17 Latisha Chan, Y5 ‘ The Shades of Discipline’. The project challenges traditional school architecture that centres on the student–teacher dynamic and a standardised educational system. Using storytelling as a tool to reimagine a school for witches, the project explores the nature of disciplinary power as oppressive control and support mechanism. The school for witches explores how different motivations interact with disciplinary power and respond to the perception of architecture.

25.7 Kai Yi (Kelvin) Zhang, Y4 ‘A Place of Your Own’. This project unites builders, planners, architects and the local community to challenge the UK’s profit-driven, repetitive and standardised housing schemes. Drawing inspiration from Walter Segal’s vision for self-build, Catford’s town centre transforms into a creative hub for manufacturing and testing DIY homes that emphasise self-expression, architectural variety and innovative urban planning strategies.

25.8 Jiawei Yao, Y4 ‘Butterfly Dream’. The butterfly embodies both transience and eternity, as its metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly serves as a metaphor for immortality. Using the language of Taoism, the vet hospital establishs an immortal world, inviting residents into a dream where they can intimately

connect with the perpetual rhythm of life, while sharing harmonious coexistence with animals.

25.9 Seyedeh Rana Tabatabaie, Y4 ‘Catford’s Queen of the South’. Catford’s perpetual regeneration over its history hints at an urban fragility which is now being taken advantage of by current regeneration plans. These transitions for the sake of ‘improvement’ have implications for the neighbourhood beyond the aesthetic. Through a theatrical exploration of objects, the project embraces Catford’s character with a film studio where objects take centre stage, archived for eternity through the lens of cinema.

25.10 Shouhui Chen, Y4 ‘What Remains’. This project investigates alternative ritualistic practices associated with grief and bereavement, focusing on the human body as a material resource in construction. Given that grief is a universal experience, the project examines the remnants following one’s death: the physical body, personal belongings and identity. It explores methods for repurposing these elements architecturally. The project shifts public perception and fosters a more open conversation about mortality.

25.11 Eleanor Mettham, Y4 ‘A Hotel for Haunting’. This scheme explores the irrational and enchanting realms that architecture can transport us to. It focuses on the hauntingly beautiful Gothic architecture and the gateway it provides into the spiritual realm. Based in the ‘haunted’ historical city of York, the project proposes a hotel of heightened perception that accentuates the receptivity of a spiritual realm for visiting guests. Their memories are continually captured and replayed, so that within its stone walls are our own souls.

25.12 Shuming Zhou, Y4 ‘The Second Insomnia: To the Forest’. A living forest primary school enhances the magical relationship between children and nature, and the power of self-healing. The site is a huge ‘sandplay’ allowing for healing, learning and growth. A wild vibrant landscape is provided to appreciate and learn from, and to be shared by all.

25.14 Monica Burman, Y4 ‘The Polishing Refinery’. This multifaceted beauty hub combines a salon, training centre and a beauty parliament to preserve and enrich Catford’s unique beauty culture amid urban regeneration. This project addresses the displacement of local beauty professionals, serving as a cultural and social anchor that values the significance of nail design – a craft traditionally marginalised yet rich in cultural expression.

25.15 Kayley Gibbons, Y4 ‘Ornamental Grime’. Current social movements encourage the acceptance of age, tattoos and imperfections on the skin as signs of individuality. Can the same be done for the urban skin? Can a structure’s defects be incorporated into the design process? The project is an interpretation of Catford’s redevelopment plan, including a retrofit of its abandoned substation. It houses a factory that functions as an epidermis, growing the cells that build its outer membrane, and a club that celebrates the town’s ‘grimy’ subcultures.

25.16 Bianca Croitoriu, Y4 ‘Marmalade City’. In response to Catford’s redevelopment, this project introduces a community-led housing initiative with controlled rents to address London’s unaffordable housing crisis. The design draws inspiration from cakes, bakeries and pop culture, with a focus on women’s safety and needs. It utilises a hyperfeminine aesthetic to challenge societal norms, exploring the complex balance between celebrating and critiquing femininity.

25.3

25.4

25.10

25.11

25.13

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 this exploration through environmental and ethical agendas. Students propose their buildings at a variety of scales and represent them using drawings, diagrams, animations, physical 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.

Thanks to all the structural and environmental design consultants who created an environment that encouraged but also guided the students’ curiosity; to all design unit tutors for their support and sage advice; to Professor José Torrero Cullen and Dr Michael Woodrow for the fire and life safety design support; to our design practice tutors for their remarkable commitment, dedication and professionalism; and to Oliver Wilton, Director of Technology, for his continual support. Special thanks also to B-made.

Year 4

Image: William Hodges, PG11. The design realisation report provided a specific lens to research the potential of solar systems as a method to radically decarbonise industry and methods of production. Using both analogue and digital methodologies, the project’s technical details were explored through a range of scales, from the masterplan to the 1:2 making of hand-crafted cob blocks, seeking a regenerative design approach.

Lecturers

Patrick Bellew (Atelier Ten), Anthony Boulanger (AY Architects), Nat Chard (The Bartlett), Katherine Chimenes (Price & Myers), Pedro Gil (The Bartlett), Jan Güell (Nikken Sekkei), Kirsten Haggart (Waugh Thistleton Architects), Farah Husayni (XCO2), Jakob Junghanss (8000. agency), Jan Kattein (Jan Kattein Architects), Stefan Lengen (The Bartlett), Anna Liu (Tonkin Liu), Theo Obeng-Sackey (Symbolic Spaces), Brenda Parker (UCL), Lukas Ryffel (8000. agency), Chrysanthe Staikopoulou (Jan Kattein Architects), Jerry Tate (Tate + Co), José Torero Cullen (CEGE), Emmanuel Vercruysse (AA School of Architecture), Michele Verdi (Donald Insall Associates), Rae WhittowWilliams (Greater London Authority), Rachel Yehezkel (XCO2)

Practice Tutors

PG11 Jennifer Dyne (David Kohn Architects), PG12 James Hampton (New Makers Bureau), PG14 Jakub Klaska (The Bartlett), PG15 Daryll Brown (ACA Studios), PG17 James Daykin (Daykin Marshall Studio), PG18 Robert Haworth (Lineworks Architects), PG20 David Edwards (Dave Edwards Design Ltd), PG21 Tom Holberton (The Bartlett), PG22 Han Hao (Studio Egret West), PG23 Steven Johnson (The Architecture Ensemble), PG24 Matthew Lucraft (Studio Jenny Jones), PG25 Martin Reynolds (Martin Reynolds Architecture)

PGTAs

Omar Abolnaga, Yichang Sun

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 the 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 introduces the students to the research of the module’s seminar tutors. This year the research covered a variety of topics such as disorder and control, a feminist history of laundry, contested heritage, infrastructures and globalisation, and ‘normal architecture for normal people’.

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.

2023–24 Seminars

Architecture and/as Infrastructures of (In)Equity, Tania Sengupta

Architecture and the Image of Decay, Paul Dobraszczyk

Architecture, Art and the City, Eva Branscome

Architecture, Commerce and the Global City, Nicholas Jewell

Architecture On & Off Screen, Christophe Gerard

Architectural Splendour, Oliver Domeisen

Conversations about Change, Daisy Froud

Feminist Approaches, Edwina Attlee

Heritage Discourses and the City, Stamatis Zografos

Nature and Architecture, Eric Guibert

Year 4

PGTA

Patricia Rodrigues Ferreira

da Silva

Of Flowers, Lawns and Mud: A Case Study of the Becontree Council Estate from a Feminist Perspective

Xintong Chen

Tutor: Edwina Attlee

Abstract: The Becontree council estate in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is one of the largest public housing schemes in the world. Born from a social revolution following the Housing Act of 1919, the ambitious postwar housing scheme provided housing to homecoming heroes and workingclass families as a social service. The estate was influenced by the garden city movement to enhance living conditions and to promote a hybrid of countryside landscape with urban living. In particular, the movement drew attention to public green spaces such as parks and gardens as a crucial driver to assert transformative social agendas within the landscape. Once known for its intricate front garden designs and annual garden competitions, the Becontree gardens played a crucial part in the 20th century in constructing, analysing and transforming the Becontree identity through cultivation.

Nevertheless, as more houses were sold to their residents under the Right to Buy scheme of 1980, Becontree was faced with a more modern pragmatic issue – lack of infrastructure – and consequently, front gardens seem to have quietly disappeared from the estate. This essay explores the shifts in spatial, legal and political ownership of the Becontree gardens over the past century to unravel transitions in architectural ideologies in council housing estates, and poses the underpinning question: who are council estate gardens for in the 21st century? Through a feminist reading of these gardens and their gardening, beyond the gendered and classed perception of gardening as a leisure activity, this essay unpicks changes in working-class life and differentiates between ‘gardens’ with spatial qualities and ‘gardening’ as productive/ reproductive labour. Following three themes – flowers, lawns and mud – the essay argues that the significance of council estate gardens lies within their spatial opposition in the existing municipal framework for what is thought as natural, as well as serving as a subversive plot for generating collective and exceptional feminist ideas.

Image: Site visit to the Becontree gardens, 2023. Image by the author.

Sculpting Unity: Art to Bridge the North–South Divide

Eleanor Crunden Tutor: Eva Branscome

Abstract: Amid the global pandemic, many creatives in the UK were struggling against unprecedented financial strain. Reductions in funding, coupled with art spaces closing their doors across Britain, rendered those on the periphery beyond the London art scene at risk of being excluded altogether. This marginalisation was exacerbated by Grayson Perry’s controversial comment to The Arts Society, where the artist stated that the sector would benefit from trimming some of its ‘dead wood’. Uproar in defence of working-class artists resulted in broader regional concerns.

Drawing on the author’s own experience of growing up in the North, and now residing in London, the essay examines Perry’s remarks within a context beyond the clichéd ‘tea’ versus ’dinner’ argument, explaining how the North–South divide emerges as a series of complex socioeconomic disparities. While the Industrial Revolution spurred the North’s economic prosperity, subsequent deindustrialisation in the 1980s led to economic decline, amplifying regional disparities. Today, London’s disproportionate cultural funding further challenges the

North’s ability to nurture creative talent, perpetuating the gap.

In 2007, Professor Danny Dorling set out to draw the dividing line between North and South and revealed that no matter the area of inquiry, the outcome was the same: quality of life had seemingly become a postcode lottery. Both lived experiences and media portrayal have reinforced a conventional image surrounding the nature of these ‘other’ Englanders. While such social and cultural stereotypes represent southerners as elite in their customs, northerners are frequently assigned the role of ‘bumpkin’.

Despite these challenges, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has emerged as an exemplar of rebalancing. Boasting over 400,000 annual visitors, and claiming its position alongside famed galleries in the South East, it stands as a testament to the passion of local artists and a real manifestation of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. Central to its continued success are Damien Hirst’s bronze works, specifically his Charity piece which is finally on display in the North. The pull of visitors, termed the ‘Hirst effect’, demonstrates how decentralising famed works of art holds the key to levelling the playing field. In this instance, it establishes a newfound sense of familiarity between London and Wakefield.

Image: Damien Hirst’s Virgin Mother and Charity pictured at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with Bretton Hall in the background, 2023. Image by the author.

Kentish Ragstone Ecologies

Jordan Panayi

Tutor: Paul Dobraszczyk

Abstract: Quarries are often perceived as ruining not only our landscapes but also the planet itself. This essay questions whether this should be the case by asking how the extraction of stone can be seen as a form of material entropy. In the context of today’s construction industry contributing over 40% of global carbon emissions, we naturally turn to low-carbon materials such as stone and timber as alternatives to concrete and steel. However, a key question remains unanswered: if stone is to thrive as a staple construction material, how do we deal with the ‘ruin’ that the extraction of stone inevitably leaves behind?

The purpose of this essay is twofold: first, to question quarries as ruinous landscapes; and second, to further develop a personal sense of place and identity, using Kentish ragstone quarries around Maidstone (the area where the author grew up) as the central case studies. The essay draws comparisons

between the materiality of these quarries and the structures their extracted materials form the basis of. Quarries and their reciprocal structures are intrinsically linked through shared economic, environmental and social ecologies. These are explored in this essay through a series of site visits, exploring each of the quarry sites and tracing their reciprocal structures across South East England.

The essay follows the movement of Kentish ragstone throughout its 2,000-year history of extraction, from its use in the construction of Roman London to the present day. In each case, the voids left behind by quarrying are not just indicative of absent stone but also of its movement to build reciprocal structures. Quarry and building may be geographically distant, but they are inseparable in their materiality and ecologies. What if we think of a quarry not as a ruin at all but rather an exponentially speeded-up version of what already happens in natural geological processes? In this reading, humans are the geological agent in an already ruinous and reciprocal landscape.

Image: Disused quarry face facilitating new growth for woodland and vertical plants in Quarry Wood, Kent, 2023. Image by the author.

Thesis

Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton

The thesis enables Year 5 Architecture MArch students to undertake research in an area of particular interest to them. In doing so 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 who are 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.

Past graduates have gone on to further pursue their thesis research interests via several pathways. These include writing papers for presentation at academic conferences and in academic journals, developing external projects, undertaking PhDs and working as specialists in industry. We anticipate that several theses from this year’s academic cohort will be developed into external publications or projects.

Year 5

Thesis Tutors

Hector Altamirano, Edwina Attlee, Alessandro Ayuso, Andy Barnett, Paul Bavister, Jan Birsted, Peter Bishop, Camillo Boano, Roberto Bottazzi, Brent Carnell, Amica Dall, Gillian Darley, Paul Dobraszczyk, Oliver Domeisen, Kelly Alvarez Doran, Daniel Dream, Murray Fraser, Daisy Froud, Stephen Gage, Christophe Gerard, Polly Gould, Jane Hall, Sean Hanna, Jan Kattein, Tim Lucas, Abel Maciel, Joshua Mardell, Anna Mavrogianni, Claire McAndrew, Luke Pearson, Rokia Raslan, Guang Yu Ren, Filomena Russo, Tania Sengupta, Michael Stacey, Tim Waterman, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton, Fiona Zisch, Stamatis Zografos

PGTA

Ana Mayoral Moratilla

Architect as Polemicist: The

Projection of Persona

Nikita Norris

Thesis tutor: Ian Birksted

Abstract: “Visible/invisible, public/private, iconic/bland: OMA’s Rothschild Bank is simultaneously contradictory, but pulls it off.” 1

This opening statement by critic Rory Olcayto describes an architecture of novelty, one that successfully exists in a state of flux. This flux is a result of the collision of two institutions: that of the banking firm Rothschild & Co. and the architectural firm OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). While one projects an aura of secrecy and traditionalism, the other bestows touches of transparency and modernity.

Olcayto’s statement suggests a design process of constant trial and error. It was a process that the project’s architect, Ellen van Loon, described as OMA’s ambition to propel the Rothschilds into the modern era. Yet it was one that has subsequently been deemed by others to be contentious and inappropriate. For example, architect and critic Joseph Rykwert’s scathing review reduces New Court, Rothschild’s London headquarters, to nothing

more than a haven for the elite, protected by a building that is colossal and closed off.

In this contrast of ideals, the design process brings to light new questions. It implies that the architect must act as an advocate – a harbinger of ideals who endeavours to challenge preconceptions. This thesis articulates and thinks through these questions by analysing the ‘persona’ of an organisation through architecture. By applying the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, judgements can be reached despite the lack of empirical data. The initial hypothesis that the Rothschilds’ persona had been altered is challenged through an iterative progression of themes that analyse the personas of both OMA and the Rothschild family. As each theme explores a paradoxical trait of the institutions, the initial hypothesis develops. Design choices that appear contradictory in nature gain clarity when the decisions behind them are revealed.

So is New Court truly a collision of ideas in the pursuit of novelty or just the desired end result of the client? Has the persona of the Rothschilds been altered by OMA’s intervention or does it stay true to their heritage?

1. Rory Olcayto (2012). ‘New Court, Rothschild Bank headquarters, London, by OMA’, The Architects’ Journal Available at: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/ archive/new-court-rothschild-bank-headquarterslondon-by-oma.

Image: A diagrammatic representation of Carl Jung’s theory of personality. New Court stands as the outcome of the Rothschilds’ desired projection on society, an expression of their persona. Image by the author.

A Toolkit for Retrofit: The Communication Conundrum and Our Road to Net Zero

Madeleine Rutherford-Browne Thesis tutor: Jan Kattein

Abstract: Zeitgeist. Façade. Pilotis. Fenestration. Gentrification. These words are just a small selection of architectural jargon listed among ArchDaily’s 150 Weird Words that Only Architects Use. As our planet surpasses the point of climate warming for alleged climate boiling, the subsequent green agenda has only broadened an architect’s glossary of terminology. Lately, the term ‘retrofit’ has risen in popularity. But the public’s lack of awareness of the word, let alone the matter itself, is evident of the linguistic divide between homeowners and industry professionals, subsequently causing misunderstanding and a delay in retrofit progress.

Retrofitting the UK’s nation’s housing stock is vital in creating a net-zero society. But how can homeowners participate in initiatives such as the ‘retrofit revolution’ led by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, if its meaning and purpose are not being communicated effectively, if at all? The Becontree Estate, the largest housing estate in Europe, acts as a microcosm for mass retrofit in the UK, and an anchor point for these investigations. Through a series of interviews conducted with residents, collaboration with the Greater

London Authority, the Borough Council and the architects who are piloting the retrofit of Becontree, the thesis identifies and investigates the reasons behind low retrofit uptake. These include a lack of public awareness, the linguistic divide, the retrofit knowledge gap, the housing crisis, crippling costs, misinformation and a lack of incentive to retrofit.

The proposed solution to increase public awareness is through capacity-building techniques in the ‘Communication Toolkit’, which provides a bridge between homeowners and built environment professionals to effectively communicate retrofit. To make progress in the retrofit mission, the Toolkit provides resources, worksheets and guidance, with their curation having been informed by the misconceptions and misunderstandings discovered by talking to Becontree residents and others in the aforementioned interviews.

The need for removal of architectural jargon in exchange for relatable and unpretentious language is a key finding of this research and it is hoped that the concept of the Communication Toolkit can become an essential, everyday part of an architect’s agency for change. If we really wish to curb the carbon consumption of our properties, then the linguistic divide between us must be confronted. And fast.

People engaging with the Communication Toolkit. Image by the author.

Image:

Seismic Flexible Morphology: Investigating

Seismic Structural Principles of Traditional Japanese Timber Structures and Their Applications in Large-Scale Architecture

Ayaka Sato

Thesis tutor: Tim Lucas

Abstract: This thesis delves into the underlying structural and constructional principles of traditional Japanese timber construction, unveiling its remarkable resilience against earthquakes and how this is achieved. By harnessing these principles, the aim is to forge a novel translational relationship between the traditional structural systems and large-scale modern-day architecture. The flexible structure methods of traditional Japanese timber construction utilise the frictional properties of wood as its primary material, enabling a degree of deformation so as to prevent catastrophic structural failure. In contrast to the present rigid construction approach which mitigates seismic stresses by enduring, this thesis seeks to develop a structural system that applies the theory of flexible structures in a timber stadium project. A literature review provides background on geographical features, local timber resources and diverse structural systems used in Japan to address seismic conditions. The Horyuji Pagoda and the Kintai

Bridge are examined as case studies. The focus is on understanding load transmission mechanisms, assembly methods and joinery systems, and how these interrelate to deliver flexible structures. Digital modelling and physical assembly of scaled models are used to investigate and gain a detailed understanding of the intricate components and assemblies.

The key outcome of this research is the development of a novel timber structural system employing flexible structural principles. As in both case studies, the proposed structure’s seismic resistance stems from a myriad of micro- and macro-level factors. At the micro level, the principle of ‘stacked beams’ is tested for the development of primary columns with curve morphology and, at a macro level, the lever principle is implemented to build the overall structural frame. Design development uses digital modelling and bending moment analytical diagrams. The system is deployed in a stadium design, demonstrating how the repeating yet adaptable modules can be used in a larger structural system. This shows the system’s potential for dispersing lateral forces throughout the larger framework and incorporating flexible structure principles at different scales.

Image: A single module (left) and a configuration with two aggregated modules (right) of the stadium structural prototype utilising flexible structure principles identified from the historical case studies. Image by the author.

A Five-Thousand-Mile Journey Home: Global Stories and Domestic Tales

Mylan Thuroczy

Thesis tutor: Guang Yu Ren

Abstract: This research began with an interest in exploring my multicultural upbringing. My mother, who is from Vietnam, and my father, who is half Russian and half Hungarian, met in Moscow during their university years and later moved to Hungary to establish a family. Today, I call this place home, where my parents’ cultural backgrounds have seamlessly integrated into my sister’s and my everyday life. In this thesis, I interrogate the confusion and complexity of a multicultural identity by examining my family home, which contains many traces of different places from my parents’ lives. Why do certain items find a place in our home, and what significance do they hold? How can I use material culture in our house to learn about specific life worlds and movements around the globe?

Through the thesis, home is studied and revealed as a site of locality building by its inhabitants, an intricate spatial practice that combines global movements and personal narratives, influenced by various sociocultural, temporal, economic and political factors. This is examined from the

perspective of objects in the home as tools that can assert cultural meaning in space. The research comprises primary research through interviews with my mother and secondary contextualising research. In describing the evolution of the home, I have chosen to focus on my mother’s journey, highlighting family customs in Vietnam, where the wife joins the husband’s household after marriage.

Through writing about four key spaces – the entrance, the living room, my mother’s study and my sister’s room – and relating them to my mother’s journey of dwellings, different aspects of the home were analysed in relation to cultural histories and references. Examples include instances where contrasting traditions of postcolonial and personal memories merge into a new cultural condition. Overall, the thesis aims to foster a critically empathetic methodology for examining multicultural spaces – not as spaces of ‘otherness’ but as sites revealing shared entanglements across all dwellings. By viewing local environments in a way that considers contingencies in global and personal narratives, the thesis aims to facilitate design approaches that preserve cultural and personal meanings with more nuance and care.

Image: Fireplace and altar, two symbols of home, facing each other in my mother’s study. Image by the author.

The Eel, the Dowry and the Seamstress Bianca Zucchelli

Thesis tutor: Edwina Atlee

Abstract: Comacchio, my hometown, is a small fishing village in northern Italy with a strong attachment to its neighbouring lagoon and its beloved eel. Isolated by its surrounding waters and known as a place of poverty and deprivation, Comacchio heavily relied on its fishing industry as a means of survival, letting the lagoon dominate today’s popular tales that are passed on to new generations. This thesis aims to narrate its story from a perspective that has been overshadowed: a history far from the lagoon and its heroic men, but instead one hidden within the rapid hands working skeins of wool and threads of cotton. It argues for the importance of telling the untold stories of a town through a gendered perspective to fill the absence of women’s voices in archival records.

By researching the role of working women in the early 20th century in Comacchio, it became apparent that the town was dominated by the textile industry, which was very much a part of a girl’s education and

later life, progressively shaping their expected societal role. By analysing the chronological process of the making of a dowry and the making of a girl within a town and its associated premises, we are allowed to see the restricted bearings placed on working women and how these impacted their socioeconomic position. The town of Comacchio is seen as a site of industrial piece-making, happening not in a factory but in different spatial typologies including the street, the home, the convent or the laboratory. This shows the role of an urban grain in weaving a profession and industrial process into the everyday life of its female workforce. Through interviews, archival research and theoretical arguments, the thesis aims to situate the findings within a broader sociopolitical context of industrialisation and waged labour. Oral histories are honoured through the use of a creative writing exercise, based on ficto-critical methodologies, engraining fading memories onto paper: Anna-eel (part girl, part eel) retraces the steps of Comacchio’s seamstresses, unveiling a side of the story yet to be told.

Image: Embroidered map showing Anna-eel’s movement across Comacchio going from her childhood home, the laboratory, the wedding chapel and her new marital home, intertwining matters of religion, waged labour and expected gendered roles within her daily life. Image by the author.

The Bartlett Summer Show, 2023

Tower Hamlets Town Hall

Photograph by Timothy Soar

Hall Monaghan Morris is pleased to support the students’ Summer Show

London Square Bermondsey

Photograph by Timothy Soar

Creatively embracing the challenges of the future

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Our Programmes

The Bartlett School of Architecture currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students across 25 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 Farlie Reynolds

Architecture MSci (ARB Part 1 & 2)

Five-year programme with a year placement in practice, directed by Prof Murray Fraser

Architectural & Interdisciplinary Studies BSc

Three or four-year programme, directed by Dr Sophie Read

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 Dr Kostas Grigoriadis and Matthew Butcher

Architectural Computation MSc/MRes

12-month programmes, directed by Philippe Morel

Architectural Design MArch

12-month programme, directed by Tyson Hosmer

Architectural History MA

One-year programme, directed by Prof Barbara Penner and Dr Robin Wilson

Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA

One-year programme, directed by Prof Edward Denison and Jane Wong (acting)

Bio-Integrated Design MSc/MArch

Two-year programmes, directed by Prof Marcos Cruz and Dr Brenda Parker

Cinematic & Videogame Architecture MArch

12-month programme directed by Prof Penelope Haralambidou and Dr Luke Pearson

Design for Manufacture MArch

15-month programme, directed by Prof Peter Scully

Design for Performance & Interaction MArch

15-month programme, directed by Dr Fiona Zisch

Landscape Architecture MA/MLA

One-year (MA) and two-year (MLA) programmes, directed by Prof Laura Allen and Prof Mark Smout

Situated Practice MA

15-month programme, directed by Dr James O’Leary and Dr Polly Gould

Space Syntax: Architecture & Cities

MSc/MRes

One-year programmes, directed by Prof Kayvan Karimi

Urban Design MArch

12-month programme, directed by Roberto Bottazzi

Architectural Design MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Dr Nina Vollenbröker

Architectural & Urban History & Theory

MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Sophia Psarra

Architectural Space & Computation

MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

Architecture & Digital Theory MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Mario Carpo

Architectural Practice MPhil/PhD

Three- to four-year programme, directed by Prof Murray Fraser

Professional Studies

Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 3)

10- to 23-month programme, directed by María Páez González

Short Courses

This year The Bartlett has expanded its short courses programme to offer a range of exciting new formats that stimulate diverse approaches to architecture, inviting participation from different levels.

For those considering a future career in architecture, going on to further study or adding to an existing professional skill set, our short courses cater to individuals from different backgrounds and ages who are seeking to learn more about the research, design and practice of architecture in flexible and creative ways. Our short courses utilise UCL’s state-of-the-art facilities and are led by international experts and members of The Bartlett’s community who are leaders in their respective fields, supporting participants to undertake both specialised and broader forms of learning.

The Bartlett Summer Schools:

July–August 2024

Taking place across July and August, our on-campus summer schools offer secondary school students an immersive and hands-on learning experience, particularly for those looking to understand more about architecture within The Bartlett’s campus environment.

Through 2-day, 5-day and 15-day formats, our summer schools provide students who are 18 and under the chance to understand more about architecture within a worldleading institution, with different options for 14–16-year-olds and 16–18-year-olds. These courses are designed specifically for students who are thinking about studying architecture and are looking for an introduction to The Bartlett, with important information about this route to assist with their GCSE, A-level decisions and university applications. Through creative exercises, we aim to promote architecture as a fundamentally collaborative practice, introducing students to the wider societal forces that affect our built environment.

In collaboration with the Access and Widening Participation Team at UCL, we also offer an architecture course within the Sutton Trust Summer School, supporting young people from less advantaged backgrounds to access leading universities and careers.

Creative Terrain Short Course:

22–26 July 2024

Our brand new Landscape Architecture Short Course – Creative Terrain – provides an introduction to the practice of landscape architecture, and our commitment to an agenda of climate-focused landscape design. The course will act as a gateway into the Landscape Architecture MLA/MA programme at The Bartlett, providing key insight into our curriculum and approach, led by design studio tutors on the Landscape Architecture MLA/MA course.

Guided by a bespoke brief titled Creative Terrain, students will collaborate over an intensive five-day period to develop a large-scale collaborative landscape model, based within the richly layered terrains of Lee Valley Regional Park. Studio-based learning will be complemented by on-site visits and mapping studies, using creative methods to trace the layers of history and development across these sites and speculate on what potential forms its future may hold. This course is taught at an intermediate level, open to participants over 18.

UCL East Saturday Club – Art and Design

This is a free weekly art and design workshop for Years 9, 10 and 11 from East London.

Visit our website to find out more about our range of short courses.

Contact bartlett.shortcourses@ucl.ac.uk

Public Lectures

The Bartlett Public Event Series: CRUNCH CRUNCH is a new flagship seminar series launched this academic year. It features panel discussions that apply critical thought to contemporary projects and urgent ecological, social, political and economic concerns in architecture. This year’s theme was ‘Resource’. All events in this series are open to the public and free to attend. Seminars this year featured:

A Concrete Crisis Dr Catherine Croft (Twentieth Century Society), Prof Adrian Forty (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Dr Ruth Lang (RCA), Elaine Toogood (Concrete Centre), chaired by Prof Eva Branscome (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Platformers – Enabling Contemporary Thought and Practice Kwame Dawes (poet), Prof Matthew Shenoda (Brown University), Nadine Monem (UAL), chaired by Prof Amy Kulper (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— The Source of the Everyday Jayden Ali (JA Projects), Dr Aleema Gray (Museum of London), Manijeh Verghese (Architectural Association), Chee-Kit Lai (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Neba Sere (The Bartlett School of Architecture) Postdigital Resources Dr Toshiki Hirano (University of Tokyo), Toshikatsu Kiuchi (Toshikatsu Kiuchi Architect Office), Gonzalo Vaillo (MORPHtopia), Nikoletta Karastathi (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Prof Marjan Colletti (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— Transscalar Architecture Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) and Guang Yu Ren (The Bartlett School of Architecture), chaired by Prof Amy Kulper (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Agents for Participation Carles Baiges Camprubí (Lacol) and Jan Kattein (Jan Kattein Architects), chaired by Dr Claire McAndrew (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Resourcing Anatomies Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler (Common Accounts), Dream Chittmittrapap (Xcessive Aesthetics),

Parma Ham (Serpentine Galleries), chaired by Daniel Ovalle Costal (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— ‘unknown, unknown’ Prof Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia University) and The Bartlett School of Architecture PhD student respondents Sarah Akigbogun, Kirti Durelle and Feysa Poetry, chaired by Dr Stamatis Zografos (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Liquid Resistance in the Black Atlantic Imani Jacqueline Brown (artist) and Dele Adeyemo (Royal College of Art), chaired by Prof Peg Rawes (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Collective Construction: From Housing to Revolution Prof Silke Kapp (Federal University of Minas Gerais), Prof João Marcos de Almeida Lopes (Federal University of Sao Carlos), Anurag Verma (Rural Urban Synthesis Society), chaired by Dr Megha Chand Inglis (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Healing through Making Rizvi Hassan (Rizvi Hassan Architects) and Prof Jonathan Saha (Durham University), chaired by Prof Claire Melhuish (UCL Urban Laboratory)

The Exhibition as Pedagogical Situation Kawsi Ohene-Ayeh (KNUST) and Prof Tamar Garb (UCL History of Art), chaired by Albert Brenchat Aguilar (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

— From the City of Plans Ruth-Anne Richardson (African Futures Institute) and Prof Julio D. Dávila (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit), chaired by Issi Nanabeyin (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

Inaugural Lectures

Professor Kerstin Sailer, 7 March 2024

In her inaugural professorial lecture, Prof Kerstin Sailer turned the spotlight of architecture away from aesthetics or critiques of form and towards an emphasis on architectures of care, focusing on the lived experiences of people within certain spatial structures. Hosted by Prof Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett.

Professor Sean Hanna, 14 March 2024

In his inaugural professorial lecture, Prof Sean Hanna explored the interrelationships between artificial intelligence and design and asks whether creative thinking is a uniquely human phenomenon. Hosted by Prof Christoph Lindner, Dean of The Bartlett.

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:

Dr Claudia Pasquero (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Marco Poletto (ecoLogicStudio), Prof Ludger Hovestadt (ETH Zurich), Dr Kostas Grigoriadis and Dr Guan Lee (The Bartlett School of Architecture)

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:

Dr Jeffrey Nesbit (Temple University) and Prof Charles Waldheim (Harvard), Toby Laurent Belson (multidisciplinary artist), José Alfredo Ramírez Galindo (Architectural Association), Tatiana von Preussen (vPPR), Dr Anna Boldina (R H Partnership Architects) and Dr Jake Robinson (Flinders University)

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 showcasing the latest research of leading architectural scholars with a particular focus on applying new and diverse methodologies and critical theories to architecture and cities. Speakers included:

Dr Jingru (Cyan) Cheng (Royal College of Art), Dr David Serlin (UC San Diego), Andrew Todd (Studio Andrew Todd), Prof Ron Henderson (IIT College of Architecture), Marion Waller (Pavillon de l’Arsenal), Prof Charles Rice (University of Technology Sydney), Dr Kuba Szreder (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw), Dr Iulia Statica (University of Sheffield) and Prof Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

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:

Feysa Poetry, Daniel Ovalle Costal, Guy Mannes-Abbott, Isabelle Donetch, Oliver Brax, Mengdi Mao, Eric Wong, Jingwen Chen and Giles Nartey

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:

Dr Sheep Dalton (Northumbria University), Prof Akkelies van Nes (University College Bergen), Besnik Murati (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Prof Alain Chiaradia (University of Hong Kong), Dr Stephen Law (UCL), Dicuonzo (University of Porto), Liam Thomas Bolton (The Bartlett School of Architecture), Dr Vinicius Netto (University of Porto), Dr Davide Schaumann (Israel Institute of Technology), Ruth Nelson (TU Delft), Dr Chrystala Psathiti (Neapolis University Pafos), Dr Tamir El-Khouly (The American University in Cairo), Dr Dounia Laouar, Prof Anjali Sadanand (MEASI Academy of Architecture) and Prof John Peponis (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Exhibitions & Events

The Bartlett hosts a variety of events ranging from conferences and book launches to workshops and international symposia. A vibrant programme of exhibitions also runs throughout the year. These events offer a diverse exploration of innovative ideas and current issues with inspiring speakers from across the globe.

The Architectural History MA student-led symposium, Unsorted: Redefining the Canon of Architectural History, 4 November 2023, reflected on transdisciplinary methodologies and perspectives within the practice of architectural history. This year’s graduating cohort also presented a temporary exhibition titled Beyond the PDF: Transdisciplinary Artefacts of Architectural History Research

A series of in-person events took place around this year’s Fifteen show. The Design for Manufacture Conference, 7–8 December 2023 saw students present research projects regarding the practice of ‘re-manufacturing’. Situated Practice Live, 9 December 2023 saw students question where architecture ends and art practice begins through boundary-pushing films and discussion. The Design for Performance and Interaction Project Fair, 15 December 2023 showcased groundbreaking design and research work from the graduating cohort.

The 18th annual PhD Research Projects Exhibition, 20 February–5 March 2024 showcased the work of doctoral research in developing or concluding phases from across the faculty. The accompanying conference featured presentations by doctoral students and panel discussions.

The Architecture & Historic Urban Environments MA organised Close Readings: Reflections on Spatial Practice in the Age of War, 21 February 2024, screening a documentary about a Ukrainian subway station turned bomb shelter, and followed by a panel discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning Ukrainian journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko, English journalist Anna Reid and Ukrainian

architectural and urban historian Ievgeniia ‘Jenia’ Gubkina.

A Festival of Feminist Architectural Writing | Re:arrangements and a Revisitation, 1 May 2024 was hosted by the Situated Practice MA and organised by The Bartlett’s Jane Rendell, Polly Gould and Sarah Butler with Emma Cheatle and Hélène Frichot. It was a celebration of feminist architectural writing with a festival of readings and discussions.

Book Launches

Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives, 16 October 2023

Published by Lars Müller Publishers with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, the UK launch was chaired by Tariq Jazeel and featured a talk by the volume’s editor, Shayari de Silva, and responses from Albert Brenchat Aguilar and Pushpa Arabindoo.

Urban Surfaces, Graffiti and the Right to the City, 29 January 2024

Architectural historian Sabina Andron launched Urban Surfaces (Routledge), which explores the importance of graffiti and public signage in thinking about cities. Chaired by Prof Iain Borden, respondents included Dr Susan Hansen, Dr Rebecca Ross and Dr Rafael Schacter.

Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, 5 March 2024

Published by UCL Press, editors Prof Sophia Psarra, Dr Uta Staiger and Dr Claudia Sternberg discussed Parliament Buildings and its exploration of the nexus between architecture and politics. Respondents included Dr Mari Takayanagi, Prof Níall McLaughlin and Lord Anderson of Ipswich KBE KC.

Where is Africa: Volume 1, 11 March 2024

Author and architect Emanuel Admassu launched Where is Africa (Centre for Art, Research, and Alliances). He and Prof Amy Kulper discussed the mispositioning of African art and the imperialist foundations of Western cultural institutions’ fascination with African objects, people and places.

Bartlett Shows Website

In September 2020, the school launched its bespoke digital exhibition environment, presenting The Summer Show 2020. Since then, 20 further student shows have been shared digitally, including The Summer Show 2024. Each digital exhibition has attracted thousands of online visitors from across the globe, with the Summer Show 2023 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 have recently implemented a fully accessible route to all project pages in accordance with the internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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. In 2022, 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 we were delighted to welcome back a number of alumni to present at this year’s cross-unit event for Architecture MArch, ‘Diverse Architectures’. Each unit invited a former student from the past decade to present their fifth-year project from The Bartlett and to share their current or future work in practice. The inspiring speakers included Rahaf Abdoun-Machaal, Nabila Afif, Anthony Awanis, Alex Cotterill, Finbar Charleson, Jennifer Dyne, Ruby Law, Mathew Leung, Matthew Simpson, Paula Strunden, Joshua Thomas and Joanna van Son.

We also invite alumni to join us at The Bartlett Summer Show for an exclusive late opening of the exhibition. The Alumni Late drinks reception gives former students the opportunity to network with friends and colleagues, as well as meet prize winners from this year’s cohort.

Alumni interested in running events should email architecture.comms@ucl.ac.uk to discuss how we can help support you.

All Bartlett School of Architecture alumni are invited to join UCL Alumni, a global community of more than 430,000 former students, 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 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 board for the exclusive alumni community

Lifelong learning options including professional development opportunities

aoc.ucl.ac.uk/alumni

Summer Show Alumni Late, 2023

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

Thomas Abbs

Ana Abram

Vasilija Abramovic

George Adamopoulos

Panagiota Adilenidou

Ava Aghakouchak

Roslyn Aish

Alejandra Albuerne

Rodriguez

Wardah Ali

Laura Allen

Carlos Alvarez Doran

Sabina Andron

Simone Antoniazzi

Dimitris Argyros

Azadeh Asgharzadeh Zaferani

Abigail Ashton

Felicity Atekpe

Edwina Attlee

Annecy Attlee

Joseph Augustin

B

Julia Backhaus

Kirsty Badenoch

Matthew Barnett Howland

Bethany Barnett-Sanders

Sarah Barry

Carolina Bartram

Stefan Bassing

Paul Bavister

Simon Beames

Richard Beckett

Bedir Bekar

Jhono Bennett

Ruth Bernatek

Julian Besems

Vishu Bhooshan

Peter Bishop

Laurence Blackwell-Thale

Isaie Bloch

Eleanor Boiling

Paolo Bombelli

Iain Borden

Federico Borello

Alex Borrell

Roberto Bottazzi

Visiting Prof Andy Bow

Matthew Bowles

Eva Branscome

Albert Brenchat Aguilar

Alastair Browning

Thomas Budd

Rosalind Burkett-Wenham

Christopher Burman

Mark Burrows

Matthew Butcher

C

Blanche Cameron

William Victor Camilleri

Alberto Campagnoli

Barbara Campbell-Lange

Ben Campkin

Brent Carnell

Mario Carpo

Dan Carter

Martyn Carter

Luciano Caruggi de Faria

Ricardo Carvalho

De Ostos

Tommaso Casucci

Bhaskar Cephas

Tsz Long Chan

Megha Chand Inglis

Haden Charbel

Nat Chard

Finn Charleson

Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno

Tung Ying Chow

Krina Christopoulou

Sandra Ciampone

Mollie Claypool

Freya Cobbin

Marjan Colletti

Michael Collins

Emma Colthurst

Emeritus Prof Peter Cook

Hannah Corlett

Samuel Coulton

John Cruwys

Marcos Cruz

Rut Cuenca Candel

Nichola Czyz

DChristina Dahdaleh

Amica Dall

Van Anh Dang

Satyajit Das

Daniel Da Silva

James Day

Louise Davies

Peter Davies

Tom Davies

Denis Delaney

James Delaney

Klaas De Rycke

Edward Denison

Pradeep Devadass

Max Dewdney

Ilaria Di Carlo

David Di Duca

Aikaterini Dionysopoulou

Paul Dobraszczyk

Patrick Dobson-Perez

Oliver Domeisen

Elizabeth Dow

Sarah Dowding

Daniel Dream

Camille Dunlop

Shyamala Duraisingam

Claudia Dutson

Tom Dyckhoff

EKimberley Eade

David Edwards

Samuel Esses

Michael Evans

Ruth Evison

F

Ava Fatah

Donat Fatet

Mark Cortes Favis

Laura Fawcett-Gaskell

Timothy Fielder

Christopher Fischlein

Zachary Fluker

Emeritus Prof Adrian Forty

Emeritus Prof Colin Fournier

Alice Foxen

Cesar Fragachan Pinzani

Kenneth Fraser

Murray Fraser

Synnøve Fredericks

Daisy Froud

Maria Fulford

G

Emeritus Prof Stephen Gage

Gunther Galligioni

Christophe Gerard

Egmontas Geras

Christina Geros

Octavian Gheorghiu

Stylianos Giamarelos

Pedro Gil

Hannah Gill

Agnieszka Glowacka

Ruairi Glynn

Vaishnavi Gondane

Alicia González-Lafita

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

Tamsin Hanke

Sean Hanna

Penelope Haralambidou

Alice Hardy

Jack Hardy

Ben Hayes

Thea Heintz

Colin Herperger

Lucy Hetherington

Danielle Hewitt

Visiting Prof Neil Heyde

Parker Heyl

Jonathan Hill

Ashley Hinchcliffe

Bill Hodgson

Aileen Hoenerloh

Tom Holberton

Seyedeh Tahmineh

Hooshyar Emami

Tyson Hosmer

Delwar Hossain

Oliver Houchell

Sheng-Yang Huang

Johan Hybschmann

IJessica In

Charles Inge

Desart Ismaili

Bruce Ivers J

Clara Jaschke

William Jennings

Nicholas Jewell

Tobias Jewson

Manuel Jiménez Garcia

Steven Johnson

Helen Jones

Thomas Jones

Nina Jotanovic

Aurore Julien

KNikoletta Karastathi

Kayvan Karimi

Jan Kattein

Tom Keeley

Tom Kendall

Jonathan Kendall

Wilton Kemyst

Yana Kitova

Jakub Klaska

Fergus Knox

Andreas Korner

Margit Kraft

Kimon Krenz

Dirk Krolikowski

Dragana Krsic

Amy Kulper

Max Kynman

L

Chee-Kit Lai

Mani Lall

Katya Larina

Zoe Lau

Wai Law

Tony Le

Kwang Lee

Benjamin Lee

Stefan Lengen

Christopher Leung

Tairan Li

Ifigeneia Liangi

Chwen Lim

Enriqueta Llabres-Valls

Visiting Prof Lesley Lokko

Alvaro Lopez

Déborah López Lobato

Luke Lowings

Tim Lucas

Matt Lucraft

Abi Luter

M

David Maciver

Jörg Majer

Alexandru Malaescu

Shneel Malik

Gurdav Mankoo

Emily Mann

Georgia Manolopoulou

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk

Sara Martínez Zamora

Patrick Massey

Robin Mather

Emma-Kate Matthews

Vasileios Mavropoulos

Claire McAndrew

Donald McCrory

David McEwen

Joe McGrath

Niall McLaughlin

Jingyuan Meng

Adam Meyrick

Jose Mias Gifre

Frédéric Migayrou

Doug Miller

Dawn Mitchell

Matei-Alexandru Mitrache

Tom Mole

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Cristina Morbi

Philippe Morel

Bongani Muchemwa

Shaun Murray

Maxwell Mutanda

N

Tetsuro Nagata

Giles Nartey

Filippo Nassetti

Olivia Neves Marra

Tsing Yin Ng

Vincent Nowak

O

Aisling O’Carroll

Toby O’Connor

Yossie Olaleye

James O’Leary

Visiting Prof Femi Oresanya

Honorary Prof Raf Orlowski

Luke Olsen

Daniel Ovalle Costal

P

Yael Padan

Maria Paez

James Palmer

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

Honorary Prof Neil Pinder

Alicia Pivaro

Maj Plemenitas

Lyn Poon

Tsz Hin Matthew Poon

Andrew Porter

Rebecca Preston

Emily Priest

Arthur Prior

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran

Sophia Psarra

Danielle Purkiss R

Sascha Rashof

Margaret Rawes

Sophie Read

Aileen Reid

Guang Yu Ren

Jane Rendell

Gilles Retsin

Charlotte Reynolds

Daria Ricchi

Julie Richardson

David Roberts

Felix Roberts

Gavin Robotham

Daniel Rodriguez Garcia

Javier Ruiz Rodriguez

S

Kevin Saey

Kerstin Sailer

Andrew Saint

Diana Salazar Morales

Joel Saldeck

Shahed Saleem

Anete Krista Salmane

Mbango Same Essaka

Eleanor Sampson

Edward Tristram Scott

Peter Scully

Khaled Sedki

Tania Sengupta

Neba Sere

Sara Shafiei

David Shanks

Bob Sheil

Naz Siddique

Philipp Siedler

Gareth Simons

Isaac Simpson

Yip Siu

Colin Smith

Helen Smith

Paul Smoothy

Mark Smout

Valentina Soana

Joana Carla Soares Goncalves

Jasminder Sohi

Amy Spencer

Ben Spong

Matthew Springett

Michael Stacey

Brian Stater

Tijana Stevanovic

Rachel Stevenson

Sabine Storp

Greg Storrar

David Storring

Ignacy Styszko

Michiko Sumi

Harry Sumner

T

Imogen Terrar

Emmy Thittanond

Andrew Thom

Kathryn Timmins

Michael Tite

Claudia Toma

Emeritus Prof

Victor Torrance

Alessandro Toti

Martha Tsigkari

Marios Tsiliakos

Samuel Tuppen

Samuel Turner-Baldwin

Jonathan Tyrrell

V

Sumayya Vally

Melis Van Den Berg

Kelly Van Hecke

Kim van Poeteren

Nasios Varnavas

Tasos Varoudis

Laura Vaughan

Alejandro Veliz Reyes

Hamish Veitch

Maria Venegas Raba

Emmanuel Vercruysse

Viktoria Viktorija

Amelia Vilaplana

De Miguel

Jordi Vivaldi Piera

Nina Vollenbroker

Doron Von Beider W

Michael Wagner

Andrew Walker

Adam Walls

Emeritus Prof Susan Ware

Gabriel Warshafsky

Tim Waterman

James Watkins

Emeritus Prof

Patrick Weber

Rosamund West

Paul Weston

Alice Whewell

Christopher Whiteside

Andrew Whiting

Alexander Whitley

Rae Whittow-Williams

Daniel Widrig

James Wilkie

Henrietta Williams

Gen Williams

Graeme Williamson

James Williamson

Robin Wilson

Sarah Wilson

Oliver Wilton

Cheuk Wong X

Zoe Xing

Y

Sandra Youkhana Z

Barbara Zandavali

Emmanouil Zaroukas

Sepehr Zhand

Dominik Zisch

Fiona Zisch

Stamatios Zografos

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