#BATHBASIL18 Follow the progress of the Basil Spence Project

By Oliwia Jackowska

This year’s Basil Spence Project is heavily documented on Instagram. If you missed the final crit or want to know more about the progress of this extraordinary and slightly infamous competition, just follow one of the hashtags.

Taking into account the size of the site, difficult and abstract context, as well as the general expectations from the project, all groups produced competitive proposals taking really differing approaches.

Personally, I have learnt that work on a group project, especially Basil Spence is all about compromise. Not only between the team members or between architecture and engineering, but also about compromising ideas for the sake of the decisions we are making.

With my group, throughout the whole process we were going through different stages - uncertainty, excitement, moments of craziness and even more uncertainty.

However, we took the approach of testing solutions and pushing through the ideas by logic. If something was not working we would try to alter it in a way that it would. Bad interim crit is the best thing that can happen to you during this project. When we were put back in the beginning after our interim review, we started experimenting even more. Every time we were in the crossroads not sure where to go, we would test all the possible solutions and find the one that is well compromised.

It seems that even though it is the second longest project in the whole degree, the most important thing is to have a strong concept. Given the time that we have (which still did not seem enough for the complexity) the projects shoud be worked out in detail in terms of its functioning, construction, environmental solutions and concept. What matters a lot, however, is producing an interesting, innovative and ‘cool’ idea. It is pleasing, however, to observe Forth Years living up to those expectations every year.

By Stefano Towli and Lesley Chung