CARDIFF SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
OUR NEW HOME
In 2015, the Cardiff School of Art and Design will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. Its history is a noble and interesting one, as the School has been delivering courses in sciences, commercial practices and the arts to the city
CSAD TO OPEN WALES’ FIRST OFFICIAL MIT FAB LAB
for the greater part of its existence. Opened in 1865, it is one of the oldest art schools in the UK, all of which shared the imperative to train the artisan in commercially relevant practices, which sprang from the energy of the Great Exhibition in 1851 and all that came in its wake.
Beginning life in the oak paneled rooms above the Royal and Morgan Arcades, it is understood to be the oldest part of Cardiff Metropolitan University. Since its early days in the Arcades, it has also been housed in The Friary building, near Cardiff’s New Theatre, and in the purpose built Howard Gardens Campus, opened by the Earl of Snowdon on 13 May 1970. “Each location has marked a step forward and a turning point. No less a turning point is Cardiff Metropolitan University’s decision to consolidate the School on one site, the Llandaff Campus, through an investment of £14m in the provision of a new building and the refurbishment of existing accommodation,” says Dean of Cardiff School of Art and Design, Professor Gaynor Kavanagh. “The planned development means a tremendous amount to the School. Above all else, it represents to us the faith and confidence placed in CSAD by the University’s Governors, who recognize the School as a centre of excellence and high performance in both research and teaching. We are hugely grateful to them for this and for their continued interest and engagement with the School.” In 2014, the School will move to the new campus. It has been designed by award winning architects AustinSmith:Lord, who also designed the Riverfront Theatre, Newport as well as the Cardiff School of Management one of the most pleasing and useful spaces in Cardiff. Consolidating the all its programmes on one campus facilitiates a far better experience for staff, students and industrial partners. “The development has been designed around the research and teaching requirements of CSAD. As a result, it is sensitive to the ways we work which are characterized by making processes, driven by critical thinking,” Kavanagh explains, “The design fully recognizes that CSAD represents higher education at its most unconventional, intellectually challenging and creatively dynamic. The design allows for the fact that we are messy, noisy, technology-driven, talkative, hugely hard-working, and resource-intensive: not to mention, inventive, pragmatic, constantly developing and generally maverick.”
But the move doesn’t just mark the physical progression of the School of Art & Design’s history. It also indicates a renewed commitment to progression in research, teaching and innovation. A lead partner in the Wales Institute of Research in Art and Design, the School will deliver a strong submission to the Research Excellence Framework in late 2013, to follow the success of its ranking of 11th in Research Power in art and design in the UK in the REF’s predecessor, the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008. On this last point, Kavanagh says, “The allocation of space in the new accommodation will enable the continuation of our varied and groundbreaking research work, especially that where we are in partnership with other universities including Lancaster, Birmingham, and Cardiff, in particular Cardiff Medical School. Our commitment to science in the context of our disciplines remains strong.”
The move will come in the third year of delivering the School’s new undergraduate curriculum, designed to enable students to work across the disciplines, whilst increasing their depth of engagement with their own. “Our students will be able to choose a period studying abroad with partners in India, Zambia, Venice, America or Korea, the Dean says. “They will also be able to choose to undertake a management module or experience a work placement or work with one of our research professors or principals. We will also have a much larger masters and research degree community, with many more students studying for MFA, MDes and Professional Doctorates in Art or Design.” Moving to a new location also allows the School to take new steps towards providing the energy and momentum for innovation in teaching with a host of exciting plans being made to provide facilities that will mark it as a truly modern faculty. Most notably, a partnership with the Samsung Art and Design Institute in Seoul will allow students to transcend international borders and still cycle home from the campus in the evening. “We plan to develop video-linked teaching facilities with Samsung Art and Design Institute, enhancing our joint delivery of our MDes, with particular emphasis on product design,” Kavanagh says. “We’re also looking forward to being able to integrate high-end prefabrication facilities into our workshops, linked to the global MIT FabLab network, to meet the proven needs of industry. This will also be deployed to enable local school children with an interest in design and technology to connect with classes as far flung as Boston, Barcelona and Tehran.”
The cross-disciplinary aspect of the new curriculum is very much enabled with the open, cross-disciplinary shared studios that are being designed. These will be able to accommodate the School’s growing interest in the way that science, art and design relate to one another, through debates experimentation and engagement. “Our students love Cardiff. Once graduated, many choose to stay to set-up businesses, set up studies and develop their own practices here. Our staff contribute to the vibrancy of the creative environments of both Cardiff and Wales as a whole. Collectively, we will remain part of the very fabric of what makes this city and this country special,” she says, as if to sum up. “We are ready for anything the future throws at us, and we’ll be addressing it from a wonderfully designed and created new base in Llandaff. We can’t wait.”
The much-anticipated new £14 million Cardiff School of Art and Design building (CSAD) will house Wales’ first Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) accredited Fab Lab. When the new building launches at the end of September 2014, CSAD will be full members of the global Fab Lab network and will be the first official UK Fab Lab attached to a university. The UK’s other MIT Fab Labs are in Belfast, Derry, Glasgow, and Manchester. The term ‘Fab Lab’ is shorthand for pre- fabrication laboratory. MIT has established a global network of local labs, each linked through video conferencing technology, operating to an ethos and specification established and maintained by MIT. Fab labs encourage the exchange of ideas between inventors in different countries by providing the space, equipment and help to rapidly turn ideas into working prototypes. MIT Fab Labs have been designed to connect industry, inventors, business, schools, communities and research facilities across the globe and the network promotes invention and innovation through easy access to specialised tools for digital fabrication, prototyping and manufacture, stimulated by discussion and cross-global initiatives. Projects in development at the 150 existing Fab Labs all over the world include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapidprototyping machines. In a Fab Lab in Afghanistan, people are fashioning customised prosthetic limbs, while shepherds in Norway have used their Fab Lab to create a system for tracking sheep using their mobile phones. Professor Gaynor Kavanagh, Dean of CSAD said: “The FabLab at Cardiff Metropolitan University will be a digital fabrication workshop which allows anyone to make practically anything. Developed by MIT in Boston, almost any concept which can be designed on 2D or 3D software can be manufactured quickly and cost effectively within the labs and skills developed around IT, Design and Fabrication. Through the Cardiff Fab Lab, users will have an unprecedented opportunity to access state of the art digital tools within a setting that can call on a global community. “Cardiff’s Fab Lab will be linked with people doing remarkable things in other labs from Boston to Lima, from Oslo to Ahmedabad, and from Jalalabad to Montreal. It will be run to meet the needs of designers and manufacturers in the development and prototyping of products and design solutions. "As well as deployment for industry, the Fab Lab will be available for use by schools and, through this, will inspire the next generation of designers and problem solvers. They will be able to join with schools across the network on design and manufacturing projects, fully enabled by the kind of equipment to which access may not be possible in any other way.” The Fab Lab will also ensure CSAD students have the opportunity to access world-class facilities and functions will include the study of robotics and musical instrument design, research at research degree level and computerembedded product prototyping. CSAD will be running short courses for designers, deploying Fab Lab facilities, through its new development, Cardiff Open Design School. Professor Kavanagh said: “The Cardiff Fab Lab represents yet another opportunity for CSAD to fuse its commitment to research, enterprise and learning. Like the new building on the Llandaff Campus, in which it will be housed, it marks yet another turning point in the life of the School and promises much for the future.”
OUR NEW HOME
CARDIFF SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
FACILITIES IN THE NEW BUILDING The new facilities will house a suite of modern, well-designed and safety-conscious workshop areas. These will be provided on one whole floor of the new build and a remodelled floor of our existing accommodation.
WOOD AREA
TEXTILES
New and traditional machines are supported by highly skilled and motivated practitioners. The workshop will provide students from all courses with the opportunity to work with one of the most elemental of all materials in either self-directed or guided sessions.
Our facilities in this area employ traditional techniques alongside up-to-date digital printing and laser cutting equipment. Professional sewing machines, over-lockers and digital embroiders are employed by a wide range of CSAD courses.
METALS
PRINTING WORKSHOP
The centre of our metals workshop is our new foundry and hot metal space, run by our RCA trained Technician Demonstrator. Pieces, both large and small, will be cast and used by a variety of different artists and makers. The workshop will also house a range of Mig & Tig welders, plus plasma cutters along with drilling, bending and milling facilities.
Students have access to a range of printing techniques including screen-printing, intaglio, etching, engraving and stone litho facilities. The workshop will continue to have a complete high pressure screen cleaning washing area with adjacent equipment for drying and developing the largest of screens.
PHOTO-MEDIA
CERAMICS The ceramics workshops will house well equipped kiln, plaster, clay and glaze areas. The workshop will also house glass slumping kilns, clay and plaster preparation facilities. Externally, students will have access to soda kilns and Raku firing facilities. This forward-looking facility reinforces CSAD’s commitment to this, the largest ceramics centre in Europe.
This area will house a darkroom with production of RC and fibre based silver gelatin prints; Photograms; Cyanotypes and Liquid Light. In the film developing room, you can process black and white film 35mm 120 or 5X4. Colour is handled via our Colour Machine for production of colour RA4 Prints from negatives. Digital Printing is carried out on Epson 9500 large format and Canon 950 A3 printers.
Also available is an infinity background for documenting small to medium sized objects plus a large flash unit for studio photographs. Our stores contain a large selection of 35mm film cameras and compact digital cameras for student loan, including 5X4 Film cameras, 120 film camera, DV tape video cameras and HD video camera equipment.
AUDIO AND VIDEO For video work we have camcorders, lighting, microphones and audio recorders available for use. There is bookable studio space, where we also do basic green screen work. We currently have four Mac based Video Edit Suites running Final Cut Pro Studio. In our Audio suite we have a Mac based recording studio utilising ProTools. We have a selection of instruments, amplifiers, microphones and outboard gear. Our Macs run Pro-tools, Logic and Reason, 3D workshops and Fablab. This facility will continue to develop, in line with technology. Here you will find a suite of CNC milling machines, laser cutters, routers, and 3D printers. Add to this our area for developing electronic control systems and you have an area where concepts can become reality in a short time.
In our studios you can expect to find continuous lighting and portable flash equipment, our copystand can be used to document all types of artwork using a digital camera.
FOUNDATION
UNDERGRADUATE
TAUGHT POSTGRADUATE
RESEARCH DEGREES
• Cardiff Diploma in Foundation Studies (Art & Design) (Bridgend) allied programme only
• HNC Building Technology and Management (Ystrad Mynach)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Professional & Research Skills: Art & Design • Master of Fine Art (MFA) • Master of Design (MDes) • Master of Design (MDes) SADI • MA (Cardiff School of Art & Design) • Fine Art • Communication • Illustration • Artist Designer Maker • Product Design • Textiles • Photographic Practice • Art & Science • Philosophy • Ecologies • MA Ceramics • MSc Advanced Product Design • MSc Environmental Change and Practice
• • • • •
• Foundation Degree in Applied Art & Design (Bridgend) • Foundation Degree in Ceramics (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Contemporary Textiles Practice (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Graphic Communication (Cardiff and The Vale College) • Foundation Degree in Sustainable Building Practice (Bridgend, Pembrokeshire, Llandrillo College, & Coleg Powys)
• HND Architectural Design & Technology • BSc (Hons) Architectural Design & Technology • BA (Hons) Artist Designer: Maker • BA (Hons) Fine Art • BA (Hons) Ceramics • BA (Hons) Textiles • BA (Hons) Graphic Communication • BA (Hons) Illustration • BA (Hons) Product Design • BSc (Hons) Product Design • BA (Hons) Photographic Practice (Bridgend)
MPhil PhD Professional Doctorate in Art Professional Doctorate in Design Professional Doctorate in Ecological Building Practices
www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/csad www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/studywithus CARDIFF SCHOOL OF ART & DESIGN, HOWARD GARDENS CAMPUS, CARDIFF, CF24 0SP Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 6154 Fax: +44 (0)29 2041 6944 email: csad@cardiffmet.ac.uk CARDIFF SCHOOL OF ART & DESIGN, LLANDAFF CAMPUS, WESTERN AVENUE, CARDIFF, CF5 2YB Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 6070 Fax: +44 (0)29 2041 6640 email: csad@cardiffmet.ac.uk