The AJ 26.07.12 D by The Architects' Journal

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Student shows  Every architecture school reviewed FOOTPRINT Olympic water recycling

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The Architects’ Journal

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Student shows  Every architecture school reviewed FOOTPRINT Olympic water recycling

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Student shows  Every architecture school reviewed FOOTPRINT Olympic water recycling

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Student shows 

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Every architecture school reviewed FOOTPRINT Olympic water recycling

THE CELEBRATES STUDENT WORK This week’s issue went to print with four covers to celebrate the excellent student work produced for the 2012 end-of-year shows. We’re also offering students the chance to subscribe to the AJ for 50% off. TheAJ.co.uk/StudentOffer

06 08 10 12 14 20 28 75 84

Week in pictures Herzog & de Meuron; AHMM; Page\Park Front page Surpassing good: the Stirling Prize contenders UK news Rothschild’s New Court ‘undemocratic’, says Rykwert News feature Council report slams Hawkins\Brown’s Corby Cube Competions & wins Delfina Foundation revamp and expansion People & practice Stephen Kieran on the US Embassy design Student shows 2012 Every RIBA-accredited school reviewed Footprint Olympic Park Old Ford Water Recycling Centre Culture Joseph Rykwert reviews Writing About Architecture This week online See photographs, drawings and details for 14 London Olympic venues at AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

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From the editor

It is not exactly the Stirling Prize shortlist we expected, but it’s not far off. The shortlisting of Populous’ Olympic Stadium (pictured) was the least surprising nomination on the list. News that it had made the cut broke a week ago when the Olympic Delivery Authority claimed as much in their annual report. Their announcement was more than a little premature, as the official shortlist was actually decided by the RIBA Awards Group the following day. Yet it would have been seen as an Olympic failure and triggered a storm in a teacup had London’s 2012 centrepiece not been nominated as one of the year’s six best buildings. As for Stanton Williams, I have to admit that I expected Central Saint Martins to make the shortlist over the Sainsbury Laboratory, mainly because the first client got more than they paid for, while the other building accomplished as much or more, but on a more extravagant budget. In either case, the practice’s presence on the shortlist was expected; it was a question of which building, rather than if. I’m sure their Hackney Marshes building was considered for the shortlist too. It does feel unfair that a single practice holds two spots on the six-strong list, as OMA does with both the Rothschild Bank and Maggie’s Gartnavel. Although the prize is for the best building, it still feels as though the judges might have shared the love a bit by choosing one of the two, as they have with David Chipperfield, with Wakefield but not Margate (the right choice). While I can understand the jury’s challenge in choosing between both excellent OMA buildings, the degree of difficulty of Rothschild was surely greater. Selecting one of the two OMAs would have left room for Adam Khan’s Brockholes among the six, which the majority of 400 AJ readers (38.5 per cent) predicted would be shortlisted. I suspect it was the skill of Brockholes’ construction, rather than its design, which eliminated it. O’Donnell and Tuomey’s Lyric Theatre is the sixth building on the list, its presence anticipated and a strong contender for the top prize too. ..

ODA

Stirling 2012: Two by Koolhaas, no Khan and a muddle over austerity versus austere, writes Christine Murray

The judges might have shared the love by choosing one of OMA’s two buildings, as they did with Chipperfield Taken together, it is an interesting shortlist which, as Joseph Rykwert said of architecture at the AJ’s British Architecture Now event at the RIBA last week, perhaps tells us more about the state of the world than we would otherwise dare vocalise – especially a tower for Rothschild bank that looks down on the Bank of England (see page 8). But more important for this prize is what these six buildings will say to the public about architects. The fact that early commentary on Twitter referred to the Stirling Prize line-up as an ‘austerity’ shortlist suggests early confusion that, despite their restrained appearance and lack of bling, these are all very expensive buildings. As Charles Holland of FAT tweeted (@fatcharlesh), the ‘Stirling Prize debate is confusing austerity (no money) with austere (sober, grey, discreetly expensive).’ Given the bad press this year about profligate architects and architecture, this misunderstanding may be no bad thing. The AJ is proud to support the Stirling Prize as trade media sponsor 

Week in pictures

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PICTURE CREDITS: 01 HERZOG & DE MEURON 02 STUDIO WEAVE 03 JOHN MALTBY / RIBA LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION 04 JAMES CORNER FIELD OPERATIONS/MAKE ARCHITECTS 05 PAGE\PARK

 Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron has released the first image of its proposed new Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford. The £30 million scheme will be built on Walton Street next to St Paul’s church inside the University’s Rafael Viñoly-masterplanned Radcliffe Observatory Quarter 1

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 Studio Weave has completed its replacement for the ditched ‘giant goalposts’ in Aldgate. The 11m-high, ‘Paleys upon Pilers’, built from 17m3 of larch, sits on the site previously allocated for Donis’s 60m-high structure, which won the Architecture Foundation’s New Aldgate contest in 2010 2

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 AHMM is to oversee the overhaul of the 1950s Graham Dawbarndesigned BBC Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. The practice is part of the victorious consortium led by developer Stanhope, which last week bought the Grade II-listed centre for £200 million 3

 James Corner Field Operations and Make have submitted plans for a post-games public realm on the Olympic Park. Planned to open in Spring 2014, the competition-winning 11 hectare South Plaza features a tree-lined promenade and landscaped ‘rooms’ for picnics, performances and play 4

 Page\Park Architects has revealed its largest project to date: the new £60 million HQ for Scottish Power in St Vincent Street, Glasgow. The practice has collaborated with Ortis Leon Architects from Madrid on the 20,400m2 office project, which is expected to start on site next year 5

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News feature

Chipperfield tipped to win as Stirling Prize 2012 shortlist announced

HUFTON + CROW

Architect Stanton Williams Building Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge Budget £69 million Latest odds 7/2 Previously shortlisted 0 Wins 0

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DENNIS GILBERT

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they are human-scale buildings, places to inspire, entertain, educate and comfort their visitors and passers-by. She added: ‘They don’t shout “look at me” and even the tallest building, New Court in the City of London, has created good views for pedestrians.’ The bookmakers’ favourite is Chipperfield, who won the Stirling Prize with his Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar in 2007, and currently has odds of 3/1. This year’s Stirling Prize judges are: chair and former president of the Royal Academy Nicholas Grimshaw, Mark Jones of St Cross College Oxford and former director of the V&A, Joanna van Heyningen of van Heyningen & Haward Architects, Hilde Daem of Robbrecht + Daem, and writer and broadcaster Naomi Cleaver.

PHILIPPE RUAULT

(AJ 13.07.12), Populous’  The six contenders Olympic Stadium has made shortlisted for this year’s RIBA the final six along with Stirling Prize were unveiled Stanton Williams’ Sainsbury on Sunday by media partners Laboratory in Cambridge the AJ and the Observer. and O’Donnell & Tuomey’s David Chipperfield is named Lyric Theatre in Belfast. on the prize’s shortlist for the However, bookmakers William third year in a row and there are Hill do not think the 2012 two nominations for buildings stadium will win the by Rem Koolhaas’ coveted prize – ranking practice OMA. it as a 5/1 outsider. Already the Now in its bookmakers’ Stirling Prize 17th year, the favourite, money to be annual £20,000 Chipperfield’s awarded Stirling Prize will Hepworth Wakefield be announced on gallery is joined 13 October. But for among the finalists by the first time in more than a OMA’s Maggie’s Gartnavel and decade, this year’s ceremony the firm’s New Court Rothschild bank in London, which it worked will not be broadcast on television (AJ 06.07.12). on with Allies & Morrison. RIBA president Angela Brady After the Olympic Delivery said: ‘All of the shortlisted Authority prematurely claimed buildings demonstrate the in its annual report that it essence of great architecture; had already been shortlisted

MORLEY VON STERNBERG

OMA takes two spots, Populous’ Olympics centrepiece holds outsider odds and Hepworth Wakefield is the bookies favourite, writes Richard Waite

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:   

Where is the clever housing? The public buildings wrenched from miniscule budgets and saved by great design? I don’t see it here. Martyn Evans, Cathedral Group Brockholes should be there. The stadium is great as a piece of engineering but not great architecture. Looking at previous shortlists this is not a bad crop Simon Carne, Simon Carne architect and urban designer

Architect Populous Building London Olympic Stadium Budget £496 million Latest odds 5/1 Previously shortlisted 0 Wins 0

Architect O’Donnell + Tuomey Building The Lyric Theatre, Belfast Budget £80 million Latest odds 4/1 Previously shortlisted 4 Wins 0

Architect OMA Building New Court Budget £122 million (estimated) Latest odds 4/1 Previously shortlisted 3 Wins 0

PHILIPPE RUAULT

Really strong longlist this year but surprised Adam Khan’s Brockholes Visitor Centre didn’t make the shortlist – shame! Brian McGinlay, NORD (on Linkedin) [The] Stirling Prize debate [is] confusing austerity (no money) with austere (sober, grey, discreetly expensive) Charles Holland, FAT (on Twitter)

Architect OMA Building Maggie’s Gartnavel Budget £2.7 million Latest odds 9/2 Previously shortlisted 3 Wins 0

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Architect David Chipperfield Architects Building Hepworth Wakefield Budget £22.8 million Latest odds 3/1 Previously shortlisted 8 Wins 1

HUFTON + CROW

I’m pleased the stadium is there. It has come in for some criticism and described as ‘lightweight’ compared to the Beijing stadium. It’s a very elegant building and I admire the effort gone into trying to ensure we’re not left with an unusable structure after the Games. Rab Bennetts, Bennetts Associates [The] list for this year’s Stirling Prize shortlist revealed no surprise again as modern classical buildings are excluded Alireza Sagharchi (on Twitter) 

News feature

Rykwert: New Court is ‘undemocratic’ Renowned architectural critic describes OMA design for Rothschild bank headquarters as symbol of oligarchic times. Merlin Fulcher reports

clear in what sort of world we  Eminent critic Joseph live: the fact it is taller and Rykwert has described OMA’s looks down on the Bank of Rothschild Bank headquarters England. We live in a society in the City as a symbol of that claims to be democratic, an undemocratic society. but in fact is oligarchic.’ Rykwert said he viewed Rem Turning to Renzo Piano’s Koolhaas’ Stirling PrizeShard, he said the shortlisted New Court, which defied City  310m-tall skyscraper could likewise be of London height seen as a symptom restrictions and Gross internal of a worsening features a doublefloor area of economic climate. height sky pavilion OMA’s New ‘Over the next overlooking the Court decade the Shard is Bank of England, going to be overgrown as a sign of increasingly by Foster’s two towers in Paris oligarchic times. and the Kingdom Tower in Speaking at the RIBA in Jeddah,’ he said. Citing the Portland Place last week in historic correlation between a debate on this year’s RIBA tall buildings and economic Awards, he said: ‘The Rothschild recessions, including the Empire building does make it very

PHOTOGRAPHY: THEODORE WOOD

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State Building (1931), he added: ‘Record high building coincides with crisis.’ The panel at the Sapa Building Systems-hosted debate in RIBA’s Jarvis Memorial Hall included AJ deputy editor Rory Olcayto, AJ editorial director Paul Finch, FT architecture correspondent Edwin Heathcote and RIBA awards group members Murray Fraser, professor at the Bartlett, and Alison Brooks of Alison Brooks Architects. Heathcote described the RIBA Award-winning 13,000m2 New Court as the ‘perfect illustration’ of the UK’s economic situation: one of ‘financial institutions glaring over the Bank of England and shitting all over it’. Commenting on OMA founder Rem Koolhaas’s role in its design, he added: ‘Rem pretended to not be interested in context but in the end created the most magical contextual building.’ Brooks said: ‘This building’s concept references the towers of the Medici family in Florence and the idea of the safe as the core of the building […] It’s a really refreshing anti-commercial approach to what could have been a very commercial, iconic, extravagant project.’ Jon Palethorpe, commercial director of Sapa Building Systems, said it was hard to identify clear trends across the awards. However, he observed that ‘… to some degree all [the buildings] were set against the unavoidable context of the current economic climate. With this in mind, perhaps it’s unsurprising that in most categories, there were fewer winners compared with last year. Healthcare and school projects were noticeably diminished and housing schemes were almost too difficult to define as such.’ ..

Trespa Advert Amend_Layout 1 24/07/2012 15:38 Page 1

News feature

Council report slams Hawkins \ Brown’s Corby Cube A crushing report published this week reveals a catalogue of faults with the building and criticises the architect for not delivering drawings and specs in accordance with contract, writes Richard Waite

against the practice was ‘still an   An astonishing option’ with respect to its design report published this week work on the building, which has revealed major problems has been plagued with issues with Hawkins\Brown’s Corby since opening in late 2010 and Cube (AJ 05.05.11). which has yet to receive full Drawn up by a working group fire and building regulations within Corby Borough Council, certification. The building has not the document was released as the received an RIBA award. authority agreed to shell It is understood the out a further £500,000 council’s working to complete the group recommended ‘dangerous’ building, Total cost to date litigation against which is now more of the troubled Hawkins\Brown, than £12 million Corby Cube but council members over its original building have yet to make £35 million budget.

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Hawkins\Brown won the project in competition against Richard Rogers Partnership (now RSH&P), Feilden Clegg Bradley and Rafael Viñoly in 2004. It houses council offices, a library and a theatre. The council said legal action  ..

a decision on this. The 7,700m² building can only house 1,560 people – half what was envisaged in the brief. According to the 91-page scrutiny review document, even that was not achievable upon completion. Fears over the fire

strategy, it is claimed, initially restricted numbers to 600 and it was ‘only through mitigating measures’ that 1,200 were safely allowed in the building. The report, which was drafted earlier in the year but has only just been made public, reads: ‘The council, as client, has incurred substantial unforeseen costs in order to bring the building into occupiable state but with limitations on occupancy still unresolved.’ Further concerns over fire safety led the authority to fit, at extra cost, mechanical smoke extractors in the basement. The document also reveals problems with the ‘helter-skelter’ spiral staircase, which was branded, ‘dangerous’, ‘forbidding’ and ‘not user-friendly to other than the most active and able’.

Councillor David Sims, leader of the Conservative group at Corby Borough Council, said: ‘We have 29 councillors and a chamber that can only hold 22 because of fire regulations. That’s absolutely crazy.’ The all-party review panel criticised Hawkins\Brown for not delivering drawings and specification in accordance with its contract. Hornagold & Hills, the council’s project managers, ‘became sufficiently concerned at the lack of performance by Hawkins\Brown of their duties at design stage’ that they commissioned another architect, understood to be Jefferson Sheard Architects, to review the Stage E information. Practice co-founder Roger Hawkins’ introduction to the overseeing board was also condemned, with one respondent saying they were concerned about ‘conflicts of interest’. Others felt the design team was engaged in ‘parallel decisionmaking processes or forums […] that bypassed the board’. The practice refused to comment on the contents of the report. But, when elements of the documents were revealed to the BBC in April, Hawkins hit back at allegations the practice had treated the council like a ‘cash cow’. He said: ‘We’ve always been very positive about the need to have control of the financial aspect of the project and I think the design team has done an excellent job […] We have consistently given good advice to the council with whatever costs were emerging on the project.’ ..

Extracts from Public Report of Scrutiny Review into The Cube, Parklands Gateway

• ‘This became a vanity project. Political governance which institutionalised monolithic control ensured that those who questioned the direction of the project as it underperformed and overspent were treated as destabilising voices and marginalised. [It is] questionable whether in the long term the council will be able to afford to maintain the fabric of the building given the absence of any forethought as to life cycle costs.’

Search for ‘Corby’ on the AJ Buildings Library to view plans and a detail of the auditorium

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ALL IMAGES TIM CROCKER

• ‘An elegant facade envelopes a building which is commercially and operationally flawed. The [helical] staircase serving level 4 is not safe and, whilst some remedial works have been carried out, it has never complied with the regulations for a staircase serving a public space.’

• [Anonymous interviewee] The design team [said it] would always take on [design responsibility] overall. Later on as the project progressed, Hawkins\ Brown distanced themselves … They did not retain that ownership that they had promised us.’

• [Anonymous interviewee] ‘I was comfortable [with the architect attending board meetings] but not that, while it was just the design team there everything that was going wrong was blamed on the contractor.’ • [Anonymous interviewee] ‘We weren’t happy with the [fire] strategy initially, especially in relation to the theatre. We were not convinced that the natural ventilation system would be adequate and suggested [the architect] get the science and smoke control evidence […] They resisted.’

• [Anonymous interviewee] ‘Initially the designers said the holes in the floor would be adequate to clear smoke from a fire in the undercroft. We weren’t convinced. They then said they would put in torpedo fans but, again, we didn’t think that would work properly. […] We asked them to model the undercroft. This showed it did not comply and resulted in them having to fit mechanical extractors, which is why you have big fans and the trunking in the undercroft now.’

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Competitions & wins

Delfina Foundation winner announced

COMPETITIONS FILE

Studio Octopi and Shahira Fahmy Architects to double size of arts and cultural foundation headquarters in Westminster townhouses  Studio Octopi and Cairo-based Shahira Fahmy Architects have won the contest to overhaul and expand the London home of the Delfina Foundation. The duo beat NEX architecture and Mossessian & Partners to win the project, which will double the size of the cultural organisation’s headquarters. The scheme involves taking over the townhouse next to the foundation’s existing building at 29 Catherine Place near Buckingham Palace and increasing its accommodation and exhibition space to more than 400m2. When the centre re-opens in autumn 2013 it will provide the largest amount of accommodation for international artists in London, with eight bedrooms and flexible workspaces throughout. The winning proposal will ‘retain the domesticity of the two houses, exploring the notion of the hearth in a home’. A spokesman for the foundation said: ‘The two firms presented an environment which is layered and contextual while peeling back the layers of ornamentation and finish to expose the period craftsmanship of the buildings.’ Richard Waite

WINNER

The Mayor of London with the Landscape Institute and Garden Museum has opened a green infrastructure ideas contest called ‘A High Line for London’. Inspired by James Corner Field Operations/Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Piet Oudolf ’s High Line park in New York (pictured), it invites ideas for a London landscape to engage communities with green infrastructure. The winner will receive £2,500 of the £3,000 prize. [Submissions to be received by 14 September]   /   

RUNNERS UP

 

 ..

 & 

The National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin is seeking architects to join a design team for a new 18,000m² healthcare building. The proposed 120-bed ward will include therapy and social spaces. [Requests to participate to be received by 23 August] Students have until Monday to enter the World Architecture Festival’s 2012 student design contest. Proposals that ‘rethink and renew a building, a group of buildings or an area’ are sought. Shortlisted teams will receive free tickets to the festival in Singapore, where they will present their schemes. [Entries must be received by 30 July] Sean Kitchen TheAJ.co.uk/competitions ..

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UK news

ARB tackles ‘chronic’ investigation failures Reshuffle to address disciplinary board’s poor performance arb The Architects’ Registration Board (ARB) has been forced to shake up the way it investigates complaints for the second time in two years in a bid to resolve ‘chronic problems’ with its Investigations Committee. The committee, which handles grievances about architects and has a narrow remit (of conduct and competence only), was restructured in April 2011. But the board has admitted it ‘continues to struggle’ to make decisions on time. New figures for the first half of 2012 show last year’s expansion

of the committee from three to five members has had little effect on performance. Just 12.5 per cent of cases were dealt with on time – only a marginal improvement on the 9.5 per cent in the same period last year. A number of architects have contacted the AJ to share concerns about current procedures. One said: ‘I’ve found the Investigation Committee to be inconsistent and lacking rigour. I’m not convinced the substantial information I supplied was analysed.’ Another described the investigations

process as a ‘lynching system’. The ARB has approved further changes to the investigation rules and the way in which it handles complaints. It plans to replace what is presently a board member-based committee with a larger pool of independent investigators. It is hoped the restructure will streamline the process by providing a ‘bigger, broader selection of investigators’. The decision was cautiously welcomed by architects as a ‘step in the right direction’.

UK architects are 94 per cent white equality New figures released last week show that the ethnicity of the profession is becoming increasingly white. According to the RIBA and Fees Bureau’s 2012 Employment and Earnings Survey, nearly 94 per cent of architects are white, compared with 93.3 per cent last year. Black British architects account for 0.9 per cent of the profession, down from 1.2 per cent in 2008, while the proportion of Asian architects has increased from 1.8 per cent in 2008 to 2.5 per cent. In contrast, about 11 per cent of solicitors are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, according to a 2011 Law Society report. The findings show an aboveaverage representation when compared with the 2001 census, where 91 per cent of the UK population is described as white. 18 theaj.co.uk

Trends in ethnic origin of Architects, 2007-12 94% 93.3%

92.8% 92%

92%

91.8%

91%

93.6%

White Black or Black British Asian or Asian British Mixed race Other background

2% 1.2%

1.2%

1.1%

2008

2009

2010

0.9%

2011

2012

0% 2007

Ethnicity data for the 2011 census has yet to be published. In London, where the survey shows about 38 per cent of architects are based, ethnic minorities account for about 31 per cent of the capital’s population. Black architecture student

Jean-Paul Tugirimana said: ‘The findings, of course, are disappointing but, unfortunately, it is not only the architectural profession with problems of discrimination and inequality. It is true black and Asian architectural students struggle more than

To maintain oversight of the complaints procedure, the ARB intends to establish a new committee, the Investigations Oversight Committee (IOC), although it is not clear precisely what its role will be. Owen Luder, former chairman of the ARB said: ‘There’s a strong case for having an investigations pool. It’s important that the ARB sort out the role of the IOC and how they can intervene in an investigation if it goes wrong.’ The ARB said: ‘The board acknowledged that timescales for dealing with complaints should be improved. ‘We believe these changes will enhance the process and reduce the timescales.’ Kate Bowen TheAJ.co.uk/ARB others in finding employment. The 1 per cent of black architects in employment and earning is contradictory to the numbers of black students in architectural education. These figures seem a world away from the diversity within my college and workplace.’ ARB chair Beatrice Fraenkel said taking steps to boost diversity was a ‘step in the right direction’ and called on architects to deploy equal opportunities policies. She said: ‘Anything that could increase the diversity of the profession is a step in the right direction. We would certainly encourage firms to have an equal opportunities policy.’ Chris Williamson of Weston Williamson said the poor representation of ethnic minorities within the profession was something all architects should work to fix. He said: ‘It would be good to see all parts of society, clubs and professions mirror the ethnic and gender split in the country. Sadly, this is not the case.’ Merlin Fulcher TheAJ.co.uk/Ethnicity

26.07.12

International

  SCDA Architects, Singapore

RIBA Lubetkin Prize shortlist revealed Four projects dominated by Chinese and Malaysian developments    Foster + Partners, New York

vying for the prize, awarded to the best new international building outside the EU. A winner of the award, named after Tecton founder Berthold Lubetkin, will be announced on 13 October in Manchester. Merlin Fulcher TheAJ.co.uk/Lubetkin

ALBERT LIM

 The tallest building by a British architect, an art gallery in New York, an eco-friendly science centre in Singapore and a tower in Malaysia have made it onto this year’s Lubetkin Prize shortlist. Foster + Partners’ Sperone Westwater gallery in New York is the only scheme outside Asia

   Wilkinson Eyre, China

CHRISTIAN RICHTERS

ALBERT LIM

TOM POWEL

 TR Hamzah & Yeang and CPG, Singapore

Japan goes for Gold

Misery continues in US

 The Japan Sport Council has launched a stadium design competition open exclusively to winners of the Pritzker Prize, AIA Gold Medal or RIBA Gold medal. Included on the 10-strong contest jury, which will be chaired by 1995 Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando, are Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. The competition’s backers want to redevelop the national stadium in Tokyo, which will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup and, potentially, the Olympic Games in 2020. Tokyo is currently up against Madrid and Istanbul to host the event. Only firms with a Pritzker Prize, AIA Gold Medal, UIA Gold Medal, Praemium Imperiale in Honour of Prince Takamatsu or RIBA Gold Medal can qualify.

and mixed practice 45.9. Only   Demand for inquiries offered a ray of hope architects has plummeted again at 54.4, though this was only in the US, according to the slightly up from 54.0 in May. Architecture Billings Index. AIA chief economist Kermit The respected business Baker said: ‘The downturn in barometer posted a reading design activity that began of 45.9 for June 2012. in April and accelerated Anything below 50 in May has continued represents a decline in into June, likely workload from the extending the weak previous month. Billings Index score market conditions All regions and for Western US we’ve seen in sectors saw a drop in June non-residential in activity as the building activity. misery continued for ‘While not all firms are practices across the Atlantic. experiencing negative conditions, The West suffered the biggest a large share are still coping with a fall, with a reading of 44.3, while sluggish and erratic marketplace.’ the North East posted 46.4, the The American Institute South 47.6 and Mid West 48.0. of Architects polls members Multi-family residential to produce the index. Greg recorded 49.0, commercial/ Pitcher TheAJ.co.uk/US industrial 46.9, institutional 46.0

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Practices must have designed a 15,000+ capacity stadium. Possible contenders include 2011 Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura, who designed Portugal’s Braga Municipal Stadium, and Beijing Bird’s Nest architect Herzog & de Meuron. Japan’s 48,000-seat national stadium in Kasumigaoka, Tokyo, was built in 1958 and hosted the 1964 Games. The new stadium is expected to seat 80,000 and is planned for completion in 2018. Practices have until 10 September to register. The deadline for proposals is 25 September and a shortlist will be unveiled in October. The winner will be announced in November and will receive ¥20 million (£164,000). Merlin Fulcher TheAJ.co.uk/Japan

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People & practice

‘A diplomat for sustainability’ NEW PRACTICES

What is the most important aspect of the Embassy’s design? There have been two central thrusts from the outset: one is sustainability – we always thought of the building as a diplomat for the environment. The second was the quality of the workspaces in terms of creating an efficient environ for the Embassy to conduct its business in. What have you modified since the competition? The design in all its general terms, as presented in the competition, remains but is different in detail. We had a programme to get the building ‘stair-stepped’ up to a really high level of environmental performance that has been fleshed out since the competition. In more specific terms, by the time we understood all of the detail requirements of an embassy, we found ourselves in an energy deficit in relation to baseline US codes (ASHRAE) of about 9 per cent. There are so many security issues of an embassy – you can’t, for example, use natural ventilation or mixed mode ventilation for obvious reasons. Has the process differed from what you anticipated? No, the process and methodology were pretty clearly mapped out. Certainly the London planning submittals have been huge. We met regularly with constituencies and made regular presentations.

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How would this building be different if it were in America? The whole planning process there is completely different. Things tend to be more prescriptive in terms of zoning, here it is all negotiated. You also have a vast array of requirements, such as right to light, that are not typically written into US law. Has it had a knock-on effect on other work in your office? Sure. We have full-time research staff and the majority of work they undertake is environmental research and development of products. There has been a knock-on effect on many fronts. With this project, we were able to integrate some photovoltaics with the external envelope and that’s actually quite an advance, which we’ve been able to develop with fabricators. What do you consider the most innovative aspect of the building? I would say the really innovative aspect of this is the totality of it and the complete integration of all these systems together. Nothing is added without being integrated with everything else – things as simple as storm water management, for instance. We are collecting water off the building and storing it in the pond. How was the consultation process? Wandsworth Council has been extremely supportive of the project and see it as a generator of urbanism in the whole area. For more see AJFootprint.com

CRMA

Stephen Kieran of Kieran Timberlake tells Hattie Hartman about the design and planning process behind the US Embassy at Nine Elms

CRMA   Colin Munsie, Balduino Borico (both pictured), Suriyong Ken Suriyachat  London, Bangkok, Australia  July 2011  crm.assignments@gmail.com Where have you come from? Colin has worked in Perth on schools and higher education, and co-founded Loughton, Munsie, Jeffery and Jodrell Architects. Balduino is a graduate from Westminster University and Ken works in Silom, Bangkok and is a part-time lecturer at the School of Architecture and Design, Assumption University and previously worked at Benoy in London. What work do you have? The team is currently working on the feasibility for apartment blocks in Bangkok and Phuket (pictured), as well as some commercial and smaller residential projects in London. Other projects include residential, retail and office projects Guinea, Kohn Kaen, Sisaket and Phuket.

What are your ambitions? We hope to develop two or three international teams of 10 to 12 people sharing skills and expertise on a range of size and type of projects. Having met with members of the World Bank and Habitat for Humanity in Asia, the aim is also to assist in developments that help meet the acute need for housing and community access. How optimistic are you? We see the recession as a paradox. It offers great opportunities stimulated by great hardship. Funnily enough, it also allows professionals to be freed of constraints and have a chance to pursue wider visions. This can mean new relationships and different work, as well as a chance to ‘do things better this time’. ..

Astragal

Stop, start  After months of darkness, it now appears that a couple of ‘lost’ contests are soon to be spewed out from the RIBA Competitions black hole. The first is likely to be the battle to design in-patient facilities for South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. Back in September 2011 a shortlist that included Allies and Morrison, AHMM and Reiach & Hall was revealed. But due to a planning inquiry about the larger site, all went quiet. Now the planning inspector has backed the wider Patel Taylor masterplan for the Springfield Hospital, which includes more than 800 new

homes, meaning the contest can finally be restarted. Meanwhile, there are rumblings about a rebirth for the Bird College competition which has also been parked since Carmody Groarke, Gareth Hoskins Architects, Mecanoo and Harry Gugger Studio were named among the finalists in December. Rumours are that the competition will get rolling again in September.

All done over  They may go to the best university in the world, but Cambridge’s architecture students recently found they weren’t above being bumped by corporate interests. The students had put

on a big show at Farringdon’s Farmiloe Building but were kicked out a few days earlier than arranged after an attractive offer reached the landlord. Apparently some footwear manufacturer and a fellow called Usain Bolt wanted it for an Olympic-related bash.

Insider knowledge  Stirling Prize obsessives had a chance to work out the shortlist before it was announced during the AJ’s British Architecture Now debate at the RIBA last week. The two-hour presentation saw the AJ present this year’s RIBA award-winners by type with Paul Finch, Murray Fraser, Edwin Heathcote, Alison

Brooks and Joseph Rykwert on hand to discuss the range of buildings on display. Yet as guests who attended will attest, of the 59 buildings eligible for the shortlist – the national RIBA award-winners and the EU winners too – there was a bias in the discussion, particularly from RIBA Awards Group members Fraser and Brooks towards buildings such as OMA’s tower for the Rothschilds, Chipperfield’s Hepworth Wakefield and Stanton William’s Sainsbury lab. OK, O’Donnell & Tuomey’s Lyric maybe didn’t get the same attention on the night, and Paul Finch was brief in his thoughts on the Olympic stadium – but then the ODA, breaking the RIBA embargo and its own no promotion rule, bragged about the Populous project’s shortlisting two weeks ago in its annual report.

Feel the burn

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 Architects with burning ambition and a sturdy pair of wellington boots have been called on to propose installations for next year’s Secret Garden Party in Bedfordshire. Festival art curator Tess Acheson is seeking participatory ideas from new practices. Interventions at this year’s event, which took place last weekend, included a Rope House structure by Bartlett graduates Matthew Shaw and Rhys Jones with artist Rosie Jackson, a Great Golden Retriever by Roding Projects and a ghoulish 3D stroboscopic zoetrope by American artist Peter Hudson. But beware before submitting your magnus opus. This year’s centrepiece – an enormous floating stage by Pirate Technics – was ritualistically burnt to the ground. ..



Letter from London

What clients value is what they will pay for – or at least they should do, says Paul Finch A discussion at the Lend Lease /AJ Awards event at the Royal Academy last week focused on what clients value about their architects. It fell to me to introduce the subject, which is more complicated than it first appears. Normally in commercial life, if you value something you pay for it. The more you value it, the more you expect to pay, though the price may not move in direct proportion to the value. These days, it is an unfortunate fact that clients of all descriptions expect to get inordinate amounts of design work carried out for nothing, not simply by architects who are likely to be appointed to do a job, but by teams of practices prepared to compete for no fee in the hope of getting a commission. Sadly, both in good economic times and (more understandably) in bad, practices seem only too willing to make voluntary donations of their time and intellectual resources to clients who believe that they are in some way doing the architects a favour by inviting them to take part in selection processes which involved actual design work. If it seems, on the basis of architects’ behaviour, that the early stages of the process are so cheap to undertake that designers will do the work for nothing, then it is scarcely surprising that clients then start squeezing the percentage fee for the work as a whole. Downward pressure on fees, particularly for certain forms of commercial work, is resulting in some practices buying jobs, in the sense that they are certain to make a loss, simply to keep the office ticking over. Thus begins the downward spiral of low fees, therefore less time devoted to the job, therefore a drop in quality and service, therefore a perceived need to control the architect via project managers and others who have scant interest in quality of design, but an ideological commitment to linear delivery at possibly damaging speeds. This is not what clients want. What they do value from architects is a combination  ..

of flair and rigour; design analysis and production delivery; a slow-cooked synthesis of site, programme, aesthetics and planning sensitivity; service to the client of the ‘frank friend’ variety; the ability to make the client think again about the project, the design or the outcome. Formally, clients need a design, planning permission, and a set of production drawings, but that is only half the story. We all know that the greatest value a designer offers is at the conceptual stage of the project; architecture is front-loaded but the fees tend to be back-ended, as though what the client is really paying for is the working details.

Formally, clients need a design, planning permission, and a set of production drawings, but that is only half the story When even the RIBA’s own work stage definitions suggest that stage A is not generally charged for, we know there must be a problem. Imagine that you get into a taxi and tell the cabbie to set off and to drive around a bit; when you have decided exactly where you want to go you will instruct him that he can switch the meter on. You can imagine the cabbie’s reaction. Architects might think about responding in the same way when the next invitation arrives suggesting they might like to make yet another donation to a client with millions in the bank. The real point is that clients value design brain power applied to their site and brief. Architects give away the product of that brain power at their peril, both financially and professionally. Give it away too often, and it loses its value. ..

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Black box

However alienated and doom-laden the explorations, we need students’ speculative creativity, writes Rory Olcayto

LEBBEUS WOODS

There has been the usual over-the-top anguish this year from teachers and critics upset by the trend for apocalyptic visions among students of British architecture. ‘A curious picture of introverted obsession and loneliness,’ said Peter Carl, on seeing a crosssection of nationwide work for a recent competition. He’s right of course. But then, seen in the context of the Taiwanese computer gamer who died after 40 solid hours of playing Diablo III without eating or stretching his legs earlier this month, Carl’s words could also be a comment on wider trends emerging out of contemporary urban life. Much of how we perceive the world today, the news we report and the entertainment we make, suggests the world is on the brink. Is it any surprise that students produce work that feels like it has bubbled up from the abyss? I began my architectural studies in 1989 at Strathclyde University and the big thing to bounce off then was Deconstruction, or Decon. Among the influences whirling around the school were Coop Himmelb(l)au’s robotic preying mantis on a roof in Vienna, Neil Spiller’s techno-gothic black and white drawings, Aaron Betsky’s Violated Perfection (the pictures, not the tricksy text) and AD editions about cyberspace (again for the pictures and not for the tricksy text).

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But then, we also had the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of both Communism and Apartheid and the Balkans’ descent into bloody war. You could argue that this political backdrop found expression in the spindly shattered forms we all loved to draw, even if most of the class wasn’t paying that much attention to the news. There were three first-class students in my cohort, and two of them drew upon the tough, fractured aesthetics I’ve described above. There must be some truth in the idea that the forms they, and the rest of us, used back then in some way channelled the spirit of the times. Even Lebbeus Woods, a Decon hero for the students of 20 years ago, proposed ‘a defensive wall (pictured) that could be constructed to protect Bosnia from the invaders. The idea of the wall was not to build an armed fortification in order to repel invaders, but rather to make it function as a sponge, and absorb them’. It would, of course, never be built and to many critics the premise and the crumpled plane-crash aesthetic, appears naïve and inappropriate. Woods himself freely admits the project is fantasy. ‘However,’ he adds, ‘as a metaphor and even an architectural strategy, it has some value.’ Woods is right, too. And the same is true of the projects that critics like Carl struggle to apprehend. Their value is a fundamental one that emerges from engaging with complexity. Which is why the better projects in Alex Haw and Roberto Bottazzi’s unit for the RCA for example, such as Data Harvest (see picture on page 29) by Christopher Green, a tower block that cultivates insects for food and data storage and, intriguingly, as a kind of swarming brise soleil, are so worthwhile, even if they could never be built. The sheer amount of research Green has carried out, from the data storage capacity of a cricket in terms of bytes to the qualities of three-dimensional Voronoi structures, suggest the young designer will relish the challenge of real-life, large-scale architectural challenges, whatever they are. Good luck to him, I say. And to all the other Neo-gothic doomsters out there whose favourite Pantone colour is Steampunk Black. More than ever the architectural profession needs their energy and verve. ..

MATTHEW PARKER, ROBERT MAWSON AND GURCAN OZYIGIT

AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

Student project of the Week Nicaragua Kitchen Project Matthew Parker, Robert ˆ Mawson and Gurcan Ozyigit This voluntary project, to build a community kitchen for a rural community in Nicaragua, was organised, fundraised and built by three architecture students during their summer break. Search ‘student’ to see six photos, five drawings and two details on AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk ..

AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk Browse thousands of projects in the AJ Buildings Library, a digital archive of built work, part of your AJ subscription



Letters

Last issue AJ 19.07.12 Established 1895

..

10 years of Tea

Inside the building that revolutionised office design plus the Architectural Association’s Big Shed

£4.95 THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL THEAJ.CO.UK

Letters should be received by 10am on the Monday before publication. The AJ reserves the right to edit letters. The letter of the week’s author will receive a bone china AJ mug. Post to the address below or email letters@architectsjournal. co.uk

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What’s in a name? Christine Murray’s editorial prose poem and the survey by InBuilding.org (AJ 19.07.12) of what an architect does are like little billet doux scribbled on the back of pages torn from the Honeywood Files, desperate for the general public to love and understand them. Unfortunately, they both bear only a marginal relation to the work of architects in the UK. Someone reading the survey might be surprised if they spoke to the site foreman of a small construction site near their home (yes, people can have homes without ever coming near an architect) and discover not only that no architect was in charge (of costs or health and safety), but no architect was even involved in the planning application. In the UK, an architect is someone whose name appears on a list held by the ARB: less exciting than the survey but more factual. So the public are protected from those calling themselves architects LETTER OFK THE WEE

Editor Christine Murray Deputy editor Rory Olcayto () Acting administrator Rakesh Ramchurn () Digital editor Simon Hogg () News editor Richard Waite ( ) Reporter Merlin Fulcher () Editorial interns Kate Bowen, Blanca Perez Technical editor Felix Mara () Senior editor James Pallister () Group special projects editor Emily Booth Sustainability editor Hattie Hartman () Sustainability intern Hannah Wood AJ Buildings Library editor Tom Ravenscroft () Art editor Brad Yendle () Designers Tom Carpenter, Ella Mackinnon Production editor Mary Douglas (on leave) Acting production editor Abigail Gliddon () Acting sub-editor Alan Gordon Asia correspondent Hyunjoo Lee Contributing editor Ian Martin Editorial director Paul Finch Chief executive officer Natasha Christie-Miller

who haven’t passed a number of academic tests (but not those calling themselves IT architects or even interior architects). A more pointless use of state powers it is impossible to imagine. The recession has caused an outbreak of hand-wringing and navel-gazing from the profession and I suggest a more useful focus on abandoning protection of title and concentrating on what we do best, admirably exemplified week after week in the pages of the AJ: architects design buildings. Crawford Wright, Taunton The lack of understanding about the wider skills and role of an architect is reflected in the ongoing confusion about who can become one. Only today I was speaking to a 15 year old who had given up his aspiration to be an architect because he’d been told his dyslexia would prevent it. We need to be working proactively with this younger generation of future clients, designers and users to give them a better understanding of the role of the profession. Jo Harrop, via AJ online

Managing director of architecture and media Conor Dignam () Group commercial director Alison Pitchford () Commercial director James MacLeod () Business development managers Nick Roberts (), Ceri Evans () Group advertising manager Amanda Pryde () Account managers Hannah Buckley (), Simon Collingwood (), Steph Atha () Classified and recruitment sales Mark Malone ()

Getting it in the neck King’s Cross Station (AJ 12.07.12) is a splendid improvement architecturally. However, as the photographs on pages 18 and 19 show, there is nowhere to sit down opposite the departure boards. Weary elderly passengers are, I suppose, architecturally a nuisance. In addition, the southern indicator board is difficult to read during part of the morning, as the clear glass louvres allow the sun to dazzle people’s eyes. Much squinting and a crick in the neck – the board is too high. But I agree, otherwise an improvement. Mrs D.P Alexander, London NW5

Corrections In AJ 12.07.12 KWY was referred to as WYG in an article about Littlehampton Council’s stage by the sea contest. KWY was shortlisted and we apologise for the error. In AJ 19.07.12 Piers Taylor was the executive architect on the Architectural Association’s Big Shed project in Dorset.

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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE www.architecture.brookes.ac.uk

Founded in 1927, the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes is one of the largest architecture schools in the UK, with around 600 students and 70 staff.

Architecture BA (Hons) Interior Architecture BA (Hons) Applied Design in Architecture MArchD

It plays a leading role in defining the national, and international, agenda in design education and research.

Architecture MArch / PGDip Development and Emergency Practice MA / PGDip / PGCert

This year’s work demonstrates the staff and student collaboration and drive to embrace and explore diversity in creative thought and excellence in design output. Debate and speculation are embedded in the ethos of the School and enable informed prediction of future global challenges for the passionate designer. With a reputation for diversity and individual student choice, the show and yearbook express these highly valued aspects.

Humanitarian Action and Conflict PGCert Shelter after Disaster PGCert International Architectural Regeneration and Development MA / PGDip / PGCert Sustainable Building: Performance and Design MSc / PGDip / PGCert

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Always forward thinking; the School has expanded into a new extension, become an integral part of the dynamic and vibrant faculty, successfully launched a live projects initiative, further embedded all research groups into the postgraduate programmes, and celebrated its 85th anniversary. One of the largest and highly regarded the School continues to build on an international reputation for student-centred education with a global perspective, entrepreneurial drive, top class design and an implicit culture of leading.

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School-by-school reviews of all 43 RIBA-validated courses in the UK*, plus the five major architecture schools in Ireland

The AJ Buildings Library contains photographs, drawings and details for more than 1,300 buildings making it an ideal resource for students working on precedent studies. The database of exemplar projects showcases every AJ building study from the last 15 years plus major projects back to 1900 (including James Stirling’s Florey Building, pictured).

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*Exceptions: Architects’ Professional Examinations Authority in Scotland; RIBA North West Region Liverpool; self-study RIBA Examination in Architecture for Office Based Candidates Right Data Harvest by RCA student Christopher Green

From adaptation to climate change, from retrofit to innovative uses for waste, sustainability issues are permeating an increasing number of student projects this year. The AJ online guide to master’s in sustainable design (TheAJ.co.uk/ sustainability-masters) summarises the current courses on offer. To have your work considered for inclusion in the online guide, forward a selection of low-res images and a 200-word synopsis to ajsustainability@emap.com

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Student shows 2012 London

London

ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Top Here be Dragons, by William Gowland, AA Diploma Unit 6 Above left Panel of a triptych by Kevin Primat, AA Diploma Unit 1, exploring a surreal history of the Bank of England Left City Airport Welfare Palace, by Sam Nelson, AA Diploma Unit 14 Right Long Island, NY, by Emma Flynn, MArch Unit 11, Bartlett Far right Model by Bartlett student Brook Ting Jui Lin

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The AA maintains an experimental, critical approach to architectural education, which today prides itself on a commitment to creating future, intelligent audiences for architectural discussion within and outside the profession. Renowned for its global cohort and ebullient west London setting, the school’s strong focus on discussion and experiential learning harnesses its unique context for the development of students’ design personalities, making it a formidable breeding ground for sensitive and ambitious future architects. Highlights in the undergraduate school include Intermediate Unit 12’s thoughtful studies of architectural re-enactment and Intermediate Unit 13’s ghostly tributes to the importance

of voids within the human experience of the city. In the diploma school, Unit 8 sampled business precincts to generate a booming architecture of megacorporatism, while Unit 1 set out to reconcile the ‘real world’ with the information revolution taking place within it. Collectively, the work on display illustrated creative, speculative thinking at its height of relevance to wider society.   Diploma Unit 14 for its timely Edufactory, an analysis of higher education’s role in the knowledge economy and proposals exploring students’ role as consumers.   William Gowland of Diploma Unit 6 for Here be Dragons, his poetic commentary on satellite navigation’s impact on the Arctic wilderness.    Salient Merlin Fulcher, AJ reporter ..

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THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, UCL The Bartlett’s international renown is reflected in its far-flung units in places including Fes, Manhattan, Camden Town and Istanbul. The show comes with a burden of expectation: spectacular imagery and futuristic utopias are the stereotypes. More surprising in 2012 is the emphasis on craft, particularly in 3D printing, vast drawings that become models and even a studio full of zoetropes. Breadth of enquiry is represented by a beautiful collection of objects, though we are often held at arm’s length from the architectural proposals in order to better appreciate their vast scale. MArch Unit 11 stands out through Emma Flynn’s extraordinary take on suburbia and recycling. The two are considered and then combined in Long Island, NY to create a new kind of suburb, where the recycling of waste and suburban family life coexist without rancour – and a new housing model results. The speculative nature of many units is a fertile territory for diverse architectural excursions, although in many cases this reviewer was left wanting more engagement with actual city life. It is the projects that experiment with how we perceive space in an environmentally and ideologically damaged world that resonate most strongly.   MArch Unit 11   Emma Flynn    Craft Ben Adams, founder, Ben Adams Architects

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Student shows 2012 London

Ariel View Over the Site

CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS In CSM’s fi rst year at its new campus in the middle of London’s biggest redevelopment at King’s Cross it seemed right to let students draw on the surroundings for final year projects. Students were asked to imagine London in 2050, and to re-interpret one of seven sites near the campus in the light of hypothetical future needs and challenges. That the show is exhibited at the campus forces you to pass the building sites around the area and helps you imagine the zone as a blank canvas open to the suggestions of this year’s student crop.   All architecture students had the same brief, and almost all envisioned a dystopian future with environmental crises, overcrowding and food shortages.  ..

Some projects were refuges such as mental health or wellbeing centres, spas or community hubs. But the ones that drew most attention were those that tackled the problems of the future in fanciful and innovative ways.   Michael Padraic Gorman designed the King’s Cross Invitro Beef Centre, a structure where artificial beef was ‘grown’, combined with an information centre that aimed to make the meat more palatable to cynical visitors, who then had the option of trying the product on an elegant, rooftop restaurant. Also on the subject of meat, Ashley Fridd designed The Pigeon Place, where the capital’s loathed birds are turned into food or fertilizer. Marina Andronescu’s work also stood out for her beautiful colour sketches.    Eclectic Rakesh Ramchurn, AJ Spec news editor ..

Left The Pigeon Place, by CSM student Ashley Fridd Below Detail from Michael Padraic Gorman’s model for the King’s Cross Invitro Beef Centre Right Diploma Unit 9 looked at London’s Lower Lea Valley

UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING Architectural study at the UEL retains a strong focus on materiality, collaborative learning and digital exploration. Located close to the London 2012 Olympic Park, the school has harnessed the experience of large-scale transformation taking place on its doorstep to explore ambitious regeneration proposals across the world and the UK. Highlights include Diploma Unit 3’s soulful interventions for the neighbouring French and Spanish border towns of Cerbère and Portbou and Diploma Unit 11’s inspiring studies comparing High Speed 2 with the Olympics. In the undergraduate school, Degree Unit G’s thoughtful tributes to east London’s urban ..

wilderness offer compelling insights into future regeneration possibilities. Degree Unit A’s proposals for high streets in Reykjavik are analytically skilful and seductive in their Ravilious-like appearance. The live project for Ecobuild and Degree Unit C’s large-scale brick prototypes create a strong impression of the school’s unique offering on the UK stage.   Diploma Unit 10 for its sensitive exploration of Poole Harbour and gritty futuristic amalgamations of ship building technology and architecture.   Sam Rose of Diploma Unit 9 for his RIBA East proposal to transform the RIBA into a creative hub relocated to east London, where its ‘archive towers’ can boost local regeneration.    Prolific Merlin Fulcher, AJ reporter

AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

Edward Cullinan’s campus for 2,400 students provides accommodation, a learning resource centre, auditorium and shops for the University of East London. It is one of more than 100 university buildings in the AJ Buildings Library. Search ‘Cullinan’ at AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk to see photography, drawings and details.

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Student shows 2012 London

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk Student work in the AJ Buildings Library: Bold Tendencies Project Base, Hannah Barry Gallery. Led and supervised by Andrew Budd, a group of post graduate students from Kingston’s School of Architecture designed and built a two-storey structure as a year-round home for the Bold Tendencies art festival. Search ‘Kingston’ at AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Greenwich’s school is still undergoing the change which began with the appointment of Neil Spiller as dean in 2010. It is clear the students are working hard to establish their identity within the new ideology and design agendas. The new approach is beginning to bear fruit: some exceptional work is coming out of the undergraduate units, which revel in the potential of new technologies. It is apparent that the intention of the new guard is not to inch up the league tables but to establish the school as a serious competitor. There is undeniable value in the scope of this ambition, and we should expect great things to come. Drawings showed the development of strong, individual styles between  ..

units and though on occasion some were too easily seduced by the moody image, rather than demonstrating a clear design methodology, the most impressive work established a grasp of articulation, fabrication and materiality which surpassed the need for overwrought photoshopping. The shake-up is sure to have had its casualties; but the ambition of the school is palpable.   Impressively executed hand-drawings from Year 1 showed a control of hierarchy, assembly and materials which surpassed expectations. It is impossible to pick just one, so special mentions to Dan Trenholme, Micheal O’Donell, Ionna Tamas and Ed Grace.    Watch-this-space Marwan Abdo, Wilkinson Eyre Architects

Top left Port of Marseille Ship Recycling Works, by Alexander Johnstone, Greenwich Unit 7 Right Streetscape rendering by Kingston students Adam Kahn and David Knight Top right Drawing by London Met student Samantha Horn in Pie Architecture’s Studio 9 UG Far right Model by London Met Unit 1 student Adam Willis

Daniel Rosbottom describes ‘a sort of radicalism’ emerging at Kingston four years after he agreed to head the school while co-directing international studio DRDH. The 2012 exhibition explores the Olympic legacy and regeneration of east London with a radicalism that is calm, confident and relevant. Adam Kahn’s and David Knight’s Graduate Diploma Unit resurrected 18th century facade-fi rst approach to masterplanning, drawing inspiration from Nash, East Anglia’s fairytale Thorpeness holiday town and Shoreditch’s boundary estate, while Timothy Smith’s and Jonathan Taylor’s second-year studio explores the legacy of Hawksmoor churches. Jane Houghton and Steven Batey’s third-year studio presented emotive outlines for an elderly care home, while Rosbottom’s own diploma unit moots a new City East with the civic infrastructure needed to transform the Olympic Park.   Diploma Unit 4 tackles the Olympic equestrian events, which will leave no physical legacy at Greenwich Park due to its conservation status. They propose Palladio-inspired amphitheatres.   Joseph Lyth for his monolithic generic urban building, which received the school’s Tim Bell Prize for drawing and nomination for the RIBA bronze medal.    Relevant Merlin Fulcher, AJ reporter

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LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE This year the school moves from Holloway Road in its merger with Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design. At a time when the role of what it means to be an architect is being redefined, London Met appears to be well placed to facilitate this debate in the workings of its studios. Craft and honing of skill is well established at the Met; other units seek to directly examine urban divisions and the ethics of space. If architecture is currently dividing along social and ethical stances, choice and positions should be apparent early in one’s training.   There were exquisite analysis drawings and the building of a published research resource in many units: wooden models of ..

Wren’s Churches sit collected in a box (Unit 5), and in undergrad a composite group travelog drawing of Nablus has a collective sensitivity (Studio 9 UG). Other units explore the high street: in one project a model of the Elephant and Castle cleverly stacks history, current proposal and the unit’s alternative. The work of the school’s ASD Projects consultancy and the connections to Design for London demonstrate different scales of embedded practice.   Adam Willis, Unit 1, for his cast insertions into a ruin; George Gingell, Unit 5 for his Barbican and London maps by; Matthew Farrer (Unit 6) and Samantha Horn (Studio 9 UG) for their drawings.    Engaged Mark Hackett, co-director, Forum for Alternative Belfast 

Student shows 2012 London

ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART In common with other London schools, the RCA does not major in brick-laying; the stand-out schemes were the stuff of fantasy. ‘Speculative cultural themes’ were given to the last group of students enrolled under the professorship of Nigel Coates, who has since been succeeded by Anton de Rijke. The responses are mostly London-based and delivered with wit (a ruined Olympic Stadium, a university atop New Covent Garden, hutongs on Chelsea Bridge Road).   The work of ADS2 into ideas of the walled city (overseen by Carmody Groarke, which also laid out the exhibition space).   Percy Weston’s linear safari park brings giraffes and chimpanzees to a strip of wilderness between Deptford and Canary Wharf. Joseph Deane looks at how ‘all organic and inorganic matter form a distributive agency over and alongside human intentionality’. Both Weston and Deane have been put forward for RIBA President’s Medals and have set up in practice together. First commission: redesign the RCA’s Battersea campus café.    Psychological Simon Hogg, AJ digital editor  ..

Left The Big Shed provides a point of arrival at the site that was previously missing Right Site plan

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UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY With an increasingly large and diverse intake of students (100 in this years’ Year 1), South Bank’s school has had to redefine itself. A re-think of programme and a new emphasis on craft and process harness and nurture a broad range of skills. Students are now also taught fundamental principles and communication methods from the outset. Drawing and model making are fostered, and an earlier obsession with CGIs has been replaced with free hand. Undergraduates are encouraged to communicate their schemes in their medium of choice – be it hand-drawn axonometric, Rhino render, model or CAD – a successful tactic judging from the quality of work on show. Second-year students shunned the traditional pin-up and portfolio and ..

presented their work as books.   Diploma Unit Studio 8, led by Lily Kudic, stood out for its geometric representations, ‘founded in contextual analysis and structure’.   Distinction student Luke Murray created a Stonemason’s School for 21st Century London, and Peggy Le Cren designed a Tea Factory in the spirit of Victorian philanthropy. Both are outstanding attempts to create architecture for a city in recession. The jubilation at this end-of-year show was punctuated by a marriage proposal. Fellow diploma graduate Carlos Sanchez proposed to Peggy in a romantic pledge to their future.    Explorative India Wright, South Bank architecture graduate and head of marketing, Webb Yates Engineers

Top left Lecturn, by RCA student Percy Weston Opposite RCA ADS5 student Joseph Deane’s project Above Tea Factory, by South Bank University diploma graduate Peggy Le Cren Right The Imaginarium/ University of Thurrock, by Westminster’s Nicki Whetstone

A well-oiled machine, Westminster could be a factory for adept, creative graduates. Its size maintains diverse units, whose work was displayed in a maze filling both studio floors. The school remains free of ‘house style’ and experiments in form and structure were evident, supported by design agendas usually complemented with intellectual rigour.   Clare Carter’s Degree Unit showed a greater conceptual maturity than its peers, dealing with manufacturing and nuclear power at Dungeness. Andrew Peckham’s new Diploma Studio launched with the reconciliation of industry and city in Krakow. At Gordon Shrigley’s unit, an ‘Architecture of Lineature and its Discontents’ was visually refreshing and seductive with its sparse language of black and white line drawings.   Tanya Okpa for her Centre for Recent Drawing and Nicki Whetstone for The Imaginarium/University of Thurrock. The most memorable project was James Kirk’s thatched London tower, a quirky take on sustainable urban regeneration.    Diverse Sahiba Chadha, AJ sustainability intern

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Student shows 2012 Feature

Education speaks

At London Metropolitan’s studio culture summit, leading academics called for a collaborative approach to learning, reports Merlin Fulcher ‘The RIBA has solidified the opposition between the speculative and complimentary,’ said a critical Tom Emerson, who blamed the institute for fuelling one of the greatest divides in UK architectural education today (AJ 06.07.2012). The ETH Zürich professor and 6a Architects co-founder was speaking at the London Metropolitan University Studio Culture Conference. He was joined on the panel by Forum for Alternative Belfast co-director Mark Hackett, who also had problems with the RIBA. The institute, he argued, should cease vetting schools and instead focus on accrediting professionals. Other academics called for a less competitive, more collaborative approach to architectural learning with strong links to practice and the outside world at the event taking place at the London Metropolitan’s Daniel Libeskind-designed Graduate Centre. They complained that a thorough reappraisal of studio, or unit-based teaching, had been missing for years. Opening the convention, Robert Mull, London Metropolitan’s dean of architecture, argued that a ‘brutal, competitive’ unit culture had thrived under Alvin Boyarsky at London’s Architectural Association in response to Thatcherite individualism during the 1980s. Mull – who headed an AA unit for 12 years – asked whether the well-established method of pitching students against each other to solve a shared brief properly equipped them to deal with today’s increasingly divided, wider society. Mull said: ‘We should be talking about the huge intellectual chasm between the academy and world around it.’ He added that students working on self-directed, live projects were helping to dissolve these boundaries. 38 theaj.co.uk

Delivering the summit’s keynote speech, asked whether students would continue to Emerson – who has taught at the AA and pay for a studio system which is so expensive. Cambridge – discussed a series of live Rachel Sara of the University of the projects by ETH Zürich students, including West of England presented research, carried a replica of João Batista Vilanova Artigas’ out with Rosie Parnell of the University Jaú Bus Terminal, which illustrated how of Sheffield. They found that more than a collaborative approach helped to share half of students found the design crit to be knowledge and to boost innovation. a negative experience and only eight per In Switzerland, students were more cent said it was positive. Their findings – inclined to work in teams towards a common summarised in a short film where tutors tore goal, he said, which led them to make the up models, swore at and attempted to seduce best out of available materials and skills. their students – showed the commonly Emerson’s controversial stance on the blurred lines between constructive support RIBA broadened the debate among the and intimidation. 60-strong audience, but not everyone London Metropolitan’s Jane McAllister agreed with him. and the University of Westminster’s For Oxford Brookes University Ben Stringer compared the modern senior lecturer in architecture, diploma course to a travel agency Harriet Harriss, the RIBA Number of students where expensive field trips of criteria has left much open who view the design limited value are used to win to interpretation with the prospective students. crit as a positive responsibility lying with educators Pie Architecture’s Fran Balaam experience to be more creative. and Michael Corr joined Hackett She argued the architecture school has and Tom Down of Cambridge-based Mole become a ‘sanatorium for creative people’ Architects in comparing requirements in the – an insular place that is complacent about RIBA plan of work to the marking criteria the studio system's value and plagued by the for London Metropolitan’s comprehensive ‘black box’ approach to grading that makes design project. Their findings called for it impossible to define how to obtain an ‘A’. a radical overhaul of teaching to take In her paper, entitled ‘The distributed account of multiple routes through and after studio’, on situated learning, she claimed architectural education. that academics should yield active control Hackett – who retired from his Belfastto their students, enabling them to assume based Hackett Hall McKnight in 2010 leadership of live projects outside the campus – suggested that the RIBA should focus and studio setting. on accrediting architects who wish to build This would create a ‘risk confident and allow more freedom for schools to be community of learners’, she argued, by places where students and teachers explore making students more aware of the kind architecture’s context in the real world. of danger they will be exposed to in Hackett concluded: ‘Architecture courses professional life, like being sued. aren’t offering the right choices to people With tuition fees increasing as part of at the moment. The RIBA should redefine the government’s drive to privatise higher completely what an architect is or stay out education, educators at the conference also of the picture.’

26.07.12

KEY FINDINGS LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY STUDIO CULTURE CONFERENCE IN BRIEF

MARK HACKETT CO-DIRECTOR, FORUM FOR ALTERNATIVE BELFAST The RIBA role in the validation of courses is problematic because it forces a singular vocational path through education. One key driver for many students is to attain that elusive title and this leads to stresses and aberrations in what could or should be their natural career direction. An architect should be considered as someone who has rigorously demonstrated competence as a critical, self-critical and strategic thinker, who can also deliver practical visions if required. This is not the same thing as someone who administers contracts between parties, holds indemnity insurances and follows a code of conduct largely designed to assure ‘clients’ that they are ‘safe hands’. One of the flaws in our vocational path to title can be perceived in the negative connotation of the oft-used phrase ‘dropping out’. We don’t provide positive paths for people to practice as architects in roles which society increasingly needs and ..

demands: the critic, the activist, the good bureaucrat, the politician. The declining and peripheral role that architects now have in decision-making, procurement and the urban debate reflects their absence at high levels in the administrative, critical and political spheres. Occasionally, the sense of grievance of a student ‘dropping out’ of a flawed system can work against the interests of good architecture later in life. There is another pressure driving down standards of independent and critical thought. In the context of rising fees, students are becoming more demanding, not always for better standards, teaching and critique as I remember we once demanded in Belfast. The pressure is rather a role reversal in which individual students are questioning grades, sinking into the tick box culture that universities have unwittingly set as a rod to break their own backs. The unit system with its student choice of direction and study offers a useful way out of this conundrum. In my view these pressures will force change, and in many ways it will improve architecture, the role of architects and their contribution to society.

Educators must question whether the studio system can resolve schools’ separation from the outside world and be affordable and desirable to students Robert Mull, London Metropolitan University Studio culture, both in practice and education, is about sharing knowledge towards a common goal Tom Emerson, ETH Zürich Field trips must engage locals and promote critical thought about relative ways of seeing Jane McAllister, London Metropolitan University Field trip organisers need good contacts, such as local activists, to help students engage with resident knowledge and opinion Marisol Rivas Velázquez, University of Stuttgart Precedent studies can boost students’ awareness of cultural heritage James Payne, London Metropolitan University Students can use precedents from their own lives to design places sensitive to people’s emotional needs David Knight, Kingston University Live projects should be used to cultivate a risk-confident culture among students Harriet Harriss, Oxford Brookes University Involving students with real projects in your practice helps them realise the validity of their work and its stake in the real world Fran Balaam, London Metropolitan University Architecture’s context in the wider world needs to be reinforced to students at key stages so they can continually reconsider their trajectory Mark Hackett, Forum for Alternative Belfast Design crits should be a true dialogue with constructive feedback and critical reflection Rachel Sara, University of the West of England Reviewing by group and allowing digital presentations can be important Sam Clark, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University 

Student shows 2012 South West and Wales

South West & Wales

THE ARTS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, BOURNEMOUTH

Above Bournemouth student Amy Nash’s Tideform Right Sam Tuck’s work at Bournemouth

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The first thing that strikes you when viewing this year’s show is the value of being within the creative hub of an arts campus. The course leader, Simon Beeson, talks about fostering a culture of informed design in students and this is exhibited in the wide variety of projects. The programme of workshop time, model building and arts influence within the course communicates the identity of the school and sets this show apart.   A key theme of this show was to look at real local examples, this year tackling one of the UK’s ugliest buildings, the IMAX, Bournemouth. Students

reimagined not just the building but the surrounding townscape. Projects ranged from reuse of materials to reuse of the building itself and designs evolved from many influences – green infrastructure, movement, and connections with the sea. The outcome is an intriguing hybrid where form, structure and landscape explore ideas such as salt crystallisation and self-assembly towers. The students talk of the opportunity to work alongside other disciplines like modelmaking, interior design, graphics, textiles and photography.   Sam Tuck, Mark Allners, Christina VarvouniGiatrakou and Amy Nash    Passionate Warren Lever, Shape The Place ..

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UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Th is end of year show marked the last for the school in the Portland Building before the move to a new home at the Eldon Campus as part of the cementation within the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries. The theme was ‘collaboration’ and a flavour of each course area was exhibited in the atrium. Tod Wakefield, Head of School, describes the typical Portsmouth student as highly creative yet ‘grounded’, embracing real issues and wherever possible engaging with ‘live’ projects. If that places the school as one with a purpose of engendering a culture of bright and employable ..

graduates, then the work suggests that ambition is being realised.   The show was a rich mix of the competent and the inspirational. For me, the standout unit was the ‘Emergent Studio’, led by Roger Tyrell and Nicola Crowson. The Living Bridge in Aalborg, Denmark, and The Academy in Ourika Valley, Morocco, displayed both collective endeavour and individual brilliance.   The highlight was Ewan Gibson and Luke Sutton’s collaboration, which combined thoughtful design with ambience-inducing artwork that would grace any wall.    Eminently-employable Richard Rose-Casemore is co-founder of Design Engine

There was a pragmatic idealism to the work – theoretical and philosophical ideas are certainly present, yet design responses were grounded in spatial propositions arising from realities of social experience. Intriguing host city Plymouth, now almost in a post-industrial state, provided a fertile ground for briefs, and academic links to Riga, Spain and Poland confi rmed an interest in positive urban re-structuring as a consequence of decline. The degree school has nine units, ranging from conservation to culture, with strong undercurrents of environmental responsibility.   Krzysztof Nawratek’s unit is intensely concerned with urban transformation, as seen in Requiem for a City by Rob Sawyer – proposing an industrial facility for dissembling the urban fabric combined with a counselling suite for the orphaned citizens. Referencing Kahn, the language was low technology from reclaimed material but the mood was sublime.   In the unit led by Simon Bradbury, the work of Isla Melville suggested not merely a building but a regeneration strategy. (Comm)Union Street took a notorious thoroughfare that refused to die and re-vitalised it with elegant temporary low-cost constructions. Melville was discussing prospects for its realisation with interested business leaders.    Engaged Mark Pearson, executive director, regional design support, Design Action Above Portsmouth students Ewan Gibson and Luke Sutton’s masterful collaboration Right Plymouth student Isla Melville’s (Comm)union Street CATALYST FOR CHANGE: the community hall _ promoting the programme

the [comm]union street project

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Student shows 2012 South West & Wales

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL There is a lot going on in the Department of Planning and Architecture at the University of the West of England Architecture (UWE). For a relatively new school, year on year, it is good to see growth in numbers matched by greater levels of confidence and ambition, among students and in dialogue with staff. UWE runs courses that cross over with Planning, Environmental Engineering and Technology. When you walked around the show, the apparent universal competence in computer visualisation appeared to sit alongside thorough technical reports and fully reasoned Design and Access Statements. As you would hope, when the synergies worked, you saw incredibly creative and convincing  ..

pieces of work with the immeasurable notion of design excellence graded alongside more onerous and measurable technical components.   BArch Unit 5, entitled Architecture and the Body, led by Rachel Sara with David Littlefield. It began with a workshop at Laban Dance Centre in Deptford and an urban documentary entitled Inhabiting Strangely. From such ice-breakers, a wide range of sensual projects emerged in designs for a Mother and Baby Prison, a Slavery Museum and an Archive.   Kevin Woodward, who designed an archive where the memory of buildings knocked down in Istanbul could be stored in a vertiginous columbarium    Comprehensive Rob Gregory, programme manager, Architecture Centre

Above top and left UWE student Kevin Woodward’s buildings archive Bottom left UWE student Jason Davies’ work Right Work by Bath student Ben Holmes’ Opposite, top and far right Cardiff student Louisa Barfoot’s vision for the Valleys Opposite, near right Cardiff MArch student Briony Paul’s Aquanomy urban fish farm

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UNIVERSITY OF BATH DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE In recent years, Bath has been criticised for its restraint and lack of exploratory ‘mess’. Now in its fourth year the show, based at Candid Arts warehouse, exhibited vestiges of this purported restraint but by no means to its detriment; the work was well-considered with a refreshing clarity. The School’s self-branding as ‘treading the line between the poetic and the practical’ was indeed evident. But this blanket competency made it difficult for projects to truly stand out. The exhibition was defiant in its simplicity; the work spoke for itself with the degree being rated top by the Times Good University Guide 2013. Degree and master’s students were given a regional context and brief to explore their own identity. This resulted in a sense of ownership and surprising maturity. Master’s students looked at an analysis-led design project based in Redcliffe in Bristol and the BSc brief, ‘Somnambulant City’, asked students to ‘re-enchant’ the dormitory town of Salisbury.   Among the profusion of ruralist degree projects, Ben Holmes’ timber ‘Biomass Energy Centre’ encompassed the brief ’s semi-rural themes, while remaining responsive to the landscape of biomass crops.    Elegant Sahiba Chadha, AJ sustainability intern

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WELSH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, CARDIFF UNIVERSITY Forget London, Cardiff is where it’s at, or so the Welsh School of Architecture’s roll call of inspirational tutors, featuring Peter Salter and Richard Weston, might lead you to expect. But crossing the school’s threshold for the first time, for the opening of the end of year show, I was struck by its varsity feel, borne out by its impressive research programmes, international links and recently boosted staff numbers. Each unit had its own studio, with ample space for students to display projects on a grand scale. Much of the work had a dramatic quality – bold, monochromatic and big – in the case of technical drawings sometimes too big for its content. But the level of competence was impressive, as was the school’s environmental and

social commitment, with a swathe of low-energy projects in the Valleys, envisioned in their entirety by one student as a vast hemp-growing region. Louisa Barfoot’s psychedelic work couldn’t have failed to stand out in its context, especially in Peter Salter’s Infrastructural Urbanism Studio. However, the show’s highlights were from Peter Thomas and Andy Roberts’ unit, featuring MArch student Briony Paul’s printed nylon model of her [Aqua]nomy urban fish farm. Professor Richard Weston captured the year’s flavour when he said if 2009 was the year of the gourd at Cardiff, 2012 was the year of the pylon.   Peter Thomas and Andy Roberts’ Economy Unit   Briony Paul    Ecodrama Felix Mara, technical editor, the AJ 

Student shows 2012 North

North HULL SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN

NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT Northumbria’s Part 2 course is relatively new and small. Rather than being split into units, it has a number of projects that the students can opt into. Many new schools concentrate on technical aspects of architecture, but Northumbria’s projects deal with historical and regional social concerns – in other words, context in time and place (the ‘as found’, or ‘genius loci’). There is a phenomenological and poetic ambience to the student show that might be viewed as nostalgic modernism by the more ‘progressive’ schools, but actually differentiates it from most, especially now that full use of computer technology enables drawings and models of the highest quality.  ..

Both Part 1 and Part 2 display an affinity for the perspective section with a colour gamut ranging from sepia to charcoal – the overall effect is one of sobriety and seriousness, while the odd splash of primary colour is a welcome relief. Northumbria is already punching above its weight.  : The ‘as found’ studio that included Matt van Geffen and Joe Crinion.  : The student who caught my attention was Matt van Geffen, who matched the unemployed young with the need for a recycling plant. His hybrid pencil and computer drawings of this industrial neo-Brutalism seduced me with their restrained conviction.   : Contextual Steve Parnell, lecturer in architecture, Nottingham University

Left Northumbria student Joe Crinion’s blast furnace project Top right Hull student Tom Smith’s Riverside Mills proposal Opposite Manchester student Carrie Bayley’s Infrascraper axonometric, concept model and zoning diagram

Architectural education has returned to Hull and is set within the School of Art and Design at Hull College. This year, the first student cohort has finished the BA (Hons) Architectural Design degree, which has achieved ARB Prescription and RIBA candidate status for Part 1. The final year show is small, with seven students exhibiting their work. All projects were set within the post-industrial River Hull Corridor in the City, and as well as evidencing the students’ skills and knowledge of individual building design, the show demonstrates the students’ exploration of the relationship between architecture and urban regeneration. The model used reflects lessons learnt from a student trip to Germany, with many participants referencing the post-industrial site at Zolverein as a generator of their thinking.  : The River Hull Corridor masterplan and proposed interventions breathe new life into the city – great ambition.  : Dominic Hornsby and Tom Smith’s proposals concentrating on two redundant Riverside Mills, recognising them as landmarks within the new park.   : Exciting Jill Jones RIBA FRCA ..

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MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE The Manchester School of Architecture’s temporary new home The Shed provides a gallery-like quality of space and light. Yet the 2012 show has been unfortunately hung, so the BA feels ‘lost in space’ and the BArch appears squeezed and confused. The visitor has to work hard to find a mental place where the undoubted quality of the BArch’s six units can be properly appraised.  : Approaches of the units differ greatly but all engage very tangibly with the urban. Particularly notable, in this respect, is the work of MSA_P, which was developed through real social research with Manchester residents. Notable for ..

other reasons is QED – each project an international competition, nearly all finalists. But the consistent high quality of shown work makes Bioclimatic Architecture the outstanding unit, with the drawings of Jack O’Reilly pre-eminent.  : Carrie Bayley in unit [Re_Map] ICU with a project set within the unlikely setting of Stoke-on-Trent. Bayley’s Infrascraper 2 shows a depth and quality of theory and design, which delights you more the longer you view it. A world-weary perspective might dismiss her thesis as utopian fancy, but the dreamer hopes one day, in practice, Bayley will make good the promise of this project.   : Intense James Jones, design director, Sheppard Robson 

Student shows 2012 North

I L L U S T R A T I O N 2 - Arrival at Decommissioning Facility - the deliver y bay

LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Leeds Metropolitan has made great strides in recent years, but the departure of influential professor of sustainable architecture Greg Keeffe a few months ago is a loss. The work on show was patchier than usual, and in places lacked the thoroughness, rigour and resolution now expected of the school. But the eco-ethos remained strong. Sustainability in Leeds, as shown through bee highways and clothes upcycling projects, is not a box-ticking tag on. Presentation of the students’ efforts was again a solid mix of models (a huge replica of Salts Mill) and accomplished visuals, with the highlights to be found among work by undergraduates such as Joe Walton.  : Tutors Dennis Burr  ..

and Sarah Mills are creating a name for themselves – once more their Part I studio boasted tactile models and the most thought-provoking work. Focusing on Bristol and Istanbul, the walls showed off interrogations of place and programme, resulting in some highly polished projects.  : Among Mills and Burr’s stars-in-the-making were Ashley Ball and Sam Stalker. Ball’s decommissioning facility for military equipment on Bristol’s waterfront was gritty, practical and topped with touches of delight (including a hidden alchemist’s den). Stalker’s neo-Gothic Freemason’s lodge disguised as a radio tower was beautifully presented. Though the Part 2 work was weaker, diploma students Ben Ponsford and Joe Roper looked handy.   : Green Richard Waite, AJ news editor

Left Leeds Metropolitan student Ashley Ball’s facility for decommissioning military hardware Right Sheffield’s Thalia Charalambous’s perspectival drawing Far right Sheffield School of Architecture’s student show

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UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE You would be forgiven for thinking that Sheffield School of Architecture has it all: a great view, light and airy studios, and a paternoster lift. The student show certainly made the most of the newly refurbished arts tower. Work was exhibited on two levels; undergraduate upstairs on the mezzanine, and MArch below. Projects ranged from a crematorium to a building aiming to mediate between the press and the public. As ever, there was a strong focus on live projects, with students carrying out many in the local community, including building with pallets and a scout hut, and increasing links with Ecclesall Woods. Sheffield School of Architecture has an obvious focus on hand-drawing

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and artistic interpretation, and this was a delight to see.  : Studio One of the MArch, ‘Cinema and the City’ stood out. Architectural work centred on four main themes: death, water and performance, archaeology and socio-political traditions. This created some interesting and varied work.  : Daniel Anderson Hall of the MArch Studio One stood out for his impeccable attention to detail and Thalia Charalambous for her eye-catching hand-drawings. The undergraduate to watch out for this year is Ross Jordan, named winner of the school’s Stephen Welsh Prize for Draftmanship in recognition of his atmospheric drawings.   : Self-assured Laura Mark, senior architectural assistant, Pick Everard

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Student shows 2012 North

LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN

SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE This school is obviously targeting sustainability. Both the undergraduate and postgraduate courses have an environmental focus. This was strongly evident in the work produced. There was a clear community focus with many projects based in the school’s locality. However, in achieving this emphasis on sustainability, the importance of high-quality design appeared to get lost in the process. Some of the work lacked depth and complexity. The show bore more of a resemblance to a final review pin-up than a curated exhibition, with the work spread across the atrium of one of the main university buildings. It was commendable that the school  ..

made the decision to give each student an equal amount of space to show their work. However, this did not always create the most interesting and inspiring display.  : The architecture course here is not taught in units. But the best year was the final Part II, where students appeared to have significantly improved in their work, creating some impressive visuals.  : Leo Palmer won the school’s HLM Sustainability Award. His project was a community theatre for the village of Holmfirth in Yorkshire. Drawings were atmospheric, and his project displayed an understanding of the vital needs and vernacular traditions of the local community.   : Lacklustre Laura Mark, senior architectural assistant, Pick Everard

Above Sheffield Hallam sustainbility award-winner Leo Palmer’s community theatre Right Liverpool John Moores student Steven Anton’s work

An ethos striking a balance between theoretical and practical thinking was seen in the diversity of this year’s Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) degree show. The school continues to encourage students to engage with their surroundings in Liverpool and the North West. The ambitious attempt to deal with challenging urban sites was impressive and the depth was cause for optimism.  : The TED Talks-inspired ‘paradigm of a future green utopia’ unit stood out as generating the most engaging responses. The central image of Peter Edwards’ Genesis Project was a good example of a powerful graphic style.  : As well as Peter Edwards’ work, noteworthy projects at degree level included Thomas Stacey’s polished response to the Living Art Gallery and Steven Anton’s Ballet Mechanique, a study of axonometric projection in relation to James Stirling’s work. Diploma projects were grounded in an urban design context redefining Cumbrian coastal towns. Projects of note were Mark Yates’ gargantuan Workington Steel Centre and Robin Graham’s Cookery School in Maryport.   : Aspiring Dan Gibson, director of Gibson Architects and guest critic at LJMU ..

CCAE 9-10 COPLEY STREET CORK, IRELAND

BSc (HONS) ARCHITECTURE Direct Entry to Year Four University College Cork (UCC) and Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) invites applications from suitably qualified applicants to Year 4 of the BSc (Hons) Architecture programme. Following completion of RIBA Part 1, successful completion of this programme will allow students to progress to the Masters in Architecture (equivalent to RIBA Part 2). All candidates applying for direct entry to Year Four shall be required to submit a design portfolio, and may be required to attend for interview. Full Entry requirements are available from the Admissions Office, University College Cork

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: FRIDAY 3RD AUGUST, 2012

Application forms, matriculation requirements & course details are available from: The Admissions Office, University College Cork, Cork.

T: +353 (0) 21 4903561 E: c.collins@ucc.ie F: +353 (0) 21 4903233

CCAE 9-10 COPLEY STREET CORK, IRELAND

MASTERS IN ARCHITECTURE Applications are now invited for this 12-month Taught Masters degree programme in Architecture, commencing September 2012 at CCAE, Cork School of Architecture. This is a joint course operated by University College Cork (UCC) and Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). A post-graduate Master’s degree will be awarded upon satisfactory completion of the program. The course will suit students wishing to pursue a final qualification in Architecture (RIBA Part 2 Equivalent) before undertaking post-qualification supervised practical experience, as well as mid-career professionals looking for an advanced degree qualification. With the design thesis project based in a major European city (last year in Istanbul), the course broadens the distinctive design based culture at The Cork School of Architecture (CCAE), through the development of conceptual and innovative design.

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: WEDNESDAY 1ST AUGUST 2012 Fees: €5,500 Full course details: http://www.ucc.ie/en/study/postgrad/what/sefs/masters/MArch/ Course Code: CKR42 To obtain a copy of 2012_2013 Course Prospectus, please contact: Mr Jason O’Shaughnessy, Masters Programme Coordinator T: +353 (0) 21 429 8401 E: jason.oshaughnessy@cit.ie W: www.ucc.ie/en/architecture

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Student shows 2012 North

HUDDERSFIELD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE The University of Huddersfield has a practical approach to architecture. This year’s show was rammed with workable blueprints, which, if not always jaw-droppingly beautiful, could almost universally be taken off the wall and built tomorrow. There was coherence in the output, which must come from the school’s drive towards what architectural subject leader Carl Meddings calls ‘contextual regionalism’. Last year, the re-validated school moved into a new home which, though uninspiring in itself, has meant that the wannabe architects are closer to the model shop. They have certainly used it. If anything was

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missing from work displayed, it was in-depth details of the design journey (at Part 1) and evidence that thinking green is embedded in that process.  : The school does not run a unit system as such, but claims in its 2012 Yearbook to put a ‘design studio ethos at the core of the [learning] experience’. Student work shows a consistency of teaching.  : Postgraduate work of note was Phil Tomlinson’s Urban Farm and Cookery School for Ho Chi Minh City – an Archigram-esque production platform on stilts. But the standout student was Jake Barrow with his plans for modular insertions into the urban fabric of a ‘transitional Vietnamese city’. Clever and do-able.   : Solid Richard Waite, AJ news editor

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NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE After a long absence from the capital, Newcastle University Part 1s and 2s put on a two-venue show, starting in the The Toon’s Hancock and Great North Museum and then travelling to London’s Truman Brewery. With the get-up-and-go crucial to securing a job today, students took responsibility for the production and transport of their shows. They exhibited a healthy mix of realistic, ‘grown-up’ buildings and a hint of playful experimentation.  : The school has loose research groups rather than units. The Brutalist heritage of T Dan Smith-era Newcastle looms large in the city’s psyche, and in turn that of Part 1 students such as Joseph Wilson and

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James Macpherson, who produced striking, ghostly work entitled Afterimage inspired by Owen Luder’s now-demolished car park.  : As well as giving support to formal experimentation, the school issues reassuringly grounded briefs. This can be seen in Part 2’s ‘Thinking and Making’ Unit, tutored by Graham Farmer. Amy Linford experimented fruitfully with materiality, coming up with a convincing resolution for timber-wool panels in her designs for a birthing centre as part of the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, with honorable mentions to Hannah Benihoud’s men refuge on the roof of Eldon Square Shopping Centre.   : Grounded James Pallister, AJ senior editor

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING ENGINEERING

Opposite Jake Barrow’s modular system for a Vietnamese city (top) and Huddersfield student Phil Tomlinson’s Urban Farm and Cookery School for Ho Chi Minh City Left Newcastle student Amy Linford’s pool proposal using timberwool panels and ceiling Below Student show at Liverpool School of Architecture

The undergraduate degree at Liverpool encourages students to undertake a variety of live projects and studio work. Focus rests on social and political issues in urban environments – particularly in Liverpool. Students are allocated a brief and a choice of sites, even in their final year, resulting in a fair standard but little variety. The MArch is composed of an equal balance of returning and new students. Following on from a written dissertation and individual projects, final-year students gather into small groups to devise a brief they develop through built models and graphics.  : Students are not divided into units. The final-year group collaborations represent the school’s intention to embrace studio culture. Projects ranged from nuclear waste disposal sites to rehabilitations of Eastern European concentration camps. Many were epic in scope, with a propensity for Blade Runner skies.  : BA students Andrew Macintosh and Polina Pencheva; and MArch student Oliver O’Neil, who won awards both individually and in collaboration with Adam John and James Fosbrook.   : Future-facing Hayley Chivers, Manchester School of Architecture graduate and writer

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Student shows 2012 Scotland

Scotland

SCOTT SUTHERLAND SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT, ABERDEEN

Above Aberdeen student Scott Doig treads a fine line between the city and nature Left Aberdeen student Emily-Ann Gilligan’s Hydro Research Centre

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Aberdeen, a school defined by its remote Northern location, has confounded this predicament through a unit system led by the leading Scottish practitioners Gokay Deveci, Alan Dunlop and Neil Gillespie. All very different in approach and sensibility, the units offer a diversity that is uncommon in other schools outside London. Of the students’ work I saw in the Big Crit, the annual post-exam shindig, all were focused on Aberdeen (others were Glasgow-based), so there was an expectation that localism and a sense of place might be on the agenda.

Alas, the city’s ills are all too familiar and the points addressed equally so. Urgent issues of the smaller townscapes were tackled, but some were more ‘beach haven’ than Stonehaven – a pity, since no school sees any glamour in really addressing the shambolic state of our small towns and rural development.  : It’s a tricky one – I would vote for the unit led by Neil Gillespie, since he’s a good guy.  : Scott Doig for his intelligently defined project poised on a site which engaged with history, the city and the natural landscape, beautifully modelled and drawn.   : Atopian Charlie Sutherland, co-founder of Sutherland Hussey Architects ..

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DUNDEE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Dundee’s degree show was the first to open, and arguably set the pace for the rest of Scotland. The school continues to strike a balance between building technology and design-led projects: full-scale models of dormer windows sit alongside thoughtful sketchbooks. All five years are represented at the show, with the Master’s Unit awarded its own gallery space. The final year was split into several studios: Rationalist Traces generated a cluster of austere urbanism projects, although the most successful ones lay at the poetic end, including Sharon Chatterton’s Physicians’ Library. The most imaginative schemes stemmed from the Adaptive Re-Use ..

Studio, including Hannah Oza’s well-resolved restoration of Torwood Castle, in the manner of Sverre Fehn. However, the most complete vision belonged to Sam Wilson, whose project to recast Brymbo Steelworks in Wales stood out for its rigour. It was beautifully presented, and the tonal drawings captured the grain of industrial ruins very effectively. If the standard at Dundee was higher than in previous years, which I believe it was, hopefully the Royal Scottish Academy and others will exhibit the best of this session’s work.  : Adaptive Re-Use Studio  : Sam Wilson   : Atmospheric Mark Chalmers, architect and writer

Above Dundee student Sam Wilson’s project to recast Brymbo Steelworks Right Wilson’s drawing captures the grain of the industrial ruins

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Student shows 2012 Scotland

EDINBURGH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE The 2009 merger of the two Edinburgh schools – respectively from the College of Art and the University – has led to a very interesting cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches to design. In the lower school, on show in Lauriston Place, there is a continuation of the College of Art concentration on exploring the labyrinthine complexity of the layers of settlement that constitute the city of Edinburgh. Suzanne Ewing’s fourth-year unit demonstrates at once a delicacy and rigour with capturing in drawing the architectonic order of the Scottish metropolis. At diploma level, studies on Fountainbridge and Leith examine the formal make-up of the city zones and the Contemporary Architecture Unit takes a cultural and historical critique to forceful depth, which among other things reveals Hume and Adam as the great demiurges in the cultural creation of the New Town.  ..

At Minto House, the two master’s years add the University’s global and phenomenological concern with ambiences, surfaces, materials and the quality of place to that lower school development of spatial tools. Dorian Wiszniewski’s fi rst year looks at Olbia, Sardinia, as a paradigm for the rural/urban dichotomy with a heavy philosophical and political input. The final master’s year Venice Unit, tutored by Adrian Hawkes, takes a delightfully sensitive approach to the fragile ecology of the city. There are wonderfully complex and delicate models throughout; projects that aim at reclaiming Venice from the tourists and reconstituting it as a functioning community. Some of these projects emphasise the drift of the city; some, such as Claire Gardiner’s Hortus and Laura Barr’s hospital project, give it needed therapy.  : Venice Unit  : Claire Gardner and Laura Barr   : Qualities Johnny Rodger, lecturer in history and theory at Glasgow School of Art ..

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW MACKINTOSH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Top left Edinburgh student Claire Gardiner’s Hortus explored the drift of Venice Left Edinburgh student Laura Barr’s model of hospital strand Above First and second year shows at Glasgow’s Mackintosh School of Architecture Right Nathan Cunningham’s Glasgow Institute of Photography Far right Natsuka Muto’s Dublin Gallery

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It was a pleasure to visit the exhibitions of first and second years at the Mac. Bursting with life, they are often a great starting point to the end-of-year show. The first year explored light, space, texture and colour through models, drawings and paintings, while the second year designed a timber structure and four dwellings. It was a joy. In comparison, the third-year studio was busy enough but the Writer’s Retreat lacked energy. Ubiquitous CGI creep made it difficult to separate one student from another, with Lucinda Eccles’ Tower House the exception. The Urban Building in the fourth year is now geared towards introducing Glasgow to the influx of students from overseas. Here the standout work was Nathan Cunningham’s Glasgow Institute of Photography, a beautifully crafted display of drawings and models of a pared and well-considered project. The fifth year pushed out from Glasgow to Reykjavik, Lisbon and Dublin to capitalise on the strong links between the school and these three cities. The exhibition was polished with stunning models and slick computer drawings on display. Natsuka Muto’s Dublin Gallery stood out as both creative and lively.  : Years 1 and 2  : Nathan Cunningham   : Polished Alan Dunlop, director, Alan Dunlop Architect

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Student shows 2012 Scotland

UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE A promenade around the Strathclyde exhibition shows how this school builds an accumulative awareness of how architects act on their environment: what architecture can do. Thus if the first year starts off with a basic engagement with the world through single events: sheltering, dwelling, settling; then through the years as we go up the school, we see in turn a more complex engagement with local, regional, national, international and global events and issues.  : There’s a strong base of reality in Strathclyde, with the upper school taking that step from a physical ‘how’ we do it, to the social, political and economic ‘why’ we do it. This means that in the fifth year, when the students pick an ‘issue’ with which to engage, they really come into  ..

their own. In the student show, the range of issues chosen for engagement varied from creating free play zones for children across the city, to the question of how people would colonise the desolate cities after a predicted collapse of the global economy in 2017, to the wonderful drawings of Dandelionopolis, a series of 160m tall techno-towers in Singapore by Chi Yoon Ming that would digest waste and produce energy.  : Perhaps the most comprehensive and delightful project was John Kennedy’s eulogy for the uncertain future of the book. Ariadne’s Thread. As per the title, this project set a labyrinthine textual collection in the tortuous urban landscape of the backlands in Old Town Edinburgh.   : Activism Johnny Rodger, lecturer in history and theory at Glasgow School of Art

Above Strathclyde student John Kennedy’s Ariadne’s Thread Left Dandelionopolis, by Chi Yoon Ming

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Student shows 2012 Midlands

Midlands

DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY LEICESTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Th is is the second year of the school’s reinvention, and this show proves last year was no fluke: standards are once again high. The school has developed its own style, with an emphasis on model-making and artistic impression. Visuals were impressive, with a high level of detail in the imagery produced. Projects were varied and the subjects imaginative. They included pharmacies, a workshop for the study and reproduction of palimpsest manuscripts and an artists’ collective. The final years of undergraduate and postgraduate courses were displayed in the main show. In corridors leading to this visitors were tantalised by work from earlier years.  ..

The exhibition was heavily curated and this could give a slightly biased view of the show, as only the best work was displayed.  : The course at this school is not taught in units. The final undergraduate year stood out for the high quality and standard of the work – and if the work stays at this level it presents much hope for the future.  : Luke Snow was the stand-out Part 2 student. His project for a renewable energy centre in the Medway estuary was well executed. Charlie Patterson won the school’s Design Excellence Award and produced some very high quality models and imagery.   : Composed Laura Mark, senior architectural assistant, Pick Everard

NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Above Visualisation for a renewable energy centre in the Medway estuary, by De Montfort student Luke Snow

While architecture courses at Nottingham Trent are relatively new – the MArch had its fi rst graduating cohort this year – there is a clear theme of global issues being addressed within the locally-based projects. Th is is underpinned by a maturing research-based approach, allied with a good sense of community and an apparent rejection of ‘starchitecture’ and iconic, form-driven design.  : The unit system is not used, with the exception of a single project. The stand-out year is BArch3, whose students demonstrated a robust understanding of the complex issues associated with crafting urban buildings, working with both vacant sites and retrofits. There is a level ..

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BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Th is year’s show was laid out around a central space featuring collaborative projects produced by students and staff at the school and practices from the local region. The focal point was an impressive bar which was designed by two of the school’s former students. Smaller rooms ran off this central space, each featuring an individual unit or year group. The work was heavily computerbased with some impressive computer renders. But it was disappointing to see the lack of emphasis on handdrawing. However, the use of models was encouraging and it was clear there was a focus on materiality.  : It had to be the

of consistency and coherence to the work, while maintaining a healthy level of individuality in approach. The presentation skills showed a welcome departure from the CAD drawings and sketch-ups of previous years, with a greater degree of variety and quality.  : Louise Young for her framework for community living that can be adapted and evolved by the inhabitants, illustrated in a refreshing, freehand style drawn with a touch of humour; Matthew Mouncey for his moody and evocative mortuary and crematorium in the Trent basin, intriguingly derived from the investigation of form created through fi re and charring.   : Evolving-glocalism Ben Bowley, project director, Marchini Curran Associates ..

MArch unit going under the alias ‘Happiness’. Here, students had come up with architectural interventions for a post-riot Tottenham.  : Sophie Britten won the school’s RIBA Drawing Prize for her calm and thoughtful drawings. Her project focused on creating spaces for the elderly of Tottenham. It was an interesting investigation into the traditions and perceptions of our ageing population. Also outstanding was Jamie Ho’s FAT and Archigram-influenced work, which explored the multicultural population of Tottenham, aiming to create community cohesion through music and dance.   : Promising Laura Mark, senior architectural assistant, Pick Everard

AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk Student work in the AJ Buildings Library: Hayes Bridge, a collaboration between Friends of the Hayes and Birmingham School of Architecture. The pedestrian footbridge improves access to the adjacent semi-ancient woodland. Search ‘Birmingham’ at ajbuidlingslibrary.co.uk

Above Nottingham Trent student Louise Young’s civic project Right Model by Birmingham student Sophie Britten

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Student shows 2012 Midlands

LINCOLN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE The Lincoln degree show was a mix of styles and work-based themes very much reflecting the diverse range of tutors the school employs. This results in an interesting blend of projects ranging from well considered pragmatic solutions which are clearly safe and could commence on site tomorrow, to bold, futuristic schemes, which often do appear to overlook fundamental elements such as structure in the search for aesthetic nirvana.  : Although there is a concern that the process and graphic presentation is of greater importance than the final architectural solution, the work produced in the standout Wright Studio is exciting and pushes students to challenge

traditional values and techniques in architectural methodology.  : The British Library Extension by Mathew Cooper is a stunning piece of work, which challenges the institutional British Library. The braid of spiralling metalwork gives the impression it is searching for knowledge hidden deep within the red brick vaults of the existing building. However, the Future Power Station designed by Antonias Lalos captures the imagination above all, a beautiful form which draws you in with almost hypnotic qualities. Is it Architecture or should we be warning the military to prepare for our ‘Independence Day’?   : Diverse Nigel Stevenson, director, Stem Architects

Top left Lincoln student Matthew Cooper’s British Library Extension project Left Future Power Station by Lincoln student Antonias Lalos Right University of Nottingham show Far right One of Nottingham student James Wright’s colourful drawings

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UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE Nottingham’s show has improved upon last year. Less work was on display than in 2011, making it seem less daunting. However, it was spread out somewhat awkwardly and this made visitor movement through the show a little disjointed. The work displayed was of a high standard with a good selection of well-made models. Projects were particularly focused on buildings and structures. Reuse and refurbishment was often considered alongside the locality of source materials. The school has a strong focus on construction and materiality. It was encouraging to see a high level of technical information. The style of work and its visual representation differed strongly between units.

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 : Students choose their own units and this can be highly competitive. It is evident from the work produced that the units are taught in very different ways, with increasingly differing styles. The standout unit was Unit 5. Entitled ‘Edgelands’, this unit focused on how contemporary architecture should respond to fragments and traces of historical legacy. It included projects in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Bath and Stoke-on-Trent.  : Undergraduate James Wright broke from the muted colours used by his classmates to produce some eye-catching, colourful images. His large hand-drawings were fantastically bizarre.   : Miscellaneous Laura Mark, senior architectural assistant, Pick Everard

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Student shows 2012 South

South

UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Above and left Brighton student Catriona Mole’s The Collaborative Town Centre Above centre Kent student Tzi Leung Man’s Mews section

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Rising sea levels (we are all doomed!) often preoccupy coastal architecture schools, and Brighton in 2012 has several units whose speculations depart from this point. Two consistent themes emerge: how should we respond to the rapid urbanisation demanded by a changing coastline, and how should our existing buildings be re-programmed and refitted.  : In the Winchelcity Unit, rising sea levels demand a rethink of Winchelsea as a significant city, or perhaps a police state, as Max Langran’s arresting images suggest. They include a dramatic counterpoint of country cottage and sinister surveillance building, and a collage of ‘redundant’ communist memorials set behind a row of 1930s

houses. The Interior Architecture surprises with a brief to reuse a utilitarian shed, and yet Violeta Stukaite gives us a glorious and sensitive space for rehabilitation in its repurposing.  : The star of the show for ambition and relevance had to be Catriona Mole’s take on the redundancy of the town centre. Her response is to pull it apart and put it back together as The Collaborative Town Centre. Grandiose enough and an easy ambition to support, her drawings suggest boldness and skill. Her central message – that personal interaction and collaboration demand public urban space to unfold – is laudable when the increasing private ownership of public spaces threaten a less palatable future for our cities.   : Flux Ben Adams, founder, Ben Adams Architects ..

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OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

UNIVERSITY OF KENT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE The keynote of Kent School of Architecture’s show was transition. The venue was a single-storey, soon-to-be-demolished teaching block, used as a labyrinthine vehicle for the show’s Peep Show concept, informed by Brunelleschi’s camera obscura experiments, as seen in the openings of a diaphragm wall. The show was designed, organised and built by the Exit:12 student committee. The school is benefiting from growing numbers of highly qualified applicants and investment in staff, facilities and research from the University of Kent and will, in November, be graced with Dan Holloway’s Crit Space complete with digital presentation gizmos resembling giant iPads. ..

Like the school, the show strikes a balance between an academic, taught approach and an independent, experimental approach, with a healthy mixture of hand-drawing, computer graphics and model-making. Stage 5 MArch student Tzi Leung Man’s Paleontological Centre on the Isle of Sheppey stood out with its polemic on ethics. Stage 5 MArch student Louisa Clifford’s Faversham Thames Barge Restoration Centre and Gravney Boat Museum were also impressive with their exploration of nautical technology. The show’s linear circulation reinforced the sense that the school and its students are busily making good progress along the route into the unknown that lies ahead.  : Tzi Leung Man and Louisa Clifford   : Transition Felix Mara, technical editor, the AJ

The Oxford Brookes School of Architecture is one of the largest in the UK and is now established within the new Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment. The school also has a new physical home ready for the 2012–13 academic year, designed to stimulate creativity and to encourage cross-faculty interaction. Th is end of year show had two showings: fi rst in the School Studios, and then transported in part for a three-week run at Chetwoods in Clerkenwell Green to coincide with the 2012 London Festival of Architecture. With an array of research-based specialisms; a new course in Applied Design in Architecture, imaginative field trips, live projects and an energetic OxArch student society, Oxford Brookes now plays a leading role in the big conversation between architectural education and research.  : Advanced Architectural Design’s Pale Blue Dot, led by Andrew Holmes, Toby Shew and David Greene, which produced thought-provoking work while characteristically pushing the boundaries of representation.  : The work of Richard Black and Jonathan Marsh was outstanding, but my favourite single piece was Louise Cann’s Working Tomb Model.   : Enterprising Richard Rose-Casemore, co-founder, Design Engine Architects

Above Oxford Brookes student Louise Cann’s Working Tomb Model Right Oxford Brookes student Richard Black’s Orchids of Canvey

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Student shows 2012 South

CANTERBURY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Activism was the overarching theme at this year’s show at the Canterbury School of Architecture, part of the University of the Creative Arts. Students are encouraged to believe that the architect is the catalyst and has an active role to play, rather than expecting to take up roles as passive agents, which may or not await them, within a rigid, immutable process. Th is realistic design activism was reflected in the briefs of the distilled selection of projects at the studentcurated show. For their final projects, third-year students made proposals for a string of abandoned sites in Budapest that they had visited on a field trip. Tom Bauer chose a site on a polluted river to bring improvements to the environment and James Young  ..

made an exquisite model drawing on the history of stringed instruments. Tutors chose the year 2050 for fi fth-year projects set in the future, because this falls within the scope of Unitary Development Plans. Firstyear students had designed furniture and perceptual devices, in one case an appendage for intensifying light from lamp posts by Hassan Sheikh, Anna Sturton, Solene Th ierry and Samuel Withing. Generally, experiments were balanced by accomplished digital work, exemplified by fi fth year Sean Hanmer’s Parasitic Prototype retrofit of Greenwich Power Station as a plastic recycling plant.  : John Bell’s fi fth year students.  : Sean Hanmer, James Young.   : Activism Felix Mara, technical editor, the AJ

Above and top left Canterbury student Sean Hanmer’s Greenwich Power Station retrofit Left Canterbury student James Young’s model Opposite Cambridge student Ebanie Powell’s Baukademie: Re-appropriation of the ground for teaching, making and display

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE Wending its way through Clerkenwell’s Farmiloe Building, the Cambridge show projects a distinct elegance. Th is student-led travelling show has matured over the years into a measured display of exploratory design. And that’s just the undergraduates. The graduate portion of the school is blossoming – the design-research MPhil programme is gathering speed under new direction.  : Year 3 Studio 2 stands out for addressing contentious plans for the Berlin Stadtschloss.  : Jennifer Gutteridge’s evocative imagery of her prefab-concrete Humbolt Centre of Political Science deserves a mention. The Baukademie: Re-appropriation of the ground for teaching, making and display by Ebanie Powell is also notable. From the MPhil, Edward Barsley’s Transition to a Riparian Landscape, a coastal defence strategy, suggests a new way of living.   : Th riving Sahiba Chadha, AJ sustainability intern

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The AJ Buildings Library contains photographs, drawings and details for more than 1,300 buildings, making it an ideal resource for students. Search ‘Cambridge’ at AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk to see 17 projects at the university, including buildings designed by Hopkins, Powell & Moya, Foster + Partners, Eric Parry and James Stirling (pictured).

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Student shows 2012 Northern Ireland

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Northern Ireland QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY BELFAST SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Over the past four years, under the firm direction of Michael McGarry and Ruth Morrow, Queen’s University Belfast has been transformed. Its fascination with research and precedent is the school’s strength. Each year displays a serious commitment to the precise understanding of a relevant building type. The third year’s effort is strong and includes a broad selection of finely made detailed models, ranging from Schinkel’s Altes Museum to Jorn Utzon’s Bagsvaerd Church.  : There is strong work on display everywhere, but as expected the master’s degree show had the biggest impact. Although the projects seemed to fall into two distinct camps, heroic formalist and site-sensitive, a common rigour was shared between the two approaches. Each student display brimmed with beautifully rendered drawings and an

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engaging architectural investigation from large to small scale; each project displayed a high level of completeness. The MArch studio had also captured its research into a wonderful little book, Stair Rooms, a survey of staircases across the centuries ranging from Hardwicke Hall to the Neues Museum. For those of us who liked beautiful things, this made a good addition to the library.  : Mark Winnington’s speculative Warehouse project displayed the raw power of a formalist approach, whereas in contrast Laura O’Gorman’s delicate Project for Paraic on the Aran Islands showed a remarkable sensitivity. Yet it was Jonny Nelis’s 1:10 model that really stood out in the student show. Very few students had the gumption to draw their work at 1:10, never mind make a completely convincing model of it, which is exactly what he did.    Rigorous Stephen Best, senior lecturer, DIT

Below left Queen’s student Laura Gorman’s Project for Paraic Below University of Ulster student Emma Campbell’s Luthier’s Workshop project

UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Being embedded in an art college and surrounded by an assortment of creative disciplines gives this school a sense of artistic endeavour. It was apparent that inhabiting the same space had led to a cross-fertilisation of intellectual culture. As a result, the undergraduate show engaged in experimentation through video, photography and collage. It was refreshing to see an architecture school outside the clutches of an engineering school. Changing gear from an artistic undergraduate degree, the master’s was dominated by rigour and professionalism.  : Year three (led by tutors Mike McQueen and Jim Luke) was exuberant and asked broad questions in a specific way. It considered to what extent the architect was a maker of space over form; and to what extent they were preoccupied by craft and detail. Working with a complex brief for a Luthier, artisan guitar-maker Dermot McIory seemed to have inspired the students to obsess about materials and making. Each exploration was led by model-making and there was evidence of an enthusiastic studio culture.Most projects looked at the studio through a Loosian lens; they used the Raumplan as a device for creating compact spatial solutions.  : Third year students Hugh Magee and Emma Campbell displayed a maturity and control with their Luthier’s Workshop projects. In their dexterous models, they appear to emerge from an understanding of first principles.    Comprehensive Stephen Best, senior lecturer, DIT ..

      

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Student shows 2012 Republic of Ireland

Ireland

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Contextual architecture abounds at the UCD show. The school makes a deliberate attempt to understand the genius loci. The show is full of projects that emerge out of their location or at least are drawn with a graphic understanding of the context. It’s easy to see the influence of the work of John Tuomey, professor of architectural design, but this approach is also part of the school’s ethos. UCD is Ireland’s oldest architecture school and recently celebrated its centenary – the fi rst student having enrolled in 1911. It was marked by a series of events focusing on the formative moments in the school’s past, including a wonderful oral history, captured by master’s student Lisa Cassidy, of the events surrounding the famous 1970’s ‘Flying Circus’, an international crop of young tutors flown in to ‘save the school’.  : The Thesis Studio Inside Outside (Sheila O’Donnell and Jennifer O’Leary) combined a fascination with architecture’s broader commitment to engage socially with the school’s ambition to embrace deeper understanding through research. Each of the students immersed themselves in conversations with the wider university body focused on reimaging the pedagogical experience, engaging with students from the UCD School of Education and the National College of Art and Design in a module called New Space for Learning.  : The Inside Outside studio also included three outstanding pieces of work: John Crowley’s Thomas Court School, which speculates on how a school and community come together; Jonathan Janssens’ work, which deals with memory and uses the existing grain to construct form; and Ray Dinh’s poetic collection of explorative watercolours.   : Sensitive Stephen Best, senior lecturer, DIT ..

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK CENTRE OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

Top left Model by UCD student Jonathan Janssens Far left UCD student Ray Dinh’s Area Interior Above and left CCAE student Richie Fenton’s Re(sistance) project, set on the Golden Horn in Istanbul. CGI (above) and maquette

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A new school that brings a new approach, CCAE has laid down strong foundations and instilled an idea that architecture can emerge from thoughtful reflection, coupled with clear aesthetic judgement. The drawings and models throughout are beautiful, handcrafted works of art. Giant 1:50 sectional perspectives are rare enough but ones carefully drawn in black ink are almost unheard of today. Not here: there are several in the fourth year alone. Th is almost forgotten medium confers sensitivity for detail and understanding of space on the work that just cannot be achieved by the CAD/plotter combo and raises questions about the current rush to embrace Building Information

Modelling at the formative stages in the education of an architect.  : The standout feature of the show is the contrast between the BSc(Hons) and MArch programmes. Whereas the undergraduate show demonstrates a thoughtful progression through basic skills to development of a clear understanding of the rich complexities required to attain master craftsman status, the master’s is thoughtprovoking and speculative. Where one is full of control and restraint, the other is liberal and free.  : In the MArch programme, Richie Fenton’s Re(sistance), and Eoin French’s Terminus were exuberant demonstrations of the potential of reimagining Istanbul’s Golden Horn.   : Thoughtful Stephen Best, senior lecturer, DIT 

Student shows 2012 Republic of Ireland

DUBLIN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE Hitherto scattered, the DIT’s school is now in a single building and there is a renewed concentration of energies. This is apparent in the fifth year, where deliberations on the postindustrial Irish bogland seek to fuse ethics with aesthetics. Shane Morgan’s excellent digital infrastructure project lands clouds of data in an architecture whose forms echo the scale of existing bog industria while harnessing the terrain to service spaces superheated by the information flux. Paul Maher’s steelworks share a similar sense of a sublime uncanny, while Aisling Flanagan’s evocations of linen as object of production, building material, apparatus for performance and representational

technique is equally persuasive. The foundations for this range and depth of enquiry lie in the rest of the school, epitomised by House for a Descendent of Capability Brown by Deepka Abbi in the first year; second-year Jaroslaw Adamczuk’s re-interpretation of the man-shed in Monasterevin; research into the ‘city rooms’ of north Italian medieval town halls and the embedded scalar explorations of third-year Laura Carroll’s Planetarium; and finally, in the smoke, mirrors and Magritte of fourth year Philip Ryan’s Housing.  : Fifth year  : Paul Maher, Shane Morgan, Aisling Flanagan, Deepka Abbi, Jaroslaw Adamczuk, Laura Carroll, Philip Ryan.   : Loaded. Gary Boyd, Cork School of Architecture

WATERFORD INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE After seven years in Portakabins the school has relocated to the city centre. It now occupies a beautiful 19th century Granary on Merchant’s Quay, overlooking the magnificent River Suir. Architects understand and promote the idea that the environment you inhabit can make a difference. It certainly has here. And this year there seems to be fresh energy.

Above left DIT student Shane Morgan’s bogland infrastructure project Left Laura Carroll’s Planetarium

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The school emerged from a technology course in 2005 and its tectonic focus remains. Many of the studios are in the Waterford region, although there is also a broader remit, which includes a successful collaboration with students at Marne Le Vallée and a high-rise project based in China, a collaboration with its newly aligned partners at the Shanghai Institute of Technology.  : The Final Year Thesis Studio (Alexsandar Kostic) demonstrates the school’s strengths.

Although the display is fragmented across two buildings, it is perhaps a reflection of the disparate nature of the work.  : Shane O’Donnell’s Water Treatment Centre in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was full of high ambition and strong on architectural detail. The project proposes a social assembly of public bathing facilities, supported by convincing and thorough research.   : Diverse Stephen Best, senior lecturer, DIT

UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Left Water Treatment Centre, Haiti, by Waterford’s Shane O’Donnell Below SAUL student Marian Dinneen’s Thesis Award-winning project

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In seven years Limerick’s school, known as SAUL, has reached maturity and its direction under chairman Merritt Bucholz is excellent at this time.  : The thesis projects this year and those represented in the exhibit were interesting in content and on the whole presented well. The use of computer drawings in combination with hand-drawn overlay provides the balance between hand drawing and computer drawing that was desired by Bucholz at the time of inception of the school. The thesis preparation material was on the whole thoughtful, thorough and very well done. There seemed to be a passion demonstrated by the students in their projects. In a short number of years SAUL has taken its place as an important school of architecture.  : The inaugural SAUL Thesis Award 2012 was presented to Marian Dinneen for her design proposal, which re-imagines a newly amalgamated local government entity for Limerick.   : Mature Ray Kappe, founding director, Southern California Institute of Architecture

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Student shows 2012 Feature

Masterful Cork As the first MArch students graduate from Ireland’s only master’s course, Stephen Best considers the school’s pedagogical approach Cork City is a small place with a big city feel and a big city attitude. Pride abounds, and proud places understand the value of architecture. It is even said that Cork’s red and white flag was inspired by St Anne’s in Shandon, a rough red sandstone church dressed in white ashlar, overlooking the city. After years of serious lobbying by the local community and with support from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, University College Cork and the Cork Institute of Technology came together in 2006 to pool their resources and fund the opening of a new school – the Cork Centre for Architectural Education (CCAE). The result of this hard work is about to bear fruit. In September, the first cohort of 22 MArch students will graduate through the school. CCAE’s director, its first, Professor Kevin McCartney describes their ambitions simply. For him, the school is responsive to its community and presents a broad focus on architectural humanities with an eye on technology in its delivery. McCartney and his team have forged a radical agenda focused on reflective inquiry, where the studio culture is infected by the academic disciplines and does not stand alone. It is an explicit relationship: one is used as a vehicle to support the other. From the first architectural project, this year located in the rich tapestry of Garnish Island in Bantry Bay, the undergraduate students are instilled with a thirst for inquiry, curiosity and critique. This is a research-led agenda that forms the backbone of the school, the latent DNA from which all projects flow, the evidence of it found in each subsequent year. An overarching pedagogical theme in the programme is its strong practice-

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based culture, which serves to promote collaborative working at undergraduate level, and through research into areas such as renewable materials, where the school is funded by the EU’s NaturalEnergy Efficient-Sustainable fund. Located in the city centre, in a vacant office building across the road from Cork City Hall, the school is well connected and has many and varied allegiances within the two sponsoring institutions, as well as others it has made locally with the

Crawford College of Art and Design, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, the National Sculpture Factory and the broader city. This connectivity has cultivated significant cultural capital in the school that draws from a broad base of artistic, social and technical sources. The results on the wall seem to suggest a happy marriage between ideas and making, where art, engineering, society, history, and theory all collude and have significant consequences on the students’ final architectural resolution. As part of the everyday cultural fabric of Cork, the school has been quick to exploit opportunities to engage. They use the city and region as a working laboratory, regularly inviting public and private bodies to connect with the school’s studies and proposals. Aligned with this broad cultural outlook is a fascination with detail, not only in the traditional sense – does it stand up, keep the water out and heat in? – but also in the degree to which projects are finished. Inquiry into the human scale is ‘essential’, says

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undergraduate programme leader Gary Boyd. ‘We do not experience architecture through plan or section, but through its detail.’ This is a sophisticated approach that breeds maturity and suppresses any urge to imitate image-driven solutions. It focuses attention on making and the wider aesthetic conversation about inhabitation. The downside is that at times the results become internalised and abstracted and it can sometimes be difficult to see how the final building relates to its context. Each academic year focuses on a specific theme within in a local community context. Second year investigates architecture as a collective device and uses Cork city as its medium. Third year engages with the periphery and decamps to one of the regional towns. Fourth year unlocks the door to individual exploration and research, whereby each student develops their preoccupations into an holistic architectural study. However it is in the new, 12-month long MArch course, coordinated by Jason O’Shaughnessy, where the fireworks really begin.

McCartney and his team have forged a radical agenda As the first taught architecture master’s in the Republic of Ireland, the MArch demonstrates an international approach to research and design exploration. The scene for this year’s students’ inquiry is Istanbul, a city with a rich historic palette. Katie Murray and Michelle Barrett’s joint thesis, Weaving a Tale of the City, embodies the strength of the programme. Their inquiry into the temporal nature of human activity through the lens of archaeological research produced dynamic forms. Abstracted from the layers of inhabitation within the city, it is a speculative work that forms an active, city-wide network of fragments. The MArch work challenges preconceived ideas in Ireland of what a fifth year architecture student should produce. Provided that the level of inquiry remains elevated above that of novelty, this will be a welcome departure. Over the summer, each MArch student must reflect on their architectural ideas and propose how they will disseminate their findings. So, when the famous bells of Shandon toll in September, the city’s long wait should be over and the first RIAI Part 2 graduates will emerge triumphant. Hopefully they will remain in Cork or at least return when the time is right, as this proud city deserves architects that understand it. Stephen Best is architecture critic of The Sunday Times in Ireland and senior lecturer, DIT

Left Richard Fenton’s Re(sistance) project for Istanbul in the MArch programme Right Fifth year Eoin French’s Terminus, for Istanbul

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2012

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12/06/2012 10:41

MORLEY VON STERNBERG

FOOTPRINT Lyall Bills & Young’s Olympic Park Old Ford Water Recycling Plant

From the sustainability editor

On the eve of the 2012 Games, Footprint features one of the most innovative and least visible projects in the Olympic Park: Lyall Bills & Young’s Old Ford Water Recycling Station cleanses black water from the Northern Outfall Sewer for non-potable uses in the park. This is a UK first for this technology on this scale and is a response to the ODA’s stringent water reduction target of 40 per cent. Tedious as it may sound, measurable targets do foster innovation. The utility’s sensitive architectural design also raises the bar for infrastructure buildings in natural settings. Both the disaggregated building form and its materials respond to its woodland location. Also in the news this month is the planning submission in Wandsworth for Kieran Timberlake’s new US Embassy, which architect Stephen Kieran describes as ‘a diplomat for sustainability’. The scheme is notable for an approach familiar to Footprint readers: integrated design. As with Hopkins’ Velodrome, an interdisciplinary team has worked together from the outset and early contractor engagement should enable innovation in the supply chain. Many sustainable features, from an outer envelope of ETFE panels incorporating thin-film PVs, to combined heat and power and a ‘cooling’ pond for heat ejection contribute to attaining the BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ and LEED ‘Platinum’ to which the embassy aspires. The UK economy was voted the most energy-efficient in a recent American survey. But where are we really? The road towards the Green Deal is bumpy, as Parity Projects’ Russell Smith outlines this month (see page 82); the definition of zero-carbon homes remains elusive; and Display Energy Certificates have yet to be rolled out for non-domestic buildings. On the other hand, organisations previously at the fringe, such as the Sustainable Building Association and the Passivhaus Trust, are gaining ground. The AECB opened its conference to non-members for the first time in June and the Passivhaus Trust’s inaugural annual awards took place this month. Clearly London 2012 has fostered innovation in construction. As for changing behaviour, the message of the Games will be critical. Whether you’re visiting the park or watching on the telly, keep an eye out for greenwash. AJFootprint.com  ..

KIERAN TIMBERLAKE

The Olympic Park shows how green targets can foster design innovation, says Hattie Hartman

3,400m

Area of photvoltaic array on Kieran Timberlake’s proposed design for new US embassy in London (CGI above)

600,000

Litres of sewage processed each day by the Old Ford Recycling Plant

6,000m

Area of photovoltaics on Blackfriars Bridge in London, soon to become the world’s largest solar bridge

4,000 miles Length of proposed planted wall across Africa to halt encroaching desert, stretching from Senegal to Djibouti

€8.1 billion Size of European Union research programme fund to support development of Smart Cities

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The month on AJFootprint.com

considered included energy projects this year. (See below consumption, indoor environment, and more at AJfootprint.com.) which will gain credence in the Voluntary Commitments has post-occupancy innovation Theand AJpromise online guide to master’s future to change our been introduced,data, including and ‘other sustainability.’ courses in sustainable design economy and decision-making. everything from countries (TheAJ.co.uk/sustainability Mel Starrs, The message from Rio+20 is and outputs help drive policies committing to renewable energy masters) summarises the current environmental engineer and Put your sustainable New awards recognise that the choice is back with us as and implementation. Government targets to universities committing  To summarise Ban courses on offer. To have prominent sustainability blogger delegations meet representatives to teach sustainable development. Ki-Moon’s words in a plenary master’s project online individuals, organisations andyour building performance work considered for inclusion and tweeter, passed awayclimate suddenly separate countries: you can either from the major groups of civil For architects, there is a session as the Rio+20 in the guide, at summit her Camden home on July 14.  Organised theare   Sustainability hope theonline scientists are forward wrong or society and businessbywho restating of huge opportunity on sustainable images and a 200-word synopsis Starrs, environmental associate Passivhaus issues are permeating anrapid join the ‘coalition of the willing’. passionateTrust, about the first and challenge of development concluded, ‘You to: ajsustainability@emap.com director Architects Passivhaus Awards increasingglobal number of studentAs Pooran Desai, co-founder, sustainable urbanisation. might at bePRP disappointed, butand this is annual previously with Though Inbuilt, was recognised three BioRegional. BioRegional has been development. In projects: these a World Bank expert just the start.’ nations a pioneering figureonindeep, social Parsons Whitney’s contributing to the Rio+20 process respects&Rio+20 was Wimbish said, for each city on failed to agreed binding Increase in global media. Her informative analysis Passivhaus since 2010. Below: Sustainability inspiring. (residential); the planet now, we commitments to sustainable populations since accompanied bytoa write self-deprecating Oakmeadow workshop in Rio’s Tabajaras favela. The Summit called will build another in development, off Rio+20 Architype’s Rio 92 summit wittotally endeared her to many. Primary Schoolof(AJ 18.10.10) in See AJFootprint.com for more for a ‘coalition the the next 40 years, so we is unfair. There is now willing’ to move forward. It must build these cities at consensus as an to what constitutes ‘Mel leaves enormous Wolverhampton (non-domestic); wasBere a chance to secure the highest standards in sustainable development, but what and vacuum on the UK sustainability Architects’ Mayville commitments ranging from the sustainability. lacksThe is a idea clearofroad map. scene. a memorial, Community Centre (AJ 23.02.12) Transition to a also highlighted of new marine reserves in The summit Rio+20 hasform not had the output increation perhaps in the of an Islington (retrofit). Riparian Landscape Australia to countries committing the limitations of GDP as a of the first Rio Summit in 1992, annual award, would inspire The awards are unusual by Cambridge to produce natural capital measure of progress. Statistics which Local Agenda 21 because others toincluded further her work,’ design is only one of six MPhilvarious studentglobal wealth and accounts alongside financial from andAJtreaties on climate change, said sustainability editor criteria against which the entries Edward Barsley accounts. A formal process of well-being indexes were aired, biodiversity and desertification. Hattie Hartman. were judged; the other criteria

Sustainability engineer Is itStarrs right to be sceptical Mel dies about Rio+20?

See tributes from colleagues and details for donations and So, what are the positives of aEarth memorial picnicThey at www. Summits? create melstarrs.com/elemental. dialogue and a statement of intent,

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Sustainability study

Olympic treatment

Lyall Bills & Young’s secluded water recycling plant in the Olympic Park sets the standard for similar utilities, says Amanda Birch

Legend

0 20m

N s

Site plan

5 route

1. Site boundary 2. Old Ford Water Recycling Plant 3. Water tank 4. Old Ford Ground Water Pumping Station 5. Access bridge 6. Olympic Stadium

supply will flush the toilets of the Media Centre, the Handball Arena and Eton Manor and irrigate the plants around the main stadium as well as numerous green spaces in the park. Jointly funded by the Olympic Delivery Authority and Thames Water, the Old Ford Water Recycling Plant was a pilot research project set up as part of the ODA’s sustainable water strategy, which had a target of reducing potable water use in the Park by 40 per cent. But this project is more than a vehicle for the ODA to meet its sustainability targets during the Games and into the Olympic Park’s legacy. It is also a platform for detailed research into reclaimed water that will be of national interest and will contribute to a growing body of work on this subject. Designed by Lyall Bills & Young Architects, the recycling plant is one of four infrastructure buildings by the practice in the vicinity of the Olympic Park (AJ 12.08.10). One of these, the Old Ford Ground Water Pumping >>

Press

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Right The Old Ford Water Recycling Plant is situated in a tucked-away wooded setting south-west of the Olympic Stadium

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ALL IMAGES MORLEY VON STERNBERG

ust past the manicured lawns surrounding the Olympic Stadium in London’s Stratford is a large sign to the ‘Old Ford Water Recycling Plant’. Pass through the gates into a woodland setting and it’s like entering another world. Mature trees and wild grasses grow unhindered, bees buzz and newts bob under the water of a small pond. Instead of the frenetic noise of the last-minute preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, bird song pierces the air in this enclave, which retains the ambience of pre-Olympic east London. The contrast between the controlled and pristine appearance of the Olympic Park and this wild idyll is dramatic. A simple, rectilinear building sits to one side of this 1.66ha serene oasis. Clad in larch and gabion baskets, this is a building designed to blend in with its woodland location. Its use isn’t immediately apparent but the presence of two large circular water tanks and Cor-ten steel loading bay doors suggest that this is an industrial facility. The Old Ford Water Recycling Plant is the largest community wastewater recycling facility in the UK. The plant, which went on stream on 1 April, takes raw sewage from the Northern Outfall Sewer and cleans it through a multi-layered process before the water is fed into a non-potable network in the Olympic Park. This

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HOW IT WORKS

Unique on this scale in the UK, the Old Ford Water Recycling Plant houses an innovative treatment process that produces 600,000 litres per day of reclaimed water for non-potable applications. With the exception of BedZED’s wastewater reclamation plant, there are currently no membrane bioreactors in the UK for urban reuse. However, the BedZED plant only treats and recycles domestic sewage for toilet flushing. The Old Ford plant is 20 times larger and is linked to an extensive metered reuse network on the Olympic Park with multiple end-users. Raw sewage passes into two underground septic tanks located outside the building, which provide flow equalisation and primary settling. The effluent then passes through a 1mm screen inside the facility to remove small fibres and hair that could clog the membranes. Influent is then treated by a membrane bioreactor (MBR) process, which combines biological treatment with a membrane filtration step. To ensure consistent reuse quality, the MBR product is further treated to remove any residual colour. Chlorine dosing ensures disinfection and suppresses bacterial re-growth in the distribution network. Finally, the reclaimed water flows into the outdoor larch-clad storage tank, from where it is pumped into a dedicated non-potable network when demand requires. ..

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Old Ford Water Recycling Plant, Olympic Park, Stratford Lyall Bills & Young Architects

As the materials fade, this building will merge into the landscape, as intended

Station is on the same site: a collection of five striking cubes with a similar palette of materials. Cor-ten steel, the cladding material for the cubes, is referenced on the water recycling plant’s doors and both facilities have green roofs to encourage biodiversity – a given for all new infrastructure buildings on the Olympic Park. The architects worked hard to design a water recycling plant that was sympathetic to its surroundings. The Old Ford location is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance and the land is leased to the London Wildlife Trust. To minimise its visual impact, the 45m x 13m building is largely single-storey. The exception is a double-height 10m-tall section at the eastern end or ‘dirty’ zone of the linear water  ..

Above The balanced massing of the water recycling plant is achieved through the use of contrasting cladding materials of larch timber and gabion baskets Right Old Ford Ground Water Pumping Station with the Olympic Stadium beyond

treatment process (see page 79), to allow for emergency access and a 15m-tall odour stack, the verticality of the flue counterbalancing the horizontal building. The ‘clean’ zone is at the west end of the building and houses the office, visitors’ area and toilets. The height of the building therefore responds to the processes within. The cladding materials were carefully considered. A robust material was needed for the base to cope with the risk of flooding and impact. As an alternative to concrete, gabion baskets were employed – a treatment that provides a ready-made habitat for plants and wildlife. Crushed Somerset stone was used in the gabions as it was considered to be a more refined finish by the planners, despite the ODA’s

aim that material from the Olympic Park site, in this case crushed concrete, should be re-used where possible. At the eastern end of the building, the gabion baskets extend half-way up the building wrapping around to the southern elevation, where they drop to a low plinth before the building becomes single-storey. The north elevation follows a similar pattern. The cladding of the upper section is larch boarding, which blends in with the mature trees encircling the building. Over time, the larch will weather to silver and merge with the grey gabion baskets below. This is not a building for people to look out of. Daylight is needed, but with minimal glare and solar gain. Rooflights were avoided for maintenance reasons. Instead, discreet, narrow windows are deployed where machinery isn’t located. This is a carefully considered facility that will age gracefully. As the green roof matures, the materials fade and the trees and grasses grow even taller and wilder, this building will merge into the landscape, as intended. The Old Ford Water Recycling Plant could easily have been just another brick utility shed with a tin roof. But, in response to the Olympic Delivery Authority’s aspiration for design quality, championed by Kay Hughes, the architects have delivered more than that through careful consideration of massing and materials. Whether future infrastructure buildings will employ a similar high quality is debatable. But if heavy technology continues to be brought back to dense areas near to where people live, then the stakes are raised. Taking a cue from the Victorians, more infrastructure buildings which celebrate their technologies and cloak them in materials sympathetic to their environs would be welcome. ■ ..

Ground floor plan

FUTURE OF THE TECHNOLOGY

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10 9 3

6 4

10m

North-east elevation

After the Games, the London Legacy Development Corporation will operate the Park. Some venues will retain the reused water supply, while others will use the data generated by the Old Ford plant to determine whether they will utilise reclaimed water in the future for other purposes, such as cooling. Thames Water has a commitment to run the plant for seven years and will actively seek users for the water generated by the facility. On-going research at the Old Ford plant will investigate process optimisation and energy minimisation, as well as support the development of standards and guidelines for water recycling systems. Also crucial will be gauging public perception about the use of recycled sewer water. The majority of full-scale MBR plants for urban reuse are situated in the US and Japan, but their use is rapidly increasing in Europe, China and Australia. Project data

Legend 1. Raw sewage pumping station (buried) 2. Dirty zone 3. Odour control chimney above 4. Clean zone 5. Control room 6. Viewing area 7. Water tank 8. Anoxic tank 9. Bundled chemical delivery bay 10. Settled sewage pumping station (buried) 11. Septic tank (buried) 12. Old Ford Ground Water Pumping Station

..

start on site September 2010 completion September 2011 gross internal floor area 550m2 form of contract Thames Water Contract building cost £700,000 cost per square metre £1,270 structural and m&e engineer Black and Veatch quantity surveyor and project manager MLM Management main contractor Black and Veatch cad software used AutoCAD annual co2 emissions N/A

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Sustainability in practice

The Green Deal looms large. What will it mean for small architectural practices? asks Russell Smith

 ..

passively for their fate. The recently established ‘Green Deal Conduit’ for SMEs, led by Parity Projects and supported by organisations which represent more than 100,000 SMEs in the UK, including the RIBA, is trying to carve a slice out of the big Green Deal pie. The aim of the Conduit is to give SMEs a route to the Green Deal market over which they have control. As it stands, the only (semi) certain role for SMEs is as subcontractors once a Green Deal Provider comes knocking. This may offer a steady stream of work to some, but will leave many frozen out. But the Conduit, if successful, will give an SME the chance to wrest control back, keep the client they’ve brought to the table and access the finance they need from a provider on their side. The project has already gone through a scoping phase, including positive

The Green Deal Conduit will give an SME the chance to access the finance they need from a provider on their side

HANNA MELIN

For some time now, the ‘Green Deal’ has been a mythical creature on a distant horizon, its arrival promising riches and a better future for homes up and down the UK. The promise has been to deliver energy-efficient homes at little or no upfront cost, repaid through a charge to energy bills, but much of the detail has been missing. Now, finally, the scheme looms large, with its secondary legislation having recently passed through the commons en route to Royal Assent. With these milestones, much is clearer: what measures will qualify, the protection it will offer and the code of conduct for providers. The giants of construction and retail are now putting the finishing touches to their business models in preparation for the Green Deal’s start. But one thing remains worryingly unclear to me, not only as the managing director of an SME, but also as someone who has seen retrofit delivered at its best and worst over the years, is how it will work for the little guys. The long-term success of the Green Deal will depend critically on small businesses. At this time of economic turmoil, the government cannot afford to exclude SMEs from the employment opportunities that a vibrant retrofit market can bring. Equally important, a Green Deal led by mega-corporations will potentially stifle consumer choice, fail to deliver quality and miss vital triggers for take-up. Why should we recommend the Green Deal to a client if it means that tomorrow they will be on the phone to a high street company who will not only take them through the scheme, but will also hoover up the work we rely on along the way? Architects have to date played a leading gateway role in the early years of the retrofit industry. They have often been the first port of call for households wanting design and project management advice. But now with the Green Deal, there is a risk that this work will drift away, landing on the doorsteps of ‘one stop shop’ Green Deal providers with their massive supply chains. It’s not just architects who are peering nervously into the future. So too are energy assessors, builders, electricians, solar engineers and even kitchen installers. Fortunately, there are plenty who aren’t just waiting

meetings with DECC, who recognise that reputations are at stake if the scheme fails to provide for SMEs. But there’s a long way to go. With the scheme now looking unlikely to start in earnest before next spring, we have a little more time. A ray of light for the small practitioner is that, as currently designed, there is no way that the Green Deal will work for everyone. It is too bureaucratic, with interest rates too high to appeal to all but a subset of the 14 million homes that require energy efficiency improvements. So a very large market should exist outside the Green Deal. But that is no excuse for us to rest on our laurels. If we work collectively, we can create a role for ourselves in the Green Deal marketplace. Russell Smith is managing director of Parity Projects greendealconduit.org.uk ..

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17/07/2012 12:26

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2012

Culture

BOOKS, BLOGS AND THE BIG APPLE Alexandra Lange’s new book Writing About Architecture, while restricted in its scope, drops hints about the growing power of information technology to determine the shape of the built environment, writes Joseph Rykwert  ..

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book review

Is there architecture outside New York? Not much, if Alexandra Lange’s Writing About Architecture is to be believed. True, a New York institution like the Guggenheim can send a colony led by the Californian Gehry to remote Bilbao, and other East Coast luminaries may visit the almost equally distant West Coast, but what really matters happens in New York. Lewis Mumford gave a qualified welcome to the (now often neglected) Lever Building by SOM, Paul Goldberger comments on Norman Foster’s Hearst high-rise, Herbert Muschamp delivers a hymn to Gehry’s Bilbao, Michael Sorkin a denunciation of Michael Graves’ proposed enlargement of Breuer’s Whitney >> ..

Left to right SOM’s Lever House; Whitney Museum, New York by Marcel Breuer; Battery Park, New York

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2012

SUPERSTOCK

Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities, Alexandra Lange, Princeton Architectural Press, 2012



Culture Book review: Writing About Architecture, by Alexandra Lange

Museum, while Frederic Law Olmsted’s centuryold programme for public parks and Jane Jacobs’ defiant plea for humanity in the city are Lange’s prime examples. Often quoted is the presiding spirit of New York criticism, the venerable Ada Louise Huxtable. The examples chosen to illustrate her four categories of criticism (formal, experiential, historical and activist) are interspersed with her own analysis and contextual notes. Differences between quote and commentary are marked by changes of typeface and colour of paper, while each section ends with a checklist to make sure you get the point. All of this gives the book a bracing, school-marmy feel and confines it to a restricted, if quite extensive, audience – the sort of students Lange has been teaching at NYU, though I suspect her range of examples will ensure it will remain useful to them and their successors for some years to come. I dare say no such handbook would stand a commercial chance in this country. Towards the end of the book Lange issues a warning to budding critics: if you wish to publish a piece about a building in print, it is part of your job to have seen and, preferably, walked through it; but a blogger has no such obligation before posting his views, and his product is and will be inevitably shorter, though often part of an ongoing polemic, which may therefore lead to the swapping of relatively uninformed opinions. But, as we have learnt in recent years, blogs can be powerful agents of collective action. Could they have the power which the late Jane Jacobs exercised when she personally mobilised her neighbourhood to prevent the mighty Robert Moses driving a motorway through Washington Square? That was done by direct personal contact, without the help of technology. We know of course that the Arab Spring and the recent protests in China relied heavily on electronic links for their success. Does this mean that the future of criticism (Lange’s formal, experiential and historical modes) is with print, while her activist mode will be the blog? She does not say, but that seems to be implied. This is, perhaps, too neat, and it may be the blog will in due course take over the three other modes. Should we therefore expect a shallowing of critical activity and a growing in power of the vociferous blogger in determining the shape of our environment? This may turn out to be a mixed blessing. ■ Joseph Rykwert is author of number of books on architecture, including The Judicious Eye (2008)  ..

ERIC FIRLEY / RIBA LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHS

Should we expect a growing in power of the vociferous blogger?

..

A new reader explores riverside Olympic resistance, writes James Pallister

In one of the many collections of ‘as rubble-awaiting-development,’ as the organisers refer to it, on Sugarhouse Studios, an area adjacent to Three Mills Studios south of the Olympic Park, the Assemble architecture collective have set up a summer-long events space (pictured). It’s just downstream from where they ran last year’s Folly for a Flyover, and follows a similar program, though this time has a workshop suitable for people to book in time for large, messy work: handy for your 1:1 prototyping needs. Last night (25 July), David Knight gave a talk on his pet topic – ‘Making Planning Popular’ – development that doesn’t require formal planning permission, using the subject matter as cue to introduce the Italian cinema classic of 1956, Il Tetto, Vittorio de Sica’s story of illicit construction. There’s a summer-long program of events, with film showings, pizza and beers throughout the summer. Enjoy it while it’s there: the JCBs will soon be in and it will be in mid-transformation to a profitable development come 2013, helped along by this eager placemaking. Though, or perhaps because, reading it in public may provoke disapproving tuts on account of its seditious content, the Art of Dissent: Adventures in the Olympic State is worth picking up, if only for experiencing the exhilarating unfamiliarity of recent history through photographs of the boundaries of the Olympic site pre-clean up. It’s a dense little anthology of art and critical writing produced over the last seven years in response to the Olympic Games. Together with 2010’s No Room to Move (AJ 27.01.11), this collection, and indeed the project at Sugarhouse Studios, is a trilogy on the nuanced problems and benefits of Olympic-side development. Each explores and illuminates differing ways in which overlapping circles of writers, artists and public have been simultaneously compliant with, resistant or craven to the Olympic Dream and how closely the winners and losers co-exist.

Left Foster Associates’ Hearst Tower, New York

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see The Art of Dissent, edited by Hilary Powell and Isaac Marrero-Guillamon, Mashgate Press. See also, David Kohn Architects’ White Building, Hackney Wick (AJ 19.07.12)



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Ian Martin

A performing dog decides Britain doesn’t have talent It hasn’t helped that the column ghosted by Darcy – ‘Ground Zero, a canine look at new design’ – is more popular than Darcy’s elegant witterings ever were. ‘Hey Bauhau’ he says, sucking another large scotch through his ragged beard, ‘What do you think of the Shard?’ Bauhau senses a cue and gives a little whimper, pleading for all this to make sense. Darcy does a ‘sad’ face. ‘He says the Shard looks vewy, vewy tall to a ickle doggy. And he wonders if it’s in the wight place, or is the wight shape, or has any welevance to ickle doggies and their fucking so-called FRIENDS AT ALL!’ As management closes in to ask Darcy to keep the noise down, he slips helplessly to the floor, getting a dog’s-eye view of the world. Not for the first time, I reflect upon the capricious world of architectural criticism.

MONDAY. Hugely cheered by a survey revealing that 98 per cent of people have ‘absolutely no idea’ what an ‘urban hub envisioner’ is. Excellent. The mystery of my craft is essential not just for the lofty professional articulation of ‘austerity metanomics’ but more importantly for the setting of a proper fee scale. TUESDAY. As sure as night follows day, some depressing news. Certain spiteful local politicians have leaked a confidential report highly critical of the Tamworth Bolus. Breadheads, dullards and opportunists, the lot of them. It took me years to design the Bolus, a unique plasmic icon of progressive municipalism. It has been under construction since 2002. Nobody can claim anything’s been rushed. Yes, the budget has been overshot by £15 million. That alone should be testament to how much thought has gone into it. Just my bad luck that the Tamworth Bolus is an excuse for fashionable negativity. People see something noble and life-affirming and decide it’s cleverer to say ‘commercially and operationally flawed’. Vague talk of ‘issues’ with fire regulations and so on has marred what should have been a celebratory period, leading up to the (fingers crossed) official opening of the Bolus in due course. It’s an ill wind, every cloud etc. While the building itself is becoming a reality, the local authority will now at least have a bit more time to determine what the 2,000 staff destined to work in the Bolus might actually be doing in two years.

FRIDAY. Great work by my mate Dusty Penhaligon the conservactionist. He’s converted a neo-hippy mixed workplace for ruthless entrepreneurs back into a tea warehouse. SATURDAY. Five-a-zeitgeist theoretical football. Actual Building 0, Signage Indicating Lifestyle Recalibration 1 after extra time for mortgage application.

THURSDAY. Lunch with Bauhau, the architectural critic and dachshund. He’s looking very smart in his bow-tie collar and skinny-fit red corduroy trouser suit. Also in attendance: Bauhau’s companion Darcy Farquear’say, former epic space correspondent for the Creative on Sunday. Darcy was once notionally in charge of this relationship. Then ‘Bauhau’ landed a gig as Darcy’s replacement and things got a bit strained.  ..

HANNA MELIN

WEDNESDAY. In the morning, design a building embodying the virtues of quiet understatement. In the afternoon, arrange to have it aggressively marketed.

SUNDAY. Newspaper review in the recliner. Bauhau’s Ground Zero column is veering dangerously close to some kind of existential implosion. Described as ‘The Creative on Sunday’s resident cultural data sausage’, Bauhau now seems intent on biting the hand that feeds him. Reviewing a bike stand outside a laptopping club in Soho, he says it’s ‘wilfully complex and flattering, as if affirming the cyclist’s mythic power and defying the ocean of doubt lapping at the edges of our self-consciousness…’ Elsewhere he describes the accidentally discovered industrial undercroft of a major museum as ‘healing space, a butch counterpoint to the cluttered drivel and meaningless throng of the galleries above’. It’s as if every aspect of the inhabited built environment disgusts him. I half-expect Bauhau to be dropped as architecture critic any week now. On the other hand, I half-expect him to become a celebrity novelist. ..

12 SEPTEMBER 2012 THE BREWERY | CITY OF LONDON

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