Pedagogy

Sustainable Materials Research: Cork

At UEL, our teaching and research centres on the role architecture plays socially and materially – the connectivity of these two aspects of building fascinates us. Not only do materials facilitate the making of the spaces we inhabit, they are also the evidence of wider socio-economic and political relations. Where materials are sourced, how they are transformed into architectural components, how they are certified, marketed, profited from, used, removed and recycled – or otherwise, are fundamental aspects of how we design and specify buildings. Cork has a particular social and geographical heritage, the transformation of the wine industry into an industrialised process has left the often small scale farming of cork forests and the habitats they sustain in jeopardy. Reimagining architectural uses for this incredible, sustainable material has been pioneered in the UK by architects with UEL connections, and is an example of the kind of innovation and sustainable ethics that we promote through and with our student body.

Cork House: MPH Architects MPH Architects was co-founded by UEL teaching alumnus Matthew Barnett Howland, current Senior lecturer Catherine Phillips, and Dido Milne. MPH were executive architects for Cork House, winning four 2019 RIBA awards including the Stephen Lawrence Prize for best building under £1m. The house was short-listed for the Stirling Prize, and was the winner of two Wood Awards including the Gold Award, as well as the Manser Medal for best private house. Executive architects for the project were MPH Architects (directors Matthew, Dido and Catherine Phillips, senior lecturer at UEL). The design for the house was born out of a research project into the structural use of cork headed by MPH Architects, granted by Innovate UK for research into Building Whole Life Performance. Matthew and former UEL student Oliver Wilton also won a 2019 RIBA research award for this work.

The RIBA South head of the judges for the awards commented about the project:

“Designed with immense attention to detail, Cork House is a structure of great ingenuity…. form, function and footprint are all equally considered and respected. This is a truly well thought through, carefully researched project that has created a home that inspires those that are lucky enough to visit. A noble, momentous model to aspire to.”

Cork Studio: Studio Bark Studio Bark is a UEL alumni practice teaching annually on our live build programme and this year an MArch ‘Unit 0’ (carbon). Committed to innovative low carbon building, they are winners of the Building Design Sustainability Architect of the Year in 2018. In parallel to developing the award winning ‘U-Build’ system supported by UEL students to develop a digitally enabled self-build timber construction system, the ‘Cork Studio’ was a low cost research prototype that eliminates frames, glues, tapes, breather membranes and wet trades – aiming to determine if cork could be used as the primary structure, not simply as a finishing material or rainscreen. The result is a robust, low cost ecological building which is almost entirely biodegradable and zero waste.

Studio Bark and MA Interior Design programme Leader Claudia Palma in partnership with Alan Chandler and Professor Darryl Newport of the UEL Sustainability Research Institute are establishing a research project with APCOR, the Portuguese Cork Association to develop a cork based building system to deliver a community building in Barking Riverside for the charity ‘Shed Life’. Designed by our MArch students, this building provides a centre for vulnerable older and excluded young people to meet, gain skills and develop friendships. Codesigned with the users, the building will be fully sustainable and demountable/re-usable and our partnership with APCOR and SRI gives us the ability to innovate using new applications for cork and systematically monitor the building across a seasonal year. A second building will be erected in the cork producing region of Portugal to monitor southern European climate performance as part of a scientifically underpinned research project, with the aim of product development for the cork industry, designed and built with Studio Bark and our MArch students for community benefit.

Above: Cork House by MPH Architects. Above and top left: The Cork Studio by Studio Bark.

PEDAGOGY

Convergence in shared purpose: teaching and learning in the climate and ecological emergency

Hwei Fan Liang

In September, representatives from 27 universities met for the inaugural Technical Studies in Architecture forum, to discuss the role of technical studies within architectural teaching, and crucially how we prepare graduates to address the climate and ecological emergency. I presented a reflection on the traditions of UEL – including the ethos of hands-on making throughout the school, socially engaged live projects in the first years of both BSc and MArch, and the ecological understanding that frames our work within social and geographical contexts. Reflection strengthens our identity and role as a school, drawing out what we do to inform how we move forward.

Last spring, Architecture Declares (AD) and Architectural Education Declares (AED), and in October the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge and the first open meeting of the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) showed an acceleration of actions, collaboration and a coming together of different voices in shared pursuit of addressing the overwhelming challenge of the present day. Within this, schools of architecture need to not only keep up but lead with skills and ideas for the future. We are conscious that this year’s first years will qualify as architects into a radically different world around 2030 – one in which this year’s MArch students will have been practicing in and transforming for several years.

In Architecture, each design unit across BSc and MArch set out their approach to sustainability on the first day of term. This foregrounding opened up a year of increased discussion and understanding of what the sustainability question might look like in different studios and project contexts. It set the agenda for guests and critics and for dialogue between students. Across five units in the BSc these approaches encompassed zero carbon to social resilience to local natural materials to urban biodiversity and food production to adaptive re-use. Each unit also produced an accompanying technology and sustainability agenda to guide their design process, and we hope that this starting point will develop into a powerful dialogue between ambition and realisation.

One of our “ways of doing things” is the integrated final year project – a proposal for change – seeking synthesis of technical and architectural ideas, and social, political and professional concerns. Year 3 students articulated sustainability strategies as an early part of their project brief – defining and driving the design process that followed. Workshop sessions with leading industry guests - Karina Williams from British Land and Liz Waters from Sir Robert McAlpine (with thanks to Jeff Tidmarsh) – showed how delivering sustainability and social value shapes both strategy and detail in large projects, as well as engaging students in asking the same questions of their own projects.

Responding to the climate crisis is about adaptation as well as mitigation, a challenge which has at its core issues of social equity that UEL has long been concerned with. Buildings and cities need to not only do less damage, but become positive contributors, repairing and regenerating through consideration of water cycle, biodiversity, resource production, health and well-being, carbon sequestration and energy.

Our most identifiable tradition is of material experimentation and the process of making as a way of developing and understanding ideas. Second is our careful understanding of place, people and context within which proposals are situated and on which they impact. These established practices can and should be articulated as a way for us to engage with the new-found concerns with resource use and craft, specificity and regionalism that currently pre-occupy industry. As well as design approaches, we must also take serious consideration of the operational impact of studio teaching – including carbon footprint and material wastage.

Our teaching staff comprise a mix of academics and practitioners who provide an ebb and flow of ideas and expertise from industry, and bring specific interests and practical experience. There is a convergence too between personal and professional lives, as increasing numbers of tutors are involved in ACAN or AD (sometimes both), and students participate in AED and other activist groups. In this time of urgency, we need to do things differently.

Achieving climate literate learning is about much more than initial briefs and agendas, and the real challenge will be in how we go from aspirational ideas to delivering meaningful projects for the future, and skills for graduates to take with them into the workplace. We are learning and moving forward together.

UEL Public Engagement Awards

For Individual Contribution to Public Engagement

Alan Chandler (Research Leader, Architecture and the Built Environment) has received an Individual Contribution to Public Engagement Award for his long-term commitment and strategic approach to public engagement. Over a decade, Alan has created and co-created several projects which are now a driving force in the UEL Architecture Department ethos.

Construction workshops – building for people to teach how to build for people.

He has initiated live construction as part of teaching architectural technical studies curriculum in 2000 when he arrived at UEL, establishing the format of 4-8 design and build workshops annually.

Workshops are presented on the first day of teaching, students vote for their choices and teams of 5-10 students are convened for the dedicated 2 week construction experience, a further month is allocated to a team report that documents the interactions with team, collaborators and clients, underpinning research and experimentation, risk assessments, project programming and a critical personal reflection to inform future project planning. Each year, second year postgraduate students volunteer as mentors to support tutors and to provide tips to support to the first year’s teamwork.

Engagement with non-academic audiences –By 2006 Alan had started to develop links with community groups, since 2009 has delivered ninety collaborative projects bringing in over £110K to elaborate and deliver birdwatching hides and urban gardening for schools, social spaces and facilities for charities and community groups, public consultation events for local authorities (Waltham Forest five projects, Newham three), delivering projects with practice partners engaged in socially beneficial work (Studio Bark and MUF in particular), a stroke rehabilitation area for St Georges NHS Trust, as well as non-community research projects for Thomas Heatherwick, even winning a Silver Gilt at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2009. Engagement through a range of activities –Over 14 years the programme has enabled our students to engage with a range of people and places, their work also supporting research outputs that were submitted to REF 2014 and REF 2021 in the form of papers, book chapters and books, public installations as well as lectures and workshops in the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Chile. Our project with Studio Bark to prototype and fabricate self-build components to generate ‘protest architecture’ for the 2019 XR rebellion in Trafalgar Square was reported globally. Alan has worked with Prof. Darryl Newport since 2003 (the recycled aggregate concrete arch on Docklands campus), and continue the SRI collaboration bringing their expertise on green roofs and materials science to our students, as well as our students building innovative prototypes for their PhD researchers.

The most satisfying aspect of the award ceremony was to have Architecture nominations in every one of the four categories – sharing the award platform with Carsten Jungfer and Fernanda Palmieri together with our MArch students and Studio Bark for the Extinction Rebellion workshop showed that the belief in socially engaged teaching in architecture is stronger than ever. Being acknowledged in this way shows to us that our University is making a determined, collective shift towards community partnership for social change. I would like to acknowledge the leadership of Amanda Broderick and Verity Brown in valuing the widespread and committed work on social impact that our entire University has always undertaken, but which in the past hasn’t always fully supported. They are now placing this work at the centre of the Universities identity, allowing teaching, research and knowledge exchange to converge on social responsibility and positive social change. Perfect.

Alan Chandler Research Leader, Architecture and the Built Environment

Tropical Isles Mas-Piece

Carsten Jungfer and Fernanda Palmieri

Collaboration between UEL students and Carnival youth group Tropical Isles to co-design a Mas-piece for Carnival 2019

Tropical Isles is a carnival youth group that works all year round with about 120 members aged 13 to 25. The charity’s aim is to support young people in building life skills, confidence and wellbeing. It delivers a range of art-lead and performing arts projects by encouraging young people to meet, work and create collectively.

Between January and September 2019, four UEL architecture students and tutors Carsten Jungfer and Fernanda Palmieri, together with Tropical Isles, co-designed, prototyped and manufactured a 5x5 meter Mas-Piece for performances at Notting Hill Carnival, Hackney Carnival and Bielefeld Carnival in Germany. A Mas-piece is a piece of bespoke bodyarchitecture that is worn as the signature costume leading the carnival group at the parade.

Collaborative design workshops at Tropical Isles in Hackney and at UEL Docklands Campus were held to experiment with various materials and construct full size prototypes in order to develop a lightweight hybrid structure which would be light enough to be carried by a young women for several hours as well as being as impactful as possible. Students had to consider the constraints and potential of different materials and understand how to put them together, the Mas-Piece had to reflect the years’ theme, it had to perform equally well under rainy or windy conditions and it had to be taken apart for transportation. In addition, a special effect was required and delivered as the upper part of the MasPiece had an open system to release numerous helium balloons into the air at judging point in the carnival parade.

After performing at Notting Hill Carnival, the second biggest carnival in the world which draws an audience of 1.5m visitors and at Hackney Carnival, the Maspiece was consecutively adapted with integrated lighting for a performance in a festive community event at Hackney Town Hall in December 2019.

The Unit A design teaching approach of learning through making aims to engage students with local stakeholders and real contexts so that learning is enriched through live-project experiences at the same time as making meaningful contributions to the local community.

Student participants: Daryl Ignacio, Eugene Yu Jin Soh, Halima Ali, Tashan Auguste.

UEL Public Engagement Awards 2020 Innovation category

Other awards: 1st prize and Carnival Band of the Year at Hackney Carnival 2019 3rd place at Notting Hill Carnival 2019, Traditional category Runner-up at ACE School Awards 2020, GLocal Engagement category

Welcome to Blockadia: Bring Your Own Block

Client: The Future and You Facilitators: Wilf Meynell, Nick Newman, Steph Chadwick, Tom Bennett (Studio Bark) Description: October Uprising

We live in a time of great peril and great promise. We face an ecological and climate crisis that many experts believe our civilization cannot survive. And yet there are glimpses of hope. Across the globe we are witnessing an unprecedented uprising of activists and indigenous groups. They are putting their bodies on the line to defend ecosystems and landscapes from the rapacious impulses of ‘extractavism’. It is this transnational network of environmental resistance that author and academic Naomi Klien has dubbed ‘Blockadia’.

In the UK, an organisation called Extinction Rebellion has become the single largest actor in this space in less than a year, advocating non-violent protest and mass civil disobedience. Their rebellion in April 2019 brought much of Central London to a standstill, and led the UK (and subsequently the RIBA) to announce a Climate Emergency. This project brought together research and prototyping relevant to Extinction Rebellion with a theoretical live-build project for their October 2019 Rebellion.

A common Blockadian tactic is to suspend a protester at a height of 2 metres or above, either on a platform, harness, tree or other structure, and/ or attach in some way lock on. This makes it much harder for them to be moved away, without specialist lifting equipment. The construction week brief was for students to take Studio Bark’s modular construction system, U-Build, and create an adaption to the system so that it could be used to make hypothetical blockades by novices quickly and safely. The students were asked to test out different box arrangements, and to demonstrate an optimum arrangement that could provide comfort, safety and shelter for the person(s) using that structure.

In October, Extinction Rebellion blocked Trafalgar Square. Whilst the protests were outside the scope of the brief, Extinction rebellion decided to put the students’ hypothetical design to the test. Over the course of two weeks, over 600 boxes made around 10 towers from the boxes. One of which reached the height of 5 metres had three protestors locked onto it, requiring the police to bring in heavy machinery to take it apart. Because the boxes were designed to be reusable, at the same demonstrations they were also used to create stages and street furniture. The same disassembled boxes were later taken by train to the COP 25 in Madrid where they were used to create a roadblock once again, during a ‘Disobedience’ dance led protest.

In a year of climate demonstrations and growing public awareness around the climate emergency, the term “protest architecture” came into the architectural headlines. The construction week project was featured in Dezeen, the Architects Journal, and the RIBA Journal, and has led to the subsequent creation of the Lockdown Festival of Architecture (May-July 2020), inviting participants to submit their ideas for crafty or spicy protest architecture ideas to an open call.

UEL Public Engagement Awards 2020 Student award category

Concertina

The Concertina structure in the AVA Architecture Space is based on the art project Concertina by Richard Wentworth and APPARATA. APPARTA were the architects appointed to make the commission and the Concertina was commissioned in 2017.

“Concertina is comprised of two free-standing and one wall-erected companionways. The staircases, built of plywood, stand suggestively in the space, creating various focal points alluding to an event waiting to happen. Whether it be a series of talks and workshops, a board meeting, or a friendly lunch between friends, the stairs are there to allow for social interactions to occur.

As a continuation of Wentworth’s 2013 work on the Black Maria with Gruppe (of which Lobo Brennan was a founding member), the constructed interferences highlight the mundanity of everyday architecture – or that which we take for granted – and asks the viewer to look at our everyday interactions with fresh eyes, to re-examine the world around us. The work reflects Smitham and Lobo Brennan’s ongoing work into what role structure has in cultivating spontaneous and informal occupation.

With Concertina, Wentworth lays the foundations on which a heavily prescribed gallery space can become a social sphere, but also highlights the point at which a city becomes a communal environment – a place for ideas and creation, both physically and figuratively, within and beyond the gallery. The creation of the staircases allows Wentworth to question the potential of such “non-places” in becoming areas of social exchange – the town square, the agora, the church, the pub, the community centre, the school, the rehearsal space, the studio, and the gallery merge together, enabling new conversations between disparate groups.”

The Concertina was enabled by Arebyte Gallery and Studios, Diversity Art Forum and BALON

“Cities result from comings and goings. We find our place. We seldom know much of the past of a city. We are poor at explaining, even to ourselves, how we come to be there. Cities, like us, are propelled by encounters. With APPARATA, I have devised Concertina as a laboratory, a place where meetings will undoubtedly happen; this is somewhere to be remembered for the quality of its encounters. A happenstance, a tiny darn in the fabric of London.”

Richard Wentworth, August 2017

Concertina in the UEL AVA Atrium Space

After Concertina was shown at the London City Island gallery in 2017, Richard Wentworth and APPARATA gave two structures to the University of East London, Department of Architecture and Visual Arts. The UEL AVA teacher Pauline Desouza organized the donation. In September 2019, Alan Chandler organised the UEL AVA MArch Construction Week and the Concertina became a 4th year workshop project for the AVA Atrium Space. The UEL AVA teachers Christoph Hadrys and Mark Lemanski organised, guided and planned the workshop. As part of the workshop, the students adapted and redesigned the Concertina for the AVA Atrium Space. They joined two structures into one larger structure and added a necessary balustrade, by using leftover A-frames and additional plywood. Even though the openness of the art work got lost, the structure still enables a rich social life, specific to its new context in the AVA Atrium Space.

Following MArch 4th year students worked on the Concertina project: Jeremy Tay Eujin, Nur Azzahra Mohamad Adzlee, Tendai Simbo, Segunda Joaquim, Raul Mormeneo, Habib Sahel, Si Chu Lum, Chutimon Suetragulwong and Natdanai Wareerinsiri.

City, Land, Process II

Unit H - 2019/2020

Our research as a unit this year builds on the experiences of last year in the same region - exploring the relationship between the land, its people and the city through spaces of production, and material cultures specific to Alentejo, a region in southern Portugal. Through starting in Porto and moving further south to Montemor-o-Novo and Evora, then briefly onto Lisbon, we were able to take in the culture, food, landscapes and materiality of the place.

Our trip to Portugal began in Porto where we were given the opportunity to visit the studios and workshop of architects Skrei. With a workshop for production below their studio, the practice has an integrative approach where design, construction and applied material research ‘combine into an experimental practice where overarching notions of the human body and ecology are weighted against the specifics of local culture and resources’1. Their studio in the centre of Porto is alive with materials – both collected from the landscape and fragments formed from experiments within their projects. Earth, hempcrete, clay, resin, beeswax, cork – these are just a few of the materials that form their ongoing archive, the knowledge of each being collected and built upon from project to project.

Montemor-o-Novo was the next stop and formed the sites for the year. Located in the region of Alentejo in southern Portugal and sited on the trading route between the cities of Lisbon and Evora, the town was gradually formed around a hilltop castle from the 13th Century onwards. Things are gradually shifting but the people in the region have a special connection to the landscape, which is dotted with olive trees, cork trees, pigs and sheep – extending to the edges of the towns where urban gardens and cobbled streets are etched onto the undulating landscapes. Whilst many places in the region have seen shrinking populations in the past decades, the cultural productivity of the town has been slowly thriving in recent years in part because of a cultural organisation, Oficinas do Covento, who formed twenty years ago. They saw the potential to take over a disused convent near the centre of the town, turning it into workshops for screen printing, carpentry and music. Eventually young artists and makers have been returning to the town thanks to opportunities afforded by abandoned buildings, low-cost living and access to space and resources. Over the course of twenty years they have gradually expanded onto other sites in the town, setting up a dedicated clay and ceramics workshop, alongside an earth lab where they test rammed earth and liquid earth as construction materials. There is a porosity to the way that they operate and their generosity was evident in the way that we were hosted for three days both by Oficinas do Covento but also a local architect, Tânia Teixeira, who grew up in the region and returned a few years ago to set up a practice. Together, they offered their time and expertise, teaching us about the many ways to build with earth and eventually showing us to how to make adobe bricks and pour liquid earth, which formed part of their own research into earth construction.

“Receiving the visit of this group of students from London was a positive challenge to our team. We also felt the theoretical and practical classes gave a catalyst to the students’ learning process. The theoretical classes were on earth behaviour, given also by our partner from Miga - Oficina Rural de Arquitectura y Construcción.

For practical knowledge, we took advantage of having a group of motivated students to implement a bigger prototype of our poured earth research. This meant they could be involved in a live work in progress, understanding first hand the materials successes and failures. It was difficult to control the minor errors of a big group. The other half of the group was working with Mafalda do Rosário, our brick master and Pedro Sequeira as a helper. They focused on molding bricks and pavement tiles in the brickworks. It was refreshing to see the analyses of the context and the diversity of proposals for the different sites in Montemoro-Novo, that the students managed to achieve. We are honored for their effort and it was a pleasure to participate in the critics events, the exceptional moment we lived during this year, allowed us to cross borders in an unexpected way. We hope to have the opportunity to have you back again!”

Tânia Teixeira

Tânia Teixeira is a director of CRU Arquitectura e Investigação and Cooperativa Integral Minga, Montemoro-Novo

Centre for Alternative Technologies (CAT) Study Trip

BSc Architecture Unit C Study Trip

The current global sustainability agenda raises the significance of low carbon design supported by momentous bottom up initiatives such as Extinction Rebellion, Global Climate Strikes, etc. Hence, creating low carbon buildings helps reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions through more efficient use of resources besides enhancing people’s health and wellbeing. Unit C ethos involves seeking to achieve thoroughly considered architectural propositions that aspire to achieve low to zero carbon design. The key objective from the study trip workshops and sessions at CAT was to start students thinking about climate responsive design, sustainable design techniques, and environmentally-friendly materials that will inform their design projects.

The trip itinerary included a CAT site introduction and tour which covered the history of the site and of CAT and introduces the key sustainability themes used on site from renewable energy through to a wide variety of examples of environmentally responsible buildings. Students were encouraged to think of the different material properties required for building. They were then introduced to low carbon footprint alternatives to more commonly used materials and the concepts of embodied energy and legacy. Students were also introduced to various low embodied energy materials and saw examples on site – the Sheppard Theatre visited by the students visit on site has the highest rammed earth walls in Britain, made using 320 tonnes of graded earth!

The learning experience also included a session on Zero Carbon Britain, where students were introduced to the major issues – climate change, fossil fuels, energy security, global equity. They were also reminded of the current UK governments target to reduce C02 emissions by 80% by 2050 and consider ‘what will Britain be like without carbon emissions?’.

This was complemented with straw bale building and earth building practical workshops and getting hands dirty! The students were challenged to work together to build something creative with the material and test the material to its limits to see what can be done with it. The students also learned some of the techniques used for straw building and how to build a solid wall. In the earth building workshop the students looked at rammed earth, cob, clay plasters and adobe blocks and experiment with some of these within the time constraints.

Thessaloniki Collaboration with AKMI - Architecture

BSc Architecture Unit E Study Trip

Thessaloniki Metropolitan College welcomed a group of architecture students and academics of University of East London – our UK educational partner for delivering in Greece BA (Hons) Architecture (RIBA Part1) programme of study. Accompanied by their UEL professors, Michele Roelofsma and Alex ScottWhitby, second and third year students attended interesting lectures and fascinating workshops, during their 5 day-long stay.

Intrigued by the eco-friendly policy and goals that Thessaloniki’s mayor, Mr Konstantinos Zervas, has set, Mr Roelofsma and Mr Scott-Whitby suggested the city as the main theme and object of research for the design unit they teach.

During their educational visit, UEL students had the opportunity to collaborate with Metropolitan College architecture students, and, also, to have fruitful meetings sharing ideas and opinions. Additionally, students enjoyed guided tours in the city centre. They visited worth seeing monuments, as well as, the districts and blocs that will be their source of inspiration for, this year’s, architecture designs. UEL and Metropolitan College Architecture and Engineering professors had insightful conversations with the students of both educational institutes.

Collaboration and Outreach in Malaysia

In December 2019, Dr. Heba Elsharkawy, Cluster Leader for Architecture and Design and Course Leader for BSc (Hons) Architecture was invited to visit Malaysia for collaboration and outreach. The aim of the visit was to meet with Heads of Departments of Architecture to discuss potential collaborative initiatives, and deliver lectures to students studying Architecture at University Sains Islam, and Infrastructure University in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. The lectures focused on sustainable design in the UK by drawing on case studies from recent research projects led by the Department of Architecture, UEL. The talks also touched on studying architecture in the UK and UEL’s ethos of engaging Architecture students (in both BSc and MArch courses) in various live projects to facilitate real life experiences with design projects hence embedding the learning by doing approach. Dr. Elsharkawy also facilitated workshops for students to understand how a portfolio should be structured and created for a postgraduate degree in Architecture. The trip was organised by Mr. Mark Whitfield, UEL International Officer where several other visits to education exhibitions and International Schools were also undertaken as part of UEL’s vision and strategy for international outreach. The visit has been very successful; the lectures and workshops were attended by around 120 students and possible formulation of Memorandums of Intent (MOI) with both Malaysian Universities for various collaborative initiatives were discussed - including international design studios, and potential research projects between UEL and Malaysian universities.

UEL Student’s Landscape Institute Travel Award

Exploring Landscapes of Healing in Seattle, Washington.

In summer 2019 MA Professional Landscape Architecture student Lisa Peachey won the highly competitive Landscape Institute Student Travel Award, with her proposal to travel to the Bloedel Reserve near Seattle, hoping to research whether landscape can support our mental health in times of grief . Bloedel is currently engaging with the role of nature for psychological healing through a programme called ‘the Strolls’, which actively correlates psychological health with access to their reserve, and includes questionnaires taken by participants. The reserve provided Lisa with a month long residency and access to their research data Her thesis , submitted in January 2020, and featured in our yearbook and in the VirtUEL show, considers the potential for design of salutogenic spaces within the public realm, spaces that can support people dealing with stress, loss, grief; things that happen every day to everyone, in a commonplace way. Her research starting point, was that when we face an aging population, in the same way that new developments have to provide so many m2 of play for children, should we also be providing spaces for reflection and contemplation - for grief?

2020 Broadgate Prize

Architecture students at the University of East London got the chance to compete to take part in paid work on the Broadgate Framework. The Broadgate competition, now in its fourth year, gives students the opportunity to work collaboratively with fellow students and alumni, creating a bridge and stair.

The brief focused on the conceptual design of a bridge between two existing buildings on the British Land and GIC owned Broadgate Estate in the City of London. The construction of the bridge needed to be thought about carefully as it needed to be lifted into place by a tower crane and lifted out again as and when needed. There were 175 students across three programmes who took part, 43 design submissions, six shortlisted but only one team could win. The winning team comprised four students - Guy Mukulayenge, Adit Jaganathan, Jeremy Tay Eujin and Sumaya Sheikh-Ali.

The competition is the result of a ten-year relationship between University of East London, British Land Plc, and Sir Robert McAlpine to give positive transformatory experiences to students and recent alumni. The opportunity is offered in partnership with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architects, ScotttWhitbyStudio, British Land, and Sir Robert McAlpine.

In the past this has enabled students to gain significant ‘live’ work experience on one of the most significant regeneration projects in Europe.

6 SHORT-LISTED TEAMS

Light Me Lusail Qatar II Edition 2020

Video Art Prize at the Digital Art and Interactive Media Festival, Qatar

The MA Interior Design has been represented by Aysha Farhana, Senuri Peththawadu, Himani Ravuri, Beth Hooper, and Tatiana Garcia, in the II Edition of the Light Me Lusail - Digital Art and Interactive Media Festival in Qatar, who have been awarded a prize with a video art project. Our UEL students have developed a critical visual and sound narrative, exploring the current emergency of climate-change and extinction. Their video was showcased together with 10 renowned international digital media artists. The narrative follows the LML second edition theme surrounding the concept of respect “Respect”.

• What are the different faces of Respect? (generational, cultural, social, ideological); • What are its boundaries? Should it always be present? • What are the challenges of Respect as we continue to drive towards globalization in every aspect of our lives? • What are devastating consequences in absence of Respect? • Respect for our future: our planet, our children, our animals; • Respect as tolerance.

This 2020 edition of the festival brings to Qatar innovative technologies and mediums in realm of Light Art and Digital Media. LightMe Lusail is solidifying Qatar’s position as a Tourism & Cultural Hub, delivering creative and innovative entertainment solution, promoting diversity and unity among local communities, and delivering a clear message of #Respect to the international community through the universal language of Art.

Student Drawing Prize 2020

Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects

George Moldovan from BSc Architecture Degree Unit H (tutors Keita Tajima & Rhianon Morgan-Hatch) was successfully awarded runner up for the Student Drawing Prize 2020 (RIBA/ARB Part 1) organised by the Worshipful Company of Charted Architects. The drawing explores primordial relationships between the rural landscape with medieval ruins of Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal and new architectural interventions through use of pre-existing textures and forms as language of the place.

AVA Open Studio

Mid Year Exhibition 2019-20

We had the AVA Open Studio – Mid Year Exhibition in the AVA Building, at the end of January. Our Department of Architecture and Visual Arts showed art, design, photography and architecture. The event was again a unique opportunity to see work in progress and share the diversity of programmes. We welcomed all students, members of staff and people who were interested in our spatial, artistic and creative studies. The event was organised in such a way that each programme presented their ongoing work in their own studio space. As such, it was both, an exhibition with work in progress and a vital platform for discussion about academic work across the AVA.

The November Lectures

A series of public lectures by top contemporary architecture academics

Top international professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were among key speakers at the University of East London for a series of six public lectures on contemporary architecture, starting this autumn.

Curated by Carlo Cappai and Maria Alessandra Segantini, the fourth annual November Lecture Series at the University’s School of Architecture, explored the relationship between research and practice in architecture as a tool to tackle the environmental, social and economic urgencies of our contemporary times.

Invited lecturers from USA, Italy, Egypt and the UK presented how the connection of their work bridges between practice and academia. The free public lectures, organised by the University in cooperation with the Sto-Foundation, a German Education Foundation, run throughout November and December. Guests have included Harvard and MIT professors Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich, who spoke at the end of October.

Andreas Kipar, focused on Landscape, Architecture, Nature, Development (LAND) on the theme ‘Open Spaces Create Urban Spaces’. The series concluded on 10 December with speaker Hanaa Dahy from the University of Stuttgart showcasing her current industrial projects. Other themes include a look at ‘natural structure,’ and geometry, pattern, texture and spatial complexity in architecture. New York based architect Bryan Young spoke focused on geometry at all scales of design and construction. Michael Ramage, the Director of the Natural Material Innovation Lab at Cambridge University, was presenting his research impact through his academic achievements and his practice. The eminent line-up of speakers also included Jon Lott, principal of PARA, cofounding member of CLOK, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he is Director of the Master in Architecture Programme. He has received a string of awards, including the Emerging Voices Award by the Architectural League of New York, the Design Vanguard award by the Architectural Record and the New Practices New York award by the American Institute of Architects, New York.

The Sto-Foundation focused on the future through education and supports young people in their craft and academic education.

The successful “November Series”, of lectures, open to the public, has been sponsored by the foundation since its launch in 2006. After the series at the University of East London, the lectures go on to five more venues: Stuttgart, Graz, Venice, Paris and Prague.

Mentoring

UEL Mentoring Scheme for ARB/RIBA Part 1 Year 2 Organised by Stephanie Schultze-Westrum, UEL Architecture Department and Rachel Oliver-Herbert, UEL CfSS. Thank you to all the motivated and inspiring mentors!

Grimshaw - Angela Dapper - Miguel Vidal - Muyiwa Oki - Marwa Altai - Natalie Azodo. HASA Architects - Charlotte Harris, Hawkins\Brown - Michelle Tomlinson, Haworth Tompkins - Jerry van Veldhuizen, HKS Architects Ltd - Alfonso Padro, Maccreanor Lavington - Olympia Katsarou - Emma Rutherford - George Mathers, Maich Swift Architects - Charlotte Hurley, Penoyre & Prasad - James Goldberg, PH+ - Andy Puncher, SOM - Ben Ward, Peter Smith Architects - Peter Smith - Stephen Davy, Stockwool - Anna Apostolova, tp bennett - Nia Rodgers, 6a Architects - Mayuko Kanasugi

RIBA Mentoring Scheme for ARB/RIBA Part 1 Year 3 Organised by Jenni Killick, RIBA, with Stephanie Schultze-Westrum, Architecture Department UEL. Thank you to all the motivated and inspiring mentors!

5th Studio - Anastasia Orphanidou, Architecture00 - Alice Fung, Bell Phillips Architects - Leithan Brimah, Bennetts Associates - Ben Hopkins, Bowman Riley - Roy Wilson, Coffey Architects - Thomas Leung, ECD Architects - Alice Hiley, Hassell - Evelyn Choy - Charlotte Birch, Holland Harvey - Chloe Anderson - Nick Shackleton, John Robertson Architects - Kwamena Beecham, Morey Smith Ltd - Rholdah Cameron Hayes, NBBJ - Jonathan Hasson, Resilient Edge Architecture Ltd - Jon Pyle, Russian for Fish - Pereen d’Avoine, Smith CH Architects - Georgette McKinlay, Studio Egret West - Heidi Au Yeung, Witherford Watson Mann Architects - Pat West.

We very much hope that the mentors can join us again in the new academic year 2020/21.

We are always looking for more mentors - reflecting our very diverse student intake - to support our students during the first crucial years of their education and to help them start a network: s.a.schultze-westrum@uel.ac.uk Mock Interviews for the ARB/RIBA Part 1 year 3 students Organised by Professional Studies Programme Leader Hwei Fan Liang. Thank you to all the patient and supportive Interviewers!

Daria Wong Architects - Daria Wong, Tate Hindle - Jemma Miller, Matter Architecture - Roland Karthaus, Stanton Williams - Kalpesh Intwala, muf architecture/art - Mark Lemanski, Weston Williamson - Louise Scannell, What If? - Gareth Morris, AEDAS (now at Buckley Gray Yeoman) - Marija Ambrasaite, RCKa (now at Hawkins\Brown) - Emma Graham.