Each installation will focus on one of four European cities, Athens, London, Tallinn and Milan, exploring how history, personal or public boundaries, narratives and cultural pre-conceptions might be used as design tools to transform a public space. First up in the series is ‘Temporary Urban Garden’ a project that explores demarcations in public space in Athens focusing on the city’s rooftops.

The rest of the series is listed below:

‘Temporary Urban Garden’- November 2 to November 6
Dr Ivana Wingham academic and architect in collaboration with Dr Roderick Lumsden IT consultant

‘Public Space Privacy’ – November 30 to December 4  
Angus Leadley Brown photographer

‘Shadow-Memories’- January 11 to January 15 
Reet Aus fashion and theatre designer and Ville Hyvönen cross-disciplinary media-artist

‘Territories of Misbehavior’- February 8 to February 12
Frank O’Sullivan presenting a collaboration between University of Brighton and Milan Polytechnic

Mike Keys, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios- November 19
Mike led the 2008 Stirling Award winning team on Accordia, a substantial residential scheme in Cambridge. He is currently leading the masterplanning and design teams on Bath Western Riverside a 14 hectare city-centre brownfield site in the World Heritage city of Bath, and two schemes to create innovative new housing in association with the restoration of historic mill complexes near Stockport and Shrewsbury.

Charles Holland, FAT- November 26
Charles Holland is a director of Fat and has been in charge of a number of key projects including the award winning security building in The Hague, the Bathroom Sweet and the new Heal’s restaurant and bakery. Charles was also the principal in charge of the Islington Square social housing project in Manchester, completed in 2006.

John Small, Fosters & Partners- December 10
John Small has worked for Foster & Partners for 25 years,
establishing a team focusing on interior and product design. Recent
projects he has worked on include, Stanstead Airport, the Berlin
Reichstag and the Hirst Building in NYC. Foster & Partners are
responsible for such award winning buildings as the Hong Kong Shanghai
Bank HQ and the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy of Art.

All lectures:

6-8pm. Includes drinks reception after the lecture
Portland Building,
Lecture Theatre 1.53,
Portland Street,
Portsmouth,
PO1 3AH

We received 20 submissions this year, which our jury whittled down to the six presented here.

School: University of Sheffield
Project: Server: Plan for an Autonomous Motorway
Tutor: Renata Tyszczuk

Incorporating an eight-mile section of the M1 motorway in the Midlands, this project proposes the establishment of an Experimental Agriculture Belt that produces no waste and consumes minimal resources.

Based on existing processes, prices and capacities, it begins with the production of biodiesel from algae, the residual biomass being used as cattle feedstock. Through a series of highly cinematic renderings, Parvin suggests spatial and programmatic hybrids that might emerge from the juxtaposition of the elevated biofuel-farming structure and the activities that co-exist beneath it.

Judges’ comments

Annalie Riches was particularly enthused. “It is utterly believable and beautifully imagined. My only criticism is that it is a bit slick. It would have been nice to see the thought process.”

Mike Taylor felt similarly, noting it “borrows freely from Cedric Price but his open-ended graphic style is substituted with a finite and highly convincing series of renders. A few loose edges around some more architectural thinking would help move it on from feeling like a graphic exercise.”

Student statement

“The result constitutes a challenge to some of the narrow political dichotomies which dominate green politics, and hints at a profound shift in the way that we, as citizens and consumers, relate to the rural landscapes, communities and infrastructures upon which we depend.”

Download project as PDF
To read fuller versions of the student and tutor’s statement click here

 School: London Metropolitan University
Project: Memory Object
Tutor: David Grandorge

David Grandorge’s unit took the idea that car use might soon be curtailed in central London as its premise.

Students were asked to develop proposals for the creative reuse of a number of multi-storey car parks. Colin Wharry adopted the Welbeck Street car park as his site and set about adjusting its structure to accommodate a two-form entry primary school. Voids have been opened up to admit light and air, while a series of solid timber enclosures provide classroom space.

The building’s distinctive diagrid frame has been overclad in glass printed with white dots that increase in radius as they move up the facade. This skin acts as an acoustic barrier but also makes a new image for the building, recalling Gerhard Richter’s use of blurred and out-of-focus images in his paintings.

Judges’ comments

The jury admired the thoroughness with which the scheme’s tectonic articulation had been developed but had reservations about the project’s plausibility as an environment for children.

Mike Taylor felt that while the scheme was “beautifully drawn to represent ethereal layers of filtered light, it looks too abstract, cool and not at all lived in. It might have worked better as the headquarters for Calvin Klein or an art gallery.”

Annalie Riches felt the same: “The drawings and models of the existing car park and the proposed new skin were exquisite but the programme for reuse was unconvincing.”

Student statement

“Through the wrapping of the building, a translucent layer starts to blur the strong expression of the structural diagrid facade. This screen adjusts the focus of the facade, becoming a memory of itself.”

Download project as PDF
To read fuller versions of the student and tutor’s statement click here

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=641&storycode=3145901&featurecode=12559&c=1#ixzz0Z79z6dKg

School: University of Kingston
Project: An Institution for the City: Croydon University for the Built Environment
Tutors: Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth

Along with every student at Kingston, Paolo Scianna has spent the past year developing a project in the highly problematic setting of Croydon.

His scheme envisages the remodelling of an existing shopping centre on the assumption that the current anchor store tenant, House of Fraser — which happens to be owned by an Icelandic bank — might vacate.

Scianna proposes the introduction of a university that would bring together training for architects, planners and engineers. This intervention allows the existing building to be made more diverse in use while strengthening its relationship to the surrounding fabric.

Provocatively, Scianna offers Ligorio’s Villa Pia as a precedent for his work suggesting that the villa’s relationship to the Vatican Gardens and to the view of Rome beyond is akin to the way his intervention appropriates the existing building and the panorama of Croydon.

Judges’ comments

“Contemporary Croydon is an unlikely context for a building inspired by the open vistas of ancient Rome,” said Mike Taylor, “but the ambitious massing of this scheme with its sequence of terraces might just work.

“The plans and model photos are very clear although the elevations are thin and it is not obvious how the interiors deal with the deep floor plates. Overall it is a refreshingly straightforward attempt to design a big piece of dense cityscape.”

Student statement

“Any attempt to upgrade the existing building stock of our cities has to speak to the economic interests of communities and private investors alike — land value alone will never secure responsible building. The thesis position taken is one that envisages a relationship between the city, its benefactors, the things which occupy it and its inhabitants; through the institution and architecture in which all this unfolds.”

 
Download project as PDF
To read fuller versions of the student and tutor’s statement click here

School: Royal College of Art
Project: Cultivating Faith: The Feeding of the 59,000
Tutor: Gerrard O’Carroll

This highly provocative project explores the possibility that a UK shortage of halal meat might be answered by the construction of a vast in-vitro meat production facility.

The scheme is sited on top of the Beckton Alps, a man-made landform of contaminated earth in east London.

Greenall’s complex, which forms a protective cap to the hill, becomes a site of pilgrimage and is joined by a mosque, community centre, hammam and residential accommodation. This complex — the central building of which is formed in the shape of a cow’s head — presents an acropolis-like relationship to the hill.

Judges’ comments

The jury were torn between admiration for the conviction of Greenall’s project and distaste over its dystopian and, some felt, facetious premise. “A Franken-stein of a scheme, but deliber-ately so,” said Annalie Riches, while Mike Taylor found it “nauseating and fascinating in equal measure”. Meredith Bowles noted: “It feels as if the cultural provocation is valued more than the actual proposition.” However, Simon Hudspith detected a powerful visual intelligence: “It’s pure opera! Fellini would be proud.”

Student statement

“Intended as a critique of 21st century society’s tendency to adapt its values in order to fulfil its needs, this project is concerned with how groups have been forced to reinterpret religious practice to facilitate the retention of traditional beliefs.”

To read fuller versions of the student and tutor’s statement click here

Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=641&storycode=3145907&featurecode=12559&c=1#ixzz0Z7BdDEH1

Judging from the work on display this year, the school encourages self-generated as well as directed assignments, allowing the students the opportunity to think twice: what is expected from me? What do I expect?

Within the categories of interior design, interior architecture, and architecture, students respond well to their briefs according to their respective levels. A new interdisciplinary MA programme in Urban Design, which takes off next term, and the research department both supplement the ambition to establish an investigative environment in Kent.

A number of works stand out, especially from the third year Ramsgate spa building assignment where Michael Dillon and Patrick Gough have produced elaborate and well communicated proposals. From the fourth year Shawn Kam’s Gallery Music Box is conceived and presented through a series of well-crafted and seductive visualisations, and among the final year graduates Richard Kirby’s new headquarters for the English National Ballet and Dimitrios Tsarouchas’s relocation of the Olympic Committee Headquarters are intriguing propositions questioning the nature and requirements of their subject matter.

If it is difficult to determine where one department’s – and student’s – work ends and the next begins. This might not only be down to a dense presentation, it might be that the students need more precision in the communication of their work. Overall, it would also be interesting to see more of the processes behind what the panels present – sketches, models, scribblings, and inquiring diagrams. The students master technical drawings and finicky scale models as required, but they should expose their lines of thought too.

This year’s student in the spotlight is Katie Warren who has mastered the self-programmed and innovative challenge of designing spaces for responsive dance. Using various media to develop and present her project, she comes across as an independent and playful third year student willing to take a risk. One can only guess what Katie’s next project will be, and as such she comes to positively epitomise the current state of affairs outside the schools of architecture: her commitment to what she does ensures it will be worthwhile, and so gives a promise for the future.

Kent School of Architecture has the freshness and staff to embrace this challenge on a larger scale by facilitating the activities and experiments outlining the space of infinite options in the time to come.