Welcome to the Bartlett School of Architecture Summer Show 2010 with over 500 students showing their new drawings, models, installations and texts. This was again another great year that finished with an enormous range of projects developed by an extraordinary group of teachers and students, each with a unique design sensibility, talent and skills. With a new Dean and a new Director the school is changing, especially in its ambition to respond to core challenges that affect our current society. This involves social issues, as well as profound environmental, technological and aesthetic transformations. As one of the world’s leading architecture schools, we continue to be proud of promoting highly creative and personalized design agendas that relate to our increasingly more intense research culture. Collectively we aim to contribute to the development of our future built environment. The now common expression ‘Lateral Thinking’, as a contemporary method for creative problem-solving, suggests to us that the Bartlett is likewise a place of ‘Lateral Design’; an experimental ground where non-linear design processes are used as a means to promote a multiplicity of divergent thinking and design modes. But we also encourage a synthetic way of thinking that is also inclusive and possibly even eclectic. Such a process tends to generate innovative ideas across a variety of disciplines while also exploring intuitive, rather free flowing design possibilities. Each project in this show implies a sense of ‘risk’, and also great passion of each individual to the discovery of something new. The overwhelming intensity of pursuit of everybody involved makes this school unpredictable, eccentric, and always exuberant. We would personally like to thank our whole Bartlett community for the amazing contributions and efforts to make this show happen. This includes our staff and students, our critics and examiners, as well as our sponsors and friends. It has been a privilege to work with you all this year. Dr Marcos Cruz Director of the School of Architecture Professor Christine Hawley Chair of the School of Architecture
The Bartlett School of Architecture would like to thank Allford Hall Monaghan Morris for their generous support of this year’s Catalogue.
Prizes Summer Show The Summer Show Opener’s Prize, selected by Hitoshi Abe and sponsored by White Partners. Awarded at the opening of the Summer Show
BSc Architecture Year 1 Herbert Batsford Prize for ‘distinguished work’ Ashley Hinchcliffe Bartlett Sessional Prize for ‘good Honours standard’ work Songyang Zhou Dorota Urbanska Sarah Edwards
BSc Architecture Year 2 Grocers’ Company Queen’s Golden Jubilee Scholarship Charlotte Baker
BSc Architecture Year 3 Donaldson Medal for ‘distinguished work’ Nicholas Elias Environmental Design Prize for ‘distinguished work in the integration of engineering and architectural principles in Environmental Design’ Thandiwe Loewenson Fitzroy Robinson Drawing Prize for ‘best drawings or models in the year’ Nicholas Elias History & Theory Prize for ‘distinguished work in History and Theory’ Nicholas Blomstrand Making Building Award Kirsty Williams Professional Studies Prize for ‘distinguished work in Professional Studies’ Laura Brayne Travel Scholarship Nichola Barrington-Leach
Dean’s List for ‘students achieving a first class degree’ William Armstrong Nicholas Elias Joseph Gautrey Alexander Holloway Ka Man Leung Thandiwe Loewenson Stefano Passeri Imram Perretta Kirsty Williams Mika Zacharias
Grad Dip/MArch Architecture Year 4 History & Theory Prize for ‘distinguished work in History and Theory’ Costa Elia Travel Scholarship Heechan Park Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Bursary Rina Kukaj
Grad Dip/MArch Architecture Year 5 Ambrose Poynter Prize for ‘distinguished work in the Diploma Thesis’ Rae Whittow-Williams Fitzroy Robinson Drawing Prize for ‘best drawings in the year’ Keiichi Matsuda Sir Banister Fletcher Medal for ‘highest marks in Diploma in Architecture final examination’ Justine Bell Leverhulme Trust Bursary Peter Webb Richard Hardy RIBA President’s Medal for Dissertation nomination Tala Akkawi Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Bursary Eleanor Lakin Sir Andrew Taylor Prize for ‘the best set of drawings combining construction and design’ Misha Smith
Commendation in Design Byron Bassington Barry Cho Geraldine Ng Cheng Hin Erin Byrne William Richard Jeffries Richard Hardy Yianni Kattirtzis Jonathan Horsfall Thomas Winter David Edwards Thomas Ibbitson Commendation in Thesis Erin Byrne Rae Whittow-Williams Chin Lye Tala Akkawi Maya Cochrane Dean’s List for ‘students achieving a Distinction in Design’ Lik San Chan Dean Walker Tom Noonan Keichi Matsuda Emily Yeung Justine Bell Dan Slavinsky Daniel Baumann Misha Smith
Professional Studies Part 3 Ross Jamieson Memorial Prize Leigh Gilshenan Angie Jim
MArch Architectural Design Distinction Tyler Barnard Yorgos Loizos Danai Surasa Tze Wei Travel Scholarship Adelais Parera Emma Morris
MArch Urban Design Commendation Anna Boldina Andres Gomez Ohoud Kamal Lina Liakou Stavroula Papafotiou Fiona Perchet Ioanna Pothou Daria Shipukhina Clelia Thermou Distinction Zahra Azizi Flora Bowden Vytautas Jackevicius Aigars Lauzis Thomas Pearson Hiroki Shibayama Mindaugas Skrupskelis Travel Scholarship Emma Feeny
MA/MSc Architectural History Distinction Wesley Aelbrec Justin Smith
MPhil/PhD Architectural Design AHRC Doctoral Award Emma Cheatle Sophie Handler Jan Kattein Ben Sweeting Neil Wenman Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship Mohamad Hafeda EPSRC Doctoral Award Rachel Armstrong Ruairi Glynn IKY Scholarship Christina Ioannaou Christos Papastergiou Onassis Foundation Scholarship Adam Adamis
Overseas Research Scholarship Katherine Bash Igor Marjanovic UCL Overseas Research Scholarship Alessandro Ayuso UCL Global Excellence Graduate Scholarship Polly Gould
MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory AHRC Doctoral Award Nicholas Beech Edward Dennison Anne Hultzsch Torsten Lange Rebecca Litchfield Jacob Paskins Nina Vollenbroker Canadian Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Scholarship Lea-Catherine Szacka Thomas-Bernard Kenniff IKY Scholarship Sotirios Varsamis LKE Ozolins/RIBA Studentship Anne Hultzsch Overseas Research Scholarship Lea-Catherine Szacka Thomas-Bernard Kenniff Brent Pilkey Royal Thai Government Scholarship Pinai Sirikiatkul Taiwanese Government Scholarship Yi-Chih Huang Shih-Yao Lai Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia PhD Research Grant (Portugal) Ricardo Agarez Colciencias (Colombia) Maria del Pilar Sanchez Beltran
Exhibition Information and Opening Times The Summer Show is the annual celebration of student work at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Over 450 students show innovative drawings, models, devices, texts, animations and installations. Exhibition opening night and party in the Main Quadrangle and the Slade Galleries of UCL, Gower St, London WC1 Fri 25 June, 6.00–10.30pm
Official show opening by Hitoshi Abe Fri 25 June, 7.00pm Exhibition open to the public Sat 26 June, 10.00am–8.30pm Sun 27 June, 10.00am–5.30pm Mon 28, Tues 29 June, 10.00am–6.00pm Wed 30 June, Thurs 1 July, 10.00am–5.00pm Fri 2 July, 10.00am–8.30pm Sat 3 July, 10.00am–5.00pm (closes)
Exhibition Layout
Guided exhibition tour by the Professors of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Tues 29 June, please arrive at 6.30pm for 6.45pm start, tour duration approximately 1 hour
Contents BSc Architecture Year 1 Design BSc Architecture Design Units BSc Architectural Studies Professional Studies & Part 3 History & Theory Technology Dip/MArch Architecture Design Units Dip/MArch Architecture Year 5 Thesis Bartlett Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research MArch Architectural Design MArch Urban Design MA Architectural History MPhil/PhD Summer School Staff Sponsors
BSc Architecture
BSc Architecture Year 1 Design Students: Caitlin Abbott, Madiha Ahmad, Ben Beach, Amy Begg, Taimar Birthistle-Cooke, Ophelia Blackman, Arti Braude, Zion Chan, Hoi Yi Ginny Chau, Nuozzi Lizzie Chen, Jianhuang George Chen, Melanie Cheng, Petrina Chung, Tzen Chia, Kacper Chmielewski, Yin Hui Chung, Nichola Czyz, Samuel Dodsworth, Charles Dorrance-King, Samuel Douek, Kate Edwards, Gary Edwards, Sarah Edwards, Ivie Egonmwan, Amber Fahey, Roma Gadomska-Miles, Geethica Gunarajah, Georgina Halabi, Alice Haugh, David Hawkins, Joseph Hawsworth, Dean Hedman, Ashley Hinchcliffe, Mai Hitomi, Kawai Ho, Karen Hu, Jackey Ip, Tomasz Jasinski, Elzbieta Kaleta, Yu-Me Kashino, Yoonjin Kim, Celestria Kimmins, Emma Kitley, Fergus Knox, Janice Tsz Lau, Sandy Yin Lee, Carmen Lee, Lucas Wei Ler, Yolanda Leung, Jamie Lilley, Kok Lim, Brook Ting Jui Lin, Matthew Lucraft, Sam Mcgill, Anna Lisa Mcsweeney, Harriet Middleton Baker, Huma Mohyudin, Allanah Morrill, Hui Zen Ng, Shiue Pang, Chengcheng Peng, Rachel Pickford, Seth Pimlott, Sophie Richards, Luke Scott, Pippa Shaw Carveth, Lauren Shevills, Simran Sidhu, Julian Siravo, Helen Siu, Melody Lok Siu, Kate Slattery, Richard Smith, Marcus Stockton, Saijel Taank, Jacob Taylor, Dorota Urbanska, Deniz Varol, Leonie Walker, Nicholas Warner, Angeline Wee, Tao Wei, Amalie White, Nadia Wikborg, Vivian Wai Wong, Alexander Worsfold, Tim Shou Wu, Nawanwaj Yudhanahas, Xin Zhan, Songyang Zhou, Alexander Zyryaev
The Bartlett’s BSc degree programme aims to develop a creative, diverse and rigorous approach to architecture and design from the outset. Year 1 is centred on the design studio and students observe, draw, model and design, based in the School’s design studios and workshop, from the first week onwards. The main intention is to explore ‘ways of seeing’; understanding and interpreting objects/events/places and learning to look beyond the visible into the unseen and ‘absurd’ qualities of things. The importance of ‘character’ and personality are emphasised throughout the design process whether in analysis, site interpretation or architectural vision. A number of recording techniques are used as ways of clarifying the subject rather than as purely graphic representation. Through being aware of the possibilities and limitations of various techniques, each student learns to express and then develop critically and appropriately, an intuitive idea for an architectural proposition. This year, starting with a collection of objects the students built eight installations around Pitzhanger Manor, Sir John Soane’s house in Ealing. Each of these follies was designed and built as a response to Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress. After a mapping exercise in Marseilles and the Camargue the final projects of the year were individual building interventions on several small pocket sites around Borough Market and Southwark.
Year 1 Design Directors: Frosso Pimenides & Patrick Weber Tutors: Kyle Buchanan, Margaret Bursa, Lucy Leonard, Johan Hybschman, Brian O’Reilly, Jonathan Pile, Gill Scampton, Nikolaos Travasaros
Opposite page clockwise from the top: Jamie Lilley, Ashley Hinchliffe, Yoonjin Kim and Shiue Nee Pang. Top: Building development models by Sam Douek. Bottom: Building development models by Carmen Lee.
Installations based on William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress in Sir John Soane’s garden in Pitzhanger Manor House, Ealing. Clockwise from top left: ‘The Heir’, ‘The Levee’, ‘The Orgy’, ‘The Arrest’.
Clockwise from top: ‘The Gaming House’, ‘The Madhouse’, ‘The Prison’, ‘The Marriage’.
Top: Building project by Ashley Hinchcliffe. Bottom: Building project by Nicola Czyz.
Top: Building project by Brook Lin. Bottom: Building project by Sarah Edwards.
BSc Unit 0 Yr 2: Heaseung Choi, Frances Heslop, Grace Mark Yr 3: Jane Brodie, Dhiren Patel, Olivia Pearson, Rida Qureshi, Jonathan De Wind, Lee Young Woo
Collections, Collectors and Hoarders ‘The clock face is the most important thing I have ever recovered from the town dump. I… rolled it home down the path to the island and rumbled it over the footbridge. I stored it in the shed until my father was away for the day, then I strained and sweated all day to get it up into the loft.’ Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory. Collections, collectors and hoarders were of interest this year. Collections give us an insight into the mind of the collector. Inevitably this can be the catalyst that reveals compulsions, obsessions and other peculiarities in an individual. Indeed the fictional Wasp Factory gives us an eerie insight into the gory mind of the book’s central protagonist, a homicidal sixteen year old. However, in a larger, more demographic, context it can also be the vehicle through which cultural or political imperatives manifest themselves through organisations or even nations. Regardless of scale and setting, and other potentially sinister implications, collections, collectors and hoarders are also about passion. Students were asked to beg, borrow and preferably not steal their collections – scouring the city in a strategic manner, using the infrastructure and transport network as a guiding framework, or perhaps using a psycho-geographic reading of the city, and defining a more personal agenda. The unit trip was to The Sir Soane Joan Museum.
Abigail Ashton
Top: Heaseung ChOi, Toy Collectors’ Storage Facility and Display Case. Bottom: Jonathan De Wind, Alzheimer Day Care Centre, Tottenham Court Road.
Clockwise from top left: Lee Young Woo, Technology Recycling Centre, Tottenham Court Road; Jane Brodie, Theatrical Museum, Blackfriars.
Clockwise from top left: Dhiren Patel, Gallery, Greenwich, Frances Heslop, Urban Dye Farm, Spitalfields.
Top: Olivia Pearson, Tailoring School, Spitalfields. Bottom: Grace Mark, Clockmaker’s Museum and Workshop, Clerkenwell.
BSc Unit 1 Yr 2: Muhammad Muhsin Abd Rahman, James Bruce, Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita, Jonathan Holmes, Frederick Lomas, Tess Martin, Charlotte Reynolds, Aimee Salata, Yr 3: Laura Brayne, Robert Burrows, Joseph Gautrey, Eleonora Hadjigeorgiou, Amelia Hunter, Adrienne Lau, Alexander Holloway
Architectural Transmutations and the Forgetting of Air This year, unit one was inspired by the scientific changes during the period of Enlightenment, when techniques used in alchemy gave way to modern science. Air’s significance as a ‘spirit’ was fundamental in alchemical practice, but this was slowly forgotten as empirical methodology became prominent in the eighteenth century. We saw the ‘forgetting of air’ as the point when matter became measurable and controllable, and ultimately lost its ethereal dimension. The first exercise, the alchemist’s laboratory, was a focused study of the work of alchemists and early modern scientists of that period, such as Robert Fludd, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday. To test our alchemical prototypes we visited an emblematic modern city: Chicago, otherwise known as the ‘windy city’. We asked whether the Western economic model for expansion is prone to erase the idea of site and collective memory and whether the pre-modern concept of air can inform new architectural interventions that respond to the city’s extreme urban environment and future needs. We sought an architecture where micro and macrocosm were entwined: We studied chemical processes, aerodynamics, electromagnetic fields, explosive reactions, allegorical symbolism, light and colour theories, and designed buildings that test new radical materials, focus on change and transformation and revert the forgetting of air.
Penelope Haralambidou & Michael Tite
Top: James Bruce, Salt Baths, Ukranian Village, Chicago. Second row: James Bruce, Robert Hooke’s Window, St Helens Church, Bishopsgate. Third row: Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita, Hooke and Newton Rivalry Chandelier, Council Chamber, Royal Institute. Bottom: Alicia Gonzalez-Lafita, Blues Bar and Record Market, Maxwelll Street, Chicago.
Clockwise from top left: Robert Burrows, Fish Market and Restaurant, Camden; Robert Burrows, Goose Island Brewery, Goose Island, Chicago; Charlotte Reynolds, William Perkin Purple Dye Room; Charlotte Reynolds, Onion Wallpaper Factory and Printworks, Goose Island, Chicago; Adrienne Lau, Chicago Film Institute, Jackson Park, Chicago; Adrienne Lau, Monument to Monument, Eastcheap.
Top: Amelia Hunter, Meteorological Research Institute, University of Chicago. Second row (left to right): Amelia Hunter, Cloud Barber Shop, City of London; Laura Brayne, Perfumery and Liposuction Clinic, Spitalfields. Middle right: Laura Brayne, New Deal Community Medical Centre, Uptown Chicago. Bottom (left to right): Eleonora Hadjigeorgiou, Rehabilitation Centre for the Destitute (Street Art Refinery) South Loop, Chicago; Nursery and Bingo Hall for Tate & Lyle Factory, Silvertown.
Clockwise from top left: Frederick Lomas, Luke Howard Weather Machine; Meteorological Research Centre, Lake Shore Drive, Chicago; Aimee Salata, Little Roomers Library, Loop; Tess Martin, Wallgreens Drugstore, North Loop; Jack Holmes, Graceland Cemetery Crematorium, Chicago; Jack Holmes, Faraday Ferrofluid Memorial, Highgate Cemetery; Tess Martin, Nicholas Culpepper Orrery, Spitalfields; Aimee Salata, Air Movement Responsive Kite Field.
Top, middle and bottom right: Alexander Holloway , plan, section and model of Chicago Board of Trade, Recycled Materials Exchange. Bottom left: Alexander Holloway, Electronics Recycling Facility, Shoreditch.
Top, middle and bottom right: Joseph Gautrey, model views of Sir Isaac Newton Research Institute, Cambridge. Left: Joseph Gautrey, Chicago Fire Department and Training Academy, Near South Side.
BSc Unit 2 Yr 2: Ashley James, Azuki Ichihashi, Augustine Ong, Julia Ran Chen, Yuan Zhao, Angela Lo, Ruthie Falconer, Glenn Wooldridge Yr 3: Anton Chernikov, Rupert Rampton
Twist and Insert, Add and Alter ‘One starts an action simply because one must do something.’ T.S. Eliot. We were interested in the variety of spaces that exist within cities – these places may be constructed or carved into the existing, occupied or derelict, ad hoc or abandoned, temporary or well worn. These volumes of lightness and darkness may be obviously beautiful and visionary, or, perhaps, more disguised and subtle in effect. We encouraged students to examine such transitory spaces and experiment with different methods and techniques in order to observe, explore, analyse, develop and refine their own individual approach to the city and insert new design proposals into the urban fabric. The unit occupied and investigated a disused building in central London as a site for exploration. Using their bodies, students recorded a sequence of journeys through this locale, creating a series of animated models and devices en route to employ and test different techniques in drawing, modelling, installation, filmmaking, and stop-frame animation. Through investigating the existing context, we proposed a new critical interjection into the urban fabric, explored and refined through an extension of the experimental and representational tools, developed and promoted in the first term. We were looking to envisage and create dynamic and atmospheric scenarios scattered throughout our familiar London. We welcome you to join us on our journey from the Thames to the Mediterranean Sea and back via the Seine, to twist, insert, add and alter.
Julian Krüger & Ben Addy
Top and middle: Augustine Ong, Mimetic Canopy. Bottom Left: Anton Chernikov, Compression Cage. Bottom Right: Ashley James, Trigger Seat.
Top and middle: Glenn Wooldridge, Puppet Space. Bottom: Rupert Rampton, Persistance Forms.
Top: Ashley James, Travellers Garden & Clinic, A40 Westway. Middle left to right: Julia Ran Chen, Recorder Residence, Great Western Road / Regents Canal; Augustine Ong, Skate Hotel, Meanwhile Gardens. Bottom left and right: Julia Ran Chen, Recorder Residence.
Top left to right: Ashley James, Travellers Gardens & Clinic; Azuki Ichihashi, Contour Tracer. Middle: Yuan Zhao, Regents Canal Garden Centre. Bottom left to right: Augustine Ong, Skate Hotel; Ruthie Falconer, Acoustic Caustics.
Top: Anton Chernikov, Meanwhile Gardens Community Housing. Bottom left: Anton Chernikov, Compression Cage. Bottom right: Anton Chernikov, Meanwhile Gardens Community Housing.
Angela Lo, Residential Dance Theatre, Meanwhile Gardens.
BSc Unit 3 Yr 2: Jae Seung Ahn, Luke Bowler, Ryan Hakimian, Anja Kempa, Nicholas Masterton, Samson Simberg, Louis Sullivan, Emma Swarbrick, Stanley Hanjie Tan, Antonina Tkachenko Yr 3: Stefanos Levidis, Rhianon MorganHatch, Camille Thuillier, Megan Townsend, Emily Yan
From The Wastelands We are at a point of collapse. We gaze out across the wastelands of our contemporary condition. The birds call as they pick at the debris of our consumption economy. Rolling hills of our made-to-break technologies glistening in the setting sun, the dust swirls across barren lands scraped clean of their resources. Sprawling savannas of picket fence suburbs sit at the edge of rising seas. Filled with all their strange new beasts these new forests force upon us another way of thinking about our impact on the world. It is a wildlife documentary filled with all the contradictions and inconsistencies of our contemporary cities. It is an artificial nature, an urban landscape formed from the unmappable growth of the familiar and the unrelenting march of progress. This year in Unit 3 we tested an alternative form of urban life built upon the principle of eccentric sustainability. The unit invented 90 fragments of the house; prototypes for a sustainable future, the experiments of mad inventors, maverick eco-warriors and DIY pioneers. We grounded our projects in the reality of a London site and the directness of physical making. Remnants of industry, revalued, salvaged from the wreckage of the future, were reassembled in strange new constellations serving redemptive ends. A strange nature grew from the wastelands of our site. The experiments culminated in the design and construction of a full-scale house, a prototype, living and breathing.
Jan Kattein & Liam Young
Clockwise from top: Samson Simberg, Weather Garden; Antonina Tkachenko, Oxygen Garden; Louis Sullivan, Crystal Radio Orchard; Luke Bowler, Hovering Infrastructures; Stefanos Levidis, Synthetic Wildlife Corridor; Camille Thuillier, Aeolian Wind Harp.
Clockwise from top left: Nicholas Masterton, Ocean Waste Collector; Ryan Hakimian, Havana Car Restoration Workshops; Rhianon Morgan-Hatch, Growing Fashion Accessories; Emily Yan, London Fog Garden; Jae Seung Ahn, Strange Fruit Air Purifiers.
Top and left: Nicholas Masterton, Cuban Intranet and Chicken Farm. Right: Nicholas Masterton, Ethernet Shelter.
Megan Townsend, Fermentation Pier and Night Market.
Clockwise from top: Emma Swarbrick, Havana Laser Eye Clinic; Emily Yan, Fog Harvesting Spa; Luke Bowler, Malecon Electric Landscape and Sea Defense; Anja Kemp, Homeopathic Cruise Terminal; Stanley Tan, Sewage Aeration Fleet and Weather Station.
Left: Camille Thuillier, Weather Generated Casa de Musica. Right: Antonina Tkachenko, Sewage Soap Factory.
BSc Unit 4 Yr 2: Kun Bi, Theclalin Chung, (Mollie) Yue Gao, Aaron Ho, Rebecca Li, Wendy Lin, Sirisan Nivatvongs, Tian Qin, Yr 3: Nicholas Blomstrand, Gladys Ching, Nicholas Elias, Dimple Rana
Character Building ‘Talent is developed in quiet places; character in the full current of life.’ Goethe. The structures of the Fallas festival (Valencia) combine architecture of popular parody with sophisticated systems of construction and industrial quantities of gunpowder, all integral to the creation of architectureas-ceremony. Gunpowder becomes the catalyst for the expression of a celebratory architecture during Fallas. In the seventeenth century it was considered to be the explosive force by which the muscles of the body moved. The architecture of “Character” forms at the interface of event, social collectivity and structure. In the modern cityscape we also see structures created in anticipation of an event that might happen. The build up, preparation and enactment of a festival might be contrasted to the predictive studies and analytical games played by designers and technicians in relation to preventing or encouraging an expected occurrence. We may then see architectures that appear ahead, or behind the curve, capturing a moment of hysteria or speculating on the future of its context. We embraced the relationship between character and context, action and reaction, and the development of visual languages that express this dialogue between them. Unit 4 investigated the spatial relationships, the protagonists, the physical construction, the objects, the choreography and any other devices that are used to manifest an occasion, event or festivity. We found inspiration in the tactile nature of the event, the precise craft of the décor, the dress codes, rules of etiquette, lavish behaviours, competition, international courtship, and the myth.
Ana Monrabal-Cook & Luke Pearson
Clockwise from top: Nicholas Blomstrand, Team Sky Base Camp Lanzarote; Nicholas Blomstrand; Gladys Ching, Early warning systems: Teide Sacrificial Visitor Centre Tenerife; Gladys Ching; Wendy Lin, Weight Test Model for a Canary Island Fish Restaurant, Tenerife.
Clockwise from top left: Dimple Rana, Climate Control: a National Herbarium for Tenerife; Dimple Rana; Aaron Ho: Carmine Palace, Lanzarote; Aaron Ho; Gladys Ching, Early Warning Systems: Teide Sacrificial Visitor Centre Tenerife.
Top: Tian Qin, Los Cocoteros Rock Pool, Lanzarote. Middle: Tian Qin; Sirisan Nivatvongs, Mud Bath, Lanzarote; Wendy Lin, Canary Island Fish Restaurant, Tenerife. Bottom: Kun Bi, Floating Chapel in St. Katherine’s Dock, London. Opposite page: Mollie Gao, Playa Chica Artificial Reef and Diving Shop, Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote.
Left: Nicholas Elias, Tower C42, London. Right and opposite: Nicholas Elias, Rolling out a New Britain: Bowling Green Lanzarote.
BSc Unit 5 Yr 2: Charlie Blanchard, Max Dowd, Joe Paxton, Asha Pooran, Alex Sutton, Nada Tayed, Su Jin Kwon Yr 3: Khalid Al Sugair, William Armstrong, Chris Leung, Hugh Moncrieff, Sabina Nobi, Frankie Pringle, John Wu, Yan Yan
‘Genius Loci’ ‘In Roman mythology a ‘genius loci’ was described as the protective spirit of a place. It was ancient belief that each place was possessed by an ‘earth spirit’ and, if the ground was to be disturbed and built on, that spirit needed to be placated to grant good fortune to its new habitants. From extraordinary myths about workmen being immured within the walls of cathedrals and castles to sinister legends of wives being built into bridges with their breasts exposed to nurture their babies, sacrifice was deeply embedded in building culture.’ FT.com Today, we use the term genius loci to describe the essence of a place that has an unmistakable atmosphere – a palpable character that permeates the site and manifests an unforgettable presence. With our environment becoming jaded by international and cultural homogeneity and conformism, the concept of the genius loci is in need of critical reinvention. This year our unit investigated the genius loci as the point of departure for meaningful, unique, imaginative but site-specific architecture. We looked beyond the visible substance, form and surface of places and investigated sites that have been repossessed and transformed, where extraordinary events, myths or anecdotes have re-appropriated places. We uncovered lost chapters of history and everyday fiction, traced the passages of explorers that have imprinted their stamp on different landscapes, and looked at places that have been traversed as much by narratives as by footsteps. We encouraged students to reinvestigate conventional model making, drawing techniques and other forms of spatial representation.
Julia Backhaus, Pedro Font Alba & Bruce Irwin
Top: Joseph Paxton, London Lost Rivers and Timanfaya Centre for Earth Studies. Middle: Asha Pooran, Dorset Street Sugar Device; Alex Sutton, Modern Times. Bottom: Nada Tayed, Table for One; William Amstrong, Speakers’ Corner Theater.
Top: Joseph Paxton, Timanfaya Centre for Earth Studies; Nada Tayed, Table for One; Max Dowd, Residencia de Menores, Las Palmas. Middle: Francesca Pringle, Brick Lane ‘Bollywood’. Bottom: William Amstrong, Speakers’ Corner Theater; Alex Sutton, Murgas’ Club; Su Jin Kwon, Tea Auction Dephvice.
Left: William Armstrong, El Salar Fireworks Factory. Right: Charlie Blanchard, Mas Palomas Sea Turtle Rescue Centre; John Wu, El Golfo Geological Research & Interpretation Centre.
Top: Chris Leung, Mas Palomas Skin Clinic. Middle and bottom left: Khalid Al-Sugair, Mas Palomas Brinewater Spa. Bottom right: Yan Yan, El Confital Surfing and Flora Reintroduction Station.
Top and left: Sabina Nobi, Lanzarote Cetacean Research Centre. Right: Hugh Scott Moncrieff, Arrecife Sailing Academy. Opposite: Hugh Scott Moncrief, Arrecife Sailing Academy.
BSc Unit 6 Yr 2: Frank Siyu Fan, Naomi Gibson, Georgina Goldman, Ami Matsumoto, Adam Peacock, Li Zhou Yr 3: Daniel Lane, Ka Man Leung, Thandiwe Loewenson, Hyder Mohsin, Risa Nagasaki, Sungwoo Park, Yuchen Wang, Linlin Wang, Mika Zacharias
Foods and Excess Over the next twenty years cities will undergo unpredictable transformations. Rapid change in technologies, social and environmental conditions will shift the form and perception of urban environments. We set out to investigate the 21st century metropolis, exploring the contradictory relationship between invisible systems and the buildings that host them. The word ‘flood’ conjures an immediate image of water: excess and its chaotic aftermath. Traditionally we have developed systems to control and contain these fluctuations. However, one could intervene in such a way that the huge dynamic of this phenomena be creatively used to benefit cities. We should also consider the concept of ‘flood’ beyond the realms of the natural. A super-imposition of imagery and information systems supported by increasingly powerful technology ‘flood’ our conscious and unconscious world prompting subtle changes of habit. Flood conjures up images of drama and intensity. Consider the palettes of Klein and Kapoor where colour floods the eye. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s essay, ‘Light is like Water’, uses light to ‘flood’ the room with dramatic and terrifying consequences. The invisible yet cataclysmic force of the global economy can be manipulated by ‘flooding’ financial markets. Unit 6 set out to question this concept and its impacts on the micro and macro environment. Abstract ideas must be rigorously tested in drawings and models and this process formed an essential part of our exploratory methodology. The second part of the year took the thread of the earlier explorations and developed these together with the notion of excess.
Christine Hawley & Paolo Zaide
Clockwise from top left: Thandiwe Loewenson, The Living Tower of Mong Kok; Ka Man Leung, Signage Reference Catalogue.
Clockwise from top left: Georgina Goldman, Defensive Wrist Piece; Linlin Wang, Water Intoxication Model; Hyder Mohsin, Pop-Up Hinge Mechanisms; Risa Nagasaki, Koi Cockatoo Fan Club.
Clockwise from top left: Ami Matsumoto, Ephemeral Poetry Book; Adam Peacock, Hideous/Fabulous Golden Lucky HK Wedding Emporium; Naomi Gibson, Day Community Centre for the Elderly; Sungwoo Park, Traditional Chinese Medicine Centre.
Clockwise from top left: Mika Zacharias, Marine Centre and Spa, Victoria Harbour; Li Zhou, Hong Kong Window Study; Daniel Lane, Kowloon Centre of Sound; Frank Siyu Fan, Public Fishing Complex.
Top: Mika Zacharias, Marine Centre and Spa, Victoria Harbour. Bottom: Yuchen Wang, Contemporary Shadow Theatre. Opposite: Ka Man Leung, Banker’s Garden Retreat.
BSc Unit 7 Yr 2: Emma Carter, Sophia Kelleher, Rachel King, Samson Lao, Aaron Lee, Rushda Morshed, Zhang Wen Yr 3: Yuan Gao, Maria Goustas, Keiichi Iwamoto, Bethan Knights, Imogen Webb, Kirsty Williams
Threat = Adaptation Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. Adaptedness is the state of being adapted: the degree to which an organism is able to live and reproduce in a given set of habitats. An adaptive trait is an aspect of the developmental pattern of the organism which enables or enhances the probability of that organism surviving and reproducing. Threat demands adaptation. Strange and wonderful things happen when plants and animals evolve to adapt to the threats presented by their particular situation: spikes, colourful warnings, camouflage, mimicry, decoys, sacrificial limbs, flocking behaviour. They adapt to their environments changing suddenly or slowly, predictably or unpredictably: moving, closing, hibernating, storing, hiding. Failure to adapt, or ill-fated adaptation, can result in extinction. People adapt to threat – environmental, financial, mythical – and create objects, spaces, environments, buildings that allow them to cope, improve and survive, sometimes even turning the threat into valuable opportunity. We considered threat and adaptation for two very different situations, environments, landscapes and urban settings – London and Oman.
Agnieszka Glowacka & Tomas Stokke
Clockwise from top left: Emma Carter, Reconfigurable Chandelier and Diving Retreat; Samson Lau, Hotel and Smugglers Retreat.
Top left to right: Rushda Morshed, Fish Market and Restaurant; Sophia Kelleher, Desert Folklore and Symphonic Music Centre. Middle: Aaron Lee, Illuminated Laundrette and Social Space. Bottom left to right: Allen Wen, Camelflage: Robotic Camel and Robotic Child Factory; Rachel King, Date Festival Retreat.
Top: Keiichi Iwamoto, Whisky Distillery in King’s Cross. Bottom left to right: Imogen Webb, Omani Wedding Chapel and Frankincense Farm; Yuan Gao, Collapsible Narrowboat.
Bethan Knights, Omani Cooking School and Accommodation in Khasab.
Top left: Kirsty Williams, 500-year Seed Vault. Top right and bottom: Kirsty Williams, Pangolin Intruder Alarm.
Kirsty Williams, Greasy Spoon Submarine.
BSc Unit 8 Yr 2: Yll Ajvazi, Cherry Beaumont, Ekaterina Minyaeva, Amanda Moore, Cho-Hee Sung, Jaymar Vitangol, Sandra Youkhana, Alexander Zhukov Yr 3: Nichola Barrington-Leach, David Rhys Jones, Christopher Mobbs, Stefano Passeri, Imran Matteo Perretta, Max Walmsley, Clarissa Yee
Weathermen ‘It is time to become part of everything.’ Unit 8 was interested in the potential for real buildings to incorporate strong poetic and experiential qualities, and to exist in symbiosis with the fabric of urban and natural landscapes they inhabit. We believe that architecture communicates the ideals and dreams of society, with the ability to respond to social, urban, and environmental problems. We put a strong emphasis on the stuff of buildings, their technologies and systems, and find great joy in exploring novel and innovative techniques of construction. This year, the unit challenged the relationship between the natural and the man-made. With an increasingly blurred boundary of definition between the two, how can one make a distinction between the ‘real’ and the artificial? What we see emerging is a new, synthesized version of nature, predominantly existing in relation to cities, where green space is no longer necessarily synonymous with natural space, and where human interaction has influenced, or in some cases radically changed, natural phenomena. We believe that buildings can be read in terms of weather (natural, political, cultural), with their own internal microclimates and zones of heat, pressure, and potentially also hurricanes, rain showers, blizzards and draughts. Acknowledging that both our natural and man-made worlds exists in a volatile and uncertain relationship, we looked at ideas of how to bridge or blur the artificial and the natural, and propose architectures that respond to these new and shifting conditions.
Johan Berglund & Rhys Cannon
Top: Cherry Beaumont, Harajuku School for the Almost Adult, Tokyo, timetable drawing. Bottom: Amanda Moore, Holborn Blood Bank, London, long section.
Clockwise from top left: Clarissa Yee, Growing a Printworks, Tokyo, screen printed perspective; Cho-Hee Sung, Rickshaw Centre, Tokyo, sectional model; Nichola Barrington-Leach, Arakawa River Sports Facility, Tokyo, Thermal Baths, interior view; Yll Ajvazi, Moisture Drawing Machine, London, installation photograph; Jaymar Vitangol, Turbulent market, London, model photograph; Nichola Barrington-Leach, Arakawa River Sports Facility, Tokyo, perspective view; Sandra Youkhana, Business School, Tokyo, axonometric view; Alexander Zhukov, Drawing from the Great Vine, London, detail view of photogram drawing.
Top: David Rhys Jones, The Local Warming Campaign HQ, London, model photograph. Middle: Christopher Mobbs, Sumotown, Tokyo, model photographs. Bottom: Max Walmsley, Sub-Nature Research Station, London, model photograph.
Top: Sandra Youkhana, Emergency Post Office, London, model photograph; Business School, Tokyo, model photograph. Middle: Matteo Imran Perretta, Neon Onsen, Tokyo, model photograph; Kings Cross Radiation Refuge, photographic study. Bottom: Matteo Imran Perretta, Neon Onsen, Tokyo, energy mapping.
Top: Stefano Passeri, Namazu’s Restless Temple, Tokyo, magnitude drawing. Bottom: Stefano Passeri, Unveiling Perry’s Submerged Forest, London, axonometric phase drawings; global view drawings.
BSc Unit 9 Yr 2: Charlotte Baker, Alastair Browning, Connor Cunnigham, Emily Doll, Natalia Eddy, Maryna Kuchak, Nabi Masutomi, Joanne Preston, Arub Saqib, Hongmiao Shi, William Harry Tweddell Yr 3: Joseph Dejardin, Joshua Green, Vinicius Machado Cipriano, Rebecca Thompson
In From The Cold In from the cold is an idiom: ‘Out of a position or condition of exile, concealment, isolation, or alienation: Since the new government promised amnesty, fugitive rebels are coming in from the cold’. It has been predicted that within nine years the world’s supply of oil will have peaked and as we enter a new unknown energy economy, the UK must acquire new energy sources – potentially a threatening state of affairs. The threat of a diminishing fuel supply is coupled with that of climate change, and as Britain adjusts to longterm weather changes, its notions of architecture will also undergo change. A new set of preoccupations for architecture is evolving, which aims to define and construct buildings that offer their users not only an enclosure and protection but systems to negotiate an uncertain future. It is the contention of Unit 9 that the newly emergent energy economy brings with it a new ideological atmosphere, which has something in common with the one that developed during and immediately after the Cold War. The Cold War generated an atmosphere of high ideological tension, which, curiously, was very productive for architecture. Seminal proposals from Eastern and Western architects and designers alike stand today as proof of the Cold War’s creative charge, the implicit threat of total annihilation seemed to encourage countless visions of technology’s transcendence over humanity. We studied Cold War propaganda strategies, adapting, revising and reinventing them as a means to address contemporary concerns and to redefine the agency of architecture in the making of proposals for buildings.
Max Dewdney & Chee-Kit Lai
Top and bottom left: William Harry Tweddell, Instrument for Activisim in Ballet. Bottom right: Alastair Browning, Platform 10 Kursky Railway Station.
Top and bottom: Alastair Browning, Platform 10 Kursky Railway Station. Middle: Charlotte Baker, Factory for Moscow Architecture Preservation Society.
Clockwise from top left: Natalia Eddy, Bandy Stadium; William Harry Tweddell, Theatre for Contemporary Ballet; Emily Doll, Viewing Device for St Paul’s Cathedral; Nabi Masutomi, Consulate for UNPO; Arub Saqib, Hotel + Transport Interchange; Vinicius Machado Cipriano, Winter Olympic Training Centre; Joanne Preston, Soviet Avant Garde Winter Cinema + Archive; Connor Cunningham, Moscow Mental Health Institute; Maryna Kuchak, Public Relations Factory. Opposite: Charlotte Baker, Factory for Moscow Architecture Preservation Society.
Above and opposite: Joshua Green, The Doronin Winery, East Moscow.
BSc Architectural Studies Yr 2: Karen Au, Jia Chen, Wai Kin Lam, Shireen Mohammadi, Bayan Okayeva, Simone Persadie, Fran Seal, Jonathan Tipper, Congjing Yao Yr 3: Emma Bass, Pasara Chaichanavichkij, Emilia Hadjikyriakou, Katherine Hatch, Matilda Keane, Rebecca Lane, Lydia Lim, Laura Neil, Mei Neoh, Ed Pearson, Isabelle Priest, Lucy Rothwell, Jingru Zhang
The Bartlett offers a BSc (Hons) in Architectural Studies (AS). This is a unique course that allows students to follow modules within the Bartlett in conjunction with modules in other departments of UCL. The programme has been running since 2002-3 and now has over 70 graduates and a well-established track record. Graduates have gone on to postgraduate studies and professional careers in a wide variety of fields including: journalism, landscape design, lighting design, documentary film, conservation, photography, sculpture, print-making, arts education and management, event management, planning, law, marketing and the media, property valuation, construction management, the charity sector, and heritage institutions. They have pursued further studies at places from the Royal College of Art to ETH in Zurich as well as in various UCL Masters programmes.
BSc Architectural Studies Director: Barbara Penner
The great strength of the AS programme is its multidisciplinarity: students are able to tailor their own course of study to suit their particular interests and future postgraduate and career plans. It suits highly motivated, independent students who are interested in architecture and urban studies and who wish to take advantage of electives on offer elsewhere in UCL. Popular choices are Art History, Management, Language, Economics, History, Philosophy, Mathematics, Anthropology, Law, Archaeology, Biology, and Geography. There are two specially tailored course modules for Architectural Studies students within the Bartlett. The Dissertation is an independent written project focusing on an architectural subject of a student’s choice and resulting in an investigative in-depth written report. Project X is an independent creative project in which students research an architectural idea or series of ideas through visual and other architectural media – including drawing, photography, model-making, casting, sound, film, new digital media, installation and performance – in conjunction with a short creative written piece. Examples from both Dissertation and Project X are reproduced on the following pages.
Project X Yr 2: Wai Kin Lam (Ryan), Shireen Mohammadi (Bahar), Bayan Okayeva, Francesca Seal, Jonathan Tipper Yr 3: Pasara Chaichanavichkij, Emilia Hadjikyriakou, Matilda Keane, Rebecca Lane, Ed Pearson, Jingru Zhang
Project X aims to help students build a creative and reflective practice of their own. It enables them to undertake a mode of working that particularly interests them and an independent practice-based project in which they can research and pursue a subject of their preference. Students are asked to think of architecture in interdisciplinary ways, explore alternative approaches to design and situate their work within a broader cultural context. The work is developed in conjunction with a short written piece. A series of key questions confront students at different stages of the year concerning the nature of their practice, the contribution of their work to the broader field of architecture, the originality of their project, and the selection of appropriate media for the ideas pursued.
Project X Coordinator: Elizabeth Dow & Chee-Kit Lai Project X Tutor: Katherine Bash
Top left to right: Francesca Seal. Clockwise from bottom right: Jonathan Tipper, Pasara Chaichanavichkij, Pasara Chaichanavichkij, Francesca Seal, Jonathan Tipper, Matilda Keane.
Top: Rebecca Lane. Clockwise from bottom right: Rebecca Lane, Matilda Keane, Jonathan Tipper, Matilda Keane, Ed Pearson.
Emilia Hadjikyriakou.
Dissertation Yr 2: Bayan Okayeva, Simone Persaide Yr 3: Emma Bass, Pasara Chaichanavichkij, Emilia Hadjikyriakou, Katie Hatch, Matilda Keane, Rebecca Lane, Lydia Lim, Laura Neil, Mei Neoh, Ed Pearson, Isabelle Priest, Lucy Rothwell, Jingru Zhang
The Dissertation in Architectural Studies enables students to undertake an independent research project of 10,000 words. The emphasis is on conducting original research and producing an in-depth written report, supported by appropriate visual and textual documentation. This course is taught through individual or small group tutorials, supplemented by occasional seminars and group meetings. The aims of the Dissertation are to enable students to conduct primary research, to think critically about issues with architectural implications, and to develop and showcase practical writing and presentation skills.
Extract from Rebecca Lane (Year 3) ‘Viewing Chora through St Martin-inthe-Fields’. Chora, and her attributed qualities, represent our culture’s key thoughts regarding what is involved in an ultimate space: a space indefinable and utterly contrary, which includes limitless possibilities, including an ability to give; inspired by the moment of creation. Here I question what constitutes this ultimate space; which in the Christian heritage of the West is the house of God. Our understanding, interpretation and translation of Chora have immediate impact on our aspirations for architecture. So what is Chora? What implications do our various interpretations of Chora have upon the relationship between power and belief, God and People, the different sexes and people and the Earth. The primary concern here is the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘other’. Chora as a concept has provided food for thought amongst architectural thinkers
for the past three decades. Chora’s implicit notions of the Greek word for place and locale that naturally aligns it to architecture was brought back to life by Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato’s concept. The receptacle of Chora is perceived as filled space, between the receptacle itself and the space inside. As space, Chora’s role is to provide both three-dimensional extension and a specific location for any observable particular to be “in” at a given time: for any particular to be, it must occupy some spatial location. The use of Derrida’s notion of Chora underpinned the philosophy of the Deconstructivist movement in architecture from the 1980s and influenced the works of Daniel Libeskind and Peter Eisenman. St Martin-in-the-Fields is a perfect case study for appreciating the effects of our understanding of Chora. As a church it addresses the themes of God, creation, humanity and includes the notion of giving that Plato threads through all three in Timaeus. The original church building is firmly set in the patriarchal notions of creation, whilst the recent refurbishment and extension have been built 20 years after Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion. This allows us to understand the effects of the changing role of Chora within one building. Chora can be used to interpret traditional religious architecture, through a logocentric reading of Plato’s notion of Chora. By this, I mean in terms of a space, a receptacle that is open to be filled by the spirit of God, allowing the building to act both as a metaphor for the human receptacle of the holy spirit, and the pregnant possibility of creation imprinted on the empty space. Church naves become a physical representation of a receptacle, a pregnant nothingness that hints at possibility. The moment one possibility is chosen, Chora remains to remind you that there were other possibilities all along. Derrida pushes this aspect of the concept so that Chora becomes the embodiment of possibilities that stretch out infinitesimally, without any imprint, and as an utterly faceless otherness. This becomes for Derrida a moment that is simultaneously everything and nothing. Plato’s concept of Chora alludes to an
ultimate space, a space with unlimited capacity of giving, the moment of creation expanded out to allow one to dwell in God’s safety: in his moment of pure giving before worldly reality rushes in. Chora here is a moment of motherly protection, encapsulated in the stillness of the rejected other possibilities. The Godly creation of Plato’s Chora can be read in the Nave of the original church. The building blocks that Plato uses to construct his notion can be seen in the church’s spaces of the chamber and crypt. Plato uses human notions to aid our understanding of the implicit otherness of creation: The womb is the active nurturing of creation; the otherness is God in the image of Man (although Plato uses the masculine, I understand it to be humankind.) The chamber demonstrates the qualities of the womb in Plato’s Chora; the crypt the qualities of Humanity.
Extract from Isabelle Priest (Year 3) ‘Gilbert Bayes and his partnership with the St. Pancras Housing Association, 1927–1939’. This essay elucidates the story of sculptor Gilbert Bayes and his partnership with St.Pancras Housing Association (SPHA) between 1926 and 1938. Although primarily set in the St.Pancras Housing Association estates built to re-house slum dwellers in Somers Town, Doric Way Estate, 1926–1936, and Sidney Street Estate, 1930–1938, this essay also considers Bayes’ work produced for the Althone Estate in Kentish Town, 1933–1937, and York Rise Estate in Highgate, 1936–1938. Whereas previous research on Bayes’ sculptural work for the Association has focused either on him or the SPHA, this essay unites the two in a comprehensive study placing the collaboration in the context of the period as well as in architectural historiography. This research examines the life and work
of Bayes, the commitment to Bayes by the St.Pancras Housing Association, the design of the housing estates, and the iconographies behind the sculptures. The essay also addresses two other essential partnerships of Bayes with respect to his social housing work: that with the in-house architect of the SPHA, Ian B. Hamilton and with the Doulton Factory, Lambeth. The essay acts as a lens into a strange but revealing episode of London history where there was a great optimism for the future after the First World War. An optimism which for Gilbert Bayes and the SPHA encompassed the ideas and rationale of Socialism, the Garden City and Arts and Crafts movements. The history of Gilbert Bayes, particularly for SPHA, is an aspect of the inter-war years long buried by Modernist artistic and architectural discourse. ‘Swamped by the tide of abstraction that dominated sculpture in Britain’ since the Second World War ‘Bayes sank into relative obscurity, together with his contemporaries who had refused to abandon the figurative tradition.’ Although contemporaries like Eric Gill have regained their status in the history of modern sculpture, Gilbert Bayes is still not widely studied. Consequently, literature research has been hindered by lack of documentation and secondary sources, relying heavily on those working on behalf of Gilbert Bayes’ reputation at the Bayes Charitable Trust. From my communication with the charity, this organisation consists of about three active members. Indeed, articles and books written on Bayes are by either Louise Irvine or Paul Atterbury of this organisation. Thus, I have taken inspiration from Beatriz Colomina’s ‘Archive’ in Privacy and Publicity (1996) as means of relaying findings. Faced with the gaps in Adolf Loos’ archive, Colomina’s method is honest – be open about what information exists and where there is lack of information.
Extract from Matilda Keane (Year 3) ‘Knitting, craftivism and space: the new uses of domestic crafts challenging traditional concepts of gender, domesticity and public space’. ‘To know the history of embroidery is to know the history of women.’ Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch, 1984. Some time ago, at an activist gallery opening, I was confounded when I overheard someone remarking that ‘knitting has become the new street art, the new graffiti’. How could knitting, something I had always associated with the domestic chores and notions of femininity of my grandmother’s era, have become a form of political and social activism? Who were these activist knitters? I became so intrigued by these ideas that I decided to learn to knit. […] Before learning to knit I had been interested in activism and ‘alternative’ platforms for art for some time. […] However upon attending numerous planning meetings for the direct action events/performances I came to understand that the movement of civil disobedience and direct action was male dominated and relied on ‘masculine’ tactics to achieve attention from the public or the press. These tactics were often not successful in reaching their intended wider audience either due to the intended messages not being simple and therefore easily understood or due to the radical nature of these actions pushing people away. These discoveries led me to question why more women were not involved within this and other direct action scenes. Was it because women were not interested in social and political issues or because they were directing their energy into other areas and into different forms of direct action?
I went to a Mutoid Waste Company’s One Foot in the Grove exhibition in Ladbroke Grove, where I met the activist ceramicist Carrie Reichardt who introduced me to the ‘craftivist’ (craft plus activism) movement. I came to understand that craftivism could be a reaction to the continued male dominance within both the activist and art scene movements. The most prominent and popular craft in the craftivist movement is knitting and I wanted to understand why there was a resurgence in knitting among young women and a few men. I became confused as to why feminists were reclaiming crafts when many had fought precisely for their liberation from the home. I had my first knitting lesson at a weekly knitting circle event called Stitch n’ Bitch, in a restaurant in Spitalfields Market, where they had a learner’s corner with ‘stitchettes’- expert knitters, who taught new comers knitting, purling and casting on. […] The next time I attempted knitting was on a train and a mother with her two children sat next to me and took out her knitting and showed me how to purl, cast on and cast off. It was then that I realised that knitting enabled me to interact with other women in an appreciative feminine context. I began to understand why many other women were taking up knitting en masse in public spaces. What effect would this have on feminism? In this essay I examine knitting and embroidery and its relationship to gender and public space. More specifically I investigate what it means for a knitting circle, constituted of mainly women who are teaching, learning and supporting one another, to come together in large public spaces to knit, an activity which has traditionally been perceived as a feminine, domestic chore. How do these actions change the way we understand the gendering of public spaces? Are the actions of these knitters opposed to the traditional aims of feminism, that is, to assert female equality with men and to reject domesticity?
Bartlett architecture students undertake their studies in the full range of architectural subject matter and enquiry. Professional Studies, History & Theory and Technology are all explored both implicitly within the design process and explicitly in specialised and comprehensive stand-alone modules. Through this integrated and extensive approach to architectural education, students experience all aspects of architecture, from the abstract and theoretical, social and cultural, rational and pragmatic, to the managerial and economic.
Professional Studies & Part 3 From day one, architecture students are asked to question the role and function of the architect. The range of practices which graduates later join is as diverse as the the individuals who arrive at the school – and in the intervening period, preconceptions are continually challenged through encounters with fellow students, teachers (many of whom run their own practices) and numerous visiting experts. Students’ own ambitions and career aspirations are nurtured within the framework of innovative professional studies courses, as well as through informal advice on practice and employment. Susan Ware Director of Professional Studies
Year 1 BSc Architecture year 1 students work with planning and construction management students on the ‘Production of the Built Environment’ course, which introduces the various professionals and organisations involved in the process of producing buildings, as well as broader political social and economic forces. In BSc Year 3 students take the ‘Preparing for Practice’ course which equips them for life in an architectural practice during their subsequent Year Out. Year Out The Year Out course itself continues the connection with the Bartlett and provides support and monitoring of practical experience through individual tutorials and a series of themed lecture days. Year 4 The Design Realisation course in the Diploma Architecture Year 4 brings together professional practice, construction and technology through a unique configuration of individual design units, practice tutors, consultants and visiting lecturers. Part 3 The Part 3 Certificate in Professional Practice and Management is open to non-Bartlett students and is truly international, attracting students from over 25 different countries. The course prepares students for registration as an architect through a comprehensive course of lectures, seminars and tutorials. A unique virtual learning environment enables students working in offices to remain closely connected to the Bartlett, and to form networks among themselves for self-directed learning. The Part 3 lecture course is available to architectural practices and as CPD. Lectures can be taken individually or in themed groups.
History & Theory Architectural history and theory is a staging post, a provisional place of reflection, a continual project. And it is omnipresent – every architect, every historian, every theorist, knowingly or not, uses some intersection of history and theory every time they design, document, discuss or speculate.
Year 3 Dissertation
Year 4 History and Theory Article
Thandiwe Loewenson
Costa Elia
Tracing the architecture of the parliament building in Zimbabwe: a symbol of political aspiration or a stamp of dominant authority?
Enchanted Catastrophe: The Cover of Le Corbusier.
At the Bartlett, architectural history and theory interjects at all levels, from introductions to architectural analysis, from encounters with buildings to the elaboration of critical practices, from public discussions to individually focused research projects.
After parliament was set up, the building mimicked the design symbols of British democracy, while masking the repression of the black population. Between 1965 and 1979, armed struggle marginalised the parliament politically, reflected in stagnation in the building design.
Professor Iain Borden Director of Architectural History & Theory
This thesis explored the relative role of parliament and the executive at different stages of Zimbabwe’s history, asking at each period how the design of the parliament building accommodates and reflects the changes in the balance of power and authority.
By mimicking the layout and symbols of Westminster, it exposed the real executive power behind the Rhodesian Legislative Assembly. The desire for a new building in 1935 revealed a political shift, with white settlers identifying less with being British and more as Rhodesians in their thirst for increasing self-determination. Whilst it has no direct agency or ability to influence the dominant politics, the building is by no means a passive shell, as reflected in the moments in which it has masked or revealed political shifts in Zimbabwe.
Le Corbusier’s book Quand Les Cathédrales Étaient Blanches was published in 1937 and gave an account of his impressions and plans for the city of New York following his first trip there in 1935. The book is often overlooked, if not marginalised, in contemporary studies of his work. I was initially drawn to it to see what could be understood of the viewed object – New York – through the writing. However, with further study, and drawing on the theories of Lorens Holm and Simon Richards concerning the subjectivity of perspective and its role in self-identity, it became clear that an author’s depiction of a topic was inseperable from their sense of self. In effect, this ‘collusion’ that Holm identifies between one’s perspectives/desires and their identity (Holm, 2010, p.1) means that the architect’s plans and observations in Quand Les Cathédrales can reveal as much about the viewing subject – Le Corbusier – as his topic of the city. Here it is the published image or screen that divides the subject of representation – the man – from his gaze upon the city. We will turn this screen into a mirror on Le Corbusier by interpreting what the architect chose to publish as part of his view and what he chose to omit. Then we will turn to the book, examining its text and frontispiece in order to see how he represented his perspective of New York; and then to the author as contained within the text and image, to gain a renewed understanding of what the author states himself to be via what he states New York to be.
Technology The best projects are those where entrenched boundaries between the design, history, theory, practice, use and technology of architecture are devoured and untraceable. They are the impudent trangressions of insatiable imagination and intellectual curiosity, motivated by the urge to reinvent our discipline and the substance of its production. Bob Sheil Director of Technology
Thandiwe Loewenson
Kirsty Williams
Technology Prize
Making Buildings Award
It is an adventurous and creative mind that incorporates top-down ventilation systems, bio-fuel manufacture and algae brise-soleil to manage the extreme climatic environment of Hong Kong. Thandiwe’s technology submission contains the imaginative complexity of a Heath Robinson Cartoon at once being both highly technical and poetic with few stones remaining unturned in her comprehensive technology thesis.
Kirsty Williams is the recipient of this fabrication award, generously donated by the lecturers’ of the Making Building Lecture Series, to develop her technologically innovative idea into built form. Kirsty’s exceptional idea is to use salt growth and harvesting to be embedded in the fabric of the building to facilitate a wider energy conservation and cooling strategy designed to operate over a 500 year lifespan. The product of this will be on display in the Bartlett Lobby Gallery later in the year.
Grad Dip/MArch Architecture
Dip/MArch Unit 10 Yr 4: Jawad Abdelhafid, Rachel Guo, Yong Lik Lee, Roger Molina-Vera, Chantanee Nativivat, Marcin Sztyk, Jen Wang Yr 5: Byron Bassington, Lik San Chan, Barry Cho, Sulawan Isvarphornchai, Janice Lee, Geraldine Ng, Dean Walker
Happy is the CITY which, in times of war, talks of FOOD We are simultaneously experiencing a global food crisis resulting from low productivity, government policies diverting food crops to the creation of biofuels, climate change, and growing food demand brought on by an exponentially expanding population. Architecture needs to offer intelligent solutions that demonstrate visionary sustainable thinking. Can food redefine the paraphernalia of our future cities? The food we consume and ultimately food production have profound influence on the architectural landscapes of our urban and peri-urban areas. The Unit focused on the understanding of our everyday food narratives and the sustainability of comfortable healthy living, together with all its historical shades and social connotations. As economic inflation is measured by the price increase of bread, milk and butter, smells, colours and textures of food can also define the tectonics, social and cultural map of our communities. How will food culture influence the pursuit of sustainable environments and establish a visionary architectural and urban discourse? Unit 10 would like to thank Simon Dickens for his teaching of the Design Realization module.
CJ Lim & Bernd Felsinger
Top: Janice Lee, The Tate + Lyle Dessert Palace, London (0.07 km2). Bottom: Sulawan Isvarphornchai, Making of a Twin City, Berlin (2.2km2).
Byron Bassington, The New Embassy of the USA, London (1.2km2).
Geraldine Ng, The Urban Shepherdess + London Fields Meat Palace, London (4.71km2).
Barry Cho, White Emission City of London, (18.2km2).
Lik San Chan, Tempelhof Ministry of Food, Berlin (2.2km2).
Dean Walker, Southwark Cooperative Food Isle, London (28.1km2).
Dip/MArch Unit 11 Yr 4: Ioana Barbantan, Adam Holland, Rina Kukaj, Adam Lansdown-Bridge, James Palmer, Justin Randle, Eleanor Stevenson, Catrina Stewart Yr 5: Erin Byrne, Will Jefferies, Emily Keyte, Rae Whittow-Williams, Chris Wilkinson
Neo-Nature ‘Land is the oldest of all archives… It is the most widely shared aide-memoire of a culture’s understanding of its past and future and is the “memory bank” of society.’ Jenny Iles. Nostalgia and wonder permeate our collective perception of the urban and rural landscape that surrounds us. They trigger an emotive rather than analytic response and profound reverence for the complexity of nature. In Unit 11 we have followed inquiries into architecture that synthesize landscape and its relationship with culture and environment. Recently our focus has widened to scrutinize organisations, regulatory bodies and institutions that have influenced the contemporary context of landscape and controlled its development, designated its use and consequently altered our perception of the natural and the manmade. Last year, politics, scientific data, NGO designations and environmental engineering further informed our studies. This year we took the term ‘Neo-Nature’ as a starting point, which at once suggests an evolutionary development as well as a synthesis of the natural and the technological. It suggests an artificial scene which, in fact, or at least in our perception develops from the capriciousness of man, nature and culture. We proposed pseudo landscapes – ersatz topographies, artificial terrains and quasi architectures – superficially prophetic or partly parody. We investigated the friction between progress and conservation via political, technological and artistic disciplines thinking about what architecture can do with them and for them.
Laura Allen & Mark Smout
Top: Adam Landsowne Bridge, Pastures New. Bottom: James Palmer, Thames Gateway Delivery Vehicle.
Clockwise from top: Chris Wilkinson, Rehydrated Landscape with Speciation Devices, Monte Corona, Lanzarote; Justin Randle, Lanzarote Arboretum; Elle Stevenson, The Art of Imposing Charm, Lordship Lane; Catrina Stewart, Pasa de Alimentos Secos, Lanzarote; Ioana Barbantan, TetraPak Park, Wandle Valley; Erin Byrne, ‘Playworks’, Building PLAY Workshop, ICA, London; Adam Holland, Festival of Sardines, Lanzarote.
Will Jeffries, Escape Preston: Bus Station Landscapes.
Top: Emily Keyte, Dark Green Conference Centre, Lanzarote. Bottom: Rae Whittow Williams, The Science of Vulgar Knowledge: Psuedo-scientific Diaoramas Explore Climate Change Predictions, Environmental Myth and Old Wifes Tales.
Erin Byrne, The Play Book: Transposing Fantasy. Opposite page: Chris Wilkinson, Teesport Phytoplankton Farm: Future Ecologies From 20th Century Industry.
Dip/MArch Unit 12 Yr 4: Steven Baumann, Oliver Bawden, James Crick, Omar Ghazal, Michael Hughes, Luke Jones, Na Li, Dijan Malla, Hugh McEwen, Erika Suzuki, Daniel Swift Gibbs Yr 5: Tom Noonan, Tom Reynolds, Anna Vallius
Time, Motion, Energy This year we explored time, motion and energy. On sites situated along the Thames, Year 5 students each proposed a building for a specific site that had a catalytic effect on London and a locality. The most creative architects have looked to the past to imagine a future, studying an earlier architecture not to replicate it but to understand and transform it, revealing its relevance to the present. Soane looked to ancient Greece, Mies admired Schinkel and the Smithsons absorbed the spirit of the picturesque. As a creative stimulus and narrative resource for twenty-first century architecture, Unit 12 focuses on earlier centuries as well as those more recent. When everybody else is looking in one time and one place, it’s always good to look elsewhere. Combining our concerns for immediate and historical time, we draw buildings in multiple states: under construction, as a recently discovered ruin, and with a future use. Representing loss as well as potential, the ruin is a means to represent time and reconsider monumentality. Combining a concern for subjective experience and environmental awareness, Unit 12 recognises a picturesque and romantic thread that began in the eighteenth century, continued in romantic classicism and was revived in the mid-twentieth century as a means to question one modernism – international, mechanical and insensitive – in favour of another – local, emotive and environmentally aware. Today, climate change ensures the increasing relevance of this evolving tradition.
Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow & Jonathan Hill
Top: James Crick, Egeus (the barn). Middle: Anna Vallius, Public Bath-house Along the Subterranean Walbrook, section. Bottom: Luke Jones, New Imperial Finance Ministry, sectional perspective; Daniel Swift Gibbs, IERS HQ: Calibrometric Projection Series III.
Clockwise from top left Erika Suzuki, Domestic River Smokery, elevation; Dijan Malla, Cathedral, Isola de San Michele, section; Na Li, Monastery of the Himalayas, City of London, perspective; Steven Baumann, Urban Cemetery, axonometric; MichaelHughes, Agrarian Airship Terminus, perspective; Omar Ghazal, Halfway House, The Dining Plane and The Smoking Pan; Hugh McEwen, Anarchitecture, linocut; Oliver Bawden, House Module, under construction.
Tom Reynolds, Brickworks and Night School, Mucking, sections.
Tom Noonan, John Evelyn Institute of Arboreal Science, Deptford. Clockwise from top left: detail; the new forest; undercroft.
Tom Noonan, John Evelyn Institute of Arboreal Science, Deptford, river perspective.
Dip/MArch Unit 13 Yr 4: Paul Broadbent, Sam Clark, Thomas Impiglia, Xin Yu Xie, Seng Chun Tan Yr 5: Geraldine Holland, Morounkeji Majekodunmi
Tesla Laboratory ‘The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of a planter – for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way.’ Nikola Tesla in a Wired interview 142 years after his birth. Who was Tesla? A genius scientist, engineer, inventor and discoverer of the principles and laws of nature, claiming over 130 original patents. Tesla invented some of the most substantial contributions to the world’s scientific and technological advances. His biggest invention, however, was the worldwide wireless electrical transmission. He claimed that there was more than sufficient energy from natural sources on earth and that therefore everyone should have free access to it. Nevertheless, we do not associate his name with any of these inventions. Tesla had powerful enemies, and died alone and bankrupt. The key question for Unit 13 was: what would the Tesla Laboratory and the Wardenclyffe Tower – which Tesla had not been able to finish because of financial issues – look like in the era of Ubiquitous- and Grid-Computing, and the technological advances of today? The task was to re-design those from a 21st-century point of view, bearing in mind important criteria such as new energy sources, resource-regenerative technologies, lifecycle intelligence, augmented realities, virtual world making, cutting edge computer technology, performative design strategies, on-demand and sensitive spaces, simulation platforms, architecture of the networks, connected intelligence and innovative materials.
Ivan Redi & Roz BarrRedi & AndTutors: ORTLOS - Ivan rea Redi with Roz Barr
Thomas Impiglia Belgrade, Belgrade: Memory Lab. Above: Memory lab in context, real and virtual, media art, architecture and ruin. Birthed from the urban fabric. Opposite page: Belgrade: Overlooking the Bridge, Building as a regenerative force for the rehabilitation of Belgrade.
Opposite page: Xinyu Xie, Design Process on Merging Vertical Farming Tower and Creative Tower. Above: Xinyu Xie, A New System/Economy Emerged out of the Old Collapsed System.
Sam Clark, Solar Plant, Alice Springs, Australia.
Paul Broadbent, Click-to-Play, The Grat達o Favela, S達o Paulo, rapid context model.
Dip/MArch Unit 14 Yr 4: Sophie George, Ammar Mirjan, Heechan Park, David Scott, Elena Thatcher Yr 5: Jonathan Craig, David DiDuca, Subomi Fapohunda, Elenor Lakin, Chin Lye, Maxine Pringle, Guy Woodhouse
The Experimental Toy Factory We returned to the theme of ‘doing it for real’ with The Experimental Toy Factory. Toys are part of a wider range of social objects that are used by children and adults to construct and maintain their appreciation and understanding of the worlds that they inhabit. They can often contain extreme examples of cutting edge technology mass-produced at very low cost. What useful purpose is served by shipping these inanimate objects from one side of the world to the other when they can be devised and tested closer to home? Students were asked to design an experimental factory where toys are invented, prototyped, tested and (possibly) made. They were then asked to develop a key idea so that it became a personal experimental toy. Unit 14’s aim was to support individual original work of exceptionally high quality within the framework of time-based architecture, architecture that is designed and understood in four dimensions. The unit explored how architecture responds to the natural and man-made physical world and how this response is perceived by human users and observers, each with a wealth of prior experience and knowledge. This year we specifically examined how architecture coexists with the world of invention. For our field trip, we went to Copenhagen to see the city and present work at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Art. Special thanks to our critics: Jason Bruges, Usman Haque, Dominic Harris, Ruairi Glynn, Mette Thomsen and Phil Ayres.
Stephen Gage & Richard Roberts
Top left to bottom Right: Sophie George, Ammar Mirjan, Heechan Park, David Scott, Elena Thatcher, Jonathan Craig, David DiDuca, Subomi Fapohunda, Elenor Lakin, Chin Lye, Maxine Pringle, Guy Woodhouse.
Maxine Pringle Year 5, A Wearable Architecture. Max has taken a long-standing interest in the relationship between architecture and fashion forward to a performance project based on the idea of an architectural ‘promenade’.
Top: Guy Woodhouse, Reconfigurable Van Eyck. Guy Was interested in the interlocking geometries of Aldo Van Eyck and how these relate to the creation of social space. He linked these ideas to the construction of drivable street furniture that manipulated social space according to time of day/day of the week and occupancy. Bottom: David DiDuca, Year 5, A Framework for Affordance. Dave looked at the perception of illusion in architecture, asking how this is constructed into ‘reality’ by observers. A number of 1:1 experiments culminated in an installation that presented variable depth illusions, testing ideas about the inherent richness in ambiguity
Elenor Lakin, Year 5, Newtonian Experiments in Perception, Taking her cue from Vitruvius 10.1.4 Elie has spent the year designing and making machinery that makes the intersection between electromagnetic radiation and gravity visible. The image shows a a gravity driven rotation arm that traces three sine waves onto a luminous film.
Top: Jonathan Craig, Year 5, Me Myself and You. Jonty investigated the architectural implications of image, self -mage and reflection initially through digital images before working with large dynamic mirrors that responded to observers and their location. Middle and Bottom: Subomi Fapohunda, Year 5, Constructing a Performative Architecture. Subomi worked on active statues that interacted with each other and observers. The movements of the statues were modeled on fencing positions.
This Page: Chin Lye, Year 5, Expression and Perception through Puppetry. Chin developed an exquisite set of devices, derived from origami, that articulate wall surfaces and interact with observers using protocols derived from puppetry. The implicit knowledge of working puppeteers was captured using potentiometers in the driving servos .
Dip/MArch Unit 15 Yr 4: Jonathan Gales, Doug Harding, Katharina Hieger, Chris Lees, Paul Nicholls, Dan Tassell, Kibwe Tavares, Richard Young Yr 5: Richard Hardy, Tom Johnson, Yianni Kattirtzis, Louise Mackie, Keiichi Matsuda, Chao-Kai Wang, Natalie Wright
Year of The Depend Adult Undergarment We are all addicts: we are addicted to the new; to consuming more; to the myth of progress; to celebrity; to cheap credit; to cosmetic surgery; to fast cars; to lifestyle magazines; to make-over shows; to reality TV; to self harm; to nostalgia; to dieting; to the myth of authenticity; to the ‘new’; to binge drinking; to search engines; to social networking websites; to video and image sharing; to gambling; to gossip; to decadence; to tradition: to lists of our addictions; to fossil fuel; to thinking that we are special and unique; but most of all we are addicted to addiction itself, we are dependency dependent! This year, Unit 15 used David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest as a starting point for an analysis of the psychopathologies of Late Capitalism and the way that they transform the built environment. The context and implications of obsessive/addictive behaviour were used to develop tactics to cope with the difficulties of creating an architecture in uncertain times. We sought to undertake a re-calibration of the mechanisms of architectural discourse, through the production, development and dissemination of alternative architectural models, methodologies and outcomes. Unit 15 Thanks: Simon Withers, Kim Quazi, Vesna Petrasin Robert, Sean Varney, Bella Edgley, Michael Aling, Dan Farmer, Soki So, George Thomson, Nancy NiBhrian, Matt Bowles, Stefan Kueppers, onedotzero, Alpha-ville
Nic Clear & Simon Kennedy
Top: Chris Lees, Museum of Consumer Electronics. Bottom: Dan Tassell, The Reality Obscura.
Top: Paul Nicholls, The Royal Cabinets Centre. Middle: Jonathan Gales, The Pentecostal Ministry of Fire.
Clockwise from top left: Nathalie Wright, Hoarding In Suburbia; Kibwe Tavares, The Tower; Katharina Hieger, Thinktank; Doug Harding, The Fixer; Tom Johnson, Parliament Square 2020.
Top: Yianni Kattirtzis, A Failed Entertainment. Middle: Louise Mackie, The Exhibit and the Cage. Bottom: Richard Young, Wastefield.
Richard Hardy, The Transcendent City (film still).
Top: Keiichi Matsuda, Domestic RoboCop. Bottom: Keiichi Matsuda, Augmented (Hyper) Reality.
Dip/MArch Unit 16 Yr 4: Meor Haris K Bahrin, Sun Woo Hwang, Kyu Sik Shin, Shanaver Hamid, Kate Marrinan, Bong Yeung, Vanessa Chik Yr 5: Jinhyuk Ko, Wan Lok Lo, Ashley Ma, Nick Wood, Emily Yeung
Common-Wealth Don’t you get that curious and unnerving feeling that we are all somehow unwittingly working for Google? Increasingly we inhabit a world living vicariously through the encrypted pseudo personalities of our on-screen inworld micro personas, unconsciously drifting through hypertext paradigms. A world in which we practice living our life, detached, seamlessly switching through various mediated context specific selves, Instant Messaging, Twittering, curiously making ourselves up as we go along. Mashing context, deliciously devoid of any true content, enacting genres, adopting alternate personalities, role-playing, outsourcing our emotions, whilst exhibiting those of others: Wondering, whose personality is this anyhow? Boundaries have traditionally defined the physical geographical limits of the tribe. The machines and technologies of mass observation and communication blur and dissolve our Cartesian certainty. So what happens to the total social construct? What remains of the physical self? What are our hardware needs? Consider those utopian dreams of the 20th Century, from the counter culture of the 50s and 60s, through the nihilistic disillusionment of Punk, the ambivalence of Generation X, to the Anti – Globalization alliance and environmental activism of 10:10. Last year the unit examined our precarious relationship with the forces of global change and the emergence of a new geographical epoch. This year, following the failure of the collective corporate utopian dream of endless growth, the unit explored the Free Commonwealth as articulated by John Milton in 1660; where true wealth meant well-being. The unit visited the Shrinking City of Detroit via Chicago and Toronto. Special thanks to our critics: Joerg Majer, Dominic Harris and Philip Turner.
Simon Herron & Susanne Isa
Top, bottom and oppposite page: Emily Yeung, House of GaGa.
Top: Meor Haris K Bahrin, Methane Generator Station, Kensington, Chelsea. Bottom: Kyu Sik Shin, Chicken House. Opposite page: Nick Wood, Belleisle, Detroit.
Top: Sun Woo Hwang, An Autonomous Island. Bottom and opposite page: Jinhyuk Ko, Ship O’ Fools.
Dip/MArch Unit 17 Yr 4: Matthew Eberhard , Fernanda Fiuza, Tony Staples, Emma Tubbs, Jay Victoria, Georgina Ward, Christopher Wong Yr 5: Tala Akkawi, Justine Bell, Alastair Crockett, Jonathan Horsfall, Katsura Leslie, Tatiana Malysheva, Thomas Winter
Decay and Emergence – The Becoming of Cities In 1194BC, 1000 ships beached on the shoreline of Asia Minor and set up camp. They remained there for 10 years before sacking Troy. A temporary city consumed an existing city, and then disappeared. At the end of the 19th century, the republican Brazilian army relied heavily on former slaves for recruits. Freed a decade earlier, but with no land or wealth, enlisting was a way of escaping poverty and came with the promise of land after service. On returning victorious to the capital, they discovered the promised housing hadn’t been built. So they established an encampment on the hill overlooking what was to become downtown. Many of them had families in tow. Over time the camp became more established as the row over housing provision continued without resolution. Many found work constructing new suburbs of the rapidly expanding city. Rio de Janeiro’s first Favela was born, and so began a symbiotic process that continues still. This year, the first year in history that more than half of the world’s population will live in cities, the unit considered the emergence of cities in mythical and structural terms. Our field trip took us to Rio de Janeiro. There we studied the relationship that exists between City and Favela, and how the tensions between the two are dissipated once a year by the liminal festival of Carnival. We examined the complex dynamic systems that underpin dense urbanism and explored the historical precedents and the stories we tell ourselves: mythic, poetic and scientific; that allow us to make sense of these constructs.
Niall McLaughlin, Adam Cole & Tilo Guenther
Above and opposite page: Justine Bell, Landfall: the Other Shore.
Top: Tatiana Malysheva, Rochina’s Water: From Chaos to Order. Bottom: Tala Akkawi, Santa Teresa Transport Interchange, Rio de Janeiro.
Jonathan Horrsfall, A Choreographed Architecture in Rio’s Sambadrome.
Top: Alastair Crockett, Rochina Planning Office, Rio de Janeiro. Bottom: Katsura Leslie, Reconstructing Solar de Monjope, Rio de Janeiro.
Thomas Winter, Reconstructing Landscape.
Dip/MArch Unit 18 Yr 5: Quinton Clarke, Rory Donald, Christian Dorin, Harry Godfrey, Elizabeth Kirchner
Psychospace Space, experienced emotionally, is not isotropic. Through processes of mental projection and association that are deeply rooted in the collective unconscious and the individual psyche, different attributes of space, both within nature and in manmade environments, are invested with psychological connotations that are not intrinsic to them but have a profound effect on us. We can be deeply moved by space. Different psychoanalytic theories propose various analogies between psychic and spatial structure, but associations vary from individual to individual and are open to interpretation and creative license. It is up to us as designers to challenge conventional associations and archetypal symbolism, play with them, and invent our own. Strangely, architects are usually reluctant to engage with the psychological dimension of space and seldom design buildings with the deliberate intention of provoking and manipulating emotions. Actors provoke emotional responses. Can a building “act”? Can it project it’s own sense of being, its personality, agenda, ambition? Is this the next mutation in architectural evolution, a sentient extension of biomorphism into the realm of artificial intelligence and personality? The brief was to design an environment that induces a strong psychological reaction: agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear, anger, aggression, irritation, impatience, surprise, wonder, curiosity, amusement, suspense, desire, delight, happiness, wellbeing, love, tenderness, ecstasy. The ultimate aim was to challenge students to reconcile the ‘reality principle’ of developing a finely tuned project with the ‘pleasure principle’ of giving free reign to unconscious desires in conceiving a singular vision of an emotionally striking psychospace.
Colin Fournier & David Ardill
Clockwise from top: Harry Godfrey, Masked Venetians; Christian Dorin, Restaurant Se7en; Elizabeth Kirchner, Carnevale Club; Quinton Clarke, Gondoliers’ Social Club; Rory Donald, Santa Maria Della Salute Laboratory. Opposite page: Harry Godfrey, Ambivalent Desires Glass Bottle Reycling Plant.
Elizabeth Kirchner, Frustration: Reward. Elevated Luxury for Neo-Renaissance Man. Clockwise from top left: layered glass sectional model; design development; roof plan.
Christian Dorin, Restaurant Se7en; A Taste of the Seven Deadly Sins. Top: Perspective of Sloth Chamber. Bottom: Pressure-sensitive Glutony device.
Quinton Clarke, Gondoliers’ Social Club. Top: Section through Seating Pod. Bottom: Installation Introspective Passage. Opposite page: Rory Donald, Santa Maria Della Salute Laboratory. Top: Pyschobotanical Installation. Bottom: Sectional Model.
Dip/MArch Unit 19 Yr 4: Tim Bradford, Jen Ting Chu, Daniel Dale, Qing Gao, Ju-Hui Hsu, Winston Luk, James Redman, Greg Skinner, Olga-Maria Valavanoglou Yr 5: Adam Draper, Kristian Kristiansen, Richard Meddings, Dan Slavinsky
Innumerable Eccentricities and the Hedingham Report In 1984-5 Peter Wilson and his students considered the fading stately home and grounds of Clandeboye. Their intention was to investigate a range of regenerative strategies, appropriate to the ambiance of the place and project a useful vision of the future, balancing private, public and institutional requirements. A document, ‘The Clandboye Report’, was produced in 1985. Now, 25 years later, Unit 19 conducted a similar, different and contemporary series of exercises in and around the historic estate of Hedingham Castle in Essex. Each student produced their own ‘Hedingham Report’ and vicariously contributed to the discussion of this most rarefied architectural brief. Our first move to inaugurate the cascade of architectural ideas was to investigate the magical operations of collage and blend these operations with the Innumerable eccentricities of cartography. Further, we re-used and redefined the ‘list of stimulants’ described in the Excursus of Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s Collage City – nostalgia producing instruments, stabilizers, set pieces, gardens and ambiguous and composite buildings in a rural estate and medieval village setting. Now is an exciting time to be an architect. Technology is allowing architects to mix and augment the actual with the virtual, question the inertness of materials, link and network all manner of spaces and phenomena, create reflexive spatial relationships, blend the organic and the inorganic and be non-luddite about ecology and sustainability. Simultaneously the doctrines of Modernism are being questioned, decoration and baroque distortion are respectable again. The whole issue of what might constitute architecture is up for grabs.
Neil Spiller & Phil Watson
Dan Slavinsky, In Arcadia at the End of Time. Top: Carnelian Column. Bottom: Fragment of Arcadia. Opposite: The Bride of Denmark: Absinthe Bar Elevation.
Adam Draper, Rebuilding the Euston Arch. Top: The Garden after 10 years. Opposite top: after 15 years. Bottom: after 25 years. Opposite Bottom: after 27 years.
Clockwise from top left: James Redman; Tim Bradford; Richard Meddings; Winston Luk.
Top: Greg Skinner. Middle and bottom: Richard Meddings, Re-cycled Landscapes, Arran.
Dip/MArch Unit 20 Yr 4: Amanda Bate, Richard Beckett, Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Leonhard Clemens, Linda Hagberg, Wendy Teo Boon Ting, Aleksandrina Rizova Yr 5: Daniel Baumann, Dave Edwards, Hyun Min Koh, Babak Niai Tizkar, Joanna Szulda
Sacred Topologies, Profane Morphologies The theme of this year evolved around the complexity of sacred and profane spaces. It questioned those spaces not just in experiential, programmatic and symbolic ways, but also in terms of their geometric dimension: sacred topologies or profane morphologies. The first field trip was focused on a site in Belem, Lisbon, in the vicinity of the famous Jeronimos Monastery. Here, the unit designed the lost facade of an old chapel of which the exterior and interior were demolished in the 18th century Lisbon earthquake. Currently used as a cultural centre, the chapel was seen as the centre of the programmatic expansion into surrounding urban voids. The second trip focused on Los Angeles where Unit 20 did a joint workshop with students of UCLA. A variety of interior spaces and prototypes were developed in the context of each individual work. One of the main aims of the year was to construct projects on a variety of scales simultaneously, designing both a small, technical, as well as larger, urban, dimension. Rather than aiming for comprehensive master plans, students were asked to grow the work from inside out with a focus on advanced 3D modelling, along with careful consideration of cultural and historic values and atmospherics.
Marcos Crus & Marjan Colletti
Clockwise from top left: Leonhard Clemens, Façade Project – Belem Chapel, Lisbon; Group Project, Food Junction Kiosk, Camley Street Nature Park (Photography: Paul Smoothy); Amanda Bate, E-scape – e-waste recycling plant, Lisbon; Linda Hagberg, Façade Project – Belem Chapel, Lisbon; Aleksandrina Rizova Fado Music Centre, Lisbon; Wendy Teo Boon Ting Gem Cultural Centre, Lisbon; Richard Beckett, Burning Man Ephemeral City; Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Renewable Lisbon.
Sublime Flesh Exhibition, Christ Church Spitalfields. (Photography: Paul Smoothy; Digital Fabrication: ESA Studio at Grymsdyke Farm, Bartlett CAD/CAM Workshop and DMC London.)
Daniel Baumann, Fluctuating Landscapes – algae based water treatment plant and ferry terminal, Lisbon.
Top, middle and bottom right: Babak Niai Tizkar, Hanging Ecologies, Belem, Lisbon. Bottom left: Daniel Baumann, Fluctuating Landscapes – algae based water treatment plant and ferry terminal, Lisbon.
Top: Joanna Szulda, Sacred Womanhood – natural childbirth and women’s centre, Santa Monica. Bottom: Dave Edwards, The LA Forum: library of the four ecologies.
Top: Dave Edwards, The LA Forum: library of the four ecologies. Middle and bottom: Hyun Min Koh, Green Beacon, Cacilhas, Almada, Portugal.
Dip/MArch Unit 21 Yr 4: Sarah Alfraih, Beatrice Beazley, Alicia Bourla, Sarah Bromley, Naomi Bryden, Costa Elia, Maiia Guermanova, Paul Legon, Tomo Ogata, Lucy Paton Yr 5: Sarah Brighton, Vivian Wing Man Chung, Tom Elliot, Zachary Keene, Laurence Mackman
Artificial Villa Aldobrandini is not set to one side of its garden, it is at its centre; the villa is treated as an optical instrument for the viewing of the garden. The view to the water theatre is composed by the framing of the loggia and doorway, a trompe l’oeil outer door and a reflective glazed inner door. Although it is intended to view onto and frame an external Arcadian vision of landscape, the garden is as synthetic as the painted door. There are many example of this synthetic nature, whether it be the Romantic English rural landscape, such as Stourhead in Wiltshire, or the ever-shifting Jones Beach in Long Island, New York. This year, we asked Unit 21 not just to develop a world of the purely synthetic but to investigate the collage of the more subtle layers between the various readings of the real, the physical and the mimetic. Furthermore we asked that students not think of this as a landscape or as an extra-urban setting, but that the context should be overtly urban. The city was their playground. Unit 21 established sites in Greater London, and identified and responded to systems of interaction, by calibration and re-reading, and establishing new systems which responded to the context. They considered how a system works as an ecology and in particular, how it behaves in terms of co-operation and symbiosis. We travelled to China for our field trip.
Abigail Ashton & Andrew Porter
Clockwise from top: Paul Legon, Constructed Shadows; Maiia Guermanova, A Hydropark, Canning Town; Tom Elliot, Supposed Urban Space, Bethnal Green; Naomi Bryden, Tripartite, Lea Valley.
Top: Sarah Brighton, A Data Landscape, Greenwich. Bottom: Naomi Bryden, Tripartite, Lea Valley.
Top left: Sarah Alfraih, Mobile Productive Landscapes. Top right: Zachary Keene, A Filmic Mall, Hong Kong. Middle: Paul Legon, Constructed Shadows. Bottom: Sarah Brighton, A Data Landscape, Greenwich.
Top: Tom Elliot, Supposed Urban Space, Bethnal Green.
Top: Sarah Bromley, Issac Waltons Walk, Old River Lea. Bottom: Zachary Keene, A Filmic Mall, Hong Kong.
Costa Elia: Three Dimensional Boundary, Tottenham Hale.
Dip/MArch Unit 23 Yr 4: Edward Farndale, Daniel Goodacre, Kyle Hyde, Daniel Lauand, Caroline Lundin, Heather Macey, Emma-Kate Matthews, David Shanks Yr 5: Marcus Brett, Michael Dean, Misha Smith, William Trossell, Peter Webb
(Extra) Ordinary Customary divisions between the built and the unbuildable, the inert and the reactive, the ideal and the real, have dissolved. Space, the matter of architecture, is no longer real or digital; it is a seamless hybrid of both. In this age, experimental design is no longer a clandestine discipline, confined to the suspicious and counterfeit materials of representation; it has transgressed the resistant protocols of manufacture, and subverted the decrepit legacies of mass production and slavish practice. Experimental design constructs the real world, whatever and wherever that is. The unit expects its members to argue a position for both the design and the designer where ideas oscillate as a continuum of speculative and polemic prototypes through conversation, collaboration, production and observation. Students are supported in identifying independent and unorthodox research interests spanning both years of the programme. This year, themes that came to the fore included architecture’s relationship with ageing, biosynthesis, rhythmanalysis, serialism, geomorphology and self-sufficiency. We thank the Centre for Creative Collaboration and its directors, Thias Martin, Brian Condon, Neil Gregory and Jess Bowles for their inspiration, generosity and hospitality. Also our critics and consultants for their stimulating provocations and expert guidance: Rachel Armstrong, Charles Barclay, Paul Bavister, Johan Berglund, Matthew Butcher, Nic Clear, Marcus Cruz, Colin Darlington, Kate Davies, Stephen Gage, Sean Hanna, Simon Herron, Guan Lee, Tom Lomax, Luke Lowings, Tim Marcot, Shaun Murray, James O’Leary, Luke Olsen, Ricardo de Ostos, Alan Penn, Caroline Rabourdin, Sebastian Ricard, Gabby Shawcross, Peter Sharpe, and Oliver Wilton.
Bob Sheil & Emmanuel Vercruysse
Above and opposite: Mike Dean, The Watcher’s House.
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Misha Smith, Prototype For a Spatialised Instrument.
Clockwise from top left: Emma-Kate Matthews, Terra-Tectonic; Marcus Brett Skin of the Bog; Caroline Lundin, The Manufactured Garden; David Shanks, Plaster Organ; Heather Macey, Revealing the Unseen; Dan Lauand, Gatehouse; Edward Farndale, A Self-Sufficient, Survivalist Architecture in a Neo-Lunar Landscape.
Peter Webb, Digging Out London.
Dip/MArch Unit 24 Yr 4: Sung-Hwa Cha, Mo Huen Chong, Christopher Cox, Michail Floros, Yi-Tung Su, Qidi Hu, Nobuhiko Maeda Yr 5: Ronald Cheape, Maya Cochrane, Thomas Ibbitson, Kevin Kelly, Asako Sengoku, Chun-Tai Tsai
Possibilities of Exchange: Poetic Transference Unit 24 studies space beyond the confines of operational thought where architecture can become a dynamic interface between the body and the landscape. Today’s innovations in technology, science and media are not only pushing the limits of what is feasible, but also the boundaries of our imagination. In this world thought is freed from pure rationales uniting opposites such as the natural and man-made, the biological and technological, the analytical and intuitive. Events emerge between users and their architectural surroundings; a hitherto unknown poetic transference unfolds new possibilities of exchange between man, architecture and landscape. This year’s projects have proposed hybrid interventions that migrate between the common strictures and nomenclatures of digital, mechanical, biological etc., becoming models of innovation as well as imaginative devices that investigate alternative spatial realities. Unit 24 would like to thank Geoff Whittaker from KPF Architects for his continued assistance with Design Realization as well as our critics: Tilo Amhoff, Christopher Bryant, Nic Clear, Marjan Colletti, Ines Dantas, Ranulph Glanville, Ruairi Glynn, Robert Greer, Christoph Hadrys, Jon Harvey, Chris Hildrey, Tobias Klein, Ben Luk, Geoff Morrow, Markus Seifermann, Bob Sheil, Ben Sweeting, Phil Watson, Mark West and Emmanuel Vercruysse.
Michael Wihart & Uwe Schmidt-Hess
Top: Michail Floros, Wet Elevator for Nautical Passenger. Middle: Chun-Tai Tsai, Tidal Architecture – Sea Food Market in Mousehole Harbour. Bottom: Maya Cochrane, Training Centre for Ice Road Truckers. Opposite page clockwise from top left: Maya Cochrane, Feather and Lung Model; Michail Floros, Wet Elevator Models; Asaco Sengoku, Muscle Wire Actuation Model; Michail Floros, Wet Elevator Models; Sung-Hwa Cha: Soft Envelope Study.
Top: Asaco Sengoku, Lace Space: a Workshop for Lacing. Bottom from left: Ronald Cheape, Terra-forming Intervention in Glenaladale; Christopher Cox, The Biological Rocking Chair; Mo Huen Chong, Elastic Space.
Kevin Kelly, Temples of Hermitic Virtues.
Tom Ibbitson, The Still Vessel: Timber Experts Stranded on an Island made of Stone are Forced to Rebuild Their Ship Using Stone, the Result is an Architecture of Inheritance and Inversion. Opposite page: Hull and Formwork Construction. Top: Sail detail. Bottom: The Becoming of the Window.
Year 5 Diploma Thesis The thesis is the place where Year 5 students have the opportunity to develop a series of focused research questions that underpin their design work. These questions may be informed by architectural, scientific, cultural, technological, literary, historical or philosophical theories. As a result, a reflexive relationship is created between the portfolio and thesis, each informing the other. Mark Smout, Peg Rawes & Katie Lloyd Thomas Thesis Co-ordinators
Tala Akkawi The Journeys In Between, On the Santa Teresa Tram; Inhabiting a Transient Threshold
Rae Whittow-Williams Empirical Ecologies; Vulgar Visions: Exploring Sites of Science
This project is sited upon the tracks of the historic Rio de Janeiro tramway. For over 113 years trams have travelled round and round the track that connects a modernist valley with a colonial hill, Santa Teresa. Never faltering from its course, the tram travels through a space at each end steered by a loop. Contained here is a certain lyricism and poetry.
As T J Demos states in ‘The Politics of Sustainability: Art and Ecology’, the environment has become the ‘ultimate domain of being’ for the production of knowledge, power and subjectivity, and as a result of climate change predictions dominating the media there has been a renewed interest in nature and ecology: the environment is fast becoming one of the most important political priorities of our time (Radical Nature, 2009, p.24). The knowledge we currently have about the environment is owed to the research of the practices and institutions that represent and work with it, and the widespread coverage regarding the effects of anthropogenic global warming draw a varied response amongst scientists and the public alike.
Accompanying the primary understanding of the track as an inhabitable threshold are notions of journey and transience, of motion and experience, of living in a line and of different places including the liminal (the between). The thesis begins with an evaluation of the origins of the tramway, based on ritual and repetition. A description of the system and the nature of the experience in the journey follows. The quality of the journey, as distinct yet repetitive, brings about the idea of recursive circularity, which tends to stability; this is demonstrated with the aid of Heinz Von Foerster’s Eigenvalues and self-referential Ouroboros snakes.
In conjunction with my proposal for an Ecology Research Institute sited in Lanzarote, I aim to explore the reflective nature of scientific knowledge, and how climate science knowledge is translated and transmitted in local and global contexts, ‘local’ referring to the bespoke environmental conditions of the island and ‘global’ to the wider discourse surrounding climate science as it is presented across all sectors of society.
Dan Slavinsky In Arcadia at the End of Time
Jan Isvarphornchai The Making of a ‘Good Twin’ Twin City
Barry Cho Urban Blanket: Creating a New Macro Climate for London
This thesis explores the notion of Living Technology. Fundamentally, this term is used to describe any technology whose behaviour is life-like and whose properties ‘include [its] abilities to autonomously act in [its] own interests, proliferate exponentially, and evolve and adapt on [its] own’ (M. A. Bedau, ‘Living Technology Today and Tomorrow’ 2009).
Rüdersdorf Quarry, one of the largest active limestone quarries in Europe, has been feeding Berlin with building materials since as early as the 13th Century. Famous Berliner buildings and landmarks were built from the stones excavated from its manmade pits and cliff faces, and so, in a sense, the twin cities – Berlin and Rüdersdorf – are poetically connected. They are twin cities since one is the negative of the other.
Today’s cities are becoming increasingly polluted and uncomfortable places to be in. Dense urban activities and vehicular transport result in air pollution and increased energy consumption, which in turn has negative impacts on the climate in the urban and natural environments. Climate-poor areas are resorting to increased summer air-conditioning and winter heating as well as the requirement for more artificial lighting. By looking into London’s current condition, results will show how hugely inefficient energy is being used and food is sourced. As a historic city, London’s building stock is rarely renewed and many buildings are not sufficiently energy-insulated for the current climate. These energy-wasteful operations exacerbate the heat-island effect from which London already suffers.
As a science, Living Technology has not yet had the opportunity to be formalised with its own language, and I propose the site of Arcadia as a tableau to discuss this. The series of drawings are tools with which to explore this, and to define the Ornament of Living Technology. Alongside their creation, I look closely at 20th century European Art Nouveau through the lens of ornament, thus combining these architectural movements that celebrate decoration and the façade with the characteristic natural aesthetics found in biology. The goal is to categorise this new-age hybrid style and to create a lexicon of ‘soft’ ornament that can be re-interpreted and re-claimed when working with Living Technologies in the future.
The thesis technically examines how the open-faced limestone quarry would be turned into arable agricultural landscape by specifically looking at water as a defining and landscaping element, as well as an energy source. Since the quarry has been dug down to 60m under the natural water table, dewatering the landscape concerns the appropriate selection of specific techniques to drain groundwater out of the site, for further excavations of the site to be viable. Thorough analysis of this technique directly affects the outcome of the landscape design in an arrangement that achieves the necessary draw down. The research is carried out through desk-based methods: qualitative analysis through reading and researching about the available technologies and techniques, and quantitative analysis through calculations.
The thesis examines the role of urban agriculture in climate augmentation and the possibility that a levitating ‘Urban Blanket’ may temper the problem.
The Bartlett Post Graduate Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research MArch Architectural Design MArch Urban Design MA Architectural History MPhil / PhD
The Bartlett Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research Current Students: Julian Busch, Will Cousins, Ben Cowd, Justin Goodyer, Michael Hammock, Lucy Jones, Mark Martines, Samuel Mcelhinney, Tetsuro Nagata, Peter Nilsson, Sara Shafiei, Declan Shaw, Matthew Shaw, Maria-Eleni Skavara, Vlad Tenu, Nick Westby, Alan Worn The best Year 5 portfolios and theses contain the seeds of serious design research proposals. Students taking the Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research have the opportunity to take their work to a further stage of development.
Research output
Architecture has a history where research and practice go hand in hand, where many great practices have grown as a result of fundamental research experimentation, and where many research projects arise from groundbreaking design. This is especially true during periods of economic inactivity, when recent modes of working are called into question and new ones (sometimes based on rediscovered historical precedent) are established.
2) A refereed journal article or refereed conference paper.
Through the Certificate, students can choose to take their work forward in design, technology, design theory or design history or any mixture of the above that they consider appropriate to their subject. Research can be developed through a mix of text, drawings, models or 1:1 test prototypes.
Programme Director: Professor Stephen Gage
Students are expected to produce a significant research output, which is usually in one or more of the following forms: 1) A report of 10,000 words to form the basis of an MPhil/PhD proposal.
3) A portfolio of drawings and/or models that explore a particular theme. 4) A thematic exploration in time-based media. 5) One or more 1:1 installations.
The 2010 Advanced Architectural Research exhibition ‘Constructing Realities’ opens on 1st July at the Arup Phase 2 Gallery , 8 Fitzroy Street London W1T4BJ
Tetsuro Nagata, Monomyth, A memory installation at Pitzhanger Manor
MArch Architectural Design Students 2008–2009: Christina Achtypi, Tyler J. Barnard, Ka Sing Chong, Cordelia Hänel, Verena Hoch, Svetlana Khidirova, Rebal Knayzeh, Yun Pei Lee, Mei-Fang Liao, Yung-En Lin, Geraldine Lo, Yorgos Loizos, Ren Luo, Danai Melessidou, Anna Nikolaidou, Tugba Ozbay, Hyun Jun Park, Danai Surasa, Camila Sotomayor, ChiaHao Tsai, Hsien Shin Tseng, Sining Wang, Tze-Chun Wei, Zhili Xu, Ji Yao
Advanced Virtual And Technological Architecture Research (AVATAR) The Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research Laboratory was founded in September 2004 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, by Professor Neil Spiller. AVATAR is conceived as a cross unit research group and has an agenda that explores all manner of digital and visceral terrain, its augmentation and symbiosis. AVATAR also has dedicated Design Masters/PhD Programme students. Over recent years AVATAR has grown into an international research collaborative centre including associates at MIT, Cornell, Rensaalar, Ann Arbor, Berkley in the USA, Waterloo in Canada and scientists in Odense, Denmark. It attracts students from around the world and a critical mix of cultural, aesthetic and social agendas are encouraged.
Its components are: Architecture and Digital Fabrication Architecture and Synthetic Biology Architecture and Interaction Architecture and Cyborgian Geography Architecture and Digital Surrealism Architecture, Film and Animation AVATAR considers itself uniquely skilled and positioned to posit new aesthetic systems and codes of representation for architecture, interior design, multi media design and graphic design. Generally, it is at the forefront of international architectural discourse and is constantly working to uncover the new architecture of the Twenty-First Century.
AVATAR is fundamentally interested in research concerning the impact of advanced technology on architectural design, however it also contributes to discussion on issues such as aesthetics, philosophy and cybernetics. Technologically, AVATAR concerns itself with virtuality (exploring fully immersed, mixed and augmented environments); Time-based new media (film, video and film theory), Nano and bio technology (micro landscapes and architecture, ethics, sustainability and ecology) including reflexive environments and cybernetic systems. It is also developing synthetic biological architecture that is capable of sustainable construction.
Programme Director: Neil Spiller. Programme Coordinator: Andrew Porter. Tutors: Rachel Armstrong, Nic Clear, Ranulph Glanville, Simon Herron, Stuart Munro, Shaun Murray, Andrew Porter, Neil Spiller, Phil Watson
Top: Danai Surasa, Uncanny Architecture: Modernities Fail. Bottom: Tyler J.Barnard, Hello My Name is Joe ..and I’m an Addict.
Above and opposite: Cordelia H채nel, Slow Motion Landscapes, Archived Architecture.
Yorgos Loizos, A FreakShow: Alchemical Designs of Spatial Decadence.
Shin Tseng, Biopunk Dandy.
Tze-Chun Wei, Motion Architecture.
MArch Urban Design Students 2008–2009: V. Agrafioti, P. Askoy, Z. Azizi, X. Bao, A. Boldina, M. Bora, F. Bowden, E. Chliova, P. Christian, R. Collin, J. Crawford,N. Erfanian,X.Fan, T. Fourazan, X. Georgiou, Y. Golubeva, A. Gomez, S. Hadi, Y. He, S. Houghton, C. Hung, R. Jagzip, V. Jackevicius, O. Kamal, D. Kefalos, C. Lal, A. Lauzis, L. Liakou, R. Loughnane, J. Lu, F. McDermott, Y. Nakamura, S. Papafotiou, T. Pearson, F. Perchet, I. Pothou, L. Qin, P. Sahota, P. Sendra, R. Sewani, S. Shi, H. Shibayama, D. Shipukhina, M. Skrupskelis, C. Thermou, C. Tolidou, S. Ven, Q. Wang, X. Wang, Y. Wang, C. Wu, M. Yateem, Z. Zhu
Urban Mutations The site this year was London. The few projects included here offer a hint of the diversity of responses. Many focus on environmental sustainability, with an emphasis on the risk of flooding, leading to urban developments connected to bridges, islands, floating communities and various kinds of retreat strategies. In terms of intellectual ambition and aesthetics, there were two novelties: projects engaged with the poetic, metaphysical and historical dimensions of urban design, and a surprising influx of heroic neo-Constructivist schemes proposed by a growing contingent of Russian students. The increase in student numbers is accompanied by a corresponding widening of their geographic and cultural background, contributing to the diversity of the work in terms of designs and political agendas.
Programme Director: Colin Fournier Tutors: Peter Besley, Jason Coleman, Robert Dye, Yuri Gerrits, Philip Gumuchdjian , Stina HĂśkby, Daniel Horner, Jonathan Kendall, Adam Lubinsky, Edouard Moreau, Graciela Moreno, Denise Murray, Fabian Neuhaus
Opposite page: Aigars Lauzis, The Island. Above: Qiaojuan Wang, Islands.
Hiroki Shibayama, A Mythic Autobiography.
Tom Pearson, Evelyn´s Ladder.
Aigars Lauzis, The Island.
Vytautas Jackevicius, Mindaugas Skrupskelis, Nautopia.
MA Architectural History Started in 1981, the MA in Architectural History (AH) is the UK’s longest established Masters course in the historical and critical interpretation of architecture. Over the past twenty five years the course has been continually developed and revised, prioritising the exploration of new and existing methodologies and critical theories as they might be applied to the study of architecture and cities. Rather than dealing with architecture solely through the work of famous individuals, stylistic classification or normative categories, the course locates architecture within social, ideological, creative, political and urban processes, and in doing so explores the boundaries of what might be regarded as legitimate architectural objects of study, and of the interpretations which might be made of them. The main focus of the course is on architecture and cities of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, but to provide a perspective on the events and interpretation of this period occasional reference is made to a wider range of historical material. The main teaching mode is the seminar, supplemented by lectures from internal staff and visitors, building and gallery visits, video and film screenings, group working and one-toone tutorials. The Architectural History & Theory section of the Bartlett also organises public lectures by distinguished visiting speakers, focusing on the intersection of historical and critical theory with different kinds of architectural practice, as well as a PhD seminars and conferences on advanced architectural historical and critical method. The course is for architects already qualified or who are in the process of qualification, and for graduates of other disciplines such as art history, history, geography or anthropology who wish to develop a specialist knowledge of architectural history or acquire a foundation for research in the history of architecture. The student cohort comprises home, EU and overseas participants.
The MA Architectural History provides skills in the historical and critical techniques for the research and critique of any architectural subject. A student having completed the course will be equipped to undertake research in the history or criticism of architecture, and to evaluate work done in that field. The culmination of the course is a supervised research project, undertaken on a topic of the student’s choice, the outcome of which is a 10,000 word report. The following students, listed with the title of their reports, graduated in 2009: *Wesley Aelbrecht Architecture and Ethnography in the Slums of Lisbon: a Study of Participation in the Films of Pedro Costa, 1997–2006. Kristina Desman Back in Europe. Exhibitions of Slovenian Architecture Abroad 2004–2009. Amy Frearson Mediating Robin Hood, A Study of Robin Hood Gardens in Media Discourse. Madeleine Helmer A Walk in the Garden: Gertrude Jekyll’s Munstead Wood. *Justin Smith Sundays in October: Texas Prison Rodeo and Huntsville Prison Stadium. A Monograph of Power. Susannah Stopford ‘The Uncanny’ Effect: Paris, 1919 and the Photographic Work of Eugène Atget.
* = Commended as outstanding.
Wesley Aelbrecht Architecture and Ethnography in the Slums of Lisbon: a Study of Participation in the Films of Pedro Costa, 1997-2006 MA Architectural History Report, 2009 Supervisor: Dr. Ben Campkin. The ‘ethnographic turn’ identified in fine art by the art historian Hal Foster (1995) seems also to have become a paradigm in architectural practice, although it has not yet been defined as such. Through an exploration of the films of the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, drawing on debates about ‘slum spectacle’ in the work of nineteenth-century photographer Jacob Riis’, this report presents a critical inquiry into the notion of participation and the ‘ethnographic turn’ in architecture. Questions of authorship and the ethics of participation in architectural and other forms of urban, spatial and visual practice are posed.
Costa’s films are particularly interesting because they allow the analysis of interrelationships between, on the one hand, experience acquired in the field, and on the other, participation in the production of the built environment. In total Costa produced three films over a period of ten years in the shantytown Fontaínhas, in the suburbs of Lisbon: Bones (1994), In Vanda’s Room (2000) and Colossal youth (2006). Bones was still marked by a classic film production similar to the French new wave cinema of the 1960s, the two following films were characterised by an ethnographic mode of production using a digital portable camera, which made an intersubjective relationship possible between the director and his subjects. During this span of time Costa observed the government destruction of the filmed slums, followed by a displacement to the modernist social housing project Casal da Boba. Interestingly, in contrast to the processes of urban change and architectural practice, in the films the slum inhabitants featured as key protaganists, as well as influencing the making of the films through playing a part in the production team. Through an in depth analysis of the film locations using archival research, on site fieldwork, and visual analyses of the films, the dissertation positioned new ethnographic research next to Costa’s filmic representations in order to reflect on the interrelation between experience and the built environment, and the ‘ethnographic turn’ in architecture.
MPhil/PhD Architectural Design Graduating students: Nadia Amoroso, Jan Kattein, Juliet Sprake. Current students: Adam Adamis, Yota Adilenidou, Dr Rachel Armstrong, Katherine E. Bash, David Buck, Nat Chard, Emma Cheatle, Ines Dantas Ribeiro Bernardes, Catja De Haas, Pablo Gil, Ruairi Glynn, Mohamad Hafeda, Sophie Handler, Teresa Hoskyns, Popi Iacovou, Christiana Ioannou, Rosalie Kim, Tae Young Kim, Constance Lau, Guan Lee, Tea Lim, Jane Madsen, Igor Marjanovic, Matteo Melioli, Malca Mizrahi, Christos Papastergiou, Henri Praeger, Kathy O’ Donnell, Felix Robbins, Eva Sopeoglou, Ro Spankie, Theo Spyropoulos, Ben Sweeting, William Tozer, Neil Wenman, Stefan White, Michael Wihart, Alex Zambelli.
Leading to a PhD in Architecture, the MPhil/ PhD Architectural Design allows especially able and reflective designers to undertake research within the Bartlett School of Architecture’s speculative and experimental ethos. The first to be established in the UK, the Bartlett MPhil/PhD Architectural Design is internationally recognized as one of the most influential doctoral programmes dedicated to architectural design. The programme draws on the strengths of design teaching and doctoral research at the Bartlett, encouraging the development of architectural research through the interaction of designing and writing. An architectural design doctoral thesis has two inter-related elements of equal importance—a project and a text—that share a research theme and a productive relationship. The project may be drawn, filmed, built, or use whatever media is appropriate. UCL’s multi-disciplinary environment offers a stimulating and varied research culture that connects research by architectural design to developments in other disciplines, such as medicine, art, anthropology and digital media. The programme is intended for graduates of architecture and other disciplines, such as art, who wish to pursue research by architectural design. Nearly 40 students from over 15 countries are currently enrolled on the programme.
The Bartlett School of Architecture’s two PhD programmes organize a number of annual events for doctoral students. PhD Research Projects, an exhibition and conference with presentations by current practice-based PhD students in UCL, is held in Term 2. Invited external critics in 2010 were Dr Lorens Holm, University of Dundee; Professor Rolf Hughes, Konstfack University College of the Arts, Craft and Design, Stockholm; and Dr Mark Morris, Cornell University. Throughout the year, PhD Research Conversations seminars are an opportunity for doctoral candidates to present work in progress. In addition, students are invited to participate in the Architecture & Interdisciplinary Seminars in the Bartlett and The Creative Thesis in the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, which is tailored to practice-led research. In December 2009 Ana Paola Araújo and Kristen Kreider were shortlisted for the ‘RIBA President’s Award for Research – Outstanding PhD Thesis’. Ana’s supervisors were Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Jane Rendell, while Kristen’s were Professor Jane Rendell and Dr Sharon Morris.
Juliet Sprake Learning-through-Touring: A new design methodology for situated learning derived through touring the built environment PhD 2009 Principal supervisor: Professor Jane Rendell Second supervisor: Dr Barbara Penner This practice-led thesis asks how touring urban buildings and their environs can reinvigorate learning activities. Concepts and processes for learning through touring are developed through the thesis in the form of analytic investigations and design projects that aim to facilitate wider engagement for people to learn about the built environment. The development of a design methodology, learning-throughtouring, is the key original contribution to knowledge that the thesis makes.
The thesis provides a framework for making and investigating interconnections across areas of enquiry from different disciplines such as architecture, art, education, geography and urbanism. It is composed of two parts which operate in dialogue in relation to one another: Contexts and Projects. n one part, Learning and Touring Contexts, notions of site-specificity and subjectivity are argued to be relevant in rethinking the relationship between learning and touring. These discussions are then developed to produce the key concepts explored through the thesis: those that involve a shift from passive to active learning through visitor participation in the production of tours. The thesis proposes a new theoretical framework or context for considering how learning can take place through touring. The other part, Learning and Touring Projects, explores these ideas in practice, developing through a series of site-specific projects, new methods and processes for designing learning activities in tours. These projects are: Mudlarking in Deptford, Transitional Spaces at the V&A and Cracking Maps at the British Library. The thesis concludes by presenting a new design methodology – learning-throughtouring. This methodology has relevance for those concerned with developing participatory practice in urban design and architecture, with education centres committed to delivering learning activities in and about the built environment, with educators who develop creative ways of engaging with the topography of the urban landscape, and with those researching mobile learning.
Programme Director: Professor Jonathan Hill; Programme Co-ordinator: Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou Supervisors: Professor Iain Borden, Dr Victor Buchli, Dr Marjan Colletti, Professor Sir Peter Cook, Dr Marcos Cruz, Professor Penny Florence, Professor Colin Fournier, Professor Stephen Gage, Professor Ranulph Glanville, Dr Penelope Haralambidou, Professor Christine Hawley, Professor Jonathan Hill, Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Jayne Parker, Dr Barbara Penner, Dr Peg Rawes, Professor Jane Rendell, Professor Phil Steadman, Professor Neil Spiller, Professor Phil Tabor.
Nadia Amoroso The Exposed City and Its Images: A theoretical study of mapping as it relates to visual representation of the city from the early twentieth century to today PhD 2009 Principal supervisor: Professor Philip Steadman Second supervisor: Dr Penelope Haralambidou The thesis examines mapping as it relates to visual representation of the city from the early twentieth century to today. The research is made up of two interrelated parts—contemporary history and theory and my personal mapping explorations. The thesis questions the role of the maps profiled in the thesis as both artistic and informative tools. Also, the research investigates how the ‘unseen’ elements of the city are exposed, through mapping visualization and techniques. The thesis begins by reviewing the role of information graphics with particular emphasis to the guiding principles developed by Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman, and also reviews the mapping conventions developed by Kevin Lynch. The thesis then profiles the concept of ‘datascaping’ with particular emphasis on the theoretical studies of Metacity/Datatown by Dutch architecture firm MVRDV. In a more recent investigation of the potentials of representational media, contemporary landscape architect James Corner portrays mapping as a creative and inventive process and shows the potentials of maps to unfold ‘hidden’ facts of the city with particular emphasis on his ‘map-drawings’.
The diagrammatic styles created by London based architecture group, CHORA, are also profiled in the thesis. The precedent reviews end with the works of early twentieth century architect Hugh Ferriss’s ‘Evolution of the Set-Back Building’ drawings in relation to the zoning Ordinance of 1916, and questions the role of these drawings as maps. The second part of the thesis (the design component) tests new mapping visualization and techniques as a response to the historical and theoretical component profiled in the first section of the thesis. These multi-dimensional maps are an attempt to contribute to the overall discourse of new mapping representation in the urban realm. In particular, the maps provide alternative visual representations to reveal complex and ‘unseen’ forces of the city that affect our lived urban environment. A series of multi-dimensional maps are developed for three test cities-- Toronto, New York and London –to investigate artistic and technical approaches towards contemporary mapping practices.
This PhD is currently being transformed into a book entitled The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles, to be published by Routledge.
Jan Kattein The Architecture Chronicle: Diary of an Architectural Practice PhD 2009 Jan Kattein has been shortlisted for the 2010 ‘RIBA President’s Award for Research – Outstanding PhD Thesis Principal supervisor: Professor Jonathan Hill Second supervisor: Dr Penelope Haralambidou Most books on architecture start when a building is completed, carefully editing out any evidence of the design and production process. As a result, architecture is often seen as a product rather than a process. The Architecture Chronicle is about architecture as a practice. It has two parts. Part one is a diary reporting on the realization of five stage sets and one urban intervention over a period of four years. The diary is intercepted by references that are carefully integrated in the overall design. Part two draws on a number of references to discover patterns, methodologies and strategies that re-appear and fortify throughout The Architecture Chronicle. The pre-Renaissance architect worked on the building site amongst other tradesmen in an environment of dispersed authorship. His ability to draw and to write acquired during the Italian Renaissance allowed him to upgrade his status from anonymous craftsman amongst others to artistic creator.
New procurement methods have changed the role of the architect in contemporary construction projects. To minimise liability and as a result of the increased specialization, contemporary buildings are designed by a team. This threatens the status of the architect as artistic creator. Today, the architect operates once again in an environment of dispersed authorship as a member of the design team working alongside other professionals. Drawings are more often produced by visualisers, engineers and subcontractors than by architects while text is more often written by surveyors or specifiers. To maintain his status, the architect in The Architecture Chronicle takes on three distinct characters. The architect-arbitrator engages the audience to realise the ambitious project. The architect-inventor challenges conventions and questions the social status quo. The architect-activist transgresses the boundary of the profession and enters the construction process. The Architecture Chronicle concludes that the contemporary architect still draws and writes, but that it is often the architect’s ability to engage and direct that asserts his or her status. To assert his or her status in the design team, the architect’s ability to talk and to act is more important than his or her ability to draw and write.
MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory Graduating Students: Rebecca Litchfield, Yat Ming Loo, Victoria Perry Current Students: Ricardo Agarez, Tilo Amhoff, Nicholas Beech, Eva Branscome, Willem de Bruijn, Edward Denison, Yi-Chih Huang, Anne Hultzsch, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, Shih-Yao Lai, Tat Lam, Torsten Lange, Abigail Lockey, Suzanne Macleod, Ivan Margolius, Jacob Paskins, Brent Pilkey, Sue Robertson, Maria del Pilar Sanchez Beltran, Pinai Sirikiatikul, Sarah Stanley, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Sotirios Varsamis, Nina Vollenbroker
The MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory programme allows candidates to conduct an extensive piece of research into an area of their own selection and definition. Great importance is placed on the originality of information uncovered, the creativity of the interpretations made, and the rigour of the methodological procedures adopted. The range of research topics undertaken in the programme is broad, but generally look at the history and theory of architecture and cities from c. 1800 to the present day, with an emphasis on the critical reading of these subjects from cultural, political and experiential viewpoints. Approximately 20-30 students are enrolled at any one time in this programme. The Bartlett School of Architecture runs an active series of events for students from both the MPhil/ PhD Architectural Design programme and the Architectural History and Theory programme to provide a platform for advanced discussions of research methodology. These include a series of departmental seminars (PhD Architecture Research Conversations), and an annual graduate conference at which students present work to invited respondents (PhD Architecture Research Projects). With the Slade since 2005, we also run a special PhD workshop, The Creative Thesis: Thesis Writing in the Practice Related Arts/ Humanities PhD Admission.
constructions of race, culture, identity and space. Focusing on the multicultural and multiracial history of Kuala Lumpur and the legacy of British colonialism as manifest in significant public buildings, public spaces, and in the urban fabric itself, the research proposes a recuperative urban and architectural history, seeking to revalidate the marginalized spaces of Chinese settlement in Kuala Lumpur, and re-script them into the narrative of the post-colonial nation-state. In doing this, the thesis makes transparent the existence of multiple forms of post-colonial voices, imaginations and desires within the subdivision of groups in a nation.
This PhD thesis challenges the existing understandings of post-colonial architecture and urban space in multicultural cities. Rejecting the binary construction of colonised/coloniser which tends to present the once colonised nation as homogeneous while keeping the ethnic and cultural minority in the shadow of the nation, the thesis aims at including the voices and contribution of the ethnic minority in the nation building process.
The research has two major lines of inquiry. First, it examines how racialisation and indigenisation has taken shape in the colonial and postcolonial state architectural and urban projects in Kuala Lumpur. It traces the perpetuation of colonial influences from the early colonial time to the 1990s new architectural and urban projects - in particular the Petronas Twin Tower project and new administrative capital Putrajaya - which signify cultural dominance of the privileged majority Malay subjects while marginalising other ethnic groups. In doing this, the thesis shows how the post-colonial state’s architectural and urban projects naturalise Malay Islamcentricism in constructing the nationality and urban form, which in turn naturalise the internal cultural submission of the non-Malays as cultural others by creating cultural, political and spatial containment for them.
Taking Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, as its primary site of investigation, the study relates the city and its spaces to the wider project of decolonisation. The main research question asks how multiracial space and urbanity were shaped by both the state’s postcolonial nationbuilding project, and the contestation of the large Malaysian Chinese minority. By including the voices of Malaysian Chinese in the analysis of nation-building, this study questions the dominant conception of national identity and decolonisation in Malaysia, and therefore comprises a political project of resistance to hegemonic
Second, it traces the spatial negotiations and contestations of the Chinese community, examining in detail how the Chinese use their marginal urban spaces – such as the Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemetery and Chinatown – in order to construct their cultural identity and contest contemporary nationalism and multiculturalism. The thesis argues that Chinese urban spaces in Kuala Lumpur can provide a perspective that intercepts the nationalist narrative in such a way as to accommodate the fears, anxieties, ambitions and visions of ethnic minority cultures and societies, as well as the alternative dreams and yearnings. The
Dr. Yat Ming Loo City of the Non-Descript: Post-Colonial Architecture and Urban Space in Kuala Lumpur Primary supervisor: Prof. Iain Borden; Secondary supervisor: Dr. Barbara Penner Short-listed for the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis 2010
Programme Director: Dr Barbara Penner Supervisors: Dr Jan Birksted, Prof Iain Borden, Dr Ben Campkin, Prof Adrian Forty, Prof Jonathan Hill, Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Dr Barbara Penner, Dr Peg Rawes, Prof Jane Rendell, Prof Neil Spiller, Prof Philip Steadman, Prof Philip Tabor.
existence of these historical and cultural Chinese spaces resists the emergence of a homogenous urban landscape – be it Malay or Chinese, Islamic or Modernist – and make the city more heterogeneous. These Kuala Lumpur Chinese spaces can be a productive space and become an alternative landscape for a vision of Malaysian nationalism. The thesis uses interdisciplinary approach and is informed by a body of work drawn from the West and the East, encompassing architecture, urbanism, postcolonial theory, cultural geography and cultural studies. As a critical analysis of imperialism, this study of colonial and postcolonial Kuala Lumpur has the potential to illuminate the spatial struggles of ethnic minorities in the cities of formerly colonialist European countries, and their subsequent construction as spaces of “multiculturalism”. The thesis has wider relevance to current urban debates regarding inter-cultural interaction, the politics of architectural heritage within urban regeneration, multiculturalism, the social sustainability of cities, and urban diaspora.
Dr. Victoria Perry Slavery, Sugar and the Sublime: The Atlantic World and British Architecture, Art and Landscapes, 1740–1840 Primary supervisor: Prof. Adrian Forty; Secondary supervisor: Prof. Iain Borden Short-listed for the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis 2010 2007 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain and its former Empire. It has also been the catalyst for a growing interest in the effect of slavery’s profits on Britain itself. In Slavery, Sugar and the Sublime, I show that wealth amassed from slavetrading and Caribbean sugar plantations
(together with the tobacco trade) transformed eighteenth century British visual culture and created an aesthetic legacy is that still apparent on both sides of the Atlantic. Inspired by the discovery of Caribbean shells decorating an eighteenth century garden grotto, Slavery, sugar and the Sublime explores the relationship between a colonybuilding British elite and the architecture, art and landscapes of ‘Georgian’ Britain. It draws on a wide variety of primary sources – including state records, plantation accounts, private letters, travel diaries, recipe books, buildings, sketches and paintings – to examine the close financial and cultural connections between eighteenth century artistic patronage and the growth of a British Atlantic trading empire. The narrative unfolds spatially, chronologically and thematically from distant island colony to imperial capital, from metropolitan villa to remote Welsh mountain road. In an early chapter, for example, the thesis reveals that in the mid-eighteenth century, the mahogany doors and decorated plaster ceilings, that adorned the era’s finest country houses were considered symbols of the wealth produced in Britain’s transatlantic slave colonies. Another investigates why one late eighteenth century commentator could not look at a new ‘natural style’ parkland landscapes ‘without thoughts of the slavery of the negroes.’ However, the visual connections between Britain and its Atlantic empire were not only expressed in the design of individual houses or landscape gardens. The growing prosperity of provincial western ports such as Bristol, Liverpool, Lancaster, Whitehaven and Glasgow had a profound effect on Britain’s ‘cultural geography’: a shift in power and influence away from ports trading with continental Europe to those facing the Atlantic west. Indeed, the thesis demonstrates that the eighteenth century growth of the spa-resort of Bath was intimately connected to its proximity to the rapidly expanding sugar and slaving port of Bristol. But the most profound aesthetic affect of colonial wealth upon western Britain, was not the limestone terraces of Camden
Crescent or Somerset Place - developed by the Scots Jamaican owners of Bath City Bank - but in a new, attitude to the rugged landscapes of the west. The thesis demonstrates how the popularity of excursions from Bath to the cliffside gardens created in the 1750’s by absentee Antiguan estate owner at Piercefield Park near Chepstow were instrumental to the development of ‘sublime’ and ‘picturesque’ landscape tourism as a ‘polite’ cultural activity. It also reveals how, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, new wealth from the transatlantic plantation trade transformed poor, remote parts of north Wales, Cumberland and Scotland. From the 1740’s onwards colonial merchants based in Liverpool, Lancaster, Whitehaven, Glasgow and other small coastal settlements had invested planting and trading profits into road construction, ‘improving’ existing or newly purchased country estates in the vicinity of these westerly ports. This injection of capital - coupled with merchant’s social aspirations to lead the lives of cultivated ‘gentlemen’- allowed chill, rain-sodden hills to be ‘re-imagined’ as landscape art and to become fashionable tourist destinations. The late eighteenth century vogue for sublime and picturesque landscapes was not just confined to Britain. The thesis demonstrates how the patronage of wealthy colonial planting and trading families such as the Burkes, the Gilpins, the Beckfords, the Longs and the Jeffersons – coupled with the expansion of eighteenth century print publication - took the concept of the picturesque landscape tour across the Atlantic. By the latter part of the eighteenth century, the idea of ‘natural scenery’ – viewing mountains, rivers and rock formations as art – became a means to celebrate colonial settlement in the British Caribbean, Virginia and the newly independent United States of America. Indeed, the thesis concludes that the growth of landscape tourism as a fashionable cultural activity in the latter part of the eighteenth century created a new, trans-Atlantic, ‘bourgeois public sphere.’
Dr. Rebecca Litchfield (Re)Imagining Los Angeles: Five Psychotopographies in the Fiction of Steve Erickson Primary supervisor: Prof. Iain Borden; Secondary supervisor: Dr. Barbara Penner
city’s dream, its interweaving of fact and fiction. She idealises about the “fantasy life” she will live whilst there, and how she will “capture my own Los Angeles” during her “exotic adventure.” Holmes’ encapsulates something that lies at the core of Los Angeles, not only as a place, but as an idea: it is a city of (re)imagining, one where people come to change their lives and live out the myths and promises of the American dream, in a landscape of perpetual blue skies and sunshine. It is where “men and women are elevated” and anything seems possible. As Kevin Starr puts it, California, and by extension Los Angeles, is ‘linked imaginatively with the most compelling of American myths, the pursuit of happiness.’
Holmes, ‘chose Los Angeles because it feels like one of the most American cities in America.’ It was Thomas Jefferson, the President who presented the American people with the notion that the pursuit of happiness should be part of their inalienable rights, who sent the expedition west to explore the American frontier, a move that eventually caused the settlement of what became the state of California.
Los Angeles is a city of fragmentations that is in a state of flux. As a product of the unique topography and the strange periods of boom expansion the city is one of contradictions: topographic, meteorological, emotional, and even identification, both urban and individual. All of this leads to a strange experience of a place that has grown very difficult to map, know or experience coherently: a site of literal and imaginative experimentation. The connection between the landscape and emotions is key in gaining a potential understanding of Los Angeles and its “inner landscape.” As a result, it is appropriate to attempt a reimagining and remapping of Los Angeles that, rather than relying on traditional methods of understanding or mapping the city, strays outside of these in order to create a new response more grounded in emotion. This approach is what lies at the core of the notion of psychotopography: whereby the interrelationship of emotion and landscape means that a shift in one directly impacts the other.
Los Angeles has intrigued Americans and non-Americans alike because of the way it embodies and manifests notions of the American dream, and has thrived on this mythology. It is also a place that is frequently seen as “simultaneously a city of the future and the past,” that allows for what Holmes refers to as an “epicentre for visionaries, romantics and dreamers.” It is clear that Holmes herself cannot help but be caught up in the
The word psychotopography comes from American writer Steve Erickson. It refers to the conscious and subconscious interaction between the individual and their surroundings; how they construct, understand and relate to their psychic, emotional and literal landscape. Erickson’s writing implies that this relationship is reciprocal; space, in shape and structure – not just perceived experience – vary according to the psychic and emotional
In 2001, National Geographic announced the launch of a new series of literary travel books. The series would involve authors of both fiction and non-fiction visiting and then writing about a place of their choosing, the aim being to produce volumes of travel literature that explained and explored the places visited whilst retaining and reflecting the “strong personal voice” of the author. As anticipated the results yielded writing about the expected classics: London. Paris, Barcelona, Sicily. However, when American novelist A.M Holmes was approached, her choice was neither a great site of beauty nor a majestic city of old. It was Los Angeles.
state of the characters, and vice-versa. Study of Erickson’s writing suggests how psychotopography could be used, both in the understanding of Los Angeles through other medias, and in the gaining of new understandings of other city spaces. Psychotopography is, fundamentally, not simply a condition of landscape, architecture or space, nor simply a condition of individuals or people, but of the dynamic interrelationship of the two. It is here, in this interrelationship, therefore, that we can begin to learn more about ourselves and the ways in which we interact with the city, and the identities that arise as a result. Psychotopography provides one way in which to engage with this interrelationship.
Summer School In 2010 the Bartlett School of Architecture’s annual Summer School will explore the urban wastelands in London. Students will explore these abandoned sites in the city recording what they find and developing responses. The sites signal decay but also offer hope providing the perfect backdrop for the projection of architectural imaginations. Proposals may be small interventions or larger projects. Using the Bartlett’s excellent workshop and studios and University College London’s associated facilities we will stage a practical symposium to survey, speculate and construct. Sustainability is inherent as re-organisation and adjustment take precedent over demolition and re-building. The full-time, two-week Summer School offers an opportunity to join the Bartlett architecture community, explore the unconventional side of architecture and develop the ideas of the future. Bring your own enthusiasm and interests, visit stimulating sites and buildings in London, discuss your ideas with others and produce amazing results. As part of UCL’s Widening Participation Programme we are able to offer 20 sponsored places to secondary school students.
Bartlett Designs The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL is one of the world’s leading places at which to study and teach architecture. Every year it attracts hundreds of students from around to world to come and participate in its highly experimental and rigorous range of architecture programmes. Its graduates have won an extraordinary range of prizes on the international stage, and are highly sought after by architectural practices globally. Bartlett Designs: Speculating With Architecture is a collection of the very best of this student work from the last decade. Through a detailed presentation of over 100 student projects, each succinctly explained by the individual tutors concerned, the book shows how architectural designs and ideas can creatively address some of the world’s most pressing urban and social problems through buildings and other forms of architectural invention. The wide range of projects on show deal inventively with such important issues as cultural identity, housing, climate change, health and public space, as well as architectural concerns with the imagination of exciting forms and aesthetic languages. Complementing the student projects is a series of short and provocative essays written by tutors at the school. Ranging from landscape to buildings, from urbanism to interaction, from making to advanced technology, these essays postulate a series of manifestoes and agendas – and so both create a conceptual framework around the incredible variety of student work on display, and suggest some of the most pertinent agendas for architecture today.
256 Pages, Full Colour 25.6 x 23.2 x 2.2cm Published by Wiley, June 2009
Available from the Bartlett and all usual booksellers £20.
Staff Abi Abdolwahabi, Ben Addy, Laura Allen, Kit Allsopp, Tilo Amhoff, Gregor Anderson, Ana Araujo, David Ardill, Rachel Armstrong, Ashton Porter Ashton, Martin Avery, Julia Backhaus, Roz Barr, Katherine Bash, Scott Batty, Nicholas Beech, Johan Berglund, Peter Besley, Elena Besussi, Jan Birksted, Valentin Bontjes Van Beek, Iain Borden, Matt Bowles, Nick Browne, Kyle Buchanan, Margaret Bursa, Bim Burton, Michelle Bush, Ben Campkin, Rhys Cannon, Darryl Chen, Elisabete Cidre, Nic Clear, Adam Cole, Jason Coleman, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Willem De Bruijn, Max Dewdney, Ilaria Di Carlo, Elizabeth Dow, Robert Dye, Bernd Felsinger, Pedro Font Alba, Adrian Forty, Colin Fournier, Daisy Froud, Stephen Gage, Jean Garrett, Christophe Gerard, Yuri Gerrits, Emer Girling, Ranulph Glanville, Agnieszka Glowacka, Richard Grimes, Tilo Guenther, Philip Gumuchdjian, James Hampton, Penelope Haralambidou, Christine Hawley, Simon Herron, Jonathan Hill, William Hodgson, Anne Hultzsch, Johan Martin Hybschmann, Bruce Irwin, Susanne Isa, Kevin Jones, Jan Kattein, Jonathan Kendall, Simon Kennedy, Julian Krueger, Chee-Kit Lai, Lucy Leonard, CJ Lim, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Ludovico Lombardi, Kim Macneil, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Niall McLaughlin, Stoll Michael, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Graciela Moreno, Stuart Munro, Shaun Murray, Christian Nold, Brian O’Reilly, Nadia O’Hare, Luke Olsen, Elena Pascolo, Luke Pearson, Barbara Penner, Jonathan Pile, Simon Pilling, Frosso Pimenides, Andrew Porter, Robert Randall, Peg Rawes, Jane Rendell, Ivan Redi, Andrea Redi Bernhard Rettig, Dan Ringelstein, Richard Roberts, Indigo Rohrer, David Rosenberg, Gill Scampton, Uwe Schmidt-Hess, Naz Siddique, Bob Sheil, Naz Siddique, Toby Smith, Paul Smoothy, Mark Smout, Anna Solarska, Neil Spiller, Brian Stater, Gareth Stokes, Tomas Stokke, Ann Thorpe, Michael Tite, Nicholas Travasaros, Emmanuel Vercruysse, Nina Vollenbroker, Susan Ware, Martin Watmough, Clyde Watson, Phil Watson, Patrick Weber, Andy Whiting, Michael Wihart, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton, Katherine Wood, Matt Wright, Liam Young, Paolo Zaide
The Bartlett School of Architecture would like to thank our sponsors for their generous support Catalogue
Rogues and Vagabonds
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
The Rogues and Vagabonds is an alumni group made up of ex-Bartlett students and friends. The group’s function is quite simply “to meet, to drink, to eat, and to listen to a good speaker...” This is celebrated through an annual dinner and after-dinner speech given by an invited guest.
Private Reception HW Lee Associates LLP Place Careers
Supporters of the Summer Show Foster + Partners Rick Mather
Opener’s Prize White Partners Ltd
For details, T. 020 7679 4642 or email architecture@ucl.ac.uk
Additional Sponsors The School’s programme of publications and associated events has been generously supported by: Bartlett Architecture Society UCL Futures
Bursaries BFLS Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners The Leverhulme Trust Bartlett Architecture International Lecture Series Fletcher Priest Trust
Individual units have also received kind support from numerous other companies and institutions. Bartlett Architecture Society Founded in 2000, the Bartlett Architecture Society (BAS) is growing rapidly. The BAS organises a special lecture series and other events. It also contributes to the development of the school through sponsoring equipment purchase, events and publications. Membership is given free to all new graduates to the first academic session after graduation. Annual membership is £40. Open to all former students, staff, and supporters of the Bartlett School of Architecture. For details, T. 020 7679 4642 or email architecture@ucl.ac.uk
Supporter of the summer show
Supporter of Rouges & Vagabonds
www.rickmather.com
www.tandb-contractors.co.uk
Opener’s prize
robert@whitepartners.com
The BFLS prize
www.bfls-london.com
DMC London London’s newest and largest selective laser sintering (SLS) manufacturing bureau now at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
CNC Routing 2.5 x 1.5m 3 Axis router table for fabrication of large and medium scale parts
Services include: 5 Axis milling machine SLS Systems High resolution, high accuracy models produced in strong durable nylon plastic with ultra white finish Material capable of producing bespoke or short run manufactured products/ components Production of excellent master models for down stream manufacturing applications Form fit function models for preproduction, testing and marketing
Z Corp 3D printers Quick and cost effective Early design visualisation Explore multiple design iterations early Models can be used for down stream manufacturing applications
Complex parts manufacture
For more information contact Martin Watmough, Director DMC London Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 8565 Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 5424 Mobile: +44 (0)77 3979 7248 dmc.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/ resources/dmc.htm
Bartlett International Lecture Series Supported by Fletcher Priest Trust
Lectures this year:
The Bartlett International Lecture Series features speakers from across the world.
cj Lim Dawn Ades Farshid Moussavi Roddy Langmuir Ed Clark Andy Whiting + Scott Batty Phil Waind + Sonya Gohil Frances Gannon Martin Manning Fred Pilbrow Matthias Kohler Joel Cady Juhani Pallasmaa Lorens Holm Dennis Crompton Marcos Novak Mark Garcia Mark Morris Mark West Mas Yendo Michael Webb Nat Chard Niall McLaughlin Nic Clear Omar Khan Perry Kulper Rachel Armstrong Ruairi Glynn Sixteen* Makers Vaughan Oliver
Forthcoming lectures are publicised within the Bartlett, on the website and through the Bartlett Architecture listing. archlist@ucl.ac.uk www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/ events/lectures/lectures
www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk
Publisher Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Editorial Laura Allen, Ben Campkin, Nadia O’Hare, & Bim Adewunmi Design Johanna Bonnevier & Johan Berglund Cover Image ‘Fragment of Arcadia at the End of Time’, Dan Slavinsky, Diploma Unit 19. Printed in England by Quadra Color Ltd Copyright 2010 the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 978-0-9558331-5-1 For a full range of programmes and modules please see the Bartlett Undergraduate, Diploma & Graduate Guides.
Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB T. +44 (0)20 7679 7504 F. +44 (0)20 7679 4831 architecture@ucl.ac.uk www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk