News – Page 9 – Open Studio Westminster

BSc Architectural Technology students collaborate with Southwark Council’s Regeneration team to empower communities and address social and environmental issues in Peckham, London

Posted on February 16, 2021March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

Tumpa Fellows, Senior Lecturer of Architecture at the University of Westminster and a Southwark Council Design Review panel member, organised a collaboration between Southwark Council’s Regeneration team and students on the Architectural Technology BSc Honours course, where they are exploring the area of Peckham through various methods of community engagement, a process which ensures that communities in Peckham that will be affected by any developments have a voice in the process and can input their opinions and ideas.
Peckham is known for being a very multicultural area, with over 70% of the population being Black or Asian, leading the students’ research to focus on underrepresented demographics in the area. In the context of racial and social inequality and climate injustice, they have been exploring research questions such as: what are the effects of gentrification in the area? In the context of health inequality, how are the communities suffering disproportionately from the coronavirus pandemic? And, how is the burden of environmental crisis disproportionately affecting the low-income communities living in high risk areas?
The students’ projects propose design interventions that respond to the communities’ needs at key civic spaces in Peckham town centre, such as Peckham Rye Station and Peckham Square, with initial research and design briefs also focusing on investigating urban infrastructures that aim to coexist with the natural and built environment.
The students’ findings from their community engagement work in Peckham has been translated to visually represent the research with architectural mapping drawings. They have also produced short films about Peckham and the current issues that communities in the area are facing during the pandemic.
University of Westminster News

Huge congratulations to Robert Beeny from MArch DS16 on winning the RIBA President’s Silver Medal 2020!

Posted on December 3, 2020March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

The School of Architecture + Cities is delighted to announce that Robert Beeny, MArch student from Design Studio 16 won this year’s RIBA President’s Silver Medal for his project Devil’s Valley Geothermal Co-operative.

This project is situated in an area of Tuscany, Italy known as the Devil’s Valley, which had become known for its production of renewable geothermal energy over the past century. To protect the livelihood of local communities relying on that energy source, Robert proposed a new rural self-build development, powered by a geothermal well, with a pipeline and manufacturing spaces cascading down the valley landscape.

Mayor’s Entrepreneur Internship | Deadline: Midnight, December 6, 2020

Posted on November 28, 2020March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

The applications for 35 student interns to support the Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition are now open! You can see full details of the roles and how to apply here but key elements are:

Contract Type: 6 Months Fixed Term part time (3.5 hours per week, flexible around lectures) starting January 2021

Salary: £10.85 per hour

Closing Date: Midnight 6 December 2020

Interview Date: w/c 14th December 2020

Any questions about the roles and the application itself should be sent to entrepreneur@london.gov.uk

Christmas Competition and other updates from the Fabrication Laboratory

Posted on November 27, 2020March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

As we get close to the Christmas Break, we have some updates from the Fabrication Lab, as well as the launch of a short Christmas Competition for our staff and our students.

Twelve Days of Christmas Window and Competition

Fabrication Laboratory is doing what they can to spread some seasonal good will at the end of an extraordinarily difficult year, and are creating a festive window on Marylebone Road. They’re going to use the Lab’s robot arm to film a one-off interpretation of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and are inviting ideas for scenes representing one of the 12 gifts. They’re looking for proposals this week – sketches or sketch models – and we’ll shortlist the best 12 next Tuesday to turn into animated sets for the window and film.

They’re running the project in collaboration with the Baker Street Quarter Partnership, who have brought generous local sponsors and cash prizes for the best three entries – £250 first prize, £150 second, £50 third. The window will open and the film will premiere the day before the students return home, Tuesday 8th December at 18:00.

For full details and a guide to how to participate, see the Lab website:

fabricationlab.london/festivewindow2020

Opening Times

The Lab remains open as it has since the start of the semester, and is available for bookable activities including use of the lasers and CNC machines. The shop, now converted to Click and Collect, is working well and is well used. It will be open for students until the end of the week when onsite teaching ends, and will reopen from the beginning of January. This information is also available on the website.

Lab Closes: 17.00, Friday 11th December

Lab Opens: 09.00, Monday, 4th January

Lab Improvements

While the Fabrication Laboratory has had fewer students this year, they’ve taken the opportunity to make a whole host of improvements. Unfortunately, most of these will not be available until they are able to open up more fully, post lockdown. But just to keep you in the loop and spread some positive news, here are a few images below.

Two new publications in Studio as Book Series edited by John Zhang and Elantha Evans.

Posted on November 22, 2020March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

The School of Architecture and Cities is pleased to announce the publication of two new books in the Studio as Book Series:

No. 4 A Tale of Two Cities, JID Studio, 2015-2020, edited by John Zhang, 2020

No. 5 Dialogues + Dreams, DS(2)01, 2015-2018, edited by Elantha Evans, 2020

The Studio as Book series was launched in 2016 to highlight the creative work undertake in what was then the Department of Architecture’s design studios. It was intended to reflectively position the work of a design studio within wider intellectual, scientific or aesthetic debate and to provide a reference for future iterations of the studio. The series includes undergraduate and graduate work, and each book covers the work of a design studio over the course of at least two years. The books are produced thanks to the dedication of staff and students involved.

Previous iterations of the series are:

No.3 The Intrinsic and Extrinsic City, DS11, 2008-2017, edited by Andrew Peckham and Dusan Decermic, 2018

No.2 Dialogical Designs, DS(3)03, 2012-2015, edited by Constance Lau, 2016

No.1 Architecture, Energy Matter, DS18, 2013-2015, edited by Lindsay Bremner and Roberto Bottazzi, 2016

For more about the series, go here: www.studioasbook.org

Books are currently available to purchase on Amazon.co.uk or through the editor of each book, but will shortly be available as hard copies from Fabrication Laboratory shop.

RIBA Student Support Fund – Autumn 2020 Application Cycle | Deadline: Friday, November 27 at 17:00 GMT

Posted on November 5, 2020March 4, 2021 by Mirna Pedalo

The RIBA Student Support Fund – Autumn 2020 Application Cycle is now open. The full details including guidance notes and application form can be found on the RIBA website here.

The purpose of the RIBA Student Support Fund is to alleviate financial hardship for students of architecture enrolled in RIBA Part 1 and 2 courses in the UK. Applications are welcomed from students who have encountered recent financial barriers during their studies and would benefit from assistance to successfully complete the academic year. Students may apply for a maximum bursary of £3,000 in this application cycle.

The deadline to apply is 5pm on Friday 27 November 2020.

Competition: Transforming Urban Landscapes | Deadline: December 4, 2020 at 17:00

Posted on October 22, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

This new international ideas competition launched by the Landscape Institute will be of interest to students and/or professionals.

The aim of the competition is to respond to the current debates on the design and use of our urban landscape in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Deadline 4th December.

https://competitions.landscapeinstitute.org/transforming-the-urban-landscape/

Robin Evans Lecture 2020: Eyal Weizman | November 24, 2020 from 18:30 to 20:30

Posted on October 22, 2020October 22, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

About this Event

For the 2020 iteration of the annual Robin Evans Lecture, we are delighted to be joined by Eyal Weizman, founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

In light of the current pandemic this year’s lecture will be delivered online via the University of Westminster’s GoToWebinar account. Further details around the topic and discussion of this year’s lecture will be made available in due course.

Registration for the Lecture

You can register for the event on Eventbrite; either by scanning the QR code in the above invite, or by visiting:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-robin-evans-lecture-2020-eyal-weizman-tickets-125144022139

Upon registration on Eventbrite your name and email address will be added by the Event Coordinator to the individual GoToWebinar registration page. By registering on Eventbrite, you consent to these details being added to the GoToWebinar registration page for the event.

You will receive a separate email within 1 working day from University of Westminster (via customercare@gotowebinar.com) with a calendar invite and a unique link to join the Webinar. Please note: This link is unique to each registrant and should not be shared with others.

About the Speaker

Eyal Weizman is the founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The author of over 15 books, he has held positions in many universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In 2019 he was elected life fellow of the British Academy and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to architecture.

Eyal studied architecture at the Architectural Association, graduating in 1998. He received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London

About the Robin Evans Lecture Series

This series supports outstanding scholarship in the history of architecture and allied fields, building on the work of Professor Robin Evans (1944-1993). It encourages scholars working on the relationship between the spatial and social domains in architectural drawing, construction and beyond. Evans’ work interrogated the spaces that existed between drawing and building, geometry and architecture, teasing out the points of translation often overlooked.

From his early work on prison design and domestic spaces, through to his later work on architectural geometry, Evans sought to articulate the multiple points at which the human imagination could influence architectural form. His first book, The Fabrication of Virtue, analysed the way that spatial layouts provided opportunities for social reform via their interference with morality, privacy and class. In The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries, Evans traced the origins of the humanist tradition to understand how human form influenced architectural drawing and construction, focusing on aesthetic dimensions in the production of architectural space.

This series will provide opportunities for the creation and/or dissemination of work by scholars working on similar questions of space, temporality, and architecture. In particular, it supports work that breaks the boundaries of traditional disciplines to think though these complex networks involved in the space between human imagination and architectural production.

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows’ article for RIBAJ: “Practical steps towards real inclusion”

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, an architect, researcher, and the BSc Architectural Technology Year 2 leader has published an article in The RIBA Journal on how the architects can use their skills to help improve conditions for the disadvantaged and marginalised communities and members of our society.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and highlighted the urgency for community collaboration towards positive societal changes. The pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. My family is grieving the loss of several family members and friends (of Bangladeshi origin), living in the UK.
Research issued by Public Health England reveals that you are more likely to die from Covid-19 if you are BAME than someone who is white, and people of Bangladeshi ethnicity are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those who are white and British. The recent global protests for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement brought to focus communities’ collective actions to rise up against racial injustice and various social and health inequalities which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The power of community action and collective response has become urgent for communities worldwide, whether they are affected by racial injustice, health inequality or new developments in their neighbourhood (sometimes resulting in eviction) and for all those passionate to change systemic racism and inequalities.
As practitioners and architects, we could act many ways to facilitate the voices of those who have been marginalised in the society. One of these is to get involved in local planning issues: for example, by alerting the planning authority to any new development that negatively affects low-income communities in the neighbourhood through gentrification.
I am passionate about being part of the change in my area, so volunteered to be part of my borough’s design review panel. There I have the opportunity to help address some of the issues and push the design team and the developers, to hear and respond to the voices of the community. Unfortunately, in all the recent projects we have reviewed (which happened to be led by influential architects), the design decisions did not reflect local engagement (in an area with one of the largest BAME communities in London), and showed a lack of communication with the community they had designed for. Very little work had been done towards any such local engagement in the design process. […]
Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows for RIBAJ, October 2020

To read the full text please go here.

The Architecture Drawing Prize 2020 | Entry deadline: October 2, 2020

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Mirna Pedalo

The Architecture Drawing Prize is an international competition that celebrates the art and skill of architectural drawing. The prize is curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the World Architecture Festival.

In the spirit of many great architects of the past, from Palladio and John Soane to Le Corbusier and Cedric Price, it’s an ideal platform for reflecting on and exploring how drawing continues to advance the art of architecture today.

Entries are welcomed from architects, designers and students from around the world, in the following categories: hand-drawing, digital and hybrid.

The winning and commended entries will go on display at a dedicated exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. The winners will also receive a delegate pass to the World Architecture Festival where they have their work on display and they will be presented with their award.

For more information please visit here.