Tag: ArCCAT

ArCCAT Student Representatives + Square Mile Farms: How to farm vegetables from hydroponic wall installed at Marylebone Campus

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

In 2022, the students in the School of Architecture + Cities received the funding from the Green Fund Scheme to install the hydroponic (green) wall at Marylebone Campus. The University of Westminster’s Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation (CETI) set up the Green Fund Award together with the Sustainability Team to support the students’ sustainability related projects.

The hydroponic wall demonstrates a sustainable method of growing plants without soil, by using water through which nutrients are pumped. This method produces crops quicker and uses 90% less water than soil-based growing methods, as well as requiring no pesticides. The ability to grow plants indoors also allows ‘farmers’ to control temperatures and lighting schedules to improve plant production.

This year, the ArCCAT student reps have been trained by Dhiresh Tailor, Farm Operations Manager at Square Mile Farms, to look after the hydroponic wall, including how to carefully monitor the nutrient solution, and adjust iron and PH levels weekly.

University of Westminster News

The ArCCAT student reps who took part in this initiative are Anna Prideaux, Architecture and Environmental Design BSc Honours; Julie Beech, Interior Architecture BA Honours; Antoni Canyelles, Architecture BA Honours; Maja Kurantowicz, Architecture MA; and Marie Laura Polselli, Interior Architecture MA student.

To find out more about this event please visit here.

“Mental Health, Design, and Wellbeing; A Co-design Workshop” one of the finalists for 2023 Green Grown Awards UK & Ireland

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Mental Health, Design, and Wellbeing: Co-design Workshop, led by the Assistant Head of School and the ArCCAT lead Dr Ro Spankie, was one of the three projects from the University of Westminster that were named finalists for prestigious 2023 Green Grown Awards UK & Ireland.

Dr Spankie said: “All of us involved are delighted the Co-Production Workshop has been selected as a Green Gown finalist under the category of Tomorrow’s Employers as the development of complex transferable skills relevant to future practice is exactly what the workshop sets out to do. It does this by offering students a unique, immersive and experiential learning experience that challenges the ‘conventional’ pedagogy of designer-client / expert-user, by putting forward the notion of the ‘experts by experience’.”

University of Westminster website
Video submission by the Mental Health, Design and Wellbeing; A Co-design Workshop group

To read more about this and other projects please visit here.

ArCCAT members took part in University of Westminster’s inaugural annual Sustainable Development Goals Workshop

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Westminster academics, University colleagues and postgraduate researchers came together on Tuesday 6 June to explore what the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mean to them, to share best practice and to discuss ideas on how to overcome challenges while embedding them into the curriculum and their work. The University also announced a new commitment to Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship at the event. 

University of Westminster website

The ArCCAT Lead, Dr Ro Spankie worked with Professor Dibyesh Anand, Dr Pooja Basnett, and Morgan Lirette the Sustainable Development Advisor to organise the inaugural SDG Workshop.

5 ArCCAT Reps – Antoni Canyelles, Maja Kurantowicz, Rowan Isles, Pious Prosper Keku, and Maria Laura Poselli – helped organise the activities and host the occasion.

To read more about the event please visit here.

Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies Nitasha Kaul debating with ArCCAT Student Rep Maria Laura Polselli 

ArCCAT + LFA: “The Common Stream” experimental walk

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

On Friday, June 23 an ‘experimental walk’ organised by ArCCAT (Corinna Dean and Diana Periton), as a part of London Festival of Architecture 2023, took place along the River Lea.

The walk started at Bromley-by-Bow and ended at Cody Dock, where the group gathered in the newly built ‘Growing Space’, a project designed and realised this year by MArch DS20 students led by Maria Kramer and Corinna Dean. 

The walk was jointly led by Corinna Dean, Lindsay Bremner, and Diana Periton, all from the University of Westminster’s School of Architecture and Cities. The group was joined by a Pakistani performance artist, Abuzar Madhu, whose performance practice embodies a profound communication with nature, becoming an act of resistance against prevailing power structures. 

Film Screening: “The Oil Machine” | Friday, February 24, 2023 at 13:00 (GMT) in Regent Street Cinema

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Friday, 24th of February 2023 at 1pm

Where: Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

To book tickets please go here.

Join the University of Westminster’s Schools of Architecture + Cities, the Humanities, Law, and the Social Sciences for a screening of the new film The Oil Machine on 24 February, 13.00 – 14.30 at the Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent St., London W1B 2HW for an inspiring screening and conversation on our energy future.

The Oil Machine explores our economic, historical and emotional entanglement with fossil fuels by looking at the conflicting imperatives around North Sea oil & gas. This invisible machine at the core of our economy and society now faces an uncertain future as activists and investors demand change. Is this the end of oil?

The film brings together a wide range of voices from oil company executives, economists, young activists, oil workers, pension fund managers, and considers how this machine can be tamed, dismantled or repurposed

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by Lindsay Bremner, School of Architecture + Cities with discussants Lucy Bond, School of Humanities, Julia Chryssostalis, Westminster Law School and member of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty campaign, Ruth MacKenzie, Westminster Law School, Wojciech Ostrowski of the School of Social Sciences and architecture students Antoni Canyelles and Maja Kurantowicz.

The screening is free, but booking is required as cinema numbers are limited.

ArCCAT Screening: “How to Save the Planet: Degrowth v Green Growth” with Jason Hickle, Samuel Frankhauser and Kate Raworth | Tuesday, November 8 at 4pm (GMT) in M309, Marylebone Campus

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Tuesday, 8th of November, 16.00 – 18.00

Where: M309, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Rd, NW1 5LS

ArCCAT will be screening the recording of How to Save the Planet: Degrowth v Green Growth, a debate between Jason Hickle and Samuel Fankhauser moderated by Kate Raworth.

The screening will be followed by a short discussion.

All are welcome to attend.

LFA 2022 + ArCCAT | Architecture Acts: A Climate Performance in Three Parts | University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, June 24, 2022, 14:00-17:00

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Friday, 24th of June 2022 from 2pm to 5pm

Where: University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS

Architecture Acts asks participants to think beyond carbon calculations as architecture’s response to climate change. It is predicated on the understanding that architecture acts on and with the environment and that acts of protest can be affirmative and inclusive.

Act 1: The Conversation, initiated by Sarah Ichioka, co-author of Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency (2021) and Elisa Iturbe, guest editor of Log 47, ‘Overcoming Carbon Form’ (2019), with Peg Rawes and Jeremy Till as respondents, discusses architecture’s implication in climate change and its potential for alternative action.

Act 2: Postcards to our Planet. In 1909 architecture student and suffragette Elspeth McClelland was posted to the Prime Minister, an action designed to allow women’s voices to be heard. We will make postcards as acts of solidarity, conversations with our planet.

Act 3: A Tea Party to honour McClelland’s action. Participants will be asked to perform readings of their postcards.

This event is free, but to attend please register here.

Featured Image [segment of the original]: Daisy Solomon and Elspeth McClelland with a post boy, police and an official outside 10 Downing Street, attempting to get themselves delivered as letters LSE Library – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22934656091/ On reverse of photo is printed ‘Copyright: World’s Graphic Press Limited, 36-38 Whitefriars Street, Fleet Street, London’.

Announcing the new ArCCAT reading group

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Architecture + Cities Climate Action Taskforce is starting a monthly online reading group. We will begin with Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn. This will take place on 2nd March, 16.00 – 17.30. If you wish to join the reading group, please contact Ro Spankie at r.spankie@westminster.ac.uk and she will send you the Teams meeting link.  

The reading group is open to all staff, students and other university employees who are interested in engaging with debates around architecture’s response to the climate crisis.   

Readings will be short. For the first reading group meeting, all we ask you to read is the Introduction to Flourish (pp.1-19). The library holds an e-copy which you can access, or if you wish to purchase a copy, go here: https://www.triarchypress.net/flourish.html. In addition, Sarah and Michael have a wonderful podcast series in which they engage with a number of interesting people about the issues the book raises: https://www.flourish-book.com/flourishsystemschange-podcast 

We are aware that 02 March is a potential day of strike action, but we feel a reading group is not ‘work’ and are also hopeful the University and Union might reach an agreement. 

ArCCAT flag flies outside Regent Street campus

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Thanks to the support of our VC Peter Bonfield, and the efforts of Dain Son Robinson and Matt and Jessica in the University’s design team, an ArCCAT flag has been produced and is hanging outside the Regent Street building this week. Once it is taken down, it will find a permanent home in the M416, the William Cullen Room. 

Congratulations to all involved and thank you for this endorsement of the work we are doing in the School of Architecture + Cities towards addressing climate change and wider sustainability goals.