Design Studio (Two) Five BA Architecture
YEAR TWO – DS2.5
Camilla Wilkinson is an architect and lecturer. She has worked in practices in Germany and the UK include Allies and Morrison, Sauerbruch & Hutton, Alsop, Lyall and Stormer. Camilla is undertaking research and lectures on the 1914-18 war camouflage system Dazzle Painting as Experimental Practice.
Chris Bryant is a founding director of London practice Alma-nac Collaborative Architecture. After graduating from the Bartlett he worked at Arup Associates and taught at Birmingham School of Architecture. Alongside practice and teaching he co-edited AD, Re-invention – New frontiers in architectural practice, with his fellow directors at Alma-nac.
The Shadow line1
This year we have encouraged students to develop multi-layered architectural concepts based on Bernard Tschumi’s Concepts in Architecture2. Through the process of experimentation and testing we endeavor to develop and shape concepts. We find ideas through playful experimentation and then test them through careful analysis. We teach that testing the requirements of the brief in relation to experimental design proposals gives the creative process value. At the center of all requirements is empathy and generosity towards humanity.
We teach that every step of the creative process requires the production of visual or tactile representation. No thought has value without a means to represent it. We teach that representation may precede thought, so that post-evaluation of experiments is key to the creative process – that of our own and our studio colleagues. Each year we adapt the experimentation process to individual sites, programmes and studio groups. This year our students made 1:50 models of key spaces and photographed them in (sunny but windy) sites in Margate. We ran a Serious Play Workshop where students challenged each other to take risks in fast pace modelling of their proposals. We invited our students to design a school for Further Education in Margate, where unemployment of 18-24 year olds runs at 8%. The brief stipulated that the school teach manual skills, enabling us to reflect on our own education and study existing innovative educational approaches, experiences and spaces.
DS2.5 start the year with a series of architectural questions that relate architecture and time. This year we aimed to explore how an injection of London life and culture to Margate has effected its long term residents. Through two briefs, one for a fish and chip shop and an education building we asked our students to consider – What does art and architecture bring to Margate?
We would like to thank the following architects and educators who have generously contributed to studio teaching:
- Alastair Blythe talk on the Global view of Learning Spaces
- Stanislava Boskovic introduction to Urban Planning, Barcelona
- Ollie Briggs, introduction and tour of Arts Education Exchange, Margate
- Valeria Carullo introduction to the RIBA exhibition Beyond Bauhaus – Modernism in Britain 1933–66
- Patricia Lora and Boaz Kogon, RMIT, introduction to teaching programme and tour of Media TIC, Barcelona
- Eva Prats, Ricardo Flores, Julia Doz introduction and tour Flores Prats studio, Barcelona
1 Conrad, Joseph (1917) The Shadow Line: A confession, UK
2 Lemonier, A, Migayrou, F, Bernard Tschumi (2014) Concepts in Architecture, Architecture: Concept and Notation, France, Centre George Pompidou
