Year 2 – Studio 1: Changes in State, Spaces in Flux

Project details

Programme

Unit MEng

Tutors: Laura Hannigan, Amelia Vilaplana de Miguel, Farhang Tahmasebi, Graeme Williamson.

As evolving architectural, structural and environmental designers, our students develop skills that fundamentally respond to the challenges we face in the early part of the 21st century. Within their work, students are invited to speculate on the potential of creative expression across all three disciplines, challenging normative practices by positing unique and integrated research vehicles.

This year commenced with a focus on the work of Olafur Eliasson, an acclaimed environmental artist whose visually rich experiments explore intangible or ephemeral conditions within structural apparatus. In term one, students were invited to explore their own experiments in relation to an introductory site at Limmo Peninsula Ecology Park in east London. 1:1 devices were evolved to expose or record an atmospheric or environmental condition or change of state.

Our field trip to Marrakech extended this conversation between environment and site with students forming an appreciation of traditional and sustainable environmental design and other necessary protections from the harsh Moroccan climate. Self-directed programmes have been developed to respond to a range of sites in the Medina. Relating to this unique cultural and environmental context, students were able to further explore the relationship between climate, building fabric and structural approaches.

Group Students

Hans Kei Kaeppeler, Y2, 'The Felt Project'

The building creates both a factory for felt manufacturing and an intimate quiet space for self-reflection, addressing the need for psychotherapeutic spaces in the city. The design is driven by a rigorous and imaginative exploration of the structural, acoustic, light and thermal properties of felt.

Hans Kei Kaeppeler, Y2, 'The Felt Project'

Leo Kauntz Moderini, Y2, 'Terracotta Research Facility'

The project revisits the Moroccan Funduq and envisions a contemporary research facility dedicated to innovations in terracotta production. A mechanistic building is generated by the assemblage of extruded terracotta elements. The fractal geometry within the façade creates a dynamic semi-permeable barrier responding to meteorological conditions.

Andreea Dumitrescu, Y2, 'L’École de Lumière'

The project explores the beneficial impact of modulated daylight using coloured glass in an educational space. During the day, a composition of coloured planes is activated by the movement of the Sun and projects a choreography of lights into the different rooms.

Mateo Rossi Rolando, Y2, 'House for a Herbalist'

Four mobile workshops create a dynamic tension between cultivation and experimentation, extending this traditional milieu into a contemporary medical research facility.

Ralf Saade, Y2, 'L'Energie, l'Eau et le Son.'

Utilising greywater, the project performs a celebration of water in the form of a reed bed filtration plant. Different therapeutic uses are deployed across the site, and the project reimagines the traditional functions of a bath house, a steam room and a central fountain.

Jessica Ho, Y2, 'Palm of the Oasis'

Within an environmental context of excessive levels of heat and sunlight, the project reinterprets aspects of Moroccan Muqarnas to build a shady oasis in the centre of the Medina. An evolved geometric canopy allows absorbed water to circulate and cool the space below.