Architecture BA Honours
This year’s theme challenged our students to explore architecture beyond just buildings. ‘2030’ was an invitation to create stories within cities – a new chapter that challenged what we build and who we will build for. The projects are potential blueprints for alternative types of architecture, where tradition meets innovation and history intertwines with imagination. Welcome to the architecture of tomorrow, where each corner is filled with inspiring stories of challenge and hope.
Our first year students started the year looking into the Future of Food, raising larger questions about food production, distribution and consumption in the face of global challenges of climate change and population growth. The Year 1 Feast was a sharing of personal memories, cultural identities and installations along two large banquet tables in our 14,000 square foot former concrete construction hall.
In Year 2 students looked at 2030 through the lens of community, circularity and craft. Two studios worked on Live Projects, one with the Bulmer Brick and Tile Company in Suffolk [DS(2)1] and the other with social enterprise ‘YesMake’ in Canada Water [DS(2)2]. Other studios focused on developing community-led building projects based on the memories and histories of the underrepresented communities of Whitechapel [DS(2)3] and Poplar East [DS(2)6]. Re-using existing buildings [DS(2)4], re-imagining institutional assembly structures [DS(2)5] and re-writing outdated People’s Plans for 2030 [DS(2)7], reflected the environmental, social and political concerns at the core of Year 2 explorations.
In Year 3, briefs were set to speculate on trends leading to 2030 and beyond. Along the Thames, an Architecture against the Grain [DS(3)1] challenged the gentrification and privatisation of the Deptford riverside; the Cosmopolitical Parliament [DS(3)2] speculated on institutions that will give a voice to ecosystems and species; and the Asynchronous Archive [DS(3)3] presented an alternative way to confront, interpret and experience Somerset House. DS(3)4 reimagined Tilbury through a cinematic lens as a ‘Dreamland Destination’, DS(3)6 proposed Stevenage New Town as a post-2030 living machine, while DS(3)7 tested models of new habitation that would respond to the rapid changes in property, demographic and climate experienced in London and Beijing.
We hope that the ideas developed in our studios this year are simply the beginnings of blueprints towards a new cultural and environmental imagination for 2030 and beyond. Thank you to all Studio Tutors and the Course Team for taking on this year’s challenge, and a bigger thank to all students for their continuous creative spirit and energy.
Paolo Zaide
Course Leader
Architecture BA Honours
This year’s theme challenged our students to explore architecture beyond just buildings. ‘2030’ was an invitation to create stories within cities – a new chapter that challenged what we build and who we will build for. The projects are potential blueprints for alternative types of architecture, where tradition meets innovation and history intertwines with imagination. Welcome to the architecture of tomorrow, where each corner is filled with inspiring stories of challenge and hope.
Our first year students started the year looking into the Future of Food, raising larger questions about food production, distribution and consumption in the face of global challenges of climate change and population growth. The Year 1 Feast was a sharing of personal memories, cultural identities and installations along two large banquet tables in our 14,000 square foot former concrete construction hall.
In Year 2 students looked at 2030 through the lens of community, circularity and craft. Two studios worked on Live Projects, one with the Bulmer Brick and Tile Company in Suffolk [DS(2)1] and the other with social enterprise ‘YesMake’ in Canada Water [DS(2)2]. Other studios focused on developing community-led building projects based on the memories and histories of the underrepresented communities of Whitechapel [DS(2)3] and Poplar East [DS(2)6]. Re-using existing buildings [DS(2)4], re-imagining institutional assembly structures [DS(2)5] and re-writing outdated People’s Plans for 2030 [DS(2)7], reflected the environmental, social and political concerns at the core of Year 2 explorations.
In Year 3, briefs were set to speculate on trends leading to 2030 and beyond. Along the Thames, an Architecture against the Grain [DS(3)1] challenged the gentrification and privatisation of the Deptford riverside; the Cosmopolitical Parliament [DS(3)2] speculated on institutions that will give a voice to ecosystems and species; and the Asynchronous Archive [DS(3)3] presented an alternative way to confront, interpret and experience Somerset House. DS(3)4 reimagined Tilbury through a cinematic lens as a ‘Dreamland Destination’, DS(3)6 proposed Stevenage New Town as a post-2030 living machine, while DS(3)7 tested models of new habitation that would respond to the rapid changes in property, demographic and climate experienced in London and Beijing.
We hope that the ideas developed in our studios this year are simply the beginnings of blueprints towards a new cultural and environmental imagination for 2030 and beyond. Thank you to all Studio Tutors and the Course Team for taking on this year’s challenge, and a bigger thank to all students for their continuous creative spirit and energy.
Paolo Zaide
Course Leader