This year, our year 2 students looked for the materially sensuous and the impeccably crafted. Our studio focused on poetic, transformational spaces and interiors that have the potential to become catalysts for change. The year unfolded into two inter-related semesters, aiming to engage students with material experimentation and craft as drivers for sustainable design thinking. This allowed students to explore how small-scale processes can influence large-scale spaces and helped develop a deeper understanding of environmentally-conscious material and crafted modes of operating within interior architecture.

In Semester One we ventured across London in search of material and immaterial observations of ‘time’. Through a series of rigorous and playful design processes, the students tested themselves as architectural flâneurs, gathering information directly from the urban realm and applying this to the design of meaningful spatial proposals, responding of the needs of the South Bank mooring community.

Semester Two was an opportunity to interact with real clients, and focus on constructing spatial experiences and designing atmospheres for flagship concept stores in the retail sector. Through a series of process-driven material experimentation workshops, students were given the opportunity to develop a personal understanding of a set of seemingly incompatible materials. Using this, they were tasked to construct innovative material applications and assemblages that would inform the production of immersive, atmospheric spatial proposals, responding to the creative agendas of four emerging fashion brands establishing shops in New Bond Street.

Tutors

Era Savvides is a partner at the creative collective Urban Radicals. Her design philosophy centres around a materially-driven, crafted approach to digital design and the creative use of robotic fabrication within the built environment.

Alessandro Ayuso is Senior Lecturer whose studio- based practice and research focus on the intersection of representation, architecture and the body.

Jake Parkin is a designer and tutor based in London. Alongside teaching, his work focuses on exhibition, set and architectural design.

Sylwia Poltorak is a set and installation designer whose creative practice investigate atypical design methods for well-being. She co-founded studio CUNST in 2023.

Guest Critics
Alex Borrell, Ashley Caruso, Sindi Dojaka, Hanna Hendrickson-Rebizant, Mary Konstantopoulou, Olivia Neves Marra, Alex Vafeiadis

Special Thanks
Serhan Ahmet Tekbas (Haptic), Mahallah Attwell Thomas (Unknown Works), Eleni Diana Elia (Green Matt Workshop), Chris Kokarev (Material Cultures), Theo Jones (Green Matt Workshop)