For the second time in two weeks, I’m at University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Cue much joking from staff and students about me not being able to stay away from my alma mater.
I’m here this week to do some research and to attend the 2009 student-led Theory Forum, which starts tomorrow. I was here last week to witness the end of project reviews of the 2009 live projects. With one of the live project teams proposing short and medium term solutions to problems surrounding Sheffield’s stalled £600,000,000 city centre ‘Seven Stone’ redevelopment, the event was held in a vacant department store just off the Moor, a once thriving street of low-end value shops and stores that has been earmarked for gentrification. With the financial crisis causing most of the money associated with the Seven Stone plans to evaporate into thin air, the city is now laced with empty shops, many of which were compulsorily purchased and/or vacated before it was realised there was little or no ready money to demolish, rebuild or refurbish. It is hard not to subscribe to the theory that there is some greater being who has decided that Sheffield should be forever trapped in a cycle of being shat on from a great height every decade. Who knows how long it will take for the city to solve this problem, especially as the only solution seems to be to wait for the end of the recession and then start building more shops. No-one has seemed to question why Sheffield needs so many shopping centres and chain stores. It’s not like the country needs another Birmingham.
Still the faded and (because the building was unheated) frigid ground floor space of the department store made for an interesting venue to present and review architectural projects. Not that much critical reviewing took place; the programme had compressed fifteen projects into a single day with only ten to fifteen minutes for each. It was hard to engage with this current crop of real-time student projects because there was not much room for dialogue or discussion. The presence of some project clients also suggested that this was not the time or the place to critique or probe deeply. The recognisable spirit and atmosphere was there, and the modular wall mounted suspension panels (once used for displaying electrical goods) made for a tolerable exhibition space. Two silent and non-functioning escalators sat in the middle of the building, leading up and down to dark unknown voids.
There was something particularly poignant about the display of student work in a derelict department store. Every year Sheffield (and most of the other forty or so schools of architecture in Britain) churns out about fifty final stage graduates in architecture. Nascent careers that are already counter-weighted by five years of student debt (now often unsecured as well as secured) begin as blurry eyed students enter the real world to find a job.
I was not the only person present to notice this old notice about the doors to the street. Thank you for buying your architectural education from us. Good luck out there, and remember that you generally only get paid when provide something in exchange that the market is prepared to pay for.
While my supervisor is out of town on other business, I will ignore her modesty and draw your attention to this news item:
Entrepreneurs win prize for best local innovation
By Symon Ross Monday
Belfast Telegraph, 28 September 2009
Two female entrepreneurs have cemented their place among the leading innovative businesses in Northern Ireland by taking home the top prize in the Northern Ireland Science Park’s competition to find the province’s “next big thing”.
Tactility Factory, founded by Ruth Morrow and Trish Belford, edged out nine rival competitors to win the NISP CONNECT £25k Award.
They took home a £10,000 cheque for their patented technology designed to combine textile design with hard building materials such as concrete.
The concept is expected to have implications for building construction and received credit from the judges for combining Northern Ireland’s textiles heritage with building product design.
Trish Belford said: “Competing for this award benefited our business thinking and has given us great insight into the potential of our business on a global scale.
“This award has greatly boosted our prospects to commercialise our product and go to market. In addition to this, the icing on the cake is receiving a significant financial prize which will provide vital capital at this time enabling us to take advantage of the opportunities that are now presenting themselves.”
Steve Orr, director of NISP Connect, said the awards had uncovered local talent with innovative ideas and inspiring ambitions.
A few weeks ago I blogged about some of the more memorable and provocative papers delivered at the 2009 RIBA Research Symposium. A highlight for me was the video offered by an absent Dr. Jonathan Charley of Strathclyde University, who couldn’t attend in person. It’s good to now see it up on Youtube, and I’ve also shared it on the blog of a fifth year elective module I’m involved with. You can find out more on ARC8014: ‘Examining Architectural Practice through the lens of Architectural Education’ on that module’s blog: archedlens.wordpress.com
I received word this week that an abstract I submitted for the 6th Annual AHRA Research Student Symposium has been accepted. I’ll be presenting it on 12 December 2009 at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.
And here is that abstract:
Be bold & proceed: fifty years of live projects in British architectural education
abstract for the 2009 AHRA Student Symposium, WSA Cardiff
James Benedict Brown, Queens University Belfast
http://learningarchitecture.wordpress.com/
Live Projects are established fixtures in a number of British schools of architecture. They have, in their most recent form, been described as design projects ‘with a real client, with a real problem … done in real time, with a defined end result.’ (Chiles & Holder, 2008) In seeking to remove students from the autonomous environment of the studio, they can broadly be divided into those projects that give students two distinct forms of ‘hands-on’ experience: a) of collaboration with others beyond the studio; and/or b) of actual building processes. But their historical predecessors, established as architectural education moved more fully into university-level institutions, were of quite different forms.
In 1961-62, Architect and Building News correspondent John Smith reported on twelve British schools of architecture. His monthly instalments provided an insight into their workings, their curricula and the manner in which they were responding to the recommendations of the 1958 Oxford Conference. In no less than three of the schools visited, ‘live projects’ were described. This included a live project at the University of Cambridge: a squat, square extension to the school itself, the design of which has subsequently been attributed solely to Colin St. John Wilson, a teacher at the school at that time. (Smith, 1962) At the Birmingham School of Architecture, third year students had designed such low-budget projects as a village hall. However, while second year students at Birmingham did indeed construct small ‘conglomerate’ projects themselves, these were temporary, small-scale indoor structures that were simply designed to combine as many different constructional details as possible rather that satisfy a client or brief. (Crinson & Lubbock, 1994) The infamous Birmingham ‘live projects’ (set in the third year) featured very little collaboration with clients or outside ‘others’, nor actual hands-on construction. Built by builders and tradespeople who tendered for the work, they were overseen by students who were training in a normative apprentice architect role. (Smith, 1961)
In the generational overlap between a declining era of articled pupillage and a rising modernist era of academic education, these live projects demonstrate an uncertain experiment in the academic yet artisanal training of architects.
This paper explores and describes the markedly different origins, motivations and aspirations of two generations of British live projects. A crucial distinction will be made, between those projects with primarily pedagogical and those with primarily philanthropic motivations. By exploring the perceived deficiencies that motivated the inception of these live projects, an alternative understanding of the twentieth-century shift of architectural education away from practice and towards the academy will be suggested.
References
Chiles & Holder, 2008. The Live Project. The Oxford Conference
Smith, J., 1962. Schools of Architecture – 12- Cambridge. Architect & Building News, (3 January), 17-24.
Crinson, M. and Lubbock, J., 1994. Architecture – art or profession. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Smith, J., 1961. Schools of Architecture – 2 – Birmingham. Architect & Building News, (22 February), 257-263.
Sunday night in with Oddbins finest 3-for-£10 Shiraz and my trusty copy of Adobe Illustrator. This weekend’s much delayed task (it should have been last weekend, but I was moonlighting as a roadie) is to tentatively start map my literature review.
You might have been wondering why my once regular ‘this weekend, I will be reading’ posts have tailed off. There’s very simple explanation for that. I’m now a clear six months into my studies, and as everyone has been so wisely reassuring me, three years goes pretty darn quick. So there comes a point when it is necessary to stop the initial rush of literature consumption, and consider the next steps. The truth is, for every five books or articles I read, I will discover at least another ten potentially interesting or relevant references. Part of the life of a phd student is, it seems, being able to say ‘no more.’
The first firm draft of the literature review will be required for my process of differentiation, which will happen at around nine months into the phd. It is at this stage (hopefully between now and Christmas) that I go before a panel at Queens and am assessed on the quality and potential of my studies. If things are on course, I may continue. If not… well, I’m not entirely sure what happens.
As part of the next stage of the process, I’m revisiting my bibliography and using RefWorks to help me map it out by subject area. Overlaps are quickly revealed, gaps are highlighted and areas of personal interest become easier to identify.
Regular readers will know that I am not to be fooled by schools of architecture claiming that they invented live projects in the last decade. It seems, from my research, that the Birmingham School of Architecture was the first, in or around 1950. Perusing the RIBA Library while in London last week (and even splashing out on the ferociously expensive and frankly average quality photocopiers therein) I dug out more articles documenting the buildings designed and built by students at that time.
One of the earliest such student projects was this modest terrace of six houses in Rednal, completed in 1951. The Architects Journal, Architecture & Building News and The Builder (above) all reported on the project. From the latter:
This terrace of four houses which has just been completed at Rednal, near the Austin Works in Birmingham, is believed to be the first to have been designed and carried through by students of a school of architecture. It is hoped to make this type of work an annual third-year event at the Birmingham school. A student, David Radford, was primarily responsible for this scheme together with Geoffrey Darke, Michael Keyte and David Meylan.
The work has been given to the school through the kindness and co-operation of the Birmingham Corporation Housing Committee. (Mr. H. J. Manzoni, chief engineer, and Mr. Davies, chief architect.) The site is situated on the edge of the estate overlooking the Lickey Hills to the south, with a moderate rise from rear to front.
Ah-ha!
… at Rednal, near the Austin Works in Birmingham … on the edge of the estate overlooking the Lickey Hills to the south …
Did I not mention to you fine readers that I used to be an air cadet? (a Cadet Warrant Officer, no less). That tentative description was more than enough to whet my appetite. And with the power of Multimap’s Ordnance Survey maps and birds-eye aerial photography, there’s enough information to start the hunt for a terrace of four houses, sitting under a shallow single pitch roof with a view over the Lickey Hills.
Nearly 60 years after construction started, graduates of the Birmingham School of Architecture will be delighted to learn that the four houses are still there, and still occupied, albeit with some dodgy plastic windows, and what looks like a complete set of porches retro-fitted under the original in-situ concrete flats.
I still feel a trip to Birmingham coming on…
I was in London last week for the annual RIBA Research Symposium Changing Practices. This was the fourth installment of this annual event, structured to bring practitioners and researchers together for a day of papers and discussions. The event was curated by Tatjana Schneider of the University of Sheffield and Prof. Jeremy Till of Westminster University (but formerly Sheffield).
Anne Lacaton opened the proceedings with a keynote on recent work by her French practice Lacaton & Vassal, and set a promising tone for those architects who were basing their presentations around recent work. While my research is about actual building work in schools, I’m always interested to see instances where actual research goes on in architectural practices. Lacaton discussed some of her firm’s recent social housing projects, each of which sought to demonstrate how existing modern-era buildings could be adapted to exceed current space standards more efficiently than if they were simply demolished and replaced with new buildings. A new-build scheme in Mulhouse introduced the idea of semi-enclosed winter gardens in a scheme of suburban houses. Although Lacaton spoke passionately for social housing that was more than just the cheapest option, and larger than the minimum space standards (reminding me of Giancarlo de Carlo’s famous appeal in the late sixties: why does social housing have to be cheap?) the project employed inexpensive industrial materials and construction techniques. The winter gardens were located on the first floor, and directly accessed through full height and width French windows. Providing unheated and technically exterior space, they dramatically increased the liveable area of the houses, simply by adding enclosed external space that is warm enough for habitation most of the year. Adding value to the properties without adding what is technically internal space plays with the local laws on property sizes, and is a refreshing example of what happens when housing is designed with aspirations beyond the basic specification. Looking beyond the traditional family shape, and considering modern day families with single parents or children from multiple relationships, the houses aspired to be significantly more flexible than more traditional cellular homes, notably those found in most recent developments in the UK.
Lacaton & Vassal have gone on to develop this concept in the rehabilitation of problematic modern-era tower blocks, notably the infamous suburban French HLMs (habitation à loyer modéré or ‘moderated rental housing’). Politicans love to dynamite problematic social housing, but Lacaton spoke up for buildings that could yet be saved, acknowledging that it is rarely the architecture that is at fault but surrounding social conditions. In this instance the winter garden (and additional rooms) are new-build complimentary structures that are built alongside or around the tower blocks. Internally, apartments can be re-configured as required, but most interestingly Lacaton & Vassal simply propose replacing the existing external façades of the apartments with French windows that open out onto these new semi-external habitable spaces. While not necessarily adding more internal space to these (often miniscule) apartments, they once again add usable space that adds value and space for the majority of the year. I was, however, concerned to note in one floor plan the addition of an extra bedroom to an apartment, only accessible through this uninsulated balcony space. I would like to know more about the efficiency of this scheme, although it was presented as a more cost effective option that demolition and construction of equivalent new housing. I was also amused to note that the spirit of le Corbusier continues to permeate through even the most socially progressive of French architecture. Lacaton also included some images of an unbuilt project for a new social housing tower block (featuring double height winter gardens to all apartments of course) that featured the distinctive Corbusian model of landings on alternate floors serving up-going and down-going flats. It seems sunlight and fresh air are still the prescribed cure for urban ills.
Simon Pepper of the University of Liverpool spoke on the evolution of practice, focusing on the sad decline of architectural design in the public sector in the UK. Tatjana Schneider plugged a forthcoming book on alternative architectural practices (which I look forward to reading) and Albena Yaneva of the University of Manchester offered an anthropological insight into the workings of Rem Koolhaas and OMA, although I was left unsure of the motivation behind the study.
Entering the second session, Jim Saker of Loughborough University reminded me of my childhood aspirations to design cars rather than houses, bringing an entertaining and articulate view of the architectural profession from his field of automotive design. He developed a theme presented by Anne Lacaton of the need to respond to the changing shape and size of the contemporary family. Fewer and fewer people need a home or a car designed for two adults and two children, and even fewer need them to serve the same people and functions seven days a week (hence Lacaton & Vassal’s open plan social housing, and the expanding market for compact people carriers with almost endless seating configurations).
Fresh out of another round of redundancies, Keith Bradley of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios attempted to remain upbeat with a whistlestop history of this established British practice, which has for some time operated as a collection of semi-autonomous studios. Harriet Harriss of Oxford Brookes presented her newly commenced PhD studies, although the presentation suggested to me that it was too early in the process to be speaking in this forum.
Evidently dealing with ever-straightened circumstances, the RIBA took me back to my childhood with a packed lunch reminiscent of a school trip. Luckily it was a basking day outside, so the majority of delegates decamped out to the street to consider the site of Jonathan Hill’s Institute of Illegal Architects.
Jonathan Charley couldn’t escape from the University of Strathclyde to be with us, so a brilliantly sharp ten minute video was presented in his absence. Charley called for a radical and critical charter for architects, encouraging us to aspire to a practice that was practical, critical and radical. It will be Youtube’d shortly, and I’ll share it here when it is. Liza Fior of muf slipped dangerously close to a twenty minute talk on her practice’s work, but nonetheless provided fantastic insight and anecdotes into working as a non-conventional practitioner. Fior proposed three steps to an inclusive design process: value what’s already there, define what’s missing and then nurture the possible. Stephen Hill of futureplanners followed, in a way, from Simon Pepper, discussing the architectural profession and its evident erosion during the years of the ‘Thatcher-Blair-Brown project.’ Although he didn’t answer the question, he indeed left me wondering whether architects are smarter than slime mould, appealing for us to all consider how the architectural profession can develop sustainably.
Christian Derix of Aedas singularly failed to hold my attention as he demonstrated digital design simulation as a means of sharing and developing design knowledge. But that was as much due to my disinterest as anything else. The afternoon session concluded with two phenomenal speakers: Robert Webb of Quiet Revolution on the architecture of energy, and Indy Johar of 00:/. Both held my attention so well that my notes cease at this point, and I simply you recommend you download their papers from the RIBA Research website when they become available.
Jeremy Till concluded the day with a final keynote, presenting a fierce but not unexpected attack on the hypocrisy of the profession’s stance towards its ethical responsibility. That these opinions can be expressed from within the RIBA is no small feat, but it’s just a shame that their sound is unlikely to be carried far.
This was a day packed with interesting speakers and topics, but sadly short on the much needed discussion in between. I was hopeful that the drinks afterwards might have provided an opportunity for that interaction to occur, but the RIBA needed to make money out of its bar, so our group repaired to a pub round the corner instead.
This is a scan of a draft phd-plan I worked on last week. It is about the seventh draft, one of a series scrawled over a printout of the thirty-six month timeframe I have in which to complete my studies.
I will confess to not having given this aspect of the project enough attention until recently. It is undeniable how important it is for a phd student to get stuck in and planning out the three years. All kinds of external and internal factors affect this spatially inconsistent and graphically horrible plan, namely the opportunities I might have to observe live projects in action in my and other schools of architecture. I also have to allow a signifcant amount of time for writing-up, editing, re-reading etc. As an exercise this quickly blows away any misconception you may have about how long a time three years is.
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