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Engineering & Architectural Design MEng Year 2 focuses on investigating structures and architectures that can navigate states of constant change. The year began with a short design and build project called ‘The Nomad’, which navigates and observes a range of changeable conditions along Regents Canal. In doing so it forms a detailed cross-section of London and reveals the variety of physical and cultural conditions the capital has to offer. Students then turned their focus to Amsterdam, a city under constant pressure to adapt to climate change threats and rising sea levels. For both projects students proposed designs that can simultaneously examine a range of dynamic conditions and adapt to the changes they are tuned to observe.
The nomadic devices developed in term one form a series of curious characters that roam the city, making observations and discoveries while collecting data. Once they come to rest, they share and compare their many findings and insights with one another, contributing to a larger, richer and more diverse picture of their sites of exploration. The nomads explore different ways of moving to roam the route, such as floating, rolling, running, flying and bouncing, to name a few. The knowledge and methods gained from the nomads influenced the analysis of our building project sites in Amsterdam; they enabled students to observe and document observations in a range of ways, from the explicitly measurable to the more ephemeral and poetic.
During our field trip to Amsterdam, we undertook a series of 3D scanning workshops as well as a workshop at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) called ‘Under Construction’. In the latter Bartlett students and students from the History Research programme at TU Delft presented their work-in-progress ideas and observations.
The final project of the year explored ways to design buildings for constantly changing environments caused by climate change. As rising sea levels and extreme weather events pose threats to the built environment, designers must engineer solutions to existing and future problems. Students took a multidisciplinary approach, combining their skills in structural, environmental and architectural design to produce complex proposals that address the challenges and opportunities of sites in flux.