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The theme for the year addressed the increasing fragility of the world, focusing upon issues related to the environment and the material, cultural and political shifts that have forced architects to re-evaluate their agency and practice.
Year 1 is studio-based and embedded in the processes of drawing, making and craft as a foundation for students to develop their own individual and collective approaches to the built environment and to start to formulate their own critical practice.
The first project of the year, A World of Fragile Parts*, focused on an individual study of a cast selected from the V&A Museum’s Cast Courts, which was first observed, then re-interpreted into something new through both technical and conceptual processes. The individual research from this initial project was then translated into a collective installation during the year’s second project titled Ritual & Translation, allowing students to explore architecture as a collaborative practice between colleagues, tutors, craftspeople and clients. Sited in St Pancras New Church, the project saw the design of six temporary 1:1 installations. These explored a series of episodic transformations between the body, the proposition and the site.
The main building project of the year was X-RAY: The Embodied City, sited in Whitechapel around the Royal London Hospital. This project investigated how the design of buildings can nurture health and wellbeing. Students considered elements of architecture that might encompass both medical and non-medical practices; they also practised alternative and lateral thinking to address some of the bizarre, mystical, profane and spiritual aspects of health. Students were asked to step into the shoes of the architect-surgeon to learn how to ‘diagnose the city’ through examining selected sites and surrounding environments. The project asked students to dream about alternative realities, envisioning what a site can host or become in order to help the occupants and the wider city.
We travelled to Edinburgh for the field trip, studying the topography, picturesque and medial fabric of the city as inspiration for the project.
This title was taken from the exhibition of the same name held in Venice in 2016 by the V&A Museum and curated by Brendan Cormier.