I was asked by Anna Pepe, studio leader of 1st year undergraduate architecture, if I would participate as a guest critic in their interim review. I agreed to do this as my previous two times at undergraduate reviews had been for 2nd and 3rd years, so I thought it would be interesting to see what work was being produced in the undergraduate year that I was yet to see. I also thought that it looked to be an interesting brief, based on the theme of parasitic architecture.
Extract from the brief
I was impressed by some of the ideas that were being demonstrated, and also enjoyed having discussions with the students about some parallel issues that they and I were both having with our projects.
For example, one student was designing a house for an 'eco-warrior' and was talking about the importance of it being a sustainable house, and so had made moves such as having wind turbines along one facade, but had also chosen a materiality of concrete. I raised the issue of some of the environmental issues which concrete has, and mentioned that I am also having to grapple with that similarly. I explained that I have briefly looked into options such as using fly-ash or GGBS as a partial cement replacement, but that I need to properly research all of the options and ideally find a completely cement-free alternative, and that she could maybe do a little research into this to aid the argument for her project as well.
Another student was clearly enjoying working with physical modelling to explore space, and there was real potential for him to carry out some interesting light studies using this method. We had a good discussion about the options he could explore in the workshop to achieve the best version of a physical model for this purpose, and I pointed him in the direction of Digital Print with the suggestion that he could print the multi-coloured glazing designs, which he was showing in his drawings, onto acetate and then get a direct equivalent light study of what he was proposing.
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