Tutors: Mike Guy (Module Leader), Yota Adilenidou, Matt Haycocks, Sue Phillips, Lara Rettondini, David Scott (Fabrication Lab)
Yota Adilenidou is an architect, an MSc. AAD graduate from GSAPP, Columbia University, and currently a Ph.D. Researcher at the Bartlett, UCL. She is the Director of Arch-hives Ltd., a practice that focuses on the research of computational methodologies and digital fabrication for the activation of matter and form.
Mike Guy is a Senior Lecturer and a practicing architect specialising in primary healthcare projects. He has balanced practice and teaching for over 30 years. A graduate of PCL (UoW as was), Mike’s related interests include urban agriculture and aquaponics. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Sue Phillips is an architect and is currently a Visiting Lecturer at two Universities in London. She has been teaching for over 20 years and aims to empower students to understand their own learning processes. She has worked in social and economic development in Africa and makes videos and sculpture.
Lara Rettondini is a Senior Lecturer, architect, and co-director Studio X Design Group, a London-based practice specialising in architecture and interior design projects. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the recipient of the Westminster Teaching Excellence Award 2017.
YEAR 1: Design Fundamentals & Strategies
IN FIRST YEAR students on the BA Interior Architecture course are introduced to underlying concepts and principles associated with the discipline and learn fundamental processes, skills and techniques relevant to conceive, develop, resolve and communicate spatial design proposals. They are also introduced to the use of graphic design, CAD and 3D modelling software as well as the Faculty’s Fabrication Lab.
In the first semester students are set a range of assignments and short projects: designing and making modular structures; light-box studies, to investigate qualities of light and scale through photography; and group research on existing built projects, to understand intent and representation. Building on these skills they are then asked to design their first piece of interior architecture. This year, working in teams, students surveyed and modelled another of the most complex and characterful major spaces of Westminster’s west-end campus: the New Cavendish Street building.
Their individual designs for transformable micro- architecture to address the needs and aspirations of students new to university, expressed their own fresh experiences in built form – Uni-tecture!
In the second semester, students individually re-ordered the interiors of Hansard Mews properties for an increasingly urgent programme of specialised repair, re- purposing, modi cation and upcycling of ‘stuff, waste, existing buildings and lifestyles’.
The Shepherds Bush location, burdened by consumer waste but strong in community potential, fuelled students’ site and context investigations. While developing an understanding of re-making and reuse practices and ecological design, they iteratively investigated materials and techniques with an equally utopian eye.