Tutors: Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows (course leader), Eleni Han and Hocine Bougdah
Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows is a chartered architect and had over ten years’ experience working for London-based architecture practices, before co-founding the inter-disciplinary practice Our Building Design (in 2018) and the charity Mannan Foundation Trust (in 2012). She was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Rising Star Award in 2017 and she has received a commendation for the RIBA President’s Award for Research in 2019. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster where she is also a PhD researcher undertaking practice-based research on architectural responses to the changing climate in Bangladesh.
Eleni Han: Currently a PhD researcher in Architecture and Photography, Eleni is an architectural designer, an educator and researcher on architecture, art and curation with a particular interest in space as a state as well as a construct.
Hocine Bougdah: runs a design consultancy practice alongside his academic role. His research interests cover topics including sustainable design, innovative low-tech/ low-energy buildings, spatial experience of users and issues of culture, urbanisation, and globalisation.
changing Climate – changing Landscape
Our studio will be exploring what role a designer plays in addressing the climate emergency and the social inequalities; how design can improve the lives of communities by inventing local responses to the changing climate.
The initial research and design will lead to exploring urban infrastructures that are directed towards coexisting with the natural and built environment.
While maintaining a particular focus on ecology, students are encouraged an explorative, experimentation in design which considers collective (human and non‐human) environments, landscapes, architectural responses and architectural technology.
The Site: Woolwich – River Thames
The students will begin by exploring the site’s interactions between the climate, topography, social and political economy that shaped the dynamic landscape of the river Thames in Woolwich (Royal Arsenal). The studio’s agenda will be to investigate the given site and to look beyond what is visible and to observe the ‘unseen’ to understand the character, quality and conditions of the site.
Leading to the proposal of the design interventions, to interact with the land, water, weather, climate and human and non‐human habitations. The students will undertake a series of design projects to be inventive and imaginative and construct through models and drawings in a range of scales, which will enable experimental design through collective adaptations to the changing climate and social transformation.
The design principles developed through the mapping of the site and the ‘designing by making’ exercises which will constitute the starting point for the final project of the year. The students will be required to design and fabricate a physical device to respond to the site and to understand the constraints of materials and technology. This project investigates the development of innovative architectural systems.
The design brief for this stage will be developed by increasing the scale on an urban site by the river edge at the Royal Arsenal, in Woolwich area of the Thames to design A Civic Space/ Community Dwelling / Public Place / Peoples’ Institution through a proposal of an Architectural landscape / Spatial Formalisation.
The proposal should be embedded within the community, to form an integral part of everyday life, beautifying and activating a public space.