Author: Mirna Pedalo

Technical Studies Lecture Series: “Natural Builder: Building with Bamboo,” Jan Balbaligo, Thursday, October 15 at 18:00 [online via BB]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 15th of October 6pm 

Event Link:  https://eu.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/guest/9aee3d5c1e2e42998b4074a8b1245dd0

… the green steel of the 21st Century 

Vo Trong Nghia

Bamboo is not a new building material, but given changing environmental design imperatives, this aggressive fast-growing plant species provides a strong and durable construction material. Bamboo is the largest member of the grass family and is one of the fastest growing plants on the planet – Moso bamboo from China can grow up 900 mm a day. Bamboo can be ready for harvest and construction use in three-five years compared with 20-25, for softwood timber. 

In January 2020, designer and Bamboo builder Jan Balbaligo working with non-profit arts and social enterprise Cosmic Convergence completed the Eco-Salon in San Pablo La Laguna, Solalá, Guatemala. The Eco-Salon is a multi-functional indoor space (85 m2) built on top of an existing public school to provide space for music, sports, arts, dance and other activities to complement and enrich the formal education. The building structure is a bamboo framework, with a bamboo lathe (bamboo splits) roof and bamboo split walls with a Bajareke (clay and sand) infill. Jan Balbaligo is a great advocate for the use of bamboo in construction and she has worked on a number of temporary festival structures and small school and community buildings and we are delighted to welcome Jan back to Westminster.

For more details contact Will McLean – w.f.mclean@westminster.ac.uk

Technical Studies website – https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/ 

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows’ article for RIBAJ: “Practical steps towards real inclusion”

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, an architect, researcher, and the BSc Architectural Technology Year 2 leader has published an article in The RIBA Journal on how the architects can use their skills to help improve conditions for the disadvantaged and marginalised communities and members of our society.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and highlighted the urgency for community collaboration towards positive societal changes.  The pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. My family is grieving the loss of several family members and friends (of Bangladeshi origin), living in the UK.

Research issued by Public Health England reveals that you are more likely to die from Covid-19 if you are BAME than someone who is white, and people of Bangladeshi ethnicity are twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those who are white and British. The recent global protests for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement brought to focus communities’ collective actions to rise up against racial injustice and various social and health inequalities which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The power of community action and collective response has become urgent for communities worldwide, whether they are affected by racial injustice, health inequality or new developments in their neighbourhood (sometimes resulting in eviction) and for all those passionate to change systemic racism and inequalities.

As practitioners and architects, we could act many ways to facilitate the voices of those who have been marginalised in the society. One of these is to get involved in local planning issues: for example, by alerting the planning authority to any new development that negatively affects low-income communities in the neighbourhood through gentrification.

I am passionate about being part of the change in my area, so volunteered to be part of my borough’s design review panel. There I have the opportunity to help address some of the issues and push the design team and the developers, to hear and respond to the voices of the community. Unfortunately, in all the recent projects we have reviewed (which happened to be led by influential architects), the design decisions did not reflect local engagement (in an area with one of the largest BAME communities in London), and showed a lack of communication with the community they had designed for. Very little work had been done towards any such local engagement in the design process. […]

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows for RIBAJ, October 2020

To read the full text please go here.

Technical Studies Lecture Series: “Building with Cross Laminated Timber (CLT),” Andrew Waugh from Waugh Thistleton Architects, Thursday, October 8 at 18:00 [online via BB]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

When: Thursday, 8th of October at 6pm

Event link:  https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/8d7c6b34eb16433cb169a07f519d9712

A mass timber building will weigh about 30% of a regular building, and so much reduced foundations … these buildings can be re-purposed, they are easy to adapt.

Andrew Waugh

Andrew Waugh of Waugh Thistleton Architects is a great advocate for the use of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) in construction and he first used it in a small project in 2003. His practice, subsequently built a nine-storey residential CLT tower in Murray Grove, Hackney, London and has demonstrated its success for the construction of dense urban housing and office projects. Waugh has also used other engineered timber products such as Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), which is a large section of bonded timber veneers providing the equivalent cross-sectional strength of steel.

Andrew Waugh and Anthony Thistleton, met as students at Kingston University and established Waugh Thistleton in 1997. Waugh Thistleton Architects is a Shoreditch based architectural practice producing thoughtful and sustainable projects in its own neighbourhood and beyond. The practice is a world leader in engineered timber and pioneer in the field of tall timber buildings. In addition to being immersed in both design and construction, they run research projects, teach and experiment in timber, with their full-time timber engineer and the many PhD and Masters students that come to work with them.

For more details contact Will McLean – w.f.mclean@westminster.ac.uk

Technical Studies website – https://technicalstudies.tumblr.com/

Technical Studies Lecture Series: “The Shape of Green” Mick Pearce, Thursday, October 1, 18:00 [online via BB]

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Thursday, 1st of October at 6.00pm

Event link: https://eu.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/guest/2415664a77cb470bb266d845cf4bcb76 

Michael Pearce is a graduate of the AA and was a student of the socio-technology gurus Reyner Banham and Cedric Price. Pearce was responsible for the design and supervision of the award-winning Eastgate Centre in Harare and the CH2 (Council House 2) Municipal offices in Melbourne Australia. The metaphor for Eastgate was the termitary, the metaphor for CH2 is the tree. Pearce believes that the architecture and its visual expression should respond to the natural, socio-cultural and economic environment of its location in the same way that an ecosystem in nature is embedded in its site. 

Pearce has been working in Zimbabwe and Zambia for 33 years. His experience covers a wide range from building in remote parts of Central Africa to converting buildings in north east England and large-scale city developments in Harare, Zimbabwe. Committed to appropriate and responsive architecture, Michael Pearce has specialised in the development of buildings which have low maintenance, low capital and running costs and renewable energy systems of environmental control. His most recent work involves developing passive control systems in small-scale single storey buildings as well as large-scale commercial multi-storey buildings using building methods which rely even less on imported materials, technologies or human resources. He has been closely involved in the development of rammed earth construction for low cost housing in remote locations in Zimbabwe where transport and energy are the largest costs in producing buildings.  

The Architecture Drawing Prize 2020 | Entry deadline: October 2, 2020

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The Architecture Drawing Prize is an international competition that celebrates the art and skill of architectural drawing. The prize is curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the World Architecture Festival.

In the spirit of many great architects of the past, from Palladio and John Soane to Le Corbusier and Cedric Price, it’s an ideal platform for reflecting on and exploring how drawing continues to advance the art of architecture today.

Entries are welcomed from architects, designers and students from around the world, in the following categories: hand-drawing, digital and hybrid.

The winning and commended entries will go on display at a dedicated exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. The winners will also receive a delegate pass to the World Architecture Festival where they have their work on display and they will be presented with their award.

For more information please visit here.

School of Architecture + Cities featured in Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival School Show

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

University of Westminster architecture students share “varied design approaches” across 9 projects

A dementia clinic that celebrates the joy of eggs and a dance school for the over 60s feature in this VDF school show of work from the University of Westminster‘s architecture students.

Of the more than 750 graduates and undergraduates that make up the university’s School of Architecture and Cities, nine students’ work is showcased below, spanning disciplines from environmental and urban design to interior architecture.

Dezeen.com

For more info and to see the featured students’ work please visit here.

Featured image: The Really Really Real by Sinead Fahey, MArch DS15

OPEN2020 Rolling Programme and Launch

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The OPEN2020 has been revised to more accurately reflect its nature as a rolling programme of events and an evolving platform being created by the School’s staff and students.

As a result, the schedule of events is planned to take place as follows:

6.30pm, Thursday 2 July

  • Introduction to the VirtualOPEN2020 programme and the collaborative OPENwestminster.london exhibition platform
  • OPEN2020 Catalogue and Film presentation

11am, Monday 6, Wednesday 8, and Friday 10 July

Digital Employability Skills for the Post Covid-19 World Webinar Series – for all SA+C students, hosted within the construction site of the Virtual OPEN2020 platform.

6.30pm, Thursday 16 July 

  • Opening of the VirtualOPEN2020 Exhibition Platform
  • Opening speech by Prof Sadie Morgan

Congratulations to MArch DS23 5th Year Student Hamza Shaikh on being featured on Design Boom!

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Hamza Shaikh is an MArch student at the School of Architecture and Cities, who has just completed his RIBA Part 2 Diploma in DS23, and is well-known for his popular podcast series on architecture and design Two World Design.

His MArch final project “The Sleep Institute” was recently featured on Design Boom.

To read more about his project and look at his fantastic portfolio please visit here.

Featured image by Hamza Shaikh

London Festival of Architecture Webinar: “Challenging Deep Pockets” with MAARC’s Iman Keaik, June 25, 2020, 7pm-8pm

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

The University of Westminster represented by MA Architecture student Iman Keaik, is excited to host an online webinar about the four conflicting powers in London.

Who owns London? Are people becoming intangible and invisible in the city of conflicting power? How can we imagine a city of consumption ripped from its money power and transformed into a city of production?

This project ‘Challenging Deep Pockets’ explores London as a conflicted city of powers, where people’s right to the city is a forgotten phenomenon, and the citizens step through controlled life marks as a part of the capital’s powers.

The project disrupts the system. It aims to highlight the much-needed new way of thinking, bringing back people’s right to the city by fighting this powerful explosion that has almost irreversibly affected the city. The new London becomes the land of production, rethinks the power of trade and becomes a place where people PRODUCE, TRADE AND BENEFIT.

This new approach to transform the city into a cashless city revolving around its production is also analysed after the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19. This pandemic helped us read the High street of Oxford Street as containing non-essential shops where most of them where closed in an emergency state. The imagined scenario is that the pandemic lasts few years while the state of the city deteriorates and the bird’s nests take over the streets. These empty unused shops will, therefore, accommodate new functions that serve the in-house production of London.

The session will include the following:

  • A short story ‘A tale of Four Powers’ about London
  • A short film about the consumption of Oxford Street
  • Presentation of the Re-imagined London

Join us for an open conversation that will lead to sharing of fresh ideas and views about conflicting powers in London.

The webinar will be held via Zoom, after registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Event Details

Challenging Deep Pockets

Tickets/Booking

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lfa-digital-challenging-deep-pockets-tickets-106958973168

MA Architecture Website: www.instagram.com/maarcwest/?hl=en

MA Architecture Instagram: @maarcwest

The Traditional Architecture Group’s Student Prize & Measured Drawing Competition 2020 | Deadline: September 30, 2020

Posted on by Mirna Pedalo

Two cash architecture prizes awarded by the Traditional Architecture Group are available to students of UK Schools of Architecture.

There is a prize of £1000 for the best student project for a new traditional or classical design. And there is a £500 prize for the best measured drawing of a traditional or classical building (or part of a building).

The deadline for entries is 30th of September 2020.

For more information please visit here.