Design Studio 18 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)

John Cook, Ben Pollock & Laura Nica

John Cook is an architect and creative director of Climate Cartographics. His expertise lies in the research and visualisation of climate change through data, aesthetics and cartographic means. @ClimateCartographics

Ben Pollock is an architect, strategic director of Climate Cartographics, environmentalist and activist with an interest in regenerative development and climate adaptation. @ClimateCartographics

Laura Nica is a practicing architect, digital designer and doctoral researcher. Working on multiple interdisciplinary projects, her interest extends to material research, digital fabrication and assemblage processes. @ArchiveZ / @LauraNicaStudio

designstudio18.com / @ds18_westminster

DS18: Architecture, Methods + Emergence: Actions, Intra-actions and Uncertainties

Yr1: Dominika Zofia Budzinska, Samuel Calkins, Taja Dennis, Sandra Dus, Matas Janulionis, Sarah Muldoon, Maritsa Raveneau-Joseph, Edoardo Ripamonti, Sofia Rota, Ruhsan Roxan Sadrettin, Hossain Takir

Yr2: Shaima Al-Jalal, Christopher Briggs, Bradley Fletcher, Valeria Golban, Hannah Ismail, Yueyue Su

This year DS18 continued the investigations into the concept of emergence, forefronting process-driven design methodologies for the generation of experimental landscape and architectural form. Students began their projects with a close study of the ‘natural’ systems and material processes of their chosen subjects, before deconstructing and recreating these processes: i) materially, through physical experimentation; and ii) digitally, through computational simulation. Students then developed their own generative design workflows, to produce responsive architectural forms driven by and integrated within these complex dynamic interactions. Simultaneously, they remained agile and adaptive to the changing environmental conditions of their circumstance. We recognise this design approach as fluid, abstracted and non-linear, where the nature of the design process is as critical as the architectural outcome itself.

Our site of study this year was focused along Great Glen in Scotland, providing an ideal transect to observe and design among the earth’s systems processes in action. This site’s existence stems from a tectonic fracture, formed at the meeting point between supercontinents Gondwana and Laurentia around 400 million years ago. From it sprung topographical conditions that would direct glacial movement and meteorological weather systems for thousands of years. The resulting patterns of rainfall, solar exposure, drainage and sedimentation formed conditions and climates that gave birth to the landscape’s globally unique habitats and ecologies and, in turn, the settlements, infrastructures and civilisations that inhabit it.

Upon closer investigations of the terrain, students were tasked to integrate their site-specific conditions and forces into their generative procedures to understand impacts, logics and behaviours of isolated variables over time, while recording, evaluating and feeding back into their iterative and interactive design workflows. Finally, having incorporated their individual programmatic requirements, these generative processes were deployed on the site, giving rise to the emergence of landscape and architectural entities flourishing amongst their environment, informing intelligent yet unpredictable outcomes appropriate and adaptive to the uncertainty and extremity of our times.

Guest Critics: Kirsty Badenoch (UCL), Anthony Boulanger, Katya Bryskina (IM-A-Studio), Emma Colthurst (Feral Landscapes), Kirsten Davis (Squire & Partners), Dusan Decermic, Mitesh Dixit (Domain Office), Alican Inal (Populous), Mary Konstantopoulou, Alex Malaescu (BIG), Fraser Morrison (Farshid Moussavi Architecture), Justin Nicholls (Fathom Architects), Esther Rubio Madroñal (Grimshaw), Elly Selby (UCL), Yara Sharif, Zuzana Sojkova (Wilkinson Eyre Architects), Ben Stringer, Elizabeth Terry (Hawkins\Brown), Ed Wall (University of Greenwich)