Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd’s project ‘The Crown of Esfahan’ was praised by Rachel Cook in a special episode of the Culture Show about this years Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Leicester School of Architecture students James Flynn and Ashley Clayton exhibit at the Royal Academy.
Tutors: Sara Shafiei & Ben Cowd

link to RA summer Exhibition

Students tutored by Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd at the Leicester School of Architecture (De Mntfort University) win student prizes:

Leicester and Rutland Society of Architects Prize:

Best graduating Part 2 Student (BArch) Richard Isslieb

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Best Performance by a non graduating student award

5th Year: Simon Davies & Ashley Clayton

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Peter Elderfield Award

This award is given to a student who has investigated, in a design project or thesis with a focus on housing, issues of social sustainability, re-definition of the social housing type, the notion of ‘home’, spatial quality within dwelling and its connection to the urban context, and to have offered a critique of current theories and orthodoxies.

6^Th year

Richard Isslieb

Manpreet Bassan

Joseph D’Abbro

5^th year:

Richard Bailey (House for Wax-maker);

Ashley Clayton (House for a Magician)

3^rd Year:

Rebecca Smith

Gareth Patrick

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David Nesbitt Prize

Ashley Clayton

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Adiyan Prize

Simone PLASSARD (BA final year)

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Ibstock Award For Best use of digital technology

Alex Taylor

Ibstock Award For Best Best model/ drawings

James Flynn & Ashley Clayton

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RIBA East Midlands Student Low Carbon Award

Richard Isslieb

Ashley Clayton’s project ‘The Magician’s Workshop and Practice Hall , George IV Bridge, Edinburgh’ is nominated for 3D Reid Prize 2010

Ashley is a student at the Leicester School of Architecture (De Montfort University) and tutored by Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd

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Unit E Architecture Design tutors

Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui  / Justin C.K Lau

Luxurious, Luxuriance, and Loss 

2nd year students / Abigail Reid, Abigail Whitelow, Anna Beer, Ayiannis Christo, Bharat Pankhania, Edmund Drury, Ergit Bedalli, James Booth, Jonathan Gillett, Joshua Evans, Kah Shuen Lee, Sebastian Andraos

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The experimentation of the unit studio is driven by the research topics through the academic organizations of Horhizon and Horhizon-Paris. The polemic of the works focuses primarily on a ‘digital green’ design methodology that is intrinsically associated with a sense of formal, structural and spatialcomplexity as seen in the nature of plants, while borrowing from the baroque thinking along with the morphing with classical architectural semantics into playful theatrical tectonics and typologies. The creative technological methodology pursues a synthetic model for design- where organically embodied flesh encompasses new ornamental, sensual and bodily qualities in architecture.

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The Agave, often called the Century Plant, can live up to 60 years, but it only blossoms once in its lifetime. When it blooms, it is unexpected, and takes less than 4 weeks for the ornamental plant to grow a thick stem that enable spiraling branches and beautiful fl owers to reach for the sky, up to 12-15 metres. The main plant then dies after its once-in-a-life-time moment. Nonetheless, the after life of the plant provides a wide range of useful resources for human beings. For hundreds of years, humans have used various parts of the Century Plant to produce rope, clothing, pins, needles, food, tequila, and many more. Hence, the blossoming period is a spectacle would attract unprecedented attentions and public interests on an architectural scale, generating a small temporary economy. (e.g. local news, school and children visits, talks, research, education activities, exhibitions, tourist attractions, production of consumer goods, etc) The long and short-term narratives of the Century Plant will be used to initiate a wide range of design themes. Throughout the year, students will be asked to respond to the unit’s agenda, by investigating the spatial enquiries of ‘luxurious, luxuriant, and loss’, and incorporate such qualities into their designs.

A symposium coordinated by Tobias Klein (AA First Year/Horhizon) and Ricardo de Ostos (AA Inter 3/NaJa-DeOstos)

Rendering Speculations is a day-long AA event in which seven invited guests, from a variety of different fields including architecture, conceptual art, video gaming and interface design, will discuss the topic of speculative visualisation and virtual design. Highlighting a variety of disciplines and approaches, the event seeks to locate architecture as a magnifying lens through which digital visions and speculations are imagined.

Navigating through CG film sets, a digital life painting performance, augmented reality strategies, narrative scenarios, experimental drawings and political projects, the concept of speculation will be discussed as an inventive design methodology. In an age where borders between physical and virtual environments are constantly shifting, the symposium looks to stimulate a debate on how architecture can explore emerging mediums and assist in the creation of new visions that we imagine, aspire and experience in the years to come.

The event will be streamed live on the AA website at aaschool.ac.uk.

Speakers include:

Marjan Colletti

architect, an architectural educator, researcher, and co-principal of ‘marcosandmarjan design limited he is teaching at the Bartlett UCL the diploma unit 20, who explores digital architecture and representation. He recently guest edited the last  AD issue titled ‘Exuberance’

www.marjan-colletti.blogspot.com

Nigel Coates

architect and interior and furniture designer and head of the architectural department at the Royal College of Art – His subversive spirit first came to public attention in 1984 with the publication of NATO (Narrative Architecture Today) magazine – a manifesto for a socio-culturally engaged and popular, narrative driven architecture.

www.nigelcoates.com

Ziah Fogel

American computer animation technical director who worked for Pixar Animation Studios and is currently working at Double Negative Visual Effects.
www.dneg.com

Zaha Hadid

Founder or seminal architectural office Zaha Hadid Architects

www.zaha-hadid.com

Andrew Jones

World famous digital painter and ‘techno-mystic visual pioneer of digital art’

www.androidjones.net

Lebbeus Woods

American architect and educator whose work envisions experimental constructs and the question of the individual in society

www.lebbeuswoods.net

The event will be streamed live on the AA website at aaschool.ac.uk.

Sponsored by:

www.crystalcg.co.uk

Horhizon workshops will be part of both the Spontaneous Schooling exhibition and publication:

a) “The Poetics of Fluid Dynamic”, Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, Paris

4th to 6th September 2008

The workshop sought to investigate and explore the topographical conditions of Venice and produce ‘hydro-ecological’ designs that would intervene with the water landscapes, wildlife and urban condition

b) “Manufactured Spaces for the Moving Image”, Royal College of Art, London,

25^th to 29^th November 2008

The workshop’s aim was to reconsider architecture as a construction of perception – the importance of time in space as explored through film shaping space from a specific point of view and from a specific moment in time.

c) “Digital Dreamland”, University of Brighton,

5^th to 9^th January 2009

A five-day workshop that sought to insert architectural form into filmic space. Students were given scenic frames from recent films and manipulated, intensified, altered and revealed a new, additional narrative, one that captured an emotive, atmospheric film-scape

d) “Urban Scenario”, Architectural Association, London,

25^th to 30^th March 2009

‘Urban Scenario’ was a five-day workshop aimed at designing an architectural narrative in a flooded London. Set along the river Thames, students utilised a number of monumental buildings and deconstructed the city through its watery streets.

e) “Spaces Being Layered Through Time”, Leicester School of Architecture, Leicester,

15^th – 19^th February 2010

A weeklong workshop to re-examine the implications of previously completed work to further communicate and animate existing drawings through film.

f) “Layers and Lair in Edinburgh”, Leicester School of Architecture, Leicester,

4^th – 7^th March 2010

A skills workshop set to introduce new software to examine digital space and in the physical context of historic Edinburgh. The work attempted to form atmospheric, crafted spaces via digital means with which they could continue the project till end of term

The role of the workshop, or design charrette is fundamental to architectural education. Horhizon actively seeks to gives students additional means to individually express their ideas. These workshops are intended to be inclusive, drawing from a full range of architectural knowledge and backgrounds to produce a richness of architectural expressions. The introduction of new modes of making and ideas augments a students education. It gives them a multitude of means to approach design issues and gives them the skills to explore design, not to be hindered by ideas but to give them the ability to express them either on paper, through film or through the construction of physical models; workshops have the ability to inject new ideas and see renewed potentials in a studio project.

image in news feed by Richard Bailey & Christopher Christophi / arch & film workshop at De Montfort University, Feb 2010

workshop at De Montfort University Leicester lead by D.Koering

4th to 7th of March

From classic floor plans to organic architectural solutions. How the Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline [could have] changed the way in our language of creation of virtual objects. A technique developed by the car industry to describe mathematical organic free forms. The idea about creating surface from splines which are controlled goes back to Pierre Etienne Bezier who developed this theory in the sixties-as we see architecture is a slow reaction on modern thoughts.

The workshop will focus on the basis of constructing 3D objects in a classic way on real architectural examples, later spiced up by personal organic shapes which are produced by students and finally the extraction of data from the computer as communication file for further re-production.

Students were grouped in teams of 2 or 3 people, allowing them to locate the film between the cornerstones of their year’s project. They were asked to choose different aspects of their project and then to transform them into a time-based drawing, a digital film.

The filmic response allowed the students to project and construct a narrative space in order to engage with the conditions of their project. This was achieved by producing a couple of layered up images in photoshop and setting up 3d scene from it in after effects – allowing refined camera movement and audio linkage, that finally led to a 2 min animation.

This workshop suggested using digital film as a time-based type of architectural drawing. Leaving 2d techniques behind and communicating the architectural idea in a 4d drawing brings up various aspects: the camera’s point of view, atmospheric perception of space and changes in time. The workshop’s aim consisted in understanding architecture as a construct of time-based layering.

Students were introduced to digital film via key frame animation. The tutorials first consisted of basic 2d animation, then they advanced into 3d space, using a so called 2 ½ d technique – consisting of a refined layered-up combination of photoshop and after effects: a Scenography-like Space comes into existence by setting up different photoshop layers in 3d space.

In Addition to that, camera movements, light set up, atmospheric effects, such as fog and rain, animated line drawings and particle animations were created.  The tutorials also covered basic audio editing in premiere and gave insight to an efficient workflow.

Different aspects of the students’ projects were introduced to the camera step by step, allowing the camera to travel and poetically narrate a constructed reality.

Designing space means designing space within a context, be it of geographical or social nature, or even a digital media scape. By focusing on time based media the camera comes into play. The architect / the virtual camera becomes an active part of the scene, architecture is viewed from a specific angle, in a specific point in time: space is shaped through the gesture of watching. Also space changes through time: the virtual camera (consequently the moving image) might reveal information not visible to the human eye – space is loaded with narrative.

image in news feed by Ashley Clayton & James Flynn

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Ads1 run by Tobias Klein and Roberto Bottazzi

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is proud to show the works in progress of this years students: Ottilie Ventiroso, Luke Smith, Dawid Panek, Marie Koyzar, Georgios Manousis, Paniz Peyvandi, Deena Shuhaiber, Bethany Wells, Alison Hesketh and Safia Qureshi. Thanks to all the critics and guests that help shaping this year – a special thanks to Lena NAlbach for her time, help  and insight information on our field trip to Berlin.  http://ads1rca.ning.com/

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Exhibition open to the public
3 – 9 February 2010
11am – 6pm daily

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Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore,
London SW7 2EU
T: +44 (0)20 7590 4444
www.rca.ac.uk