Open Up with Ahmm, Duggan Morris & Glowacka Rennie
Open Up is a unique programme for secondary schools to experience contemporary architecture first hand. The programme aims to develop young students design skills and set awareness of their own built environment.
This year I was fortunate enough to work alongside three architectural practices. I worked with AHMM with Highshore School at the Monsoon Accessorize HQ (Yellow Building) designed by AHMM, Duggan Morris with Cator Park School at the Friendship House designed by MJP Architects and Glowacka Rennie with John Roan School at the 201 Bishopsgate and the Broadgate Tower designed by SOM.
This was a rewarding experience as I got the chance to not only teach but to inspire the young and hopefully generate the future architects.
My First Month at Alan Camp Architects
I have been working at Alan Camp Architects for just over a month now, and I must say, I am really enjoying myself. Everyone in the practice are so friendly and are always willing to help.
Currently, I am working on a large residential scheme in southeast London which is preparing for the construction stage. I have been working on a lot of revision on construction details. The building itself is a timber frame building with brick facade elevation on the ground level and timber cladding on the upper-floor levels.
The advantage of working in a small-medium size practice is that you are always exposed to what is going on. I am surprised by how much knowledge a person can pick up by just sitting down in a meeting or even overhearing a phone conversation.
Dissertation Completed!
My dissertation - 'DESIGN TO HEAL: Pioneering health schemes that initiated the relationship between arhitecture and health' is finally completed.
The dissertation explores ' Architecture' and its relationship to 'Health' during Britain's inter-war period using two specific case studies: The Pioneer Health Centre designed by Sir Evan Owen Williams, built in 1935; and the Finsbury Health Centre designed by Berthold Lubetkin, built in 1938.
Using prolific resources of first and secondary texts, the dissertation examines two of the quite rare early examples of modernism that were solely influenced by socialist desires, political circumstances and medical reforms; in hope to enact social improvement and human betterment, through 'social' and 'efficiency' engineering. Not only does the dissertation construct a history of these buildings beyond their iconic facades but it also reveals its significance in medical history, and its curent affairs.
Work gets published in the OPEN2O12 Catalogue
Open2012 is the annual celebration of student work and of their teachers who make it all possible. The exhibition is of students' work from Department of Architecture, and the catalogue provides a guide and a record of the best achivements of 2011/2012.
Fortunately for me, my work (The LOGISTICS Catalogue) was selected to feature in this year's OPEN2012 Catalogue.
OPEN2012
Chapter: Diploma Studio Eleven
Page: 102
Price: £4.99
I win "Best Education Volunteer of the Year"
To mark the end of the Open Up programme, an award ceremony was held at the stunning newly refurbished German Gymnasium in King Cross. This award ceremony celebrated the winning students across London from 26 different schools. The Open Up competition asked students to produce drawings and models of their vision for a temporary school building, applying the knowledge they had acquired from the site visits, workshops and discussions with architects, engineers and architect students.
Founding Director of Open House, Victoria Thornton said: ‘This is the sixth year we have run our Open Up programme which sees year on year in a rise in the number of schools who wish to participate. At a time when the design of schools across the country is at the forefront of the government’s agenda Open House is pleased to offer ways to educate young people in the language of architecture and the built environment in order to enable them to become informed clients should their school become involved in the BSF programme.’
This year I am proud to announce that Willowfield Secondary School, the school which I taught was awarded for Best Class Response. This award was awarded to the school which demonstrated a high level of detail, a good awareness of the sustainability and understanding in construction methods.
But above all, I was awarded Best Education Volunteer of the Year against twelve Part 1 and Part 2 students. This award was awarded to the best architect student that showed good teaching skills, leadership skills and true involvement with the programme.
Teaching at Willowfield Secondary School
This November, I was volunteered to work as a Design and Technology (support) teacher at Willowfield Secondary School (winner of the Artsmark Silver Award) for the Open Up programme. The students I worked with were in year 10 and they were preparing for their crucial GCSE and BTEC exams for the next academic year.
As part of their BTEC assessment, their task was to design a temporary classroom for their school. As a support teacher, my role was to teach and inspire the students to generate creative but sustainable driven ideas and then transform these ideas into working 3D scaled models.
This was a rewarding challenge as I was able to work with different students with different working and concentration abilities. Teaching them how to create ideas with driven concepts was the easy part but teaching them how to transform their flat 2D sketches into 3D working models proved to be difficult.
Open House London 2009
“It is a simple but powerful concept: in celebration of design excellence, 700 buildings of every conceivable type, shape and size opened their doors to Londoners completely for free. Londoners came together exploring all corners of the Capital, inspired by the power of architecture to transform the quality of our lives”.
[ www.openhouse.org.uk ]
I helped run this year ‘Open House London’ event. The occasion was a great success, attracting thousands of people around the world to experience London’s architecture for the weekend. I worked on Kids corner programme where kids and parents came to express their creativity by creating exciting architectural structures and design for an alternative London skyline. This was a wonderful experience as I witnessed young children making striking buildings on how they see the future of their own built environment.
I felt this event was so important and vital because architecture is not a subject taught in school education but yet has a large impact on our daily lives. This event allowed everyone to have the opportunity to articulate their views and concerns on the fast-growing built environment, which can only benefit the London City.
The New Moulin Rouge, Paris 2009 Competition
Arquitectum held a competition for a new reinterpretation for the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the most famous cabaret in the world and symbol of what is an important aspect of Parisian life.
We were asked to design a new space incorporating latest technology for a dance school and all its installations. The purpose of this competition was to create a new vision which, in the future, will remain an important symbol, as well as ensuring the continued quality of the show and the performance of the dancers.
Whilst leadings and working with a group of three friends, our proposal was to enhance the street presence by creating a facade of vertical aluminium fins. The facade creates a varied dialogue with its surroundings. When closed it stands as a mysterious volume; when the fins open it expresses the life going on inside. At ground floor visitors enter through the ‘EYELID’, a grand and red patterned perforated metal shutter that slides up, extending the street into the building. These sliding shutters are located throughout the building, opening and closing various spaces. The ground floor space is a multiple height space allowing for informal performances and exhibitions to take place. The design addresses the fragment chaotic spirit of Moulin Rouge by knitting together spaces with a sense of cohesiveness. Each space has the essence of a stage, and each visitor a performer.
Open 2012: University of Westminster, Department of Architecture End of Year Exhibition
The department of architecture invites you to OPEN2012, our exhibition of student work.
Preview
Thursday 14 June, 6 - 9pm
Exhibition continues daily
Friday 15 June to Saturday 30 June
10am - 9pm
Location
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS
PRESS
Sustainability Intern at Sefaira Engineering
Architects are challenged to design beautiful and refined buildings, while also meeting ambitious performance goals and tight budgets.
They cannot effectively explore sustainable design options with current software, and the use of “rules of thumb” do not allow architects to uncover the best combination of energy efficient design strategies. When energy analysis happens only after major design choices have been made, the options are fewer and the costs of change are higher.
The results are lost opportunities for sustainability, energy efficiency and lower operational cost, and ultimately a compromised building design.
The solution is to change the way that buildings are designed - to make sustainability analysis a seamless, integral part of the conceptual design process. This allows architects to explore their sustainability options earlier, and select those that most effectively complement architectural goals...and this is where Sefaira steps in.
Sefaira Concept enables architects and project teams to create better performing buildings with a powerful web-based sustainability analysis platform. It performs whole-building analysis of energy, water, carbon, and renewable energy potential, while an intuitive interface allows for fast, iterative exploration of design options.
Sefaira allows you to combine creativity and analytic insight to design buildings that are both elegant and highly sustainable.
As I aspire to be a sustainable-driven architect, I could not resist the opportunity to work on a promising project with a passionate multidisciplinary team made up of architects, building engineers, building physicist and software developers. Not only would I gain professional growth in my sector, but will also gain new invaluable knowledge of sustainable regulations, methodologies and constructions. Bearing in mind that, in 2016, all residential homes will have to be designed to be zero carbon in order to gain planning permission will hopefully put me in the forefront of things.
10 Most Creative Resumes
My Pocket CV design has been announced as one of the ten most creative resumes on savedelete.com; attracting more than million visitors. The concept of my CV was to create a mini portfolio, clearly illustrating my work whilst it being light and easy to carry about.
As I am training to become an architect, my aim was to create a resume that expressed the idea of construction and art. I did this by using a ‘bolt and wash’ fixing to construct the CV together. This fixing expresses the idea of construction whilst the pages express the idea of art.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank savedelete.com for choosing my Pocket CV as one of the 10 most creative resumes.
Work gets featured in the
AEC Magazine
My work designed for Sefaira Concept
gets featured in the Nov/Dec issue of AEC
magazine. The AEC Magazine is the
number 1 journel for decision makers in
Architecture, Engineering and
Construction.
Published bi-monthly, AEC Magazine has
a bold agenda that reflects the
evolutionary nature of this fast-moving
sector with its proliferation of software
and hardware technologies and the
collaborative working practices that are
integral to today's design and engineering
workflow
PRESS
Energy efficiency at
Bluewater Shopping Centre
There is no surprise that large shopping
centres massively consume endless
amounts of energy. Artificial lighting
along with space heating and cooling are
often the primary cause of this.
Bluewater shopping centre based in Kent
is a prime example. With their current
annual CO2 emissions of 8,000 tonnes and
an annual energy bill of £1.4million, Lend
Lease (who manages the Bluewater
shopping centre) has acknowledged that
something needs to be done, and have,
ambitiously, embarked in reducing their
common energy use by 50 per cent.
In order to achieve this ambitious task,
they are collaborating with Sefaira, the
company I currently work for, to help
lower the centre’s energy consumption
and carbon footprint. Sefaira is being used
to initially ‘pinpoint’ the inefficiencies
and then, using Sefaira software, it will
analyse the shopping centre's current
carbon footprint by looking at the
building's makeup. To find out more
please visit the Architects Journal...click
Photo credit
V&A
Building new bridges: my
architecture career
Since the recession, the construction
industry has been a very tough market to
find employment. Latest official GDP
figures show that construction is now the
worst performer of the major UK
industries. More discouraging, according
to the Higher Education Careers Services
Unit (Hecsu) survey, architecture students
have been hit harder than most. Thus it is
no surprise that many architectural
graduates with minimum work experience
are struggling to secure full-time
employment in an architectural practice.
Fortunately for me, I've been lucky
enough to secure a job within a well
established firm - Aukett Fitzroy Robinson
(AJ100 International Practice of Year 2012).
This achievement was not easy and I feel
the decisions I made whilst unemployed
was crucial. For this reason I have chosen
to share my experience by writing an
article for The Guardian, in the hope of
inspiring others to never give up!
The article discusses how I came to realise
working in a technology company was
pivotal in opening new opportunities and
how I managed to secure an internship at
a technology engineering firm called
Sefaira which consequently expanded my
knowledge in sustainable development,
regulations and constructions, and which
undoubtedly led to my employment at
Aukett Fitzroy Robinson. Click here to
read the full article.
Architecture Football League
The Architectural Football League was set
up by Oliver Bawden of de Metz Forbes
Knight architects after his team won a
number of friendlies against other
practices but were unable to loudly
proclaim to their superiors that they were
closing in on a league trophy. So far the
league has been a great success, with 12
teams signed up and more expected in the
future. In addition, next year BD will be
sponsoring the league and will be posting
match reports and highlights.
The 12 teams that participated in this year
league were: Stanton Williams, Rogers
Stirk Harbour & Partners, De Metz Forbes
Knight, Karacusevic Carson, Foster &
Partners 123, Foster & Partners 456, KPF,
AHMM, Grimshaw, Heatherwick, Lifschutz
Davidson Sandilands and the practice I
currently work for Aukett Fitzroy
Robinson. Unfortanetly for us, we did not
do as well as we had hoped; finishing
third place from bottom. Nevertheless,
with the new 'signings' (employees) and
our strong peformance towards the end of
the season, we look forward to next year
with genuine belief that we could be
strong contenders.
