REGISTRATION
_About
UG6 is fascinated with the reciprocity between methods of architectural design and production and the worlds they give rise to. By engaging the poetic with the practical, the conceptual with the constructed, we seek to discover a wider range of spatial, material, and temporal possibilities for architecture that are more attuned to the sensibilities of our ecological condition.
Our theme for the year was registration, a process for determining the relativity of things. Consider an artist who performs a form of geometric registration by marking the surface of their drawing to determine the spatial difference between features in a landscape. This type of registration attempts to offer certainty over an otherwise changing landscape by figuratively clamping it in place. The affordance of this reductive form of registration is felt across architectural production, from the site survey, through the design process to the placement of materials in the form of a building and its eventual occupation.
While recognising this utility, this year UG6 were captivated by the idea of registration as a form of enquiry that can draw out worlds rather than impose order upon them. By recognising the unique position, the register holds – it is explicitly between things – we developed tools, methods and processes that acted as interlocutors between us and the agencies, environments, and materials we wished to engage. In this light, the act of registration doesn’t cull differences, but provides the ground for differences to play out which in turn holds the potential to produce radically new ways of practicing, building, and occupying architecture.
Design tutor: Stefan Lengen + Ben Spong
SLOWNESS AND DUST
_About
The evolving and sometimes contentious concepts of preservation and experimentation in the context of cultural heritage, emphasis the need to reconsider traditional approaches and to tease out new methodologies that challenge the status quo. The question of ‘Preservation’ has come to be associated with a sort of deference to the past over the needs of the present that subjugates contemporary action.
At the turn of this century the Catalan architect Manuel de Solà-Morales suggested urban environments benefit from ‘small interventions, which create a ripple, not comprehensive development’. This project focusses on a socially and ecologically strained environment, and the capacity for SLOW tactile interventions to change the speed-driven culture of the build environment.
Our idea explores the notion of an EXPERIMENTAL CONSERVATION APPROACH designed and informed through digital technology and explores the process of an evolving exchange of design and a relationship through cork, timber, stone and metal manufacturing methodologies. The folly and its ground scoop respond to the slowly decaying ruins and its particular site condition at Acconia, Italy, and it provides a public plaza and protection from the road and the prevailing weather, with walkways and seating positions that look out upon key vistas, in a position that was previously inaccessible to visitors.
This project is an experiment in making digital architecture in collaboration with the local manufacturing industry in the context of a historic site. It represents a new kind of conservation museum that is entirely designed and fabricated through digital technology and local, reusable materials and explores an evolving exchange of design and manufacturing relationships. This conservation open-air museum is tailored to respond, in broad terms, to preserve and celebrate the existing roman brick structures, through a carefully calibrated canopy and roof openings that seek a relationship with the ruins, through temporary light rays and a spectacle of dancingDUST particles that are activated by the presence of visitors, flora and fauna.
Stefan Lengen
Assoc. Prof at the Bartlett, School of Architecture, University College London, Director at FELT Architecture, Design and Research Ltd.
In collaboration with Claudiu Horsia, Peiyan Zou.
M.Arch Fire Safe Design Programme
_About
‘This course will give students and professionals alike an opportunity to upskill in this increasingly important and technical aspect or our jobs, and through this improved understanding allow innovative design to flourish alongside fire safety and not become an unintended casualty of it.’ Tracy Meller, Partner, RSHP
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/civil-environmental-geomatic-engineering/news/2023/mar/ucl-launches-first-uk-programme-specialising-fire-safe-design
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/civil-environmental-geomatic-engineering/fire-safe-design-march
M.Ach Y4
Architecture_ Design Realisation Module
_This module provides the opportunity for students to consider how buildings are designed, constructed and delivered. Students will be asked to reflect upon their relationship to technology, the environment and the profession. This will be explored through an iterative critical examination of the major building design project taught within the context of individual design units. Experimentation and innovation are encouraged and evidenced through iterative drawings, models, diagrams, animations. This module is supported by a dedicated lecture series, seminars and cross unit reviews (open juries/ forums), with each design unit being supported by a dedicated practice-based tutor.
Throughout the MArch programme, a professional way of thinking and acting is expected, be it through the development of briefs, the identification of problems or dealings with outside consultants. Students taking this module will gain advanced understanding and abilities in: planning, financial contexts of work, procurement, contracts and contractors, structural - and environmental design strategies, fire safe design strategies, cost engineering, risks and difficulties in construction and the delivering of a major building within a site. They will learn about how projects are run in a design office and have an advanced understanding of the contractual relationship with clients and stake holders.
This module will also expose students to a range of technical and scientific issues that affect design, and to encourage general reading in this area. It will help to ensure that a student’s design work incorporates an appropriate understanding of technical and scientific principles. It will ensure that students understand how to work with technical experts in a professional manner help students understand and demonstrate the iterative nature of design, as material - and environmental investigations are taken into account.
What students learn from this module should be synthesised into their final design project which is taken in their second year.
UG6
Registration
_Stefan Lengen & Ben Spong
Last year we looked at ‘calibrating’ and encouraged the production of experimental practices and individual design methodologies that formed the basis of our architectures. UG6 continues to develop experimental approaches that draw out the potential and pleasure in worlds on the edge of architecture’s traditional sphere of concern and study our fascination between landscapes and architectures.
This year we will explore the notion of ‘registration’, an idea present in all stages of architectural production. Surveyors use markers to align and cross-reference data, and manufacturers use methods such as scraping to determine the accuracy of made parts. While we recognise the utility of these methods, we sense that some of the more pleasurable and unique aspects of registration have been overlooked and will spend the year drawing them out.
We will begin the year with the construction of an apparatus, that registers a spatial, temporal, or environmental phenomenon within Epping Forest our site for the year. Our registers will enable us to design architectures of critical observation and speculative interjection that sensitively and confidently address our ecological condition.
Our field trip is to Copenhagen and Aarhus. We will explore a range of buildings of interest to us and visit advanced manufacturing facilities, architecture practices and research institute.