The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment
Location Nottingham • Courses BArch (Hons), MArch • Head of school Gavin Richards • Full-time tutors 15 • Part-time tutors 20 • Students 300 • Staff to student ratio 1:12
Undergraduate
Will Lumby
Course BArch (Hons)
Atelier 05: Challenging Mythologies of Learning
Project Reframing Unconvention: The ADHD Sanctum
Project description The site is adjacent to listed Green’s Windmill in Sneinton and offers a place of sanctuary within a parkland setting. The concept ‘Reframing Unconvention’ was developed to portray the mental and physical struggles of ADHD sufferers by reframing the disorder in a more positive light. Subconcepts distracted/highly perceptive, restless/energetic, disorganised/misaligned priorities, aim to guide users through educational spaces, giving them a sense of what experiencing the disorder is like. The goal of the Sanctum is to provide education through art, sport and therapy. Supporting this is a collection of villas sitting atop the site, arranged like a scattered mind. Inside the Sanctum, order is derived from Tavernor’s perfect Pythagorean numbers of human proportion. The south façade is organised like a decastyle hypaethral temple. Light funnels piercing the slope mimic an open-roofed cella. Folding concrete apertures over loggias act as though earth is being peeled back, revealing the internal nature of the condition.
Tutor citation Will’s development of his own architectural brief and conceptual narrative goes beyond expectations. His project was born out of in-depth contextual research and primary qualitative research. It has resulting in a reframing of negative words associated with ADHD into more affirmative and positive outcomes. Lois Woods
Postgraduate
Jack Whitehead
Course MArch
Module Design Thesis
Project The Garden of Candlewrich
Project description Rapid industrialisation and a booming neoliberal London economy has framed the city as a built environment informed by datasets dictating development based on plausible financial investment and net capital growth. The need to achieve the maximum economic gain has created a competitive market of investors and developers and so the city has been blinded by gluttony, with civic assets reduced to their most basic form. A recurring theme of loss of identity, unsympathetic rejuvenation and an absence of environmental agenda is emerging. London’s Cannon Street Station forms the basis of the proposal through the sustainable adaptive re-use of a pre-existing structure, re-using material to prevent waste and further damage to its Victorian structure. The development allows people to have greater control in shaping public spaces and provides a structure for the conscious removal of inner-city privatisation. The integration of renewable transport links into the scheme provides transparency, populating the building through the reformation of an historic passage and the adaptation of a rooftop botanical winter garden.
Tutor citation The project addresses two thorny problems that plague London’s civic development – privatisation of public space and commercial expansion. The thesis is an interesting compact of prosaic and polemic. Material, context, and light are forensically reappraised: composed vignette views strengthen connectivity to the city and the immediate context. Kenneth Fraser
