The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning
Location Dundee | Courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch, MArch with Urban Planning | Head of school Kirsty Macari | Full-time tutors 11 | Part-time tutors 20 | Students 300 | Staff to student ratio 1:12
Undergraduate
Finley McCallum
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Performance +
Project title Edinburgh Society of Musicians
Project description This is a new home for the Edinburgh Society of Musicians, comprising a performance venue and music school in Dean Village. The main aim is to promote live classical music for the whole of society by making it more accessible. Key to the building’s concept are interlocking voids between floors, used as a mechanism to ensure light reaches the depth of its plan, on a tight site. Its southern façade features practice-room light cannons doubling up as a shop window for showcasing music tuition and café facilities. Overall, the building’s massing is inspired by the work of John James Burnet, the designer of neighbouring Drumsheugh Baths.
Tutor citation Finley has explored a personal agenda that aims to bring together place, craft and architectural identity, challenging the traditional ‘performance’ brief to develop this into a music school that brings together vernacular heritage and built form. Douglas McCorkell
Postgraduate
Yavor Nedelchev
Course MArch
Studio/unit brief NR-W and the Global Landscape of Reason
Project title Ex Machina
Project description How can industrial detritus be reconstituted? Looking at the hinterlands of North Rhine-Westphalia, this project explores how such a landscape might forge a productive relationship and investigates how abandoned industrial landscapes can revitalise universities. It has four strategic elements: the Knowledge Grid formed from trusses and acting as both library and infrastructural connection; the Academic Shelter of housing for students and academics; the Industrial Detritus of 12 abandoned machines incorporated as the loci of collective learning; and finally the Public Shelf, the public component.
Tutor citation Yavor’s work is intelligently anchored in discourse around Fordism and post-Fordism landscapes, not just in its celebration of industrial-era machines but as a realistic suggestion of how industrial detritus might be repurposed. Andy Stoane
