brighton crits

A pleasure to see Studio One 2nd years's work at Brighton yesterday. Alex Arestis and Ben Sweetting's briefs challenge students to imagine an urbanised future scenario for the town of Winchelsea, once again an important costal city following flooding. Winchelsea's history is fascinating and the briefs allow students to imagine their own stories for the place. So the critics saw the small peninsula transformed into a wildlife and animal park, a trendy bike-only fashion district, a centre for religious studies inspired by palimpsests, a place for getting lost in dance, a magnificent station for a fast rail link, a series of islands for golf players, a labyrinthian masonic lodge and a fishing village - amongst others. Thanks for having me!
Rute

ATA Teaching at CAT Summer School

Fran and Junko spent a most enjoyable couple of days at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) architecture diploma summer school, talking about projects and about participatory design. A workshop in which we played the architects and students were allowed to be clients had us all laughing, but illustrated a great truth - bringing all the participants into the design process makes it much more interesting!

Delightful too to see the setting out drawings for the timber building in the woods, and the photos of the build in action, we love the bird hide, even if birds might hide in it better than humans

Click here to see a fantastic video by the CAT students of their bird hide construction, and here for photos taken by the students.

ATA Host Idaho Charette Students

ATA hosted students Corey Becia & Charles van Ausdell from the architecture school at the University of Idaho for their one day design charette at the end of the students month long visit to the UK. The charette brief was to design a sustainable serpentine pavilion. The students took sensory experiences as their theme and designed a beautiful pavilion constructed from greened gabion wall, a delicate roof structure, and lightweight structure, weighted by a body of water that collected rainwater run off from the roof.

The student trip focused on sustainable architecture and design in the UK and was led by Bruce Hagland, professor at the University of Idaho, who'd taken the 20 architecture students on building visits and to the Centre of Alternative Technology in Wales during their time month here.