Hasta La Ideas

News: a concept for rooftop housing built from foam blocks and steel cables (above) is one of the winners of the RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards, announced last night.

Above and top: Sunbloc by students from London Metropolitan University

A team of students from London Metropolitan University receive the RIBA Silver Medal for their graduate project, Sunbloc, which imagines residences that generate their own electricity for infill sites and unused rooftops around London.

Above: Sunbloc by students from London Metropolitan University

Vidhya Pushpanathan, an undergraduate student at the Architectural Association, wins the Bronze Medal with her designs for a system of scaffolding around the buildings of Moscow.

Above: The Depository of Forgotten Monuments by Vidhya Pushpanathan

Spanning between the nineteenth century Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture, The Depository of Forgotten Monuments is conceived as a framework for the city’s fragmented architecture.

Above: The Depository of Forgotten Monuments by Vidhya Pushpanathan

The dissertation medal is awarded to the Bartlett School of Architecture student Matthew Leung, who presented his studies into the development of Chinatown in the Japanese city of Yokohama.

Above: Oriental Orientalism in Japan – the case of Yokohama Chinatown by Matthew Leung

The RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards are awarded annually to two stand-out design projects and one dissertation from the undergraduate and post-graduate courses of over 300 schools of architecture.

Above: Oriental Orientalism in Japan – the case of Yokohama Chinatown by Matthew Leung

The winners were announced at a ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London last night and medals were presented to each of the winners.

“2012 has been a record-breaking year for the RIBA President’s Medals with the highest number of entries ever in the 176 year history of the awards,” said RIBA president Angela Brady. “It is an honour to present these awards to the future trailblazers of the architecture profession.”

See some of the winners from previous years.

Here’s a press release from the RIBA with the full list of awards presented:

Winners of the 2012 RIBA President’s Medals announced at London ceremony

The winners of the 2012 President’s Medals have been announced at a special ceremony at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in central London. The prestigious RIBA Presidents Medals, which date back to 1836, reward talent and excellence in the study of architecture.

‘Sunbloc’, a collaborative project by a team of students from London Metropolitan University, received the RIBA Silver Medal (awarded for best post-graduate design work).

Sunbloc is a lightweight and heavily-insulated prototype house constructed using a pioneering system of foam blocks and steel cables. The inexpensive structure is designed to produce more electricity than it consumes over an annual cycle. The judges rewarded the detailed study and solid body of research involved in the project and were highly impressed with the team’s entrepreneurial spirit and ability to complete a real building. The students were tutored by Eva Diu, Nathaniel Kolbe, Jonas Lundberg, Toby Burgess and Iain Maxwell.

Vidhya Pushpanathan from the Architectural Association was awarded the Bronze Medal (for best undergraduate design project) for her project ‘The Depository of Forgotten Monuments’.

‘The Depository of Forgotten Monuments’ addresses Moscow’s paradox of deconstruction and reconstruction. The project suggests a flexible architectural framework. As both a curatorial strategy and an urban prototype, it suggests an opportunity for a hybrid between the city’s cultural and commercial art sites and an allowance for the co-existence of past and future. The project was deemed by the judges to reveal a fresh and sophisticated quality of thinking. Vidhya Pushpanathan was tutored by Maria Fedorchenko and Tatiana von Preussen.

Matthew Leung from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, was awarded the Dissertation Medal for his work ‘Oriental Orientalism in Japan – the case of Yokohama Chinatown’.

The judges considered this a highly accomplished dissertation on the development of a pocket of Chinese style within a major Japanese city. Drawing from an impressive breadth of sources, Matthew Leung meticulously composes a picture that brings a careful reading of history to bear upon the complex contemporary reality. Critically astute, beautifully written and illustrated, this piece never loses sight of the architectural dimension of its topic, offering a thoroughly convincing and sophisticated discussion of an unexpected and topical subject. The dissertation was supervised by Professor Murray Fraser.

A number of other important student awards were also presented at the ceremony:

Bronze Medal Commendation
Paddi Alice Benson from the University of Cambridge for ‘Remember Berlin – kunsthochschule archipelago’

Bronze Medal Commendation
Richard Breen from the University of Newcastle for ‘Afterimage – Projected Morphology: a cyclotel created from perspectives’

Dissertation Medal High Commendation
Kirti Durelle from the University of Sheffield for ‘Poetic Creation: the magical metaphor of architectural design – an investigation into the relationship of exoteric and esoteric dimensions in the practice of architecture and alchemy’

Dissertation Medal Commendation
Stephen Marshall from the Architectural Association for ‘Here isn’t now – Ballard, Silvertown and the forces of time’

Dissertation Medal Commendation
Tom Sykes from Cardiff University for ‘The Site as Muse: Georges Perec and Walking into Topophilia’

SOM Travelling Fellowships
Part 1: Paddi Alice Benson from the University of Cambridge
Part 2: Rebecca Roberts from London Metropolitan University

Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Drawing
Part 1
Vidhya Pushpanathan from the Architectural Association for ‘The Depository of Forgotten Monuments’
Part 2
Martin Tang from Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘Manual for Eternal Autumnal Micro-climates: re-imagining Kyoto as the city of a thousand autumns’

RIBA Donaldson Medal
Brook Lin was awarded the RIBA Donaldson Medal. The winner of this medal is selected by the Bartlett School of Architecture to the student who graduates top of the class at Part I.

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Awards 2012 winners announced appeared first on Dezeen.

This series of hand drawings by Bartlett School of Architecture graduate Ned Scott presents a science-fiction world in which London grows a jungle of crops for fuel and food next to Buckingham Palace.

Above: The Mall

The War Rooms, St. James’s Park imagines a future in which the UK’s energy supply has been cut following a war over energy resources in 2050.

Above: The Mall – detail

Scott presents a closed-loop agricultural system where London provides energy and food for itself without relying on imports.

Above: Smart Grid

An anaerobic digester would stand on the outskirts of St. James’s Park, filled with vertiginous crops.

Above: MP’s House

A sky-scraping ‘energy tower’ nearby would have plants growing on every floor, and a smart grid would be installed for efficient energy use.

Above: MP’s House – detail

Scott was inspired by Ebenezer Howard, the late 20th century thinker whose utopian writings led to the creation of several ‘garden cities’ in Britain.

Above: New St. James’s Park

See more work by Bartlett graduates »

Above: Energy Tower

See all our stories about conceptual architecture »

Above: Energy Tower – detail

See all our stories about graduate shows in 2012 »

Above: The Instrument

Here’s some more information from Ned Scott:

The War Rooms, St. James’s Park

The War Rooms takes a science-fictional premise in which the UK’s energy supply networks are terminated following an Energy War in 2050.

Above: Aerial Perspective

The project explores the implications of the decentralisation of the UK’s energy networks and the implementation of a closed-loop agrarian economy.

Above: Aerial Perspective – detail

The science-fictional scenario presented and the subsequent urban strategies proposed address the challenges the UK faces regarding energy security and fuel poverty, and speculates on the hypothetical consequences of a future where the many risks associated with the UK’s long-term energy strategy come to bear

Above: Anaerobic Disaster

The War Rooms, St. James’s Park introduces an institutional framework for agrarian reform, inspired by Ebenezer Howard, which operates on three simultaneous scales representative of the three protagonists of Clifford D. Simak’s ‘City’: Man, Dog and Ant.

Above: Anaerobic Disaster – detail

Above: Energy Warehouse

Above: Energy Warehouse – detail

Above: Howard Boulevard

Above: Howard Boulevard – detail

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by Ned Scott appeared first on Dezeen.

The stark concrete exterior of many of London’s postwar housing blocks could be made more attractive with thatching, proposes architecture student James Kirk (+ movie).

Kirk’s University of Westminster graduation project presents an option for improving rather than demolishing the high-rise buildings by extending apartments outwards and creating a new thatched facade.

A phased development would minimise disruption to existing communities of residents, who Kirk says “don’t wish to move or be moved.”

The plans also feature a school of thatching where residents could be trained in how to apply and repair the new exterior, using reeds sourced from constructed wetlands in the southeast of the city.

See more projects from this year’s graduate shows »

The description below is from Kirk:

A film for my Masters in Architecture, University of Westminster in Design Studio 17.

A thatched approach for the redevelopment of London’s postwar towers. London Thatch makes the case for alteration, extension and remodelling as opposed to demolition as an approach to reworking London’s ageing tower blocks. The approach that is proposed is specific to the site and context, though the attitude is proposed open enough to be repeated elsewhere.

London tower blocks are lively communities, with groups of residents who on the whole don’t wish to move or be moved. It is essential to remember this when designing for the renovation of the buildings that the residents live in. The proposals seek to achieve a maintained architecture which promotes a skilled method of construction and restores a skilled trade south London.

The project proposal is for a building that facilitates the modification of the existing towers, over time. The project allows for a phased redevelopment of the existing towers, providing on site temporary accommodation for families displaced by the construction process. The existing towers will be extended laterally, on a new structure, to increase the living space of the existing flats, and provide private outdoor amenity space for each, improving the quality and amount of space in each of the flats.

Alongside this, a school of Master Thatching is proposed, which will teach local residents a skilled, traditional construction method, the resources and students for which will be used to apply and maintain a new thatched facade for the existing towers. Local people who are in need of work will be able to gain skills, and maintain the existing built environment. The school will train students, maintain the buildings, and promote building using natural materials in the city.

Finally, a constructed wetland of reeds will provide the materials required for the new thatching industry in Bermondsey, as well as filtering and cleaning effluent from the towers before it is disposed of in the Thames, and creating a pleasant, diverse functional landscape around the estate, in the location of an underused outdoor amenity space.

Film by James Kirk
Music kindly lent with permission by Celer & Nicholas Szczepanik, from the album Here, For Now.

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by James Kirk appeared first on Dezeen.