ÐÂÏã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±½á¹û

BSc Y1 design is part of four design modules that all first year BSc Architecture students take.

The main intention of the Year 1 Design Projects is to explore ‘ways of seeing’ – understanding and interpreting objects, events and places and learning to look beyond the visible into the unseen material and spatial qualities of things.

In this way, a place can also be seen as something with its own identity which each student can personally interpret.

The importance of ‘character’ and the specifics of a place, climate or culture is emphasised throughout the design process, whether it concerns analysis, site interpretation or architectural vision.

A range of recording techniques are used as a way of clarifying the subject rather than using these techniques as purely formal graphic representation. Through being aware of the possibilities and limitations of various techniques, each student learns to express – and then develop critically and appropriately, through their own intuition – an idea for an architectural proposition.

Inventiveness and imagination are cultivated through a series of design projects which are constructed and represented through models or drawings and which tackle a range of architectural scales and spatial experiences. In addition, a series of lectures and workshops on ‘architectural media’ provides students with a wide range of skills to undertake investigations and representations of architecture as part of their course submission.

In the first projects of Year 1, each student is asked to undertake a series of personal investigations of objects and places, a group installation / performance and understanding different architectural and spatial elements through drawings. Initial observations are explored, investigated and documented through a series of techniques – sketching, drawing, photographing, slicing, disassembling etc.

The historical and social context of the findings have to be presented alongside the initial observations and investigations. Each project helps students to develop their own unique and personal readings and methods of communication. Students are advised to take risks and to try out new techniques of exploration and documentation. The first terms projects include an individual project and a 1:1 making group project; the installation. There is a field trip in which a sketching project teaches different methods of recording and communicating ideas about architecture. The major building project of the year encourages students to engage with social, environmental and climatic issues and that brings together the skills learnt in earlier projects through the design of spatially rich and playful building proposal for a real site. BSc Y1 is an exciting journey that introduces students to both the culture and citizenship of architecture, processes of 1:1 making, orthographic drawings and modelling within a supportive, dynamic and lively studio culture.Ìý