CZWG and Paul Smith have completed their Maggie’s centre in Nottingham after an 11^th month construction period. Maggie’s Nottingham serves the Mid Trent Cancer Network and is situated next to the Breast Institute at Nottingham City Hospital. The Mid Trent Cancer Network covers the populations of Nottingham, North Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire – approximately 1.3 million people. Within this area, there are over 4,000 new cases of cancer a year.

From the architects:
The near symmetrical design and generous height of Maggie’s Nottingham allows the building to have a sense of space and balance. The oval building of green glazed ceramic tiles floats over a smaller basement, with plants and trees surrounding. Balconies extend from the kitchen and sitting rooms and provide places from which to look out onto the surrounding landscape, which is designed to use scent and texture to create a secluded and uplifting area for people to enjoy.

“The light, peaceful and non-institutional design of Maggie’s Nottingham is a sanctuary for all those who walk through the door. From the outside the playful appearance entices people to take a look through the door; once they do the harmony of light and space creates a uniquely welcoming environment. It’s a daytime event. It’s a place for living, rather than sleeping – rather like a super dooper house” – Piers Gough, Partner CZWG Architects

Nottingham-born fashion designer Sir Paul Smith has designed the interior of Maggie’s Nottingham. Each room has carefully selected pieces of furniture and objects from around the world – all with their own story to tell. The upholstery of these pieces include a Paul Smith tartan and floral printed fabric. The upholstery of several chairs within the building make direct reference to the classic Paul Smith stripe.

“I am delighted to have been involved in creating this Centre for people living with cancer and their family and friends. It will be a great resource for everyone and a fantastic new addition to the city. Piers Gough is an incredible architect and it has been a joy to work together on the design.” - Sir Paul Smith

http://www.maggiescentres.org/
http://www.czwg.com/
http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/

Antonio Lopez - New York Times Magazine 1967

Drawing Fashion at the London Design Museum comprises a selection of 150 works by 16 fashion illustrators, created for various designers as advertising material, usually for publication in commercial magazines.

They have been drawn from the extensive collection of Joelle Chariau, founder and owner of a Munich gallery specialising in fashion drawings. The exhibition spans a century beginning with the heyday of fashion drawing in the 1910s and 20s, when it was the principal means of communicating fashion to the consumer. The show follows through to the present, where fashion drawings are coming to be seen more and more as art. Visibly, there is a unifying style to a whole century’s output, or at least, a congruence in the mediums used. The prominence of pencil, charcoal and watercolour; the looseness of the lines and the sparseness of detail; the emphasis on the outline of forms and not the textuality of materials, are evident throughout the show.

At their best, these works transcend any photography: they demand a far more personal response from the illustrators. And when they can capture the essence of a design and its desirability, the images they produce are mesmerising.

Conspicuous within the works of illustrators at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly Georges Lepape and Erte, is the conversation between art and fashion, where the influences of art deco, Picasso and Japonisme permeate. Lepape and Andre Edouard Marty, whose popularity peaked in the 1910s and 20s, represented fashion in context. They placed women in scenarios that evoke a narrative, an area of potential in the medium that seems to have been abandoned by later illustrators. In a drawing by Lepape, a demure lady in evening dress stands alone, with a crowd of high society men and women looking on from a distance and commenting. It is an ambiguous image, and all the more intriguing because of it.

In July 1932, Vogue placed the first photographic image on its cover. It was a fateful moment that spelt the rapid decline of drawing in fashion magazines and advertising. Despite such adversity, in 1947 René Gruau relaunched drawing as the exemplary platform for haute couture by conveying so convincingly the allure of Christian Dior’s first collection through a buoyant and coolly flirtatious femininity. Then in the 60s and 70s, Antonio Lopez was able to woo the fashion world’s attention by capturing in his drawings the exuberance of youth culture through fierce and masculine women. Lopez was also the master of tongue-in-cheek quotations, that range in their sources from Cubism to Futurism and Pop Art. His work went beyond fashion magazines: a piece in an untitled series for the New York Times in 1965 is a three panel comic strip with a pastiche of the weeping woman from Roy Lichtenstein’s Hopeless (1963), with photographic collages of a space shuttle taking off in the background. Lopez’s social commentary is quite unique among fashion drawings, it places his images within a time and place, defined by clothing and landmark events that would have been chronicled by the NYT. Despite this, it is still far from a serious critique. They are, rather, frivolous and fun takes on the times.

Mats Gustafson’s watercolour of a catwalk model is subtle, but insular

Today’s illustration marks a significant departure from these precedents. They are represented by the works of the three contemporary artists, hailed by the exhibition as the ‘Fashion Drawing for the Future’. The triumvirate is composed of Mats Gustafson, Aurore de La Morinerie and François Berthoud. Gustafson is a favourite of the Vogue magazines: his drawings for Alexander McQueen appeared in Vogue China’s May issue of this year. His delicate watercolours depict minimal outlines; sometimes his figures are merely shadows, lost in a haze or hidden behind a translucent screen. La Morinerie’s monotypes, most of which were printed in the past two years, show a striking similarity to Gustafson’s work, though her images are rougher and employ a stronger colour palette. Collectively, they differ to their predecessors on a more fundamental level, they have cede to portray seductive women. Morinerie and Gustafson’s women appear as anonymous bodies, muted and silent as mannequins.

The exhibition ends on an optimistic note, celebrating the medium’s burgeoning reputation among art curators. This, however, feels misplaced. The trend towards more and more abstraction signals fashion drawing’s final defeat, as it begins to abandon its engagement with the outside world. It is also denying its consumerist and populist nature, retreating into the realm of fine art. This can be seen in the establishment of the Fashion Illustration Gallery, which opened in London’s Mayfair in 2007, and collects and sells works by fashion illustrators, most of which were only created in the past decade.

Contemporary fashion drawings, elegant but de-sensualised, have shed much of the refined seduction – as opposed to the crude one of pornography – that once made the work so appealing. In pieces such as In the Mirror (2009), Berthoud ramps up the sexualisation to such a degree that even Lopez, working in the decades of the sexual revolution, resisted. This exhibition’s note of optimism is doubly false: by presenting only a handful of renowned illustrators from each era despite the substantial exhibition space, Drawing Fashion reinforces the irrevocable dominance of photography within fashion. It unwittingly confirms drawing as a niche discipline for only a few masters who can rise above the horde of superstar photographers.

Drawing Fashion, Design Museum, London – Until March 6th

Through two distinct, yet ultimately interrelated, installations by Hussein Chalayan at Kentish Town’s Spring Projects, B-Side seeks to highlight the invisible forces controlling our everyday lives by piecing together a controlled environment in which his own garments are placed. I say garment not simply because of Chalayan’s occupation as fashion designer but rather, because in both Anaesthetics and Inertia, it is clothing that stands as protagonist and canvas for his narrative. In the essence of his loyalty to art and design as inherently cross-disciplinary, dating back to his time at Central Saint Martins, Chalayan use B-Side to offer challenging comment on design and the designer: the precious final object to be handled with care while the chaotic and violent mess of the process lies hidden behind. The artist also deals with the designer’s grabbing wish to dictate their own narrative, Chalayan uses film to animate his designs as desired, at several points filming in reverse as if to illustrate a predetermined behaviour.

Anaesthetics is described by Chalayan as a 22’22” film-sketchbook, exploring “institutions which codify behaviour in order to conceal violence”. Two silent figures in full laboratory attire craft eleven situations, each a miniature narrative to explain this polemic. The narratives include air travel, with the comfort masquerading total control over our actions; we wash our hands and face when handed a towel, we watch what is provided and our movements are decided by small light signals. It seems Chalayan’s background in fashion has laid the ground for an obsession with voyeurism, the feeling that an anonymous outsider is always watching, silently judging and the knowing fear that at some point the designer must relinquish control of their own ideas. Another captivating example used is sushi, which we experience as a delicate simplicity, a ‘jewel’, yet the activities that lead up to this point involve death, blood and butchery. There exists a severed connection between the process and the outcome where the sterility and stillness of a final design rarely reflects the fluid and dynamic nature of its production, this theme bleeds through neatly from Anaesthetics to Inertia.

Inertia refers back to the stars of Chalayan’s Spring Summer 2009 collection of the same name; rigid rubber foam dresses, apparently single moments of flowing movement, frozen in time. In B-Side, we find three of the dresses in industrial grey suspended from the ceiling and engaging with the negative moulds from which they were born. Sunk into an adjacent wall, it is as if the ambiguous moulds are attempting to pull the beautiful objects back to their mechanical roots so they can be connected once again. As I am sure Chalayan intended, the experience of these two pieces is an unsettling one as he admits that design is wholly dependent on a strand of deception.

B-Side runs until 23 October, Spring Projects NW5

Scroll down to see all the work or click on the links below to go directly to the relevant school:

Architectural Association School of Architecture,
Robert Gordon University: Aberdeen,
Bartlett School of Architecture,
Brighton School of Architecture,
Bucks New University,
Cambridge University,
Welsh School of Architecture: Cardiff,
Central Saint Martins,
De Monfort University,
Kingston University,
Leeds Metropolitan University,
London Metropolitan University,
Glasgow School of Art,
Manchester School of Architecture,
Manchester School of Art and Design,
University of Nottingham,
Leeds Metropolitan University,
Nottingham Trent University,
Oxford Brookes University,
Royal College of Art,
University of East London,
University of Westminster,

Architectural Association School of Architecture

Fredrick Hellberg: Diploma Unit 13

Winner of the AA’s Nicolas Pozner Prize for the Best Single Drawing of the Year, Hellberg’s design for a Japanese Embassy is printed on a manga-graphic kimono, which shows the building from all its aspects. The lining of the garment opens up to reveal the Tower of the Folding Stones – the office of the Japanese Ambassador – which like Embassy building, is revealed in plan on the back of the Kimono. Hellberg’s work tackles the unit brief of re-interpreting ornament with great individuality and rigour.  Graham Modlen

David Nightingale: Diploma Unit 13

Still within AA Diploma 13, Nightingale’s project for a Belgian Embassy was selected for achieving the best balance between prospect and proportions. This is a noteworthy achievement for a unit which is never fully upfront about the spatial organization of its projects. The unit agenda is ‘the reformed grammar of ornament’ which stems from Owen Jones’ Grammar of Ornament. Graham Modlen

Carlos H. Matos: Diploma Unit 14

With overtones of Super-studio, Mies, Ledoux, maybe even Roma Interrota, Diploma 14 is creating a impact with its polemic views of the city. Cite Carlos Matos’ insertion into the centre of Delft. In his project, Matos revisits Mies’ concept of universal space. He addresses the flexibility and ephermerality of contemporary industrial shed or generic industrial box. Graham Modlen

Aberdeen, Robert Gordon University

Sean Gaule: MArch

Sean’s proposition is for a cluster of buildings containing industrial processing, public promenade and a restaurant for consumption in Edinburgh. The proposals seek inspiration from familiar industrial forms and spatial architypes  evoking an optimistic atmosphere of renewed coastal harvesting and future trade. Sean’s project encapsulating ideas of productivity and consumption, industry and recreation, ruggedness and luxury, and enclosure and openness. David Howarth

Bartlett School of Architecture

Dan Slavinsky: Dip Arch

Slavinsky says his drawing depicts ‘an arcadia at the end of time’. His beautifully drafted project develops a language of ornament, which strongly references the architectural movement of Art Nouveau. The large scale drawings stole the show at the Bartlett which, as ever, ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Owen Pritchard

Brighton School of Architecture

Charlie Piper

Charlie worked closely with the institutions that serve the homeless in Brighton, and spent time with people who are living on the streets to understand their experience of the city. Charlie’s project inserts a series of urban interventions at different scales around the city that act as discreet support structures to better service homeless people and improve the public perception of homelessness. Angie Pescoe

Hien Nguyen Thu Nguyen

Hien’s project questions the ways in which we inhabit urban space and suggests a new set of criteria for urban regeneration, in which the afterlife of spaces is essential to keeping the city alive. Using landscape to create movement, architecture to create institutions,and public services to control time, Hien developed a scheme to regenerate 982m of Brighton seafront. The architecture is deliberately ambiguous and complex. Angie Pescoe

Bucks New University

Torti Hoare

Hoare’s range of hand-crafted furniture used leather that had been boiled and stretched to make it a stiff, structural material. Each piece demonstrated a willingness to experiment and use the material in new ways to create novel items of furniture. Hoare was awarded New Designer of the Year at the annual New Designers show in North London. Peter Kelly

Cambridge University

Natasha Amladi: BA Architecture

The brief for this project was to make a proposition for an ‘island’, which suggests a new way of working around food production and consumption. Amladi’s proposal for a site on the edge of the market town of Ely in Cambridgeshire was to create a youth retreat for school-age inner-city kids and their teachers. Amladi came up with an intelligent and positive response, which marries a social agenda with architecture. Her architectural language is sensitive to the natural conditions of the site, uses materials and ideas which are sophisticated and seductive, with special care given to the interior spaces offering unique and varied experiences for the children. Kate Goodwin

Benjamin Barfield Marks: BA Architecture

With ideas of bricolage in mind– repair and reuse- Ben proposed an indoor scuba diving centre be located in a former veneer factory in a residential neighbourhood in Bow, east London. It’s a playful and novel idea for the re-use of the building, suggesting an optimism for the future. Kate Goodwin

Welsh School of Architecture: Cardiff

Alice Brownfield: BSc Architecture

Brownfield is an exceptional talent. A Part 1 graduate this year, she has the clear individual voice and relaxed virtuosity that marks her out as an instinctive architect. The most beautiful of her piece were created for a public house and hotel, set among the uber-banks of Zurich. The themes of the project and of much of her work are diversity and empathy: that we are enriched by seeing the world through the eyes of people very different to ourselves. Jonathan Adams

George Metcalfe: MArch

It is ironic that just as academia shows signs of coming to terms with the computer as a drawing tool, digital media themselves have advanced to the point where not just drawings and models but architecture itself may be replaced by digital simulacra. George’s project is, one of many in schools around the land exploring similar territory – but his does it with particular maturity and thoughtfulness: the technology, while in the foreground, is never an end in itself. This is some testament to his skill, because the technology is really breathtaking. City 2.0 emanates from a subtle but immensely complex building, in which each space acts as a three dimensional screen onto which alternate virtual spaces are superimposed. Jonathan Adams

Rachel Witham: MArch

Rachel’s prodigious technical skills and fine aesthetic judgement are evident in every creative move that she makes: a gazetteer of foot-worn man-hole covers, immaculately photographed, printed and bound; collage, pencil drawing and, most compelling of all, sweetly constructed models. The inspection covers are gateways to the under-world of our utilities: Rachel’s thesis project is a narrow slice of structure incised along the centre of Holborn’s Kingsway, exposing the rich complexity of our hidden service infrastructure and the ways in which it organises and mirrors metropolitan life. A vivid description is provided by this detail model: apertures linking engineered vessels, lined with gold, elevating the unseen to the immaculate. Jonathan Adams

Central Saint Martins

Gemma Roper: MA Industrial Design

This particular course retains strong links with industry, so that students work in collaboration with firms including Nokia. The Printerpreter is a playful subversion of mobile technology tat knits a scarf according to the characters sent in a text message. Each character is defined by a certain colour yam, which is knitted by the machine into a hoop on a scarf. The machine transfers a message that is ephemeral and throwaway, but a key feature in everyday life, into a physical form that transcends language. Peter Kelly & Owen Pritchard

Rohan Chhabra: MA Industrial Design

Part of a series titled Embodying Ethics, Chhabra’s hunting jacket that turns into a ram’s head wall mount is a superbly realised work of craftmanship and concept-led design. Chhabra sees the purpose of the series as exploring the ability of design to ask ethical, emotional and political questions. In this case, the hunting jacket has been designed with an extraordinarily intricate series of zips that allows it to transform into a ram’s head, creating something that promoted reflection, rather than a trophy. Also in the series is a piece of chair upholstery that unzips into a floor rug that mimics the shadow of a tree. Peter Kelly & Owen Pritchard

Liang Bo: MA Industrial Design

Liang Bo’s electric charging station are an investigation into how electricity charged cars may work with today’s available technologies. His two solutions included a bollard that provides contact with a conductor plate beneath the car in special bays for charging and a charging station which replaced the battery in the car using mechanics similar to a car wash. The project is believable and a considered response that provides answers to a problem, rather than simply more questions.Peter Kelly & Owen Pritchard

Josiah Emsley: BA (Hons) Product Design

Responding to the fact that a work surface in use is never flat, Buro provides levels to create opportunity for subconscious prioritising. It also offers a mobile storage unit with drawers that can be self-assembled in seconds. The fittings are the structure; all components are CNC cut birch plywood, laminated with white Formica; to assemble, the user simply slots the parts together. The drawers are die-cut natural cairn board, with a length of elastic to hold the structure tight. Peter Kelly & Owen Pritchard

De Monfort University

Kevin Scott: BSc Product Design

Scott’s design for a collapsible bicycle was a rare example of a ‘one-liner’ idea having potential and was one of the smartest products displayed at the New Designers exhibition in July. The articulated frame, held together with a central chord that can be loosened by the user, allows the bike to be wrapped around a lamppost or tree. There is still room or development in the project: there is no integrated locking mechanism, and the frame will need more work to make it 100 per cent safe, but the idea demonstrated a refreshing clarity of thought. Peter Kelly

Kingston University

William Law: First Year Architecture

Rainham Marshes became the site of a study of threshold, landscape, material and space, culminating in a building composed of 3 spaces. Williams work is astonishing in the quality of its representation, as presented through drawings, models and photography. A model of his project, for a small educational and art building which takes its place within Peter Beard’s wonderful series of bridges, walkways and pavilions that meander through the marshes, is a strongly spatial and material presence, captured through exquisite model photography. Layers of paint, built up on surfaces of the large scale model, drip and run to exemplify the layers of weathering, time and renewal of the surface within this harsh, exposed environment. Internally the spaces are articulated as a series of intimate connected rooms, each with a particular quality and relationship to the landscape and the horizon. This is exemplary first year work, deeply rooted in the physical and tectonic qualities and bodes well for the future of the profession. David Howarth

Carlos dos Santos: Diploma in Architecture

The Ocean Estate at Shandy Park in Stepney Green used to be one of the most deprived Estates in Britain. Today, the area is changing radically with substantial funding. Carlos dos Santos has engaged with this scenario in an intelligent and inspiring way, setting his project for a new mosque for the area as a tool for invigorating the place itself. Carlos’ project makes an inspiring effort to open up the rich and hidden world of domesticity to the public realm, and to infuse this richness into his architecture.  His calm and straightforward analysis of the existing buildings and local people brings richness to his architecture. David Howarth

Paul Kittle: Diploma in Architecture

Paul Kittle’s work is concerned with the fallout from the construction of the M11 in the Roding Valley in the early 1970s. The comparison brought to light a series of peculiar landscape spaces which have an in-between character – caught between infrastructure and suburbia. The project proposes the transformation of existing Victorian brick sheds and co-opts modern electricity pylons to make three building groups each designed as a pairing of a big shed and a tall tower. Formally confident and materially contextual, these buildings feel like counterparts to the place, alter ego characters providing qualities of destination. Paul’s work is precise and skillful in terms of materiality and atmosphere but what is most compelling and resonantly right is the serious attitude taken towards investing this unloved landscape of uncertain use and purpose with a new social infrastructure of permanence. David Howarth

Will Pirkis: First Year Diploma

The project, for a school within London’s Lea Valley, seeks to define schools and their grounds as mediating spaces between the Lea Valley and communities that surround it. Will Perkis, a first year diploma student, won the Diploma Portfolio Prize. His work imaginatively explored the landscapes of the Lea Valley in relationship to the ideas of the picturesque, transforming and re-framing their latent, industrial and infrastructural qualities as a painterly horizon against which his  project was placed. The project was sophisticated and eloquent throughout, understanding the intrinsic relationship between strategy and detail, exploring refined tectonic and spatial strategies and articulately responding to precedent. David Howarth

Aladeyemi Aladerun: Diploma Graduate

Aladeyemi Aladerun has designed a new community building whilst working explicitly with the city as a background.  By creating handmade drawings of beauty and precision this information serves as an analysis of the value of what is being measured. Aladeyemi made use of the surface in a range of ways to examine the varied qualities of local identity. Indeed, one of the most notable things about the work of this student was ‘normal’ it is easy to almost miss; a glossy brown ashtray stand. Designed to look as if it had been in the pub for years, it was actually made up of a ‘turned’ Victorian spindle comprising the found shapes of a variety of beer glasses, jugs and other drinking and storage vessels. This work is a sensitive approach to the past and the future of places that uses precise practical tools to locate public significance. David Howarth

Leeds Metropolitan University

Sam George: PG Dip Architecture

A small scale independent brewery and visitor’s center designed for a disused chalk mine site in Reading, to maintain the area’s brewing traditions. An analogy between brewing processes and circulations within the body informs the project. Above ground the internal parts of the building take their form from the vascular like web of circular steel pipes, which carry the brewing processes over the heads of visitors and permeate the underground spaces. Exterior elevations show a building that appears to bubble over ground. Rather than shying away from a subject that is often presented as a national blight, this fun, playful project celebrates a local industry of beer making in the spirit of craft and merriment. Drawings show a design that is playful yet elegant. Danielle Hewitt

London Metropolitan University

Elly Ward: BA (Hons) Architecture

The Studios focus was the Thames Valley and more particularly its means of production – of ideas ,myths, objects and energy. Elli Ward won the best portfolio prize for her exceptional reworking of an existing shed into a new amenity building for a local community of Didcot, the ‘distribution capital of the Thames Valley.’ Wards work has exuberance in its representation and offers optimism in how we might sustainably re-occupy found enclosures such as these for spaces of community activity rather than commerce. The project reminds us of the fun palaces of Cedric Price and perhaps the Palace Der Republic, Berlin and is playful, mature intellectually grounded and above all exquisitely drawn and represented. David Howarth

Lucy Pritchard: Graduate Diploma in Architecture

The final designs of the studio focused on the Medieval town on Monpazier in France and how these ensembles or city buildings can contribute to the public realm of the city. Lucy’s project forms a bridge between the urban grain of the medieval town and the open farmland beyond. The project extends the form of the city with a coherent strategy of building ensembles, forming parentheses between a new agricultural field structure. There is a quiet civility in the proposals and a measured understanding of the subtle spatial hierarchies needed to perhaps successfully extend existing rural settlements and allow them to be fully self sustaining. David Howarth

Tji Young Lee: BA (Hons) Architecture

Tji Youngs project is for a series of water side brick structures; the Boatmans House, 2 boathouses and ‘The Red Hall’, a large warehouse for recycled building components. Tji Youngs buildings take reference from earlier drawn studies of artist Per Kirkeby’s brick structures and are beautifully executed and finely crafted. The pieces are infrastructural and mute, acting as simple vessels for in-habitation, but they are also characterful and ‘uncanny’, extending the rich narrative history of the site.The work shows a maturity, confidence in its execution and provides occasional humour in its narrative. David Howarth

Glasgow School of Art

Alex Whitton: Graduate Diploma Architecture

Porto’s historic center exhibits a huge paradox; a disconnect between an excluded, inner city poor and a transient tourist population. The irony is that the tourists are attracted by the very ‘picturesque dilapidation’ that ensures the social exclusion. The cathedral square is the point where the two sides meet; dense, dilapidated, ‘domestic vernacular’ and monumental, civic scale ‘city face’. The aim of this thesis is to form a program that can express this tension; bringing together the ‘inward’, domestic nature of a homeless refuge, with the ‘outward’, civic face of a performance center. In addition to displaying a formal bravura in terms of its bold interventions in a traditional historical context, the project also addresses fundamental social inclusion issues. Caroline Ednie

Anna Kraay: Visual Communications

A short documentary film about Anna’s dad, a model train/toy enthusiast and former trainspotter, looking at the role the hobby has played in his life and the response of others to these types of hobbies. Anna’s presentation at the degree show was reminiscent of the work of Oliver Postage and Tove Jansson’s Moomins – with a tangible aura of innocence rather than experience. Yet there is no cloying nostalgia, instead (and in common with Postage’s characters and narratives particularly) there is also a great deal of humanity, personal insight and social commentary – with a slightly surreal contemporary twist. Beguiling. Caroline Ednie

Embracing the principles of the Slow City  the brief called for the design of a shopping centre that can do more than fulfil practical shopping needs – one that will also afford an opportunity for cultural, social, civic and recreational activity. Hugo Corbett’s design proposal creates a public market place that not only segues seamlessly into the urban fabric of the traditional market town but also creates a new and integrated public realm experience. The proposal displays an understanding of Crieff’s distinctive character and offers a solution that stitches together rather than radically reinvents the existing urban area – resulting in an entirely appropriate response to the unique location as well as the Slow City brief. Caroline Ednie

The brief was to design of a Cook House where slow food will be growing, cooked and eaten. Hudspith’s proposal formally (and cleverly) chimes with the Slow Movement brief in that it’s set into the contours of the site. In this way it eschews the values of speed driven architecture – and its emphasis on visual dominance.  Hudspith’s proposal is site sympathetic and specific in that it echoes the Roman Camp ditches and ramparts that define this area of Perthshire, and in doing so it’s landscape hugging form, low material impact and low energy approach to design maximizes its sustainable credentials. The feeling of ‘emerging’ from the landscape further reflects the building’s function of growing, harvesting and preparing food. Caroline Ednie

Lauren has focused on suffers with Autism – in particular those who are also diagnosed with Sensory Processing disorder (SPD). This condition affects how an individuals processes and response to external stimuli – dramatically reducing their daily independence. The project was called BOA – Body Over Autism. Lauren designed a range of garments and arm cuffs which when worn, the weave constricts, emulating a deep pressure sensation on specific areas of the body – an outcome that is scientifically proven to lessen anxiety attacks associated with SPD. The project directly addresses the needs of someone living with a long-term health condition. The solution is simple yet extremely effective. Lauren’s BOA earned her the joint winner of the RSA Design Directions competition 09/10. Caroline Ednie

Nathan Cunningham: Architecture

The brief was to design a piece of architecture that embraces the ambitions and concept of the slow architecture movement. Nathan’s work beautifully encapsulates the ideas embodied in the Slow Movement that encourages a ‘jumping off the treadmill’ approach and sense of reflection.  The sense of removal and isolation is palpable, not only in terms of location but also in the spare, earthy language of the Cook House. The space evokes a sense of secular spirituality, and beautifully suggests an architecture that is capable of ‘restoring the inner world’ – a concept at the heart of the Slow movement. Caroline Ednie

“To take blood, you of course have to receive substantial training, but you do not need to be a nurse. What could happen if members of the public were trained to take blood and manage donation sessions away from NHS centres?”  This project suggests how such a system could work and imagines what might happen if the members of a local knitting group were to begin running their own tri-monthly blood donation sessions; exploring the rituals and objects that would evolve over time. This project no only encourages and promotes individuals to take a greater sense of responsibility and self-reliance in terms of their own health care, it is also politically prescient in terms of the current situation facing the National Health Service where resources are already stretched and dramatic cuts are on the horizon. Caroline Ednie

Manchester School of Architecture

Steve Connah

Connah’s project “Robinson at Junction 31: Reveries in non-Place” was presented cleanly and properly. Long 2D line drawings and postcard size colour studies. It’s economically set out, simple, no fuss work. The detailing of the project are reminiscent of Nat Chard, whose work often deals with the notion of an indeterminate architecture. All in all the work was strong, and wouldn’t be misplaced amongst the RIBA Silver Metal nominations. That said, the work could have been more exhaustive. Graham Modlen

Manchester School of Art & Design

Stacy Brafield: Embroidery

“I’m told Manchester has the only school of embroidery in the UK. It shows. None had really considered life outside their Sixties tower; where they are incubated and hatched for three years along with other applied arts departments, including architecture. Yet their work nearly crawls out of the windows and across the city. Brafield works with VCR and cassette tape weaving big, stripy, shimmering black panels that wave over walls, turning space into disco-y-syrup. It tells a story with the materials at a small scale, then stretches or enlarges the work across the space and metaphorically out of the window. Graham Modlen

Nicola Searle: Embroidery

Still in the Embroidery School, Nicola Searle has sewn a geopolitical maps of Africa and South America into cloths of her own design, thread composition and weave; identifying each country in a different type of beaded thread, then taken details and woven them back into shirt details – weird, dour in colour, but visionary. Graham Modlen

Sarah Fletcher: Embroidery

Sarah Fletcher has cast pink masks and pinned some 300 plus masks to a large section of wall in a grid. Each of them has a crack, requiring stitch work to hold together. One looks at them from the inside. Painful.  Her work honours the pioneering facial surgery work that was carried out after the horrors of the 1st World War. Explanation that makes her work all the more moving. Graham Modlen

Steven Clark: Embroidery

Clark mixes carbon, locust wings and legs, a type of ginko bush, hexagonal tiles made from cement plus other materials all stitched together with bronze discs. This raw ambition is folded together to hint at a 3D dystopian view of the future. Graham Modlen

University of Nottingham

Chandni Modha: BArch

‘Decadence is back.’ Modha has lamented the loss of ornament and devised a set of decadent body adornments that serve dual functions. This elegant, insightful project subverts jewellery into a series of useful tools, that in turn are used to calibrate a new architectural landscapes set within Bodnant Gardens in North Wales. The beautiful artefact’s and drawings that compromise this compelling project draw together phenomenology aesthetics and technique. Owen Pritchard

Michelle Yeung: DipArch

This project is a response to the need to provide sustainable and desirable homes at high density. The essential design concept envisages the construction of a huge v-shaped frame on which a large number of revolving cylindrical pods are hung. The internal surfaces of these pods incorporate different built-in functions (so the base might be a kitchen while the roof might be a bedroom. This project has a confident, radical, avant-guarde approach, underpinned by a robust belief in the ability of technology and innovation to solve one of the globe’s looming problems. It shakes off conventional notions of how we should live and how we should arrange our space and it invites us to consider an entirely new way of seeing things. Nick Ebbs

Nottingham Trent University

Samantha Gill: Architecture

The idea of this project is to take dead spaces at roof level in London and to open them up. The concept is beautifully and imaginatively articulated with seductive images and drawings that illustrate how rooftops could be used as a “free running” course by runners and jumpers. The project is challenging, dynamic exciting. It has zest, playfulness and excitement – it points to dynamic new futures and is marvellously free of all the constraints that encourage us to be safe and secure…..not that for one moment am I suggesting we jump from roof to roof that is not the point. A powerful, positive, playful invitation to look at very familiar but largely dead spaces in a new way thereby opening up new possibilities. Nick Ebbs.

Oxford Brookes University

Edmund Drury: BA (Hons) Architecture

An inhabitable bridge for performing arts. Seeking to blur the boundary between artist and voyeur anyone using the bridge was to become a part of its exhibition, the performance itself. Taking its cue from a brief of semi-living architecture the bridge became a series of separate organisms each in constant flux between introversion and extroversion imitating the life of plants, slowly gathering energy so as to present themselves to the world. ‘Organism’ has become one of the architectural trends recently. Among those looking at similar approach to organism, this semi-living architecture proposal suggests a new definition of ‘organic architecture. Mami Sayo

Rodolfo Rodriguez: BA (Hons) Architecture

The memory of the place is captured by our first impression, precisely at the moment where one’s senses are stimulated, generating a connection between the individual and the city. Before using the walking device we are unable to recognize the beauty and atmosphere of the city. After using the walking device the senses are awakened and the individual is able to identify with the place. What a fantastic idea to have a cup of tea with the aroma and atmosphere of the city you are walking. The mechanism of the device is designed to its details. This will definitely create our better future and improvement in day to day life. Mami Sayo

Royal College of Art

Oliver Wainwright: DipArc

This project develops a vision for Mayfair, the area with the highest density of diplomatic missions anywhere in the world. Current trends in London’s development, such as the proliferation of Business Improvement Districts, and the rise of terrorism-driven fortress urbanism, are analysed and transformed into a new urbanism. Grosvenor Square becomes the site for an extraordinary flagship project -  monumental and terrifying. Wainwright’s part of the exhibition was fitted out with a Persian rug, wall mounted flags and a timber vitrine containing BD, Cabe Reports and the Economist, all reporting on different aspects of his project. He operates with a sober sharpness, precision and efficiency, which is uncanny for a student. Judith Losing

Hye Yeon Park: MA Design Products

Park designed two distinct, witty products that brought a humanity and humour to the digital clock faces. ‘Mr Clock’ has a display that seems to flip around eccentrically until the viewer stands directly in front – at this point the clock starts to ‘behave’ itself and reveal the right time. ‘Inbetween Time’ is both a technically impressive piece of interaction design, and an appears work of motion graphics, with the numbers on the display morphing into each other as time passes. Park says that this fluid transition represent the ‘flow of time’. Peter Kelly

Je Baak: MA Communications Art & Design

In the RCA’s Communication Art & Deisng course, Baaks work stood out for its technical perfection and vaguely hypnotic beauty. At the show Baak displayed three animations on loop comprising video footage of fairground rides combined with moving montages that give industrial looking structures the appearance of undulating sea creatures. Much of Baak’s work reflects his interest in Buddhism; reinterpreting everyday scenes to give them a sense of poetry. Peter Kelly

Jamie Tunnard: MA Design Products

The Desklamp/Projector is a dual-function desk lamp. The lamp head contains a LED bulb for use as a normal lamp. It also houses a miniature LED projector module, which enabled moving images to be displayed. The Desklamp/Projector can be connected to a DVD player or TV receiver box via ports in the lamps base. What instinctively drew me to this project was its inventive spirit. It evoked images of modern-day man inventor, sparks flying from a shed at the bottom of the garden. In the audio-visual industry, which is over-populated with identikit grey boxes, this project has a soul and personality. Tonnes of potential, both as a contract product but also as a domestic object. Richard Shed.

Seongyong Lee: MA Design Products

Plytube is a wooden tube created using similar principles of making cardboard tubes, for which Seongyong developed additional process to increase its structural integrity. It is a great piece of furniture. In quite a saturated market Lee’s plytube furniture stands out as original and distinctive, but also feasible and marketable. I love the honesty of each exposed joint, very sensitive detailing and finishing, and then, when you handle the product, it has wonderful tactile qualities too. Richard Shed.

Sarah Wiberly: MA Ceramics

Part of the exhibition Out of Practice, which showcased the outcome of a collaboration between the RCA , MA ceramics and glass and dance company Siobhan Davies Studios, between the Lines was inspired by the quality of the lighting and verticality of studios designed by Sarah Wigglesworth Architects. Set in between two glass panes on the first floor of the Siobhan Davies Studios, this delicate sequence of glass tubes creates a visual rhythm which as well as being an interpretation of movement, in its layout and structure, evokes a close connection to the world of sound and music.
Gian Luca Amadei

Megan Charnley: DipArch

Taking it lead from Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, the project transforms Kings Cross and St Pancras Station into a learning landscape, the main Wikiversity Campus. The Wikiversity exploits the infrastructure of the railway network, the urban locations of stations throughout the country, and the time spent travelling or waiting to travel to offer informal learning opportunities. What gripped me most in Megan’s work was the optimism and freshness of her writing – she is able to create an atmosphere through the content and graphics of a train timetable – anyone for Conversational French on the 0800 – 0846 from London Kings Cross to Peterborough? Her manifesto for unconstrained imaginations recalls the modernist Marxism of Berthold Brecht, which is refreshing and delightful, and the last thing I expected walking into at the RCA. Judith Losing

University of East London

Vassilis Pafilis: PhD in Fine Arts

Vassilis Pafilis work tuned my eyes to a very different geographical situation in London’s New East Town, complete with its very own airport across Royal Victoria dock, setting the acoustic tone. His large cracked-oil paintings; studies of beaches, horizons, heaving seas in thunderous ochres, browns and greys, certainly took me somewhere.   It’s not ‘greek to me’ but it might be to him.  His work is very different in tone to some other cracking canvases in this (very) Professional Doctorate in Fine Art display. Graham Modlen

University of Westminster

Elizabeth Blundell: DipArch

A postal sorting office and private residence dedicated to the collection and preservation of letters in Bayswater constructs an architectural letter to London. Written to address emotional loss within the city, through the practice of letter writing users are encouraged to articulate the loss experienced in their lives. The project forms an ode to absence and encourages the expression of grief in a society where one is rigorously coerced  to don a ’stiff upper lip’. This project combines subtle intervention with architectural rigour that culminates in a powerful yet tender proposition for a building. Owen Pritchard

James Gardener: DipArch

High Tide Street is an inhabitable bridge on the Thames, which shifts with the changing tide and connects to Silvertown in London’s Docklands with Woolwich in the North. Addressing the city’s north-south divide, Gardener’s project offers an elegant means to re-territorialise a once vibrant artery. The project transcends the limitations of scale in architecture. The beautifully composed film and drawings show the vacillating structure reconfiguring to create a walkway over habitable pods. Gardener’s vision of a ‘cultural highstreet’ which includes a floating library, concert hall and fish market, balances the magical with the prosaic. Gwen Webber

The new flagship store of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto has opened in Paris. Although based in Tokyo, Yamamoto has an affinity with the French capital having debuted his Pret a Porter collection there in 1981. He now adds to list of stores in Tokyo, New York and Antwerp with a signature white box on Rue Cambon – a mix of gallery and shop designed in collaboration with architect Sophie Hicks. In her first career Hicks was fashion editor at Vogue and Tatler in the 80s. Since qualifying as an architect she has maximised on her expertise by designing an illustrious list of clothing stores for the likes of Paul Smith, Sigerson Morrison, Boden, Chloe and now Yamamoto.

The white box effect begins outside – with the moulded façade of the existing building whitewashed at ground level to indicate the extent of the store to the street. The windows are partially obscured from the inside with oversized origami, allowing passersby a tantalising glimpse of the space beyond, as well as offering privacy and an exclusive shopping experience to customers. The oversized origami is actually a contemporary and beautiful take on the ‘Shoji’ feature of traditional Japanese buildings – the translucent paper screen. The concept of appreciating things in glimpses, fragments and half-light is one mused on by Junichiro Tanizaki in his cult text ‘In Praise of Shadows’, which Yamamoto cites as an influence on his own aesthetic. Given this, dazzlingly bright white seems an odd colour to choose; however the sculptural Shojigami pattern is repeated near the entrance in carved chestnut panels that more aptly evoke the feel of a traditional Japanese inn.

Inside, the shop is a meld of the sculptural background of Hicks’s design and Yamamoto’s creations. Dressed on white mannequins that merge into the white background, the clothes are intended to have the appearance of floating in space, and resemble artworks in a gallery more than clothes in a shop. The store covers a huge floor area and the vastness of the space is an expression of luxury in itself. As Hicks says, the store aims to transport customers to a “uniquely luxurious, comfortable and aesthetically Japanese” environment, right in the heart of Paris.