University College London (The Bartlett) – Summer Exhibition 2011 Review – 09.07.11

Boidus would like to introduce our new member of the team – Neelam Shah.

Neelam is 19 and recently completed her National Diploma in Multi Media at Croydon College, South London.

She is currently attending the YJA (Young Journalists Academy) Summer School and plans to study a degree in Journalism, Media and Cultural studies at Kingston University in the future.  Last year Neelam had her work featured on “End of Show”, also, she recently wrote a short article about climate change for “Your Local Guardian”. To find out more about Neelam click here, and here.

Recently Neelam visited the Bartlett Summer Exhibition, as a non-architecture student it is interesting to hear her

opinions of what she saw, here is her review -

Bartlett Summer Exhibition Architecture Review:

This year’s summer architecture exhibition showcased amazing work created by design and architecture students from University College London.

The exhibition was held in Bartlett School of architecture, Slade galleries on Saturday July 9th and every final project design presented in each room was up to a very impressive standard.

All of the architecture models showcased were very dynamic; the structures were very unique and well thought out.

The use of space on each architectural model was cleverly utilised with the surroundings. Some of the students thought about every single component within the model structure and how the public would interact with the space around them.

The designs and 3D models were presented all over the gallery floors, on ceilings, on multi-media screens, on the floor, everywhere!  On the walls were the designs and location maps.

I also liked the recycling centre model; it showed that the student was thinking about the environment and sustainability as well as the design/structure, which is really well done.

I was intrigued by the whole structure of the model and in the way it was constructed out of bright colored materials such as papers, cardboard, Lego and reusable resources, which brought out interesting vigorous angles, shapes and patterns. The model was really cleverly created, well thought out, innovative and very eye catching too.

Some of the projects achieved Distinction in design, amongst those were prizewinner Kibwe Tavares, he designed a piece about robots in the Brixton area, combining urban and digital design.

See the links below for the news headlines and the video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13889371

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2011/06/28/robots-of-brixton/

http://io9.com/5738491/the-robots-of-brixton/gallery/

http://io9.com/5816440/there-are-robots-rioting-in-brixton

I also liked the way Kibwe Tavares had used digital technology to design robots making the whole piece seem like the a futuristic cyber techno world.

Prize winner Jonathan Gales for ‘best drawings of the year’ (digital drawing) also achieved a distinction for Fitzroy Robinson drawing.

I thought Jonathan Gales’ use of shape, form and structure was particularly interesting and the grid like patterns appearing in the digital design made the whole design symmetrical, the colours used were vintage as well, giving the whole piece a classical 1950s feel to it.

For more info on the architectural award winner, click here.

Both of these projects I thought were different to the rest of the architectural designs as they had a unique theme and some kind of narrative in their final designs, which made them prize worthy.

Both the designs convey different messages; the robots in Brixton had quite an interesting storyline in portraying what the area would look like in 2015.

I didn’t really understand the storyline behind the Fitzroy Robison drawing though; it was one of those projects that provoked different reactions and interpretations into what the design is trying to communicate to the visitors.  This was something that I really liked about it as there was something happening in the design, maybe in the background but I can’t tell exactly what.

After leaving the exhibition showcase, I felt inspired by the talented work that was on display by these students, each and every model clearly showed passion, drive and ambition which gave life, a sense of identity and appreciation to architecture. I felt happy to see so much skill and hard work produced and seeing the projects showcased collectively makes the whole exhibition definitely worth seeing, writing about and taking photos.

The whole atmosphere of the exhibition was abundant with creativity; there were many projects that had their own unique selling point (USP).

I couldn’t really say which was my favorite design, as they were all great and had their own style which made the exhibition even more interesting, just seeing how the students put their own perspective and personality into their work. It was also great to see so many people engaging with the designs, exploring what each project was about, reading about the themes of each of the projects, the planning/preparation of the work i.e. scales, maps, seeing how each of the student’s models and designs were presented, some under glass.

There were many snap shots on the day; a lot of people, mainly family and visitors came with cameras to capture some of the work.

To find out more about the Bartlett school of architecture, UCL, slade galleries, or to view the students’ work in the online gallery, click here and here.