AIA Student Charrette Presentation.
Floral Court Central Courtyard, Covent Garden. Credit: Andrew Montgomery.
KPF’s London office welcomed 70 architecture students representing the universities of Bath, Cambridge, Hertfordshire, Manchester, Nottingham Trent, Sheffield, and Westminster for the AIA UK annual design competition.
The design charrette emphasised analogue drawing skills, encouraging students to work quickly by hand to generate concept ideas. This year, students learned about Covent Garden and were challenged to design a temporary installation for the courtyard of Floral Court, a newly-created mixed-use courtyard by KPF that provides a refuge in a busy and colourful part of London. The students’ designs would respond to the theme of ‘Urban Gardens’. Students were tasked to propose how the intervention would be used, and by whom, as well as propose a strategy for its construction and deconstruction. Students presented their ideas through drawings, models, photos & collages, concluded by a three-minute presentation to the jury.
This year’s jury included David Ogunmuyiwa, London Mayor’s Design Advocate and founding partner at ArchitectureDoingPlace; Sanaa Shaikh, founder of Native Studio; and Bongani Muchemwa of McCloy + Muchemwa. Each university group was also assigned a mentor from the AIA UK chapter. KPF Associate Principal Orkun Beydagi served as a mentor for the students representing Nottingham Trent University, and Anna Mytcul helped mentor and organise the event.
Congratulations to this year’s competition winners from the University of Westminster: Elena Delli Colli, Claudia Gomez, Umi Sakai-Stoute, Della Wendha, Edwin Zhou and Daile Cerneckyte. Teams from the University of Bath and Manchester School of Architecture were named as runners up.
The annual event is open to students enrolled in their second or third year of a RIBA-accredited Part-1 architecture course.