7 July 2022 · By Harriet Jennings
It is refreshing to see landscape architecture courses given the same space and gravitas as architecture at the Greenwich School of Design degree show, writes Harriet Jennings
On a warm June evening in the bustling Stockwell Street Building of the University of Greenwich School of Design, the energy of excited students, relieved tutors, and proud parents swirls around the large, open atriums of the Heneghan Peng designed building. It’s opening night of the 2022 end-of-year exhibition.
Seeing work displayed in the context in which it was produced, one can appreciate the cross disciplinary scope of the faculty, with the outputs of all the different design disciplines exhibited together – Architecture, and Landscape Architecture and Urbanism are presented alongside Animation, Film and TV, Graphic Design, and Media Communications.
University of Greenwich student show 2022
The open interiors mean the work of each course or studio is divided by partitions in a slightly impersonal way, without any one space that feels highly differentiated in character or personality. It perhaps reduces the visitor’s immersion in the exhibitions, but allows a smooth, slightly more detached survey of the whole.
Head of the School Anastasios Maragiannis, a Professor of Inclusive Design, states in his introduction to ‘The Book 2022’ (a hefty tome) that the school’s intention is to supply the expanding creative industries’ demand for creative thinkers, so long as they are industries that work for all – and so this year’s degree show has an emphasis on social inclusion.
University of Greenwich student show opening evening 2022
He writes: ‘To design inclusively means that our students engage deeply with the end-users’ needs from the beginning of and throughout the whole creative process.’ This framework spans all courses and informs the architecture programmes both practically (in Unit/Studio briefs focussed on real sites, and underpinned by a technology module) and creatively, as students interrogate ideas using experimental materials and techniques – from algae in the BA Arch Unit 6, to the fantastically extrapolated digital drawings of the MArch.
Introducing the BA Architecture course, Year 1 Design Coordinator and senior lecturer Susanne Isa says: ‘To do is to know and to know is to do’. The course gives time to empirical methods, design processes, and the act of learning through making. This is clearly seen in large 1:1 cardboard structural models of a Year 1 group project, or at a smaller scale in the collectively-made Thames townscape model of Year 1 Unit 2’s ‘Re-cast; Re-Create’, led by Iris Argyropoulou and Elliot Nash.
Excellent model-making is also combined with photography and pencil drawing in later years. In Unit 5 Year 2, Fabi Waters’ ‘Fairview’ gives a simple cardboard model structural gravitas in photographic form. Year 2+3 Unit 7 ‘Making/Unmaking/Remaking’, led by Yorgos Loizos and Ned Scott, shows the importance of design processes that architects often hide – from material test models like the tactile puffer jacket-like plaster casts of Kayhan Kaya, to the intricate 3D printed form model by Jaewoo Kang, matched with an equally ornate pencil drawing of a proposed Guildhall for Millwall.
The exhibition booths of the MArch Architecture present digital drawings that move away from hands-on experimental processes to hold space for speculation and imagination. Especially arresting is Unit 12’s ‘Fictions and Fabulations’ – led by tutors Rahesh Ram, Lucy Sanders, and Kieran Hawkins – where student work stands out for being phenomenally detailed and particularly pink. Sophie Shields’ fairytale Gaudí-esque series ‘The Ark of Southend-on-Sea’ is a must-see.
MArch Unit 12: Fictions and Fabulations. An Instrument for Speculative Dreaming. Run by tutors Rahesh Ram, Lucy Sanders and Kieran Hawkins
Through MArch you reach the open plateau of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism. How refreshing it is to see Landscape Architecture courses given the same space and gravitas as Architecture. Indeed, Greenwich offers the only courses of its kind in London which are accredited by the Landscape Institute.
A large central table introduces the overarching theme ‘Making Wild’, with each design studio represented with material samples, such as bricks made from foraged clay in Year 1 Studio ‘A Tolworth Safari’, led by Elin Eyborg Lund and Will Sandy. Temporary walls delineate individual studio spaces, including the detective-like hand drawn mind map created after consultation with young people in Canada Water for the ‘Paper Garden’ by MA Unit B, led by James Fox, which is particularly absorbing in its unpretentiousness.
Dr Ed Wall, Academic Portfolio Lead of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, explains that Greenwich is one of the UK’s oldest schools of Landscape Architecture, with eminent past lecturers including Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe. But, with new, young tutors invigorating an inspiring programme that has in recent years focused on contemporary issues like the climate crisis and urban justice, Greenwich is looking forward and laying a path for first steps in a career within a nuanced field important for addressing the challenges of our future.
Harriet Jennings is a public programme curator and writer, and AF young trustee
University of Greenwich student show opening evening 2022
Tags Student shows 2022 University of Greenwich
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