Formative Reviews …..with a twist.

It is that time of year again, the formative reviews! Thursday 15th November, each Interior Architecture studio pinned up their as usual but there was a slight twist, with a walk-around ‘exhibition’ in the afternoon. As part of the exhibition, students during the lunch break were to scout out which work they wanted to hear more about, placing a post-it alongside it. This resulted in the most chosen student from each studio talking through their work and this is what they had to say;

“The NFA is exploring designing around pleasure based in the Brunswick Town area of Hove. I immediately thought displeasure would be much more interesting to design after being inspired by programmes such as Black Mirror and Maniac. My project is at the site of a hotel which went bankrupt in 2013. Set in post Brexit 2025, bankruptcy has been abolished and anyone who would have usually been declared bankrupt is sent to their nearest rehabilitation centre to pay off their debts. The main character of this project, David Glover – the same man who was managing the hotel when it went bankrupt, declares bankruptcy for the second time in 2025, but is instead sent to the centre. The Dudley Rehabilitation Centre is built from the empty hotel. The centre forces patients to undergo a series of medical trials to pay off their debts. These trials vary in risk and time taken. This corresponds to the number of points they get, therefore the amount of money that comes off their debt. Patients cannot leave the centre until their debt is paid.”
Liz Newcombe – Near Futurists Alliance

“Broadcast Industries is interested in the current state of uncertainty the UK is in because of the 2016 Referendum – Brexit. We are exploring this through the use of temporary architecture, and interstitial spaces. We set out in the streets of Brighton in small groups to explore the interstitial and in-between in the form of a derive. Once we had discovered our chosen sites in the groups, we mapped our discoveries – this is an ongoing piece of work that we will add to as our projects develop further. We then created models of our sites at a minimum of 1:25 scale. This was completed in the groups we did the derive in. With both model and map, we moved on to find a catalyst. We defined a polemic and position to form the catalyst that will inform our future design project. We gathered research to create a manifesto leaflet, and advert that communicates our polemics and positions to our chosen target audience.”
Emmeline Footitt – Broadcast Industries

“Emerging Habitats is a studio exploring the ‘ways we live’ in an urban landscape, particularly on socio-cultural, environmental or political trends affecting the city and the community. As a studio we each defined lifestyle patterns we wanted to explore in our projects. The lifestyle pattern I chose to look at for my project was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a mental health condition in which a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours. After having researched about OCD, I completed my hybrid drawing which is visually defining the 7 different behavioural types associated with OCD; checking, hoarding, contamination, symmetry and orderliness, mental contamination, ruminations and intrusive thoughts. I started to use the colour white to emphasise cleanliness and perfection. In Brunswick square, London, I mapped out contamination, hoarding and symmetry outdoors to begin to get an idea of what these behaviours of OCD would look like in a spatial environment. I also looked at site forces and materials at a site in Antwerp, Belgium, which could represent OCD in a spatial environment, with the inspiration of the style from Rachel Whiteread’s work. This work acted as a catalyst directing me to look more into negative space and cut outs of a building, which I can soon start relating to our site which is the Isokon building in London.”
Meg Collis – Emerging Habitats

“With the looming uncertainty of the future, we can only act upon predictions of what we believe will be true. Within the Subject to change studio, we deal with the future in response to the changes predicted for Brighton high street 2030. Analysing, collecting and interpreting data from the existing high street, we used this as a collective, to explore the radical assumptions we have made as designers and inhabitants of the city. As catalysts into design, my assumptions about the future are heavily linked to the extinction of retail and adaptations of social interaction within existing and emerging communities. With site specific research, collected demographic data and exploration of ideas linked to circulation through Clarence square and the activities that take place within this protected area. From the current themes and ideologies my manifesto addresses, understanding the constructs of community, and how sociability within this space can form a new emergence of communities for the future.”
Joshua Curtis – Subject to Change