Free Range exhibition & Welsh School of Architecture Exhibition



Image1.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

FREE Range exhibition had opened its door at Truman Brewery on Brick Lane where is a cultural headquarter of London. This exhibition was for undergraduate courses of fashion, design, photography & media, fine art and interior & architecture over the UK. It was started in 2001 and has been getting a reputation for one of famous cultural event in London. In this year, fashion courses kicked off their exhibition from May 31and interior & architecture courses ran its show from June 11 to 15. Twenty five universities across the country, including Glasgow, Dundee, LCC, Westminster and Manchester, set up their own booths and unfolded their ideas, talents and capacities. The universities might want to get a chance to show off their students into the largest market London in this disastrous recession.

Image2.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City



Image3.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

Image4.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

 



Image5.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City



Image6.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City



Image7.Free range Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

 The works of Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), Cardiff University was awesome and highly recommended from many architects who work in London. Although it is hard to compare directly to other universities because WSA exhibition consisted by the projects of masters’ students while others were bachelors’, seven units of WSA might not fall behind other schools in London. In fact, WSA was ranked as the second best department in GuardianUniversity Guide 2014 and they marked the same position with AA School in the list of the UK best architectureschool surveyed by Architects' Journal.

 

Image8.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

Image9.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

Image10.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

Image11.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

Image12.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

 

Image13.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

 

Image14.WSA Exhibition place. The image was taken by Networking City

 When it comes to me, the works of ‘Unit 7: Infrastructural Urbanism’, which explore reorganizing local identity in the process of changing urban industries, were particularly impressive. Usually, when we proceed urban design projects, we start first to overview macro urban structures, its development history, and regional issues and so on. Then, we reach the level of urban and architecture design what should make balances between abstract urban policy & specific physical design, macro urban patterns & micro human behaviours and economic feasibility & public value by design quality. At this point, lots of conflicts would be emerging, and it should be hard to reach agreeable point. Furthermore, when the work frame is changed such as from urban design to architecture design, logical connections between different types and scales of works would be weakened. We can say it as ‘logical jumping’. Networking City understands Unit 7 admitted the jumping could be appeared, however; they might try to know what the jumping would be there and how they could minimize the jumping at each development phase.

Elizabeth Venning’s work, Supportive infrastructures: Affordances between the DVLA and its locality at different scales, which examines new possibility of massive district of DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority) in Swansea City, well shows the characteristics of this unit. She investigates the way of redefining the physical and social relationship between DVLA area and local people through transforming and reorganizing some DVLA’s buildings and its programmes. In order to provide an effective strategy, she finds that there are six different levels including National scale, Regional scale and Household Scale behind the integrated complexity and each level has relevant policies, rules and orders that impact on the site. All policies, rules and orders at each level are analysed by Venning, and inter-relationship between levels and response plan are proposed with building plans in detail. 

If you want to know more about Welsh School of Architecture and their exhibition, please visit this link.



Image15. Elizabeth Venning’s work. The image was taken by Networking City
 

Image16. Venning’s diagram shows six different systems of the site. The image was taken by Networking City

  

Image17. Models and panels of WSA. The image was taken by Networking City

 

CASA Seminar: Parameterizing land use planning by Talia Kaufmann



Image1.Talia Kaufmann gave the presentation at CASA Lunchtime Seminar. The image was taken by Networking City.

 On 10^th July 11, 2013, CASA Lunch Seminar was commenced in The Rockefeller Building. Talia Kaufmann, who is a visiting student from MIT Master in City Planning, provided her current research ‘Parameterizing land use planning’. After she finished her bachelor degree in Architecture Tel-Aviv University, Israel and worked as an urban planner for the Tel Aviv-Yafo City Planning Department.

Throughout the presentation, she showed brilliant ideas and cool images. Also, some arguable points were emerging in her presentation, and the considerable discussion between audiences and Talia was continued.

For example, one of her main idea is to randomly capture Google Street View images from several targeting cities and ask people to answer their sense of images. And it becomes the score of each city. The audiences questioned about the precondition of the idea. Can we measure the feeling of the city by just watching some images? Would there be the gap between the feeling of Street View images and the true feeling of cities? Is there any delicate setting for cultural backgrounds and individual subjectivity of participants?

This seminar could be a good opportunity for her to listen others’ comments, articulate the ideas and develop many possibilities of her research.

 

 

SHOW RCA 2013

 

 

Image1. The entrance of the exhibition (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

The architecture students’ works of Royal College of Art revealed at their annual exhibition ‘Show RCA 2013’ from June 20 to June 30. Except fashion design which already opened its show on May 29, there are two exhibition areas where are Kensington and Battersea for 10 departments of RCA. The department of Architecture has its own exhibition place in Battersea with Applied art, Fine art, Photography and so on.

The exhibition place looked an old warehouse, therefore, the weird tension between rough feeling of the old building and innovative works of the students generates a marvelous atmosphere.

 

Image 2. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

As I looked around six studios’ works, it was coming to me that the works of RCA students are pushing beyond the realm of architecture with the imaginary and creativeness of the students rather than being sustained in it. Some students show very architectural drawings, some works might suit to consider as fine art or sculpture, and it would be possible to meet some works at the exhibition of video art.

Image 3. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 4. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 5. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 6. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

 

 Like the exhibition of The Bartlett which this blog introduced before, (http://networkingcity.blogspot.kr/2013/06/bartlett-summer-show-2013.html )

this exhibition gave an opportunity to clearly understand that architectural thoughts can be shown with multiple media including videos, 3d displays and installations which were set up in the exhibition place as the works and rooms for watching videos.

 

Image 7. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 8. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 9. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 10. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 11. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 12. The exhibition place of RCA (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Alexander Turner (http://alexander-r-a-turner.tumblr.com ) suggests the simple and strong ‘wall’ for East Sussex against indiscreet urban sprawl. This plan of housing and public space for 2000 inhabitants, which might fall under the influence of Dogma (http://www.dogma.name/index.html ), is outstanding among many works.  

 

Image 13. The work of Alexander Turner (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Environmental issue is spotlighted here again. One student provides an interesting idea to purify air pollution of London by transforming BT tower into a filtering facility in the worst polluted area in London. This work was introduced on Dezeen last week and has been paid attention from international readers.  http://www.dezeen.com/2013/06/24/synthetechecology-by-chang-yeob-lee/

 

Image 14. The work of Changyeob Lee (The image is taken by Networking City)
 

In fact, it was more impressive when we visited other exhibition areas after the department of architecture. The quality level of the works of fine art, photography and sculpture students is easily over the normal level of masters’ students, therefore, it would not be strange if we meet these works at museums in London with professional artworks. In addition, buildings and working facilities for students look very nice to do something creative.     

 

Image 15. The exhibition of Applied Art (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 16. The exhibition of Sculpture (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Image 17. The exhibition of Fine art (The image is taken by Networking City)

 

Echo Morgan’s works (http://echomorgan.com/ ), which were displayed in the area of printmaking, are distinctive to provide multiple and complex faces that can be variously interpreted. She intended to show the vital force of vulnerable human body when a fragile woman’s body is accompanied with brutal metal balls. Furthermore, the photo, which captured the scene of a tree with the same metal balls in ruined industrial landscape, is planned to illustrate the vulnerability and vitality of nature as well as the coupling of the human body and nature. When it comes to me, the metal balls, which were firstly close to the sight, underline the human body and the ruined landscape, which are actually the background of the photos, therefore, the tension between figure and background creates the enormous power for being these photos lively.  

 

Image 18. The work of Echo Morgan (The image is taken from Echo Morgan's website)

 

Image 19. The work of Echo Morgan (The image is taken from Echo Morgan's website)

 

 

Image 20. The work of Echo Morgan (The image is taken from Echo Morgan's website)