Design Yearbook 2017

Welcome
Prue Chiles – Director of Architecture
This book celebrates the achievements of students and staff whose hard work is a
testament to the innovative culture and inclusive atmosphere of this School. It has
been an exciting year which has been wonderful to both observe and be a part of.
The creative and intellectual rigour of our approach was again formally recognised as
excellent by the RIBA in the accreditation visit that took place this academic year.
It has been a year of both change and continuity; change, with the addition of a
number of teaching, academic and support staff, their arrival has already been warmly
received and widely appreciated. Our School has always promoted a broad range of
interdisciplinary practices and specialisms within the study of architecture and this
increasing diversity has fostered a wide variety of design and research studios in both
the Bachelor and Master’s degree programmes. For the first time, this has also included
vertical studios which have encouraged collaboration between undergraduate and
postgraduate students.
Change has also come with the first major redevelopment of our School’s
accommodation since 1966: the addition of an extension to the Building Science
building which has doubled our workshop capacity, added new studios, review spaces
and digital fabrication facilities. The latter include a new digital workshop space which
has already been fully exploited by this year’s cohort through a wide range of models
and representational studies. Moreover, investments in new technologies such as virtual
reality equipment have allowed students to explore a wider range of media and further
expand the limits of their architectural imaginations.
Continuity has come in the form of continued success of the live build ‘linked research’
programme, the latest iteration of which was highly commended in the rural initiatives
category of the RIBA MacEwen Award. This programme has worked for a number
of years in collaboration with local residents to design and build small structures in
Northumberland aimed at sustaining rural communities. They have also provided
an opportunity for students to experience the difficulties and delights of seeing a
live architectural project from concept through to completion. This programme
is an example of the close connections between our teaching and the work of the
Architecture Research Collaborative (ARC), the School’s established research group.
Collaborations between researchers and students fill the pages of this yearbook from
the Newcastle After Dark studies, a study of the intricacies of night-time economies in
Newcastle, through to Zanzibar Futures, a journal considering Zanzibar as a microcosm
of geopolitical issues, along with continuing experimental architecture research into
living architectural fabric.
NUAS, the Newcastle University Architecture Society, has been recognised by the
students’ union for the second year running as Best Departmental Society. Students
have also established a student charter of Article 25, an NGO whose name is derived
from the United Nations declaration of human rights, stating that everyone has the
right to adequate and dignified shelter. Work like this continues the School’s tradition
of offering programmes which engage students in a diverse range of social, political and
cultural projects, instilling a strong sense of human values and societal responsibility.
Our research-led teaching is intended to equip graduates not just with the skills they
need to enter the profession but also with skills to help them to stay ahead of a changing
professional landscape during a long career. The work presented in this book illustrates
its diversity, originality, significance and rigour.
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