2021 Noel Hill Award Winning Team

Photo: A college of the Mackintosh School of Architecture presentation.

It was a busy day for the Student Charrette jurors this year, as they met at the Building Centre in early November before that event to judge this year's Noel Hill Award submissions. The award is presented annually to a Part 2 student that has undertaken outstanding and original research during their studies. It is not limited by topic or location and offers £3,000 to enable students to further pursue and develop their interests. 

Relaunched this year, the award attracted numerous entries, each of which consisted of two A3 pages and a short video presentation. Students presented their proposals for the continuation of research carried out during the course of their Part 2 studies, looking to win the £3,000 prize - one of the largest student architecture prizes in the UK.  To learn more about the Award and the requirements see Noel Hill Award — AIA UK.

A team of four students from the Mackintosh School of Architecture were selected as the winners for their proposal to further develop a community-building workshop in the Govanhill area of Glasgow. The jury was struck by the participatory design initiated by the group, who showed resourcefulness and creativity in driving forward their community project during the pandemic. The AIA UK is happy to support their return to site for continued engagement - hosting new workshops, building further installations using recycled materials, and conducting post occupancy evaluations to gather feedback on their interventions.  

Congratulations to the winning students: Lily Whitehouse, Kasia Antoszyk , Kester Samsom and Zoë Hyatt. We look forward to seeing how their research progresses over the coming year. Their completed research will be presented at the Chapter’s 2023 Excellence in Design Awards and will be published in a future newsletter. 

Written by: Nicholas Kehagias, AIA, RIBA

Iris Ceramica invites AIA UK to the Architects Series at its Speakeasy Club

Photo: While Iris Ceramica’s production team set up the event, Russell Brown and Roger Hawkins go over their notes…

Following up on our commitment to become more actively involved with AIA UK Chapter’s sponsors, we were pleased to be invited to Iris Ceramica’s Speakeasy Club on 18 Nov 2021 for this month’s ‘Architects Series’. 

The Architects Series offers exclusive videos - up close and personal - with some of the most famous architecture studios around the world. In collaboration with Iris Ceramica Group, team members from The Plan – an independent production team - go behind the scenes of the most important international practices to report on the life, work, and aspirations of the architects who build our cities.

The November session was an in-depth review of Hawkins/Brown Architects with a chance to meet the principles after the video for an open discussion of their work. At circa 300 employees, Hawkins/Brown is one of the UK’s largest architectural practices.  Three major projects from the many reviewed in their excellent presentation exemplified the practice’s ethos of adding social value to good design: 

• Crossrail’s Tottenham Court Road station, emphasising art and circulation,

• Sheffield’s Park Hill Housing, bringing ‘love, life and pride back to an abused icon’,

• Olympic Park’s Here East project, rescuing a ready to be demolished broadcasting shed and turning it into 1.2million sq ft of creative and digital industry units.

Photo: A relaxed atmosphere encourages face to face interaction with the featured architects.

Iris Ceramica’s Architects Series is international, and the event was transmitted simultaneously to London, Milan and Berlin with 2.0 CE credits for both the AIA and RIBA. Those of us attending live at the London showrooms witnessed the professional set up with a full production team and also enjoyed a classy after event bar (with canapes) - all imbued with high quality Italian design and panache. A relaxed and stylish way to earn CE units.

Photo: Iris Ceramica’s event was organised by The Plan, who handled the event logistics and continuing education requirements.

Another Speakeasy Club event scheduled for December will follow the same format as November’s offering and feature Wilkinson Eyre. Other AIA UK Chapter sponsors are also being considered as part of this initiative, including an upcoming lunchtime webinar hosted by Beale & Co.  

Watch out for the official Announcement or check out our website ‘Events’ section for more details.

Written by: Lorraine King, AIA

65% by 2030 / ZERO by 2040: Top 200 Global Firms and Organizations Lead With 1.5°C Climate Actions

Panel Discussion from COP26 with Peter Exley, AIA President

Construction industry leaders, including AIA President, Peter Exley, show how it is possible for us to meet the 1.5°C carbon budget. They are drawn from the top firms and organisations signed up to the COP26 Communiqué, of which AIA UK is proud to be a founding signatory. Watch the panel discussion from COP26 here!

Description

By showing what's possible, we’ll embolden governments to do the same. The top 200 firms responsible for a significant portion of construction worldwide present the bold actions they are taking to decarbonize the built world in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C carbon budget.

Speakers are a select group of dynamic senior leaders from the signatories of the COP26 Communiqué. The signatories include the largest firms and organizations in the architecture/engineering/planning sector from around the world; the sector is acting on the urgency of the climate crisis.

Nanoparticles Used to Advance Ceramic Tile Technology!

Considering ceramic tiles have been utilized for millennia, you would think there is little room to make advances in the technology.  You would be wrong!  AIA UK members attended a fascinating lecture on a new technology utilized by the ceramic tile industry.  The event took place on the 14th of October at Chapter sponsor, Iris Ceramica’s London Showroom.

Iris Ceramica developed and patented a technology that can be applied to most ceramic tiles.  Nanoparticles of titanium dioxide are combined with silver and fired onto the surface of already manufactured ceramic tiles.  This new line of tile is called ACTIVE SURFACES™.  But why go to the trouble you might ask?  Well, ACTIVE SURFACES™ exploits the photocatalytic properties of titanium dioxide and silver transforming the ceramic porcelain into an eco-active material with high end properties that are, antibacterial and antiviral, anti-pollution, self-cleaning, and anti-odour!

Considering the pandemic, the antibacterial and antiviral properties are particularly valuable.  The silver content in ACTIVE SURFACES™ kills germs within seconds in a constant and everlasting manner.  Another amazing property of ACTIVE SURFACES™ is its self-cleaning properties.  This is particularly useful in public buildings where graffiti can be a problem.  Realtime examples were presented to the attendees where dye was place on the tile and within 30 minutes it had faded!  

After the lecture attendees were treated to a social hour featuring Italian food, wine and beer!  To learn more about ACTIVE SURFACES™ and Iris Ceramica’s extensive line of quite extraordinary ceramic porcelain tiles, take a look at www.irisceramica.com.  You are also, always welcome at their London showroom at 61-67 Old Street.

Chapter member Gregory Fonseca, AIA, (left) discusses tile with Giacomo Bertoni, Iris Ceramica’s UK Specification and Key Account Manager. 

2021 Keynote Lecture Featuring Tatiana Bilbao

The 2021 Keynote Lecture Featured Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao.  The event was jointly hosted by the AIA UK and the RIBA, and it was held at the RIBA headquarters on September 27th.  The event was the AIA UK’s first hybrid event, in that it was held-in person and simultaneously broadcast online.  The evening was opened by welcoming addresses by RIBA President Simon Allford and AIA National President Peter Exley.

Tatiana Bilbao presented a range of her projects – from a botanical garden, an urban aquarium, a large university building, a Cistercian monastery, a community-based project designed around a San Francisco substation, and a house in Germany.   The work is personal, bespoke, and carefully crafted to the client’s situation.

Interestingly, Tatiana Bilbao avoids the use of computer renderings, particularly in the early stages of a project.  Instead, she has developed a unique ‘collage’ style of drawing that attempts to indirectly convey the essence of the project through an assemblage of disparate images.  The collages are artworks in themselves.

Tatiana Bilbao teaches at Yale University, and has taught at Harvard GSD, Columbia, and Rice in the US, as well as other universities internationally.  She has been recognized with the Kunstpreis Berlin in 2012, was named in 2010 as an Emerging Voice by the Architecture League of New York.

AIA UK President Katharine Storr, AIA moderated the event and hosted the Q&A.  Drinks and canapes were served after the lecture.

The event was sponsored by Iris Ceramica.

Written by Lester Korzilius; FAIA, RIBA

Widening the Range of CES Credit Opportunities

Detail from a Traditional House in the Old Jewish Mahallah of Bukhara

The AIA UK Chapter’s commitment to offering its members a wide range of Continuing Education opportunities has received a boost this year via our arrangements with other organisations that also have an interest in the built environment. 

Two virtual lectures - coincidently both aired on 30 Sep 2021 (13:00 and 17:00) - took viewers through projects in distant Jordan and Uzbekistan, addressing conditions far outside the usual London architectural experience. 

ARTICLE 25 / Make Design Matter Lecture Series – Azraq School and Za’atari Classroom, Jordan.

AIA UK Board member, Bea Sennewald AIA – a Director at Article 25 - has been able to use her position to monitor the charity’s on-going lecture series ‘Make Design Matter’ and ascribe CES credits to their latest events.

September’s event – introduced by Denise Bennett, Chair of Article 25’s Board of Trustees - focused on the work of Emergency Architecture & Human Rights (EAHR) and their project in a Jordanian camp to create a multi-use public space and a classroom for refugees fleeing Syrian hostilities.  The discussions centred on methods of working with local communities to elicit their involvement in planning, designing, constructing, and using public spaces.   Refugees do not generally have a say in their own wellbeing; this initiative gave them a voice and - however narrowly focused – their involvement was productive.

The speakers included: Michael Ulfstjerne, EAHR’s CEO and Assistant Professor at Aalborg University; Chiara Garbelotto, Architect and Project Manager at EAHR; and Kotaiba Alabdullah, the founder of Acting For Change International.  Learn more about Article 25 by visiting its website HERE.

Azraq School in Jordan Refugee Camp

WORLD MONUMENT FUND® / On My Watch Series - Traditional Houses of Bukhara's Old Jewish Mahallah, Uzbekistan 

This lecture was the 2nd in the ‘On My Watch’ lecture series made available to AIA UK members through Lorraine King AIA’s involvement with WMF in London.  Whereas the 1st lecture focused on the building and conservational techniques for traditional mud architecture in Africa (see HERE), the 2nd one discussed the complexities of international research and planning, and the collaboration required to bring a large conservation project into being. 

In doing so, the lecture opened a window on a little know aspect of isolated Jewish culture along the Silk Road.  Less than 200 Bukharian Jews remain in the city and their traditional homes - with exceptional representations of woodworking craft - are in danger of serious decline and degradation. A video of the lecture summaries the situation of the vernacular architecture HERE.

The speakers included: Dr Ona Vileikis, University College London, and Sukhrob Babaev, Director for Strategic Development, both with the International Institute for Central Asian Studies; and Javier Ors Austin, an architect working with the World Monument Fund Modern Architecture Initiative and Jewish Heritage Program.

Housing Deterioration in an Abandoned Traditional Bukharian House

There are clearly other opportunities to widen our range of CES credits through collaboration with likeminded outside organisations.  In 2016 – for example - we promoted the 20th Century Society’s lecture series on Overseas Architects Working in Britain (see HERE) and we have also joined with INTBAU (see HERE) for their World Congress event.  

We welcome your introduction to other organisations that might be of interest to our membership.  Please contact us on secretary@aiauk.org with your suggestions.  

Written by: Lorraine King, AIA

Photo images curtesy of World Monument Fund and Article25.