Dr Philp Graham - Director of Studies for Architecture and Design - reports on progress by final year architecture students taking Homerton as their year-long design project
Last summer I set a three-part challenge to the Department of Architecture, based on the question of Homerton’s future estate:
- What would a collegiate masterplan fit for 21st Century learning look like?
- How might College members steer decision-making?
- Could design strategies improve social inclusion, cross-disciplinary collaboration and social, environmental and economic sustainability?
Happily, ‘Studio 1’ - one of the final year undergraduate design studios - answered my call and co-opted my brief into their 2024-25 design project.
Design studios are the primary group learning environment in the Department of Architecture, through which Design Fellows (typically practising architects) teach their students design process. This is achieved by means of an overarching theme, site, brief or problem that culminates in a complete architectural proposition over the academic year.
Each year, Studio 1 asks its students to research place-making and its role in social interaction, creativity and the exchange of ideas. The studio contains 17 students from all colleges, of which there is one Homertonian this year. By taking Homerton as its subject, my brief offered Studio 1 a renewed focus on the collegiate environment as an arena for inclusion and innovation - but now with the challenge of linking user consultation to design outcomes.
Meaningful consultation is key to purposeful and long-lasting architecture, but is too often paid only lip service in practice, being both expensive and time consuming to do properly. It is also daunting and hard to simulate, making it unusual for an architect’s training to include such in-depth practical experience. At the Department of Architecture, however, there is now the expertise to assemble locally-informed feedback on the built environment and turn this into collective action. This is thanks to the Head of School, Professor Flora Saumel and her leadership of the Cambridge Urban Room.
To transfer knowledge from the Urban Rooms initiative into studio teaching, Dr Ruchit Purohit explained the consultation methods in theory through a workshop and lecture. Ruchit is Girton’s Director of Studies for Architecture and part of the Cambridge Urban Room team. The practical, however, put the students well outside their comfort zone, by asking them to design and deliver a day of consultation.
Part one of this was a day-long ‘back-stage tour’ (11th October). We spent time with lead gardener, Helen; head of catering, Stu; archivist, Svetlana; client lead for the new dining hall, Francesca; director of music, Daniel; then as many fellows as could join us for lunch. Of course, there was also an hour with Simon, who first showed the students a blank sheet, then added his one word brief - “belonging”.
Armed with drawings, tours, information and original plans from this first day, Part 2 was the students’ chance to build out a picture of Homerton’s needs and vision, through a day of listening. Their preparation of drawings, posters, ethics-approved information sheets, consultation boards and semi-structured interview plans gave them an ideal platform to listen to what our College-wide community had to say - good, bad and pie-in-the-sky. One student described the consultation day as “one of the highlights of my degree so far and I loved every moment of it.” There is no doubt that the experience of speaking to fellows, porters, cleaners, students, librarian and the kitchen team will put these students in pole position when they apply for jobs in practice later this year.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the students, however, has been to analyse and operationalise their hours of interview transcripts, notes, photographs and drawings into robust records and masterplan drawings of a possible future for Homerton. The constraints and opportunities for doing this were workshopped through a day-long design coaching session, led by architect Roddy Langmuir - a colleague of almost 20 years at Cullinan Studio and an expert in socially and environmentally sustainable masterplanning.
Studio 1 Design Fellows, Sarah Hare and Richard Lavington, described the students’ excitement at getting to know the College and thinking how to improve inclusive learning and living within a collegiate structure. “The site is large and the questions it raises are complex, but breaking it down into specific areas has enabled the studio to tackle detailed issues across the college, allowing certain strategic themes to emerge. These can be categorised into themes such as landscape, courts and walkways, new frontages, and improving the arrival sequence.”
Excitingly, the students will be presenting their masterplan ideas back to the College on Tuesday 28th January at 1700-1900 in the Great Hall. We are framing it as a takeover of Changemakers’ weekly Tuesday Conversation and, to make it just that, we hope for the biggest possible turnout. The input of our College community will not only enrich the students’ work and inform their building designs to follow, but will help us to shape our future discussions around this inspiring, timely and well-informed resource. Please make time to join - staff, students, and fellows - to engage in what we hope will be a free and open conversation, enabled by these rather brave final year students. All are welcome.