The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning
Location Dundee • Courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch, MArch with Urban Planning • Head of school Cameron Wilson • Full-time tutors 11 • Part-time tutors 14 • Students 320 • Staff to student ratio 1:13
Undergraduate
Brendan Kerrisk
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Project Re-make: Dundee Recycling Centre
Project description Inspired by contemporary climate action initiatives (including the AJ’s RetroFirst campaign), this project looks to revitalise an old industrial building on Perth Road in Dundee in line with the city’s new identity as Unesco City of Design. The design uses recycled goods as the primary material: existing brickwork combined with a lightweight polycarbonate glazing system. The coming together of old and new represents the cultural and industrial changes that Dundee has undergone while celebrating its heritage. As the scheme operates, waste plastic is gathered from the community as a tool for educating members of the public and designers on the reality of a circular economy – the end point being that the building also becomes carbon-negative at some point in its life cycle.
Tutor citation Throughout every stage of developing the project, Brendan’s personal architectural agenda underpins his highly self-reflective design process. Brendan has embraced the opportunity to work with an existing building and to challenge traditional principles of intervention. Through critical research, he investigated the potential for a holistic, community-based facility that enables material whole-life recycling to be married with digital fabrication. Neil Cruickshank and Doug Pearson
Postgraduate
Thomas Dougan
Course MArch with Urban Planning
Project Gaps of Uncertainty: Towards a Tactical Architecture
Project description The year studies holistic approaches to urban sustainability, procurement and local, national and international frameworks to manage urban development. It particularly works with the city of Perth to consider the issues and opportunities presented by a post-pandemic urban context. The project itself explores the potential of introducing a temporary modular architectural system into Perth’s urban environments that grows and evolves as the city does. The system aims to bring experimentation back into our urban spaces: offering low-cost, fast-acting interventions capable of changing to accommodate the needs of users, finally becoming a precedent that can be applied elsewhere. Perth’s abundance of infill sites and car parks are appropriate for this approach as these sites can be transformed into ‘gaps of uncertainty’.
Tutor citation This project considers ways that cities might inject new activities and new life into places that are currently dormant. What is proposed is not a finite building proposition but a system which might be employed to serve a variety of uses, users and clients. Thomas used the framework of the course to look in depth at meanwhile uses and how cities have implemented temporary change in the context of Covid-19, drawing on references ranging from Cedric Price to Boxpark. Helen O’Connor and Kirsty Macari
