The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the Department of Architecture and 3D Design
Location Huddersfield • Courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch, PG Cert Professional Practice and Management in Architecture • Head of school Nic Clear • Full-time tutors 10 • Part-time tutors 6 • Students 300 • Staff to student ratio 1:19
Undergraduate
Andrew Billington
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio DS6
Project Amphibi.Tecture Centre in Haiyan village, Kunming, south-west China
Project description The Institute of Ecological Fishing Technology in Haiyan village is a centre for the research, development and teaching of new ecological fishing techniques used in Dian Lake. It sits on Dian’s banks and has a curved wave form that reaches out into the water, creating a central marina for boats to dock and new fishing technologies to reach out to forgotten fishing communities. The main building is split into four parts: to educate locals; research fishing ecology; develop state-of-the-art technology; and provide a separate laboratory and market/banqueting hall within different buildings on the edge of the site. A key design driver of the scheme was to give the building an amphibious identity whereby it would become part of the lake. With a primary structural frame of glulam, the building is also connected to its surrounding woodland.
Tutor citation Andrew’s project is a centre to educate researchers, educators and students about the ecology of Haiyan village. It takes inspiration from traditional timber houses, innovatively creating a circular glulam framework that presents a simple image of the building, sitting between land and water. The concept of ‘amphibious’ was developed from its strong technical solutions, which work as a contemporary interpretation of a local historic tradition. Yun Gao
Postgraduate
Dariana Nistor
Course MArch
Unit 15: A Northern Powerhouse. Toward a SM_ART: GREEN Future
Project Making Genus. Architecture as Science Fiction: Exploring Gender Roles Within Utopian Societies
Project description The project proposes a post-gender utopian island located around the area of Dogger Bank in the North Sea, approximately 100km off the east coast of England. It takes a critical view that looking at the world through a gendered lens is problematic and creates a hierarchical structure founded on binary terms, forming power structures, social boundaries and default identity expectations – all social thresholds that dictate how the built environment is created and operates. Concerned with the social and architectural implications of living in a post-gender world, Making Genus is a thought experiment on what a utopian society would look like and is deeply rooted in feminist science fiction. Alluding to Donna Haraway’s 2016 Staying with the Trouble and its call for cross-species interaction in a post-human world through the critique of binary approaches to gender, the self-growing island organism operates between synthetic and natural processes in response to contemporary environmental issues.
Tutor citation Dariana’s project is defined by an architectural language that moves away from the conventional and rigid systems of the current built environment and posits a language impregnated with ideas of utopian dreams, environmental consciousness, social equality and kinship. Her work demonstrates an innovative, original and in-depth research on the gendered status quo of our contemporary society that compels us to think about speculative alternatives. Nic Clear and Hyun Jun Park
