The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the Grenfell-Baines Institute of Architecture
Location Preston • Courses BSc (Hons) Architecture, MArch • Head of school Lee Ivett • Full-time tutors 12 • Part-time tutors 3 • Students 130 • Staff to student ratio 1:12
Undergraduate
Boniface Atu
Course BSc (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Poverty, Pleasure and Production: Architecture as a Tool for Regenerative Cultures
Project title Ganuhyan. Autonomy of the Individual
Project description This project considers the potential for civic infrastructure for improving the wellbeing of individuals and collectives. A series of interventions guide the ‘pilgrim’ towards a main temple from Coniston village, through Copper Mine Valley to a body of water positioned half-way up the Old Man of Coniston. The wider strategy builds anticipation towards the revealing of an organic form that acts as a transition between land and water, through a series of event and circulation spaces. Mass stone construction is used.
Tutor citation This project is an ambitious architectural and theoretical response to themes of sensory and scarred space and how architecture can manifest itself as a tool for healing, respite and reflection. Boniface’s commitment to considering landscape in its immediacy and as a much wider topography is commendable. Lee Ivett and Ecaterina Stefanescu
Postgraduate
Michal Ochnio
Course MArch
Studio/unit brief Tussen het Sociale, Culturele en Commerciële
Project title Building Social Cohesion
Project description This project proposes flexible residences for vulnerable peoples and their loved ones. The environment facilitates neighbourly contact while making it easier for families to provide care. Ground-floor apartments are designed to fit residents’ needs. The strategy was inspired by the Netherlands’ Buurtzorg care model, which uses a de-centralised working system and is renowned for its innovative methods in providing care. The pattern of single-storey ground floor apartments, multistorey family homes and rented accommodation is completed with small temporary quarters for professional carers.
Tutor citation Michal’s design involved overlayed iterations of three-dimensional hand-drawn explorations, enabling a constant awareness of the immediate context and intimacies of spatial relationships within the programme. This culminated in a complete and modest architectural expression, which on closer inspection reveals much skilled spatial control. Chris Lowry and Kevin Loftus
