The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About
Location Leicester | ARB/RIBA courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch Architecture | Head of school Kate Cheyne | Full-time tutors 13 | Part-time tutors 56 | Students 363 | Staff to student ratio 1:15 | Bursaries available Yes
Undergraduate
Caleb Ernst
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief We Are Makers
Project title The Woven Home for Staffordshire
Project description The Woven Home is a scheme for radical housing located in the market town of Tamworth. The design addresses the increasing frequency of flooding on the site, using this climate uncertainty to grow the community. The residents – weavers of many disciplines – share communal facilities and collectively harvest not only the construction materials for the woven home but also their weaving mediums from the productive field of the site. The project brings to life two disused steel-framed sheds within the site and is designed to be constructed using practices that can be repeated and recycled elsewhere.
Tutor citation Caleb’s project is driven by a social, environmental and contextual agenda. The project integrates a deep narrative of climatic and tectonic themes while pushing a rich and testing process of material impact studies and the circular economy. Jon Courtney-Thompson, Andrew Waite, Douglas Cawthorne
Postgraduate
Lydia Brant
Course MArch Architecture
Studio/unit brief Wild Cities: Caring Ecologies
Project title The Urban Cottage Hospital
Project description This project explores the integration of a healthcare facility into an established residential community in the dense urban fabric of Belgrave, Leicester. It challenges typical overly clinical hospital design and proposes an architecture focusing on homeliness, intimate community care, natural lighting, air purification and a connection to nature. The Urban Cottage Hospital’s typology reintroduces green spaces into the densely built environment of the city and presents healthcare as a community-driven garden beneficial to the recovery and experience of patients, visitors and staff.
Tutor citation Lydia’s work manifests as a highly innovative, beautifully represented, ethically considered, and comprehensive architectural proposition. The project speculates that a more personalised and community-driven approach offers an alternative typology to healthcare environments for the UK. Ben Cowd, Tim Barwell
