The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About
Location Reading | ARB/RIBA courses BSc (Hons) Architecture, MArch Architecture | Head of school Oliver Froome-Lewis and Penelope Plaza | Full-time tutors 8 | Part-time tutors 14 | Students 210 | Staff to student ratio 1:18 | Bursaries available Yes
Undergraduate
Will Hooper
Course BSc (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Cacao to Cocoa
Project title Conscious Free Chocolate
Project description Since its emergence, the University of Reading’s International Cocoa Quarantine Centre has collaborated with eight other cocoa research institutes. This thesis aims to inspire the institutes to create global projects that share the same ethos and knowledge, providing a small-scale chocolate production facility. Proposing an alternative, non-addictive chocolate recipe using natural ingredients such as hazelnut oil and honey, the project sees hazel trees grown in and around the site and bee hives installed. The buildings are designed for disassembly and use natural materials: a wooden frame over a rammed earth structure.
Tutor citation Will has skilfully synthesised a critique of global flows of materials together while addressing complex local site issues. The approach has been developed with critical research, linking unsustainable practices within the chocolate industry to those in building construction. Vsevolod Giorgi Kondratiev-Popov
Postgraduate
Anna Knight Gonzalez
Course MArch Architecture
Studio/unit brief Regenerative Design: Material Ecologies and Environmental Imagination
Project title Refabricating the Wansborough Paper Mill
Project description This project is located on a former paper mill at Watchet in Somerset. For centuries the mill was the main employer of the town and greatly contributed to its identity. The project aims to reconnect this lost site to the town by proposing a new industry that celebrates its industrial past and borrows from local folklore to evolve its identity. Building on Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes, local folklore figures and their values have been explored to build a masterplan. A craftswoman, inspired by the local legend of Florence Wyndham, is the main daemon, becoming an allegory for textiles and a spirit that thinks in strings and knots, guiding the architecture through alternative building tectonics.
Tutor citation Poetic, quirky, unusual and authentic – this is a sophisticated scheme that feels as if it really belongs in Watchet. It’s an outstanding level of independent creative research and critical thinking. Izabela Wieczorek, Piers Taylor
