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UG8 [2017-2023]

@unit8_bartlett

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BSc Unit 8, The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL / Archive
@bartlettarchucl
Taught by Farlie Reynolds + Greg Storrar

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2 2 - 2 3 B R I E F
Up Close, at a Distance

‘The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.’
– Martin Parr

Interested in material, structural, and spatial experimentation at a range of scales, UG8 champions innovative architectural strategies that boldly address the environmental challenges of our time.

This year we will explore the architecture of sightseeing and sightmaking, re-imagining the experiences of tomorrow’s tourist. We will ask ourselves how much travel was ever really needed, and consider the different experiences we might construct now we are able to travel again. In doing so we will address critical and provocative questions of architecture: of its identity, authenticity, permanence and mobility, of the provenance of materials and the skills and people that make it.

Are we destined for ‘Surrogate Tourism’, simulated travels to another place (or time)? Or might we creatively rethink ‘Destination Tourism’, building new sustainable experiences at endangered historical sites and across sublime landscapes? Or are consumerist models of travel altogether inappropriate in an age of climate catastrophe; should we embrace ‘Slow Tourism’, a return to the nomadic?

Come and join us on our journey!

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Image: Martin Parr, New Brighton Merseyside from ‘The Last Resort’ (1983) by @unit8_bartlett

2 1 - 2 2 U N I T B O O K

… with super special big thanks to Athena and Cosmin! by @unit8_bartlett

S U M M E R S H O W 2 0 2 2 by @unit8_bartlett

2 1 - 2 2 F I E L D T R I P
Head to Toe

Back in January we navigated the lesser trodden routes through England north to south - from the industrial heartlands of The Peak District to the agricultural landscapes of Somerset, Dorest, ending on the Isle of Portland. Visiting prehistoric gorges, quarries, mines, mills, forges, workshops and laboratories, we educated ourselves in traditional and cutting-edge materials and building crafts. We toured the likes of Frei Otto’s Prototype House and Workshop, AA’s Hooke Park, Shatwell Farm and Drawing Matter Archive, Hauser and Wirth and the Upper Lawn Pavilion by Alison & Peter Smithson. by @unit8_bartlett

C O S M I N , A T H E N A ,
L O R E N Z O

‘Negotiating the Wreckage’
An adult education centre for traditional crafts sits upon and within the ruined church of St Mary-le-Port in Bristol’s Castle Park. Through a reappropriation of L’Art du Trait techniques in fabrication drawing, practices of woodworking, ceramics and stone masonry reside both within the building and within its design.
- Cosmin Ticus, Y2
(Images 1-5)

‘Recipes and the City, a New Reciprocity’
A co-operative food store and culinary kitchen for Bristol’s Clifton Village. Perched on a steep urban site this stepped architecture of processing, preserving, cooking and dining spaces seeks to support Bristolians in recultivating their interpersonal relationships in the post-pandemic world through a renewed understanding of food and the city.
- Athena Li, Y2
(Images 6-8)

‘Clifton’s Acoustic Chamber Hall’
Musical performance and artist residencies come together in this hybridisation of two architectural typologies: the music hall and the hostel. Learning from the fabrication of traditional string instruments, the building’s internal envelope is a series of crafted acoustic timber chambers, each tuned to the modes of rehearsal, recording and recital that they accommodate.
- Lorenzo Angoli, Y2
(Images 9-10) by @unit8_bartlett

L U K E , M A T E U S Z , T I F F A N Y

‘In the Corner – At the Edge’
A new harbour workshop and landmark on the edge of Bristol’s Cumberland Basin and surrounding dock infrastructure. Constructed in stone, the building operates as a series of sculpted voids derived from physical and digital fluid dynamic simulations. The pressure differentials invoked by the architecture enable the passive ventilation of the workshop spaces, enabling a zero-carbon approach to a traditionally energy intensive building programme.
- Luke Sturgeon, Y3
(Images 1-3)

‘Finding a New Earth’
A community centre and shelter run by the LGBTQIA+ community offers a new home to accommodate, witness and share the queer stories and tales of Bristol past and present. Providing accommodation for the youth in crisis of homelessness and a headquarters for charity support organisations, the proposal is an intervention into the lost and forgotten identity of the city, drawing upon the stories of its segregated communities.
- Mateusz Zwijacz, Y2
(Images 4-6)

‘Redressing Mary-le-Port: A New Clothing Market for the Circular Economy’
In this upcycled fashion studio and showroom negotiating the ruins of Mary-le-Port church, recycled household fabric is deployed as a building material. Combining traditional tailoring techniques with contemporary constructional principles, the building is able to recycle and reconstitute itself over time, maintaining relevance as showrooms and fashion styles evolve.
- Tiffany Chin, Y3
(Images 7-10) by @unit8_bartlett

J A C O B , A D A M , M I U

‘Centre for Bristol’s Contested Histories’
A civic forum and archive for contested histories located in Bristol’s historic Old City becomes a beacon of a new democratic order where citizens can re-write the future of their past. The building is a physical embodiment of its programme, constructed out of reclaimed stone and rubble-filled gabion bags, salvaged from the projected demolition of maligned nearby buildings with dark pasts – a cairn for a city.
- Jacob Meyers, Y3
(Images 1-5)

‘Flimwell as it’s Not’
A critical exploration into the boundaries of spatial reproduction and what this means in the search for an ‘afterlife’. The camera replaces the eye and the digital replaces the physical: an anthology of imperfect recreations exploring thresholds between the seen, the drawn, the virtual and the real in search for misinterpretation.
- Adam Stoddart, Y3
(Images 6-7)

‘Old City District Screening Rooms’
A gallery for the moving image seeks to rejuvenate the post-pandemic cinema experience by embracing alternative and unexpected ways of both screening and viewing film. In the District Cinema space becomes image, and vice versa, through an exploration in projection, illumination and receptive architectural surfaces.
- Miu Ieosivikul, Y2
(Images 8-9) by @unit8_bartlett

H A N N A H , L U K E , M Y L E S

‘The Bristol Institute of Oral Histories’
Stewarding and curating an intimate tradition of historical enquiry, this new museum for the spoken word collects, interprets and broadcasts every voice in the city. An architecture of stone, steel and softwood, announces, amplifies and attenuates stories of the past, present and future.
- Hannah Lingard, Y2
(Images 1-3)

‘Hotwells Village Hall’
A campus of reconfigurable community spaces brings together residents and students in the historic residential neighbourhood of Clifton Village, Bristol. Incrementally shapeshifting through the day and through the term, the architecture actively and passively flexes to suit the co-habitation of two typically disparate communities.
- Luke Saito Koper, Y2
(Images 4-7)

‘Do Pictures Talk of Mirrors?’
A production studio and cinema reclaims a forgotten corner of Castle Park in the centre of Bristol. The architecture’s atmosphere learns from the complex material make-up of projection, from the scale of the screen surface down to the chemical composition within the film strip. The appearance of everyday construction materials is transformed by oxygen-starved heating and other prototypical metamorphosis techniques, substituting unsustainable precious metals with otherwise by-produced waste from the building industry.
- Myles Green, Y2
(Images 8-10) by @unit8_bartlett

O S K A , Y E N

‘Towards a new Public House’
A neglected church ruin in Bristol serves as the new foundations for the recontextualisation of a Public House. The pub’s eroded function as an important civic space is re-established through the re-framing of its material culture. A new ceramic architecture aims to be more expressive and inclusive, drawing inspiration from the diversity of traditional brick and glazed tiles, and recognising the aesthetic and social pluralism in the surrounding communities it serves.
- Oska Smith, Y3
(Images 1-7)

‘Dying for Dark, the Darker the Worst’
A new city theatre and cinema for Avant Garde production, staging and screening sits at the intersection of medieval and modern Bristol. Exploring prototypical use of wax as structure, light modulator and heat exchanger, the architecture seeks spectacle in the technics of building performance.
- Yen Ting, Y3
(Images 8-10) by @unit8_bartlett

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Prototypes for an Afterlife
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UG8 welcomes the brave and the curious. We nurture an experimental, testing-led methodology in a safe place in which you are not expected to play safe. This year we will explore the opportunities, idiosyncrasies and curiosities inherent in the working and re-working of that which has had a previous life.

‘Better a crutch than a lost limb’
– John Ruskin

Every ten minutes a building in the UK is demolished. Our architectures are mortal; eternal sufferers of the relentless laws of gravity, destructive weather and disobedient tenants. Wiping the slate clean can be an aggressive act of social, cultural and material erasure. But to retain in some capacity – to lease new life – requires embrace and interface with awkward or inconvenient fragments and memories. This is where we will begin…

Come and join us on the adventure!
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Image: Ron Mueck’s studio from the film ‘Still Life’, 2014 by @unit8_bartlett

U N I T 8 :
A R C H I T E C T U R A L R E S E A R C H
A R C H I V E

With the unit fieldtrips put on hold over the past 18 months, UG8 arrived at a virtual compromise, with students each researching and presenting timeless pieces of architecture sited around the globe - even if only in the digital realm. In the spirit of the times, here is a glimpse of the lovingly authored publication which hopes to afford you, the reader, a chance to participate in that same journey…

A BIG BIG shout out to our hugely talented UG8 alumni @mattiejscsimpson for designing and editing the publication so beautifully 💥 by @unit8_bartlett

C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S to our amazing Class of 2020-21 ⚡️

Wishing our super-talented graduating Y3 students all the best in their next adventures!
And hope our wonderful Y2’s have a fun-filled final year ahead - we can’t wait to see what you guys get up to next! 💫

Lastly, a H U G E thank you to our UG8 critics, collaborators, conspirators and alumni for your invaluable enthusiasm and support. We hope to see you IRL + back in the woods very soon! by @unit8_bartlett