Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello, my name is Daniel Rosbottom. I am the Head of School
of Architecture and Landscape, which is one of seven schools
within the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture
at Kingston University. The School is... I suppose you might
say is a vibrant, design-focused community.
It focuses on architecture and landscape obviously,
and it does that from undergraduate all the way through
to PhD level. We have professional programmes that
take you through all the stages of qualification in either
discipline, to the point where you become a
practitioner; but we also offer postgraduate courses which
are more about refining an intellectual position
or beginning to establish an emergent research agenda,
which you then might take forward into higher-level research.
I think it's an exciting but it's also a rigorous place to study.
One of the key distinguishing factors of the School might be
our relationship to practice. We have teaching staff
that are not only experienced academics but they are also
highly-regarded practitioners; and our proximity to London
means that we have access to a whole range of people
from the best practices that the country has to offer.
Five of the 100 buildings that were on the 2010 RIBA
National Awards were built by people teaching in our School.
We are interested in that critical relationship to practice
and work, and I suppose the things that respond
to the world in which we actually live.
We enjoy thinking about buildings - how buildings are
inhabited and made, and how they adjust or even
transform the places in which they are built.
We do projects that range in scale from the interior
to the building, to the city and right through to the
landscape; and I think that mix of architecture and
landscape makes what we do very particular and a very special place.
That also feeds into the sorts of projects that we get
involved in. One of the other key distinguishing factors
of the School might be that it works with strategic-scale
projects. Often students from right across the School
are working in some way in relationship to a single project;
and over the last few years those projects have been
done with the London Development Agency where we've
been thinking about London as a site in which to operate.
We are one of the few schools of architecture and
landscape in the UK who are embedded within an art
and design faculty, and that offers us a whole range
of opportunities that probably just aren't available to
people studying in our disciplines in most places.
I suppose that means that most of our courses are
characterised, and most of the projects we do are
characterised, through the idea of thinking through making.
There are an enormous range of facilities available to
a very high level here. Our students get involved in an
awful lot of them. We have students who are casting,
welding, bronze casting, stone carving - as well as things like
rapid prototyping and cadcam; and that incredibly kind of
hands-on concentrated action of making I think really
characterises the sort of work that they produce.
That is formalised at the upper end of the School in quite
specific areas, where we do things like bronze casting,
stone carving, concrete research and rapid prototyping
as modules; and that really gives our students an
opportunity to develop interesting specialisms that
give them a very particular kind of position when they
go out into the work place.
All of that idea about making arrives I suppose at
dealing with live projects. Our postgraduate students from
across a range of courses get involved in live projects
every year and they have been involved in many different
types of things - from working in a landscape scale with
Design for London, down to an artist's workspace that
they are currently making for a small gallery in Peckham.
And a completely different scale our landscape IS, which is
our kind of practice that exists within landscape, is
undertaking an international project on waterways
working with British Waterways and a whole range
of practitioners and academics from across Europe.
One of the key strengths in the School is our attitude
to representation. Of course if you are an architect
or a landscape architect, aside from being able to do
live projects, it's often not in your power to actually
physically make the things that you are designing.
And so those skills of representing, communicating your
work and communicating your ideas to other people are
absolutely central to what we need to do as professionals
and within academia.
The traditions that underpin those skills have been lost
in many schools I think, and one of the things that we do
that's very special is to start by teaching very traditional skills.
So we teach traditional drawing skills, model-making skills,
etching, plaster casting - all sorts of things which really
enable students to begin to work out for themselves how
they want to communicate their ideas to other people and
to explore their ideas in their own work.
Another key strength and critical position for the School
is its attitude to history. We think about the history of
architecture, and the richness of that history is something
that is fundamental to the action of making architecture
now and in the future; and we see what we do as part
of a continuity, and that attitude's very powerfully
represented by the strong team of academics and
historians who work throughout the School.
The strength of the School has led to a considerable
amount of success over the last few years.
We've been successful in the RIBA President's Medals a
couple of years ago. For the last two years one of our
architecture graduates has been in the top six graduates in
the UK; and this year we were one, well we were the only
school in the UK and one of about 10 schools across the world, who were asked
to present at the Venice Biennale... the 12th
Venice Biennale for Architecture.
It's not just students but staff - Irina Davidovici, who is one
of our history teachers, last year was awarded the RIBA
President's Award for an outstanding PHD thesis in which she
was looking at contemporary Swiss architecture.
It's not just about culture, it's also about the technology
of buildings. Dr Stephen Pretlove who runs Archilab
(our building science facility within the School) has just won
a £330,000 research award to engage the construction
industry and to consider their understanding of sustainability.
The School is not just though about those people who excel -
it's about the idea of a community. It is very easy in
higher education to get lost in modules and courses,
and I think one of the most important things when you're
learning how to be a designer is to learn how to
communicate with the other people around you.
We do that in a lot of ways. At the beginning of the year
we start with a project that everybody in the entire School
gets involved with called the Vertical Project;
and then half-way through the year we have a thing
called the School Assembly, where again all the students
come together and present to each other and describe
to each other the work they are doing. It's the moment
when they start to take the projects that their tutors
have set on and begin to make their own. At then at the end of the
year we have a summer show; and that is an incredibly
exciting occaision because we are in the Faculty of Art and
Design. So it's a moment when fashion and graphics and
architecture all start to mix up - and that is an incredibly
vibrant and interesting event.
We also have a really engaging and lively students' society
called KLASS, which is the Kingston Landscape and Architecture Students' Society.
They do all sorts of events throughout the year - social
events, including boating up and down the river - and they
make the place fun to be in as well as a kind of place of
hard work and endeavour.
And what do we expect from you?
Neither architecture nor landscape architecture are the
things that you might learn in school so often people come
without much idea of what it is that they are going to be
doing whilst they are here. All we really ask from you is
that you are open minded, that you arrive with both
passion and discipline, and that you are willing to
communicate and engage in the conversation.
So what do you do if you want to come here?
We offer lots of events throughout the year.
There are Faculty-wide open days and University open
days. You can apply for an individual prospectus which will
give you a very tailored understanding of what you might
be able to engage in across the Faculty, and we as a School
run applicant days where we offer individual interviews
at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
You tour around the building and meet our students. So we look forward to seeing you.