Sunday, May 22, 2011

Isover competition in Prague!

22 May 2011: The UK Team of 9 students, DNc and Phil went to Prague for the Isover world final, accompanied by Tom Foster of Isover UK.
We were royally treated in the Crowne Plaza hotel, north of Prague city centre (near the University campus) and saw 56 presentations from 19 countries (3 from each, except Germany who had 2).
All of our teams did excellent verbal presentations, and Green Canyons came second in the world final.
Isover UK organised the process very well, and the exhibition of 8 of the projects at Ecobuild required a much earlier timeline starting in October with a completion by end of January - after which we had stages that took us to the final in Prague. Some of the other countries hadn't started until April 2011.
  We gave the entire Tall Buildings unit an extra week (until 1st June) for their main project to compensate for these days in Prague. It was a great experience for all, although we would prefer to have come first!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

May Crit with Ken

12 May 2011: We had our mid May and were honoured to have a visit from Prof Ken Shuttleworth, designer of the Gherkin, and now chief exec of MAKE. I will write more about this visit, with photos, when I get back from Prague.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Summer Tutorials

5 May '11: We had the first tutorials of the summer term, after the long break. Most people have something now, although some people are still shaking the long Easter - Royal-Wedding sleep out of their eyes. A week to go and we have a crit!