External Examiner visits

20 June 2012: We are lucky to have architect Christian Male of Ian Simpson Architects visiting us as external examiner. ISA is one of the leading British practices for tall building design, although they are perhaps more glassy than we would do in our TB Studio - but they are operating in the real world. ISA are famous for the Beetham Tower (Manchester Hilton) with a magnificent house for Ian on very top deck.
     They are also architects for the yet-to-be-built Blackfriars Tower, which some are likely to call the Shampoo bottle.  We have used that site in previous TB Studio design work. It is an excellent site, with connections to the Thames, the Underground, a south aspect and close walking to the Tate Modern. We didn't use it this year because we wanted to try the larger and more challenging Elephant and Castle site.
    Christian fully understands our aims and philosophy and always has an enjoyable day of interviews with the tutors and with the STB students.

 Group photo of STB students with Christian, during the interviews. (Janet Jing Huang is in China)

 Christian looking at Pelin and Soni's Singapore project.

Pelin explaining the Singapore project to the external examiner.

After he had the first meeting with us, lunch with other examiners, meeting with the students, and a final meeting with Phil, DNC and Robin Wilson, Christian returned to London. We await his report.

Summer Exhibition 2012

Fisheye lens view of most of the 2012 exhibition

June 2012: The Tall Building studio have a 'room of our own' in Paton house of the University, so we can put an exhibition up, and will leave it there until the start of the 2012-2013 session - so that the incoming students can see the work on the wall. This page will take a permanent place as a Tab at the top of this website.

Here is Nirav's poster for the door to the exhibition. Then, starting from the door and moving in clockwise direction, we have some of the best schemes pinned up.

Above: Elephant and Castle: Udayan and Wezha's Migrant tower, and Sian Hodgson's Vertical Farming tower, and then the University triple tower by Deepika and Rishika.

Above: Elephant and Castle: The University triple tower by Deepika and Rishika, and the Flexitower by Nirav, Sayali and Pelin.

Above: Elephant and Castle: The Green Core tower by Veronica and Alejandro

Above: The Singapore rain-catching Roofscraper twin tower by Jue Shi and Pelin

Above: Views of the first semester work, with the Roofscraper (Singapore) by Jue Shi and Pelin, the Sikkas tower (Abu Dhabi) by Mimi and Alejandro, the Oasis tower (AD) by Aaron and Clarissa, the Aviary tower (SP) by Owen, Anh Nguyen and Yiwei Ding, Vertical Villages (SP) by Nirav and Jin Huang, and the Floating Clouds tower (New York) by Jing Huang, Chen Hu and Yu Miao.

Above: Another view of the first semester work, and in the foreground, the Elephant and Castle Healing Tower by Noura, Jing Huang and Rong Xu.

Prizegiving 2012

18 June 2012: The school decided to have its annual prize giving at the Nottingham Contemporary this year, instead of the normal even in the quadrangle of the department mini-campus.
Much of the work for this entire event was done by our own TB-specialist Philip Oldfield, coordinating the student work in all categories, the printed booklet, the prizes, and more.
The Tall Building students did quite well, winning three prizes for tall building work, and in some cases winning in other categories (e.g. Deepika and Rishika for the first semester housing project and Clarissa for best Diploma portfolio.

 Pelin, Nirav and Sayali receiving the Arups prize for best engineering proposals.

Pelin and Soni (Jue Shi) getting the Canary Wharf PLC prize for best tall building, RoofScraper, a rain-catching multi use twin tower for Beach Road in Singapore, which strongly captured the essence of tropical architecture and lifestyle, and was architecturally and structurally adventurous.

Deepika and Rishika getting the Rushcliffe Solar prize for best use of PV, providing a level of PV that would generate over a million kilowatt hours a year - not forgetting that they had enough solar thermal on the roof to provide all the heating requirements for their three towers.

Exhibition preparation

15 June 2012: The external examiner is due on Wednesday, so the Tall Building studio has been converted into an exhibition space. First, we coated all the walls with black cloth. We have used this for many years, as it bring out the bright colours in the presentation, and conceals the wide variety of pinning surfaces underneath. The Studio has a many decorative plaster features on the wall, and a miscellaneous patchwork of fibreboard pinning panels between the features.

Here are Nirav, Rishika, Deepika and Pelin helping to put up the black cloth.

 Pelin Gurkan pinning up her Singapore RoofScraper project from first semester.

Nirav and Soni (Jue Shi) preparing some title sheets and the poster for the exhibition.