Shanghai CTBUH

23 Sept 2012: Here are a few more 'human interest' photos from the student competition event in Shanghai, taken from Facebook.

 Rongsi, Janet and Noura, in the exhibition of student projects

 Janet getting ready to present the details of the Healing Tower

 The Healing Tower panel

All the prizewinners from the final five

Rongsi, Janet and Noura, after presenting their design

CTBUH Student competition 2012

23 September 2012: Three of our students attended the annual CTBUH Congress in Shanghai 2012. Noura Ghabra, Janet Jing Huang and Rong Xu won their way to the top five final group in the annual student competition, with their design for a 'Healing Tower' in the Elephant and Castle site, London, 2012. They won the 4th equal prize. The five finalists and the 20 semi-finalists all have their work displayed on :

http://www.ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/AcademicStudentWork/CTBUH2012CompetitionEntries/tabid/3728/language/en-US/Default.aspx
"This project aims to tackle both environmental and social sustainability through the design of a tall building that meets Passivhaus performance criteria while responding to the human needs of health and wellbeing. It accommodates a mix of functions. The design agenda is embraced within the building through three states namely relax, nurture and heal."

3d representations of different aspects of the design project.

Atrium interior

 Facade and environmental thinking in a 3D selection of the building

 Section and selected floor plans of the Healing tower

 Photos of the physical model

Overview of the Healing Tower on its site at Elephant and Castle, London

The three heroines of the Tall Building Studio!

Soha & Fahimeh design for Abu Dhabi published

23 August 2012: Congratulations to Fahimeh, Soha and Najla for getting their Abu Dhabi project - A New Shibam - published in the Scroope Journal. The journal editors called it a project "which we thought comprehensively engaged with environmental design principles and the contemporary issue of high-rise housing within a rapidly developing urban context"



Fahimeh and Soha (from Isfahan, Iran) are graduates from the MArch STB course, 2010-2011

Vertical (and Helical!) farming idea

22 August 2012: We use this blog to tell you about our tall building studio, but occasionally, there is a scheme in the news that is so relevant or compelling, we cannot resist telling you about it. This is remarkable, not just because of the design but because it is actually being BUILT! and should be operating actively in early 2013!

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/realestate/investing/swedish-city-begins-construction-of-skyscraper-farm/story-fndcursx-1226454823643


"The Linkoping urban greenhouse, as designed by architectural firm Plantagon, will be a conical glass building that uses an extensive internal conveyor belt-style system to move potted plants from seeding, growing and harvesting stations.
    As the plants move under the glazed walls and ceilings their pots will be rotated to give the fruit and vegetables optimal exposure to available sunlight.
    It's more than just a tall greenhouse."

the 'Jacobs density' effect

29 July 2012: The Wall St Journal has published an interesting article by Richard Florida discussing Urban density. The 'Jacobs' effect is named after the writer Jane Jacobs who argued that density can bring people together and the interaction can lead to richer urban life.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443477104577551133804551396.html
He is saying that it isnt enough just to built tall and increase density mechanically, looking just for numbers.
   Some of the best innovation has come from Silicon Valley, the epitome of low density Californian suburbia. But innovation also comes from London and New York which have moderately dense centres, but which also attract talent and have a vivacious and complex culture. Parts of Shanghai are approaching 125,000 people per square mile, but this does not automatically lead to innovation if people are stacked like eggs in labelled boxes on shelves.
   This underlines the ethos of our MArch in Sustainable Tall Buildings - that the students should strive to understand Culture, Context and Climate. In their design, they must have a Concept for a building that will encourage mixed use, complex urban-human interactions, with plenty of social spaces and a lively ground plane. 

Graduation day

Graduation 2012: Architecture students lining up to walk past the Chancellor.

Friday 13th July 2012: Graduation day for the BArch, Diploma and MEng and a few PhD students. None of our Masters are involved because their special day is coming in December 2012.  The photo above includes Sam Holt who is a graduating 6th year, and took part in both our TB studio semesters in 2010-2011. His design for New York was my favourite, and I am sorry it wasnt chosen to be at Prague for the Isover finals. However, it was at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 2011!
    It was an extra special day for our course and studio because Phil Oldfield now becomes Dr Phil Oldfield! He completed his PhD in the spring, and graduated today. Sorry for not getting a picture of him in the official gown and hat! Here is a photo of Phil's family visiting the TB Studio Summer Exhibition in Paton house.

Exhibition visitors

end-June 2012: We have the TB exhibition open in the day and had a lot of visitors on the 21st June, the day of the school barbecue. Alumni and parents get invited to take part.

Enjoy the video..... 30 seconds of pictures and music!

Animoto Video of the Exhibition

 Thursday 21st June and we all feel cheerful as it's the end of term, and everyone has done well! (Pelin and DNC in the frame).

Udayan Jain's parents visited England and Scotland for a week or two, and had time to drop into our exhibition and meet the tutors and see all the work. I apologise to them for all the rain that they have found here.

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.

Dinner before the Jubilee

31 May 2012: With the Queen's Jubilee weekend coming up soon, we decided to have a dinner with members of the Tall Building studio. It was rather short notice, so not all could attend. We usually go to Nosh, in High Rd, Beeston. Although the largest group were from India, we like the way that Chinese food is served, with several shared dishes, and savouring the experience with chopsticks. Janet (Jing Huang) organised the menu, so we had a good range of flavours.

There's still work to be done: the portfolios will be submitted after the Jubilee weekend. After that, there is a bit of a rest-time, before we have to finalise the exhibition in Mid June. 

Tall Buildings Crit 24 May '12

24 May 2012: We had the final Crit of the year, in the Atrium of the Engineering Student Learning Centre. This was a bit risky, conducting crits in the middle of a public exhibition, with the public walking through. But the exhibition seemed interesting to the passers by, and we were able to conduct our crits, and invited a few guests from the faculty to sit down and listen. 

 Sabina and Lukasz, with Phil.

The four main crit-reviewers, Phil Oldfield (UoN), David N-Cole (UoN), John Prevc (Make) and Lukasz Platkowski (Gensler). Sabina Fazlic was with us most of the day, but left before we took the photo.

 David NC, John and a guest from Civil Engineering look at the 'Migrant Tower'.

Alejandro and Veronica with their 'Green Core Tower'

Sayali, Nirav and Pelin with their 'always building, never finished' tower, using prefabricated components.

View of the exhibition from above. The day was relaxed, with only 10 schemes to see, because two of our designers were in Bratislava for the Isover competition world final.

 Georgia showing her tower for South Bank university.

Even when not being critted, students were enjoying the chance to relax and listen after the stresses of the previous few weeks. 

May Crits with Ken Shuttleworth and others

3 May 2012: We had an exceptionally good day with both architects Ivan Jovanovic (BDSP) and Ken Shuttleworth (Make) coming on the same day. To add to that, John Macdonald (Ecoworks) came in for a while to help the students with vertical greening.

Ken suggests ideas for the 'Green Core' group


Yan answers questions from Phil and Ken


John is advising Rongsi and Janet on their vertical greenery


Ivan with Nirav, Pelin and Sayali, the Flexiscraper group


Ken and Phil advising Deepika and Rishika, the Seekers group


Ivan with Janet and Rongsi


Janet, Noura and Rongsi with Ivan