Rising Architects - Meet the Team!!

We are a group of six enthusiastic fifth year architecture students at the MSA working with The Smallpeice Trust for Events 2020.

Elise Colley
Atelier - CPU
Part 1 - Rolfe Judd
BArch - University of Nottingham

Joe Copley
Atelier - Infra:Space
Part 1 - Aukett Swanke
BArch - University of Nottingham

Emma Lewis
Atelier - CiA
Part 1 - Farrells
BArch - University of Nottingham

Val Lezius
Atelier - CiA
Part 1 - Aukett Swanke
BArch - University of Nottingham

Andrea Nobrega
Atelier - Infra:Space
Part 1 - 1618 Architects
BArch - Liverpool John Moores University

Grace Yu
Atelier - Infra:Space
Part 1 - CJCT
BArch - University of Nottingham

We will keep you posted as our team grows!!!

Rising Architects - Meet the Collaborator

In February we met with Tariq Ismail who is the Inspiration & Engagement Specialist at The Smallpeice Trust. We discussed the possible approaches to designing our course, the educational strategies and the future collaboration between The Smallpeice Trust and the MSA.

Tariq was very enthusiastic about what we will create! We look forward to working together to inspire the next generation of Architects!!

Rising Architects - Meet The Smallpeice Trust

We first heard of The Smallpeice Trust through Joe, who has been volunteering as a summer school residential supervisor for 4 years. During this time, Joe has been working with a number of universities across the UK from Glasgow right down to Southampton, helping with courses such as Motorsport Engineering and Naval Architecture.

The Smallpeice Trust are an Engineering charity with over 50 years experience inspiring young people to make their big ideas a reality! Their events are aimed at students aged 11 to 17 y/o, with a target 50/50 gender split.

Working with them will provide a long term social impact!!

We have spent some time researching educational strategies to help make our architecture course be the most impactful to our students. The Gatsby Career Benchmarks are a framework of eight guidelines about what makes the best careers provision in schools and colleges. We aim to have an aspect of each on our course.

Our brief , an architecture summer school, where STEM activities are catered towards the built environment and architectural design. We are looking to inspire, educate and develop skills for young aspiring designers, while still responding to current issues, like the skill gap between property and development, trained people and stem subjects, which ultimately results in difficulties in recruitment.

Rising Architects - The Schools

Our brief aims to target a variety of students interested in the field of architecture, across different schools, academies and colleges in Manchester. The schools identified demonstrate the ambitions to encourage the engagement of student from different institutions to ensure we have the widest possible outreach. Creating our architecture summer school, establishes a link between the University and the schools, providing lasting impact that will continue to benefit upcoming students.

Rising Architects - Designing The Course

The purpose of our event is to design and test a summer Architecture course for the Smallpeice Trust at Manchester School of Architecture. The final output being a report/publication showing the 5-day timetable, 2-day taster course and feedback we received from it. The process required to get to this output relies heavily on students who: are passionate about their architectural education, want to help others by sharing knowledge/skills and are able to work well in a team. These are also important skills you will need as future Architects. We will spend time reflecting on our architectural experiences and thinking of strategies to make the architectural application process easier. This is a chance for you to inspire prospective students, giving them advice on what you would have liked to have known! We will also incorporate a number of creative workshops which will develop your architectural skills to use in future projects.

Rising Architects - The 2-Day Taster Course

Having designed a speculative 5-day architectural summer course for The Smallpeice Trust, we will then test part of it as a 2-day taster course at a local school.

On day 1 a series of introductory presentations will be given, the main one being ‘What I Wish I Knew’. This is a presentation that provides tips and advice on applying to University to study Architecture, accompanied by a variety of example portfolio applications. Day 1 will also mark the start of the Design and Build Competition (more details will be announced soon!). Throughout the day a variety of design workshops will take place, including tutorials on SketchUp and physical model making.

Day 2 will start with a walking tour of MSA, UoM and MMU campuses. A Photography Competition will run alongside this and photos taken are encouraged to be used in their portfolios when applying to universities too. Two guest speakers will give presentations to all pupils, one of which will include a professional Architect who will present a variety of exciting projects they have worked on in practice. The 2-day course will end with: an Award Ceremony where final designs will be presented to a panel of judges (these will include our two guest speakers and a representative from The Smallpeice Trust), a closing speech, certificates of attendance (produced by The Smallpeice Trust) and thank-yous.

Rising Architects – Initial Ideas

The High School will join the Events on the 05/05/2020 to run a pilot of the course design for The Smallpeice Trust. The high school students will be split into 5 teams joined by 2 BArch Students and 1 March student to start the Design & Build Competition. With the MA and BA students help (precedents, architectural theories including materials, structure and scale), each team will have a day and a half to design a pavilion in the All Saints Park, producing a series of 2D drawings of their concepts, site analysis and 3D digital and physical models. At the end of the course, the best project will be elected and win a small prize.

Rising Architects - Architectural Content

As part of the Architecture summer school, we aim to introduce and teach the young students the fundamentals of an architecture course. Throughout the pavilion project, with the assistance of the BArch students, we will work towards teaching the next generation of Architecture students, all the steps on the development of a project. At the same time, inducing a range of software used in the field, which will help both the high school students and BArch students. This course will also demonstrate the importance of a good portfolio and the role it plays when applying for university and/ or for an Architecture job.
At the end of this 2-days course, all students will be able to present a portfolio of the skills acquired and work produced, as well as gain a better understanding of what is expected from them in the different stages of Architecture.

Rising Architects - The Output

We will produce a booklet summarising our activities during the events programme that will be sent to both The MSA and The Smallpeice Trust. We will collate feedback from students of the course and suggest improvements that could be made in the hope that this will start a conversation to make the course a reality.

Rising Architects - Social Value

Fundamental to our event are the social values which result in positive impacts affecting Manchester and its surrounding community through our educational programme. We promote engagement within education through a variety of creative and group work activities in our session plan, to spark interests in architecture and the arts, as participants learn fundamental architectural and interpersonal skills. Integrating people across a variety of expertise and backgrounds not only encourages interpersonal skills but promotes a collaborative environment where everyone can learn and exchange skills, views and knowledge. Utilising the university campus as a key site for task activities and as a workshop location is a great way to promote what the city of Manchester has to offer.

Rising Architects - The Competition Site

The site for our design competition (that will run during our 2-day course) is All Saints Park. We have chosen this particular site because we believe that it is currently underused, providing us with a great opportunity to come up with ideas on ways to bring it back to life. It’s close proximity to Manchester School of Architecture will allow us to visit the site easily with the school pupils. We want the participants of the course to create a pavilion that will make All Saints Park the focal point of Manchester Metropolitan University’s campus.

Rising Architects – The Pavilion

For the build competition, the participants alongside with the students, will propose and design, in teams, a temporary pavilion. A flexible architectural open space that invites people to come in and spend time in it. It can be used as a shelter, seating, meeting point, café, theatre, events, exhibitions, play, relaxation and much more.
With this competition, and with further research on precedents, we are looking to explore the different aspects of Architecture, through the exploration of different materials, construction methods, forms, activities, scale and experiences.

Rising Architects - The Importance of Drawing

The ability to create both precise technical drawings and expressive sketches has always been an important part of the architectural profession. Our course, in collaboration with the Smallpeice Trust, aims to introduce students to the diverse role of drawing from quickly and efficiently sketching dimensions on site, to converting ideas within a design team, as well as demonstrating the need for accurate technical drawings to understand the built form in 3D. Whilst computers offer a valuable aid in this aspect, like other architecture courses, ours will introduce hand drawing as a practical way of understanding the drawing process and the necessary visual form of communication.

Rising Architects - The Importance of 3D Modelling

2D sketches and drawings have always been key elements to design buildings, however they have their disadvantages. With the new technology improvements, both physical and digital 3D modelling have been made possible and have now become fundamental tools for architects. Our course will introduce the participants to 3D modelling with tours to the B15 workshop to familiarise them to the equipment available as well as SketchUp tutorials. At the end of the design and build competition, the students will have to present both physical and digital models to explain their ideas.

Rising Architects – Competition Teams

During the design competition, all the participants, BA students and MA students will be distributed into 6 balanced teams. we hope this vertical learning will encourage conversations between different years and levels of experience. It will provide the opportunity to maximise the skill sets that each team has and learn new skills from others.

Rising Architects - The walking tour

On the second day of the taster course we aim to take the school pupils on a 60 minute walking tour of Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University and The University of Manchester Campuses. The purpose of this is to show the pupils a variety of buildings at different stages of their life: from the Manchester Museum (1867), to the Arts and Humanities (MMU) and the Manchester Engineering Campus Development (UoM) buildings currently under construction.

Rising Architects - Photography Competition

During the walking tour around the campus, we will also hold an individual photography competition and hold a workshop on how to use the basics of Adobe Photoshop. We will look at the importance of architectural features and 2D composition in photography. Bring along your cameras and phones to take lots of photos of the campus, it is filled with modern and historic architecture to explore!

Rising Architects - THANK YOU!

Unfortunately, we are sad to announce that due to recent events regarding the outbreak of COVID-19, our EVENTS 20 project will no longer continue as hoped.

We were extremely excited about the opportunity to work with The Smallpeice Trust to inspire the next generation of Architects. Given the circumstances and the involvement of a large group of students across MArch, BArch and external school participants working in collaboration, it wouldn’t be safe to run the pilot of our summer school scheme at this time.

The extensive research and work we have compiled in developing the project, can hopefully still be used to develop a future collaboration between the MSA and The Smallpeice Trust. We would like to thank the Smallpeice Trust, especially Tariq who supported us throughout this process! We would also like to apologise to the prospective students who will no longer benefit from the valuable skills and existing opportunity this project presented.

Thank you to our collaborators, and everyone involved in the project for helping us begin to create something special. Wishing you all well in this difficult time. Stay safe!