Course: BSc

Welcome to the Welsh School of Architecture end of year student exhibition and congratulations to all BSc Part I students for your resilience and perseverance through these difficult times and changes to your learning. We are proud of your energy, enthusiasm and achievements.

As we shift from our usual in-school exhibition, filling the rooms and corridors with exciting and dynamic drawings, models and installations, we are delighted that so many students, across all years, have committed time to curate and contribute to a new format that not only showcases the usual design units, studios and ateliers but allows us to include other critical, but often less exhibited, work such as history and theory, technology and practice, that underpin design studio.

While the global pandemic has disrupted our working environments, we have seen students and staff continue to be creative, experimental and innovative developing new collaborative online working methods, embracing alternative approaches to communicating ideas and supporting each other through difficult times. As we forge ahead in unfamiliar environments, students continue to be curious, becoming creative and grounded designers who are: environmentally engaged; theoretically, culturally and politically aware; enterprising and highly valued by practice.

Our programme is delivered through a mixture of core and elective modules, general and specialist subjects that are research-informed. The broad diversity of the twelve Year 3 design units, equips and empowers students to reflect, question and tackle real situations. The portfolios highlighted in this exhibition demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach to design supported by modules on History and Theory, Technology, and Practice management and Economics. Each portfolio is student-led promoting opportunities to take an ethical, curious and critical stance that positions our graduates well as the next generation of open-minded, inclusive and creative designers. We thank all our tutors, critics and contributors who have supported the delivery of these units.

We wish all our graduates the best in your future careers. For those continuing we look forward to welcoming you back in 2021-22, as well as a new intake into Year 1.

Dr Steve Coombs, Director of Undergraduate Teaching