BSc2
Course Director
Dr Ed Green
For the WSA BSc Year2 Architecture cohort, our focus this year has been on designing in context. To design in context is to design in response to the interrelated conditions in which something occurs. An architectural response to context would suggest that new buildings - or works to existing ones -should respond to the physical surroundings, history, beliefs and needs of a particular place. From this perspective, adaptation has been at the centre of our activities this year.
Year 2 is a transitional year, building on the foundational skills acquired in year 1 with core design skills and abilities. The importance of understanding context before adaptations are proposed has been emphasised. We began by developing understanding of place through careful analysis of a collection of towns throughout the county of Monmouthshire – the location for our year of study.
During semester 1, design work focused on ‘housing’. Between semester1 and semester2, we proposed adaptations for Cyfarthfa castle and ironworks – a live client and an historic industrial setting of international significance, and in need of a transformed identity. Semester 2 design work developed a range of medium scale ‘public’ projects – civic and community architecture designed to adapt and transform the urban contexts we have been working in.
Throughout the year, projects have included both new-build and retrofit elements – blurring the boundary between adaptation and creation. A rich body of work has been produced by the Year2 cohort. A key aspiration has been that all design outcomes, regardless of any project-specific aims, should be zero carbon, energy positive, and exemplars of good placemaking.
“If what we see and experience, if our country, does not become real in imagination, then it never can become real to us, and we are forever divided from it... Imagination is a particularizing and a local force, native to the ground underfoot.” -Wendell Berry
Raglan Housing Project
Strengthening the multi-generational community through local heritage engagement
Usk Art Studio and Gallery
A retrofit redevelopment in the heart of Usk, aiming to bring artists, residents, and visitors together in one creative space
A palace for the people of Caldicot
Public community project set in a discarded Lloyd's bank
Metal Workshop & Youth Centre in Caldicot
An arts centre that re-introduces the lost metalwork skills of the past and provides non-academic pathways to the young
Melin Cibi
A Community Visitor Centre in the shadows of the Black Mountains showcasing local produce and craft beer.
Reinventing the Marketplace for Chepstow
Embracing the changing nature of the High Street.
Chepstow Marketplace
A public project to improve the reputation and utility of the highstreet
A Colourful Market Hall for Chepstow's Highstreet
Adaptive Re-Use of an Existing Brutalist Building
Places for life: a public or community project
The Hereford School of Arts - Pottery school
Hereford College Musical Theatre school Monmouth
Hereford College Musical Theatre school Monmouth
Monmouth Public Project - Art and Photography College
A new location for the Hereford College of Art