WELSH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE STUDENT SHOW 2024
IN TRANSITION
IDEAS
Voicing, Reflecting, and Embracing Emerging Ideas
The architectural industry is undergoing a seemingly constant transition. It must keep up with the ever-changing standards set by society’s growing demand for more ethical responses to global injustices. We believe the students from this school could benefit the industry by giving it the chance to stop and reflect, resisting the urge to progress hastily. In this period of transition, this exhibition offers work that reflects the school’s ethos: tackling local and global challenges in urban and regional contexts; being grounded and responsive to real-world social and environmental issues; promoting the integration of a multi-disciplinary approach to design; valuing diversity in culture, identity, and opinion; encouraging a collaborative approach to intellectual debate and learning; and embracing fearlessness in experimentation, curiosity, and creativity. We pose a standstill, spotlighting ideas to make way for conversation and debate between students and practice, bridging the gap between education and the profession, and clearing the path for emerging ideas to represent the school’s efforts toward developing a cohort of curious, creative, critical, and ethical learners.
The exhibition aims to emphasise the state of being ‘In Transition’ acting to frame our ‘declarations’ as a demonstration of the kind of architecture we wish to see in practice – reflecting our approach to education through the school which will continue to define ourselves as designers. The show asks professionals, students, and visitors to join conversations catalysed by the student’s exhibited work, allowing for diversity in opinion.
WELCOME TO THE
WELSH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE SHOW 2024
Welcome to the Welsh School of Architecture Exhibition 2024.
Presenting an array of drawings, models, charts, maps, and other visual materials, this exhibition showcases the diverse work produced across the Welsh School of Architecture during the academic year 2023-24, aptly titled ‘Transition’ by our student curators. Transition is relevant to architectural education and design in a range of ways. It encapsulates the journey through architectural education and public academic programmes that students undergo, reflecting their continuous evolution within the learning process while anticipating future career opportunities.
Transition can be experienced on an individual level—as personal identity deepens or life stages progress—or on a broader cultural scale, amidst social, economic, and environmental changes. Design at various scales can work to enable, reflect, or, in some contexts, mitigate the consequences of transitions of these diverse kinds.
Transition often implies a responsibility to attune to and support change in the multifaceted ways in which it may be experienced beneficially. Hence, it aligns with the goals of ethical practice to make a positive difference to people’s lives through the design of the built environment.
Facilitating transition in this ethical sense lies at the heart of our School’s vision to contribute through education, design work and research to a sustainable built environment that enhances the wellbeing of present and future generations while caring for our planet.
Transition in all these and further ways is explored across this exhibition and the related exhibition. From first-year students responding to transitions in a local river through a small cabinet project, to MArch students exploring housing needs for aging populations in the ‘Dwelling Differently’ studio, and to the transformations of historic buildings imagined by students in the ‘Carbon Pasts/Low Carbon Futures’ studio, transition will be revealed as a pervasive and dynamic concept.
For many of our graduating students in 2024, this exhibition marks the culmination of their studies, serving as a keepsake as they transition as cohorts and individually into the next stages of their careers. We extend our very best wishes to them for the journeys ahead.
Professor Juliet Davis, Head of The Welsh School of Architecture
VISIT THE ARCHIVES