Lost Cuckoo: the video
We have put together this short video about our Lost Cuckoo project with artist Marcus Rowlands from the DVD produced by the Lakeside Art Centre, who hosted the event last year.
The project was great fun and we are looking forward to develop this concept in other art festivals this year!
Lost Cuckoo report
The Lost Cuckoo project culminated last weekend with an event at the Wheee! International Childrens' Theatre and Dance Festival at Nottingham's Lakeside Arts Centre. Nearly 1000 visitors participated in this live public art project, building imaginative and gravity-defying structures.
In the weeks leading up to the festival, we designed with artist Marcus Rowlands and families from three schools in Bilborough, a cardboard building “module”. In essence, a box with a “secret corner” that could be popped in to join boxes together at interesting and unpredictable angles.
We've blogged about the project before: You can read more about the process, the event, and catch up on our live blog from the event itself.
We really enjoyed working on this project and are very proud of the results. This is largely down to our brilliant collaborators: Marcus Rowlands, Ruth Lewis-Jones from the Lakeside and — most importantly of all — the children, parents and staff from Portland, Melbury and Brocklewood schools.
Thanks also must go out for the generous support given by the Lakeside Arts Centre, the Arts Council England, Faspak, Staples and Nottingham Education Improvement Partnership.
2hD in RIBA journal
A great article on East Midlands regional architecture practice has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It features 2hD's Alina Hughes talking about her dual roles in practice and education, and the importance for the region of retaining talented graduates.
See the online version of the RIBA Journal.
The Lost Cuckoo takes flight
In our first set of workshops we asked families to build with standard cardboard boxes and colourful tapes. They produced an amazing array of sculptures and spaces, pushing the boxes to do the unexpected and giving us plenty of inspiration to start the design of our special module.
Further workshops will run over the months until the Festival, on June 4th and 5th at the Lakeside Arts Centre.
This project is being supported by the Lakeside Arts Centre, the Arts Council England, Faspak and Nottingham Education Improvement Partnership.
2hD at Lincoln Architecture Society
The Lincoln Architecture Society invited 2hD along to give a talk as part of their evening lecture series. I was genuinely impressed by the professionalism of the students who run the society — an excellent welcome pack in my email a few days before the event giving all the info I needed to get to there and a warm welcome and introduction.
Here are a few of the slides from my talk, which covered the Sky Vault project, the barn conversion in the Dordogne, our work on the NTU architecture course, Mission Control (our hairy micro-office), our Structures on the Edge shortlisted competition entry and the inflatable event space.
Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change
Light boxes Pt.2: Quick plan views
This week at Mannings School it was all about preparing material for an exhibition. Rather than drawing plans, we decided to photograph the lightboxes the students made last week from above. The models were fine as lightboxes, but a bit scrappy for the plan view, so we added some sketchy detail and people.
Lightboxes
Continuing our work with Manning School, we brought the school pupils to Nottingham Trent University, where they worked with 2nd year NTU students from the Interior Architecture course. With help and guidance from the students, the school pupils built lightbox models, lit them carefully with coloured light and took these evocative photos.
School net
Working with pupils at Mannings School in Nottingham, we surveyed a classroom that will be converted into a creative learning space. A quick Sketchup model was then virtually 'unfolded' to create a printed paper net. In class the students then cut and glued to create sketch physical models, before starting to experiment with transforming the space. Next time we will use thicker card, and investigate laser cutting. Rapid prototyping might be the logical step, but then a whole stage of physical creation of the model, and understanding folding, geometry and nets would be missed, so maybe not.
