Postgraduate architecture unit 02 - London Metropolitan University

Unit 02: Southbank Film Centre

Unit brief

The British Film Institute (BFI) occupies charming, idiosyncratic premises under Waterloo Bridge. Unit 2’s design project will use the brief for an unrealised BFI building next to Jubilee Gardens, and extend over two semesters to allow a fully designed, detailed and argued building.

Proximity to Jubilees Gardens and an approach from the station through a campus of well-designed buildings allows a building that differs from the consumption and spectacle of the rest of the Southbank.

Image: Tony Fretton Architects scheme for a moving image centre for The Science Museum

Details

Course	Architecture RIBA 2 - March
Tutors	Prof Tony Fretton and David Owen
Where	Goulston Street
When	Monday and Thursday

All postgraduate architecture studios

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Unit 02: Southbank Film Centre

Tony Fretton and David Owen

A project extending over two semesters for a new building in London’s Southbank Arts Centre for the British Film Institute that looks out to the river and comprises four cinemas, a foyer, bar, restaurant, videotheque, film library and offices.

Unit 07: Poetic Pragmatism V: Correspondence

David Grandorge and Ted Swift

Exploring how architecture can embody and facilitate acts of observation, making and exchange through the lens of Poetic Pragmatism, this unit will focus on the productive landscapes of Park Royal in West London.

Unit 08: Economy and Joy – Purpose and Play in the Language of Reuse

Takero Shimazaki and Jonathan Mortlock

This unit will explore the collective themes of ‘Language – Method – Care’ through the practice of economical reuse, doing so through precedent studies and model making, in collaboration with Network Models Archive and Drawing Matter.

Unit 04: Complete Topologies: Living Together within Intelligent Ground

Jonas Lundberg and Nate Kolbe

Complete Topologies is a speculative design studio exploring collective living on complex terrain in a time of climate emergency. Students design a Commons: a public building with a medium- to long-span structure, resolving landscape, ground, inhabitation and ecology as one system.

Unit 09: Room and City

Stephen Taylor and Han Wang

This unit will explore architecture through two intimately connected scales: the room and the city. We will consider what makes a good room and what makes a convivial city, and how the two are connected through the threshold between private and public life.

Unit 12: Colour and Abstraction

Peter St John and Amy Young

This unit will continue its interest in language, and this year will focus on the invigorating potential of colour and abstraction in architecture.