Comment
Top of the Class!
A couple of months ago the worldwide student design scholarship was run, hosted by Nemetschek, and developed round Vectorworks, the popular architectural suite of applications. Winners in each country, who each won a bursary to fund their ongoing education, were put forward for the grand finale in America. The UK winner, Daniel Sweeting put forward, in my view, an astounding entry that mixed technical expertise, off the wall thinking, and a good dollop of humour.
His entry, the Westminster River Thames Tourist Industry, envisaged a two chimneyed forge in the bit of green space to the West of the Houses of Parliament, on the bank of the Thames. He supported this with impeccable logic that encouraged the recycling of the decaying parts of the embankment to preserve it's industrial heritage for the future, and to shore up crumbling elements with unique application of recycled metals and modern plastics (lego bricks, anyone?).
Check out the Student Design Scholarship on the Vectorworks website, which gives a single page view of the structure or email me for the full PDF of his submission.
As one of the UK judges, I found Daniel's entry to be just one of many great submissions. We have some brilliant talent on their way up the chain, boding well for the future of architecture in this country – but nobody can rest on their laurels as a combination of modern technologies and materials, and the design freedom offered by the latest modelling software, are spurs to every young architects creativity and imagination.
David Chadwick
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