Campus 2021: Feedback for 2011

I’ve finally got through tallying the marks and finalising the grades which should be ready to pick up when you get back (wait for an email form Carolyn to tell you when). I’m afraid that this blog post is also imageless at the moment because the photographs I took on the day have been corrupted in my camera so will have to wait until I receive the A3s and update later.

Overall we were very impressed with this years work – particularly since this is the first master planning type exercise you have ever done and the first time you have been asked to do serious site analysis. Most people treated the exercise with huge enthusiasm and professionalism and the results showed. The marks, in keeping with the tradition of group projects where generally not middling with no one really excelling into the high 70s or 80s but very few dropping significantly below 50. As usual though, as long as you have passed and learned something that’s good enough for us!

This is not the best medium for extensive feedback but just a few notes made by the reviewers which refer more generally to the overall assessment. I also encourage you to go back over the comments I made to last year’s work which could also refer to much of the stuff we saw:

Selection Selection Selection!

By far the biggest challenge we saw was in the selection of the images used in the A1 presentation. There were a number of instances where we saw A1 presentations which we judged to be of 2.2 or even 3rd standard where the supplementary work submitted was easily of a 1st standard. The instruction to reviewers was to mark ‘what is on the wall’ and while the supplementary information was referred to we took the decision to stick to that rule. Remember that you wall presentation is there to both show your design but also to argue for why it is the way it is. In this instance (given the competition context) you really needed to edit your site analysis in such a way to persuade the audience that your design decisions have been made for the right reasons.

Understanding 3D

A common problem was mistaking the idea of a masterplan as only a plan. The key to getting this exercise right was to understand that you are planning for 3-dimensional volumes on a 3 –dimensional site. The best proposals were those that used section and/or 3 dimensional studies to give their building proposition weight and volume and to tackle issues of access on multiple levels.

Oral Presentations

It was noted by one of the reviewers that in many cases those for whom English is a second language did better in the oral presentation that native English speakers. We put this down to the fact that often overseas students tended to prepare better taking notes and structuring their presentations where as often native English speakers relied on their own improvisation so the story they told tended to be much less clear, disordered and also untimed. The oral presentation is very important and you should structure your story logically and make sure that you practice what you intend to say before time and make notes of the main points you want to discuss and their order.

Group working

Inevitably group working is challenging and I think it would be accurate to say that most students don’t enjoy group work projects. Despite this working in groups is a reality of virtually all professions and a key skill we must develop to give you professional accreditation with the RIBA. This means that you will do at least one group work project (or project with a significant group work component) every year. The groups that seemed to work best were those where roles were clearly assigned with each member given specific responsibly but with an overall sense of direction. Groups which worked less well tended not to collaborate but each take a section of the design each or where there was a lack of leadership. There were a couple of instances where I felt that group members were passengers in the process and did very little. We have decided to give everyone in all groups the same mark but I think there are a number of people who need to ask themselves whether they deserve a grade earned by other people in the team.

So now to the good stuff – the winning entries. This year I decided to give three prizes which reflect the way we characterise different projects and shows that quality is not necessarily done on a single dimension. So the prizes are:

COMPETITION WINNER

This goes to Group 33! It’s interesting to note that this was not the highest scoring design (in fact it got a high 2:1) but a combination of a very high level of presentation (elements of which we felt where clear to a non-professional) and a thorough 3D knowledge of the site meant that this was a clear competition win. We also felt that this was the convincing attempt we saw to join up the museum to the rest of the Campus and created a really exciting new public space.

BEST MARK

The best mark went to Group 31. The overall design was, by far, the most accomplished we saw with extensive background work and a very well worked out master plan – presented beautifully and with clarity.

TUTORS FAVORITE

You might think that the tutors favourite would get the best mark but not in this case. I think for its sheer audaciousness in creating an entirely new civic core for the city and the extraordinary level of research that went into coming up with the design we wanted to give a special mention to Group 32 for making us excited about the master planning exercise and really understanding what it could do for the campus.