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Year 1 engaged with the ground, looking at it as more than just a neutral backdrop. They conceived it as a contested field shaped by extraction, occupation, climate and collective memory. Architecture was framed as a critical and material practice, capable of responding to deep environmental histories and urgent social needs. Through three design projects, students asked how spatial interventions might emerge through close, site-based observation – working between placement and landscape, and learning to propose architectural responses situated at points of transition, tension and change.
Future Relics, the first project, began in the UCL Geology archive. Students examined geological specimens – rocks, fossils and mineral forms – not only as scientific artefacts but as cultural objects embedded with layered meanings. Through detailed drawing, casting and transformation, each student reimagined their chosen relic, amplifying a particular quality – texture, composition, form or process – into a new spatial proposition.
The second project, Antennae: Signals from the Ground, shifted focus from deep geological time to dynamic atmospheric conditions – the ever-changing qualities of air, weather and light. Students worked collaboratively to design and build 1:1 installations for Camley Street Natural Park in King’s Cross. These structures acted as environmental instruments: sensitive to light, wind, temperature and sound. Collective design and material care were developed in dialogue with the agencies of other beings – human and non-human – foregrounding architecture’s capacity to register, initiate and communicate change.
During the Year 1 field trip to Paris, students created short films inspired by Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Playtime and Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée. These works explored architecture through movement, light, rhythm and perception – offering a cinematic take on time and space for the third project.
In this final project, Uncommon Ground, students developed building proposals across ten sites in Hastings, where land meets sea. They explored extraction, civic use and shared ground through tectonic strategies and spatial transformation. Each proposal responded to a specific process – such as fishing, salt harvesting or quarrying – and was shaped by the local geology, seasonal dynamics and public rituals of the coastal edge. Students developed unique programmes rooted in site research, combining material invention with social, environmental and spatial awareness.