I’m extremely happy the MegaCrit went well! It was so great to see projects from the RCA, CASS, Bartlett, and AA. Thank you to all the students who presented yesterday, to the critics who came to see us, to our generous sponsors, and to the volunteers that made this happen ! Well done everyone – it was a MEGAcrit and party ! I really hope that this is a strong precedent for inter-school collaboration and will become an annual event hosted at Westminster.
It gave WAS lots to learn about what to do better next year (for example, get extra funding to improve acoustics in the space). Otherwise, I was overwhelmed by how many messages of thank you and appreciation we got and how well it was received. We even got interview invitations! More to follow on that, I’m sure.
I mostly walked around from group to group trying to make sure everything is going well, but I did get to see snippets of the 38 projects on show. What struck me was how difficult it was to even tell which school the student was from (and I organised it!!!). They were all roughly putting forward similar ideas that were not contained by studio ideologies. A few themes that I noticed were the emergence of VR in enhancing the experience of one’s home, and integration of micro-industry and housing, and systems building (that looked a lot like DfMa).
We had a great variety of critics too, that very generously gave up some of their time to come down and talk to the students. Huge thank you to:
| Vicky Havercroft |
| Orlando Hill |
| Merlin Fulcher (Architects Journal) |
| Molly De Courcy Wheeler (Alumna, University of Westminster) |
| Hester Buck (Alumna, RCA) |
| Ben Summers (Part 2 -Mole Architects) |
| Tom Atkinson (Alumnus, CSM) |
| Marion Brereton (Director – Berman Guedes Stretton) |
| Angela Brady (Director – Brady Mallalieu) |
| Magali Thomson (Director – Marks Barfield) |
| Lawrence Friesen (Director – Gen Geo) |
| Patrick Devlin (Director – PTE Architects) |
| Francois Steul (Architect – Theo Hotz Parner, Zurich) |
| Sasha Edmonds (Director – Liv Architects) |
| Robert Sakula (Director – Ash Sakula) |
| Francis Archer (Project Director – Arup) |
| Tony Hall (Emeritus Professor of Town Planning – Anglia Ruskin) |
| Yashin Kemal (Partner – Robin Partington & Partners) |
| Steve Kitchen (Operations Director – Willmott Dixon) |
| Glen Price (Design Manager – Willmott Dixon) |
| Stavros Zachariades (Associate – Squire & Partners) |
| Chris Hartiss (Director – Squire & Partners) |
| Sadiqa Said (Architect – MEB Design) |
| Christoph Egret (Partner – Egret West Studio) |
| Ab Rogers |
| Tony Swannell (Tony Swannell Architects) |
| Michael Wilford (Michael Wilford Architects & alumnus) |
All the amazing students who presented their work on the day:
| Shogo Suzuki – Bartlett Unit 19Matt Chamberlian – Westminster DS10
Alexander Bryan Farmer – RCA ADS9 Rhys Waring – Westminster DS22 Tunde Oyebode – CASS Unit 14 Jieun Jun – RCA ADS9 Sam Clarry – Westminster DS12 Niccoló Cesaris – AA Inter 6 Marcello Seminara – CASS Unit 14 John Wildsmith – Westminster DS12 Lito Karamitsou – AA Inter 6 Anna Malicka – Westminster DS12 Alessandro Conning-Rowland – Bartlett Unit 19 Robin Spencer – RCA ADS9 Ben Street – Westminster DS10 Mirabell Schmidt – Westminster DS12 Lianjie (Li) Wu – Bartlett Unit 19 Sofia Delbono – CASS Unit 14 Manveer Sembi – Westminster DS10 Thomas Jenkins – RCA ADS9 Halil Yorel – CASS Unit 14 Nena Naima Olga Aru – AA Inter 6 Chloe Fenton – Westminster DS12 Sara Malik – Westminster DS10 Alice Foreman – RCA ADS9 Nuragiyanti Dewi Permatasari – AA Inter 6 Paresh Parmar – Westminster DS12 Mike Armfield – Westminster DS12 Kin Keung Kwong – Bartlett Unit 19 Rim Kalsoum – Westminster DS22 Nick Leung – Westminster DS10 Melanie Rich – RCA ADS9 Jess Phillips – CASS Unit 14 Lela Sujani – Westminster DS12 Muqing Bai – AA Inter 6 Oliie Riviere – CASS Unit 14 Emilio Sullivan – Bartlett Unit 19 Lily Zhao – Westminster DS12 Hangyul Jeong – AA Inter 6 Ola Wojciak – Westminster DS10 |
Photos here!
Crista Popescu 
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