Senior lecturer Chi Roberts shares some exciting news about this year's Cass Foundation course shows.
Date: 18 May 2017
By Chi Roberts, Principal Lecturer, Head of Cass Foundation, and Senior Lecturer on the Foundation Course
The ambition of the Foundation students at the Cass knows no bounds as they take over the roof garden at the Aldgate campus with their designs for shading structures. The final pieces will be unveiled at the Foundation end of year exhibition 22nd May – 1st June and shown as part of the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2018.
39 architecture and interior design students created and presented a wide range of individual ideas and then voted to select the final designs that would be developed and completed by 5 groups as an ensemble piece. This is essentially a live-project commissioned and funded by the Cass and is valuable experience for architecture and interior design students at the very start of their careers.
The presentation of the structures for the LFA also includes an exhibition of the collaboration between the Cass Foundation and the Disordinary Architecture Project.
The Cass has been working with The DisOrdinary Architecture Project over the last two years, to co-explore how we can open up the multitude of different ways of being-in-the-world to students, both as a potential design generator and as a key part of personal development. DisOrdinary is a platform bringing together disabled artists and built environment/design students, educators and practitioners for creative dialogue and action.
The exhibition presents student projects with disabled artists, on prototyped co-partnered activities that were funded by Arts Council England. They include making 'soundmarks' and other kinds of body mapping; doing audio-descriptions as a way to look more closely at the world around us, as well as understanding more about how blind people experience space; and the production of "objects that act in the spaces between body-identity and the wider world", such as masks and/or body extensions.
A film made by art, media and design Foundation students that records and reflects on the process will be shown, with a discussion on our experiences of the project. Here, identity and diversity are understood as complex but vital aspects of design making; with projects aiming to help foundation-level students creatively and critically engage with their own and others' multiple identities.
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The Foundation show opens at Goulston Street on Tuesday 22nd May between 5 and 7pm CM3-14 and GS2-01 and closes on Friday 1 June
