The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About Leeds School of Architecture
Location Leeds LS2 | Courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch, Architect Degree Apprenticeship Level 7 | Head of school Sarah Mills | Full-time tutors 15 | Part-time tutors 5 | Students 225 | Staff to student ratio 1:15
Undergraduate
John Samuel Rigby
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Abstract Machine
Project title A Headquarters for The Rodent Workers Party
Project description The rodents are fighting for their emancipation. They need a space where they can strategise to overcome their struggle against the bourgeois human class which is exploiting them for their labour and deriding their culture. This is the project mission statement, which uses an Orwellian allegory to construct a narrative of organisation and emancipation. It proposes a headquarters for a Rodent Workers Party, adjacent to Christ Church in Spitalfields. It features a subterranean grand hall above a canal, above which is a multistorey timber library rising above the ground, as well as a bar, office and other ancillary spaces.
Tutor citation The building brief is similar to Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple – a place to organise and learn. The project opens the sewers and culverted rivers, reimagining them through a rat’s gaze as a new Venice, in a nod to Crossrail’s extensive utilitarian burrowing. Keith Andrews
Postgraduate
Johan Visser
Course MArch
Studio/unit brief Displace non-place
Project title Cape Coral Central
Project description The project proposes to resolve issues of community displacement, and prevent the destruction of buildings from seasonal hurricanes in Cape Coral, Florida. It specifically addresses the influx of Cuban migration, proposing a series of interior spaces that shapeshift into immediate housing or educational facilities. The migrants are empowered by being taught to build with a fast-construction cassette module system, which enables spatial and programmatic malleability. In an emergency, the building can transform into an evacuation strategy. A 2m concrete plinth protects the structure from storm surges and becomes a docking point for emergency boats.
Tutor citation This proposal seeks to transform a placeless city and its omnipresent vulnerability from the increasing cycles of devastation and rebuilding from hurricanes into a multigenerational, multi-ethnic, easily accessible place. George Epolito