Project Overview

Purpose:

• To reinforce cultural understanding between students in Spain and students in the UK.
• To understand the differences, similarities and limitations of dealing with historic buildings within both countries.
• To reinforce the fact that in practice architects and designers may be working on buildings which are in other parts of the world. To this end Seville Students will be working on a building in the UK and UK Students will be working on a building in Seville.

Buildings

Seville Students will use The Ruins of Coventry Cathedral and
Coventry Students will use San Jeronimo Monastery in Seville.

Brief

The Seville Students to create a pavilion that will house the work of Tony Cragg a contemporary UK Sculpture. The pavilion will be in Coventry’s ruined Cathedral.
The Coventry Students to create a pavilion to house the work of a Contemporary Spanish Sculptor Jaume Plensa in the ruins of San Jeronimo in Seville.

The students must choose which sculptures they wish to present in the pavilion so some research is required but not too much as this is about the pavilion and what can and can’t be achieved within historic buildings.
The pavilions must not be higher that the surrounding ruins and must not be attached to the ruins. Also whereever possible the fabric of the ruins must be incorporated within the pavilion or the ruins must be seen through the pavilion.

Methodology

This is a team project. The teams in the alternate countries will act as design teams designing in opposite countries and the teams will also “Switch” to be survey teams for the alternate design teams i.e. if a measurement is needed or a video or pictures are needed. In this way buildings are Switched over from country to country. Sculpture is switched from country to country. And the teams switch and become different things depending upon their roles at the time.

OIL Outcomes

Knowledge:

The Coventry students learn their work bears comparison with Architectural students and Architectural students from years above them as well. The speed of the project did not allow time for error and the students learnt to work under pressure.

Skills:

Communication skills where honed. Experience of presenting to a large audience in a huge space. The students were very nervous initially but all presented well with no exceptions.

Attitudes:

Even though this wasn’t a summative project it was taken seriously by both Spanish students and UK students.

Culturally:

By swapping countries for site of the project this gave the students insight into each others countries and cultural heritage.

Friendship:

Solid friendships have been formed. Some students are meeting up in the summer to travel together.
Staff bonds have also been solidified.

OIL Outputs

Output has consisted of A1 boards, powerpoint presentations, animation and verbal presentations in Seville.
The Oil moved from online to reality.

 

This project was run in partnership with Jose Almodovar, Architectural Department at the University of Seville.

 

 

Picture
pixabay.com