Student projects of the University of Westminster

Student projects of the University of Westminster

Aedes presents the project 'Nighthawk City - the city of the night owl' of the first year of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Westminster London, which Andrew Holmes conceived as a three-year project together with Thomas Arnold, Anna Hart, Susanne Hofmann, Natalie Newey and Peter Silver. The exhibition is an installation of student designs in the context of Andrew Holmes' research; his search for a new architecture that uses cutting-edge technologies - from satellites to computers - an architecture of joy in which the sensory experience comes mainly from playing with light effects. The students worked on an 'architecture of pleasure' that celebrates ephemeral materials such as light, water, air and heat. Their field of experimentation has been the Thames in East London, the sinuous surface of the water and the vast horizon of the city, to reveal the sensual pleasures of the nocturnal site and further develop a 'city of pleasure'.  In doing so, the students have created a vision of a '24-hour city' free of any convention of earlier architecture. A large model on a scale of 1:200 shows these designs near the Thames: they line the banks, shine light into the distance, are reflected sparkling in the water and glisten in the moonlight. The models, imaginative constructions, glow from within themselves, projections of starry skies and water simulate the sensual qualities a city can offer at night. The designers have, for example, imagined imagined what it would be like to have a drink while enjoying the sunset through a curtain of spray, to dine in a space like a fish swimming in the air, to swim in a pool that opens like a crocodile's kite, to walk out onto the river from a giant glass and silvered egg moored to the shore on walkways resembling octopus arms, while in the river the illusion of three horses seems to rear up from a mass of foam. These 'architectures of delights' work with versatile materials - billowing fabrics, flowing colours that iridesce and glow. Inspired by biological processes, the models consist of often cantilevered, sometimes movable or unfolding steel structures. Vertiginous floor surfaces, ramps and stages made of glass or steel mesh lead the future residents through spaces rising into the air to balconies with unexpected views of the sunset over the city. In Nighthawk City, young architects make the social and technological changes of the early 21st century visible to the senses.