Westminster End of Year exhibition

I just managed to sneak along on the last afternoon (some work was just starting to be taken down, so if you haven't seen it yet, you missed your chance)...

Predictably, the vast quantity of work, from so many students from such a big school gives an impressive show, but I was really unimpressed with the overall quality and the actual presentation provided.  They've relied really heavily on the little white cube exhibition spaces they have up there, with little or no effort to adapt the venue to best display the work (hey, I say unimpressed, but the is NOT comparing it to LSBU).

The work generally itself was massively reliant on rendering software from almost every design studio, and the quality just wasn't there.  Lots of post-apocalyptic monochrome skyscapes with Hitchcock-like flocks of birds menacing the skyline... typical student images.

Models weren't up to that much either, and the scale of the presentations was just weird.  Rather than present focal pieces of work as a single panoramic or something, often it was divided up and printed on maybe 3 bits of A3... it just looked a bit tacky in places.

Everything looks cool in B&W

RCA master show

loved the craftworked goldsmithying, ceramics (above - the room was incredible), glasswork... but thought that for Master's projects the architectural ones were a bit ... populist.  They lacked real intellectual rigour.  The prize winning headline project consisted of theoretical Free Aid Zones - the idea being that in the future aid would be privatised and deserving countries would come and compete for it in specially designated zones, showing off their need... load of gumph if you ask me and the visualisations were just a load of shapes. 

AA summer show

some selected pics... looking back at these, i must admit, if we had the money they have at the AA it would help produce some better stuff (like this 2 ft high 3D printed thing...)

UEL

Summer show was pretty impressive considering how isolated they are.  A lot of good quality down to earth projects, great modelling and good exhibition space.  They had also maintained a high level of hand crafted skills which I thought was great, and something the AA seemed to lack.  Some really well down sketchbooks with water colours brought the whole idea of projects together, simply.

Architecture School's Summer Shows

The AA's got a great show this year, especially some diploma work on the ground floor.  One particular project is an epic collection of models, drawings, video, soundeffects... Creating the entire environment of the site specific to an Australian outback missile testing range in the corner of a Georgian terrace... amazing.
The work was good, and there was a good depth and breadth to the projects, but there was also a huge evidence of the support the school gives the students in terms of presenting the work they produce.  Custom-built rooms within rooms, lighting, new spaces... all are provided to best show off individual projects and sometimes even individual drawings.  A huge range of media and focus on the quality of the finished article was obvious.  You don't get that at South Bank.  There the lecturers were still haphazardly pinning up bits of work to old, whitewashed boards 5 minutes before the start of the Show.  No differentiation, no attention to detail - an unreferenced splurge of work.  Don't get me wrong... they didn't have much to work with.