The Foundation course is a one-year introduction to an art- and design-based education. It allows students to develop their conceptual ideas through a wide range of media and creative disciplines. Students are taught in an intimate, studio-based environment and work on both individual and group projects. By drawing upon a number of pedagogical practices, experienced tutors and visiting practitioners, the Foundation offers a unique cross-disciplinary education within the context of an architectural school.
Point, Line, Plane, Terrain… Domain
We are the points. We introduced ourselves through our first image, using the personal to suggest the abstract and mark our start. We fictionalised our identities through text and represented ourselves as memories of cities fused or as scientists conducting experiments. We then sought out objects in flea markets in order to document, dissect, reproduce, dissolve and reconstruct them in a process that re-imagined their functions and altered their uses. We toured Rome and drew lines of documented experience that cross-referenced history, politics and art movements – describing sunrise at the Ponte Sisto by tracking the starlings that burst from the trees to flood the morning sky, or steeping ourselves in the baroque by playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor inside Santa Maria della Vittoria during the late afternoon. We examined our bodies and their movements and constructed garments that acted as the primary interface with our surroundings. We gathered our thoughts to create a one-minute vignette of moving images, which we projected against a plane in the AA to tell a small fragment of a much larger narrative. Finally, we experimented at 1:1 in the forest of Hooke Park, where we indentified our individual domains and marked out the territories for our last series of experiments that concluded our year and introduced us to our future.
Foundation Director
Saskia Lewis
Studio Master
Takako Hasegawa
Tutors
Umberto Bellardi Ricci
Taneli Mansikkamaki
Critics and Consultants
Leith Adjina
Vasiliki Antonopoulou
Sue Barr
Andre Baugh
Pascale Berthier
Mitch Birne
Shumi Bose
Mark Campbell
Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange
Kleopatra Chelmi
Fenella Collingridge
Charlie Corry Wright
Georgie Corry Wright
Alison Crawshaw
Corinna Dean
Henderson Downing
Trevor Flynn
Raluca Grada
Juliet Haysom
Bettina John
Romina Karaminea
Alexander Laing
Antoni Malinowski
Clare McDonald
Flora McLean
Sara Muzio
Joel Newman
Cher Potter
Brian Sayers
Alex Schwader
Trys Smith
Natasha Staples
Brett Steele
Sylvie Taher
Manijeh Verghese
Michael Ho
Throughout this year, nature has inspired and influenced my work. My investigation, observation and subsequent personal interpretation of nature and the movement of its elements is very much evident in my projects. The ineffable sights and characteristics of the natural environment that intrigue me a lot, such as witnessing sunrise, the effects of gravity and aerobatic displays by flocks of starlings.