There's been some great work going on around studio this week, with the hit of inspiration from international field trips across the year groups. We're loving the energy that's in studio right now! Unit D's Trip to Athens // Viviana Roberti As part of our "Exclusion | Inclusion" brief, Unit D set for a deep exploration of the city of Athens, where our main project is set. This brief includes us (the designers) and challenges us to become activists to enable the Greek community to overcome austerity and economic crisis conflicts through our designs. Besides visiting high-end landmarks and areas of interest, we were asked to conduct an analysis not only of the place but of the people that inha

This week the studio has been very quiet without the undergraduate students, who are all away on field trips! Stay tuned for updates on where they've been. Looking to the week ahead, final year masters students have their cross crits this week - where students review each other's work - so have a look around the studio on Thursday to see what everyone is up to. At OSA we're getting started on putting the magazine together, and we're so excited to see everyone's work! Keep up to date with us on facebook and instagram for updates on the launch. What's On Disappear Here - RIBA London - Ending this week! OGS Crawford, Life in Photographs - Pitt Rivers Museum - Ending this week! Moving Image Prin

Donald Insall Associates are a practice that specialise in conservation and historic architecture. They demonstrated that depth of skill at their lecture, taking us through the details of the Palace Hotel, part of their work on Regents Street for the Crown Estate. The building was originally an Edwardian hotel; the largest in Europe when it opened with a thousand rooms. It was designed for use by the middle class, and was at first hugely popular, but it fell out of fashion after the first world war. As the area around it degenerated, the operator of the hotel lost its ability to run the business, and returned the building’s 100 year lease to the Crown Estate for regeneration. Originally, the

This week, there has been so much activity both in the studio and out, through design, making, photography and more. It's been great to see - have a look at the highlights. DS3 Trip to Georgia // Luis Lopez Leon 3, 2,1 takeoff! Destination: Georgia, and DS3's exciting and eventful trip to this largely unknown and forgotten country. Our site for the year is Anaklia, a small Georgian village that, bathed by the waters of the Black sea, is located right in the border with Abkhazia, a de facto state controlled by Russia since 2008. Whilst the country has had a hard time reconfiguring itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the aggressive neoliberalist reforms implemented by the go

We're now at the half way point to Christmas - and isn't the term going by quickly! The first international field trips have returned, and we cannot wait to hear back from them. Not only that, but the OSA Ritual deadline is nearing, and the team is so excited to see everyone's work. DS4 Trip to Skopje, Macedonia// Rob Goacher DS4 have just returned from the maddening city of Skopje, Macedonia. This intense place is an unapologetic montage of architectural styles and typologies from an Ottoman old city to a modernist urban core - designed by an international team after the 1963 earthquake flattened 70% of the city - to the kitsch neoclassical buildings, facades and statues of the past decade.

Takero Shimazaki Architects, a London based and design focused practice, presented by the Takero himself, former Brookes studio tutor and current diploma tutor at London Metropolitan University. The lecture centered around one of the practices most recent projects and one that Takero feels exemplifies the practices ethos and design process. The recurring theme being the poetry of architecture and the struggles that one must sometimes endure to deliver a vision. Tiverton house is a two storey new build in place of the client's existing carport to the rear of the main house. A tight site with height restrictions pushed the design into the ground, and the locality next to a railway meant that s