It's beginning to look a lot like crunch time - we're barely 3 weeks away from the end of semester! This week on the blog we're featuring DS1's field trip, along with Chloe's 4th NFTS blog (which you can find here) and a thought-provoking blog from Luisa on social action and intersectionality (which you can find here)
Don't miss the free Climate Peace Talk at the AA on the 2nd December with Territorial Agency - All events put forward by AED are free for everyone to participate in. You can follow the Summit Conversations that happened earlier on this term through the AACTION page and the AA Youtube Page
Also coming up in the next week:
Dyslexic Academic: Towards a Neurodivergent Academy - an informal workshop hosted by Dr Kate West from 12pm - 2pm on the 2nd December - register your place with fjenkins@brookes.ac.uk OxArch In Conversation With... Architects Sans Frontieres UK
For their final talk of the semester, OxArch are hosting architect, urban designer and lecturer Beatrice de Carli from ASF-UK - don't miss it!
Submissions for Issue XII:REBEL are open until 20th December! We welcome written, drawn, photographic and modelling submissions - so get creative and see where the REBEL in you takes you! Send submissions to osazine@gmail.com for your chance to be featured.
This week's Studio Update comes from DS1, who recently had a field trip to the Peak District. Here's what DS1 had to say about their trip:
Last week DS1 drove up to the Peak District for a short retreat in the nature. We stayed for three nights at Rocklodge Farm, a spacious farmhouse with beautiful views of the hills and local farm cows outside. The rest of the evening was pretty relaxed, mostly playing board games and watching movies after preparing dinner for the group.
We hiked up the National Park on Day 2 – all on foot for almost 15km and about 5 hours outside! We began our journey from Baslow, up to Curbar and turning back around at the end. The views we’ve seen were breathtaking – from rocks and boulders to vast fields and cliffs.
Returning to nature taught us to appreciate its beauty and importance, aligning with one of the ethos of the studio: creating architecture in an ecological society. For some of us, seeing farming animals roaming around the field was a first-time thing. The impact of living in an urban setting for a large part of our lives detaches us from the more rural environment. It’s important to be exposed to these elements as, for some part of it, this is where our food comes from.
The following day we visited Blue John Cave in Castleton. We went down 254 steps of the only cave in the world where the Blue John stone was discovered and mined. The internal air temperature of the caves varies depending on its distance from the ground and if there’s any pothole opening in its walls. Somehow experiencing this fluctuating temperature remind us to consider its importance in our design – that perhaps some places would require more heat than others, and how we can design for that. Afterwards, we drove back into Chatsworth town and walked for 30 minutes to their beautiful Christmas market.
On our last night in Peak District, we conducted our Citizens' Assembly – discussing the ideas for our brief and brainstorming about how we could employ the principles of Architects’ Declare in our envisaged projects. The aim was to help one another build on the complexity of our ideas. The rest of the evening went on in a very relaxed environment with s'mores and a movie night!
Want your work featured on the blog? Or know someone whose work is worth celebrating? Simply send us an email at osazine@gmail.com with your submission! We look forward to hearing from you!