Location: University College London
Coordinators: Hannah Corlett, Niall McLaughlin

[ ARCHITECTURE / EDUCATION / RESEARCH ]
[ 2101 ]

UG12 is lead by Hannah Corlett [HNNA] and Niall McLaughlin [Niall McLaughlin Architects] and is an undergraduate design unit for the BSc Architecture program at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

Niall and Hannah have known each other for over 20 years and share passions and interests that range from the miniscule to the global, the material to the intangible, the topical to the enduring. They both consider addressing these passions more important than working in a particular style, allowing each project and therefore student to make an original interpretation of the client, site, brief, constraints and opportunities. They are both architects in practice and want the unit to open out to the world of practice with all its challenges, opportunities, and contradictions.

Key skills that are develop with us:

- An understanding of material culture based on real experience of how things are made and how they work together over time.

- An understanding of architectural culture through an exploration of other buildings. We want you to learn how to extract objective lessons from other works of architecture without needing to imitate them directly. Success and failure are both teachers.

- Drawing as the special skill of the architect, allowing us to think and dream.

- An intuitive grasp of building physics, particularly how certain buildings can naturally regulate their own environment without reliance on external energy sources.

- An active engagement with the politics and ethics of sustainability, based on realistic research into the needs and capacities of human cultures.

- The art of getting what you want through negotiation and exploiting constraints. Architecture is not a solo enterprise; it requires diplomacy, resilience, persistence, and powers of persuasion.

Hannah Corlett

Having studied at the Bartlett and worked for Niall, Hannah set up her own practice [HNNA] in 2004. Her studio is made up of urban designers and architects who combine practice and research to reconsider how we design cities.

Her focus is questioning preconceived attitudes amid contemporary challenges. She often undertakes projects that are very significant in size including winning the international competition for the Iraq Parliament and being the masterplanner, design coordinator and one of the 8 architects for the recently launched Design District in Greenwich, London. Her approach is to resolve a large-scale brief not with big architecture but instead create a permeable, accessible urban solution.

Through all of Hannah’s work lies a preoccupation with the nature of materials, the technology of fabrication and the poetics of space. All solutions focus on maximisation of potential and attention to detail, with common themes of efficiency and sustainability. Hannah has also taught on both Architecture and Urban Design Masters programmes at the Bartlett since 2012.

Hannah Corlett - Iraq Parliament © HNNA Ltd

Niall McLaughlin - The Bishop Edward King Chapel © Niall McLaughlin Architects

Niall McLaughlin

Niall is Bartlett’s Professor of Architectural Practice and has been teaching since he established his own practice in 1990. His work puts a strong emphasis on the inventive use of building materials, the qualities of light and the relationship between the building and its surroundings.

For Niall, practice is understood as a range of activities which are all necessary to each other – design of buildings, fittings and furniture; making buildings, installations and models; connecting speculation and practice, lecturing and writing about architecture; collaborations with craftsmen, artists and consultants. Niall uses a great range of materials in his building projects, enjoying it most when he can inventively combine traditional and new construction techniques. He relishes unexpected juxtapositions.

All his designs are discussed with the makers, not just in terms of performance, but also as aesthetic propositions. His work is less interested in the expression of technology by bolts, junctions and gaskets, more in the overall presence of a space. In particular the way in which materials alter space by modulating light, combing it, diffusing it, storing it, reflecting it, dulling it or changing its speed.