Taking place on 19 October, Westminster Architecture students and colleagues attended a sustainability workshop at The Growing Space, a sustainable, creative, community space created by Westminster students at East London’s Cody Dock.
To kick off the event the group, along with Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Bonfield, took a walk along the River Lea and then headed to Cody Dock’s Growing Space for a workshop on local plants and how they can inspire sustainable architecture. The Growing Space is a community hub within Cody Dock which was co-designed and co-constructed by Westminster Master Design Studio 20 students from the previous year.
The workshop explored how to forage plants responsibly and how they can be used for food, medicine and as potential building materials. Students and colleagues used nettles and bindweeds to make rope to form parts of joints and looked at how the reeds that are found in the River Lea can be used for thatched roofs, shading devices or for brick-making.
Cody Dock is a charity and social enterprise that has transformed the East London dock into a creative industries quarter with community gardens and footpaths, opening up the Lower Lea River whilst promoting regeneration for conservation, environmental and cultural benefit. As the Cody Dock continues to grow more workshops like these are taking place, including a lecture from artist Rym Powell and a session on Structural Bamboo. Also, on 9 November a structural engineer and sustainable material specialist is coming to help with their new Live Project, a Floating Platform.
Through working to build and help grow Cody Dock, Westminster students have taken part in stakeholder engagement and developed designs such as The Growing Space to work as a community space. Together, with support from Maria Kramer, who initiated the project, and Corinna Dean, they have introduced new ways of working collaboratively across sectors and take multidisciplinary skills within academia and use these in live projects to serve communities and have a positive impact on society.
One Master of Architecture MA (RIBA Part II) student who took part in the workshop is Jonathan Hubert Raffray. About the event he said: “Working with natural materials and creating such a wide variety of objects at different scales was an incredibly rewarding experience. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the simple, natural materials in our surroundings could be used to craft such beautiful structures.
“After we reached Cody Dock, leaving behind the noisy city environment, we took a pleasant walk by the canal. Entering the welcoming, warm, wooden space felt really wonderful. It was like all the outside noise disappeared, and we were in our own little world. It was a bit like a break from the usual rush of everyday life.”
About the event Maria Kramer said: “The workshop was fantastic, as we learnt about our immediate natural environment and how we need to think more about humans as part of this and the importance of using local regenerative materials, with Julia Briscoe from Cody Dock giving us further insights into local plants and craft making. ‘Learning by making’ is part of experiential learning, where we work hands-on with materials and is part of our Live Design Studio, directly combining theory and practice.”
Find out more about the Live Design Projects.
Find out more about the School of Architecture and Cities at Westminster.
Photos by Maria Kramer and Edmund Sumner
