In First Year, all units are centred around building foundational skills such as hand drawing, model-making, and critical thinking. These are developed through the design of a range of buildings from small one-person dwellings in Semester 1 to more ambitious, larger community centres and retrofit designs in semester 2 on a range of sites, providing us with a broad array of essential tools to progress confidently into the subsequent years of study.

As the final project in semester two, students complete a ‘Transition and Transformation’ Project, teaching us the principles behind working with existing buildings, transitioning us smoothly into year two projects involving retrofit tasks. I chose the ‘ReCycle’ brief of the 3 available, and the ‘Boathouse’ site:

My proposal outlines the design of a bike centre that is sensitively integrated into its woodland setting, aiming to harmonise with the natural environment both aesthetically and ecologically. The centre is conceived as a structure that feels nestled within the landscape, with tall ebony timber pillars framing both the existing and new buildings. These vertical elements echo the surrounding trees, allowing the architecture to blend organically into its environment.

The extension adopts a 'shadow gap' approach, ensuring the preservation and respectful treatment of the original building. A smaller, mirrored structure sits alongside it, carefully designed to complement the existing architecture. These two volumes are connected by a suspended, enclosed glass bridge- symbolically minimal and transparent- serving as a near-invisible threshold between past and present.