A group of 30 secondary school students considering a career in architecture took part in a week of workshops held at Shatwell Farm and Hauser & Wirth Somerset for the annual Architectural Drawing Summer School.
The Architectural Drawing Summer School 2021 was organised by Drawing Matter Trust, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Kingston School of Art and Bruton School for Girls in association with Architecture Today.
Now in its fifth year, the programme was set up by Drawing Matter founder Niall Hobhouse, and executive director of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust Robert Bargery. The programme, which is free and particularly welcomes participants from diverse backgrounds, is designed to offer A-Level students insight into how architects use drawing in practice and centres on the drawing archives of Drawing Matter, an organisation based at Hobhouse’s home, Shatwell Farm.
The course is led by Professor Andrew Clancy of Kingston School of Art and Clancy Moore Architects, and was supported this year by visiting tutors Matthew Blunderfield, Sohanna Srinivasan, Yassir Ibrahim and Thomas Bryans.
Students took part in workshops at Shatwell Farm – a collection of early 19th century buildings with contemporary additions by Skene Catling de la Pena, Stephen Taylor Architects, Hugh Strange Architects, Clancy Moore Architects, Cedric Price, David Grandorge, Tuomas Tuovonen and John Glew, Peter Smithson and Álvaro Siza – and Hauser & Wirth Somerset, which is now home to Smiljan Radić’s 2014 pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery.
Addressing students, family and sponsors gathered in the pavilion on the final day of the programme, Clancy explained that this year’s activities launched from an exercise about a memorable window.
“We started by understanding space through our bodies and then understanding our position in architecture through our memories., understanding that before we enter a building with “architecture” written on the door that we are already navigating space, we are already active in space, that we are building up intuitive relationships to the world, that we can introduce ourselves to each other through the architecture of that space,” he said.
“The students remember their windows, they drew the windows for each other and in drawing them told us about the sights and smells, about cooking, about family, about streets in foreign places and places close to home, about social contexts, about council houses and luxurious dwellings, about places where they have been formed, about places they could introduce themselves to each other through architecture.”
The exercise resulted in spoken word performances and an exhibition of drawings of windows from memory and studies of buildings at the farm presented on an installation of translucent red netting. Architects sponsoring the programme gathered with students on a straw bale amphitheatre constructed by students to review their work.
Scholarships for this year’s course were funded by Peter Wilson, Eric Parry, AHMM, Alison Brooks Architects, Chris Wilkinson, Feilden Clegg Bradley, Glenn Howells Architects, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, HHbR, Keith Williams Architects, Maccreanor Lavington, Malcolm Reading Consultants, Moxon Architects, Proctor and Matthews, Richard Parr Associates, Roger Zogolovitch, Roz Barr Architects, Stephen Taylor Architects, Studio RHE, Sue Barr, The Marco Goldschmied Foundation, The Newt in Somerset and Wilkinson Eyre.
“I’m incredibly proud of the students this year, I’m incredibly proud of the things that they’ve done – not because I’m instigating any of it and none of the tutors are – but because the students have been extraordinary,” said Clancy.
“The doors that have been opened that is all that matters,” added Eric Parry, a continuing supporter of the programme. “The fantastic thing is to offer the opportunity to those who might not have that moment yet of knowing whether architecture might be the right route, and that is the great thing that this week offers to students. That’s a thrill.”
Listen to our podcast with Andrew Clancy and former Architectural Drawing Summer School tutor Nana Biamah-Ofosu to hear more about the programme.
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