Monthly Archives: January 2010

Real Estate Management’s Yvonne Student of the Year Award

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 On Thursday 21st January 2010, Excel magazine hosted the Excel Student of the Year Awards. Designed to raise aspirations and encourage student achievement, this event celebrates the success of outstanding students from diverse backgrounds all over the UK.

Kingston University student Yvonne Ambo, who studies Real Estate Management, was awarded this year’s ‘Excel Built Environment Student of the Year Award’. Yvonne is the first generation in her family to go to University and is successfully juggling her studies and part-time work as a retail supervisor with raising her young son. Yvonne is one of the top performing students in her year and was nominated by her lecturers to undertake the European Real Estate Challenge 2010 held in Berlin.

Yvonne completed our mentoring scheme for black and minority ethnic students which we run in conjunction with the National Mentoring Consortium. Lorraine Kelly (the scheme’s co-ordinator) nominated Yvonne because “she is such a positive role model and demonstrates that it is still possible to achieve your aspirations even if you are studying, working and looking after a young child”.

Hydrangeas to high rise – new research by Professor Sarah Sayce

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Research by a team at Kingston University reveals that, despite concerns that ‘garden grabbing’ is on the rise; the likelihood that the developers will be moving into a garden near you is not increasing. According to the research, in most places you are no more likely to look over your fence and see a block of flats emerging from your neighbour’s rose beds now than you were in 2003.

The study by Professor Sarah Sayce, Head of the School of Surveying and Planning at Kingston University showed that nationally there had been no significant increase in garden developments between April 2003 and March 2008. Professor Sayce led a team of researchers who looked into the scale and type of garden development across the country, and asked whether local planning authorities regarded building in back gardens as a significant problem within their area.

Slightly more than one third of local authorities who responded to the survey perceived garden grabbing to be a problem, although the picture was extremely varied across the country. In some areas where there was little other land for development, building on gardens could be the only way for local authorities to reach their housing targets, Professor Sayce explained. “There has been no significant shift from house to flat building in garden space, with the exception of London, and location, type of local authority and local planning policy all play a part in determining whether garden developments are seen as a problem,” she said.

To read the full article please visit:

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/pressoffice/news/61/26-01-2010-hydrangeas-to-high-rise.html

New journal edited by MIRC senior researcher Anne Massey

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Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture.

Kingston University’s Anne Massey of the Modern Interiors Research Centre is one of the editors of Interiors, a new journal launched this year which provides an invaluable forum for lively discussions and new research findings in the emerging field of interior studies.

Interiors will bring together the best critical work on the analysis of all types of spaces and their impact on the individual. It aims to keep you up to date with the latest research, book, and exhibition reviews, and interviews with interior designers themselves. Published three times a year, the journal will be a tool for academics, researchers, students and practitioners in interior design and architecture as well as cultural studies, anthropology, and art and design history. The inaugural issue will be a double issue available in July 2010

A brand new book for budding designers by Kingston Course Director

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Work by Kingston University staff and students is being showcased in a brand new book for budding designers written by BA (Hons) Fashion course director Elinor Renfrew.

‘Basics Fashion Design: Developing a Collection’ is Elinor’s first foray into the publishing world. An expert in womenswear and childrenswear, she embarked on the project with her husband Colin Renfrew, who she met on the MA Fashion course at Saint Martin’s, together combining more than 40 years of fashion experience.

“The industry experts and representatives from international brands who sponsor the Kingston course were extremely generous with their time as the book took shape,” Elinor said. They included top designers Giles Deacon, whose illustrations feature on the book’s cover, and Richard Nicoll, both of whom have previously been named Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards. Milliner Stephen Jones, accessory designer Bill Amberg and shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood were among the many other contributors.

Kingston staff and students both feature in the book. Work highlighted includes new menswear knitwear label Sibling set up by senior lecturer Joe Bates and colleague Andrew Ibi’s award-winning shop The Convenience Store. High-achieving Kingston graduates Sophie Hulme, who now sells her label in to Whistles and Asos, and Peter Perrett, whose menswear designs are stocked at b Store also have examples of their work in the book.

Produced by AVA Publishing and distributed by Thames & Hudson and Ingram Publisher Services, the book is the fourth in a specialist series on fashion. Currently being translated into Portuguese, Chinese and German, it will be distributed worldwide. The title has already set a new record for its publisher for the number of advance copies ordered in the United Kingdom. “We wrote the book to fill what we perceived to be a gap in the market for a contemporary textbook. Creating a collection is often a defining moment for fashion students and this fully-illustrated reference book should help them navigate through this challenging process,” Elinor explained.

As part of the process of putting the book together, Elinor and Colin accessed the costume archive at the London College of Fashion where Colin is Dean of the School of Design and Technology. “Researching the historical aspects for the book from haute couture to high street was one of the most enjoyable parts of the process for me,” Elinor said. “Editing, however, was the most difficult. We were both so deeply involved in the content, it was often necessary to make compromises about how much we could include,” she said.

Working together had proved a rewarding experience for the couple, although Elinor quipped it had also been a little difficult at times. “We both were new to publishing and had so much to bring to the process,” she said. The challenge has inspired her to give a talk on the experience called ‘How to Write a Book and Stay Married’ which will be part of a series of research talks in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture later this year.

Elinor is planning an official launch for her book in the spring.

Former Kingston student’s illustration adventures

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George Butler, a former Kingston University illustration student has teamed up with The Times to publish his illustrated travel blog as he attempts to travel the 8,500km overland from London to Libreville, the capital of Gabon, over the course of the next 6 months.  George, who graduated in 2007, was initially introduced to reportage illustration on a Kingston University trip to Manhattan where he “learnt how drawing can take you inside a situation and in a community in a way that photography, on the whole, does not”. Armed with pen, ink, watercolour, pencils and as much paper as he can carry, George is hoping to record the countries he travels through  as honestly as he can, believing that pen and paper “allows you to be discerning and understanding, and to record things over time”.  To keep up with George’s travels, his blog can be found at www.timesonline.co.uk/sketch

Children inspire architect’s vision for future world cities

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A ‘Model City’ – drdharchitects

When Daniel Rosbottom’s practice, drdharchitects, was asked to create an exhibit for the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, it asked the children of Shenzhen to help.

Daniel is Head of School of Architecture and Landscape and working with 500 Chinese school children, he helped create Model City, a collection of 1500 china clay buildings.

The generic clay buildings were made using traditional craft techniques and the children used wooden clay stamps and tools to individualise their houses. Each house became even more distinctive through the subtle deformations created during the glazing and firing process. “We hoped the buildings might collectively recall a latterday terracotta army for a new China” Daniel said.

A workshop held within the exhibition space allowed the children to plan out their model city.

 “We wanted to engage local school children in imagining their own city. We asked them to think about their home and then to consider it as part of a collective city, including how the city might be laid out – its patterns and the relationships between things,” said Daniel. The result includes long boulevards, public squares and crescents. On the wall next to it, an atlas of photographs represented each individual child who had taken part, along with their models.

Daniel suggests that Model City reflects on the physical city which most of us actually occupy. “Rather than the buildings that become symbolic of a city’s individuality, it considers those anonymous and generic structures that make up the fabric of everyday life. Out of that generic condition, it seeks to address the individual and collective lives of the inhabitants, and future inhabitants, of the world’s big cities. This seems of particular relevance given the extraordinary and rapid growth of Chinese cities like Shenzhen, as the country goes through a dramatic process of urbanisation.”