Project Lead: Jingru Cheng, Lucia Alonso and Leren Li

Number of participants: 15

Duration: 2 days

Project Outline:

How well do you know the building in which you spend most of your day? Do you know how fashion designers organise their workstations, how interior designers make mock-up models, and how textile artists manage printing, knitting and dyeing?

This two-day workshop sets out to investigate the relationship between selected disciplines of the RCA, their workspaces and the daily routines of students and staff within and across buildings and campuses, as well as different ways of how these spaces can be represented and communicated. We aim to explore the following questions:

How might the arrangement of individual workspaces surface assumptions held by students about the substance and structure of their work? How might the actual uses of workspaces meaningfully diverge from their intended or expected uses? What might such divergences reveal about new possible configurations and patterns of use? How might we become more sensitive to how our built environments influence pedagogies and learning styles?

This workshop will convene in the Kensington campus to collectively put together different material of the alternative workspaces across campuses. The material will be translated into a cross folded map that participants may take and use in the future to navigate new routes and patterns.

This workshop will be led by two research and teaching staff from the School of Architecture and a PhD candidate from the School of Arts & Humanities. Collectively, we bring experience in architecture, business, engineering, fashion and history of design.

Timetable:

Day 1: Tuesday 5th November:
(10:00 am – 4:00pm), Kensington

10:00- Introduction by the project team
10:30- Fieldwork of Kensington

Begin 8th floor at Kensington Darwin building and move down, stopping on each floor to have a quick look at each of the following studios: Interior Design, Architecture, Textile, Fashion Design, Design Product, Global Innovation Design, and Sculpture. We will stop to discuss the participants workspaces.

12:00- Transport to Battersea
12:30- Lunch break
1:00- Fieldwork of Battersea

Visit workspaces of the following: Painting, photography, print, ceramics and glass, jewellery and metal.

2:30- Transport to Kensington and walk to V&A
3:00- Visit V&A: Visit the History of Design study room.
3:30- Discussion in V&A Courtyard

Participants identify their own themes/threads and ways of representation.

Day 2: Wednesday 6th November
10:00- Participants share their narratives, followed by a group discussion.
11:00 onwards- Working session

Make a collective map of the workspaces across campuses using different forms of expression (knitting, photography, plans, models, sketches, collages, etc). The map will then be made into a cross folded leaflet as a collective outcome.