A group of architecture students from the University competed to provide new ideas to develop a stronger ‘sense of place’ and improve connections between the different parts of its Medway campus.
The students from Kent School of Architecture (KSA) were challenged to project the different elements of the Medway campus as ‘a single coherent entity’. The judges were looking for ideas that would be quick solutions, but also more extravagant and expensive suggestions with a ‘wow’ factor.
Thirty students visited the sites and then presented their designs to a group of judges on Friday 2 June.
The four-day design forum known as a charrette was organised as a collaboration between Professor Nick Grief, the University’s Dean of Medway, and Chloe Street Tarbatt and Jef Smith, lecturers at KSA.
The judging panel were unanimous in giving the first prize of RIBA vouchers to team Ocelot – Alana Tidd, Julita Borys, Tilly Franklin, Nor Farah Ain Md Her and Moha Moein-Shirazi.
The team Ocelot impressed the judges with a ‘thorough and consistent entry, which featured visual clues for wayfinding, including the use of gateways and thresholds to identify particular areas in a stimulating journey through time’. An ‘inventive use of a contemporary tram system to move people to key locations on both sites’ and a new viewing tower ‘clearly identifying the site from a distance’ also impressed the judges.
The University moved onto the Pembroke site in 2005 and shares buildings there with the University of Greenwich and Canterbury Christ Church University. Since 2012, the Kent has also had a significant presence in The Historic Dockyard, including the Royal Dockyard Church which was refurbished as the main lecture theatre.
Any of the ideas adopted will be acknowledged and their authors consulted as they progress. The completed presentations will be exhibited at University of Kent graduation ceremonies.