Vision of water wins sustainability competition

Links:

ucl.ac.uk/greenucl" target="_self">Green UCL

UCL Environment Institute
UCL Estates and Facilities
UCL Union and the environment
HoldUP Architecture

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An installation exploring how much water it requires to produce a single cup of coffee has won a UCL competition encouraging staff and students to think about sustainability.

Lola Pedro's vision, which involves the installation of a network of large blue pipes behind the pillars of the portico in the university's quadrangle, will go on display for three weeks from Friday 8 October.

The UCL Management Science and Innovation student's winning entry - The Blue Gold Project - beat stiff competition from a range of imaginative designs from staff and students across the university.

The Green UCL Sustainability Competition sought to energise the practice of sustainability at the university in an engaging, thought-provoking and dramatic way.  

Entrants were asked to use environmentally friendly materials and construction methods to create a spectacular focal point, visible from Gower Street, that encouraged public engagement and demonstrated sustainability in 'how it is made, used, can be re-used, re-purposed or disposed of when it is taken down'.

Entrants submitted their work up to the end of May, and in early June a panel chaired by Professor Michael Worton (Vice Provost Academic & International) selected The Blue Gold Project as the winner.

In this video Lola discusses her collaboration with HoldUP architecture and the ideas behind her installation, and the original submissions for her winning entry can be downloaded as PDFs (sheet one, sheet two and sheet three).

The competition fired the imaginations of a wide cross-section of entrants, whose ideas ranged from a temporary funfair through to the use of advanced digital media in the quadrangle. Outlines of their ideas and links to their original submissions are shown below:

Aaron Angel (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) - Jungle Outpost 1:1

An exact enlargement of an Airfix kit to provide both a unique curatorial space, and a designated platform for an artist-led programme of teaching and research. Download PDF.

Ava Fatah gen Schiek (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies) - Reveal: an environmental persuasive media façade

Projection of images on to the Wilkins Building façade creating a spectacular artistic visualisation of heat-loss problems in the building under various scenarios aligned with the UCL Grand Challenges. Download PDF.

Richard Dent (UCL Geography) - The Power in Nature

Hanging a massive LED curtain from the top of the portico to show stunning HD video images of nature's energy moving slowly and demonstrate the value of this energy to power our future. Download PDF.

Samuel Atack (Student Residences) - Eco-Skelter

Enjoy a retro funfair ride in the middle of UCL. Learn about green initiatives at UCL and beyond through interactive screens, projected displays and talk to some of our Green Champions. Download PDF.

Julia Tcharfas and Timothy Ivison (UCL Slade School of Fine Art and Birkbeck College) - Cubicle for Sustainable Practice

Cubicle is a collaborative project involving participants from across the UCL community coming together to build an eco-structure in which to discuss ideas of sustainability in architecture, design and everyday life. Download PDF.

Kyle Buchanan, Tim Barwell and Michael Hadi (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture) - An Afterlife for Bottles

The work highlights the amount of waste glass consumed in the UK translating this into a geometric volume that is both visible from a distance and inhabited as a space. Download PDF.

Kevin Green and Ned Scott (UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment) - A Brick Speaks 10,000 Words

An interactive installation composed of 1,250 compressed paper bricks made from wastepaper donated by UCL students. The installation is composed of 15 arches vaulted together to create a soaring composite structure 12 metres in height on the steps of the portico. Download PDF.

Enol Vallina and Olga Banchikova (UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment) - The Be-ALL Project

Using the main quadrangle at UCL to lay out a new game that embodies social, collaborative, networking and mind-provoking involvement that deals actively with the problems of sustainability, not just the symptoms. Download PDF.

Cansu Aladag (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) - Weaving and Weaving Again

Create a weave from side to side that acts like a mechanism to attract recyclable objects like plastic bottles and magazines, which are attached by the individuals to begin a new routine. Download PDF.

Eunkyung Lee (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) - Green Columns

Creating 'green columns' around the portico by utilising wastepaper in book-bound tablets chained into grids and hole-punched to form receptacles for plants. Download PDF.

Anton Chernikov and Vinicius Cipriano (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture) - The Green Revolution

Forming vibrant multicoloured zones within the quad where staff, students and members of the public can be taught recipes offering cooked meals, less fast food and more local and seasonal ingredients. Download PDF.

Ermis Adamantidis, Madhav Kidao (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies) - Message in a Bottle

An installation that attempts to highlight the excessive use of bottled water in modern society, and the subsequent waste and its environmental impact. Through the recycling of discarded plastic bottles, the entrants create a natural fluid structure that hangs elegantly over the quad. Download PDF.

Andrew Parratt (UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage) - Dome of the Rock tile from Jerusalem

Create a representation of a design taken from the Dome of the Rock as a tile shimmer wall. Raise awareness of climate change through revealing the environmental forces that surround us. Download PDF.

Dimitris Argyros, Joel Cady, Afra van't Land and Frosso Pimenides (UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment) - The UCL Sustainability Forum

Propose a series of structures that will act as a setting for the UCL Sustainability Forum. Bring together students, academics, alumni and the wider community for a series of discussions on Communication, Energy, Growth, Tracel and Waste. The flexible structures form a variety of arrangements from 'soapbox' to 'amphitheatre'. Download PDF.

Julia Vogl and Gavin Weber (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) - Steam Rolling for Sustainability

An interactive and performative work that results in the creation of nine banners that celebrate and educate on the commitment of UCL to sustainability. Use a steamroller to serve as a press and perform woodblock printmaking on to colourful fabric that will be suspended between the columns. Download PDF.

Niall McLoughlin (UCL Geography) - Symbiosis

Depicting the ideal interface between humans and nature to create a focal point for sustainability at UCL. At the centre three people lift up a globe together, each person representing the key components of sustainability - environment, economy and society. Download PDF.

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