Bartlett Student Awarded Grant for Norman Foster 2022 Energy Workshop

The week-long workshop, which runs from 25–29 April, is organised by the Norman Foster Foundation, and will bring together international experts from diverse fields, with ten granted scholars selected among brilliant students worldwide. The workshop will include introductory sessions, seminars, open discussions, working sessions, cultural visits, a final presentation and public debates.

The workshop will generate tangible results from design solutions to building systems or material applications that can be further developed. The aim is to generate proposals and innovations for future projects both in and outside of the Foundation, presented to a jury composed of academic body members and Trustees of the Norman Foster Foundation.

Callum is completing his fifth year of Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2), and was selected among nine other students from around the world after applying for the scholarship. His application included excerpts of his Master's project, ‘The Ministry of the Inevitable’, which resonated with the themes of the workshop brief. Callum is studying in PG13, tutored by Sabine Storp and Patrick Weber.

‘The Ministry of the Inevitable’

Callum Richardson, Architecture MArch, PG13, Y5

The Ministry of the inevitable is a speculative governmental office of research and governance on climate-related issues worldwide and poses the question: are we too late? The architecture embodies this emerging sense of urgency and invites discussion, action and awareness through personal experience.

Situated directly south of the Isle of Thanet in Pigwell/Sandwich Bay in Kent, the site has a rich precedent of catalysing discussion on climate change in the UK after the 1956 flood. The Isle of Thanet embodies this increasingly tenuous relationship between land and sea, having historically been separated from the mainland multiple times. Careful examination of the site behaviour and conditions drive the Ministry’s form – a combination of buildings that turn to ruin over decades. The building stimulates a hybrid environment of light, flexible structural elements, the landscape and flow of water are integrated into the building.

The trajectory of the architecture meets that of the environment – some of the buildings move with the changing coast, others are left to ruin and decay, thus imbuing a sense of irony and urgency, and a call to action if it is not already too late.

More information

• Find out more about the Norman Foster Foundation Energy Workshop
• Find out more about Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Images: 'The Ministry of the Inevitable' by Callum Richardson, Architecture MArch, PG13, Y5