Bartlett's Institute of Ideas

Former UCL architecture student Luke Chandresinghe (Diploma in Architecture 2004) is exhibiting work from his Diploma project at the Bartlett's next Lobby Gallery exhibition from 3 to 20 May 2005.

Each student on the Bartlett School of Architecture's postgraduate Diploma programme joins one of 12 units, each with its own structure and theme.

Luke's exhibition, 'The Institute of Ideas,' shows his portfolio produced during the final year of Diploma Unit 16 tutored by unit masters Simon Herron and Susanne Isa. The collection of drawings illustrates his ideas for a new Patent Office for the United Kingdom, entitled The Institute of Ideas.

"The institute consists of two hundred storage towers and expiration vessels which dominate the site of the Lea Valley in East London," explains Luke. "It houses all registered patents or 'ideas' in the UK for twenty year periods, continually expelling expired ideas and receiving newly registered patents."

Each storage vessel comprises of twenty chambers of ideas on each floor, with twenty storeys in each vessel, one for each year the idea is protected. Patents rise one storey per year until it reaches the top. Luke adds: "On the expiry date of the patent, it is released and transferred to the expiration vessel where it can be blown across the terrain. The surrounding landscape is a junkyard, market and forum for discussion of old ideas where intellectual scavengers steal, recycle, sell and buy expired inventions."

The exhibition is held at the Bartlett School of Architecture, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1 and is open Monday to Friday from 9.30am-8pm and Saturdays 10am-4pm.

To find out more about the Bartlett use the link below.

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UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture