UCL at the Lord Mayor's Show

The incoming Lord Mayor, Ian Luder, is a UCL Economics graduate, and UCL is entering a float in the Lord Mayor's Show, on Saturday 8 November 2008.

Designed and organised by the UCL Bartlett School, the float will consist of a giant LCD screen showing a specially made video about UCL, and accompanied by 20 students from BSc Architecture Year 1.

For the main video, Nic Clear (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture) has worked with a former Unit 15 student, Michael Aling, to produce a short animated film that outlines the history of UCL.

The text and images that make up the narrative of the film have been 'mapped' into the spaces of UCL, so that the story comes alive within the buildings of UCL itself. This effect is achieved by using sophisticated post-production techniques that allow the makers to create a 'virtual' UCL from photographs of the existing building and then animating and transforming the spaces of the building.

Additional films by current Unit 15 students Richard Bevan, Nancy Ni Bhriain and Keiichi Matsuda will also be shown.

On the float will be 20 UCL Bartlett students (from BSc Architecture Year 1) dressed in UCL t-shirts, emblazoned with various facts about UCL.

Nic Clear runs Unit 15, a postgraduate architecture unit at the UCL Bartlett that specialises in using film, video and animation in the generation, development and representation of architectural ideas and spaces. Unit 15 has been using moving image for more than ten years and many student films have been shown at international film festivals and won numerous awards and prizes. A recent Unit 15 student, Nicholas Tayler, is being exhibited as part of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the Liverpool Biennale.