The Bartlett Summer Show 2011

The Summer Show is the highlight of the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture’s annual calendar. This diverse showcase is an opportunity to view the school’s best works of the past year at close range in the galleries of the UCL Slade School of Art.

Visitors should expect a a wide range of architectural visions. School Director Marcos Cruz describes the occasion as being “more like a fair than a curated exhibition”, reflecting the structure of the degree and diploma courses wherein students form ‘units’ with distinct interests and approaches. Each unit curates its own section of the show, allowing emphasis to shift rapidly from the scale of a mechanism to a masterplan, and for a diversity of drawings, models, objects, texts and films to coexist.

Cruz is keen to emphasise the human effort invested in the show: “There will be even more physical work than last year, which is very exciting. Something which makes the Bartlett Summer Show so extraordinary is the amount of crafting. Students use innovative techniques to construct their models, implying that the architecture they are producing is also constructed in an innovative way.”

Balancing these particular enthusiasms is a deep respect for draftsmanship. Cruz identifies a “huge tradition of drawing that exists within the school”, which continues to inspire practitioners and prospective students alike. It is no wonder that every room of the Bartlett is presently booked for students to sift through portfolios, making tough decisions over what can be included in the limited space of the final show.

The show will be opened by Itsuko Hasegawa, a seminal figure in Japan who was invited by newly-appointed Professor of Architecture Frédéric Migayrou, who greatly admires her work.

On Friday 1 July, Summer Show celebrations will spill out of the Slade galleries into the quadrangle, and the show will last until Saturday 9 July. Full details are available on the Bartlett website, and a report will follow on the UCL Events Blog.

Last year’s show was documented by ScanLAB as a full-colour 3D scan – view their video for a taste of what to expect in the coming weeks…