Students create installations for global engineering practice’s London office refurbishment

At the end of a marathon day during which 23 students presented project work to BuroHappold Engineering’s top executives, four students from Diploma Studio 10 (DS10) at the University of Westminster were selected to build temporary installations for the global engineering practice’s soon to be refurbished London offices. The presentations were overseen by their tutors Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess, and Neil Billett, Andrew Best, Emma Greenough and James Solly from BuroHappold.

The winners of the competition were:

• Garis Iu (71 Newman Street window) with The Meander, an 12 meters long flowing  cluster of laser-cut curved origami filtering views on street level towards the reception area.
• Diana Raican (17 Newman Street window) with The Colliding Cubes,  a dramatic 5 meters wide wall suspended above the street and assembled with friction-based component dissolving through one another, parametrically designed to filter light and views.
• Joe Leach (17 Newman Street Staircase) with The Falling Leaves, an innovative laser-cut curved truss system assembled around a series of nodes holding a beautiful array of wooden leaves.
• Charlotte Yates (17 Newman Street separating screen) with The Jitterbug, a kinetic installation inspired by Buckminster Fuller and made from punch-pressed aluminium icosahedron opening and closing depending on space requirements.

The projects celebrate 40 years of innovative structural solutions from BuroHappold and the practice’s commitment to supporting education in the fields of architecture, engineering and digital fabrication and will have a lifespan of a year before the next DS10 intake follow the same process and vie for an exhibition space.

We would like to thank David Scott and Edward Lancaster from the University of Westminster’s Fabrication Laboratory for all their support.

Here are images of the winning designs. More news to come on the expected launch date.

The Meander by Garis Iu – DS10 Univeristy of Westminster for BuroHappold Engineering (led by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess)

The Colliding Cubes by Diana Raican – DS10 Univeristy of Westminster for BuroHappold Engineering (led by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess)

Jitterbug by Charlotte Yates – DS10 Univeristy of Westminster for BuroHappold Engineering (led by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess)

Falling Leaves by Joe Leach – DS10 Univeristy of Westminster for BuroHappold Engineering (led by Arthur Mamou-Mani and Toby Burgess)

The student work will join the permanent installation “Wooden Waves” designed by DS10 tutor Arthur Mamou-Mani. More information on this project may be found on http://mamou-mani.com/BuroHappold.

TheWoodenWaves by Mamou-Mani at 17 and 71 Newman Street.