The Farrell Review and Assembly Studios

We proudly present this article by Sir Terry Farrell talking about the Farrell Review. We think our Creative Assembly could be ideal as Virtual Urban Room System!


Written by Sir Terry Farrell CBE
This week senior representatives from over 20 institutions and agencies involved in the built environment will be meeting at the Design Council to discuss “The Farrell Review: What Next?”. It seems like a good time to reflect on progress so far including a number of potential ‘pilot’ projects which aim to demonstrate how the recommendations can work in practice.

The review was very broad in scope covering early education in schools, professional education, adult outreach, skilling up decision makers, proactive planning and design quality, cultural heritage, economic benefits and built environment policy. It was also independently funded and is independent of party politics having engaged with Labour’s shadow Culture Minister and All Party Parliamentary Groups.

There were 60 recommendations in total aimed at central and local government, professional and cultural institutions, built environment agencies including architecture centres, the media and PLACE professionals (using the acronym for Planning, Landscape, Architecture, Conservation and Engineering). The aim was to create a road map for everyone involved to play their part and help bring about the culture change that is needed – making architecture and the built environment a major public issue like health or food. As the review is so broad, the intention was always for action to be taken from the ‘bottom up’ and to be dispersed and disaggregated.

One of the most significant developments is the intention of Bristol to act as a ‘test bed’ for the review’s recommendations under the leadership of Mayor and architect George Ferguson. Some of the recommendations that could be implemented on a ‘city wide’ basis in cities like Bristol include training planning committee members and highway engineers in design literacy; forming a multi-disciplinary PLACE review panel to review existing places like high streets, mega hospitals or housing estates and creating an urban room with a model to explore the past, present and future of that place.

Similar interest has been expressed by Kent School of Architecture to explore how they could act as a pilot for the review. Recommendations including a broad foundation course in the PLACE subjects; exchanges with construction training courses; adding business planning, development economics, retrofitting and refurbishment to course content as well as apprenticeships and sandwich courses to make architecture more accessible will be the subject of ongoing discussions with them.

The Greater London Authority, who responded to the consultation for the review about skills and resources within local authority planning departments, are interested in the acronym PLACE to better describe the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of the built environment. Design South East have also indicated their supported for rebranding their design review service as PLACE review to ensure it is more collaborative and broader in scope. In Southwark, the Shad Thames Area Management Partnership (STAMP) believe they could provide a “test bed” for how the outreach ideas might be implemented benefitting from the active engagement of councillors, residents and businesses as well as the neighbouring Business Improvement District
Virtual urban rooms will be on the agenda at one of many workshops on the Farrell Review organised by
 Urban Design Group on the 22^nd May and Assembly Studios has expressed an interest in using their online creative network platform as a potential Virtual Urban Room System (www.creativeassemblyuk.com).

Other workshops and seminars focusing on next steps and are being organised by the Design Network (with speakers including the Government’s Chief Construction Advisor and Mathew Carmona of UCL Bartlett) as well as regional events in Yorkshire, Manchester and Newcastle.

At the recent event in Birmingham, locations were identified for a potential urban room and the architecture centre MADE is in discussions with the local authority about offering PLACE review services in return for skilling up decision makers in design and placemaking.

For school education, there is a consensus emerging that the ‘open source’ website www.engagingplaces.org.uk is the right platform to provide teacher training toolkits and lesson plans on a national basis. We will be appealing to the government and the institutions to support the development of this website so that the built environment can be taught through many different subjects at the earliest age possible.

For more information about the review, including PDF downloads, visit www.farrellreview.co.uk.

Assembly Thinking - The Future of Design?

We would like to introduce a new section of our blog which is Assembly Thinking. This is where team members of Assembly will for example share their thoughts on latest developments in the industry. We hope you  enjoy the read! 

'Move Over Product Design, UX Is The Future': This insightful article from Rick Wise, CEO of Lippincott, really struck a chord with us here at Assembly. The article details the rise of 'Experience Innovation' – developing and refining the customer experience to give them the very best service a company can offer. Using real-world examples from companies working in all different sectors, from car service Uber to well known brands such as Nike and Disney, the article sets out the most important things to remember when crafting a customer experience. 

For us at Assembly, so much of what it means to be a 'brand' is now defined by the customer experience and meeting the needs and expectations of consumers, that experience innovation should be a key component in any brand exercise. Visual identity systems that blend with a clear company vision and perfectly sculpted customer experiences are signalling a new era in corporate branding: bring on the Experiential Age!

(Comment by Rosi Digne-Malcolm, Junior Designer)

Zaha Hadid Building Assembly Worked on Nominated for Best Building of the Year

A while ago our CG team worked on the below CG Image for The Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku (Azerbaijan). 

 

The elaborate building has now been nominated for the Best Architectural Design of the Year by the Design Museum. Designed by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher, it stands out in Baku, a city with its fair share of white elephant architecture. "Elaborate undulations, bifurcations, folds and inflections modify this plaza surface into an architectural landscape that performs a multitude of functions. The building blurs the conventional distinctions between architectural object and urban landscape, building envelope and urban plaza, interior and exterior," say jury members. Our fingers are crossed!

Get in touch with charlotte@assemblystudios.co.uk if you want to know more about our CG services!

Things we like - PART #04

Memory as time travel: Artist Chino Otsuka superimposes her adult self into images of her childhood in her delightful yet haunting series Imagine Finding Me.

 

 (Selected by Rosi Digne-Malcolm, Junior Designer)

Things we like - PART #03

A very cool video sequence created using 88 still images of a building in Munich. Click the image below to watch the film.

(Shared by Ross Cunningham, Creative Director)

Season's Greetings from the Assembly Studios Team

Wintry wishes from all at Assembly Studios! One of the best things about the holiday season is the opportunity to say THANK YOU to all of our clients and partners - it's because of you that we have had the chance to keep pushing boundaries whilst working with inspiring people!


May the wonder of the holiday season stay with you throughout the coming year!

Dodgeball and Christmas

"If you're going to become true dodgeballers, then you've got to learn the five d's of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge!"

Well, we learned this before our game - what we hadn't been prepared for was the pain that comes after dodgeball! 4 days after our match, the lift in our building is finally less frequented again, as the pain slowly gets better. The aching legs gave painful Christmas shopping a whole new meaning on the weekend for some of us! 

But enough of the apocalyptic scenario - we did actually have great fun playing Cobras versus Average Joe's! Here are our teams:

Cobras

Average Joe's

Here you can see us in action, so that you know that the pain didn't come from nothing, but from full use of physical strength:

Calvin going for it

Fighting for balls

Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge!

 















Good shall triumph - so the Average Joe's beat the Cobras 8 games to 10. We all ended the day together in a Shoreditch bar. It didn't get much less competitive, but in the end, we're all friends :)

Calvin and Pawel in their next competition

Merry Christmas!