The BEAM Project - Real Life Complexity in a Design Studio Context

The cumulative forces in the architecture live project make for a complex environment for the student to negotiate and inhabit. This paper advocates that the architecture live project is more demanding for students than is normally acknowledged in architecturaleducation and proposes that careful calibration of the multifaceted and potentially contradictory factors is required for appropriate and successful student experience, assessment and client satisfaction. The factors for consideration are well known, the most prominent amongst them being; client requirements and interface, procurement methodology, site specificity, group and collaborative working and cost. Taken singularly each can be responded to effectively by the student, taken accumulatively the live project becomes a greater synthesis and challenge generating both virtues and pitfalls. This is demonstrated through a Leeds Metropolitan University postgraduate architecture live project; the design of a pavilion providing additional flexible space for an arts organisation in Wakefield, England undertaken by 9 students in October 2013. To facilitate deeper understanding and exploration of the stated aims and acknowledge the contribution of students in the making of the live project this paper embraces student reflection of the experience.