DKA Award Winner 2022
6 July 2022
Since 2005, DKA have sponsored the Digital Visualisation Prize at the University of Bath 4th Year End of Year Exhibition. Happily, we were able to attend in person again after a few years of digital judging. It was inspiring to see the range and quality of student work across the school of architecture and as ever, the job of selecting a winner was very tough.
The 2022 winner selected by our panel of judges is Emmanuel Chryssanthopoulos for his Crafts College, in Camden. Emmanuel’s work stood out amongst some strong contenders across the cohort. What drew our attention was the incredibly high standard and consistency of all the images and their ability to tell the story of the building through multiple drawings. We particularly enjoyed the detailed human inhabitation and clear consideration of the purposes of the various spaces that had been designed as part of the scheme.
The digital visualisation style itself was unique and had a tactile engaging feel sitting between a photo realistic CGI render and a hand drawn sketch. In places the materials of the building almost seemed to shimmer in the light. This balance of material, construction detailing, light and delight makes Emmanuel’s work a thoroughly deserved and engaging winner – congratulations; we wish you every success in practice!
Click Here to see a selection of Emmanuel’s fantastic images.
Emmanuel describes his scheme as follows:
“The vision for the Crafts College is to become a centre of the local community and catalyst for the social mobility of its disadvantaged inhabitants. It will achieve this through the training of the local population into craftsmen and women with the ability to build. Moreover, tapping into the rich vein of architects, engineers, developers, and other construction industry professionals that is present in the Camden Borough will create a vibrant and creative hub for the construction industry. Of course, the best way for the apprentices to train is through practical experience, and so the site will also act as a test bed for these many different disciplines to try out and perfect their trade, and of course learn from one another.”
“One must begin first by listening and learning from professionals before one is able to design. This dictated the positioning of the auditorium and the classroom spaces towards the main entrance. Even at the next stage, Design and Reflect, students will still be coming and going between classroom, design studio, and auditorium, and so the Teaching Block, orientated towards the entrance and in close proximity to the auditorium was formed.
As a student begins to progress further into their course and into the building, it is at this moment that the existing building and the prototyping hall is revealed, in the form of glimpses from the circulation path to the dedicated material workshops. This idea of the student being made aware of the applied and the cutting-edge side of craftsmanship (which the Prototyping Hall embodies) is key. This interaction, albeit brief, provides the student with the insight into where they are heading, and additionally, will hopefully inspire them before they then go into the material workshop for their practical classes. Finally, the student arrives to the light-filled, dedicated material workshops which sit at the Southern end of the site. These workshops consist of a double-height space for the positioning of large objects and a surrounding supporting mezzanine for smaller table-working.”
