A glimpse into the academic process of training to become an architect.

1. Alun Dolton MA Dip Arch ARB - Academic Works 1993 - 2003
Architect Urban Designer Masterplanner

2. The Urban Landscape
The built environment being part of landscape
and landscape being part of well everything...
Katherine moore telling a story of visiting a site
with a developer, and him saying that there is
nothing there, and Katherine’s response was,
why? Did the world suddenly de-materialise at
that point?
The project is about forming a spine that linked
the two railway stations, a continuous object
that passed though, over and under existing
structures that make up the site, linking all the
where people would want to be.
20 Degrees of Difference
Taking a 20 degree segment of city emanating
from the centre of the Rotunda and exploring
the urban environment withing that sector,
taking in the dead spaces as a result of the
Inner Ring Road, under the Rotunda, along
High Street and therough to Masshouse Circus.
The project became centred on advertising
billboards, shopping culture and energy usage
in the city, trying to visualise making a car city
car free, suggesting that the environment of the
city could be used to generate power through
buildings.
Cleansing the Industrial Void
The site for this project was Digbeth, on
a vacant site next to the Custard Factory,
abandoned except for few cars. The project
was about a support structure to hold the
decaying elements of city together, forming
an urban oasis a, tranquil zone where people
could rejuvenate themselves, through using
the facilities, creating a focus within the
industrial wreckage that would breath life into
the industrial void. The building itself a steel
tube structure, with water running through
them, connected to solar panels on the roof,
to heat all the, spaces and facilities.
Crit Wall
BA 109S First Year Exploratory Project
Shared unit with BA Landscape: 1994
BA 107/108 Design from Experience
First Year Design Project: 1994
BA 110/111/112 First Year
Major Comprehensive Design Project: 1994
I arrived at Birmingham School of Architecture
in September 1993 under a bit of a
Technician, having worked in an Architectural
Practice since leaving school in 1987,
completing ONC and then HNC in Building
Studies on the part time course at South
Devon College of Arts and Techology. I was
accustomed to scoring 85% in assignments,
thinking I was invincible, this should be easy. I
remember showing examples of my work that
I had done in practice to my fellow students,
they were impressed, but I was told by our
tutor ‘great drawings, but that is building,
not Architecture’. He also told us at the very
beginning of the course that Architecture is
about people, not buildings...it did come as bit
of a shock to me at the time.
a broad foundation to the study of architecture
and landscape architecture in the context
of the urban condition. With many projects
being based on aspects of the 1960’s modern
urban core that makes up Birmingham city
centre, the industrial voids in the city and
surrounding areas. Throughout the course,
units were aimed at reading and interpreting
the non-designed and designed environment,
supported by an introduction to a wide range
of representational media. All studio units were
centred around presentation and discussion of
ideas in a crit environment.
These are all projects that have been pinned
up, presented, shot down, and learned from.
The selected projects included show areas of
BA Hons Architecture 1993-1996
Introduction

3. Layers of Change
The study area for the project is Digbeth,
centred on the Custard Factory, that is. The site
is adjacent to the crossing of the River Rea,
which as a bit of research revealed the origin of
the foundation of Birmingham.
The Exploratory Project is an investigation of
the layers that make up the urban fabric and the
effects of the burning out of the industrial city
on the urban environment proposes a series of
interventions that emphasise the layering and
explores the process that the city has been through.
The Dynamics of Rowing
End of year project: Riverside Pavilion.
Opposite Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
upstream from Stratford boat club. On the
site of existing bowls club on bank of river
Avon. New rowing and Bowls clubhouse for
Stratford upon Avon Boat Club and Bowls club
respectively. Accommodation of programs
associated with rowing events, bowls, training,
specialised storage, clubhouse/sports pavilion.
Expression of movement and energies
connected with rowing. Investigation of boat
building techniques and technology transfer to
architecture.
Welcome to Walsall
Investigation of activities associated with
travel, arrival, departure, comfort, aimed at
encouraging people to use public transport.
Proposal: Pavilions in the park, development
of park as ‘welcome mat’ for town, treatment of
individual activities associated with bus travel,
waiting, meeting, along with those associated
with spare time, dining, browsing, milling
about whilst waiting, etc. Superimposition of
unifying structure. New program comprising,
coffee shop, gallery, communications centre,
facilities.
Fourth Dimension
Exploratory Project: ‘4’: Representation the of
dynamic nature of the city, through studying the
medium of photography, assemblage, drawings
and models. Capturing the 4th dimension.
BA 212 Second Year
Design Studio Themed Project: 1995
BA 209/210/211 Second Year
Design of Small Public Building Comprehensive
Design Project: 1995
BA 303/304 Third Year
Space and Occasion Design Project: 1995
BA 308 Third Year
Design Studio Themed Project: 1996

4. Transitional Space and the City.
The site is a Satellite campus to the East Birmingham
College, the courses offered are diverse and
comprehend the needs of the immediate surrounding
community. The area is a planted ‘model village’
developed in the second half of the eighteenth century
following the success of Bourneville. This village
however appears to have proved unsuccessful,
with community life apparently suffering as a result.
There is a pressing need to inject the life back into
the community, a need which can be addressed by
this project which could form a new centre of the
community, to build a nucleus around which new life
can revolve. A new educational and cultural centre
will give life to the community.
Transitional Space and Education
From an early age we are in a state of transition,
we are continually learning, we work towards
an educational goal, when we reach that goal,
it becomes the foundation for our next stage of
education in which new goals are set. Education is a
journey on which we gain knowledge along the way,
we achieve a heightened awareness as we process
more information.
Environmental Approach
The street frontage of the site faces south, and the
solar orientation is used to control the environment
within the building. The glazed south facade acts
as a heat collector, backed up by a masonry wall
Crit WallCrit Wall
BA 309/310/311/312 Third Year
Major Comprehensive Design Project: 1996
BA Hons Architecture 1993-1996

5. that acts as a heat store, in a passive solar design
similar to a Trombe wall. Excess heat is directed to
a tower that acts as a solar stack to exhaust stale
air. The ventilation system works by drawing cooler
glazed facade and associated masonry wall creates a
trasition space that acts as a shop window to address
the street scene, an exhibition space, a circulation
spine and informal meeting space.
The tower is inhabited by an observation pod at the
top. The concept of the observation pod grew out of
the sense that the site is out on a limb from the city
which is exaggerated by the lack of visibility of the
city skyline. A section taken through the land form
level it would be possible to see the city skyline
and the features of the surrounding area. The
observation pod acts as a receiver which collects
and feeds energy into the site and the education
process. At present information technology is being
used to create cultural entities such as virtual reality,
cyberspace and the World Wide Web, taking the
working title of the Web Centre, the site could be
seen as the centre of the World Wide Web, as any
Web Site can be.
The observation pod affords the use of information
technology to teach the user about the actual reality
of the built environment in which they live. This is
achieved by backing up information gained by the
user through what is viewed via the telescope, with
information about the site that they have focused on.
skyline they use the same point
and click method that is used by
many computer programmes, where
to obtain more information the user
simply presses a button when the
cursor is on the window that they wish
to view.
Solar collectors harness the sun’s
energy and feed it into the building, to
heat the water and assist in heating
the spaces. Electrical energy is
generated by the wind turbine and fed
into a capacitor in the basement of the
building and stored for consumption
by the electrical appliances within the
whole building

6. Crit Wall
UK-ISES Headquarters, Doncaster
The aim of this project is to produce a landmark
in sustainable building, in essence to develop
a stage to demonstrate the potential in
sustainable architecture and the technologies
involved. The project has developed following
three main strategies:
1. Sustainability of the materials used in the
construction process.
2. Solar Energy how it can be harnessed,
stored and used withing the building and
its environment.
3. How the building makes the best use of
the energy available.
The Origin of Spaces
Shrewsbury is a town situated on the border of
England and Wales with a long history dating
back to the Roman occupation in founding of
the town of Ucronium. The town has marks of
the Norman conquest, manifested in the castle,
and has many buildings surviving from the
medieval period, it has a grand railway station
and exhibits the wealth of the Victorian era in
classical buildings following the Renaissance in
Italy. It is also the birthplace of Charles Darwin
who is memorialised in a statue outside the
library, and whose name is given to a sad mock
‘Tudorbethan’ shopping centre.
Two Way Street
Shrewsbury and the theory of evolution. A long
section is cut through the town and manifested
in a model, that links the English bridge and the
Welsh bridge, a vista of experience, exhibiting
the town as a dynamic object. Sites are
selected for interventions that demonstrate the
transient nature of cities, where life has moved
on leaving the buildings out of context. One
such site is St Julians Craft Centre, situated
in a former church with a Gothic Tower and
a Classical nave here interventions into the
fabric demonstrates the urban evolution that
has occurred by reprogramming the spaces.
Theatre of Memory
An intervention into the Bull Ring Centre, that
is developed through a series of studies of life
within the area of city that is characterised by
the 1960s ring road and shopping centre. From
Calvino there is no city without the lives of the
abstraction from individual frames a series of
drawings are made, superimposed creating a
composite map of the activities of the people in
the space. Through a process of deconstruction
a construct is made that could be reinserted
into the city as an events venue that becomes
part of the very life of the city.
Post Graduate Diploma Architecture 1997-1999
Dip 404/405 Fourth Year
Interest Assignment and Design Project: British Steel
Architectural Student Award Competition: 1997
Dip 501 Fifth Year
Building Design Project: 1997
Dip 501 Fifth Year
Building Design Project & Dip 514 Production
Information: 1997
Dip 516/517 Fifth Year
Specialist Design Project: 1998

7. The Med Deck
Developes from a strategy to tackle fear of
hospitals from a child’s point of view. Space
capsules are suspended above the ground
overlooking a lake, linked back to a service
spine that accommodates consulting rooms,
structure that supports the capsules sits on the
ground extremely lightly to allow the natural
habitat to grow around the structure. Towers act
as solar energy receivers, the lake is used for
in the control of separate environments.
The Beaubourg Experiment
The Paris of 1998 is a far different place to
the Paris of 1968, as it will be different to the
Paris of 2028. The physical context changes
very little, but the cultural context will render
the Paris of 1968 almost unrecognisable to the
the Urban Grain in 1977, it was not intended
but will be accepted as part of it in the future. In
1977 Centre Pompidou did address the cultural
context of the time.
Reconstructing Memory
From ‘Full on and Flat out in New York’:-
Battery Park City to the south, or is it Southend-
on-Sea, Brighton or Bournemouth with its pier
and sea front pavilions. Walking between the
wedding cakes of wall street, the spaces narrow
the world? On the return, travelling beneath the
Hudson river and into New Jersey. Manhattan
Empire State Building and the Twin Towers of
the World Trade Centre fade in the mist as they
fade into memory.
The City’s Memory
How could the city’s archive be made in such
a way that this process is open and visible
that could make it unique to Birmingham? The
archive needs to address the public realm,
it needs to be able to present revolutionary
discoveries so they can be of interest to a
seven-year-old who is used to learning through
watching television or playing computer games.
How will the future’s children respect history?
Is the library a stuffy institution with dusty old
books and dusty old librarians?
Dip 512 Fifth Year.
Advanced Communications/CAAD. British Steel
Architectural Student Award Competition 1998
Dip 507/508 Fifth Year
Dissertation: 1998
Dip 506 Fifth Year
Exploratory Graphics: 1998
Dip 509 Fifth Year
Design Approaches, Advanced Architectural Design:
1998

8. Crit Wall
Archive 4 Birmingham
The philosophical approach to the project
is aimed at reinforcing the citizen’s Identity
and by doing so taking archives into the next
millennium. It represents an exploration of role
of the ‘library’ in the future and by extension
the role of the book as a bearer of information.
The starting point is the requirement to house
the archive of the city library, essentially the
city’s memory, this is not just about placing
documents in a box, this is a highly serviced
environment, different books, documents,
documents and artefacts are stored in
conditions to protect them from further decay so
that they are preserved for future generations.
Different objects require different support
infrastructures, for example a book is easily
readable and movable, the only restriction being
the controls placed upon it by the institution.
Photographs need to be stored in specialised
conditions; there is a requirement for some
photographs to be stored at temperatures of
exposed to light.
In considering these observations, a major
challenge is that the city’s memory is public
property, that is every inhabitant regardless of
age sex or ethnic origin has the right to access.
To discover events of the past that shaped their
city. The issue of affording public access to
objects that are safely locked away from light
access to three hundred year old documents?
For example the city library has an internet site,
the catalogue to the archive is accessible from
anywhere in the world. at the time of exploring
the brief anyone in the world (provided they have
internet access) could view pages from James
Watt’s notebook explaining the discovery that
the latent heat of steam could be harnessed,
a discovery that contributed to the start of the
industrial revolution – BCL website 1998.
This is a key discovery in Birmingham’s
development, James Watt was a member of
the Lunar Society, a group of key thinkers of
the time who met once a month to exchange
ideas to gain momentum of industrial progress.
By extension this discovery led to increased
travel, trade, production, colonisation and the
establishment of the British Empire, the world
view changed, colonisation led to immigration
and the start of what we now term a multi-
cultural society. This demonstrates that there is
Post Graduate Diploma Architecture 1996-1999
Dip 510/511 Sixth year
Advanced Architectural Design: 1998

9. a cause and effect relationship between place
and events and what gets recorded and later
regarded as history.
by establishing its purpose in relation to the
archive as a containerof information as a point
of departure, the project investigates what is
not a neutral entity; and taking information as
a subjective representation of the events that
shape the city. In this context the design sets
out to express the processes involved in the
making of an archive, from the generation and
recording of information, to the selection and
storage of the information that is to make up
the archive.
The project manifests itself through four
elements; the stack, the active wall, the
interface with the archive and the interface
with the city. There are four stacks making up
a huge computerised racking system, a kinetic
sculpture, in essence a giant data warehouse;
archive items are stored in stainless steel
time capsules which are then retrieved at
will by the public, the four stacks differentiate
between specialist archive materials: paper,
each requiring specialist conditions to facilitate
the event of retrieval.
The interface with the archive is made through
the provision of specialist reading areas, whilst
the interface with the city involves cafes that act
as an energy harness where people can come
to eat, drink, talk, look and access the catalogue
to the archive through the internet.
The active wall is the unifying element forming
a backdrop to the events being supported by
the archive facilities. Live images from around
the city are projected onto the wall along
with images if activities within the wall, such
as conservation and sorting of elements. In
conclusion the project takes the archive out
of its container where people can come to
discover or rediscover the city.

10. Crit Wall
MA Architecture Design and Theory 1999-2003
Having completed the Post Graduate Diploma
in Architecture, there was a sense that there
into architectural education from a technical
background with 5 years experience of working
in architectural practice, already knowing
how buildings go together, relearning in the
academic environment was far slower than
previously experienced and the theoretical
exmination as to why we build, and how we
interact with the living environment of the city
was stunted by the requirement to produce a
building.
In previous years there was the opportunity
to continue the Post Graduate Diploma for a
thesis project and submit the work to gain a
Masters Degree. At the time the school was
not offering the same facility. A small group of
us elected to undertake a full Masters Degree
part time as a separate course, amid many
questioning us as to why do an MA when it
is all about going into practice, and for many
essentially experiencing the realities of the
RIBA Part 2 Graduate, with only one year of
work experience gained during the year out.
Due to work commitments and the pressure
to gain RIBA Part 3 as soon as possible, the
2 year course became 4 years for submission
work and been awarded the Masters Degree
answer is absolutely! The investigation into the
social, political and cultural context in which we
operate has opened up architecture from the
making of buildings, to planning entire cities.
DT2 Analysis, Criticism and Methods: 2000
Schizophrenia of the New Street Complex
The metaphor of mental illness is uesd to
describe the condition of the site that represents
and the user. The multiple programs of the
City Centre, Palisades shopping centre, New
Street Station, are forced into the same space.
A mish mash of these converge on the ramp
that runs from the Junction of New Street and
Corporation Street, up to the entrance to the
Palisades past a huge Mc Donald’s.
The drawings oncentrate on reresenting events
and settings, investigating how humans are
behaving in these settings, the study moves
from analysing the spaces and structure that
is holding them together (or is it apart) and
focuses on how people are being affected by
the cmplex that they are moving through. .
A white line drawn down the centre of the
order to assist this, signs and electronic voices
constantly remind pedestrians to keep left, half
way up (or down, depending on your direction
of travel) Mc Donald’s happens, what seems
like hundreds of people spill out, to crash into
the hoards of people moving up the ramp. Bad
luck if you actually want to go down the ramp!
After recovering from the Mc Donald’s incident
shopfronts interrupt it. Into the Palisades, the
deliberate criss crossing of peoples’ paths
breeds more collisions.
The story continues, encountering more
reacting to situations as a result of being forced
through the same series of spaces.
Introduction

11. DT5 Theoretical Approaches: 2001
Continuity and Extension
the railway, there are events that caused the
railway to be part of the city. The site before the
arrival of the railway is shown on maps as being
part of a medieval town. The map is drawn
giving preference to activities centred around
the ‘Bull Ring’ and St. Martins church. The most
prominence is given to the manor house, the
ancient seat of power of the Lord Birmingham.
Through reading Lewis Mumford. - ‘The
postulates of Utilitarianism’ from ‘The City in
History’, and through studying ancient maps of
the city, it is apparent that the city is never a
blank canvas, it is a continuation of the previous
city.
The railway is ‘cut’ into the fabric of the city, in
time it has caused those areas directly adjacent
to decay and has produced dead areas. The
investigation continues to explore the Zeitgeist
from nineteenth century programs of commerce
and industry creating the need for the railway to
plunge into the life of the city, to twentieth century
programs of trying to deal with the impacts, the
Futurists in Italy, the Constructivist in the Soviet
Union, the Modernists in France and Germany
Anthropological study
The second reading of the site starts through
photography, then manipulating the images to
concentrate on the way the space impacts on
the users, ‘space violating bodies’ - (Tschumi),
and explores the intended and unintended
events that occur on a daily basis. Arriving and
departing on trains, queuing for tickets, the
air of anxiety, waiting, buying, selling, eating,
begging, taxis dropping off, waiting, picking
up, and the numbers of people trying to rush
through the whole scene where all these events
are occuring sumultaneously.
Formal Study
The third reading of the site in terms of the built
form, investigating the different programmatic
elements, and their relation to each other.
Although not intended as a design project,
sections were drawn to explore concepts,
investigate how collision between different
programs could be resolved and provide a
vehicle for futher investigation. In recognising
that the site is a living organism it is not a
case of redesigning the complex, it is one of
understanding how and why it has come into
being, and understanding the social context
that any intervention will need to address.