Architecture students on The Design is Research Studio are undertaking a two week long residency at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.

During the first week the students will occupy the gallery’s main ground floor spaces, transforming them into a live workshop in which they will make large, 1:1 building elements. These pieces will draw on their design work to date, exploring architectural ideas at a large scale through the act of making.

The pieces will address the theme of ‘Welcome’ and the context of the seaside town. During the week the students will be doing a series of talks, explaining their work to visitors to the gallery so that the space becomes a public laboratory of ideas and acts out the them of Welcome for real. The elements will then be displayed in the gallery the following week.

The workshop is a partnership between the School of Architecture and Design and the Towner Gallery and represents an important and exciting opportunity for students to engage in a public and high profile exhibition of their work. It continues the studio’s methodology of intense, design-focused workshops that develop individual approaches to architectural language, composition and form. The theme of Welcome was developed by the Towner in response to the studio’s site the year of the East Sussex coast and will challenge students to engage with the gallery’s audience and its role in the town of Eastbourne.

The workshop will run the week commencing 21st January with the work on display the week after. The studio will be supported and assisted throughout by Lewes-based sculptor Will Nash and SOAD’s Jim Wilson. The Design Is Research Studio is led by Professor Charles Holland who will also be doing a public talk at the gallery with Professor of Architecture and Head of School Robert Mull in the new year. Dates and further details to come.

The gallery director is Joe Hill and the workshop is being organised and run at their end by their Head of Learning Marina Castledine