Arts Degree Show 2022

VOLUME ZERO 2022

Volume Zero is our attempt to create a new narrative for Architecture and Education based on sustainable and responsible choices, saving of resources, reuse, ecology, wellbeing and displaced communities. The Degree Show tells the chronicle of becoming designer at university and symbolically presents fresh architectural understanding in symbiosis with maturely articulated spatial awareness.

Three years after our first Volume Zero exhibition, in 2019, we are pleased to celebrate again in person our students’ achievements.

This year's projects covered the major issues of climate change, the reuse of derelict housing in Ipswich and the social and economic agenda of temporary and displaced communities in Suffolk.

The third year’s projects looked at architectural responses to displacement, understood both as a violent act that forces entire communities out of their homes following wars, natural disasters and socio-economic reasons, but also at the idea of local displacement, with the forced displacement of entire vulnerable communities out of the public eye. The recognition of displacement as a contemporary form of urban violence and the architects’ responses guided the students in their research and projects.

The third-year projects covered two areas, one urban, in central London, the other semi-rural, between the banks of the River Orwell. In the urban environment, the students tackled the themes of wellbeing and care, designing a building for the psychological support of cancer patients, based on the experiences of Maggie’s Centres. The second project, created on the Ipswich area of the River Orwell, is a ‘Living Bridge’, an investigation into the relationship between individuals, communities and the mobile element. After the historical research of the great living bridges (Ponte Vecchio, Pulteney Bridge, but also the more recent projects of Zaha Hadid for London and Yona Friedman for Paris) the students tackled the theme of “Architectural Crossing”.

Finally, the first-year students' project explored the design of a Ravintolapäivä, a typical example of House/Restaurant hybridisation, which in Finland makes it possible to transform the home, the domain of private par excellence, into a public space based on the exchange of food, experiences, ideas, narratives.

Volume Zero is our journey, our responsibility, and our commitment.

Volume Zero is in the Foyer of The Hold, 22-29 June 2022.

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We are thrilled that this year our students are able to present their Degree Show Translations to the public throughout the top floor studios in the Arts Building at University of Suffolk. This exciting exhibition of work is the culmination of several years of experimentation with materials and processes, as well as testing out ideas and theoretical positions. Here, the graduating students translate their points of view, concerns and enthusiasm about the world in which we live into visual and audio manifestations; provoking discussion about loss of natural habitat and species, sense of place, materialism and self.  

We are proud at the University of Suffolk to offer bespoke support that nurtures each individual student’s talents. This is particularly apparent in the shifting dynamic which makes every end of year show unique. This cohort of Fine art students is no exception as they present work with a wide variety of materials from deconstructed found and everyday objects, oil on canvas, screen-printed clay slip, botanical illustration, yarn, projected image and sound.  

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Ben Leckie

This year’s graduate show in photography is the first on campus since the pandemic. The students in this show have shown great resilience to complete their studies through these challenging times. This has resulted in each producing a significant and new body of work based on academic rigor and visual curiosity. Sometimes drawing on familiar art and photographic tropes, such as portraiture and landscape, much of the work this year explores our relationship and engagement with contemporary society, and photography, through the photographic image. 

Some of the photographs are challenging whilst others have a sense of deliberation and quietness, all of them, both individually and collectively, however, reflect and encompass the world we inhabit today.

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Dylan Winstone