RIGHT NOW WE all need a hug — so let's collectively embrace and share in congratulating everyone in coming through the endurances of the last five months and producing an extraordinary body of outstanding work
In architecture we concern ourselves with the making of spaces for people to convive, so it has been challenging to experience a city without people, and public life flattened to the screen surface. It has also been a reminder that learning happens in a social dimension where creative thinking and practice can thrive. Studio culture nurtures trust between us through the embodied actions of talking, drawing and making. The translation of many of these things into our online world has only reminded us of the power of physical places to shape experiences and stimulate our imaginations.

Our new ways of working have demanded resourcefulness and tenacity, drawing on the extraordinary dedication of staff to energise the online space. The transformative experience of studio culture is the centre of architectural education, and is a place where we can put aside outside pressures and commitments and let the imagination take hold. We have been very aware of the challenges our students have faced: the pressures of working at home in difficult situations; lost jobs and isolation.
Whatever the future holds we will savour the doing together, the talking, the 'making sense of things that in so many ways forms the heart of the studio. We have been inventive in our work now is the time for us to be creative with how we teach and interact; working out with fresh eyes how to work alone while being together.

Looking back to the start of the year we began as usual with goodbyes and welcomes: Duarte Santo left for Cornell, Sarah Milne for the Survey of London. and Alicia Pivaro for radical Highgate (though we have enjoyed her bedtime stories thanks to the AF). We welcomed Bo Muchemwa, Balveer Mankia, Ross Perkin, Katherine Leat and Florian Brillet to I st year Kirti Durelle to 2nd year and Michael Spooner to 3rd year.
London has, as even been the focus of project work the physical landscape of the city, its river and its tributaries, as well as its diverse cultural landscape. The question of climate change has been taken up by final year students, supported by a new approach from the Technical Studies team. The responses engage with not just the technical challenge but also its political, cultural and experiential dimensions.
I hope you enjoy the very diverse and rich work of the studios, both here in the following pages and online in the virtual exhibition.

Julian Williams
Course Leader