Design Tectonics Models 2026

The Tectonics course at the LSA priorities model-making as a way of developing and demonstrating an understanding of the spatial consequences of construction issues. Student’s models thus capture both how the buildings are put together, and the character of the resultant spaces and forms. They also foster an enjoyment of architecture and an enjoyment of making.

Sarah Dinsmore

My model forms part of my thesis project, which explores how architecture can make time perceptible for people who experience space from a fixed position, such as bed-bound patients in a care or hospice setting.

The sectional model is a construction study of one of the room conditions. It tests how a wall and roof can be built up in layers to control light, shadow and atmosphere. The model exposes the different parts of the assembly: a timber structural core, a layered wall build-up, translucent elements, and an external slate-tile skin. I was interested in making the construction readable, rather than hiding it, so the model shows how the material layers work together to produce a specific spatial effect.

The white relief models are related studies of the courtyard as a clock. They test how the courtyard could become a temporal device rather than simply an external space. Using raised walls, edges, markers and cut-out forms, the models explore how sunlight could move across the courtyard surface and cast changing shadows throughout the day.

William Brooks

The project focuses on care leavers, young people required to become independent earlier than their peers, often without stable support. It proposes a housing and learning community that enables gradual independence through making and shared experience. Located within a historic builder’s yard in Bethnal Green, the scheme draws on its legacy of construction and repair. Architecture is used as a teaching tool, where materials, structure, and services are made visible. Workshops, shared spaces, and housing are integrated, positioning residents as active participants in the construction, maintenance, and ongoing life of their environment.

Emily Bradley

Unearthing the Murky: Reclaiming Urban Water Agency through the River Neckinger.

Water is recognised in the UK as a basic human right, defined as access to “sufficient, affordable, safe water for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene” (UK Government, 2006). This definition frames water as a controllable resource, detached from its wider ecological, cultural, and spatial potentials. ‘Uncovering the Murky’ challenges this position by asking the simple questions: what could water be beyond a resource? How might architecture enable cities to live with water rather than against it? Using the lost River Neckinger in Southwark as a site of investigation, the project tests how uncovering lost waterways can reconfigure relationships between humans, infrastructure, and more-than-human systems. Through research by design, this thesis explores how water can act as an active agent in shaping urban life, spatial practices, and environmental futures.

Bihi Mohamed

This tectonic model explores a roof transformation for Bridge Park Centre, reimagining the existing leisure complex as a cultural hub. On the left, the original structure, defined by triangular trusses, is retained as a framework for intervention. On the right, a new roof structure replaces the trusses, introducing a lighter system with integrated skylights. The new roof’s brings daylight deep into the plan and supports natural ventilation. The proposal works with the existing fabric while redefining it, using the roof to unify old and new spatial and environmental strategies.

Caspar Barker

This is a tectonic model illustrating a low carbon self-build construction system inspired by the work of Walter Segal. It is composed from a repetitive frame of standard dimensioned timber with cast Hempcrete infill. In this model specifically the system has been deployed to introduce new homes replacing garages between two typical semidetached suburban houses. This test forms part of a larger thesis exploring the delivery of suburban densification through planning policy reform.

James Read & Caspar Barker

The Red House located in Bexleyheath was designed by architect Philip Webb in 1859 for the celebrated textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist; William Morris. It was the first and only house that Morris ever commissioned, built, and lived in during his lifetime and it is considered by many, the earliest example of the ‘Arts and Crafts’ architectural style.

Webb’s design rejected ornamentation in favour of a celebration of the craft of construction itself. This sectional model focusses on the chimney and window seat build-up, which exemplify Webb’s attitude towards the celebration of craft, which came to define the Arts and Crafts movement.

James Read

The project explores how sites can better harness their waste streams to produce the built fabric of the new, through pre-cast rammed earth construction: a re-imagination of an ancient building technique that has answered the call during housing crises of bygone centuries.

Inspired by Boltshauser, Lehm Ton Erde, and BC Materials’ research on the material, the tectonic element of the project proposes a pre-cast rammed earth system ready to be deployed on the site of Smithfield Market in London, acting as a waste harvester for the incessant buzz of demolition and construction in the city.

Sam Wimbush

The project proposes a new model of mental health care, designed to move away from current large-scale institutional models toward something more domestic, embedding support within everyday urban life rather than isolating it in clinical settings. At its core, the project attempts to re-align the way in which we understand mental well-being as something that has spatial and architectural aspects.

Drawing on domestic settings and historical medical architecture, the scheme aims to create an environment for therapy, reflection, temporary residence, and care, rooted in nature and creating calm, legible spaces. The architecture has been imagined as a series of pavilions, embedded in a housing estate in Limehouse, carefully fitted around the existing structures, improving the site without displacing a single resident.

Tectonically, the design rests on the idea of repairability; the structure and materials chosen to either accept wear and patina in ways not interpreted as broken or otherwise be maintained easily. Something reflected in the exposed timber structure, designed as a clear, repetitive grid which can be easily adapted, patched and allowed to weather. Creating spaces that allow residents to feel truly connected to the spaces they occupy.

In doing so, the proposal challenges the separation of healthcare from daily life, suggesting that care can be easily embedded within communities, and that architecture itself plays active roles in shaping wellbeing. Calling for a shift in how we design architecture towards environments that actively participate in care.

Rachel Opie

Feeding Kilburn explores how deconstruction can become a method of architectural production. Working with the remains of the empty 1960s South Kilburn Estate, the project investigates how precast concrete panels and architectural fragments can be carefully recovered before demolition and reassembled to form new civic infrastructure. The model illustrates a segment of the Kilburn food hub, where salvaged materials form a patchwork architecture of reuse: part facade, part memory. Rather than treating demolition as waste, the project uses materials to carry forward the material identity of a threatened estate, transforming existing fabric into spaces for cooking and community exchange.