Lock in with BA Design for Future Living

Watch 

George Clarke’s Council Housing Scandal – an informative documentary about housing provision and affordable in the UK today and looking at some exemplary projects at home and abroad.

Find out about how living is changing: there are a range of short documentaries and lectures online about fantastic housing projects around the UK and beyond. The Guardian has a series of films exploring how we live now; The Architecture Foundation YouTube channel has lectures on historic examples Walter’s Way and The Barbican; and there are other films on innovative approaches such as Wikihouse, Marmalade Lane Co-housing and the Passivhaus Sterling Prize Winning Goldsmiths Street.

Start snapping 

How do people make a house a home? Document a digital catalogue of homes you walk past on a journey you take frequently. Look how people personalise their homes through door colours, porches, plants, objects in windows, even their house number. Try to compose your photos in the same way and capture as many different examples as you can and crop each photo to exactly the same size. Click 

Sketch

Sketch everyday – build up a series of sketches of place in and around your home. What are the sizes and shapes of spaces? What makes them feel like home? Think about what they are made of, what furniture is in them, where the light falls and how they are used.

Find out about orthographic projection. Draw a kitchen utensil in top view (aka plan), front view and side view (aka elevations) at a scale of 1:2 (half real-life size). Use just a pencil and a ruler to construct the drawing. Click here for some guidance!

Measure

Measure yourself or someone you live with standing, walking and sitting to create a series of simple ergonomic charts of human proportions and movement. click here for some tips!

Add to your reading list

Read anything. Read everything. Housing is in the news, architectural press and across the web all the time. Look at different viewpoints, remember to compare what you are reading to alternative sources – what you want is a balanced view that takes into consideration the attitudes of different cultures. You might even want to try writing about the things you feel strongly about, and this could be in the form of a short story, essay or perhaps a blog that you can add to.

Create a collage

Create a conceptual collage using scrap materials or cut up magazines to explore what a space in your idea home would be like.

Listen to podcasts 

A podcast on design, culture and the city. There are loads out there, frequently updated with useful insights across a range of subjects, 99% Invisible is one of the best, looking at the impact of design on everyday life across a huge range of topics.

Get connected 

@BCU_DfFL