The Thesis project at the Leicester School of Architecture marks the completion of work leading to RIBA Part 2. It is a comprehensive and challenging project, in which the student is required to conceive of a design thesis [literally stated in a complete sentence] which is subsequently explored and demonstrated. The intention has always been to encourage students to invest design with discursive thought, that is, to invest the development of architecture with that density of reference and interest so often neglected in design processes aimed at explicit functional or formal objectives. Historically, this has lead in the Thesis project to a variety of striking confrontations between unlikely narrative components. We too, of the satanic mills of Leicester, have opted for the cathection of the architectural sign through its submission to ironic tropes. At Leicester, however, the Department places an even more significant emphasis on technology and practice in consequence of its claims to professional realism. [Ref.: hefce Q244/94] This can be seen in the way that the Thesis has carried the burden of establishing a student’s ‘Part 2 competence’ [?] in addition to that of architectural substance.
Spicer’s is one of the best example, so far at the Leicester School, of a project which addresses this otherwise unreasonable requirement of breadth in the documentation of entry level competence. She has commenced with an idea of the incommensurability of aboriginal and global-European cultural values - this project had a precursor in the design of an aboriginal ‘embassy’ sited next to Australian Government buildings - and finished with a realistic, considered proposition for a building. [Cognoscenti will note that at half-way point, the building makes use of the geometry of the Sydney Opera House roofs, broken into a series of segments.] It is a miracle. The concept begins with ideas of story-lines and alignment with significant elements in the aboriginal landscape, animal forms, bureaucratic programme, environmental morality, etc., etc., and it ends up as a drawing of construction. This is the best of what we do at Leicester.