Tustin Estate Designers and Makers Week

To engage young people who live on the estate and surrounding areas we worked with Beyond the Box Consultants to deliver a Designers and Makers week during the 2021 October half term.

Through an intensive week of workshops including design, drawing and model-making sessions, young people aged 14 to 25 were able to develop a landscape proposal for the estate.

Participants benefitted from creative workshops at F.A.T Studios, a design studio and community interest company who run the Old Kent Road Arts Club. An acting workshop hosted at the Tustin Estate Residents’ Centre, helped participants build confidence in public speaking in preparation for presenting their designs. The Designers and Makers week culminated in a design competition which was won by Tustin Estate resident, Victoria Durodola who went on to join our studio for a work experience placement in July 2022.

Designers and Makers Week, model making workshop at dRMM
[1] Designers and Makers Week, model making workshop at dRMM

Victoria’s placement with dRMM focused on the design of a community library, allowing her to build on skills learnt in the Designers and Makers week. At the end of the week, Victoria presented her research and design work to the dRMM team. Victoria shares some thoughts on her placement below.

Victoria presenting her design for a community library to the dRMM team
[1] Victoria presenting her design for a community library to the dRMM team

What were your impressions of being inside an architects’ studio?

I first visited dRMM as part of the ‘Designer and Makers Week’. Now that I’m visiting for my placement my impressions of it remain the same. The atmosphere is very nice and chill, but the people still work hard on their projects. It is easy to communicate with everyone here to. I like looking at all of the building models on the wall because they are so detailed. Displaying the models is a nice way to bring the studio’s projects together.

What have you enjoyed working on, what did you learn, and how might it be useful in the future?

During my placement I have been given a project to design a community library and have enjoyed working on that. As part of this project I have been working on hand-drawing and model-making at different scales. I also made a presentation of my work. I have really enjoyed working with Olivia, an Architectural Assistant at dRMM to learn Adobe Photoshop, as it was my first time using this software. This skill is something that will help me in future with my schoolwork, particularly my coursework in media studies as we need to learn how to edit the photographs we take.