Hello! I'm Andreas Benjamin, a driven final-year undergraduate who is very passionate about, as you may already have seen, hand drawing! I believe architecture today should always continue to embrace hand skills such as sketching and fine drawing to communicate a more personal side to architectural outputs such as through perspectives and masterplans. Throughout my three years of undergrad, I've encountered many excellent opportunities to which I'm very proud, such as already networking to get two years of professional placement experience, since the summer of Year 1 in 2023, not only enhancing my Revit, AutoCAD, and Adobe suite knowledge but pushing forward my handrawing skills to real world projects. As a creative, I'm interested in looking for like-minded studios to push community-driven architecture forward one sketch at a time! Pencils at the ready!
A bird's eye freehand illustration of my proposals, focused around the idea of investing in a circular economy, from the main building of the vehicle upcycling hub to revitalised allotments, textile upcycling pods, and futureproofed community-led landscapes.
With a multiple-building proposal taking on the brief, I devised an 8-step community engagement programme that allows the locals to decide what should be built and, importantly, when.
Taking a long section gives a sense of ceremony to the beating heart of my circular economy proposal, a place in which learning and then learning by doing can be two halves of the same upcycling coin.
The form initially deriving from a leaf found on site, catching rainwater and letting it naturally run off, tapping into ideas of biophilia which allows for arguably the largest indoor flexible space in the area.
Looking at this retrofit, every element from services to interior finish connections is unapologetically on display, in a similar dichotomy to the vehicles themselves, deriving from ideas that this space is constantly at work and seen to be so.
Looking at the wider proposal, many of my buildings seamlessly interact with existing stock on site, slotting within unused spaces, opening up rejected corners, maximising what the community already knows while allowing for future change as the community sees fit.
