Westminster’s annual end-of-year exhibition, OPEN is a showcase and celebration of the talent, creativity and achievements of students from the School of Architecture and Cities. Students present their projects and showcase the skills and creative practices they have developed whilst on their courses. OPEN is a highly anticipated show amongst students, graduates, staff and industry guests every year.

We caught up with Pablo Pimentel and Axelle Sibierski, third-year Architecture BA students, as they prepare to showcase their projects at OPEN 2023.

What are you most excited about for your end-of-year show?

Pablo: I’m most excited about the show being a culmination of all of our hard work

not only this year but over the course of our degrees. Architecture is a very demanding course, where both staff and students put in an enormous amount of effort.  The end-of-year show is a merited celebration of all our skills, creativity and hard work! It is also a great opportunity for people from outside of the university to come and see what our courses are all about and learn about our projects.

Axelle: I am most excited about being able to showcase my work alongside my peers and celebrate the hard work we have all accomplished over the years. I’m also looking forward to being able to show my finished work to an audience and speak with people who are discovering my project for the first time.

Can you give us an overview of your final project and what inspired your creative thinking?

Pablo: My project, Southend Stayport seeks to reinvent the failing London Southend Airport. This project aims to give back this large piece of infrastructure from the hands of London holiday goers into the hands of the Southend-on-Sea community. The airport perimeter becomes a park, whilst the terminal building is reinvented into a new community-driven gateway to this new green area. The last remaining destinations of the airport, transform, alongside the needs of the community, into a new program which provides cultural spaces, community gardening and dining, community living and further leisure spaces for all of the Southend Community. This new program reinvents the vacation, giving way for the local staycation, open to all, in the heart of Southend.

Each project carries with it new sources of inspiration. It all depends on the site and on the community for which you are designing. For this project, which is based on an airport, aircraft elements and recycled materials from an airport terminal have inspired the design.

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Axelle: My project, The Ever-Changing Language of Childhood seeks to create a place where immigrants who have moved to Southend-on-Sea, would have a place to come and share not only cultures but also language. With the addition of providing a place for young children to be cared for and their parents and/or carers the time to be able to learn skills and develop their English. This has come from my personal experience in England and the difficulties my mother still faces today. Having two young children to look after, meant that my mother was not able to go out and learn new skills. The wedge between her and the English culture grew as the rest of my family began to integrate better. This project aims to critique the integration of immigrants into our society and how we can provide safe and educational spaces for children and their parents to feel welcome and part of this country. The designs for this project includes gardens for the learning of a craft, a crèche for the children, a multi-purpose classroom that can be adapted for various purposes and a theatre for the reunion of the community.

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How has your course prepared you for your final project?

Pablo: The past few months have brought with them a lot of reminiscing

about my work over the past year. It is incredible to see how my work has changed and progressed each semester. I have learned so much, not only in terms of practical skills but also what it means to be a designer and an architect today. I think that my last project reflects everything I’ve learnt whilst studying architecture at Westminster.

Axelle: My course has prepared us from the start for our final projects with a variety of modules in our first and second years. With a strong focus on drawing conventions in the first year and developing those through the second year, alongside some more technical aspects, we were able to bring all these skills into our final third-year projects.

What has inspired your creative thinking and works so far towards your final project?

Pablo: Each project carries with it new sources of inspiration. It all depends on the site and on the community for which you are designing for. For this project, which is based on an airport, aircraft elements and recycled materials from an airport terminal have inspired the design.

What do you hope to achieve from your final project?

Pablo: I am seeking to achieve personal fulfilment from my project. We dedicate so much time to our projects in the end we want to see them fledged out to their full potential. It is also very satisfying to see our projects showcase the development of our skills.

Axelle: I hope to evoke emotion through my proposal to reflect the issues that I want to address on immigration and the inclusion of immigrants into society. I wanted to start a discussion on how the built environment can have an impact on people’s experiences of moving countries and feeling included.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your final project or upcoming end-of-year show?

Axelle: I am very much looking forward to the exhibition and having the chance to show everything I have worked on during my course and in particular my final year.

To find out more about our architecture courses and the wide range of exciting student projects, visit the digital exhibition OPEN 2023.

_{Header image: Pablo Pimentel (Architecture BA) – Southend Stayport (2023) Southend Stayport Elevation}