The Winter School 2023

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Cardboard cutouts of white fashion models set against a miniature theatre set with 2D flowers

Visit the Winter School Gallery at the Virtual LSA

The Winter School, alternatively known as the Whole School Project, has a long history at Liverpool School of Architecture.  It offers students from all year groups and courses the opportunity to meet and work together on one of a number of simultaneous workshops.

Eleven students standing in front of a display of their project holding models

At the end of January 2023 the first post Pandemic Winter School was held, comprising of five workshops and attended by students from first year undergraduate to Masters.

An asian woman directs an asian man on a giant paper map with an architectural scheme drawn on it in charcoal

The 2023 Workshops

Liverpool Biennial.  Working with the curating team from this international arts festival the students explored the potential of presenting contemporary art in the historic context of the one of the most historical buildings of Liverpool’s Docks, framing their work in the context of the Biennials theme of UMoya, The Sacred Return of Last Things.

Wildly Wavering.  Ex LSA student and award-winning architect Kirsty Badenoch and Dan Rea of Periscope Studio led this radical studio which took students on an adventure in representation.  Working in both the School of Architecture and the Granby Winter Garden this workshop presented their output by encouraging visitors to take their shoes off and continue the experiment.

POV Students in this workshop reimagined often overlooked spaces in the School, creating a series of exciting and unforgettable interpretations. These were held in identical cardboard boxes, so the theatrical reconfigurations could only be seen if the box was lifted and the eye was put to a tiny hole, a reward for engagement and an appreciation from the first person perspective.

Performance Prestigious architectural practice, Austin-Smith:Lord joined the Winter School and took their students on a journey into the city on a quest to activate public spaces with imaginative performance spaces, mirroring the process that they would use in practice.

AppArchitecture Exploring the multiple subjective decisions in every act of translation, the workshop presented the group with a number of richly descriptive texts of contiguous architectural spaces. Each participant attempted to convert a text into an image and then a model form, at each stage their interpretation and symbolic imagination taking them to places that no one else could have discovered.

View of a miniature set, a white plastic woman sits on bench wall of red paper with a wire sculpture in front of her

All the students who attended demonstrated an enthusiasm, creativity and commitment that was widely complemented by the visiting tutors.  We hope that many of them may be able to join Winter School 2024, which is already being planned.

View looking down on a student making a model, they are surrounded by card, paper and tools

Sincere thanks for all those Liverpool staff across many departments who made this possible, and our gratitude to the students who made it so memorable.

Model of architectural space. The walls are covered in angled panels made from foil, foil cubes hange from the ceiling. Two small mod