Academia & Teaching
Bartlett UCL
Lectures & panels
Workshops
Bartlett UCL
Architectural Computation MSc/MRes
Vlad has been involved in teaching at the Bartlett since 2009, initially as an assistant on the MSc. Adaptive Architecture & Computation course, later renamed to Architectural Computation, where he currently is a dissertation technical tutor.
More information about this course in the video below:
MSc. Architectural Computation at B-Pro Show 2019.
Image: ‘Simply Interlocking’ by Daniel Gonzalez.
2019 Students: Mario Medina Vilela, Paris Nikitidis, Sarah Kably, Yannis Chrysochou. 2018 Students: Daniel Gonzalez, Konstantinos Chatzimanolis, Abdülkadir Kaçan, Alexandros-Spyridon Kokas. 2017 Students: Anastasia Katikaridi, Mingyang Han, Tina Zeng, Xinwei Zhuang. 2014 Students: Diego Lopez, Iman Elshafei, Sofia Damianidou. 2013 Students: Conor Black, Stamatios Psarras, Panagiota Athanailidi. 2012 Students : Anna-Klara Veltsista, Burapa Prommul, Eleni Georgiadou, Lida Theodorou. 2011 Students : Helen de Sousa, Miriam Dall’Igna, Enrique Ramos
EN{CODE}D – MSc. AAC Show 2011. Film by Andrea Vannini. Projects by: Carla de Beer, Neema Sheby, Enrique Ramos, Ciriaco Castro Diez, Andrea Vannini, Miriam Dall’Igna, Greig Paterson, David Di Duca, Michelangelo Bonvino, Zahra Mokhtarpour Gharoudi, Dorothy Kalogianni, Katerina Saraptzian, Henry Suryo, Moritz Behrens.
Lectures & Panels
Vlad Tenu has given lectures and presentations at leading academic institutions such as the Architectural Association, Bartlett, G.D. Hines College of Architecture in Houston, Aarhus School of Architecture and Cooper Union in New York as part of ACADIA 2010 Conference.
Vlad Tenu has also taken part in various discussion panels and gave lectures at international design events and conferences such as Shenzhen Design Week 2019, SHARE X Bucharest 2019, EUSight Talks in Shanghai 2014, Galateca Gallery Bucharest 2014, Rising Minds inaugural session at Shoreditch House 2013 and BIFE Conference in Bucharest 2012.
Shenzhen Design Week 2019. Panel discussion chaired by Johnathon Strebly. With Frank Peters, Nigel Coates, Peter Murray, Julie Chapel.
Workshops
Vlad Tenu has been running a series of educational and creative workshops based on modularity and assembly systems. As a main design focus in a lot of Vlad’s projects, the idea of ever-changing design pieces by simply disassembling and reconfiguring them has opened up the creative process to the audience. By creating an open-ended system of modules that can be added to infinitely, the outcome of a project is given by the interaction with the users, just like a Lego game would.
Based on symmetry, the rules of the game are fairly simple and accessible to anyone from children to students or adults. Whether the final shape of an assembly is pre-defined computationally or grows organically shaped by the participants, it is a fascinating process that involves creativity whilst being a practical lesson about mathematics, geometry and structure.
Miniplex
The most recent series of workshops was based on Miniplex, a single component modular system designed by Vlad Tenu. The system has been installed, diss-assembled and reconfigured several times for different events or exhibitions: London Festival of Architecture 2017, PLUG-IN-TO-THE-FUTURE. Changing approaches to design exhibition at ARUP Phase2 Gallery in London in 2018-2019, the London Pavilion at the Shenzhen Design Week 2019, a permanent installation as a decorative dividing wall at ARUP’s headquarters in London in 2019 and the FPS London ULTRA Exhibition at the OXO Bargehouse in London 2019.
City Centre’s Youth Programme 2017
Supported by AHMM in collaboration with City Centre London, the City Centre’s Youth Programme 2017 was an educational initiative giving students the opportunity to learn about architecture, engineering and construction as well as develop their design skills. A prototypical edition of MINIPLEX, version 1.0, was especially produced and installed by AHMM for this event.
The workshops included structural sessions with the engineers from ARUP, building day with contractors from Knight Harwood, as well as the design workshops with AHMM and w - exploring the digital modelling of the pavilion using SketchUp and the hands-on assembly possibilities of the modular system. The outcome was a pavilion installed in Paternoster Square and included in the itinerary of London Festival of Architecture 2017.
Shenzhen Design Week 2019
The proposed installation for the London Pavilion at the Shenzhen Design Week 2019 took one afternoon to assemble, as part of a creative workshop with a team of enthusiastic students and volunteers.
Starting from pre-assembled saddle shaped pieces, the team has learned about the versatility of this modular system by creating square voxels, a form of 3D pixels or Miniplex cubes, as basic units representing the masonry blocks for any desired shape for the pavilion.
Walls and roofs were developed into a meandering assembly of connected Miniplex arches which illustrated very well the underlying rigour of this system and the opportunities for developing it into low-res discrete assemblies of any given geometry.
Process 2014
Previous workshops include PROCESS, a creative workshop dedicated to Chinese students from architecture and art universities in Shanghai, as part of the EUSight series of events at Fuxing Soho Plaza in Shanghai in 2014.
Based on Anemone, a modular piece designed especially for the event, the presentation and tutorial session introduced students to the world of computational design, modularity and assembly systems.
