Howel-Evans and Opher Architects

Home Competitions

24 July 2008

Campus Redesign - University of Central England
1997
Designs were invited to improve the poor quality environment around the campus buildings. The project proposed to unify the campus through a central public space bordered by new sports facilities, and a relocated access from the railway station, which brought students directly into the campus rather than the series of existing underpasses and roads.

Centocelli Park Competition, Rome
1997
A new park for the suburbs of Rome is based on a shifting geometry of rotated forms to create an artificial hill and to form depressions around excavated sites of ancient ruins. The terraces formed are reminiscent of the ancient wine growing terraces of the Mediterranean, creating moving and static spaces within the landscape. Trees were planted in groves giving the notion of shelter. Trees and lights were laid out to form pathways and links to the surrounding cityscape, routes that used to cross the site are reinstated at least notionally to link to the older history of the location.

Concept House, Ideal Homes Exhibition
1997
The house is designed to adapt to the needs of the changing family structures over time. Each floor could be an individual flat for single people, or combined into a single family house based around a courtyard garden, or one floor could be a separate flat for elderly relative or grown up child. Alternatively, a floor could be turned into a workshop/office space. The client would buy the plot, plus as much of the house as they wanted or could afford, with the ability to develop and expand within the guidelines set down by the design. Over time this would create a varied but homogeneous urban environment.
The courtyard garden is integral to the design and is formed between the house and the opposite neighbours home. Whilst being high density this moves away from the front to back layout of the standard English town house and enables each floor to have a view of the garden from their own terrace. A block of eight houses are grouped around a central communal space with the private gardens orientated for maximum sunlight.

Hot-desking - Building Design shortlisted
1995
An open competition to produce a general prototype for the intensive 24-hour use of office space.

Newcastle architecture centre - RIBA
1995
The project aims to tackle an inarticulate masterplan by projecting a new public square through the building to a rapid transit system on the riverside, uniting the different levels of the site and revealing the exhibits as if in a see-through dry dock.

Edinburgh Central Library - RIBA
1994
Edinburgh Central Library occupies an important site beside the George IV Bridge. With its main entrance leading onto the bridge, the building at this point is actually already five storeys high, as the ground floor sits in the historic Cowgate area below.
The brief was for a major expansion of the library, more than doubling its area. The layout of the original building was compartmentalised into three double height library spaces. This feel of separate volumes is continued in the proposed building, with three spaces separated by a monolithic tower housing the collection, through which views can be made. These spaces are served by the amended circulation ‘spine’ which wraps around the new and old building, and is wide enough to be used for informal meetings or seating areas. The massive structure is fairly uniform throughout the building but as it works down to the lower levels, nearer the medieval streets of Cowgate, the volumes start to be broken up and eroded. At the ground floor nursery/crèche the ground is raised and sculpted, which further reduces the buildings scale.

Maximum Exposure public art
1994
Photography exhibitions at Manchester Museum of Industry
A proposal for a large photo etched collage on steel to be placed on the existing exterior of the museum, acknowledging its location as well as its content, particularly the canals and railways.
‘Mementoes’ at Gloucester Royal Infirmary
Photographs taken by patients, relatives, and other visitors to the hospital of the important and often life changing events that occur there are placed in waterproof clip frames bought from a vending machine. These then gradually fill larger frames in the lobbies. As the frames are filled and moved up the lobbies’ entire eight storeys, the overspill frames are bolted together and placed in the grounds.

Housing and Urban Design, Japan - International competition for Women Architects
1994
A considerable increase in suburban growth around the major towns of Japan has resulted in large areas of identical detached houses with little to distinguish one street from the next often lacking the infrastructure to support community life. The urban design of the site at Hana-No-Ki seeks to generate a community atmosphere by reinstating the street as a boulevard that becomes the focus for activity and a place to meet people. This ‘rambla’ then connects with a public space which can be used for meetings and social events. The use of a single directional traffic system liberates more of the site for public use and minimises the effects of cars on the development.
The dwelling was required to have street frontage and off street parking, which denoted a long rectangular plan and allowed all the buildings principal elevations to face south. This façade comprises of a series of moveable screens, which can respond the environmental changes of shade and ventilation in the summer and solar gain in the winter, also creating a variety of changing relationships in the internal spaces.

Marble Arch, London
1993
A proposal for the reorganisation and burial of the existing traffic management system, and the provision of a multi-storey car park.

Headquarters for the Arts Council, East Midlands (in collaboration with Ed Frith)
1992
The media department of the East Midlands Arts Council is a fee earning and somewhat independent wing of the organisation. This provided the rationale for the ‘urbanisation’ of the site, which was a typical back space behind a former market town main street, decimated by 1970’s traffic planning.
The proposal was to place the media department and main building opposite each other, on the front edge of the site creating a barrier to the ring road. Linked by a bridge at first floor level, this created a clear site edge and a public space between, with paving laid as a regional map. Cinema footage can then be projected from the main building, onto the plain surface screen of the media department opposite. Effectively, the buildings create a new public square at little or no cost.