_Celebrating the achievements of the Spatial Practices programme at Central Saint Martins
As I walked through the immense walkway inside Central Saint Martins I couldn’t help feeling slightly out of place in my stiff navy blue suit and tie. It’s true that I have a beard, some semi-fashionable glasses and an appreciation of art, but I was standing in THE College that Jarvis Cocker wrote about and attended along with esteemed alumni like Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Matthew Williamson.
A student with an asymmetric fringe wearing a silk kimono dressing gown (that I imagine he’d made) did little to put me at ease as he eyed me suspiciously over his mirrored Yoko Ono glasses. I darted in to the nearest bathroom, ditched the tie and roughed up my hair…
Over the last four years we have been helping more and more students find accommodation in London and I have been leading an initiative to build on this. Specifically, we now do around 20% of our total lettings business with students and in the busy summer months that figure can rise as high as 35%. Some are from the UK but our top origins are China, The Middle East And Russia which seems fitting for a global business like Knight Frank. Our top Universities are UCL, LSE, Imperial, King’s College and Central Saint Martins – some of the very best in the world.
Work on this initiative has seen me fly 5,000 miles to Beijing for the Imperial College ‘London Welcome’ event, as well as to Abu Dhabi and Qatar with London Universities and Partnership (LUIP). However, this year we have been making more of an effort to meet students in London and engage in some of their projects and endeavours. In the last two months we have been to Imperial College’s May Housing event, sponsored LSE & Imperial’s inaugural 20:20 cricket match (LSE won by a whisker!) and, last week, we sponsored the Spatial Practices Degree Show at Central Saint Martins (CSM).
Graduating student projects from three disciplines: BA Architecture, M ARCH/MA Architecture and MA Narrative Environments were shortlisted and the winners from each course were announced on the night. I was flattered and terrified in equal measure to be part of the judging panel of experts including lecturers, professors and senior architects. I’d hoped I could get away in the role of the smiling mute, the nodding motley fool but not so! All nine of the nominees pitched their projects in a three minute presentation whereupon we were whisked in to a private room for a vigorous debate about the abstract projects from the Narrative Environments course to the more tangible Architecture projects. Throughout the process I reflected on how extraordinarily talented this group of students are.
I am very much looking forward to meeting more talented students in the years ahead and, in the case of CSM Architecture students, it is my hope as they graduate and become the next Norman Fosters and Richard Rogers that they think of Knight Frank!
Main photo (above):
Winners left – right:
- M ARCH/MA Architecture – Tom Atkinson
- MA Narrative Environments – Geetanjali Sayal
- BA Architecture – Olivia Sutherill
Photography : John Sturrock