Every January, some of the best Institute of Acoustics (IOA) Diploma student final projects undertaken at the School of BEA, are presented by authors at the IOA London Branch meeting.

To add to that, a new IOA Diploma Student Final Project award competition was set up last year by course director Dr Luis Gomez-Agustina in collaboration with the IOA and the sponsor of the award, acoustics instrumentation manufacturer NTI-Audio.

At this year’s London Branch meeting held on 16 January 2020, two nominated finalists, of the first year of the competition, presented their work undertaken at LSBU in the last academic year (2018-19).

Paul Roberts presented his work on Sound Propagation From Lightwells and Jakub Hajko presented on Monitoring Aircraft Reduced Engine Taxi Using Sound Level Meters.

Charles Greene, General manager of NTI-Audio UK, presented the award and prize to the winner, Jakub Hajko.  

After the meeting and award ceremony we all went to the local pub to raise our glass

Congratulations to Luis Gomez, who was awarded SFHEA and to Steve Philips, who was awarded AFHEA.

The Delegation from the Internal Resources Division (IRD), Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh visited the School of the Built Environment and Architecture.

10 senior Bangladesh Government technical and vocation education officials visited the School of the Built Environment and Architecture. The delegation was met by Mr Daniel Janowski Business Development Manager, Prof John Ebohon Director of Internationalisation and Dr Issa Chaer- Director of Research and Enterprise for the School.

During the visit, Prof John Ebohon conducted a session on the role of Vocational Education in Economic Development and the process of institutionalising and embedding it in the system. The delegation was taken through the UK experience in supporting vocational education.

Dr Issa Chaer then spoke to the delegation about his experience of developing courses at London South Bank University and the importance of industry engagement, quality assurance, articulation and path route for development.

On Wednesday 11 December 2019, we visited Tarmac concrete mix factory. It was very interesting to see how the concrete is mixed first hand.

Our students were very engaged with experts from Tarmac, where logistics, materials and the sustainability aspect of their operation were discussed.

On Wednesday 20 November 2019, we visited the steel fabrication factory based in Hounslow, to gain an understanding of how they operate and to learn more about the challenges they face from a business point of view in the steel industry.

We saw a demonstration of a robotic arm used for welding end plates to a column, which sparked some interesting discussion within our industry.

On Wednesday 13 November 2019, we had the pleasure of taking our Civil Engineering students to visit a construction site on 90 Blackfriars Road, SE1.

It was a very valuable experience to understand site constraints, particularly working in central London. We will have to appreciate the logistics during and after construction as there are implications to consider in our design.

Thank you to United Living Group for accommodating this visit for the students.

Our LSBU Civil Engineering students visited Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe on Wednesday 16 October 2019.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of the most renowned Civil Engineers in history, and the students had the opportunity to celebrate his engineering triumph and learn about the history.

We are delighted to announce that Piotr Smiechowicz - a July 2019 graduate of the LSBU architecture programme - has been awarded a RIBA Silver Medal Commendation in the RIBA President's Medals international design competition; Piotr is a student of MArch: Master of Architecture Studio 23 (co-led by Professor Lilly Kudic and Luke Murray), and his project receiving this award is called MoonCatcher.   

The President's Medals is the oldest competition for students of architecture in the world, with an impressive history spanning 185 years; it is considered to be both the most prestigious, and the most demanding competition in which to succeed, and we would like to send Piotr congratulations on behalf of all the architecture team, the School of the Built Environment and Architecture, and LSBU as a whole.  This is a great achievement, and builds on the very strong record LSBU architecture has established for success in the President's Medals.

Piotr received his Commendation from RIBA Pre

Every year, the Architecture team led by Head of Division for Architecture, Lilly Kudic organise public lectures called ‘The Open Lecture series’. They are a series of public lectures for students of architecture, architecture graduates, and practising architects; the great news being that they are all open access with free admission!

Each lecture involves a celebrated architect and academic exploring the many and varied possibilities for professional practice, and the very different characteristics a career in architecture can offer. The first open lecture of 2019 took place in October and was led by guest speaker, Hugh Broughton, the founder of Hugh Broughton Architects who provided a fascinating insight into his career and plans for the future. The event was a great success with 130 people in attendance!

The next open lecture will take place on Thursday 7th November from 18:30 – 20:00 and will be led by Professor Murray Fraser of The Bartlett School of Architecture. If you are inte

Dr Alex Paurine, one of the Acting Heads of Division for Civil and Building Services Engineering was recently informed by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) that his team had won the Happold Brilliant Award for 2018/19. The Award recognises excellence in the teaching of building services engineering.

The panel were impressed by the high quality of graduates produced by the university and felt that the project topics studied by the students cover a wide range of building services areas and include sustainability and renewable systems. They commented that LSBU has excellent links with the industry through the advisory panel as well as LSBU staff being involved in knowledge transfer partnership schemes. They also acknowledged that students are supported by experienced, helpful and dedicated staff throughout their course.

The award comes in the form of an engraved crystal chalice and will be presented at the CIBSE President’s Award Dinner on Friday 11 October

An Acoustics masterclass will be given by Rob Harris, from ISVR, Universisty of Southamnpton and Theatre Projects, at 6pm on Thursday 19 September 2019 at the Keyworth Centre (Keyworth Lecture Threatre B). If you're interested in attending, please email the organiser, Dr Luis Gomez-Agustina at gomezagl@lsbu.ac.uk.

ABSTRACT
Auditorium acoustics is interesting in that objective science and engineering are employed to elicit subjective perceptions and emotions. This lecture discusses the auditorium acoustic design of concert halls, opera houses and theatres. It starts with describing some fundamental requirements for audiences, performers and other stakeholders. Both scientific and other factors are considered. The lecture will then look at how the art and science have developed over the last 35 years. This will include the use of scale and computer modelling, the paradigm shift of auralisation and the integration of architecture and creative digital audio. The scientific and engineering r

League table results were recently published by the Guardian and the Complete University Guide, these rankings indicate where we are in comparison to other universities and courses within the UK; please read on to find out how we did. Spoiler: we’re very pleased.

First up, the School’s courses…

Our Building Services courses have been ranked as the 12^th best in the UK by the Complete University Guide (up 11 places since last year) and our Construction, Property and Surveying courses have been ranked 18^th best in the UK by the Guardian (up 8 places since last year). Our courses have seen an average growth of 15 places since 2015, which is an average growth of 3 places per year. As they say, slow and steady wins the race!

London South Bank University went up 10 places in the Guardian League Table (68^th best in the UK) and went up 6 places in the Complete University Guide (87^th best in the UK).

Thank you to all our staff and students for their hard work this year – we couldn’t have done it

Mubarak Ismail, a PhD student within the School of the Built Environment and Architecture at LSBU, recently participated in a research presentation competition organised by the London Doctoral Academy at LSBU. Mubarak participated in the '3 minute thesis presentation' category and won first place and a prize of £500 towards research expenses. Click here to watch Mubarak's 3 minute presentation.

LSBU sent the video of the presentation to Vitae, if shortlisted then Mubarak will be given the opportunity to present live at the Vitae congress in Birmingham in September 2019. Learn more about Vitae by clicking here.

Dr. Mustafa Selçuk Çıdık, a senior lecturer in LSBU-BEA, has won one of the best paper awards in an international conference that was held in London between 19-21 June 2019. The conference was organised by Academy for Design, Innovation and Management. The paper, which is co-authored with Dr. V. Zerjav (UCL) and Ms. V. Papagiannopoulou (Faitful+Gould), explores what ‘managing as designing’ means for everyday practices of organisations based on the data collected by Ms. Papagiannopoulou during her master’s studies at UCL. Critical of the current hype about the step-wise methodologies of design thinking for management, the paper argues for a focus on everyday interactions and leadership for effectively ‘managing as designing’ in practice. You can access the full-paper by following the link below.

http://researchopen.lsbu.ac.uk/3250/1/ADIM2019-practice_of_managing_as_designing-final_submission.pdf

Jennifer Hardi MCIAT, Programme Director for the BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology and Architectural Engineering degrees at London South Bank University and the Principal Investigator for a Royal Academy of Engineering funded project recently teamed up with Dr Andry Widyowijatnoko, an architect, bamboo expert, researcher and academic from Institute Technology of Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia. They carried out a bamboo tensegrity workshop at London South Bank University in March 2019 as a continuation of a research project.

The three day workshop attracted positive collaboration from academics and students from various disciplines. Tensegrity is an abbreviation of tensile and integrity. The structure consists of compression members connected with wires or strings until it forms a balance and stability without connecting each of the compression members. It creates a floating compression. In the case of bamboo as tensegrity material, the tension member of bamboo tensegrity is in the form o

Lectures and exams may be over, but these students are preparing for the Autodesk University London 2019 Student Competition being held on Tuesday 18th June and Wednesday 19th June 2019. Using our BIM Centre, these Architectural Technology students are knuckling down to master Autodesk. We're wishing them the best of luck!

For those not in the know, Autodesk software is primarily used by architects, engineers and structural designers to design, draft and model buildings and other structures. Autodesk software has been used in many fields, and on projects from the One World Trade Center to Tesla electric cars.

The talent, skills and ambition of the region's female property and construction student undergraduates were celebrated at the annual South East Women in Property Student Awards, held at Savills on 4th June 2019. The Student Awards seek out the best Built Environment degree students, highlighting to industry the necessity to link with Universities early in the education process and improve the students' knowledge of the career options available to them. Many secure work placements as a direct result of competing in the Awards, which often translate into permanent positions upon graduation.

The South East branch made four regional awards, due to the extension geographical reach of the area, with one going to Lauren Webster, a student at London South Bank University where she is in her second year studying BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology. The judges, a panel comprising professionals in development, construction, engineering, surveying and property law, described Lauren as, "very con