Dr Hector U. Levatti recently travelled to North-East Argentina to promote the School and Civil Engineering courses. He held a series of talks to reflect on the similarities and differences of education systems in different merging and developed countries to understand the current situation in Argentina and the possibilities for improvements for the immediate and long term future in association with LSBU.

Dr Levatti was invited to speak at the Economic Federation, the Provincial School of Technical Education (Formosa), the Higher Institute of Teaching Training (Corrientes), and the School of Engineering at Northeast University (Resistencia). These three cities and institutions are paramount to the education and the civil engineering industry in the Nort-East region of Argentina.

Local media caught wind of Dr Levatti’s efforts; he was interviewed 4 times for both TV and print media. Social media and online news outlets also helped boost the profile of the campaign.

We couldn't be prou

The School were delighted when recently asked to host a professional delegation from Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute. Tianjin is the third largest city in China, it serves as both the most important manufacturing centre and the leading port in northern China. Tianjin is an industrial base for major activities such as the production of heavy machinery, chemicals, iron and steel production, and shipbuilding and repair. Tianjin is a fine example of beautiful urban design and architectural practices with its stunning skyscrapers and desire to invest in urban repair and ecological restoration.

The delegation consisted of city planners, architects and engineers (20 in total), who were all very interested to learn of the UK's expertise in renewal methods, and therefore our School was the perfect fit for their visit to London.

The visit itself occurred on Thursday 25 July 2019. The Dean, Professor George Ofori, kicked off proceedings with an introductory seminar that highlighted ou

Staff with the School of Built Environment and Architecture recently took part in the biannual BEA Scholarship Week. This interactive week affords the school’s faculty the chance to engage with each other through workshops, presentations and group activities. This year’s iteration was the best yet, with staff from every part of the school in attendance.

The aim of this week is to ensure the School of BEA can share their knowledge between each of the members, to help each other with the processes they use and, of course, to build team morale. The topics covered had showed the real utility of the week: Lesley Roberts delivered a talk on how to dealing with and understanding potential difficult student behaviour in sensitive situations.

Benjamin Crooks shared his ideas and methods in marketing the school and its courses on offer.

With a more political and real-world bearing, Sarah Plant spoke about the complexities of Brexit, and how the landscape of research funding may change, especiall

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

The National Student Survey (NSS) results for 2019 are in, and we’re elated! We already had a feeling this was the case, but it’s official, we have some very satisfied students!

• BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering has been ranked 1^st for overall student satisfaction in London and ranked 2^nd for overall student satisfaction in the UK.
• BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology achieved 100% overall student satisfaction.
• Overall student satisfaction doubled for BSc (Hons) Quantity Surveying (80%).
• In fact, every course in our School saw an increase in overall student satisfaction.
• In 2018, the average for teaching on our courses was 78%, this year it has jumped to 86%.
• LSBU’s Students’ Union also has reason to celebrate as it now joins the top 3 university students’ unions in London.

The School would like to thank all of the Course Directors and Module Leaders; we’re so pleased that they’re finally seeing the results of their hard work! Thanks  to Dr Haydar Aygun and our NSS sub-committee whose tirel

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

The Acoustics Team at Inter-Noise 2019

Every year the International Institute for Noise Control Engineering, organise a conference in the field of acoustics, www.internoise2019.org. This year it was held in Madrid, Spain, to coincide with the Spanish Acoustical Society's 50th anniversary. Between 16-19 June 2019 with Municipal Congress hosted the event where 1000 papers were presented to 1200 delegates representing 51 countries.

The Acoustics Group of London South Bank University decided that branding was key for marketing our courses. To this end, we had 11 delegates each wearing specially designed polo shirts. Our delegates included four former Masters students who presented their dissertation projects to an international audience, two current PhD candidates presenting their latest research, and three members of the teaching staff presenting their own ideas. We also had one current Masters student who wanted to experience the event and take advantage of the networking opportunity w

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.

Greater London Regional Councillor Richard Briffa MCIAT presented the Greater London Regional medals to BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology students at the Final Year Exhibition of student work at the University. The event was hosted by Jennifer Hardi, course director for BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology.

The winners are...

Gold Medal: Karol Krol

Silver Medal: Jag Brard

Joint Bronze Medal: Royden Gilbert and Ben Wells

Highly Commended (AspirATion Award): Sandeep Saddal

Highly Commended 2nd Year Students: Ben Clark, Lauren Webster and Like Stanley

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

Lauren Webster has been nominated for the student award at the Women in Property awards being held tonight. Lauren is a full-time second year student studying BSc Architectural Technology and has made it through to the South East finals. She impressed the judges at her presentation and interview and was offered a placement by one of the panel members, so we have high hopes that she may make it to the national finals. Click here to learn more.

We invited British Youtuber, Callux, to experience our Anechoic Chamber and the video (see below) has gone viral - the video currently has 5,526,444 views! 

The Anechoic Chamber (anechoic meaning echo-free) is a specialist facility that has been carefully designed and built to achieve almost perfect quiet conditions. Within the chamber, external sound is not allowed to break in and sound reflections off internal room boundaries cannot occur. Watch the video to find out if Callux was able to beat the world record of enduring the eerie silence of the chamber!

Are you interested in studying acoustics at LSBU? We have the Environmental and Architectural Acoustics MSc, the Institute of Acoustics Certificate of Competence, and the IOA Acoustics and Noise Control Diploma.

Are you interested in learning more about our Acoustic Research Facilities? Click here.

Finally, a big congratulations to our Acoustics Team!

You are invited to attend the Energy Slam! hosted by the CIB Student Chapter at London South Bank University in associated with the Energy Institute. Participants will be presenting their topic in speedy 3 minute sessions. Themes are linked to the built environment, energy efficiency, and energy technologies. If you're interested in attending, please email salehib@lsbu.ac.uk

Date: 22nd May

Time: 6pm-8pm

Venue: Room V114 (K2 Building, London South Bank University, SE1 0AA)

Fee: Free

BEng and BSc Civil Engineering students recently attended Constructionarium 2019 in Norfolk. The shots taken from the construction experience week show our students engaging in some very hands-on construction work; the experience allows students and professionals to construct scaled down versions of bridges, buildings, dams and civil engineering projects from all around the world. The principle is to link academic institute with industry and to ensure that students are able to apply the knowledge they have gained in a practical, safe and relevant environment. 

Students founds the experience to be worthwhile and inspirational; we're hopeful that we'll be going back again in 2020.

Your students did a fantastic job at #Constructionarium. It was a pleasure to have them. https://t.co/LmlxzJnZXb

— Constructionarium (@JuliaStevensUK) May 14, 2019

Congratulations are in order for Luke Stanley, Ben Clark and Lauren Webster; they're currently in the second year of Architectural Technology and won 1st place at the CIOB Bright Futures Challenge. 

A special congratulations to Luaren as she also won the Outstanding Student Award.

And the winners are...the LSBU team! Congratulations on first place! #BFSC19 pic.twitter.com/pceGePJDor

— CIOB Ldn & Southern (@CIOBLdnSouthern) 6 March 2019

The most outstanding student of the night? It’s unanimous - the award goes to Lauren Webster from LSBU! #BFSC19 pic.twitter.com/MixnhWuYOq

— CIOB Ldn & Southern (@CIOBLdnSouthern) 6 March 2019

LSBU alumni, Sir David Adjaye (former Architecture student), was recently featured on Radio 4's 'Profile'. The feature included interviews from Sir Adjaye and fellow colleagues.

Click here to listen to the full episode

Staff recently paid a visit to the Applied Sciences University in Bahrain to review the collaboration of courses being delivered at ASU.