Dezeen School Shows: a proposal for a terrain located on Leicester's River Soar dedicated to ash scattering is among the student projects from De Montfort University.
Also featured are private and communal living spaces in Leicester's Wolsey Island and a brewery fuelled by hop waste.
De Montfort University
School: Leicester School of Architecture
Course: BA Architecture and MArch
Tutors: Sophie Roper Hall, Dan Farshi, Lucy Wilson, Grace Quah, Lucy Pengilley Gibb, Kyriakos Katsaros, Ben Cowd, Tim Barwell, Alex Mills and Danielle Fountain
School statement:
"Architecture is increasingly shaped by a convergence of environmental, social and technological challenges that demand new ways of thinking about design, practice and the role of the architect.
"At the Leicester School of Architecture, these challenges are not treated as constraints but as opportunities to rethink architecture as an ethical, collaborative and regenerative discipline.
"The school combines a long tradition of design teaching with a future-facing curriculum that places climate literacy, material responsibility and social engagement at its core.
"Studio projects are grounded in the realities of contemporary practice while encouraging students to question established assumptions and explore new forms of architectural agency.
"Sustainability as a specialist concern is embedded throughout the curriculum as a fundamental design principle that informs every stage of the design process.
"Live projects, community partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations such as the BIM in Leicester conferences (BIM in Series Charity) and working partnerships with industry, provide opportunities to test ideas beyond the studio, while research-led teaching supports experimentation across drawing, making, digital technologies and design research.
"This ethos reflects the school's commitment to ethical and regenerative architectural practice, environmental justice and the decolonisation of architectural education."
The Whittlesey Reed Revival by Harriet King
"The Whittlesey Reed Revival reimagines the declining Fenland reed and thatch industry within Whittlesey's King's Dyke landscape.
"Responding to clay extraction, flooded brick pits and the loss of local craft knowledge, the project explores how wetland materials cut back through landscape maintenance could become contemporary construction products through paludiculture and modern manufacturing.
"The proposal transforms King's Dyke into a production, research and education landscape, with floating reed beds, waterways and a natural building campus supporting cultivation, making and community-led learning.
"Using reclaimed brick waste alongside renewable reed and thatch, the project reconnects landscape, industry and community through regenerative design."
Student: Harriet King
Course: MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA part II)
Tutors: Ashley Clayton and James Flynn
Samudaya Beyond the Arches by Paige Hurst
"Samudaya Beyond the Arches is an architectural narrative exploring how belonging can extend beyond the home and into the street.
"Rather than proposing large-scale redevelopment, the wider masterplan supports existing social networks by extending the idea of home into the neighbourhood.
"Working with existing buildings and post-industrial fragments, including the railway viaduct, the proposal investigates how communal spaces can rebuild social connection and participation, transforming everyday spaces into neighbourhood social infrastructure.
"Samudaya is formed not through construction alone, but through people, shared contributions, overlapping networks and places made meaningful by those who care for them."
Student: Paige Hurst
Course: MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA part II)
Tutors: Ben Cowd and Tim Barwell
The Lantern Parade by Rob Cunnington
"Located in Okehampton, on the northern edge of Dartmoor National Park, this project reimagines a decaying former Vitriol and Manure Works beside the river as a temporary civic intervention.
"The proposal stabilises the existing structures before allowing their gradual decay and collapse, preparing the site for future renewal.
"In the meantime, it provides a covered outdoor gathering space and workshops for constructing the floats and lanterns used in the town's festivals.
"Set during the blue hour, the architecture takes its geometry, material language and spatial atmosphere from the making and procession of lanterns, celebrating Okehampton's spring parade."
Student: Rob Cunnington
Course: MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA part II)
Tutors: Alex Mills and Danielle Fountain
Great Central Railway Fragments: Building Community Infrastructure by Jake Southcombe
"The Great Central Railway once shaped Leicester's industrial growth, but today only fragments remain. This project reimagines these abandoned corridors as the foundation for a healthier urban future.
"Guided by the principle of community health, it responds to fragmented communities, declining biodiversity and unhealthy urban environments through three interconnected themes: City, People and Nature.
"A lightweight timber infrastructure creates a continuous ecological spine, reconnecting neighbourhoods and supporting education, recreation, ecological restoration, social interaction and wellbeing.
"Through fragments including Biodiverse Commons, Forest School, Workers' Commons, River Commons and Generational Living, the project transforms redundant infrastructure into a resilient landscape for people and nature."
Student: Jake Southcombe
Course: MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA part II)
Tutors: Ben Cowd and Tim Barwell
Rewilding the Machine City by Raven Schneider
"This project reimagines Leicester's Lee Circle as a post-car, ecological and socially connected urban habitat.
"Responding to the legacy of car-led planning, slum clearance, displacement, urban fragmentation and the loss of public life, the proposal explores how redundant infrastructure can be transformed into a more humane and resilient city.
"Through strategies of rewilding, water management, biodiversity, collective living and urban repair, the project brings water back to the surface as a visible civic and ecological system, while creating new forms of public life, shared habitation and environmental repair."
Student: Raven Schneider
Course: MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA part II)
Tutors: Ben Cowd and Tim Barwell
Between Making and Play: An Architecture of Observation by Umar Kahn
"Between the quiet rhythm of making and the uncertainty of play, architecture becomes a space of observation, where children learn through watching, wandering, pausing and inhabiting.
"Within the ruins of Frog Island, craft, movement and memory begin to overlap again. Learning occurs through proximity; observation becomes participation and play exists within making.
"The 'ruin' is not preserved as an object, but continued as occupation and the architecture frames relationships rather than rooms."
Student: Umar Kahn
Course: BA Architecture
Design tutors: Sophie Roper Hall and Dan Farshi
Technology tutor: Lucy Wilson
Living in Between by John Europa Ramos
"This project investigates the relationship between private and communal living through a series of interconnected volumes organised shared 'in-between' spaces.
"These transitional areas encourage interaction, collective activities and a stronger sense of community while still maintaining individual privacy, exploring adaptable living through polyvalence and ideas of expandable, courtyard and layered living.
"The proposal tackles an urban scale, positioning itself between the industrial memory of Leicester's Wolsey Island and a new way of inhabiting the site by reinterpreting the landscape spaces."
Student: John Europa Ramos
Course: BA Architecture
Design tutors: Grace Quah and Lucy Pengilley Gibb
Technology tutor: Kyriakos Katsaros
Ecotone Breawern, Frog Island Leicester by Mark Shaw
"'An industrial process reimagined as a sustainable, regenerative system where herpetofauna, place and pub culture coexist.'
"The riverbank of Frog Island, Leicester, and its post-industrial ruins bring humans and habitats together as a circular system.
"Static aerated composting systems transfer heat into walling to support burrow areas for reptile inhabitation, brewery hop waste fuels a closed-loop electricity system and waste transport is minimised with black soldier fly larvae bioconversion systems.
"Walls are thermal micro-climatic with reclaimed sandstone and facades are demountable for further re-use."
Student: Mark Shaw
Course: BA Architecture
Design tutors: Sophie Roper Hall and Dan Farshi
Technology tutor: Lucy Wilson
Where Media Shifts, the Bridge Responds by Sabeeha Hussain
"This project explores how rapidly evolving media and AI have the capacity to reshape society. Expressing this acceleration and rate of media 'shifts' through deployable architectural structures, with shifting forms to mirror continual technological change.
"A narrative of three characters – the space innovator, digital storyteller and sceptical resident – occupy the site through a system of sequential programmatic coding, volume interplay and level changes, bridging gaps and circulating occupiers into areas of exchange to inform digital literacy."
Student: Sabeeha Hussain
Course: BA Architecture
Design tutors: Grace Quah and Lucy Pengilley Gibb
Technology tutor: Kyriakos Katsaros
Respective Remembrance: The Narrative by Danly Agboraw
"A narrative-focused crematorium ash scattering terrain located along the River Soar in Leicester.
"The project examines how architecture can convert stories from a singular ritual event into an orchestrated journey of participation, reflection and particularly witnessing.
"In response to modern perspectives towards cremation and memorialisation, the proposal redefines the relationship between mourners, visitors and the landscape.
"Through a sequence of processional spaces, visitors move from the urban realm into an immersive setting of controlled light, water, material weights and changing levels of enclosure.
"Storytelling is integrated in the architecture as a medium, shaping emotional transitions through scenes of compression, pause, gathering, ceremony and release."
Student: Danly Agboraw
Course: BA Architecture
Design tutors: Grace Quah and Lucy Pengilley Gibb
Technology tutor: Kyriakos Katsaros
Partnership content
This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and De Montfort University. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.