Friday 13th March - unlucky for Bartlett students, very lucky for the Uber drivers they hire.
For the uninitiated, students study- ing Architecture and associated pro- grammes at The Bartlett are each issued with their own desks in 22 Gor- don Street to use as a personal work- space over the year (Art Historians, this is where UCL has been spending your £9,250). So when whispers of 22GS’s closure began to spread along the Bar- tlett grapevine, the students calmly be- gan to panic - fearing they would lose their desks and with them their entire personalities.
Rumour was compounded when an email confirmed that the onsite BMade workshop would close later that after- noon for an indefinite period (as it falls under UCL’s ban on face-to-face teach- ing). This caused additional, less mild panic as students did their level best to cram a whole term’s worth of ham- mering, drilling and screwing into the remainder of the afternoon.
An email from esteemed architec- tural historian Murray Fraser (editor of Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global His- tory of Architecture - RRP £395.00 available at all good booksellers and, presumably, Waterstones) was spread around the BSc cohort like some sort of a virus... Fraser warned his students that 22GS was likely to close without warning over the weekend and not reo- pen until September.
Queue pandemonium. Take the gun? Take the cannoli? TAKE EVERY- THING - THERE’S NO TIME TO DECIDE! Edgelord architects spent their Friday night going retro - playing games of irl Tetris as they crammed as much of the school’s equipment as possible into the boot of a Volkswagen Passat.
Come Monday, an email informed Bartlett students that 22GS would in fact remain open, as well as gently re- minding them that ‘Desktop 3D Print- ers should remain in studio spaces’. UCL, clearly wanting to make them- selves of some value to a post-apoca- lyptic society, are hoarding all the 3D printers. Fucking typical. Shortly after the 3D Printers had been safely re- turned, 22GS was indefinitely closed. UCL 1 - Bartlett Students nil.