ARCHITECTURE students at Clydebank’s college were challenged to prove they’re the best bar none by a top architect.

William Nolan, interior design director and architect at Graven Images, tasked the HNC pupils from both Paisley and Clydebank’s West College Scotland campuses to design a micro bar or cafe suitable for all. After three months of work, the students were invited to present their work at the Lighthouse in Glasgow.

Clydebank student Khaalid Nazir, from Balloch, said: “I really enjoyed the project.

“Having Graven create us a brief and help us along the design process was extremely beneficial and certainly helped me improve my skills.

“Seeing some of Graven’s previous designs and hearing how they went about researching and inventing concepts has shown me different ways to tackle briefs as a working professional in the future.”

Staff praised the project for providing pupils with real industry experience.

William said: “Graven has always been committed to supporting training and education within our profession, so I was very happy to be involved in developing a design project for the WCS students.

"Interior Design is a demanding profession, and a challenging course, so one of the key objectives for me was to help nurture a forum where young students can learn to explore and articulate design ideas, and start to feel more confident about how these ideas are expressed and make manifest.

“It seemed important to balance the analysis of the more serious design principals, about scale, order, proportion, use of light and materiality, with some latitude for left-field thinking – and a bit of fun as well – to engage the whole class in what opportunities good design can offer while challenging their thought process.”

He added: “It was great to see the class buy into the ideas we discussed together and respond with a high level of enthusiasm and hard work. It was also really satisfying to sense that there was undoubtedly talent within the class, and with continued application and commitment to explore and ask questions of themselves and their work, the future could be very positive for many of them.”