The capstone: the whole district argued as one plan — every zoning, transit, budget and public-realm decision since Week 1, defended end to end at the final jury.
Artefact deadline: · Weight: 50%
Deadline passed. The artefact clock has stopped — what late work costs.
Twelve weeks of district decisions, argued as one position. Holistic marking does not mean the three metrics stopped applying. It means no part of the plan can be carried by a strong score elsewhere, and that a fourth question sits beside them: Week 10’s exposure, and what the model could not show.
This brief is the sole authority for memo, appendix, boards, screenshots and defence. The Week 12 studio is the jury. Two deadlines apply, not one — read Two clocks below before you read anything else.
Two clocks#
- Friday 21 May 12:00 — jury copy of the defence memo, including the omissions appendix at the front. Both chairs pre-read all sixteen copies. This is why the chairs can sit at 13:00 on Monday; it is not the artefact deadline.
- Monday 24 May 12:00 — the artefact. The same memo, the in-simulation
screenshots, two A1 boards, and the save
<student ID>-w12, paused at 08:00 and full district extent. Late work on this clock follows the studio policies artefact rule.
Finalize the reserve-versus-link decision during Week 11 and lodge it in Friday’s memo. Monday rehearses that position. A late Friday copy must still reach both chairs immediately; it receives no separate mark deduction, but forfeits advance feedback. Monday’s artefact clock still applies. An agreed extension explicitly states the revised memo time and whether the student uses the original jury or a later convenor desk crit; contact the convenor before Friday noon.
What the artefact must contain#
- A defence memo of no more than 1,600 words (the omissions appendix does not count toward this limit) that states a claim, the grounds, the warrant, the qualifier as a number, and the rebuttal. The omissions appendix drafted in Week 11 sits at the front, not the back.
- Screenshots at the walk-through views named in the Week 12 session: full extent roads only; land value overlay; corridor at neighbourhood scale; one street-level block; the three metric readouts. Caption in-game day and 08:00.
- Spatial planning evidence on the boards — named overlays, the corridor budget sheet column, the unfunded list, the Week 10 exposure statement. Oral polish without this evidence does not carry a 50% holistic mark.
- A metric card is permitted in the slot: the three headline figures written where you can see them. Memory is not the assessment.
- Transit share and walk share keep separate observation denominators. Do not add them. The long-range reserve-versus-link forecast is a worksheet, not a UI field.
Defence#
13:00, not 14:00 — this brief overrides the standing pin-up start because sixteen fifteen-minute slots cannot start at 14:00. Studio 2.14 (Marisol Quaye chair, Idris Fenn sitting) and Studio 2.16 (Tobias Wren chair, Nadia Ilkhom sitting), eight students each. Sunniva Marek circulates between both rooms as Visiting Critic; her feedback feeds both chairs’ calibration, and she chairs neither.
Fifteen minutes per plan: five presenting, then clarifying questions, then critique, then the presenter last. This is the policies clock, not Week 4’s six minutes and not a twenty-minute slot.
Boards hang in roster order from 12:15. The running order is drawn at 12:50 and does not rearrange the wall. Each student is seen live by one chair and one sitting tutor. Chairs do not swap rooms. The other chair’s mark is from the Friday memo, the boards, and Friday’s calibration.
The last question of every slot is the fourth question: does the district hold under Week 10’s fire load case, and what could the model not show.
Marking#
Holistic. The three metrics remain the language of the argument. A plan whose claims exceed its evidence is marked down across the whole document.
See resources and upload destinations and the common marking bands.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- The jury copy of your defence memo, with the omissions appendix at the front, reaches both chairs by Friday 21 May 12:00 — three days before the artefact deadline.
- Your defence memo is no more than 1,600 words (the omissions appendix does not count) and states a claim, the grounds, the warrant, the qualifier as a number, and the rebuttal.
- Your screenshots cover full extent roads only, the land value overlay, the corridor at neighbourhood scale, one street-level block, and the three metric readouts, captioned in-game day and 08:00.
- Your boards carry spatial planning evidence: named overlays, the corridor budget sheet column, the unfunded list, and the Week 10 exposure statement.
- Transit share and walk share are reported against separate observation denominators, never added together.
- You answer, for every slot, whether the district holds under Week 10's fire load case and what the model could not show.
How it is marked
Judged as a whole rather than criterion by criterion. The jury reads the plan against all three studio metrics at once — livability, fiscal performance and mobility performance — and asks a fourth question the earlier briefs do not: whether the district still holds up under the hazards of Week 10, and whether the plan is honest about what the simulation was never able to show it.