Christopher Jan Wright

Christopher's project gained interest in being realized in Dundee in 2020. Read our interview with him below.

How much did the funding help you not just with your education but also with the industry partner you had?

In terms of the industry partner and the support - that was one of the greatest assets of the programme. It encourages you to find an industry partner and I was really lucky, I worked with Bell Architects, which is an Architectural firm from Northern Ireland and throughout the whole year I was having zoom calls with Murray the lead Architect and he introduced me to loads of community projects they worked on and they became great case studies for my project. And that really helped me to create a dynamic proposal. It really anchored it in the real world.

What would you say to people thinking about applying to the funding?

So I think I would go back to when I was applying in January and I was actually quite sceptical about applying. I didn’t think my project linked directly to construction. My tutor encouraged me to apply. When I was looking at the case studies, my research project didn’t look like any of the others ones.

I think that’s why I would encourage people to apply because CSIC encourages you to do a unique body of research that is totally unique to you and it gives you a lot of freedom in that way. And like I said with the industry partner in terms of getting contacts it’s so useful.

Construction is changing. Why do you want to move into the built environment?

So I think even for myself I had the preconceived notion that the construction industry is just about building but it is such a multidisciplinary system with services, systems, organisations, etc. It pulls in so many different voices from so many different areas so it offers an interesting opportunity for so many different future careers.

Watch the full interview: