High Street Panorama
Food Stall Bus Stop
Chigae Postbox
Yoke Bench
Lotus Lamp
Residential Semi Detached Extensions
Back of House Sectional Extensions
Pergola Pagodas
Rooftop Allotments Establishing a Global Local Connection with New Malden and North Korea
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New Malden Raised Korean High Street
Existing High Street
High Street Statistics
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Potential of Back of House Sectional Extension and Rooftop Allotments when Korean Businesses fully engaged
Fully Upgraded Pub with Korean BBQ restaurant extensions
Sectional Components inspired by traditional Hanok Architecture and Craft
New Malden is a suburb in South West London with an 8000- strong Korean immigrant population; Of this group over 600 are North Korean defectors/refugees. This makes New Malden the home of the most populous North Korean community in Europe, and one of the world’s largest outside of the DPRK itself. Within New Malden High Street, which serves as the site of the project, many refugees find work within the numerous South Korean owned businesses. One of the core goals of the Raised Korean High Street is to provide a spatial system that will help this community better navigate the social web of bein in a Western country but being surrounded by people that look like them yet have lead a completely different lifestyles. Essentially dealing with being a minority wihin a minority and empowering them through their working and home environments.
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Processor and transmitter Panoramic camera
Shop Fronts
Building Scale interventions initiates from Back of House of the High Street and adjacent residential properties of Korean participants
DMZ Building cap, shed and machine area, can be easily dismantled to enable phase 4 up to 4 times
The Exterior Brickwall will be painted green facing the extensions and used as a green screen that will project the Korean forest environment of the DMZ
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Green Screen Fences are installed in the residential units once connected to Raised High Street
Temperature sensor Humidity sensor Ultra durable plastic casing
4 Studio flat for new tenantdesigned for new refugees so they do not have to wait for council housing
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The South Korean community of New Malden started in earnest in the 1980s following a global expansion of large Korean conglomerates likes Samsung and LG, with the first Korean restaurant being opened on the High Street in 1989.
Exploded diagram of Back of House Sectional Extensions
Rooftop gardens and storage facility added, primarily for primary landlord
The South Korean community is largely middle class with long standing immigrant families only now reaching its 2nd to 3rd generations. It is this community that the businesses on the High Street predominantly serves and is run by.
3 First floor and loft renovation for primary landlord
The new High Street seeks to grow their influence within New Malden’s suburban fabric and express their new cultural standing as one of the more tech savvy nations in the world.
Sectional Components inspired by British Allotment, Garden and Tea Time culture
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Views from the DMZ over looking into North Korea
1 The High Street within New Malden Suburb
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House extension and Ground Floor Conversion to B&B
Furniture Scale interventions initially populate the High Street
The wider British community must also be considered within the design of the new High Street as it serves as its wider social, political and economic context.
Transmission via Satellite
Korean Rice Wine Makgeolli stored and fermented in Pub
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2.2 Basement spa and foundation set for future extension possibilities
It is the intent of the high street to be a tourist attraction and simulataneously a place where the wider British Public are not alienated.The project will embrace cultural hybridity to come up with a solution that is unique to New Malden, both Korean and British.
SITE
The High Street is a crucial conduit in which Korean individuals have adapted to find their own sense of the local in the urban fabric of London. Surveying the physical make up of the New Malden High Street revealed an unexpectedly visually-passive Korean retail presence notwithstanding its ethnic association. Korean businesses are nestled sporadically amongst non-ethnically specific businesses - labelled with simple, understated retail frontage blending into the existing streetscape. Despite the street’s outwardly conventional architectural vernacular, the High Street proved to be a complex and unique platform for inter-Korean relations ethnographically. Classified by an over-representation of pink-collar businesses (a majority female workforce), the employment largely consists of North Korean workers engaged in informal economies, with the residential presence of the predominately middle-class Chaebol workers acting as its primary market. <A detailed fieldwork based study that looks at the High Street in a jointly architectural and ethnographical light can be found in the Thesis>
South Korea has a history of sending ‘Peace’ Balloons that send aid to the North over the DMZ. These are generally shot down by the North Korean Military and many end up on the no man’s land which is now a thriving forest. This event will be exploited to gain access to the North Korean environment on a digital capacity.
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REFERENCES
The residential presence of Koreans within New Malden precedes their retail presence on the High Street. Despite the steady increase of Korean businesses opening over the last 25 years, they remain inconspicuous and scattered around the high street, in between other independent businesses and corporate chains with understated shop fronts that seamlessly merge onto the High Street. The types of businesses exhibit signs of gentrification with its wealth of restaurants, retail units and estate agents that clearly cater to the middle class residents in the area. When engaging the Korean businesses of the high street, they are evidently over represented by pink-collar female workers with a high employment rate for North Korean workers engaged in the informal/ grey economy. It is the intent of the new High Street to empower primarily these workers
The 3 groups above serve as the primary groups the High Street seeks to serve. Their background colour serves as a key to show which aspects of the project is specific to them.
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Furniture Scale interventions that have purpose for all three target groups are first introduced to the High Street to see how the wider public will react to the growth of the Korean community in New Malden. These units exhibit cultural hybridity that combine traditional Korean tools and mobile spaces to symbolically british features such as the postbox.
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The Korean community are slowly owning more homes within New Malden. As more North Korean residents are increasingly moving into the predominately semi detached homes around New Malden High Street, this project asks how they could take advantage of the new law allowing house extensions without planning permission and how this could be carried through to express a new ‘Korean in the UK’ architecture via cultural hybridity. In this case how to convert a home into a B&B and further into a small apartment complex. The extension scheme is not meant to be constructed in one go, rather it is phases and the residents are free to stop at whichever phase they are most comfortable with. This page explains how the extensions could be made and the possible commerical benefits to its owner.
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The hidden back of house is where the raised High Street expresses its more exuberant hybrid designs. Sectional Typologies are mixed and matched for each independent businesses on the existing High Street depending on the wants of the owner. In combining architectural tropes from both Korean and British cultures, a playful hybridity is achieved. In conjunction to this, the Brick walls that surround the areas are painted green on the interior side that act as a green screen that displays live broadcastings of the Korean forest of the DMZ through the local free internet network.
Peace Balloons with data collection orbs are sent over the DMZ and promptly shot by the North Korean Military The orbs litter the DMZ forest floor, resisting the crash
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The orbs capture photos of the DMZ forests and climate data
Which is then transmitted back to New Malden for phone app Green Screens and other Global Local devices
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The New Malden ‘Fountain’ Pub is already an established social gathering space that caters for a range of different cultural groups. It hosts a variety of Korean festivals throughout the year and serves Korean food on occasion. The Scheme imagines how it could be extended to become a Korean BBQ pub that combines the gregarious pub culture with the equally social Korean BBQ culture.
Viewing platforms
Chilli Growing Tower
Chilli Drying Kitchens
Back of House areas joined via Viewing Platforms and scattered Chilli Growing Towers
Raised walkway and Display Fans
Chilli Growing Kitchens giving access to Raised High Street
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Garden Spa
Station Wifi Gate
Garden Spa Overlooking the park
An interlocking timber lattice gives structural support to the raised High Street Entryway and is used by the Korean Community to store their Clay pots that ferment a New Malden Specific Kimchi, using the grown products on the land bridge itself.
Signal Range
The main lounge is predominately timber that looks over the park. Above the timber landscape are hanging sleeping pods where people could relax in.
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large field space spotted with family eating modules and given opportunity to easily transform into an events space
Station and Wifi Kites covered in solar panel skin to gain electrical energy for drone flights around New Malden
Solar Energy Gain
3 Patio extended with new extension and making garden into interior courtyard
The bright red display fans on the bridge is automatic and fans out when people are nearby. They display statistics of businesses reachable by the new raised High Street as well as crop yields and local produce sales.
The raised pools have a semi exposed glass frame and is timber clad, surrounded by glass on three sides over and in tree line of the park.
The Kitchens on top of the timber lattice have south facing roofs that are used in the summer to dry chillies for the Kimchi. Their height makes it an ideal place for a projector that allows for an interactive floor that children can play with and on.
The Spa has a café area where people who are not there for the water and sauna to enjoy the atmosphere.
Drone Base
Wifi Kites
Drone base and Station area during festival season
= Internet access is becoming increasing desirable for the public and the tech savvy Korean community is set to take advantage if it through this scheme
Free Wi Fi
Solar Panel Fabric Skin Circular Polarized Antenna core
Wifi Kites Wifi Kites near the Station entrance
2 Dedicated korean restaurant and bar area with new patio area Chilli drying racks
Mesh seat Drying Fan Projector Viewing platforms are lit with these umbrella sky lanterns that store smaller lanterns that are used for display on special festival periods
1 Korean BBQ and pergola area extension on top of unused space on the flat roof of existing pub extension
Lantern Storage
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The Viewing Platform seeks to join all the extensions into a coherent whole, creating a new, raised High Street that expresses the Korean Culture more exuberantly. The Bride brings more plant growing areas and kitchens that will intensify the production of site specific produce such as New Malden Kimchi.
The Chilli growing towers are semi climate controlled areas that allows for Chillies that normally will not grow in London to be viable
Chilli Growing
Kimchi Storage
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The Chilli growing kitchens provides an alternate route onto the New Malden Raised High Street without needing to gain entry via the Korean businesses themselves. To help navigate the different walkways,display fans will show you exactly where you are located and provide an interactive guide to the High Street itself.
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The Garden spa will be one of the last installations for the new High Street for its large financial capital requirement. It will work off the structure of the existing car park that over looks the public park and join onto the main High Street towards the final phases of development. It combines the idea of a bath house and Korean ‘Jimjilbang’ spa culture.
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The Station Wifi gate is important as it marks the start of the High Street (with the roundabout on the end of the road signifying the end). It houses the control room that operates and manages the drones and the Wifi network while also providing power to these services through solar panel management.
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The Wifi Kites provide free internet access across the raised High Street. Their installation throughout the High Street will be phased to meet the demand of the service as they are modular and can be easily installed on any of the columns supporting the raised High Street.
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Alongside the Wifi towers, a drone delivery system will be in play on the High Street with their base being on top of the two existing office towers next to the station. These towers will also feature new advertisement boards to take advantage of the tourism that the scheme is expected to generate. These are speculative ways in which the Korean Community could be better served and generate a profit in the not so distant future.