Bartlett Design Anthology | UG4

Design Anthology UG4

Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Compiled from Bartlett Summer Show Books

Our Design DNA

At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based programmes for more than a decade. These catalogues, amounting to thousands of pages, illustrate the best of our students’ extraordinary work. Our Design Anthology series brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how their practice and research has evolved.

Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have remained constant, others have changed. Students have also progressed from one programme to another. Nevertheless, the way in which design is taught and explored at The Bartlett School of Architecture is in our DNA. Now with almost 50 units, clusters and labs in the school across our programmes, the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year.

2024 Unearthing

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

2023 Antithesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

2022 Anamnesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

2021 Convalescence

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

2020 Inter Alia

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

2019 Great Expectations

Hugh McEwen, Greg Nordberg, Catrina Stewart

2018 Subtropeia

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2017 Supersaturators

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2016 Otakutecture

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2015 Monumetric

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2014 Datum Shifters

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2013 Facsimile

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2012 Expo(sé)!

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2011 The Wild Blue Yonder

Mike Aling, Luke Pearson

2010 Character Building

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

2009 Nothing is Neutral

Mark Ruthven, Jerry Tate

2008

Saskia Lewis, Jerry Tate

2007 Production + Consumption

Stewart Dodd, Saskia Lewis

2006 Connections

Stewart Dodd, Kate Darby

2005 Dangerous Futures

Stewart Dodd, Vesna Petresin Robert

2004 Performa

Stewart Dodd, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen

2024

Unearthing Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Unearthing

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Amid the clamour of modernity’s ceaseless march, there exists a lamentable loss, one not often heard but profoundly felt – the gradual fading of the architectural narratives that once wove the tapestry of humanity’s existence. Much like the diminishing echo of an ancient myth, our lineal heritage has been eroded, obscured and, in some cases, obliterated. This lost narrative is not merely a compilation of bricks, mortar and ornaments, but also a chronicle of human dreams, aspirations and our ceaseless crusade for meaning in the spaces we create to inhabit.

Just as an archaeologist delves into the depths of the earth to unveil the mysteries of civilisations long past, architects too are excavators of the human experience. We sift through the strata of time to bring to light the buried treasures of our collective memory. This year UG4 has been unearthing the intrinsic properties and potentials of stone and steel, listening to the whispers of humanity’s antiquities and tales from beneath our feet, gleaning from our forebears the authentic craftsmanship and processes pertaining to spatial formation.

In our relentless pursuit of progress, we have too often bulldozed these architectural storytellers to make way for the new, forsaking the wisdom and beauty they once held. The act of concealing or destroying such artefacts is occasionally compelled by necessity rather than being a deliberate choice, often framed as a measure of protection rather than erasure. In doing so, we risk severing our connection to the past and blinding ourselves to the lessons it offers.

We forsake the opportunity to draw from the rich reservoir of human experience, to learn from its triumphs and tribulations. It reminds us that we are part of an unbroken chain of generations, each contributing to the unfolding epic of human history. The accumulated achievements of mankind necessitate a process of rediscovery, examination and thoughtful assimilation within contemporary frameworks, continuing our search for better ways of living.

Year 2

Khushi Arora, Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Luke Grbesa, Hei Lam William Li, Liana Lumunyasi, Gideon Mbowa, Chae Won Song, Brant You

Year 3

Sara Abbod, Siya Bhandari, Natania De-Marro, Chanya (Miu) Ieosivikul, Junjie Mei, Jessica Richard, Zaynah Younus

Technical tutors and consultants: Kacper Chmielewski, Uwe Frohmader

Critics: Jhono Bennett, Charlie Caswell, James Christian, Holly Cowan, Zachary Fluker, Bethan Kay

4.1, 4.3, 4.10 Chanya (Miu) Ieosivikul, Y3 ‘St. Mary –Centre for Casting’. St Mary Aldermanbury is a historical church reconstructed by Christopher Wren in 17thcentury London. The church was ravaged by the Blitz, and, to save the structure, a plan to move it to the US was set in motion. The church’s life through three distinct historical epochs unfolds a captivating narrative, eliciting intrigue into themes of reconstruction. The proposal speculates a fourth life, marking the third intervention on the site. It emerges as a distinct entity while acknowledging the sensitive history and knowledge transfer inherent in the church’s lineage.

4.2, 4.5 Jessica Richard, Y3 ‘The Glassworks’. In the remains of Holywell Street lies the abandoned 152–158 Strand. Stained glass is an endangered craft experiencing rapid decline. The project brings back the life and light that once existed. Its decorative façade and brightly coloured windows draw attention, housing a bar that recycles its waste glass into stained glass windows. The project reinvigorates this lost trade in new ways, providing opportunities for young people to learn historical skills that are on the brink of extinction.

4.4 Junjie Mei, Y3 ‘St Luke’s Community Centre’. This project stands on the former site of St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics and assumes the responsibilities of the old asylum. As Islington has the highest rate of mental health issues in the country, this project provides the community with a space in which to work and live together. It inherits the old functions of the courtyard, which offered space for sports and children’s play. The building is a ‘quiet newcomer’, maintaining a low stance above the ground.

4.6, 4.20 Natania De-Marro, Y3 ‘The Panatorium Project’. Located on 12 Whidborne Street in Camden, the project renews a piece of its history, directing its purpose towards the young people of the area. The clients, London Music Fund and The Actors’ Children’s Trust, desire a building that caters to the largest demographic in the area: children aged 7–13. This project has multiple auditoriums for productions, plays and musical endeavours. The reuse of bricks as building aggregate in the façade allows a proposal that is homogeneous with its surroundings, assimilating to the existing context.

4.7, 4.25 Gideon Mbowa, Y2 ‘Staging Recovery’. Brixton has historically faced challenges related to drug abuse, underscoring an urgent need for support services in the community. Brixton also has a rich history in the performing arts, which have been proven effective in aiding individuals with substance addiction recovery. The building therefore bridges the personal and private journey of rehabilitation with the social and expressive nature of performance, providing a safe space for addicts to better themselves and their community. This project redefines traditional materiality through a more contextual response.

4.8, 4.15 Liana Lumunyasi, Y2 ‘Heritage Waters’. This project creates a fusion of contemporary bathhouses with Roman ruins. Visitors can enjoy the tranquil experience of a modern bath while exploring the archaeological remains below, providing a unique experience. The building represents a blend of practicality and cultural preservation, inviting visitors to appreciate the seamless union of different eras. The project emphasises a commitment to sustainability and history.

4.9, 4.11, 4.18 Hei Lam William Li, Y2 ‘From the Ground Up: The Excavation Exhibits’. This project retrofits the existing building’s shell structure. It unearths and displays the hidden medieval archaeology revealed by projected railway excavation works near Holborn station. A grid formation based on the Wheeler–Kenyon method is employed to create unexpected viewing experiences. The building showcases geometric, guided views designed

through bespoke displays, creating a labyrinth where the viewer’s experience becomes an excavation.

4.12, 4.14, 4.16 Brant You, Y2 ‘The Leather Development Centre’. The existing building sits along a historical alleyway that connects Bow Lane and Queen Street in the City of London. The project fosters connectivity and attracts people to this hidden location by cutting through the building to create an external pathway. The programme is influenced by the Cordwainer Technical College, a school that focuses on leather-making. The external design was inspired by historical decorative elements from the surrounding buildings.

4.13 Chae Won Song, Y2 ‘Return of Bozier’s Court’. The project restores the demolished building, Bozier’s Court, which was best known for its bookstores. Located near Tottenham Court Road station, the client is Hoxton Mini Press, an independent publisher that focuses on photography books centred on niche topics in East London. This small extension of their main building in Hackney helps them expand their presence to other areas of the city.

4.17 Wing Hei Hayley Chan, Y2 ‘Unearthing Memories of the Docklands Area’. The site is located on Narrow Street in the Limehouse district of East London. The project revives the rich cultural history of the area, which was shaped by the multicultural community of sailors and their interactions with Limehouse Chinatown in the late 19th century. The programme is an extension of the developing public art exhibition in Canary Wharf, attracting more local and global artists to showcase their works through indoor and outdoor exhibitions.

4.19, 4.23 Luke Grbesa, Y2 ‘Verdant Refuge: A Rejuvenation of the Union Jack Club’. Based in Waterloo, the project retrofits and redevelops the Union Jack Club, which currently serves as a military membership club and accommodation. The proposal transforms the club into a mental health care and gardening centre for veterans of the armed forces, creating a therapeutic journey of healing.

4.21 Khushi Arora, Y2 ‘Healing with Clay: Therapeutic Pottery for Stroke Recovery’. The programme combines traditional pottery-making techniques and modern rehabilitative methods to treat patients who have recently suffered a stroke. Engaging with ceramics has many benefits, such as improving fine motor skills and stimulating neural pathways through the sensory experience of using clay.

4.22 Siya Bhandari, Y3 ‘The Refuge’. This site lies on what used to be Holborn Court, one of the biggest slums in the 1880s. Slum eviction schemes left 45,000 people without a home. Refugees today face a similar plight. The project supports female refugees in particular, empowering them to become independent while fostering a sense of community among those who feel alone.

4.24 Sara Abbod, Y3 ‘Institute of Urban Exploration’. The project retrofits the derelict Tate Institute building in East London to create a home for the urban explorer. It includes a research department with digital and physical archives, among other spaces.

2023

Antithesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Antithesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos UG4

Recent events around the world have revealed we are in an age of upheaval, facing abrupt changes that have left us feeling perplexed. Humanity finds itself placed in a difficult position in which truth and stability cannot be realised in simple terms, demanding that we instead find them in their very opposites. When complex and contradictory situations do not offer simple solutions the notion of duality proves itself relevant. It provides a perspective on life which embraces the tension in the paradox of human existence.

With growing access to knowledge follows an increasing awareness of the fact that the solutions to our problems lie not in a one-sided view, but in the interplay of contradictions. UG4 interrogated the paradigm of antithesis, an exploration into the concept of duality in theory, creative process and spatial formation. We rejected simple answers to what we acknowledged to be fundamentally complex issues. From a wide holistic conceptual dissection of the brief condensing down to specific material interrogations, we explored the implications of antithesis as a conceptual and methodological design contraption.

To remain relevant to the context of human existence, the architecture of today must also find truth and stability in opposites. Duality exists regardless of the state of its recognition. As a matter of fact, architecture could not exist without fundamental dualities. The potential of inverses is not simply realised by pairing their contrasting nature. We were interested not only in the obvious outcomes of these pairings, but also – and more so – in the friction and dialogue produced at its point of contact: the architectural and socio-political threshold. With a strong plea for civility and a demand for society to be inclusive rather than exclusive, we welcomed uncertainties by embracing the hybrid rather than the ‘pure’, accommodating as opposed to ‘excluding’, and in turn appealing to disorganised vitality over obvious unity.

UG4 brings a sense of theatre, playfulness, innovation and context to the design of spaces – manifested through rigorous thinking and analysis, alongside testing and making. We reinterpret materials, revisit old crafts and techniques and approach design through both analogue and digital mediums, excited by the complementation of the two.

Year 2

Nadiya Khan, Hashaam Khan, Lily Nguyen, Adam Raymond, Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich, Theodor Wolf

Year 3

Sara Abbod, Sean Abkhou, Fasai Chainuvati, Veronika Khasapova, Mikaella Konia, Chin (Shirley) Lam, Hannah Lingard, Maisy Liu, Esma Onur, Oyku Sekulu, Elina Seyed Nikkhou

Technical tutors and consultants: Simon Pierce, Kacper Chmielewski

Critics: Charlie Caswell, Kacper Chmielewski, Hannah Corlett, Maria Fulford, Neil Hubbard, Niall McLaughlin, Jörg Majer

4.1, 4.3, 4.14 Maisy Liu, Y3 ‘Unearthed Memories of the Forgotten: Reconstructing the Lost Narratives of the King’s Head Theatre Pub’. The King’s Head Theatre pub is an amalgamation of London’s past and future. As a microcosmic place of refuge, discovery, nostalgia and memory, the site reflects the historical culture and the expansive creative potential of fringe performance. To enhance the pub theatre experience, the project deconstructs the origin of the public house and tavern, creating a juxtaposition between the divisive and the inclusive, the intimate and the expansive. The intertwining of pub, studio and theatre spaces introduces the theme ‘see and be seen’.

4.2, 4.9 Hannah Lingard, Y3 ‘On Common Ground: Establishing an Urban Commons for the Precariat’. ‘Precariate’ is a portmanteau combining the words precarious and proletariat. It is a term employed in the fields of economics and sociology to describe a new social class comprising people who experience various forms of precarity. This project proposes a programme that focuses on providing a space for this social class, that enables the users to articulate their own identity and establish a form of representation. The programme facilitates the idea of philanthropic endeavour, through welfare and enrichment spaces which the visitor can transition between autonomously.

4.4, 4.25 Theodor Wolf, Y2 ‘Return to the Rails’. Based below the ground plane within the railways, the old Shoreditch Station will serve as a home for the Islington model railway club, and provide them with an all-new club headquarters. Situated directly over the railways, the accommodation will offer unprecedented views for trainspotters. The building reflects the ornamentation of industrial England railway stations on its façade.

4.5, 4.6, 4.24 Veronika Khasapova, Y3 ‘Planting Sensuality’. Situated in a former horticultural area of London, the building revives the connection between nature and medical expertise to enhance the psychological state of its guests. Naturopathy will be used as the system of treatment which discourages drug use and emphasises the practice of natural therapies, such as herbal medicine and horticultural therapy.

4.7 Oyku Sekulu, Y3 ‘St Bart’s Orthopaedics Clinic’. The site of an existing disused ambulance station close to St Bart’s Hospital is utilised to house a new orthopaedics clinic. Referencing Smithfield Market, the excess bone waste from the market is used as a bonding element for the creation of new bricks that are to clad the building, creating different textures and colours on its façade.

4.8, 4.18, 4.20 Elina Seyed Nikkhou, Y3 ‘Mint and Gospel Lighthouse Shelter’. Southwark has long been a deprived area of London. Current statistics reveal that 31% of its households live in poverty and 43% of its children reside in poverty-stricken households. Homelessness due to domestic abuse has also risen by 125%, as reported in 2019. In light of these challenges, The Mint and Gospel Lighthouse in Union Street, Southwark – a historical ragged school – will be repurposed to serve as a safe haven and shelter for women who have fled their homes due to domestic abuse.

4.10 Adam Raymond, Y2 ‘Camden Lock Spa’. Just a stone’s throw away from Hawley Wharf and a threeminute walk down the canal from the famous Camden Market lies a site that holds a significant piece of Camden’s history. This project proposes a unique spa that draws inspiration from the forgotten art of sponge making, which once thrived in this very area. From the laboratory situated in the heart of the building to the textures of the external façade, the structure is infused with a palpable sense of history and authenticity.

4.11, 4.13, 4.19 Fasai Chainuvati, Y3 ‘Reclaimed Haven’. Electrical lighting and urban development have allowed

us to colonise the night, driving out wildlife and astronomers who use the stars for navigation. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictable nature of this evolution, a small astronomical community is now facing insolvency. To tackle this challenge, the Haven will embrace environmental involvement and foster dialogue around ownership. The new proposal reintegrates wildlife and restores natural conditions while making the existing structure a highlighted part of the site.

4.12, 4.21 Pasathorn Srichaiyongphanich, Y2 ‘The Convoys Wharf’. Research into the history of Lewisham informs the proposal, which works within the existing Grade II listed structures of Convoys Wharf in London. The project addresses the preservation of the 19thcentury cast iron structures on the site and respectfully integrates a secondary enclosure to house a new programme for a colour factory and learning centre, referencing the historical production of white and indigo pigments for paint. The programme challenges the future plans for the site by developers and creates an experimental space for local residents.

4.15 Esma Onur, Y3 ‘London College of Fashion: Mycelium Wing’. Situated in the former horticultural area of London, the building revives the connection between nature and medical expertise to enhance the psychological state of its guests. Naturopathy will be used as the system of treatment which discourages drug use and emphasises the practice of natural therapies, such as herbal medicine and horticultural therapy.

4.16 Mikaella Konia, Y3 ‘Café and Bio-plastic Cup Factory’. The self-sustaining factory functions by collecting sugarcane from the farm, processing it and creating bio-plastic cups for use in the café. The café sits alongside the factory, giving visitors an immersive experience of the production line. The project’s purpose is to enhance public knowledge of the use of bio-plastic in building materials and product design while experiencing and celebrating the material’s lifecycle.

4.17, 4.23 Chin (Shirley) Lam, Y3 ‘Finding the Light in the Dark’. The building’s primary use is a woodworking and lantern workshop, opened for the community to learn both traditional and modern ways of making paper lanterns. Lanterns are a vital celebratory element of many Asian festivals and are a symbol of luminance, luck, prosperity and longing. Through the celebration of light, this programme illuminates a path towards community unity and shared experiences.

4.22 Nadiya Khan, Y2 ‘The Mannequin Factory and Theatre Spaces’. Situated within the historical streets of London Bridge, the mannequin factory and theatre offer visitors a unique experience inspired by the origins of plastic surgery and the eerie phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’. The programme gives an insight into the world of mannequin production set alongside theatre experiences in the building’s two performance spaces. Visitors can witness the creation of mannequins by climbing ramps that surround the glass factory and observe every stage of production from the initial maquette to the hand-painted details.

2022

Anamnesis Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Anamnesis

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

As a fallout of the pandemic, self-isolation has inevitably altered the defining archetype of spaces, our homes metamorphosing into the city. Our place of rest now serves as an office and studio, classroom and gym, restaurant and cinema. The threshold between interior and exterior is inverted, the park now serving as a vast common room, enclosed only by trees and foliage that form screens between porous pockets of space.

In the process of exiting the pandemic, we enter an age of spatial revolution and ambiguity, with a continuing dissolution of architectural and historical typologies.

This year UG4 interrogated the theme of anamnesis, reconstructing memories of space to reconfigure a future that is unexpected yet familiar. We employed memories as a design tool, a conceptual and methodological contraption to construct constellations of forms, narratives and information. Our deconstruction of memory revealed opportunities for discourse on shifting paradigms and architecture’s response to it. The familiar yet foreign city of London acted as our testbed, where the fabric of the capital supplied us with incentives to design new interventions within the present. Its history provided unconventional opportunities for the city to leverage conditions of impermanence to act as catalysts for change.

The built environment is not stagnant; it evolves alongside humanity to be harmonious with the region and socio-cultural community. An increasingly important issue is the treatment and disposal of construction materials. Within the UK, the construction industry is the largest consumer of resources, requiring more than 400 million tonnes of material a year: 32% of landfill waste comes from the construction and demolition of buildings. Waste is simply material without an identity. Value for these materials can be recreated by extracting embedded memories, while also introducing and preparing for new ones. Consideration of transiency and permanency became part of our design methodology.

We prepared our interventions for potential unpredicted shifts, both physically and programmatically. To do so required both a radical approach and a deep understanding of materials and how to reimagine them in new contexts. Our design is informed by, but not limited to, past architectural contributions, reassigned to a contemporary context.

Year 2

Marco Carraro, Shuhao Guo, Sally Kemp, Hoi (Derek) Lee, Gabriella Peixouto Bandeira Da Silva, George Perks, Keeleigh Pham, Eden Robertson, Adriana Rodriguez-Villa Lario, Caitlin Wong

Year 3

Fangxingchi (Brendan) Du, Max Hubbard, Kyra Johnston, Gaeul Kim, Moe Kojima, Daniel Langstaff, Siqi Ouyang, Hei (Leo) Tse

Technical tutors and consultants: Kacper Chmielewski, Simon Pierce, Tom Ushakov

Thanks to our critics: Kacper Chmielewski, Maria Knutsson-Hall, Cameron Overy, Simon Pierce, Matt Pratt, Caitlin Tobias Kenessey, Barry Wark

4.1, 4.11 Marco Carraro, Y2 ‘The Electrical Complexity’. The project responds to the ever-increasing issue of e-waste, serving as a catalyst for change in the current model of production, consumption and disposal of e-goods. The proposal reappropriates the Interchange Warehouse, dividing it into four elements: an e-waste disassembly hub; a storage area for retrieved components; a dynamic display that archives the sorted and disassembled items; and a small electrical workshop which aims to empower people to repair and engage with electronics.

4.2–4.3, 4.26 Hei (Leo) Tse, Y3 ‘The Arches at Nine Elms’. The project proposes a boxing gym in Nine Elms, addressing the complex issue of class discrimination through a multidimensional programme. The programme centres around a communal boxing gym enriched with a social space and a physiotherapy clinic to address the high injury rate of the intensive combat sport.

4.4, 4.27 Keeleigh Pham, Y2 ‘Limehouse Textiles and Fashion Workshop’. The project proposes a series of artists’ workshops in Limehouse, reinhabiting the now abandoned and derelict sailmaking workshops with the aim of supporting East London’s burgeoning fashion industry. The proposal provides spaces for young designers to develop alternative textiles and garments, as well as runway show events to exhibit their work.

4.5, 4.9, 4.21 Moe Kojima, Y3 ‘The Bridge’. Prior to gentrification, Vyner Street, adjacent to Regent’s Canal, was the heart of the art scene in East London. The project proposes an open studio for artists and aims to bridge different communities, serving as a social condenser. The site’s forgotten craft of silk weaving informs the roof tile design, reflecting the local climate while suggesting the thousands of strings that come together to form cloth.

4.6 Fangxingchi (Brendan) Du, Y3 ‘Silo-D’. The project proposes a space for people to release and escape urban stress in Silvertown, East London. It contains private tea houses, skywalks, a watchtower and a club. Timber serves as the structure’s main material, creating a fragile and delicate form above ground which is juxtaposed with the robust underground palette of concrete and granite. 4.7, 4.15 Caitlin Wong , Y2 ‘Floating Playground’.

Located on top of Pollock’s Toy Museum, the project proposes a museum inspired by the materiality and mechanics of vintage toys. As well as having playrooms, programmes include the pre-existing toy shop, a workshop, a toy library and a café. The proposal focuses on the experiential aspect of play and embodies architectural playfulness and vibrancy.

4.8, 4.10 Maxwell Hubbard, Y3 ‘Areopagitica’. Sitting adjacent to the House of Lords, Abingdon Green is frequently utilised by broadcasting companies for news reports, with the Houses of Parliament featuring prominently in the background. Due to its semipermanent and unregulated usage, the site is confused and under-employed. The historical precedents of Thorney Island, the Cottonian Library and Doulton Pottery feed into the architecture to create transparency in the murky world of political broadcasting.

4.12–4.13 Gabriella Peixouto Bandeira Da Silva, Y2 ‘The House Above’. The project proposes a space for miniature filmmaking on Berwick Street, Soho, responding to the site’s rich history of film production and light manufacturing. The building is extended, providing film studios and community space. The perforated tile façade allows sunlight to penetrate the building and rotates to ensure there is a constant supply of light throughout the day.

4.14, 4.25 Gaeul Kim, Y3 ‘Therapeutic Herbal Playtower’. The former public baths, gymnasium and playtower in Ladywell, once an exuberant venue and second home to generations of Lewisham locals, has been derelict

since 2004. The project proposes to rejuvenate the site and bridge generations, responding to the site’s urban grain. Therapeutic herbs are sourced from the adjacent St Mary’s churchyard and interweave with the aromatic water canal, celebrating the revival of old medicinal springs and fountains that were once an important resource.

4.16 Eden Robertson, Y2 ‘Chambers of Primordial Water’. This project interrogates the role of water within Jewish practice and how it can be incorporated into secular society. Jewish religious texts place importance on the construction and use of the ‘mikvah’, a man-made pool of spring water used for purification purposes. The proposal explores the themes of birth, life and water, serving as a water birthing facility and hydrotherapy centre for ante- and post-natal care.

4.17 Hoi (Derek) Lee, Y2 ‘The Whittington Inn’. Highgate historically served as a gateway to London, and many travellers used its inns for overnight stays. With the development of railways, theatres and music halls, these local inns entered a state of decline. The project proposes an inn and multi-use venue that ensures a steady stream of visitors, keeping the inn viable on an indefinite basis.

4.18, 4.23 Siqi Ouyang , Y3 ‘Sound in Haggerston’. Haggerston Baths has been derelict since 2000, and current redevelopment plans go against the wishes of locals, who would prefer to restore the original swimming pool. The project responds to these demands by preserving the main façade of the existing building, with a new roof structure interpolated from the neighbouring architectural identities. Curves representing waves, arches and elements developed from Victorian bath interiors are reflected through the spatial layout.

4.19 Sally Kemp, Y2 ‘Finsbury Park Reservoir’. During the 18th century, Finsbury Park and its reservoir were notorious hotspots for promiscuous behaviour. To discourage this behaviour, the government converted the space into a park. This new proposal plans to open the historic underground reservoir and transform it into a community space, while preserving its original layout, creating a labyrinth of arches with interwinding paths and gardens.

4.20, 4.22 Daniel Langstaff, Y3 ‘Launch Point Congreve’. In the early 1870s on a former factory site next to the River Lea in Bromley-by-Bow, construction began on a large new gasworks. The project uses principles taken from archaeoastronomy to stir the primally existential relationship humans had with the cosmos. These manifest as walls that gradually erode to mark the solar eclipses of the next thousand years, and an opening to view the rotation of the stars around Polaris in the night sky.

4.24, 4.28 Kyra Johnston, Y3 ‘The Strange Palace Hotel’. The project is a journey back in time, merging the past and present of central London’s Strand Palace Hotel. It seeks to reinterpret the hotel’s central courtyard, navigating human relationships with animals through augmented reality and highlighting the changes over time through immersive museum exhibits. The use of augmented reality challenges the need for real-life animals and provides a futuristic alternative to combat the abuse prevalent in zoos and circuses.

4.29 Shuhao Guo, Y2 ‘A Stage Performing Gin’s Memory’. A gin palace and distillery located in an abandoned tram tunnel under Kingsway in central London. The proposal links the history of theatre in Covent Garden with gin culture in Holborn, mirroring the way in which trams once physically linked the two areas. Inside, visitors can view the whole manufacturing process before enjoying a drink, while outside, pedestrians can see these visitors from above.

4.2

2021

Convalescence Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Convalescence

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

UG4 is driven by the pragmatic reality of architecture as a profession of rules, restrictions and guidelines and the deep creativity we, as practitioners, bring to our projects. Though we call on theory to reinforce our investigations, we find joy, beauty and levity in the presence and ideals of nature.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the need for personal, collective and urban recovery more apparent than ever. In general, recovery means regaining, recuperating and returning. This year, UG4 interrogated how various definitions of recovery shape the future of London’s urban landscape. We examined recovery at the scale of the individual and their immediate environment, as well as the collective and its impact on the city.

The concept of recovery became popular during the 1970s within grassroots self-help communities and the psychiatric rehabilitation profession. After the mid-1980s, recovery became the focus of extensive research and policy, with the World Health Organisation leading the global conversation. Recovery is thought of as a deeply personal and individual journey, but one that is also inherently connected to an individual’s community and wider society.

Alongside place-based research, UG4 questioned the notion of recovery across histories and cultures: Can re-greening restore degraded urban landscapes and hasten recovery for individuals and communities? How might a new vision of an urban pastoral create places for convalescence and recuperation? These questions culminated in tactical site interventions, using placemaking as a tool to promote urban recovery.

We sought to invent new ways to integrate the outdoors into our spaces, neighbourhoods and cities, challenging conventional architectural approaches and exploring how green infrastructure could become part of our buildings, both laterally and vertically. We investigated increasingly redundant models of city building, such as the high street, town centre and housing estate, and tried to recover them through our use of nature. We looked at brownfield sites, rooftops, disused buildings and abandoned spaces, making them part of our proposals. By better utilising our time outdoors and creating connections with our environment, we became placemakers who break the boundaries created by socio-economic divides.

Year 2

Monika (Nina) Buranasetkul, Adnan Demachkieh, Gaeul Kim, Yan (Johnson) Lam, Ling (Stefanie) Leung, Adam Lynes, Siqi Ouyang, Zuzanna Sienczyk

Year 3

Sahba Akbar, Serim Hur, Yutong Luo, Sara Mahmud, Charis Mikkel Makmurputra, Wiam Mostefai, Jamie Stuart

Technical tutor: Simon Pierce

Critics: Simon Beames, Kacper Chmielewski, Amy Croft, Nick Elias, Tom Greenall, Oliver Houchell, Neil Hubbard, Alex Smith

4.1, 4.20 Jamie Stuart, Y3 ‘Fleet Marriages in the Urban Palimpsest’. The project restores the Fleet Marriage – a ‘secret’ marriage ceremony held in or near Fleet prison in London during the 17th and 18th centuries –at Clerkenwell Chapel. Initially divided, the couple are brought closer to one another as they ascend around a watch repair shop, dressmaking atelier and artificial flower-making workshop. The open chapel space at the top symbolises the end of the journey to marriage. Synonymous with renewal and new beginnings, the building’s programme is wedded to the subterranean themes and hidden histories that permeate the Fleet Marriage. 4.2, 4.8 Ling (Stefanie) Leung, Y2 ‘Everymania – Atelier & Cabaret’. Drawing from Hampstead’s unique histories relating to the performing arts and washerwomen – in the early 16th century Hampstead was said to be chiefly inhabited by washerwomen – the building serves as a costume atelier for elderly women during the day and a drag cabaret by night. The co-habitation of space fosters interaction across generations as a form of urban rehabilitation in London’s loneliest borough. 4.3, 4.14 Yutong Luo, Y3 ‘Echo of the Tide’. The stress of urban life and socialising due to a fear of missing out, increases the need for solitude and mindfulness. The project builds a space behind the sound of the tide, where introverts and people with social anxiety can hide themselves from unwanted conversation and social noise. The function, atmosphere and accessibility of the shared space changes according to the tide.

4.4–4.5 Wiam Mostefai, Y3 ‘In Pursuit of Awe and Wonder: The Northolt Astronomy Centre’. An initial exploration into public space and artificial lighting led to the creation of an underground network of spaces inspired by constellations, astrological myths and gas street lanterns. The centre tackles issues of obesity and low income in the area by drawing connections between healthy eating and astronomy. Inspired by Andrew Ainslie Commons’ award-winning photograph of the Orion Nebula, taken from the garden shed of his Ealing home in 1883, the project provides facilities that share a core understanding of astronomy and allow visitors to practice astrophotography.

4.6, 4.16 Sahba Akbar, Y3 ‘Holistic Therapy’. Living in the urban environment of London, we rarely immerse ourselves fully into a therapeutic natural environment, away from the polluted atmosphere. The proposed holistic therapy centre provides an oasis of nature within central London, sited beside Regent’s Canal. The space focusses on therapy through music, specifically piano, alongside aviaries for songbirds to inhabit.

4.7 Monika (Nina) Buransetkul, Y2 ‘Escapism’. Located in Rotherhithe, London, this project is inspired by the story of The Mayflower, which transported a group of English families in search of a new life, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. The proposed programme is a form of escapism from everyday life, where multiple types of nightclubs are designed to enable visitors to travel through a range of contrasting immersive experiences.

4.9, 4.19 Adnan Demachkieh, Y2 ‘CBD Spa & Wellness Centre’. Limehouse, East London, was once the focal point of a large and thriving Chinese immigrant population, composed mainly of sailors. Their desire for homecooked meals and gossip in Cantonese led to the beginnings of a Chinatown located in Narrow Street. Applying the healing qualities of CBD, the spa and wellness centre promotes the beneficial aspects of social cohesion, relaxation and mental development.

4.10, 4.12 Charis Mikkel Makmurputra, Y3 ‘The Weavers Theatre’. The proposal is a learning centre that spans across a prop-making workshop and theatre. The site, located in Shoreditch, London, has a rich history in the

weaving and crinoline-making industry. The building takes inspiration from the site’s history, incorporating it into the functional and aesthetic elements.

4.11 Yan (Johnson) Lam, Y2 ‘Battersea Heritage Gardens’. The proposal celebrates Battersea’s two identities –agricultural and industrial – and merges them into one space. The building is defined by both its grand undulating industrial walls at its base and the stepped landscape roof at its top. The walls create space for brewing and distilling alcohol and indoor farming, capped by a landscaped roof, and are constructed using bespoke modular units that can be combined to form multiple shapes and functions.

4.13 Zuzanna Sienczyk, Y2 ‘The Ice House’. The project is based on the idea of psychological and physical growth through the endurance of extreme cold temperatures. The idea was first developed by the Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hoff, also known as The Iceman, who puts himself in the most extreme conditions in order to study the effects of cold temperatures on the body and mind. The Ice House is situated in Battlebridge Basin, London, as a tribute to its fascinating history. During the 19th century, Swiss entrepreneur Carlo Gatti established an ice-importing business next to the site.

4.15 Sara Mahmud, Y3 ‘The Ornate Urban Experience’. The project creates unique and harmonious experiences that challenge conventional approaches to recovery through its exploration of architectural pattern, ornamentation and sensory experience. As we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for a space for human and architectural urban recovery has become evident. A study conducted by Imperial College London revealed how the combination of natural fragrances, scent, memory and emotion can improve wellbeing and reduce stress levels.

4.17–4.18 Adam Lynes, Y2 ‘The Floating Tea Expedition’. During the lifetime of the English naturalist and botanist Joseph Banks (1743–1820), Soho Square, where he lived, was described as a tropical paradise. Today, it is neglected and overwhelmed by the urban context. The building reflects Banks’ interest in economic botany and his enthusiasm for tea through the onsite cultivation and production of Earl Grey. ‘The Floating Tea Expedition’ is a community craft centre comprised of an orangery, tearoom and model-boat workshops. The building cultivates recovery by connecting people to the outdoors, forging community and promoting intergenerational relationships.

4.21 Serim Hur, Y3 ‘Masked Ambiguity: A transparent safe haven’. The project explores the ideas of disguise and ambiguity inspired by masquerading and masks. A variation of transparency throughout the building is achieved using unique timber structures inspired by the movements of the human body, fencing and nets. The timber structure wraps around the entire building like a shell, creating a beacon in a centre of urban green space.

2020

Inter Alia Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

Inter Alia

Katerina Dionysopoulou, Billy Mavropoulos

UG4 is driven by the dialectic between the pragmatic reality of architecture as a profession of rules, restrictions and guidelines, and the deep creativity we as practitioners bring to our projects. Without the former, the latter finds no resistance. Though we call on theory to reinforce our investigations, we find joy, beauty and levity within the confines of the real.

This year we challenged one of the principles of planning: the infill development. Awkward plots, leftover sites, the in-between, missing elements and fractured architecture: the infill takes on many forms and suggests myriad solutions. Our proposals have been forged within these parallel limitations, taking the London Borough of Westminster and its policy for infill development as a set of rules to be challenged and disrupted, on tricky, highly restricted sites.

Our tools emerged from the fabric of the city. In a moment when the rhetoric of ‘now’ and fictions of the future dominate critical thought, the value of the past can be overlooked. We focused our design solutions on the lost industries of manufacturing and making that have shaped the urban sites in which we find ourselves. Processes of craft and fabrication are devalued in an economy that demands the cheap and the throwaway. We provided a counter-narrative –uncovering the crafts and industries that have shaped the city and looked at innovation through a reawakening of the historic.

Covering a large area in the centre of the city, Westminster hides beneath its flagstones a rich lineage of craft and making which we will uncover through our research in term one. Histories of watchmaking, jewellery, printing, map-making and bookbinding can be found between Soho, Tottenham Court Road and St Paul’s. For our first project we worked collaboratively to map these crafts, and individually reimagine them to create ‘infill artefacts’, demonstrating historical crafts reinvented today. These were displayed in an exhibition at the Sto Werkstatt gallery in Clerkenwell.

We then visited Portugal, a country renowned for its history of craft, tracing a journey between Lisbon and Porto to discover pottery, tapestry, filigree, woodwork, metalwork and more. Through a consideration of their evolution and development, as well as their social and urban impact, we uncovered lessons that enhanced our findings back in London. There we synthesised our artefact and material investigations, our observations from the field trip and our site analysis, to design creative and unexpected architectural forms. We harnessed the creative potential of our chosen crafts to challenge Westminster’s urban and planning restrictions.

Year 2

Noor Alsalemi, Chelsea Faith Dacoco, Mankiran Kundi, Jasmine Lam, Jacqui Lee, Parin Nawachartkosit, Elijah Ramsay, Jackson Saez

Year 3

Albert Brown, Charlotte Carr, Cheuk (Felix) Lau, Sut (Eunice) Lo, Tao Shi, Sinziana Vladutu, Siyuan (Amy) Yao, See (Phyllis) Yu

Thanks to our consultant Simon O’Callaghan

Thank you to our critics Abigail Ashton, BarbaraAnn Campbell-Lange, Amy Croft, Ruairi Glynn, Neil Hubbard, Kyrstyn Oberholster, Simon Pierce, Deyan Saev, Emmanouil Stavrakakis, Sabine Storp, Timothy Waterman

4.1 ‘Infill Artefacts’ by Noor Alsalemi, Charlotte Carr, Chelsea Faith Dacoco, Mankiran Kundi, Jasmine Lam, Cheuk (Felix) Lau, Sut (Eunice) Lo, Parin Nawacharkosit, Tao Shi, See (Phyllis) Yu

4.2, 4.18 Albert Brown, Y3 ‘Escaping Westminster’. Responding to Westminster’s tourist industry and the rise in investment in personal security among the rich, this project proposes a design for an escape bunker, a multi-operational building that acts as an escape room tourist destination and a luxurious family bunker for when the apocalypse strikes. The escape bunker infills the five-metre slot above Exchange Court and excavates down to the nearby Adelphi Vaults.

4.3, 4.4 Jasmine Lam, Y2 ‘Garden Hospice’. This project proposes a poppy garden and residential hospice providing longterm palliative care for elderly patients of which nature and pain relief play a central role in the residents’ experiences. Opium poppies are cultivated in gardens and are processed into opioids which are then consumed by the residents.

4.5, 4.6 Parin Nawachartkosit, Y2 ‘Coalesce: An Architectural Reconstruction of the Decaying Essence of Old Mayfair’. A traditional bespoke butcher shop and picture palace, where both seemingly dissociated programmes interlock as infills, pervading each other’s idiosyncrasies. The building aims to rejuvenate Mayfair’s lost urban persona as London’s centre of amusement, escapism, and diversion.

4.7, 4.8 Cheuk (Felix) Lau, Y3 ‘Care for the Air’. The project is a speculative experimental facility which aims to educate and raise awareness of air pollution in London. The building is an air-filtering infrastructure and research centre, which also acts as an urban park and brings in the sublime quality of nature into the dense urban context. Through offering a tour around the building, the mesmerising journey of the building tells the story of air pollution in the city.

4.9 Elijah Ramsay, Y2 ‘Solanum’. This proposal, for an urban farm restaurant and a market, is a response to the lack of agriculture in Soho and the low number of urban farms in London. The project revolves around the way these two functions complement each other, through the journey of a person producing the crops, cooking, selling and finally eating, appreciating each process individually and as a whole.

4.10, 4.13 Noor Alsalemi, Y2 ‘Primula Gardens’. Through the exploration of historic and current site context, this project proposes a Visitor Centre that follows the process from flower to bottle. Glasshouses hold floral nurseries, with a perfumery and visitor area in the main building. The project brings together the two aspects of St Johns Wood’s past to create a local space for relaxation and leisure. The materiality, history and context of the site provide a basis for the programme brief while also influencing elements of the building design.

4.11, 4.12 Siyuan (Amy) Yao, Y3 ‘Color Naturae’. A flower library located in Mayfair is inspired by the story of the vanished flowers in Green Park, when Charles II’s wife, Catherine of Braganza, ordered all flowers to be removed, having discovered the King had given flowers to another woman. The aim of the project is to bring back the flowers as well to as gather the community from different backgrounds in the same space so that they can engage in different flower-related activities.

4.14, 4.15 Tao Shi, Y3 ‘Ebury Fashion Community’. The building, a community for recent fashion graduates, echoes the fashion industry of King’s Road, Chelsea, which inspired many young fashion designers in the 1960s and 70s. Its volume and character builds upon the history of the site, the traditions of its owners, Belgravia Garage, and draws inspiration from Shi’s first project of the year, an artefact created in response to the theme of infill.

4.16 Mankiran Kundi, Y2 ‘Coffea’. Through research into the history of coffee, the brief of a coffee roastery and spa was extracted. Coffee has several uses in cosmetics and crafts, and can be transformed into biofuel and other materials after use. The project emphasises on how two functions can complement each other through sharing the same space, revolving around the coffee atrium that transports coffee through the building.

4.17 See (Phyllis) Yu, Y3 ‘Infill Tile: Dissecting Traditional Georgian and Japanese Pattern to Interrogate the Notion of Infill’. The London Borough of Westminster has a rich lineage of craft and making. There are two main patterns that embody 19th-century pattern design: the Imari collection and the Georgian collection. These were manipulated to become more modern and contemporary, resulting in a piece that highlights the importance of processes within the craft and fabrication industry.

4.19, 4.20 Chelsea Faith Dacoco, Y2 ‘The Chunee Conservation Centre’. The project centres around the story of Chunee the elephant, brought onto and killed on the building site in the 1800s. It responds to the site’s history of animal cruelty, attempting to encourage a changing relationship between humans and other species. The programme has three interconnected functions: as a city habitat for endangered birds of the British Isles made up of multiple rooftop aviaries; an education centre; and a research facility.

4.21, 4.22 Charlotte Carr, Y3 ‘Protheroe House’. Named after the obstetrician who established the world’s first women’s hospital in the area and inspired by this and the many members’ clubs in surrounding streets, Protheroe House, located in Soho, brings back a sense of relaxation and play that modern members’ clubs can often lack. The club functions as a members’ club for pregnancy, parents and young children, focusing on the wellbeing of these groups.

4.23, 4.24 Sut (Eunice) Lo, Y3 ‘21st-Century Pleasure Garden’. Speculating leftover sites and fractured architecture through disrupting restricted sites within the City of Westminster, The 21st Century Pleasure Garden is an elevated escape reminiscent of historic entertainment centres in the city. The proximity of buildings on four sides have resulted in a radicalised building strategy in maximising the design potential of this new entertainment centre.

2019

Great Expectations

Hugh McEwen, Greg Nordberg, Catrina Stewart

Great Expectations

Hugh McEwen, Greg Nordberg, Catrina Stewart

In UG4, we believe that you can change the world with architecture. The unit’s approach is concerned primarily with the social, cultural and political conditions of today, explored through alternative environmental, material and programmatic strategies. Using thorough analysis, narratives and material investigations, our projects speculate and invent new building typologies.

This year, we have individually confronted the generic and meaningless forms of architecture that have resulted from austerity. Austerity has created a society that is risk-averse and architecture that is used as an anaesthetic for occupants, rather than a means for good. Using design as a critical tool, we have proposed projects that make possible futures real and, in doing so, become powerful polemic tools that enable us, and others, to question our values.

The site for these speculations is the stretch between the City of London and Canary Wharf. London is expanding at an unprecedented rate and this, together with increasing levels of pollution, waste and a housing crisis, means that we face challenging times ahead. Can the fabric of a capitalist city be disassembled and repurposed to propose an alternative economy? Can a pluralistic and ad-hoc architecture create more with less? We are designing for a future where millennials seek experiences over possessions, where co-habitees wear shared haute couture rather than squabbling over the remote, and workers inhabit buildings powered by their own waste rather than oil.

On our field trip to Northern India, we collected examples of radical individualism in Rajasthan: decorated trucks, paintings of cities and hand-carved astrological instruments. These were used to create a catalogue of architecture to reuse, containing a collection of materials, elements and narratives that showcased radical individualism as new models to investigate through the projects.

The architecture that the unit has proposed views reuse as essential and is a new architectural response to austerity that views waste as valuable in its discarded state. Using materials such as recycled plastics, glazed tiles, blitzcrete and recycled polystyrene, we have focused on longevity rather than assuming that we will always have more resources, framing discussions in terms of both resource and social sustainability.

Year 2

Tisha Aramkul, Christina Econimidou, Isabelle Gin, Gabriel Healy, Evan O’Sullivan, Chinwe Obi, Thomas Richardson, Zuzanna Rostocka, Yunzi Wang

Year 3

Christopher Collyer, Nanci Fairless Nicholson, Maria Petalidou, Muyun Qiu, Joshua Richardson, Justine Shirley, James Van Caloen

Thank you to Marcus Andren, Mat Barnes, Paul Bisbrown, Duncan Blackmore, Graham Burn, Phineas Harper, Joseph Henry, Alex Hill, Charles Holland, Theo Jones, Anna Mill, Joe Morris, Ellie Sampson, Elly Ward, Owain Williams

Thank you to our sponsors: U+I, Metropolitan Workshop

4.1, 4.4–4.6 Joshua Richardson, Y3 ‘The Microbial Medi-Clinic’. This health centre, located in Wapping, is designed to combat the exponential rise in superbugs. The clinic contains both naturally anti-microbial spaces, which discourage the use of antibiotics, as well as ‘pro-biotic’ spaces that strengthen natural immunity to infection. The clinic is modelled on a notion that health is a public luxury and proactively working on one’s health can be an act of leisure and respite. Like Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanitorium or the Peckham Health Centre, ‘The Microbial Medi-Clinic’ is a ‘legacy project’: a prototype in realising the future of health and architecture.

4.2–4.3 Christopher Collyer, Y3 ‘The Gig Economy Guild’. This project is an exploration of precarity in contemporary societal living and architecture. Focusing on the gig economy and the precariat – a group of people defined by labour instability, social insecurity and occupational identity – this project seeks to establish a discursive, allegorical architecture that is simultaneously precarious and secure. It celebrates the radical yet dangerous nature of precariousness whilst, also, facilitating community and resilience to a group who have become increasingly exploited and isolated.

4.7–4.9 Maria Petalidou, Y3 ‘The Service Exchange Bank’. Canary Wharf has been a site of trade and exchange throughout its history. Radical redevelopment in the 1980s, however, created a site of social and aesthetic division. ‘The Service Exchange Bank’ tries to bridge the gap between Canary Wharf and its surroundings by creating a centre where services are exchanged based on the supply and demand of the local population; from economic skills to plumbing. Its architecture combines elements from the site.

4.10 Evan O’Sullivan, Y2 ‘The Weather Sanatorium’. Holidays are socially and physically good for us but their financial, environmental and political impact is increasingly unaffordable. By controlling the weather through architecture in this project, the perfect holiday is created on the banks of the River Thames.

4.11 Gabriel Healy, Y2 ‘The Plastic Mint’. A discussion on luxury, this project looks at recycling plastic into a new monetary system. The ceremonial building re-frames waste as a valuable item, whilst questioning the value of souvenirs and fast fashion.

4.12 Isabelle Gin, Y2 ‘Ministry of Water’. London’s cycle of flooding and drought has been exacerbated through poor management by water companies. By nationalising the water system, this project provides a space to educate the public on this crisis, and allows interaction between the minister for water and the public.

4.13–4.14 Muyun Qiu, Y3 ‘An International Haven for the Exiled’. By exploiting legally ambiguous opportunities in its architecture and programme, and complying with the legal framework of the UK, this project creates a dedicated ‘international zone’ beyond the UK border, sited in the south dock of Canary Wharf. Responding to the UK’s current political climate, and the social issues that have arisen as a result, it provides shelter, amenities and support for those suffering from the UK’s increasingly tight immigration policy.

4.15–4.17 Nanci Fairless Nicholson, Y3 ‘The Circadian Realignment Centre’. Exposure to the sun has synchronised our biological circadian rhythm to coincide with the 24-hour clock. There is, however, increasing disruption to this natural rhythm from shift work, long-haul flights and blue light from screens. This project creates spaces to realign the circadian rhythm, using careful studies on light temperature and colour perception. It enables overnight porters, early morning cleaners and late-night traders to experience the day as it should be, whilst improving health and increasing productivity.

4.18–4.20 Thomas Richardson, Y2 ‘Ageing Gracefully’. This project proposes a model for a new type of care home that tackles loneliness, using a domestic architecture for living, gardening and cooking, but proposing it at an urban scale.

4.21–4.22, 4.24 James Van Caloen, Y3 ‘The Data Guild’. Situated at the northern edge of Canary Wharf, ‘The Data Guild’ responds to the possibility of a ‘Digital Dark Age’, where information on obsolete formats becomes unreadable by future ages. In the monastery-like building, precious digital information is transcribed onto physical supports, whilst local inhabitants can delete sensitive aspects of their online identity. Information is, thus, both preserved and obliterated.

4.23 Zuzanna Rostocka, Y2 ‘Dance Macabre’. Dying is bad for our health. This project is a new form of garden cemetery that decreases the environmental impact of burial, and creates a landscape to come to terms with death through music and dance.

4.25–4.27 Justine Shirley, Y3 ‘The London Housing Commission’. Situated on Whitechapel Road, this project houses the fragmented government agencies and private sector bodies who are responsible for addressing London’s housing crisis. It seeks to break down the compartmentalised nature of housing development and delivery. In turn, its continually self-built architecture serves as a pedagogic tool to encourage innovation and risk-taking in local authority housing, and provokes change amongst London’s residents.

2018

Subtropeia

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Year 2

Patricia Maria Castelo, Chan (Jason) Chan, Emily Mak, Nandinzul Munkhbayar, Joshua Richardson, Thomas Richardson, Constance Stafford, George Stewart, Zifeng (Simon) Ye

Year 3

Assankhan Amirov, Gabriele Grassi, Zachariah Harper Le Petevin dit le Roux, Thomas Leggatt, Chandni Patel, Yuk (Gordon) Yip

Many thanks to our technical tutors Gavin Hutchison and Will Jefferies for their dedication and insight.

Thanks to all our critics for their invaluable feedback throughout the year: Laura Allen, Jeroen van Ameijde, Julia Backhaus, Shumi Bose, Eva Branscome, Matthew Butcher, Ian Chalk, Mollie Claypool, Ryan Dillon, Tom Dyckhoff, Penelope Haralambidou, Oliver Houchell, Phuong-Trâm Nguyen, Pedro Pitarch, David Roberts, Nina Vollenbroker, Owain Williams

Subtropeia

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

UG4 explores architectures that embody a character, challenge a stereotype and engage with the public through all the varying media that the contemporary designer has available to them. Our unit is intrigued by contemporary pop culture mediated by new technologies, and how this may be introduced into architectural design methods. We pursue speculative work that combines new technologies with the traditional tools of architecture, exploring digital worlds through physical artefacts and vice versa.

Our research this year revolved around architectural ‘tropes’: implied conventions or storytelling devices that act as a shortcut to describe a situation or convey an idea. The trope can mean something pleasantly familiar, but can also become a banal cliché. We are interested in places that have built themselves around a fabricated image fuelled by different types of media, subsequently creating their own particular architectural language.

Having explored the fabricated images of Las Vegas last year, this year we visited Florida, a whole state given over to the trope. Inspired by our road trip across the state, we used new technologies in our design projects to reframe Florida through original eyes. Our research responded to a state where rocket science meets the theme park and retirement communities meet cities framed through the neon seduction of police shows. Here, in the 1980s, popular media reinvented Miami as a seductive and dangerous landscape, creating the legend of a place that the locals would not have recognised.

Today, our students have responded with architectures that critique tropes using new technologies, while embracing them as a delivery mechanism for architecture. We imagined how Virtual Reality could extend the mobility and memories of ageing communities by making virtual and physical spatial hybrids. We prototyped new forms of suburban high street and even municipal courthouses that functioned as film sets, the architecture becoming an active protagonist in the drama of the courtroom.

Our research discussed how self-driving cars and their robotic eyes might allow companies such as Google to subvert the stringent style guides of Celebration first laid out by Disney. Explorations into ersatz materials drove the development of a new hotel chain for Donald Trump, where every facet of his ego is encoded into a steroidal golden palace. We planned hotels that fused overt Americana with the logics of Islamic nomadic architecture and a series of motels that each held a cinematic trope within. Our architecture looked out to the stars, seeking to recreate the conditions of space flight, and repurposed Space Mountain to tell the history of NASA. We made Virtual Reality experiences, video games, films, models, graphic novels and experimental drawings. We designed architecture that operated through twists of fact, fiction and entertainment. These are our Subtropeias.

Fig. 4.1 Gabriele Grassi Y3, ‘Li(e)DAR Laboratory for Celebration.’ Disney’s American suburbia Celebration is the site for a new headquarters for Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary company. Subverting Celebration’s copyright laws, the architecture of the proposed laboratory rewrites the rules of the town’s existing design guidelines by constructing for the eyes of the autonomous vehicle and the laser scanner. The new street scene is a replica of Celebration seen through the eyes of the car. Inspired by Ed Ruscha’s ‘Every Building on the Sunset Strip’, stealth materials such as mirrors, slit-scan errors and iridescent materials are employed to create a new suburban streetscape operating between Disney’s parochial rules of design and the rules of real-time scanning. Fig. 4.2 Gabriele Grassi Y3, ‘97% Palm Tree’. This project investigates the

impact of machine vision on architecture. By using machine learning systems the project trains an AI to detect Miami’s palm trees. However, what the machine learns can be subverted by the designer, posing questions about how our built environment will be read in the future. Here a painted mop stands in for a palm tree, and does a 97% acceptable job. Fig. 4.3 Zifeng (Simon) Ye Y2, ‘Orangeland.’ The project addresses a once-upon-a-time lucrative industry and attempts to boost tourist interest by designing a theme park as an ode to the orange. Set within a 10x10m gridded landscape defined by the requirements of the orange tree growth, a series of five factory follies embody the process of selecting, squeezing, pulping and juicing the orange. Fig. 4.4 Emily Mak Y2, ‘1 Celebration Avenue – The Celebrationite’s Theatre.’ Set in

the context of the suburban town of Celebration, this proposal for an immersive theatre entices local residents to live out a precarious version of their mundane daily routine. The building sits at an angle on the site defying the rules of the Celebration Pattern Book. Each elevation addresses a neighbouring building, reworking each architectural element to create a distorted mimicry of the typical house. The theatrical performance is carried out as a journey through a twisted domestic context. Fig. 4.5 Chandni Patel Y3, ‘The Chiteau’. President Donald Trump is a key investor in Key Biscayne – one of Miami’s wealthiest islands – and has previously bid to attain Crandon Park as a site for a new hotel complex. ‘The Chiteau’ proposes a five-star hotel as Trump’s ultimate franchise, subverting the perceived and real value of materials as a

commentary on the grotesque and ostentatious Trump empire. Ersatz materials convey opulence but in fact conceal and disguise viewing platforms for the staff to observe and ridicule guests. Ornamentation tells the story of Trump’s controversial past; fixtures and fittings play out a political parody and a commentary on Trump’s polemic reign.

Fig. 4.6 Zachariah Harper Le Petevin dit le Roux Y3, ‘Miam-o-bility.’ The project is a retirement home based on the principle of the ‘exer-game’, using Virtual Reality (VR) to encourage the retired snowbirds of Miami to exercise their way to happiness. The design incorporates the VR technologies alongside the practicalities of designing for the elderly. This creates a virtual landscape which encodes the attractions of Miami Beach without leaving the comforts of the retirement home. Techniques such as re-directional walking, change blindness and visuo-haptics reduce the physical space required to recreate the experience. The proposal provides the ultimate exercise route by sampling existing buildings from the nearby strip and memories of the elderly inhabitants in a controlled environment. Fig. 4.7 Assankhan Amirov Y3,

‘Space Oddity.’ Florida has built an attraction out of the popular fascination with space travel, although NASA’s facilities are sited in the state for scientific and political reasons. Referencing filmic tropes of space flight, the Space Oddity is nestled next to a golf course in Key Biscayne, simulating a space adventure through its architectural form. In the manner of Disney’s utilidors, giant enclosing walls conceal routes through the building, accessing each key stage of the implied journey without spoiling the continuous illusion. The project condenses the physical conditions of space flight by using optical trickery, rotating sets, curved chambers and controlled light projections to provide a cinematic experience for visitors without undergoing the rigorous training of astronauts.

Fig. 4.8 Patricia Maria Castelo Y2, ‘Florida 2.0.’ The project compares Florida as seen through the eyes of visitors and permanent residents. This becomes a four-way split-screen video game, combining views from snowbirds, spring breakers, Floridians and Orlando-visiting families. Together these views challenge the image of Florida we think we know. Figs. 4.9 –4.10 Joshua Richardson Y2, ‘The Chaotic Customs House.’ Fisher Island, just south of Miami Beach, is the wealthiest neighbourhood in the US. Residents describe it as its own country and in response this project is proposed a as customs house for those trying to emigrate to the island. While the building appears to offer escape, it actually sifts and judges people, offering them a close-up view of an unobtainable life. If rejected you will spend a day luxuriating in the building, only

knowing your folly once you are on the ferry looking back.

Fig. 4.11 Thomas Leggatt Y3, ‘Undermining the Weight of the Law’. A courthouse doubles as a film set in response to Florida’s strict laws on location scouting and cinematic filming. In contrast to the image of stability and justice, this alternative courthouse uses architecture to manipulate and potentially impact the outcome of trials. and poses the question: ‘Can Architecture undermine the weight of the law?’. The building incorporates crime scene reenactment into the typology of the courthouse, creating an architecture of drama. The building uses water from Biscayne Bay to physically move and atmospherically change the environment within the building to manipulate the wellbeing of the jury, defence and prosecution culminating in a physical outpouring from the building itself.

Fig. 4.12 George Stewart Y2, ‘The Ali Baba Inn’. The project is sited in Opa Locka, a neighbourhood of Miami designed in Moorish-revival style in the 1920s by a developer obsessed with The Thief of Bagdad. The building is an American-style motel utlising architectural tropes from Islamic architecture including the caravanserai and Bedouin tent. Through this the project plays with current tensions between US politics and Islamic culture while being highly site-specific for an historically protected ‘designated theme zone’. Fig. 4.13 Chan (Jason) Chan Y2, ‘Miami Beach Anti-Intoxication Hut’. Located in South Beach, Miami this police HQ addresses drunk and disorderly behaviour perpetuated on Miami Beach. Inspired by the architecture of the Japanese police kobans and Miami’s lifeguard huts, the building functions as a game, where

inhabitants can prove their sobriety by overcoming mental and physical challenges. Fig. 4.14 Yuk (Gordon) Yip Y3, ‘Sanostosa: A Jelly State of Mind.’ A retirement home for those with digital dementia presents a vision for a population in 2050, nostalgic for today’s world. Based on the idea that the development of our brains is being altered by our use of smartphones and laptops, the building addresses a different approach to caring for the elderly by creating sensory architecture made predominantly of gelatine. Jelly building blocks are used to create chromatic aberrations or optical distortions that mimic our interaction with screens. Altered states of gelatine enlarge the surface of the building, diffusing scents that can identify stages of dementia. The tactile qualities of the material create safe and playful social environments.

2017

Supersaturators

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Year 2

Jack Barnett, Caitlin Davies, Aleksy Dojnow, Lingyun (Lynn) Qian, Kenji Tang, Jarron Tham, Rupert Woods

Year 3

Gabriel Beard, Se (Elva) Choi, Alex Desov, Yidong (Isabel) Li, Jack Spence, Tze-Chuan (Roger) Tung, Ryan Walsh, Hyun (Kevin) Yoon

Many thanks to Gavin Hutchison for his continued help and advice as our technical tutor. Thanks also to Sam McGill and Dan Scoulding (Studio Archetype) for their media workshops, computing tutorials and support

Thank you to our critics:

Laura Allen, Abigail Ashton, Iain Borden, Matthew Butcher, Ian Chalk, Pierre D'Avoine, Oliver Houchell, Gavin Hutchison, Will Jefferies, Ifi Liangi, Jon Lopez, Shneel Malik, Adrian Massidda, Sam McGill, Hikaru Nissanke, Dan Scoulding, Stamatis Zografos

Supersaturators

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

UG4 explores architectures that embody character, challenge stereotypes and engage with the public through the new media that contemporary designers have available to them. We are intrigued by the ability to tell stories and create experiences through combinations of craft and new technologies that challenge architecture by pushing the experiential boundaries of place and space. We propose architectures of communication that challenge and enhance the spatial art. Our students design events, attractors and virtual spaces as a counterpart to physical designs. We fold new technologies into making drawings, crafting models and synthesising stories into the buildings we design. Our projects strive to challenge architecture in a supersaturated world.

This year we researched the city that provoked studies into saturation over 40 years ago – Las Vegas. The archetypal city of desire, and a mythical destination summoned from the desert by the money of gambling institutions, Las Vegas is a city borne out of the technological event, a synonym for packaged pleasure and excess. In 1972, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown produced their seminal and controversial book 'Learning from Las Vegas', which studied the ways in which Las Vegas communicated with its visitors. They perceptively foresaw architecture as a multimedia discipline. The book used the study of symbolism in Las Vegas to call on architects to appreciate pop culture rather than only designing ‘heroic’ monuments to themselves. But contemporary Las Vegas seems weirdly ‘heroic’ itself – a city of extravagance and escapism sitting alone in the desert, churning out fantasy as real tensions grow in the America that surrounds it.

This year, our projects drew from the energy, irony and saturation of The Strip, channelling this into buildings that gazed down upon the lights from a giant man-made land formation on the outskirts of the city. VR and videogame technologies embellished structures and challenged boundaries between the digital and the real in architectural space; encrypted furniture and algorithmically generated terrazzo patterns formed the key to unlocking the safest safe in Vegas; new conceptions of the retreat revived the cosmic landscapes of the Native Americans and made worlds for casino carpet obsessives, while the material limits of steel created architectural mirages – buildings becoming bodies of water in times of drought.

Throughout the year our students developed unique ways of drawing, modelling, simulating and playing as part of a design process that ‘desaturated’ the qualities of Las Vegas, re-injecting it into speculative projects that emerged as our architectural Supersaturators.

Fig. 4.1 Gabriel Beard Y3, ‘Ascaya City Hall VR’. The Ascaya City Hall is the civic hub for a gated community just outside Las Vegas, which is experienced as both a physical building and virtual reality videogame space. Playing on the history of exaggerated neoclassical architecture used in American municipal buildings, the project extends this language via VR technologies. Building upon a playable architectural videogame that examines the plight of the pedestrian on the Las Vegas Strip, the project explores how virtual worlds can be used to satisfy the symbolic portion of American civic architecture. The research explored architecture in relation to videogame space, and the direct use of game-engine technologies such as Unity in architectural design. Inspired by Lev Manovich’s comparison between the image-space of historical murals and

contemporary VR, the architecture takes advantage of VR positional tracking technologies and research into ‘redirected walking’ to give the user an impression of a physically extendible architecture where space and image merge together. Fig. 4.2 Aleksy Dojnow Y2, ‘The Almost Legal Water Hub’. The project is a centre for rest and relaxation but additionally acts as an undercover water collection and storage facility. Due to Nevada’s legal restrictions on collecting rain water, the building plays with water flows both overtly and covertly. Existing as a cavern in the landscape, water becomes a priceless resource in the face of worldwide desertification. Fig. 4.3 Caitlin Davies Y2, ’Endangered Species’. Las Vegas is the city of the endangered. Unprofitable casinos are exploded, out-of-fashion entertainers are sidelined to the off-strip and

local wildlife is constantly threatened by new building works. This project preserves all three. Geriatric performers sing amongst the pens of endangered lizards which scuttle around the luminous turrets of the latest casino to be demolished, in a landscape of surreal pathos. Fig. 4.4 Kenji Tang Y2, ‘Crazy Golf Decompression’. A crazy golf course where players de-stress from the rigours of life on the strip by pitching and putting their way through a strange Martian landscape. Fig. 4.5 Jack Barnett Y2, ‘Modern Caricature’. The project explores Las Vegas’ relationship to architectural caricature and applies it to modernism. Drawing from Gombrich’s writings on the ‘truth’ of caricature, the project frames modernism in the window of Vegas’ abstractions. By means of a series of conceptual and theoretical studies, the project explores the distillation of

modernist characteristics into a series of tropes and symbols appropriate for dissemination on the Strip. Fig. 4.6 Se (Elva) Choi Y3, ‘The Red Carpet Treatment’. Do you see carpet as ‘a floor-covering made from thick woven fabric’? Do you see it as something that changes the atmosphere of the entire space, as in the casinos of Las Vegas or Gottfried Semper’s origin of architectural creation? Carpet could be something more. The project proposes an enclosed resort for lovers of carpet in Las Vegas. The building includes a carpet-weaving workshop and a relaxation area amongst carpet spa and saunas. Sited on the top of a hill overlooking Vegas, the project becomes almost a site of religious revelation, a monastery for those devoted to the aesthetics and haptics of carpet.

Fig. 4.7 Rupert Woods Y2, ‘Title of Project’. Following research into ‘growing’ drawings and landscapes using Conway’s ‘Game of Life’, the project establishes a facility for generating and distributing digitally derived replicas of the environments and architectural styles that Nevada’s ‘McMansions’ regularly take their inspiration from. Clients watch as facsimile environments are grown from their algorithmic DNA and become architecturalscale souvenirs delivered direct to their door. Fig. 4.8

Jack Spence Y3, ‘Ascaya Warden and Police Department’. The project plays on the fine line between America’s police and the ubiquitous private security forces that patrol the inumerable gated communities surrounding Las Vegas. The building leads a double life, presenting a carefully cultivated face to the residents while also appearing pumped-up and

fortified to any potential trespasser. Through the careful use of lighting, inflatable structures and light-catching meshes, the building bulks itself up by night while appearing permeable by day – an architecture that places layer upon layer of armour on itself. Here we see the building as it appears to the resident, the police officer and the criminal. Fig. 4.9 Ling Yun (Lynn) Qian Y2, ‘The Gold Mining Museum of Nevada’. Inspired by Nevada’s rich history of gold-mining, the proejct establishes an architecture that draws from the gold geography of the state and turns it into a symbolic landscape. A series of symbolic grids are overlaid onto the site, into which a series of follies – inspired by gold-mining and refining procedures – are inserted, which structure the visitor’s experience as they follow a golden path through the building.

Fig. 4.10 Alex Desov Y3, ‘The Maintenance Oasis’. The project was designed in response to the huge amount of cultivated landscapes within Las Vegas, and the armies of staff required to maintain them. It takes the form of a housing scheme built around an artificial oasis that uses collected water to drive a series of algae systems that turn the building into a readout of environmental conditions. By providing market stalls and community spaces, the building offers the maintenance workers of the Vegas Strip their own private paradise.

Fig. 4.11 Jarron Tham Y2, ‘UNKind: Chindustrial Aesthetics’. Inspired by Donald Trump’s famed disinterest in renewable energy sources, the project also explores the vagaries of the American immigration system, where green cards can be obtained by foreign nationals bringing a certain amount of

money and jobs to the US. Under this guise, the project proposes that what ostensibly appears to be a solar energy plant is in fact a private club and holiday home for rich Chinese investors attracted by these visa loopholes. Developing an architectural language, ‘Chindustrial’, the building, plays on recognisable forms, drawing from traditional Chinese architecture and aesthetics, combining them with industrial ‘functionality.’ Industrial building materials meet the protocols of Feng Shui, and Chinese characters inform the shape and appearance of spaces. Read by a US factory inspector, the building appears to be a working industrial facility, yet through the eyes of a Chinese speaker, an entire other architectural landscape unfolds. Fig. 4.12 Tze-Chuan (Roger) Tung Y3, ‘Laser Safari’. Taking inspiration from the American desire

for the hunt, and the plight of Cecil the Lion, the project creates a series of facsimile environments where visitors can track and pursue animals in a supernatural landscape. Low-poly, videogame-like geometries and replica animals mix with intrepid hunters in a game with only one winner. Evoking the safari-hunter paying thousands of dollars to have their perfect shot lined up by local trackers, the building provides a satirical environment that mediates between the simulated and the absurd. Fig. 4.13 Yidong (Isabel) Li Y3, ’Endangered Species’. Engaging with the Native American culture of Nevada, the project transcribes the landscapes from a number of reservations across the state into an architecture that is cut into the surrounding site. Taking in Native American conceptions of the sky and the ground, the building sits as

part of their cosmic sphere, connecting to above through views and to the ground through materiality. A series of sweat lodges and other vernacular spaces are woven into the building, where gentle transitions in materiality and climate demarcate the move from one landscape to another. Together, these become a microcosm of the indigenous lands that responds to the overbearing cultural appropriation of the Las Vegas Strip by proposing an architectural counterpoint that draws from the spirit of its sources rather than becoming a parody of it.

Figs. 4.14 – 4.16 Ryan Walsh Y3, ‘Creating a Mirage’. Given its climate, Las Vegas and its surroundings are prime mirage country. Yet on the few rainy Nevada days, rapid plant growth raises the risks of wildfire. Water leads to fire. In response, the project, a local fire station, attempts to create a water-like architectural mirage by means of a treated blue steel roof that nestles into the site to be superheated by the sun. Underneath, a well-insulated engine bay holds the fire engines and a series of training spaces for firemen that emerge onto the roof, turning the heated surface into part of their regular fire simulations. On the hottest days, the building will appear to hover in the air like a film of liquid in an ironic nod to the dangers of rainfall in Nevada. Fig. 4.17 Hyun (Kevin) Yoon Y3, ‘The Metamorphosing Bank’. Drawing from first term research

into the protocols of augmented reality technologies, and how to manipulate them in physical space through architectural models, the project questions how an architecture itself may act as a ‘lock’. Proposing the ‘Safest Safe’ in Las Vegas, the building unfolds through an augmented choreography carried out by the clients. Elements of the built fabric push, slide and lock into place causing the building to respond. Algorithmically designed terrazzo surfaces combine ornamentation with advanced security features that explore how contemporary digital encryption techniques could be applied to architecture. Finally, a series of augmented reality drawings built in the Unity game engine, seen through the Vuforia AR app, show the spatial effect of these systems, updating to reflect the viewer’s interaction with them in real time.

2016

Otakutecture

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Year 2

Hohgun Choi, Nicholas Chrysostomou, Arthur Harmsworth, Will Kirkby, Jimmy Liu, Oliver Mitchell, Aikawa Mok, Luke Sanders, Sarmad Suhail

Year 3

Milly Black, Sam Davies, Alex Findley, Emma Jurczynski, Adam Moqrane, Afrodite Moustroufis, Andrew Riddell

Many thanks to Gavin Hutchison for his continued help and advice as our technical tutor. And to German Casado, Greg Kythreotis (Shedworks Interactive) and Sam McGill (Studio Archetype) for their media workshops and support

Thanks to our critics: Laura Allen, Elisa Bertoja, Matthew Butcher, Ian Chalk, Tom Coward, Stephen Gage, Penelope Haralambidou, Gavin Hutchison, Will Jefferies, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Diony Kypraiou, Ifigeneia Liangi, Sam McGill, Christopher Pierce, Dan Scoulding, Bob Sheil, and Sandra Youkhana

Special thanks to: Akihiko Niiho, Keigo Kobayashi and all at Waseda University, Momoyo Homma (Arakawa + Gins Tokyo Office) and Massimo Baracco (Prada Japan) for their hospitality and guidance during our trip to Tokyo

Otakutecture

Ana-Monrabal Cook, Luke Pearson

From Godzilla to Blade Runner, Tokyo is often held as an architectural synecdoche of the future, a city symbolising the relationship between technology and the metropolis – both seductive and uneasy. Nowhere is this tension more present than in the culture of otaku. As a term roughly translating into ‘nerd’, Japan’s otaku population throw themselves into pop culture proliferated by technology, obsessing over virtual anime pop stars, manga, videogame worlds, trains, modified cars or even the recreation of historical Japanese periods. Cultural critic Hiroki Azuma argues that otaku creativity is both heir to Edo-era Japanese aesthetics, and a Japanese domestication of Americanised pop culture. At best such passion drives the country’s creativity and economy, at worst it is symptomatic of a population withdrawing from the reality of modern Japan, betraying the fragility of the nation’s identity.

Otaku also means ‘your home’ and is a polite form of ‘you’ – equating a person with their architectural space of residence. Otaku’s multiple identities remind us of the weird and wonderful bastardisations of culture that sit just beneath the city’s surface. Otaku culture challenges boundaries between actual and virtual, fact and fiction, and author versus consumer. As Otakutects we applied these tensions and distortions in the design of new architectural typologies.

UG4 questions the status of architecture in our image-saturated digital world. This year we challenged the boundaries of architectural media through workshops with professionals from the visualisation, animation and videogame industries. Exposing relationships between modern technology and their historical precedents, we blended real, fictional, technological and historical approaches. Projects collapsed distinctions between architecture, craft, nature and super-nature. Otaku approaches saw students embody the qualities of gods in videogames, turn bedrooms into landscapes of scrolling parallax drawings, create spatiotemporal comics, design foldable buildings for slot sites, machine pavilion-scale Noh masks and plan postapocalyptic playgrounds.

By extending these obsessions and idiosyncrasies into the design of a building, students worked towards synthesising a piece of true Otakutecture. Research methodologies developed in term one were carried into the production of unique building projects that questioned the nature of obsession in design, becoming transcriptions of our fascinations – from crystallising the typology of Tokyo’s police kobans, through a museum that becomes a secret pilgrimage for a cult, to an artificial landscape containing hidden spaces for Tokyo’s women to break their cultural bonds.

Embracing technology, obsession, tradition, perversion and malfunction, we jumped into the symbolic overload of the modern city and emerged as Otakutects!

Fig. 4.1 Alexander Findley Y3, ‘Habitat AFK’. The project explores ‘hikikomori,’ homebound videogame and manga addicts, numbering over one million in Japan. It aims to reintegrate the Hikikomori as functional members of society through the appliance of hyperstimulation, gamification and other escapist techniques to create architectures. Fig. 4.2

Afrodite Moustroufis Y3, ‘The Sounds of Kyudo’. Designed for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the project is a public pavilion exhibiting Kyudo, a traditional form of Japanese archery with an emphasis on the sound of the shot. The building becomes a sonic landscape framing the archers. Figs. 4.3 – 4.4

Adam Moqrane Y3, ‘Muology’. Drawn from ‘Mu’ theory, the project investigates breaking the city down into components of urbanism, before redistributing them along urban rules

developed in the Unity game engine. Fig. 4.5 Emma Jurczynski Y3, ‘The Hashigakari Noh School’. Sited in Shibuya, the building is based around five elements of Noh performance; acting, instrumental music, chorus, mask carving and costumes and stagecraft. Through its environmental mediations it recreates the open-air Noh stages of Miyajima island. Fig. 4.6 Emma Jurczynski Y3, ‘Noh-ify’. This project uses the protocols of the emotionless Noh mask to explore architectural façades. As Noh actors tilt their heads to make emotions through light and shadow, so the façades communicate emotion through the sun’s passage across the course of a day. These CNC milled masks allow one to become an architectural Noh character.

Fig. 4.7 Andrew Riddell Y3, ‘Baby Bunker’. The building is designed in response to the crisis of birth rates in Japan and children becoming a scarce 'natural resource'. Inspired by Froebel Block toys, the daycare centre reinforces Japanese educational attitudes that teach children to respect, and even love, seismic activity as an experience. Constructed from hybrid concrete and silicon materials, under tremors the building will crack to reveal luminous colurful and soft materials, augmenting a playscape of blocks at a smaller scale.

Fig. 4.8 Nicholas Chrysostomou Y2, ‘Tenkei’s Natural History Museum’. Yamato-No-Miya is a Japanese cult founded by Ajiki Tenkei which is preoccupied with saving humanity through purifying the environment, finding deities in stones, water and trees. The project provides a safe place of worship for the

followers of Yamato-No-Miya protecting them from public prejudice. The museum is a forest of columns containing discrete pavilions, each showcasing one of the Yamato-NoMiya deities hidden in plain sight amongst other similar objects. Figs. 4.9 – 4.11 Aikawa Mok Y2, ‘Meido Dance House’. A dance school for Butoh, a form of contemporary Japanese dance that emphasises non-Western aesthetics, taboo subjects and bizarre settings. Sited in westernised Roppongi, the building becomes an embodiment of the seven trials of Meido – the Buddhist ‘purgatory’. It is designed through a series of choreographic and symbolic transcriptions of the trials of Meido. These trials are translated into articulated spaces to create an architecture that augments the body in different ways as a physical manifestation of Butoh.

Figs. 4.12 – 4.13 Sarmad Suhail Y2, ‘Tokyo Ritsuban Training Facility’. The project draws from the eclectic typology of Tokyo’s Police Kobans (public information cabins). Police officers are retrained in the seven orders of the Bushido code of honour through Kobans that encourage and symbolise Loyalty, Honesty, Courage, Respect, Kindness, Politeness and Integrity. Each Koban is designed externally to reflect contextual themes based on a specific value of Bushido, and internally conditioned to reinforce this value on each of its four resident officers. Fig. 4.14 Arthur Harmsworth Y2, ‘Studio Arukadia’. An animation studio located in Tama. Through structural ‘trees’ and squeaking nightingale floors, the building becomes an internalised environment to fire the imaginations of the animators. Fig. 4.15 Luke Sanders Y2, ‘Tokyo Netsuke

Collection’. A collection of 15 3D printed Japanese miniatures called netsuke. Traditionally netsuke represented places and experiences of their owner. These contemporary figurines collectively form a journey through modern Tokyo, defining it as a series of miniature territories. Fig. 4.16 Samuel Davies Y3, ‘NDL Tsundoku’. An extension to the National Library of Japan to deal with the pressures of digitisation. The project frames and architecturally exaggerates the inefficiency of the digitisation process into a celebratory procession. Taking cues from cultural Japanese case studies, the project looks towards architecture that accepts its own eventual redundancy. Through scale model tests, a scheme of designed demolition is devised; a transient flurry of analogue activity that accentuates the physical at the outset of the digital age.

Fig. 4.17

Hohgun Choi Y2, ‘Tsukiji Fishslice’. A hotel for the post-relocation Tsukiji fish market district. Like the market, the building uses an auctioning system – as a method of booking hotel rooms, where guests inspect slices of a hotel room like a dealer assessing a tuna. Each slice becomes a sample of the room’s metaphorical fat content, quality and character. Fig. 4.18 Jimmy Liu Y2, ‘Nihonbashi Totem’. A structure puncturing the layers of Tokyo around the famous Nihonbashi Bridge. The architecture striates the historical layers of the city and protocols of Japanese art from Edo to contemporary Tokyo. Fig. 4.19 Jimmy Liu Y2, ‘Superflat Sando’. Inspired by Takashi Murakami’s ‘Superflat’ Japanese pop art movement, the project proposes a studio for young artists that blurs the boundary between architecture and its image,

becoming a form of inhabitable artwork. Figs. 4.20 – 4.21

Milly Black Y3, ‘Kyokai Park’. Despite being an advanced global economy, Japan maintains a traditional cultural identity that often restricts the rights and actions of women. The project focuses on the creation of a spa that offers a sanctuary from exclusion, inspired by ritual cleansing that takes place at temples and shrines. The building is divided into the public domain, private pavilions and the thresholds between them. Excavated into the ground, the building embodies the concept of the Low-City, with private spaces, drawing inspiration from Origami as a method of concealment. Folded beneath a roofscape of cleansing boundaries, it offers a place of retreat and support that ultimately lifts women up (figuratively speaking) above their recognised social position.

2015

Monumetric

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Year 2

Iman Datoo, Danny Dimbleby, (Yi) Ning Lui, Ben Mehigan, Liam Merrigan, Kate Woodcock-Fowles, Minh Tran

Year 3

Flavian Berar, Laszlo Von Dohnanyi, Egmontas Geras, Ye Lone Jarrell Goh, Olivia Hornby, Patrick Horne, Francesca Savvides, Elin Soderberg, Priscilla Wong

Special thanks goes to Gavin Hutchison for his continued dedication as our technology tutor, and all the other module tutors who supported the students’ work. Many thanks to everyone we visited on our Monument Valleys roadtrip, especially William Whitaker at the Kroix Gallery, Penn Architectural Archives. And thanks to all our critics across the year for their invaluable and challenging input: Laura Allen, Sebastian Andia, Iain Borden, Shumi Bose, Matthew Butcher, Ben Campkin, Kristijan Cebzan, Mollie Claypool, Stewart Dodd, Killian Doherty, Penelope Haralambidou, Gavin Hutchison, Johan Hybschmann, Will Jefferies, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Alex Kirkwood, Frosso Pimenides, Manija Verghese, Robin Wilson, Sandra Youkhana

Monumetric

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

UG4 continues its explorations into architectures of public delight, antipathy or bemusement by examining the role of clarity, resolution and imagery in communicating and propagating spaces and events. Working with an architectural typology that keeps the symbolic at its heart, this year we explored the notion of the monument.

Monuments have typically been thought of as static forms –a remembrance or commemoration of a moment frozen in an architectural form. The great cities of the world define themselves and their achievements through their monuments – an architectural form used as a unit of measure. But monuments have always sat at the junction between symbolism, power, technology and memory. What they mean and what they stand for can change in an instant; they are judged within the context of time (historic) or place (geographic). Rem Koolhaas used the term ‘automonument’ to describe the skyscrapers of New York, how these totemic structures became a testament to technology, power and progression. A building does not have to be designed as a monument to become monumental. We embarked on our Monument Valleys field trip, a 1000-mile journey through Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pittsburgh and New York. Passing through the heartland of American democracy, we took in the Mall’s constellation of monuments, circulated the Pentagon, drove Levittown’s suburban sprawl, explored a Louis Kahn building site and gazed at the floating monuments to consumerism at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In relation to this, we framed our approach towards monumentality into three categories: ‘pop’, ‘plop’ and ‘process’.

‘Pop’ suggests that technologies of the everyday can create new contexts in which a building becomes monumental. If Venturi and ScottBrown’s architecture learned from Las Vegas’ landscape of pop monuments, we asked how could the monumental emerge through the millions of new symbols technology inserts into our lives at every level? James Wines coined the term ‘plop’ to describe the way modern art pieces were slapped outside banks and shopping malls as a cultural afterthought. Plop perseveres in the world of international ‘starchitects’ – with oversized 3D models splattered across the world this way and that. We questioned how monumentality could occur in the rupture between a building and its context. Louis Kahn spoke of monumentality as a way of memorialising living values through an architectural process. Certain buildings become the exemplars of historical techniques, construction, and ways of thinking about architecture. We explored how the ingenuity of today might become the monuments of tomorrow.

Beginning the year with a game of chance, students pursued a project based on the results of our ‘Random Monument Generator’ software. The strange juxtapositions and proto-typologies this produced served as the starting point for a year exploring new manifestations of monumentality in the information age.

Fig. 4.1 Patrick Horne Y3, ‘Duquesneland’. Taking from Baudrillard’s ideas of the American ‘hyperreal’, Dusquesneland is a theme park sited in Pittsburgh PA that encodes the industrial heritage of the city into a scheme located on the Duquesne Incline. The park explores the steel industry and Pittsburgh’s multicultural history, taking visitors on a journey through carefully cultivated spaces, reframing the city as a miniature world before revealing the strategic manipulations that underpin the architecture, calling into question the idealised version of the city the project initially appears to present. Figs. 4.2 – 4.3 Danny Dimbleby Y2, ‘The 2 nd Amendment’. A building for the licensing of guns, in line with new Washington DC legislation. The architecture becomes one of symbolic fragment and intimidation, a built manifestation of

the divisive nature of the Second Amendment. Figs. 4.4 – 4.5 Ben Mehigan Y2, ‘Reconstructing Carrie’. Sited at the Carrie Furnace in Homestead, PA, the project reframes an industrial relic through a tactile architecture explored through techniques such as 3D printed drawings. Figs. 4.6 – 4.9 Egmontas Geras Y3, ‘Windows to Williamsburg’. A library sited at the Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn. Using the existing frontage the project is explored through façade retention and concrete casting. The library becomes a series of ‘shelves’ that hold the storage and reading spaces between them. Using scaled models and digital fabrication, the project explores the process of concrete pouring as a choreography, where precast elements become funnels and channels for in-situ casting, eventually becoming entombed within the built fabric.

Fig. 4.10 Kate Woodcock-Fowles Y2, ‘The (Rube Goldberg) Freedom of Information Building’. The project proposes a government run centre for Freedom of Information request processing. Through its ‘Rube Goldberg’ complexities, it presents an exasperating space, reflecting the exhausting bureaucracy of actual FOI requests. Figs. 4.11 – 4.12 Laszlo Von Dohnanyi Y3, ‘The Arch of Dymaxion’. Exploring a 3D space suggested only through flat website images, the project reconstructs a cemetary arch step-by-step, showing the slippage between 2D and its transcoding back into 3D. Fig. 4.13 Laszlo Von Dohnanyi Y3, ‘Rhizome Island’. Sited on North Brother Island, above Manhattan, the building proposes a museum for digital arts foundation Rhizome. Through a series of interfaces allowing digital artworks to be shown at varying

scales, the architecture and the art piece combine into one form, emphasising the translation of data into spatial information. Figs. 4.14 – 4.17 Jarrell Goh Y3, ‘The Food Rescue Centre’. Concerned by the amount of waste food discarded by supermarkets, the scheme became a research project into building with food. Through tightly controlled tests, waste food bricks and ‘potato terazzo’, along with naturally dyed concretes, were developed containing much lower embodied energy than typical building materials. The Food Rescue Centre applies these materials into cladding systems, compressive structures and furniture. As a public outreach centre and restaurant, the building sits atop vermin-proof foundations, with facilities for processing and drying waste food, introducing people to its potential as an architectural material.

Fig. 4.18 Flavian Berar Y3, ‘An inside-out, upside-down Statue of Liberty’. Investigating the morphology of monumentality, the project proposes a distorted, skewed, inflatable Statue of Liberty that is flown from the torch of the iconic structure. A series of Grasshopper studies explored how the symbolic hierarchy of the statue could be changed, and how far one could still recognise its form through details, even when rescaled and distorted. Fig. 4.19 Flavian Berar Y3, ‘Rehousing Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade’. The project proposes a workshop and assembly centre for Macy’s Parade inflatables. The buiding provides an inflatables hangar as well as a ‘birthing canal’ built into the building’s elevation through which the inflatables emerge, using peristaltic movement. Fig. 4.20 Minh Tran Y2, ‘The Lake of Telescribing’. A monument to

communication sited next to the 33 Thomas Street data centre building. The internal courtyard produces an immaterial landscape of wifi signals within a cloistered space. Fig. 4.21 Liam Merrigan Y2, ‘17927 - Centralia New Frontier’. Sited in the ghost town of Centralia PA, a place ravaged by a mine fire since the 1960’s, the New Frontier proposes an architecture that sits at the heart of a new colony developed around mineral collection. The site’s unusual levels of heat and chemical reactions produce rare minerals found in few other places on earth. Built into the ground and supported by a geothermal powerplant, the building provides a research centre and deposition facility for the processing of rare minerals. A series of drawings in the style of a graphic novel examine the new economy and inhabitants drawn to this inhospitable landscape.

Fig. 4.22 Iman Raisa Datoo Y2, ‘The Curtain Twitching Courthouse’. Derived from a term-long study of Levittown, the courthouse provides a venue for the resolution of domestic disputes in Levittown, PA. Inspired by news stories of gnome shootings, as well as the history of Levittown as a Sears Catalogue kit of parts, the project plays with the scale and symbolism of the surrounding suburban community. Referencing the work of designers such as Ettore Sottsass, the project proposes an architecture that slips between image and reality, like a building bought from a catalogue, providing a new landmark for a place with no centre. Figs. 4.23 – 4.25 Priscilla Wong Y3, ‘The Hungry Hippodrome’. The project challenges the horizontal typology of the contemporary supermarket, proposing a monumental temple to food in the

Brooklyn Naval Yards, the historical site of the famous Wallabout Market. Sitting on a raised ‘false hill’ the project proposes replacing the language of signs and branding with architectural zones. Visitors are taken on a journey through the tower, exploring local produce as the architecture combines with food production methods, framing its colours, textures and smells. Using an AutoStore system, robotic containers weave a choreography across the main atrium, carrying produce to be collected at the end of the route.

Fig. 4.26 Francesca Savvides Y3, ‘Open Secrets’. In the face of regulation of Washington DC lobbying, Open Secrets provides a ‘last chance saloon’ for the open discussion of policy, then subverts this with details designed to catch lobbyists out through acoustic strategies. Situated on The Mall, the project plays with the symbolic tropes of DC, with half-severed domes, false porticos and double-faced columns.

Fig. 4.27 Yi Ning Lui Y2, ‘A Homage to FLW...’. Using a kaleidoscope to distort details of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, the project proposes a monument to his life, a space that encapsulates the fictions and underbelly of his persona. Fig. 4.28 Francesca Savvides Y3, ‘Classical/Brutal’. Exploring the dichotomy between Washington’s Neoclassical symbols of democracy and their brutalist governmental Headquarters,

the project explores an architecture that slips between the two through a series of retractable ornaments. Fig. 4.29

Olivia Hornby Y3, ‘Hacklab’. Sited in Chicago’s Medical District, the project proposes a scientific research centre based around out-of-date but still functioning equipment from the Fermilab Hadron Collider. Figs. 4.30 – 4.32 Elin Soderberg Y3, ‘Unstable Ground - Centralia Town Hall’. The project proposes a new town hall for Centralia, a mine-fire ravaged ghost town in Pennsylvania. The building reacts to the subterrean conditions with a controlled cracking and degredation. Referencing the Russian Orthodox church that still stands nearby, and using traditional construction methods for protecting against inhospitable conditions and heat, the project develops a new vernacular for the uncertain future of Centralia.

4.27

2014

Datum Shifters

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Year 2

Annecy Atlee, Uday Berry, Niki-Marie Jansson, Sonia Magdziarz, Douglas Miller, Sarah Stone

Year 3

Laurence Blackwell-Thale, Max Butler, Xi Yao (Joyce) Chen, John Cruwys, David Flook, Olivia Hornby, Gregorios Kythreotis, Maggie Lan, Lisa McDanell, Ellie Sampson, Elin Söderberg

We would like to thank Gavin Hutchison for his support in his role as technology tutor and regular critic for the Unit. We would also like to thank our critics this year for their invaluable feedback: Ben Addy, Abigail Ashton, Matthew Butcher, Kristijan Cebzan, Rhys Cannon, Stylianos Giamarelos, Penelope Haralambidou, Colin Herperger, Gavin Hutchison, Will Jefferies, Diony Kypraiou, Adrian Lahoud, CJ Lim, Alan Penn

Datum Shifters

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Unit 4 continues its explorations into architectures of public delight, antipathy or bemusement by examining the role of clarity, resolution and imagery in communicating and propagating spaces and events. Our modern systems for reading, traversing and positioning ourselves within space are mediated by constant flows of data. But these structures are based on correlation to the real world – fixed points, levels – the ‘Datum’ within a city.

What if a key Datum could change? How would this skew the city and open up new possibilities for novel types of space and public occupation? What are the new forms of architecture that will emerge from these fluid situations? To synthesise these new architectural typologies, we challenge ourselves to pull such conditions apart and become ‘Datum Shifters’.

What is a Datum Shifter?

We investigate the notion of Datum in the context of the physical and virtual city. We consider Datum Shifters to be those who have pushed and probed technology, theories and ideas to allow us to see the city and its architecture in new terms.

Chicago is the home of the American Datum Shifters. The city has had its ground level raised block by block in an unprecedented act of civil engineering overcoming nature. As its ground shifted and its buildings crept skyward the city became a landscape of datums in flux and flexible territories.

When William Le Baron Jenney completed the first skyscraper, he changed the datum of architectural proportion and scale forever, creating the catalyst for Chicago’s growth into a landscape of tectonic and monolithic structures that challenge bodily scale. In a world increasingly compressed or stretched by communication tools, Chicago represents the original template of a city formed by technology, where architecture has outgrown human magnitudes.

We are Datum Shifters!

Unit 4 takes a critical position in relation to the creation of architecture and its communication through representation. What are the new forms of architecture that will emerge from the rupture between the physical and the digital? How is hand drawing being augmented or redefined by new technologies and interfaces?

Datums invisible to the human eye can be seen and acted upon by other devices for viewing and recording. Cities are no longer purely physical entities, but multi-scalar sites for events and information overloads. Datum Shifters propose buildings that play with these reference points, and respond to the context of the city as a combination of physical, cultural and ephemeral conditions. We propose that the architectural datums of Chicago – its proportions, ornamentations, technologies and notorieties, can be deformed and reformatted into architectures that enmesh technological developments within the latent historic and cultural conditions of this ‘ur-American city’.

Fig. 4.1 Douglas Miller Y2, ‘The Machining of Chicago’. A CTA maintenance facility in the Chicago Loop serves as a blue-collar symbol against the increasing marginalisation of Chicago’s rail workforce. The project proposes an architecture of infrastructural materiality and industrial heft that re-emphasises the layered spaces of Chicago created by the city’s relationship to technology. Fig. 4.2 Niki-Marie Jansson Y2, ‘The Fermilab Interface: People Collider’. An outreach centre for the publicly funded Fermilab particle physics centre, located in Chicago’s Millenium Park – resembling the huge hadron collider machines of Fermilab. Fig. 4.3 Sarah Stone Y2, ‘Pharma Laboratory’. A space for advanced chemical reactions sited in Chicago’s medical district, the architecture is defined through a series of interlocking testing rigs and

biosafety zones for conducting experiments, and steam-cleans itself periodically. Fig. 4.4 – 4.5 Lisa McDanell Y3, ‘CPD Internal Affairs Station’. Responding to recent examples of the Chicago Police’s corruption, the project proposes the intertwining of Police Station spaces with those of the Internal Affairs creating a landscape of duality, where the thicknesses of materials, and extents of space are in a perpetual flux. Fig. 4.6 Max Butler Y3, ‘The Synthetic Slaughterhouse’. Coined the ‘frankenburger’, many are repulsed by lab grown in-vitro meat. The building presents the process to the carnivorous American public, but in an altogether different light. Constructed from ‘grown’ materials such as bacterial brick and microbial cellulose, the building expounds the delights, possibilities and advantages of synthetic biology.

4.7 – 4.8 Laurence Blackwell-Thale Y3, ‘The Heliolithic Community Centre’. After a researching the impact of digital devices on human physiology, the project examines architecture as an interface. Through an articulated roofscape, the surrounding light conditions of Chicago are manipulated through lenses, materials and filters, to create zones of circadian rhythm within the building. The building provides a number of different amenities, all attuned to a particular wavelength of light, and the reactions this causes in a person’s physical and emotional reaction fosters a new sense of community at the block scale of the city. Fig. 4.9 – 4.11

David Flook Y3, ‘Home Building 2035’ + ‘Village MC-1’. Home Building 2035 speculates on the spatial implications for suburbia that arise from highly referential and restrictive

aesthetic architectural codes meeting the modernity of the manufacturing techniques with which they are mass produced, and proposes a new framework for changing the public appetite. Village MC-1 is inspired by the quasi-suburban prairie lands of Fermilab, where cutting edge research is conducted in cottages. The result is an architecture that materialises in the form of a cultivated Mid-Western Prairie that doubles as scientific test ground. This fabricated landscape attempts to provide an environment suitably ‘precise’ for Fermilab’s ongoing experimentation yet ‘imprecise’ to allow for the processes of burning that propogate the Prairie landscape. This new architecture defines the parameters of an experiment that explores the manufacturing of myth, the sociology of science and formation of fact.

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Fig. 4.12 Xi Yao (Joyce) Chen Y3, ‘The Lakeshore Disclosure Hotel’. The project deals with Chicago’s huge heat changes across the year by developing a strategy that sees the building as a giant ‘wall’ with many smaller heat zones intertwining within. The building plays with disruptions of an idealised elevation, and utilises versions of the famous Chicago Window, a central viewing pane flanked by two ventilating windows. By peeling apart the laminations of the wall, the hotel maintains spaces classified into climatic zones such as tent, cabin or cave. Sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan, the hotel not only provides framed views back across the skyline of the city, but takes advantage of the lake’s particular nature – at once a beachside resort, then an ice-locked retreat. Fig. 4.13

John Cruwys Y3, ‘Route 66 Museum’. The Route 66 Museum

is proposed as part of a combined effort including groups such as the National Parks Service, to preserve the memory and history of the famous highway. The result is a technological landscape built around the diverting of the South Branch of the Chicago River in order to create a water computer. Through the careful use of fluid dynamics, water flows can be manipulated through ceramic logic gates, effectively turning these flows into binary decisions, and turning the flow of the Chicago River into a landscape-scale computation device. This computer performs ‘glacial speed’ calculations in order to grow and germinate a series of landscapes across the site that correspond to the states that form the route of the 66. Appearing as a yearly cycle, these three dimensional pixels contain traces of roadside architecture and of the indigenous

plants of each of the region states. Alongside a series of archival buildings collecting ephemera from the route, the landscape thus becomes a new form of hybridised national park, encapsulated within its site near the start of the famous route. Fig. 4.14 Sonia Magdziarz Y2, ‘Pop-Up Cinema’. As part of Rahm Emmanuel’s drive to regenerate Chicago’s Uptown areas through their historical relationship to music, and the number of old music halls and cinemas that lie decaying in such areas, the project proposes new forms of pop-up architectures that can be inserted into these old spaces. By creating these new architectures to focus on the ornamentation and detailing of the existing space, these picture palaces can find a new life. Fig. 4.15 Annecy Atlee Y2, ‘The Kinzie Cabin Collective’. The project proposes an

architecture that sits as the driver for a new collective approach to the homeless community around Kinzie Street in Chicago. The creation of living units and market stalls not only provides skills in tradesmanships for the local residents, but also starts to build a new collective community around the elevated tracks of the L train – turning the ‘launching’ of each pod into a public event.

Fig. 4.16 Uday Berry Y2, ‘Goose Island Brewery’. A brewery and tourist centre for the Goose Island Brewery, using huge concrete weights to cantilever an elevated ‘dive bar’. Fig. 4.17 Maggie Lan Y3, ‘Augmented Histories’. Examining the monumental nature of Chicago’s architecture as a tabula rasa for the application of new forms of ornamentation through augmented reality technologies. Fig. 4.18 Gregorius Kythreotis Y3, ‘Place-hacking the Pedway’. The project examines Chicago’s Pedway, a series of non-contiguous pedestrian access tunnels secreted across the city. Inspired by the 2D/3D slippage present in the mechanics of videogames such as Fez and Monument Valley, and the ways in which such games can define architectural experiences, the project proposes territories brought into and out of alignment through animated,

spinning drawings. Fig. 4.19 – 4.22 Ellie Sampson Y3, ‘Bucktown Housing Court’. Honoring the memory of Richard Nickel, a Chicagoan famous for his heroic rescues of Louis Sullivan ornamentation destined for the wrecking ball, the Housing Court draws from the diverse architectural context of Bucktown to create an architecture that becomes a field of symbolic objects and spaces. By overlaying this onto a site with three postal addresses, yet subservient to the procedures and regiments of the courthouse, the project examines the role of threshold in the function and symbolism of the court, allowing for sound to seep out to and from the surrounding rumbles of the L-train. The project suggests a new architecture for Chicago, where memory, symbol, technology, scale and composition all combine into new typologies of building.

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2013

Facsimile

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Unit 4

Facsimile

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

‘There’s no more beautiful city in the world provided it’s seen by night and at a distance’ Roman Polanski, Chinatown

‘LA, the most photographed city in the world, yet the least photogenic’ Thom Andersen, LA Plays Itself

Unit 4 this year focused on the implications of new technologies for mapping and reading space in order to propose architectures. With new digital tools, physical locations may be understood remotely, as a facsimile of the real city; does this affect how, what and where we design? We continued our exploration into architectures of public delight, antipathy or bemusement by visiting the city that can truly attest to have been founded on such principles: Los Angeles.

LA has always intertwined fact and fiction. The architecture of the city bears witness to an urban sprawl built up through capital investment and property developers who used their constructions to communicate versions of a history that is as fantastical as the productions of Hollywood itself. Buildings such as the Bradbury feature as film characters rather than subjects; they are more famous and have more distinguished filmographies than most film stars.

In decades past, before digital technologies eased direct access to information, the export of this vision of a city was primarily through creative endeavour, through writing, music and most importantly films. This allowed a city such as Los Angeles to write its own myth, rendered through architectures that suggest histories and futures that never truly existed.

New ways of remotely viewing contemporary Los Angeles allow us to see beyond the cultivated image this myth represents. We now have tools for understanding the city that take the previous notion of the ‘survey’ the ‘map’ or the ‘view’ and turn it on

its head. These new ways of remote seeing and understanding, allow us access to a representation of the city deemed true to the source; the city becomes a facsimile.

Unit 4 poses the question: is this city – that takes pride in the image it portrays – adapting to the new and widely available surveying instruments and methods of reproduction to continue its hold on the image of the American dream? Will buildings or components be choreographed to play along with the forecasted upgrades of new technologies?

Los Angeles has been compared to the circuit board – as a vast network of information and movement. It speaks of the ‘language of movement not monument’ (Reyner Banham). The city is a sprawling series of fantastical infrastructures that have a direct relationship to four key systems that allow it to function.

We began by looking at: air and the relationship between the sprawl of the city and its viewing and reading from above; oil and LA as a city with underground reserves of ‘black gold’ and technologies for finding and extracting it; traffic and the vehicle as a forming force behind both the layout and the image of the city; and the river with potential new ways in which the ‘drain’ might re-manifest itself as a river and become part of the city again.

In LA we visited Case Study Houses gazing out across the constellations of street lights below. We studied the Salk Institute, its restrained use of materials and flexibility of spaces. We encountered architectures immortalised through film: Union Station, Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and the Bradbury building. We witnessed the magnitude of Mount Wilson’s observatory and Hubble’s legacy, and took in the acrid smell of La Brea Tar Pits. We met architects and universities to compare how LA’s unique nature drives its architectural discourse.

Visiting sites studied in the first term we assessed the appropriateness of both the remote readings and subsequent proposals. Gaining first-hand experience of the scale of the city and the true context at ground level, we compared and contrasted all we thought we knew about LA to the reality we found.

Unit 4 continued to push students to question the mediums by which architecture is transmitted, with projects engaging notions such as a ‘Google Picturesque’ comprised of ruptured error-spaces that led to architectural aesthetics of the momentary glitch. We explored the relationship between remote viewing and ground conditions, from proposing scanned digital/physical material hybrids through to drone-operated strategies for breaking up the LA river, promoting new ecological development. Students developed strategies for tapping into abandoned oil infrastructure, produced ersatz landscapes for police training and incrementally improved regulations for emergency response buildings in a city of gridlock. We compared dromoscopic viewpoints from the car to the shifting accuracy of GPS guidance and questioned the potential changes to the urban landscape of LA with the legalisation of autonomous vehicles in California. The unit endeavoured to create architectures that contrast and speculate not only on the way we read a city, but on the nature of the reading tool itself as a potential approach for design.

We would like to thank Bryan Cantley, Neil Denari, Wes Jones and Morphosis (with special thanks to Natalia Traverso Caluana) for being so welcoming in LA.

We would also like to thank the critics this year for their invaluable feedback: Laura Allen, Abigail Ashton, Johan Bergland, Matthew Butcher, Nick Elias, Will Jefferies, Nicholas Hockley, CJ Lim, Andrew Porter, Peg Rawes, Gavin Hutchison and Rae Whittow-Williams.

Year

2

Charlotte Archer, Matthew Bovingdon-Downe, Thomas Budd, Emma Colthurst, Chloe Ellis, Christian Georcelin, Isobel Parnell, Sarah Stone, Joshua Toh Kai Heng, Daisy Urcell

Year 3

Chiara de Stavola Barrett, Leo Boscherini, Jiongjiong (Joanne) Chen, Daniel Scoulding, Saijel Anil Taank

Fig 4.1 – 4.3 Leo Boscherini, Y3, Wilshire District Fire Station. The WDFD is an ‘optimal fire station’ based in an area of West Hollywood suffering from the poorest emergency response time in LA. Existing design regulations were assessed in order to shave seconds off emergency response procedures through a series of incremental improvements. The roof plan shows three individual apparatus bays minimising off-site truck manoeuvres derived from the choreography of the pitstop.

Fig. 4.4 Leo Boscherini, Y3, A dynamic device to reinvigorate the roadside landscape of Miracle Mile, using the momentum of a vehicle to recreate a landscape of ‘Google’ architecture.

Fig 4.5 Daisy Urcell Y2, Cobalt Conference Centre is an adaptable theatre and garden powered by the movement of parking cars on the level below. Layered mesh screens and

suspended palm trees form the backdrop to adaptable meeting spaces. Fig 4.6 Isobel Parnell, Y2, The Bay Bridge Training Centre educates the next generation of Californians to preserve the new Oakland Bay Bridge, constructed remotely in China. The building incorporates the exact joints and fixings used in the bridge to form spaces including a museum, training areas and didactic workshop. Fig 4.7 Christian Georcelin Y2, Pembroke Business Hub Elevation treatment of a centre for start-up businesses located off Pico Boulevard, LA, including a modulated roof system for advertising. Fig 4.8 Emma Colthurst, Y2, The model for the ‘Texture House’ peels apart to create hybridised digital/physical materials that reveal this dual materiality in the difference between photographic and digitally scanned recordings of space.

Fig 4.9 Joshua Toh, Y2, A Los Angeles atelier for a French fashion house in the centre of the LA Fashion District. The scheme builds up layers of moulded cladding panels, glass and working spaces to insulate the celebrity client from the exterior world. Fig 4.10 – 4.11 Matthew Bovingdon-Downe, Y2, A hybrid cinema located adjacent to the cinematic backdrop of the LA river. The building offers a sequence of public spaces as ambulatory freeways forming dynamic visual connections across the various levels in the building. Fig 4.12 Lottie Archer Y2, A Guide to the Creation of Ghost Spaces is the conclusion of a series of studies of Marilyn Monroe’s house compiled from imagery available on the internet. A scaled model rendered with specific textures revealed the ghosts of the actress’ life when scanned using photogrammetry software. Fig 4.13 – 4.16

Tom Budd, Y2, The Inglewood Oil Field Community Gardens and Market are situated on the largest urban oil field in Los Angeles. The proposal provides residents with an agricultural superstructure specifically designed to house a diverse range of naturally grown produce. Using geothermal energy acquired from pumping water into unused, capped oil wells, the building creates steam, which it then uses to power and create spaces with specific temperature and humidity related qualities. The building lies on the boundary between the suburban community and the industrial oil field. These contrasting elements are reflected in the building’s design – the community gardens act as a bridge connecting people demonstrating the new ways in which it’s utilisation can be beneficial to the suburban community.

Fig 4.17 – Fig 4.18 Joanne Chen, Y3, The Emergency Actions Training Centre for the LAPD sited in Downtown LA is deliberately accessible to the public to build relationships with the city’s community by providing an insight into the rigour of their training techniques. The centre equips police officers with responsive situation awareness by training them through ‘infinitely reconfigurable’ spaces to create unfamiliar situations. The internal spaces are inspired by existing rock gardens in the original ‘SITSIM’ village created in 1975 with help from Universal Studios; a series of static connected facades and internal rooms designed to simulate search scenarios. The dimensions of the reconfigurable props are based on everyday items commonly used as shields or obstacles in hostage situations. The training tower becomes

a framework for applying and simulation different material environments, while presenting a fragmented totem to the institution which plays with the large scale of its surroundings. Fig 4.19 – 4.23 Dan Scoulding, Y3, 1 North Mission. The scheme is a new transport hub for Downtown LA comprising a light rail station, office space and data centre. Through the mediation of light and heat across the massive superstructure of the scheme, a complex system of environmental conditions is maintained. The building is designed to respond to the Piggy Back Yard Conceptual Masterplan designed for the Friends of the Los Angeles river, which seeks to re-establish the waterway through breakdown of hard infrastructure and new green riverside developments. By taking the proposed 125 acre park as the instigator of a future site to come, the project

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starts to explore the strategy of building a marker, where the particular requirements of space between transport hub, office space and ‘lights-out’ zones of non-human occupation start to mingle together. Exploiting the composition of beams and fins as environmental strategies as well as spatial conditions, the building uses the monumental scale of many of the cities public buildings, but breaks this down to a fine grained mediation of environmental conditions.

Fig. 4.24 Saijel Taank, Y3, Comicon Los Angeles. The project proposes a new convention centre for the secondary Comicon event held annually in Los Angeles. Through the mediation of natural light using a series of optical devices, a series of unitised spaces are turned into fantastical internalised worlds derived from the style, framing and spatial rules of the comic book page. Through controlled circulations, and programmatic assessment of the genres of comic exhibited, a series of bespoke exhibition spaces are woven into the larger infrastructure of the site. Fig. 4.25 – 4.27 Chiara Barrett, Y3, The Tenets of Google Picturesque. The Google Picturesque dealt with the study of Los Angeles remotely through Google Earth and the ruptures that emerge between reality and the new forms of spatiality present within its internalised worlds.

The project catalogued and dissected the current anomalies in Google’s patented algorithm The Universal Texture, using these to develop a series of design proposals that formalised the anomalies into the physical world. Through discussing ideas of resolution, distortion, inversion and datum within the structure of Google Earth space, the project proposes fragments of glitch architecture built into the existing urban fabric that would play with the constant ‘optimisation’ of the Universal Texture software to become an indelible legacy of current digital trends.

Fig. 4.28 – 4.29 Chiara Barrett, Y3, DARPA Headquarters Los Angeles. The project explores some of the contradictions implicit in the idea of ‘controlled transparency’. DARPA is the US Department of Defense’ ‘blue sky thinking’ arm investigating innovative technoligies across military and civilian spheres. Public access to the federal building accredits the agency with transparency, yet the public perception of the researchers within is heavily controled through an architecture of fragmentation, slippage and obfuscation. Using the techniques developed in the Tenets of Google Picturesque project, an architectural approach was derived that investigates the public face of an institution as a fragmented collage of other such hulking headquarters in the Downtown surrounds.

The building intends to embody the agency’s primary aim to prevent and create strategic surprise by playing with notions of scale, proximity, resolution and materiality. A ‘slipping strategy’ results in the cross-fertilisation of these ideas and the manifestation of a ‘Glitched’ architecture specific to DARPA.

2012

Expo(sé)!

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Unit 4

EXPO(SÉ)!

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

In 2020 Silicon Valley had hoped to hold an International Exposition, which would have been the third such event in the San Francisco area’s lifetime. The Bay Area is currently investigating an application for Expo 2025 despite a Government seemingly unwilling to make payment to the Bureau International des Exposition for the acceptance of the bid into a formal competition. The Exposition as an architectural construction exists in a dichotomy, at once sprawling, colourful, wilfully silly, yet carefully promoting the interests and investments of nation states and multinational corporations.

Architects have an inextricable link to those who wield power in society. Now more than ever, the production of visualisations, masterplans, sketches and films are tightly controlled to appeal to the senses of those who hold political or financial capital. It is through physical manifestations of these desires that the architects of the many follies and pavilions of International Expos have played with their audience’s visual, consumerist and symbolic appetites.

The Expo provides a forum for nations to export themselves and their culture. Constructs of the power, attitude and philosophies of nations are sent across the globe for the consumption of other cultures. Crystal Palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Barcelona Pavilion and many more, have become architectures far beyond the Expo itself; becoming cultural icons that define the city they reside in.

San Francisco as a city embodies the counter-culture of the United States, yet this “free thinking” has led to it becoming the world’s capital of the digital industries, where new models of control weave their way into our lives at an ever-increasing pace. But just as these Expositions paint a controlled picture of international culture - the Olympic games of the economy, science and industry - so our remote personal perception of the world is affected by information brokering. Winning the bid to host an International Expo involves a highly competitive selection process. An idealised version of the city is exported to the selection panel far in advance of the public event. The perceived benefits for a city and immediate international attention can act as catalyst for growth or as a distraction from societies real problems.

Unit Four investigated the Architectural Exposé as a counterpoint to the tightly controlled dissemination of cultural ideas in the Exposition. Exposé implies the reveal of something secret, (un)desirable, a hard truth or grotty titillation. It is the opposite to the masquerade of the World’s Fair.

In approaching the Exposé as an architectural construct, we asked students to question the role of representation and communication within architectural

practice. Through an initial study of the city as a remote destination, students questioned both how they might read a city from afar, but how the frameworks and systems for delivering that information to them could be harnessed as part of an architectural dialogue.

These questions resulted in novel and uniquely contextual approaches towards a ‘Remote SF’. Matthew Lyall suggested an architecture occupying a spatial zone derived from the way in which Panoramio software shows geotagged photographs as locatable objects within Google Streetview. Luke Scott suggested roofscapes of buildings might become exploitable elevations for advertising or subversion, manifest through a controlled reveal mirroring the development curve of higher resolution satellite imagery. Brook Lin fabricated a hidden landscape located within the city as a reveal of the unconventional legal and social frameworks San Francisco has in place for embracing illegal immigration into the city. Other such projects spatialised political discontent, or generated infrastructures reconciling the grid system with the sinuous San Francisco Fog - students sought to derive architectural approaches that would contrast the remote city to the actual one.

Following a field trip to the SF Bay Area, these studies then became concerned with buildings that dealt both with real events and planned legacies. They engaged with the city as a dynamic body. A city that would swell with tourists swarming around the fringes of the Bay towards the proposed Expo. A city that exists on a seismic knife-edge, with near-certain knowledge of a huge quake in the next 20 years. A city that once emerged from devastation through its artistic expression, and a city where the voice of protest rings loud despite its immense economic powerbase. A city within perfect wine and crop growing country yet composed of artificial fill and contaminated land.

We would like to thank our technology tutor Toby Maclean, and our critics throughout the year: Laura Allen, Abigail Ashton, Julia Backhaus, Scott Batty, Emma Cheatle, Ming Chung, Nick Elias, Pedro Font Alba, Johan Hybschmann, Damjan Iliev, Will Jefferies, Alex Kirkwood, Guan Lee, Stefan Lengen, Luke Lowings, Frosso Pimenides, Andrew Porter, Nick Tyson, Patrick Weber, Rae Whittow-Williams. We would also like to extend our thanks to Dan Grayber for kindly showing us his studio and work in SF.

Year 2: Sonia Yuen Hin Ho, Man Lung Jackey Ip, Vanessa Lafoy, Matthew Lyall, Isobel Parnell, Carina Tran

Year 3: Kacper Chmielewski, Charles Dorrance-King, Ting Jui (Brook) Lin, Luke Scott

Fig. 4.1 Vanessa Lafoy, Telegraph Hill Community Farm –A timber framed structure allows growing components to be reconfigured depending on season and demand. The ‘clip on nature’ of the buildings extends to rooftop greenhouses or extra living spaces. The scheme provides an opportunity for crop growing in the cramped spaces typical of SF terraced housing. Exploded iso of housing/ growing unit. Fig. 4.2 Sonia Yuen Hin Ho, Film House –Celebrating the genesis of cinematic and photographic legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and Edward Muybridge, the building attempts to craft a paradoxical experience from the pixelated and inverted landscapes projected into the interior via optical devices, revealed progressively as you ascend the building. View into Camara obscura room.

Fig. 4.3 Man Lung Jackey Ip, Wine Bottle Protector –

Acting as a protective vessel to precious wine in areas that are prone to earthquakes, the structure detects vibrations and tremors, transforming from its normal static storing position to a tilted emergency state. Model testing spring trigger mechanism and moving components. Fig. 4.4 Carina Tran, SF Re-use/Re-cycle – SF’s recycling regime boasts 0% waste to landfills by 2020, an ambitious goal considering the existing SF Recycling Centre acts as a conduit from which rubbish bales are shipped to China. The scheme questions the integrity of the existing recycling programme and proposes a museum and plastic recycling factory incorporating heavy machinery and waste products within the building structure. View of plastic mould wall unit.

Fig. 4.5 Matthew Lyall, San Francisco Police Department Auction House – Located in an alleyway between the SFPD and a branch of the Bank of America, the design is strongly informed by the interaction of the physical and online auction process of stolen and found goods. Before having the power to sell stolen items, SFPD must hold items for at least 6 weeks in order that members of the public can claim them. A storage facility is situated on the south side of the site carefully framed by a facade of concrete batons allowing glimpses of the lots without clearly revealing them to avoid false appropriation. Objects for sale are digitised by a process of structuredlight scanning techniques in order to be viewed online. Specific shadows are projected on to objects, photographed and reconstructed digitally resulting in

point clouds. The specific nature of the process results in an articulated roof-scape formed of louvres designed to rotate along a horizontal axis in order to align shadows with non-vertical surfaces down below. As the objects come closer to point of sale, the digital reconstruction becomes both more accurate and of higher resolution. The breakdown in the relative scale of the stolen goods (a distortion of perceived dimensions that occurs within website frames) is simulated in real life through anamorphic arrangements of the objects within the building. Roofscape and structured light scanning louvre test models. Fig. 4.6 Matthew Lyall, San Francisco Police Department Auction House. Roof plan of building.

Fig. 4.7 — 4.8 Charles Dorrance-King, Occupant CA94105 – Triggered by the recent ‘Occupy’ movement, Occupant CA94105 is designed as an independent body to raise awareness by occupying the space above private plazas which otherwise restrict public protest and challenge public authority. The success of the occupant relies on the intensity of any online activity covering campaigns, petitions and coverage on social networks. Fig. 4.9 Charles DorranceKing, SF Federal Credit Union and Community Park - Just as the architecture of many of America’s grand institutions was created from extraneous typologies, the proposal asserts itself as a referenced architecture. Not one of repetition or reproduction, but a deformation of existing typologies taken from the old Chamber of Commerce and other ‘power buildings’ around SF’s Financial District. The concept of the

design is a re-intepretation of old to new, re-configuring the existing building and manipulating existing decor, changing its scale, materiality and function.

Fig. 4.10 — 4.11 Kacper Chmielewski, Bernal Hill Earthquake Rebirth Arts Centre – After the devastating earthquake in 1906, San Francisco’s arts community brought the city back to life. Sited within an earthquake safe-spot, the proposal provides a private artists’ residence and workspace re-engineering typical seismic structural failures to respond to specific measured trembles. The proposal manipulates the boundary between public and private, modifying the building structure to reveal artwork.

Fig. 4.12 Kacper Chmielewski, SF:FOG – investigates the irregularities of the urban grid. The fog, a landmark of the city, responds to the grid work as it meets the tops of the buildings, covering the city. Sited within streets unaccepted by the grid system, a series of proposals are developed to manipulate the fog and extrude a perfect,

supertouristic-image of the orthogonal plan of San Francisco. Aerial view of SF grid with FOG Infrastructure.

Fig. 4.13 Luke Scott, Reclaiming Hunters Poin – In response to the de-gentrification of a site previously known for it’s U.S naval shipyards and ‘blue-collar’ demographic, the project re-appropriates traditional camouflage techniques to avoid satellite detection. By occupying gaps in the new masterplan, the roof is designed to respond to the forecasted staged upgrades of Google Earth’s resolution over the next 5 years. The buildings undergo a process of ‘digital weathering’ in which their presence and the nature of their occupancy is gradually unveiled. Drawing of pixelated roof. Fig. 4.14 Luke Scott, Toxic Weathering – De-contamination Facility & U.S. Navy Debriefing Centre. Treasure Island, an artificial land mass originally constructed for the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition, is threatened by resurfacing of its subterranean nuclear

contamination. In a cleanup strategy the building probes the ground, drawing radioactive waste into suspended phyto-gardens, filtering and harvesting the contaminated land. Naval veterans engage in horticultural therapy to acclimatize to civilian life as contaminants trigger controlled throughout the sacrificial architecture.

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Fig. 4.15 Brook Ting Jui Lin, SF: Sanctuary City – San Francisco is known as a Sanctuary City (term used to describe practices that protect illegal immigrants). Represented through models, drawings and short animation, the project is an allegory of the current situation of undocumented immigration. Each ‘moment’ looks at one of the aspects, including attractive factors of the city, living situation, employment in underground business, mock citizen health care, secret methods of obtaining financial aids after migration and the economic benefits undocumented immigration brings back to the city. Collection of models. Fig. 4.16 — 4.17, Fig. 4.18 (Overleaf) Brook Ting Jui Lin, Expo 2020 Transit Ferry Terminal – The Terminal is designed to serve Expo visitors traveling from the east coast of the Bay Area to the

proposed Expo site in Moffett Federal Airfield providing temporary pavilions, a semi-permanent landscape legacy and a permanent ferry terminal that will carry on serving the city after the World Expo closes. Each temporary pavilion responds to the activities of the passengers and gradually disassembles due to construction techniques and material choices. The building also includes the Expo Human Resource Centre where, based on the Sanctuary Policy and Regulations, undocumented immigrants obtain short term working experience to begin a new life in San Francisco as the post Expo legacy of the building. Internal views through temporary structures and long section.

2011

The Wild Blue Yonder

Mike Aling, Luke Pearson

T H E W I L D B LU E YO N D E R

‘We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.’

Werner Herzog

Unit 4 investigated the manner in which the evocative imagery and technologies underpinning mankind’s attempts to escape the earth’s atmosphere are intricately woven into our public consciousness. Werner Herzog’s 2005 cinematic interstellar voyage, The Wild Blue Yonder, subverts the notion of the exploratory spirit Through the adaptation of stock documentary footage of locations (relatively) easily accessible to us on earth, he blurs the boundary between what exists on our doorstep and what we perceive to be otherworldly. The film-camera is used as a device for the drawing of duration The unit proposed architectures that functioned in a similar fashion, holding within them edge conditions between the real-world and the other-world that exist concurrently within a space

The Wild Blue Yonder triggers distant collective memories of an era when the public looked on in wonder at buildings of such unfathomable scale as to appear otherworldly. The era of the space race also produced constructions for staged transitions into different states, enclosures moulded to the body and designed for survival in the most inhospitable of conditions, contraptions used to test man and his senses to known limits and beyond, and situations that forced mankind to renegotiate the ways by which we represent spaces

We have investigated what the architecture of duration is how a building may be reasserted many times over through revisions and remodellings that are also understood to have been produced at an identifiable point in the building’s life

We believe that drawing should not simply be understood as a static vehicle used to represent architecture. A drawing can be used to interrogate architectures that constantly alter, that call out to be read through vectors, azimuth, altitude, and velocity. The drawing encompasses the modelled, the photographed, the filmed and everything in-between these are not distinct paths. Moreover, the drawing can become the link between architecture and the wonderment Herzog encourages us to experience

Unit 4 constructed architectures that embraced this wonderment. If wonderment is dissipated by familiarity, then its creation relies on an architecture that constantly updates itself, that keeps on transmitting information Taking in the otherworldly terrains, plasticised cities, test sites and installations of Nevada and Arizona we instigated a series of architectures that operated as border controls between familiarity and wonderment

Year 2: Hoi Chau, Mai Hitomi, Samuel Mcgill, Philippa Shaw Carveth, Richard Smith, Tao Wei, Shou Wu

Year 3: Connor Cunningham, Naomi Gibson, Sophia Kelleher, Anja Kempa, Aaron Mann Howe Lee, Nicholas Masterton, Nabi Masutomi, Adam Peacock, Alexander Zhukov

Fig. 4.1 Anja Kempa, London Bridge Armature Taking advantage of the ever-changing floorplan of London Bridge station undergoing renovations, the project reuses discarded constructional material to provide an evergrowing access spine for confused commuters As the station changes, the elevation of the armature grows to reflect this Fig. 4.2 Aaron Lee, Extendable Rover mapping a lost London site through an articulated point cloud field derived from readings made by a ‘rover ’

Fig. 4.3 Adam Peacock, Lag Simulator an instructional facility for 1960s diners preparing for their first meal on board the Post Office Tower ’s rotating restaurant Inspired by vintage footage of dinner service’ simulations’ the Lag Simulator explores public Health and Safety training for a pleasant rotational dining experience Fig. 4.4 Nick Masterton, The Curious Case of Arthur K - tracing an architecture of paranoid parametricism through the

suspicious mind of a rogue architect obsessed by Mount Pleasant sorting office The architect builds his own obsession into his apartment block directed by data gleaned from site visits, covert photography and sending tracking devices into the postal system

Fig 4 5 Aaron Lee, CPO Training Facility an architecture that trains bodyguards in Las Vegas through the surreptitious monitoring and tracking of patrons within the restaurant and bar that comprise the front of house

A series of interchanges and articulations keep trainees in a constant state of alertness, and circulation allows people to filter into and out of the choreography of protection

Fig. 4.6 Anja Kempa, Windsurfing School an Argon distillery providing gas for neon signs uses the by-product components of air to articulate an artificially enhanced landscape for windsurfing on Lake Mead, Arizona

Fig. 4.7 Navi Masutomi, Unpacking Primrose Hill an occupiable device that allows the user to recreate the qualities of Primrose Hill in a multitude of other locations Features include the visual enhancement of green vegetation through complementary colours, the production of a gentle breeze, and the elimination of

middle ground through an ersatz ‘tree line’ Fig 4 8 Sam McGill, Journey’s End A resting place for hikers in the remote Arizonan village of Supai Fig. 4.9 Connor Cunningham, Court of Last Resort, Tucson Through a dissection of the Western film, comparing the contrasting styles of directors Sam Peckinpah and Anthony Mann, the Court of Last Resort creates a pre-trial journey which unfolds as a classic cinematic standoff between the plaintiff and defendant Through analysing the clichés of the western, as well as particular scenes in the films of Mann and Peckinpah, an architecture emerges that striates the border between Arizona as actual site, and as site representing other places and other points of history through cinema Fig. 4.10 Tim Shou-Hang Wu, 1% Clubhouse Providing a social hub for Hell’s Angels in Las Vegas, sitting across the road from the plasticised Harley Davidson Cafe on the strip

Fig 4 11 Naomi Gibson, The Conservation Officer developing a drawing convention for reading buildings on a site as a conglomeration of history Fig. 4.12 Naomi Gibson, The Conservation Officer a device for reading the historical and archaeological makeup of buildings on the site Fig 4 13 Naomi Gibson, Bankruptcy Hotel Deriving an architecture from the economic flux and flow of the Las Vegas casino hotel, the constant intake of money from hotel rooms to the huge spikes of spending on the casino floor and associated shops and bars Fig 4 14 Naomi Gibson, Bankruptcy Hotel section through the entrance and introductory rooms By using five key elements of the motivational speech, the architecture seeks to define moments of reflection and hope within its fabric that help to get families affected by the recession back onto their feet

Fig 4 15 Nick Masterton, Neon Spa Using manipulations of neon and natural light to help alter the circadian rhythms of Las Vegas’s overworked service staff By focusing on delivering light from certain angles, and through a controlled circulation, the architecture allows patrons to have a ‘blast’ of light therapy, along with a carefully controlled strategy of heat delivery through the structure to promote wakefulness The result of these manipulations is a building that at once subverts the nature of Las Vegas as artificial lightscape, while producing an original architectural approach that would not look out of place on the Strip itself

2010

Character Building

Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson

Yr 2: Kun Bi, Theclalin Chung, (Mollie) Yue Gao, Aaron Ho, Rebecca Li, Wendy Lin, Sirisan Nivatvongs, Tian Qin, Yr 3: Nicholas Blomstrand, Gladys Ching, Nicholas Elias, Dimple Rana

Character Building

‘Talent is developed in quiet places; character in the full current of life.’ Goethe.

The structures of the Fallas festival (Valencia) combine architecture of popular parody with sophisticated systems of construction and industrial quantities of gunpowder, all integral to the creation of architectureas-ceremony. Gunpowder becomes the catalyst for the expression of a celebratory architecture during Fallas. In the seventeenth century it was considered to be the explosive force by which the muscles of the body moved. The architecture of “Character” forms at the interface of event, social collectivity and structure. In the modern cityscape we also see structures created in anticipation of an event that might happen. The build up, preparation and enactment of a festival might be contrasted to the predictive studies and analytical games played by designers and technicians in relation to preventing or encouraging an expected occurrence. We may then see architectures that appear ahead, or behind the curve, capturing a moment of hysteria or speculating on the future of its context. We embraced the relationship between character and context, action and reaction, and the development of visual languages that express this dialogue between them. Unit 4 investigated the spatial relationships, the protagonists, the physical construction, the objects, the choreography and any other devices that are used to manifest an occasion, event or festivity. We found inspiration in the tactile nature of the event, the precise craft of the décor, the dress codes, rules of etiquette, lavish behaviours, competition, international courtship, and the myth.

& Luke Pearson

Ana Monrabal-Cook

Clockwise from top: Nicholas Blomstrand, Team Sky Base Camp Lanzarote; Nicholas Blomstrand; Gladys Ching, Early warning systems: Teide Sacrificial Visitor Centre Tenerife; Gladys Ching; Wendy Lin, Weight Test Model for a Canary Island Fish Restaurant, Tenerife.

Clockwise from top left: Dimple Rana, Climate Control: a National Herbarium for Tenerife; Dimple Rana; Aaron Ho: Carmine Palace, Lanzarote; Aaron Ho; Gladys Ching, Early Warning Systems: Teide Sacrificial Visitor Centre Tenerife

Top: Tian Qin, Los Cocoteros Rock Pool, Lanzarote. Middle: Tian Qin; Sirisan Nivatvongs, Mud Bath, Lanzarote; Wendy Lin, Canary Island Fish Restaurant, Tenerife Bottom: Kun Bi, Floating Chapel in St. Katherine’s Dock, London. Opposite page: Mollie Gao, Playa Chica Artificial Reef and Diving Shop, Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote.

Left: Nicholas Elias, Tower C42, London. Right and opposite: Nicholas Elias, Rolling out a New Britain: Bowling Green Lanzarote

2009

Nothing is Neutral Mark Ruthven, Jerry Tate

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Karen Au, Robert Burrows, Anton Chernikov, Haesung Choi, Eleonora Hadjigeorgiou, Grace Mark, Lucy Rothwell. Yr 3: Jonathan DeWind, Yong Lik Lee, Young Woo Lee, Nicola Perrett, Marcos Polydorou, Felicity Price-Smith, Harriet Redman, Suyang Xu.

Nothing is Neutral

This year our architectural proposals inhabit, interface and amplify selected elements from the mesh of natural forces, urban patterns and sociopolitical contexts which form a liquid web of material in the Docklands, East London. We have evolved increasingly complex relationships between our multiple proposals and the urban context, establishing a network of inextricable links creating an environmental metamorphosis. Our investigations acknowledge and celebrate cultural differences, histories, narratives and memories, anticipating how the future of what we propose is fused with the footprint of history. They aim to facilitate an alternative to the blanket regeneration sweeping through East London.

U4 would like to thank: Laura Allen, Jan Birksted, Iain Borden, Jolyon Brewis, Marcos Cruz, Lorna Davies, Michael Faulkner, Bernd Felsinger, Stephen Gage, Elliott Hodges, Gerry Judah, James Khamsi, Saskia Lewis, cj Lim, Mark Middleton, Deborah Miller, Robin Monotti, Erik OrtsHansen, Stuart Piercy, Mike Reynolds with ‘Earthship Biotecture’, Justin Sayer, Mark Smout and Rosie Winston.

Mark Ruthven and Jerry Tate

Clockwise from top left: Suyang Xu, Lucy Rothwell, Felicity Price-Smith, Eleonora Hadjigeorgiou, Lucy Rothwell, Robert Burrows, Nicola Perrett

Top left: Marcos Polydorou. Top right and bottom: Harriet Redman

This page: Yong Lik Lee, SilvertownTomatoCity.

This page: Robert Burrows, North Woolwich Promenade.

This and facing page: Harriet Redman, South Woolwich Pleasure Pier.

2008

Saskia Lewis, Jerry Tate

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Mark Attmore, Alisan Dockerty, Daniel Dodds, Daryl Fitzgerald, Matilda Keane, Charlotte Moon, Alex Nassar, Lucy Ottewell, Dimple Rana, Francis Roper, Yong Jun Song, Anthony Whittaker Yr 3: Canzy El-Gohary, Dalina Gashi, James Gunn, Elizabeth Mitchell, Bodin Nilkamhaeng.

volume of Milano Centrale.

‘I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.’ Woody Allen

We took the ingredients for our narratives from the fare at Borough market, the smells of ripe cheeses, exotic oils, cuts of cured meat. We collaborated to make theatrical instruments that would make a performance of the production of food and then toured central London with these temporary installations trying to tempt and draw a crowd. We dodged security and fed a few.

We sampled the rainforest within the crater of the Eden project and sped to the cliffs of the Minack theatre where we scattered down the steep incline and braced ourselves against the searing wind and swelling sea. We lost ourselves in the jungle at Heligan and paced the kitchen gardens gathering thyme and atmosphere.

We measured sites in Marseilles with our bodies, walked the Panier and the Coastal road, met men playing petanque and football in dusty parks and watched from benches bathed in low winter sun. We gathered on the roof of Corbusier’s Unite, squeezed into his Cabanon at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, and from the terrace overlooked the healing carcass of Eileen Gray’s E1027. We sped through the Villa Noailles arrested by the indoor pool with a glass facade that drops through the floor to embrace a Mediterranean panorama. We clung to the incline of the track on the roof of the Lingotto Fiat Factory in Turin and soaked in the cathedral space of its ramp with scenes of The Italian Job in mind. We flew home with fleeting memories of Terragni facades and return train rides to and from the vast

We had 24 hours to find our site in Marseilles and used newspaper articles to develop schemes to house travel-writers, lost boys, build yachts, dance, perform and navigate a park by smell and texture. We proposed dismantling cars, farming mussels and helping refugee women while housing the retired and providing meditative walks. We allowed for retreat from the world, designed spaces to catch conversations, play music and store media and a space for the mayoral candidate to entertain.

Thank you to all our critics for their time and insightful critique: Laura Allen, Jolyon Brewis, Stewart Dodd, Michael Faulkner, CJ Lim, Stephen Gage, Elliot Hodges, James Khamsi, Mark Middleton, Jon Richards, Mark Smout, Neil Thomlinson. Thank you to our sponsors Douglas James of Mindseye 3D and Whitegoods Ltd.

Saskia Lewis and Jerry Tate

Clockwise from top: Alisan Dockerty, Canzy El-Gohary, James Gunn, Alex Nassar, Charlotte Moon, Lucy Ottewell, Daryl Fitzgerald, Daniel Doods.

Top: Daniel Dodds, Bottom: Canzy El-Gohary.

This page: Canzy El-Gohary. Opposite: Alisan Dockerty.

Clockwise from top left: Daryl Fitzgerald, Dalina Gashi, James Gunn, Charlotte Moon, Mark Attmore, Francis Roper, Daryl Fitzgerald, Yong Jun Song, Anthony Whittaker, Elizabeth Mitchell, Dimple Rana, Anthony Whittaker.

Top: Daniel Dodds. Bottom: Francis Roper.

2007

Production + Consumption Stewart Dodd, Saskia Lewis

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Ioana Barbantan, Kim Foster, Alexander Joury, Anastasia Kaisiri, Anthony Lau, Daniel Lavand, Gregory Nordberg, Jen Feng Wang, Christopher Wong. Yr 3: Mayu Akashi, Antonia Hazlerigg, Brian Hoy, Elizabeth Mitchell, James Palmer, Sarah Syed.

Production + Consumption

The film ‘The Long Good Friday’ led us to Smithfield market for a pre-dawn breakfast amongst the die-hard clubbers, meat-market butchers, blood, corpses, white vans and pints of beer.

We split from the city to Dorset’s Portland, home to Portland stone quarried from this fragment of land sitting just off the mainland on England’s south coast. We walked the coastal path watching the darkening sky engulf the horizon and fire us violently with a freezing horizontal rain. We sat in the pub and listened to the conversations of regulars and thought about the prisons on the island in doubly isolated incarceration.

‘C’etait un rendez-vous’ a cult short film shot us through the streets of a1970s Paris dawn in a non-stop race to the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, and we followed suit, dodging from boulevards to back streets, slipping into see the Fondation Le Corbusier, Nouvel’s newly opened Musee du Quai Branly and the Beaubourg to see the Movements et Images exhibition showing works from Stan Brackage to Moholy-Nagy and more, much more.

We took the train from Gare de Lyon and the ornate promises of southerly destinations painted on the ceiling of Le Train Bleu restaurant to the raw grit of Marseille. We travelled through freezing snow to pale winter sun and drank coffee over meetings in the Samaritaine Café that featured in ‘The French Connection.’ We took a boat past the Ilse d’If , had a midnight rendez-vous on the roof of the Unite d’Habitation, met up in Jazz bars, clubs, fish restaurants and flea markets.

Through documenting what we observed and identifying our values, priorities and motivation we have been encouraged to define our design practice as individuals. We used this analysis to develop a brief dealing with issues of Production and Consumption, to examine the ways in which Architecture impacts on society and how we work to articulate the atmosphere of a space and the narrative sequence of a series of spaces.

Thanks to all our critics for their engaging and sometimes confrontational but always astute opinions.

Laura Allen, Miraj Ahmed, Kate Darby, Steven Gage, Bill Hodgson, CJ Lim, Heather Lyons, Tom Tatum, Neil Thomlinson, Matt White and finally our great friend Professor Barry Bell who died unexpectedly on 8th May 2007.

This page: Ioana Barbantan. Facing page, clockwise from top left: Sarah Syed, Antonia Hazlerigg, Anastasia Kaisiri, Daniel Lavand, Ioana Barbantan, Elizabeth Mitchell, Sarah Syed, Christopher Wong, Daniel Lavand, Anastasia Kaisiri.

Stewart Dodd and Saskia Lewis

This page, clockwise from top: Ioana Barbantan, Daniel Lavand, Christopher Wong, Anthony Lau, Jen Feng Wang. Facing page, top and middle: Brian Hoy, Velodrome, Marseille; bottom: Sarah Syed, Food Opera, Marseille

This page, clockwise from top: Greg Nordberg, Anthony Lau, James Palmer, Alexander Joury, Antonia Hazlerigg.

This page: James Palmer, Retirement Home, Marseille

2006

Connections Stewart Dodd, Kate Darby

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Aditya Aachi, Peter Alexander, Sarah Alfraih, Ioana Barbantan, Natalia Benes, Naomi Bryden, Sarah Custance, Amanda Ho, Ben Kirk, Wise Leung, David Rieser.

Yr 3: Barry Cho, Olasubomi Fapohunda, Seng Chun Alvin Tan, Rebecca Tappin.

Connections

principle connection

How do we read an urban landscape, what connections and networks are revealed when you understand the material histories of the city? Is it possible to make an intervention in the city at a scale of 1:1, which would have an impact on the urban terrain at 1:10,000? What would the physical consequences of these interventions be? What marks would they make, what scars would remain?

site connection

Our site for the year has been Digbeth in the city of Birmingham; which we have explored through its physical, ephemeral and historical connections. The scars of post-industrial England are highly visible in Digbeth. The area is crisscrossed with redundant infrastructure in the form of railways, canals or roads and all within view of the city centre. Connections were identified from the following categories: Hydrology, Networks, Massing, Population, Conflict, Landform and Industrial Production.

material connection

We have explored the theme of connections through the medium of light. Light can reveal and conceal, it can distort, erase and accentuate. The perception of light is both tangible and subjective. Light can be spatial and linear. The physical networks of an industrial age are being superseded by virtual networks, enabled by travel at the speed of light. The embodiment of the material connection was an occupied stile, constructed at 1:1, and installed in Digbeth. This piece acted as a prototype for the building.

Stewart Dodd and Kate Darby

This and facing page top to bottom, left to right: Natalie Benes, Rebecca Tappin, Ioana Barbantan, Peter Alexander, Peter Alexa nder, Barry Cho, David Rieser, Naomi Bryden, Naomi Bryden, Sarah Alfraih, Sarah Custance, Wise Leving, Seng Chun Tan, Amanda Ho, Ben Kirk, Adiya Aachi,Olasubomi Fapohunda.

Top: Aditya Aachi. Middle: Sarah Alfraih, Olasubomi Fapohunda.

Top left: Barry Cho; right: Rebecca Tappin. Bottom: Seng Chun Tan.

This page: Natalie Benes.

This page: Sarah Custance.

2005

Dangerous Futures

Stewart Dodd, Vesna Petresin Robert

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Lik San Chan, Tammy Chow, Isabel Crewe, Richard Hardy, Ric Lipson, Geraldine Ng, Nancy O'Brien, Kyna So Yr 3: Yee-Lain Billing, James Davies, Lida Kokorelia, Emily Mann, Vanessa Salambassi, Andrew Scrace, Tsuyoshi To

Dangerous Futures

This year we looked at the transforming city; the process of transformation is the key operation in contemporary urban culture and perhaps the only constant We asked: How does the transformation of cities influence architecture? How do the processes of transformation that shape new urban society inform the new urban matrix? How do they redefine architecture and the notion of public space?

Even though Berlin was an isolated city, its recent development has produced a boom in modern urban transformations with architectural, cultural and political shifts Because of recent history and technological/social development, the city of Berlin seems to have a variety of processes expressing transformations; the integration of Eastern and Western Europe and the evolution of the European megalopolis have begun to create a sense of new national identity in the new German capital Public spaces (Alexanderplatz, Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie etc ) have always been connected to changes in political, cultural and architectural trends in Berlin The design proposition for the unit was therefore to be sited in the public spaces of Berlin’s ‘dangerous futures’

Stewart Dodd and Vesna Petresin Robert

Clockwise from top: Yee-Lain Billing, Tammy Chow, Lida Kokorelia, Vanessa Salambassi

Clockwise from top left: Tsuyoshi To, Ric Lipson, Nancy O’Brien, James Davies, Geraldine Ng, Richard Hardy, Lik San Chan

Overleaf, left: Andrew Scrace, right: Ric Lipson

2004

Performa Stewart Dodd, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen

BSc Unit 4

Yr 2: Stuart Cadge, Alice Cartledge, Marivenia Chiotopoulou-Isaia, Anna Deacon, Morten Engel, Tom Finch, Gregory Froggatt, Sara Mohammadi Khabazan, Yoosung Ok, Luke Pearson, Amelia Rule, Joshua Scott, Alia Tohala, Bashrat Verjee Yr 3: Alexia Anastasopoulou, Polly Clegg, Eve Goldman, Benjamin Masterton-Smith, Jan Krzysztof Wisniowski

Performa

The year started with the building of an artificial city of dynamic architectures Taking its point of departure in observed transformations, the artificial city exists through its performed interrelationships The city architectures depend on each other for light, wind, projection surfaces, projections, for movement and change

The city performers become the basis for a first design proposal within the modernist context of Notting Hill Gate Here, the artificial architectures meet a spatial context informed by scale and inhabitation, by place and programme

In the final project we went to New York to explore the raised territory of the Highline Focusing on the sectional cut along the block running between West 15th and West 18th Street and from the waterfront to Broadway, our site exists as a nodal point on this section line, defined by the intersection of the High Line and 10th Avenue We explore the making of an infrastructural programme engaging the interchanges and intersection of the city The programmes occur across time becoming the basis for a transformative architecture

Stewart Dodd and Mette Ramsgard Thomsen

Above: Luke Pearson

Clockwise from top left: Tom Finch, Joshua Scott, Joshua Scott, Polly Clegg, Unit 4 Artificial City