UpTown The Architecture of Layered Living
Uptown The Architecture of Layered Living UpTown - The Architecture of Layered Living ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE SCHOOL Housing and Urbanism 2016-2017 Tutors: Lawrence Barth, Dominic Papa, Anna Shapiro Published in London 2017 Design Workshop Group Umair Ibrahim Zak Lawson Tal Mandola Palak Nachrani Madelyn Pena Selin Tosun Marco Veneri Ana Vila Yangyang Xu
CONTENTS
01 UpTown pg.07
02 New Grounds pg.12
03 Associative Neighbourhood pg.48
04 Urban Intensification pg.66
05 Food Ecologies pg.78
06 Conclusion pg.98
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Uptown The Architecture of Layered Living
‘Uptown’ places Camden on the map of London. It creates a place for Londoners to live, work and shop outside but within convenient distance of the city centre. It takes the opportunities presented by a hitherto underutilized area while avoiding some of the pitfalls of central city conditions. ‘Uptown’ is ambitious in its scope to create a viable alternative to the conventional Central London living experience. As London grows, central city living expands into the inner periphery. In parallel the new
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knowledge economy places unprecedented demands on the living and working spaces with regard to density, quality and mix of programs. ‘Uptown’ provides creative solutions to such questions by proposing new kinds of design alternatives which cater to more intense and complex programs without compromising on quality of life.
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Living and Working Spaces The current moment in the knowledge economy offers an opportunity to harness the demand for innovative workspaces and living spaces to create a high quality urban environment in an area that is otherwise riddled with deadlocks. Like many areas situated at the edge of city centre, Camden finds itself in a condition of limbo, whereby land values are high yet it is bridled with large pieces of infrastructure which do not allow it to develop in a coherent way. It consists of large landholdings by various owners who tend to put it to a supplementary use for their businesses which are located elsewhere. Therefore, Camden has thus far not been imagined as anything beyond a warehousing or storage district. In such a condition, the only service the area has been able to offer to the public is a combination of entertainment and small-scale retail, geared
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towards a particular young segment of the population. Camden has thus come to be known as an ‘exotic’ backyard district where the youngsters or only the most ambitious tourists venture. Some of these aspects are nevertheless positive features of any area but in Camden, they tend to be locked into a vicious cycle of low value–low quality service provision. The intention of this research is therefore to seek ways to create a higher growth equilibrium compared to the current condition and to unlock potentials which are presented by recent turn in the information and service-based economy. It seeks to outline the contours of a future built environment which will accommodate the various new industries and occupations that have grown to become some of the largest sectors in the region.
Living and working spaces being the constitutive blocks of urban life, it is important to begin envisioning a new urban area by paying attention to their changing nature, especially in the context of London in the twenty-first century. In terms of work, we are already observing a shift in working environments whereby the once rigid corporate hierarchies which often translated into equally rigid office spaces are giving way to flexibility and adaptability. New technologies are giving rise to ever new ways of shared work and collaboration. A trend that is seen in most developed economies is the rise of flexible work hours and work-from-home. In such an environment it is critically important to rethink the workspace. The conventional office space has given way to more hybrid spaces where opportunities to work are provided alongside recreation.
In a similar way, nuclear families with both parents working, single parents and other forms of human association have given rise to new requirements vis-à-vis living spaces. The hegemony of the single-family dwelling is being questioned. Opportunities are already being provided in London and other metropolitan cities for people living outside family organization even in old age. Similarly, it is also important to think in terms of larger associations of people beyond the nuclear family who might require to share living space. Coupled with this is the challenge posed by rapid advance in technology which has given rise to not only new kinds of jobs and industries but also new forms of social interaction and community. What can architecture offer to the city in such a context? This is one of the central questions that ‘Uptown’ aspires to answer by reifying the qualities that are increasingly defining the experience of living in the metropolis.
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Services for Central City The increase in carrying capacity of the area would depend on how well the neighbourhoods are served with support functions. The changes in lifestyles and working habits are also palpably felt in the services that enable living and working in a neighbourhood. Schools for instance are growing in size and functional complexity to assume many roles over and above that of providing conventional education. They have come to contribute to the surrounding environment where they are situated and have become important players in the community. Similarly cultural and healthcare facilities have begun to accumulate many programs which have traditionally been understood as separate activities. The crossovers among all these functions have the potential to create new kinds of sociability in these innovative environments. In the case of supermarkets, where once the businesses tended towards vertical integration as a method of cost cutting, now there is an emphasis on horizontal cooperation. Hence instead of a supermarket competing against the tra-
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ditional small retailers, we can observe an effort towards mutually beneficial partnerships. These changes in the way neighbourhoods are serviced, are important considerations in envisioning future development in Camden. New Mobility Along with well serviced neighbourhoods, an important part of a successful regeneration of an urban area concerns movement. Technological shifts have not only impacted how businesses operate but also transformed the way we move through the city. Digitization, networking and automation have put new forms of urban transport at our disposal. At the same time transport oriented spaces are becoming hubs of interaction within the city centre. Camden town can benefit from its strategic location close to two of the largest national and an international train station. A good neighbourhood to work and live in Camden can be supported by the immense traffic of people and resources that is criss-crossing through this area. For this to happen, an effective network of
transport linkages will have to become part of a strategy to transform the area. The future mobility patterns will divert from car based transport to the more eco-friendly alternatives which have been made possible by the emergence of new navigational and transport-related software applications that have diffused into the population. An effective strategy will also have to reorganize the street hierarchies in the area to constitute a more efficient distribution of people and facilities. Currently the high street is overburdened with several uses while also performing as a corridor between central London and the outlying areas. On the other hand, the streets and roads in the area flanking the high street remain underutilized. A more balanced and hierarchical order of streets will need to be created for a denser utilization. Potential Development Above all, ‘Uptown’ is an architectural argument. It seeks to find alternatives to conventional models of site development which are based on tried and tested ways of production. Built environment produced through conventional modes of operation may reduce
risk in investments and generate positive value, however, many additional benefits remain untapped. In a situation in which Camden finds itself, neither a master planning exercise nor the usual market based models have been able to unlock the potentials of the area. ‘Uptown’ argues that the solution lies in architecture. Uptown explores the question of stakeholders. In conventional understanding, Camden has this exotic image which has an appeal to tourists (and only the more ambitious ones at that) or those of a more conservationist outlook. However, in a sense the whole of resident population of London is a stakeholder. Moreover, if the current developments at Kings Cross are any indication, the stakes are far beyond even the national reach. If it is possible to exploit these untapped resources in order to transform Camden into the next generation Central London, then it will require the right mix of housing capacity, workplaces and services along with the accompanying ecology which forms a broad support system which offers greater opportunities even for the current residents of Camden.
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New Grounds New Collectivities
The project is proposing a new approach to a collective ground, one that is morphologically and programmatically more hierarchical, complex and varied; aiming to create a new pattern of collective spaces linking the street with the interior of the block in multiple layers and dimensions. This ambition is achieved through a thick ground that is articulated, and thus drawn, not only in plan, but also in a sectional understanding.
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New Grounds, New Collectivities
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1960s Modernist Estate in Camden. The ambition of a collective space in between the buildings and along the street fails due to the mono-functional character of the buildings and their typological conformation.
The London’s new vernacular tends to abuse of the perimeter block, emphasising the street as the only way to generate urbanity. The interior of these blocks are often prioritising security and private property.
Shifting Morphology/Shifting Typologies Two of the three projects are replacing existing modernist estates. Those estates, and in general mid-century modernism, made some critical moves out of their strong social intentions, aiming to create a collective realm in the interior part of the block that is distinctive from the street but still publicly open and permeable. Yet, it failed to deliver that ambition - but rather
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became vast underutilised space, due to over privatisation - the only function around those spaces is residential, without any additional services- there is no reason for anybody except the immediate residents to go there. Furthermore, those ‘meant to be collective spaces’ from initial diagrams to plan, were always thought of in a planimetric manner, without any sectional articulation
differentiating them from one another. This mono-dimensional, mono-cultural approach had no vitality or urbanity and couldn’t have possibly met the criteria that we have for contemporary urban values. But if we are looking at what’s being delivered today in other projects- neither would that. The tendency today in London is that everything should be focused on the street.
The perimeter block is thus coming back as a predominant morphology. If there is anything inside the block- it is going to be given over to the immediate local residents and become completely private. This approach is based on a strong sense of security and a feeling of ownership over common areas, together with the importance of street life.
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Top: Lafayette Park, Detroit, Mies Van Der Rohe. Composition of differences. Bottom: Chu Hai College’s campus, Hong Kong, OMA. Thick groung composing the various parts of the campus.
As the values we are after are broader and richer and has to do with trying to clarify the importance of the changes that are coming about through incorporating working and living into the organisation of the residential community, we are now retrospectively realising the importance of some critical moves in the mid century modernism, it was simply never delivered due to over privatisation. We are proposing a new approach - rethinking modernist estate’s original ambition of
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collective space by coming back to that understanding of the importance of the courtyards, giving them new life by varying the typologies, increasing the range of services that are delivered, and by doing so having a more 24-hours approach. Differences are composed together in plan and section, integrated through the thick ground, forming a meaningful and functional collective realm.
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Value Planning The proposed design process is based on a series of integrations aiming at a highly serviced environment. This approach raises the question- how do we ensure that there is a transparent planning process to it? How to make a rule out of it? The proposed design approach is not about simple form making, neither is it diversity for its own sake. It’s not just because some people would want to live in tall buildings and some in mid-rise but rather is based on the idea that if we were to put values first, through a conversation with stakeholders, we could deliver environments that would be equally, perhaps more, successful through a different way of planning in conjunction with design. This design approach is about trying to deliver a best environment, that we currently can’t achieve due to our preconceptions about design, due to the failure of our planning system, and due to our preoccupation with having things delivered by a single developer creating and capturing all of the values in a single project. Instead, a collaborative, value driven and design led approach is proposed.
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Camden High Street
Bayham St
Camden St
Royal College St
New Grounds, New Collectivities
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Fashion Cluster The unique values leading the approach for the design of this site are based on the proximity to the canal, and the existing fashion industry together with the nearby King’s Cross new development with its fashion education facilities at Central St. Martin. This area of the canal today is one of its weakest parts, underutilising the potential it embodies for a significant sense of urbanity and vitality. Yet, its location between recently shifted Granary Square, and soon to be developed Camden Lock, implies a change should occur over the next decades. This led to a time based approach- offering at the short term an alternative public space to the canal, attracting the few walking there to pop in, while in the long run it will be related to a greater network of leisure and micro-mobility along the canal. The site offers a development economically driven by the big fashion industries, supporting new workshops and maker-spaces for small and medium size producers, as well as exhibition spaces to promote the
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The industrial shed unleash its potential to become a flexible covered public space while the spaces in between the pavilions are activated by the complex overlap offered by the cultural program. (Top: IJ Hallen, Amsterdam. Below: FondazionePrada,OMA, Milan)
collaboration between the various creative economies, the nearby fashion education and the rest of the community. This mixed program and services is composed together with new residential development of various co-live-work typologies. The integration of the makers, education and production, with the local residents and wider community, is achieved through a pattern of possibilities for events integrated through the shed.
The development hosts 300 units/ha of residential distributed in the different buildings with different size and typologies. 15.000 square meters of workspace for creative industries are both hosted in the plinth of the tower and distributed and merged with the residential typologies. The fragmentation of the development allows new patterns of movement between and throughout the buildings and interaction between the program
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The block is divided by clusters of dwellings. Each of them has individual double rooms and shared living room and kitchen plus a common “productive room� for working or studying.
The street is activated by retail and gives access to the workspace. An elevated platform with parking lots underneath offers semi-public collective spaces to the residents and the workspace.
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Communal facilities for the residents sits on top of shops and on the rooftop.
Cultural facilities, offices and restaurants are hosted in the plinth becoming a permeable street between the street and the covered public square space.
The existing industrial shed offers a large covered yet lit public space that can perform as an event and exhibition space or for ad hoc working collaborations for makers and fashion industries.
New Grounds, New Collectivities
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3. 2.
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The double orientation of the apartments and their dimensions allows different typological conformation and the possibility to transform them into workshops and ateliers. (Top: Ateliergebouw Rijksmuseum, Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos,Amsterdam. Down: 96 logements, Chalon-sur-SaĂ´ne, Lacaton & Vassal, 2016
6.
Residential Unit and Workshops
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1. Workshop 2. Apartment 3. Storage Room 4. Communal Terrace 5. Guest Room 6. Communal Living Room 7. Bycicle Storage
Work/Live Apartments Types
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Learning Centre The site characteristics with its proximity to an existing school and community center in the same block define the values that stand in the center of the design, offering a residential driven environment and experimenting new co-live-work typologies, in search after social values, as well as an economic generator- enabling the development of a library and a learning center- integrating the live-work environment with the school and the rest of the community. The project experiment with the urban form of a big ‘container’ where the mixed functions- the library, learning center, commercial retails, co-working spaces and lobbies to the live-work- are integrated through the articulation of a thick collective ground in plan and section, all contributing to the definition of interior urbanity. The mixed program is composed of 21,600 m2 of residential, 12,000 m2 office and co-working space and 8,000 m2 learning centre.
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Sectional Studies of the Ground Articulation
Extensive permeable and interiorized ground floor allow the coexistence of multiple function to be accessible, curated and well-managed. (ANZ Building, Hassel, Melbourne,2010)
The 20 metres deep slabs hosting the coworking spaces allow a functional distribution of the different working areas. (ANZ Building, Hassel, Melbourne,2010)
UpTown - The Architecture of Layered Living
Ground Floor Porosity and Perimetre Fragmentation Studies
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Undercroft and open terrace of the offices.
The street is activated by a continuous frontage of retail and gives access to the residential towers and the offices.
workshops
Triple Height Skylit Gallery. Separate and gives access to the public porgramme of the building such as exhibition rooms, bookshop, restaurants in the lower ground.
The Rooftop of the Learning Centre and Library working as a greenhouse extends the learning program of the building and offers views over Camden.
The ground floor extends with continuity under the volume of the Learning Centre where workshops and conference rooms offer additional spaces for the school and the community centre.
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Veritcal Communal Apartment Plan
5. 7. 3.
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1. Room (15 mq) 2. Room (40 mq) 3. Room (25 mq) 4. Room+Mezzanine (20mq) 5. Living Room/Coworking 6. Communal Kitchen 7. Communal Dining Area/Bar
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The communal flats in the three towers reimagine the concept of sharing on multiple levels. The generous communal areas and their articulation offer the possibility of using the space either as large living-rooms or to become working spaces. The types of rooms ranging from fifteen to forty square meters are scattered through the plan forming pockets and niches in the communal area so to allow the coexistence of different activities and gradients of privacy.
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Japanese co-housing, Nagoya. Mutliple Patterns of Sharing. Articulation of the communal areas.
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Tech Hub Work driven organisation of a single tenant hi-tech company with a Tech-Hub incubator for small-medium size start-ups, mixed in the same urban block with new co-livework typologies and a sports center. Due to being a substantial urban block (150 m / 150 m), and its proximity to the high street and mobility systems (two tube stations in a walking distance of less than 400m from each side and multiple bus lines), the main values driving the design for this block has to do with the potential to become an essential work space provider for the benefit of the entire borough. The suggested project is thus work drivenoffering 85,000 m2 of new work space. This dense work environment is integrated with 800 new living units (400 units/ha), 20,000 m2 public service- sports center, and 6,000 m2 of commercial retail. All those differences are integrated through a thick ground floor layering a highly articulated collective space in plan and section. The work-hub is composed of 48,000 m2 single tenant building meant to host a strong tech company, it will be built at first stage as a strategic move to help finance the services- the sports center will be built
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as a mixed investment of the tech company and public funds- to support both the tech employees and the residents of the area. A 24,000 m2 Tech-Hub will function as a campus with the tech company, as an incubator for new promising start ups. it will be operated as a venture capitalist by the tech company, an investment in future co-operations and inventions, offering young talents the opportunity to start their businesses in Camden. The living environment is composed of various types, offering new typologies of co-living with mixed tenure models for long and short term, offering residences for young professionals related to the tech-hub together with an inclusive living environment of 24,000 m2 residential space, integrated with over 2,000 m2 of shared work space and common facilities, with some of those spaces dedicated to bicycle facilities as a generator for a sense of community. The collective ground is integrating the differences creating a rich multilayered experience of passages and views, supporting a hierarchy in patterns of intimacy, openness and permeability related to the different functions.
Sectional Studies of the Ground Articulation
Ground Floor Porosity and Perimetre Fragmentation Studies
New Grounds, New Collectivities
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The street is activated by a continuous frontage of retail and gives access to the residential block. Bicycle storages are spread around the perimeter. Interior courtyard at the level of the street offers a shared space for the residential unit and the coworking spaces.
Rentable Common kitchen and dining areas.
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Sunken courtyard offers a more secluded area and extends the possibilities of the surrounding workshops to become open-air.
Public passage leading from the exterior streetscape to the interior pattern of courtyards inside the block.
The sportcentre is connected to the office spaces and opens-up towards both the street and the interior of the urban block.
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Regulated Freedom The diversity of different elements composed together without insisting on a stylistic logic from the past of Camden, or any other urban preconception, enable a design led approach based purely on the definition
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of values, thus promoting the possibility for various stakeholders and small and medium size developers to participate, in a gradual manner through staged development process.
New Grounds, New Collectivities
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7.
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1. Sport Centre 1.1. Sport Centre main entrance 1.2. pool (underground leve) 1.3. gym 1.4. commercial mezzanine 2. Lobby Single Tenant Office
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1.3.
3. Tech Hub Lobby 4. Workshop’s Mezzanine 5. Lobby Coworking 6. Bycicle Storage 7. Retail 8.Communal Spaces
9. Coworking 10.Tech Hub 11. Office 12. Living Units
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4. 5. 1.
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Modular Co-living
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The co-living residential floor of the block is composed of various type of units. The units cluster between two vertical cores and share a double height common living room. The units are based on different combinations of the same module. The location of the services, placed between the individual and the collective areas enables flexibility of the unit types and their relationship with shared spaces. These services can be either included in the individual unit or shared between few of them. `
1. Unit with shared services (15 mq) 2. 2 bed unit semi-shared services (50 mq) 3. 3 bed unit with services (75 mq) 4. 3 bed unit semi-shared services (80 mq) 5. Shared toilets and baths 6. Communal Living Room/Coworking 7. Communal kitchen
UpTown - The Architecture of Layered Living
Top: Shared Sillim-dong house in Seoul, JYA-rchitects, Bottom: Yokohoma Apartments Japan, ON design partners
Basic Module
Circulation Service/Storage Service/Kitchen/Bathroom Living Space
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New Networks Network of Activities- establishing new continuity through services. In Camden today there is no reason for anyone living in the estate block to walk to the industrial block by the canal, they are completely un-integrated. The design for the three sites is looking for the possibility that together with the high street an entire new depth of services is achieved, each of them
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potentially serves the others. The diversity of different things that come together create a great range of amenity and services that people have access to, establishing a new pattern of mobility where people don't just walk from the tube to office on the high street or from home to school but rather start to make use of the series of opportunities for work, culture, hanging out, producing, collaborating and more.
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Co-Existing Identities The proposed design approach is based on the notion of a development process implemented in stages. This approach enables the coexistence of the new projects with the varied already existing identities of Camden. “To the extent that identity is derived from a physical substance, from the historical, from the context, from the real, we somehow cannot
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imagine that anything contemporary- made by us- contribute to it. But the fact that human growth is exponential implies that the past will at some point become too “small” to be inhabited and shared by those alive.” (Koolhaas, R. 1993. ‘The Generic City’, in R. Koolhaas and B. Mau, S,M,L,XL. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1248-1994)
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Associative Neighbourhood Integration through Services
The project is aiming to discuss elements attributing to good living environment and how they come together into a neighborhood as a way of compact living in future uptown, embedded with the possibility that people from different groups are able to engage with each other using services as an interface. We provide a systematic solution as the ground is where the belongings of the property are being distributed into zones and the management issues are sitting on.
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The project envisions a new way of family life enabling stronger bonds, imagining a seamless continuation between school and a well-being centre for children beyond school hours, where mothers and grandparents spend time chatting and sipping on healthy juices in communal gardens as they wait for their children or involve themselves in yoga or other gym activities in the well-being centre. An inclusive livelihood of stronger family bonds and social neighbourhood interactions triggered by the service provider creating a lifestyle that takes advantage of health and medical benefits.
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1. Housing 2. Swimming pool 3. Shops 4. Clinic 5. Audiotorium 6. Park 7. Secondary School 8. Elderly Housing
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There exist advantages in having a fracture in the urban tissue in order to trigger a development guided by wholesome neighbourhoods and a sense of belonging in an area through services that form a link not only in the adjacent parcels but Camden as a whole. To achieve this continuity, it is important to look for the setting of this combination such that the individual quality of each is not compromised yet maintaining the overall autonomy of the integrated diagram. The combination of institutions generates integration across the canal without necessarily having a physical connection, since the railways and canal itself create a fracture leaving it isolated.
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section of the school, the sports center and well-being center
Augmenting the performance of the school when combined with a well-being centre, making it a shared service provider, changes the way they function. Challenges range from delivering varied activities at different times of the day or the development of complimentary functions such as housing around where each potentially serves the other. Sharing these facilitates generates a value that in isolation they might not. Sharing clarifies the rules for spatial organisation as it becomes very convenient for the adjacent elderly living, changes the way students move around the space, privatizes the discourse of activities, and rethinking the management without burdening teaching staff. This is being achieved by extracting shared facilities out like auditorium and sports courts, pulling them in the middle shared by school and leisure centre, projecting them out to the public and residence causing a wholesome neighbourhood enriched with the sense of belonging.
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Sequences and tones within and between buildings are being managed so that the value of the busy road can be transferred into the neighbourhood, pulling people off the road so that they can gain entrances to the open yard inside. Therefore, the primary orientation is not the street, but remains collective, creating a new, safer environment.
the facade for the elderly housing
Edges between buildings circulates to create an environment where the residential buildings are coexisting with the complimentary facilities and enabling us to rethink the location to place a school in terms of its relationship with the road. the facade for the housing
the facade for the well-being center
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view to the park
The School is pushed behind to maintain security taking advantage of the discontinuity caused by railways. Thus, creating a central transparent communal space between the school and well being centre that benifits of the fundamental role of the street.
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Children use the space in the first half of the day when most people are busy at work. During weekends and in the evening when the school is closed such spaces are open for public use optimising the use of services in daily life which also strengthen social ties through productive activities.
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The design challenge was the combination of both programs with different requirements of each without hindering the performance of either or as a whole. The ground becomes an extremely important opportunity to allow a transition that supports a communal life and sense of belongingness. From that perspective, Golden Lane shows an organisation where housing is wrapped by the services in the centre to retain qualities as a whole. Such a value driven synergy based on the balance between various relationships established by the typological experiments provides security for the school while outsiders use the well being centre or transparency between sports creating an atmosphere of a health driven lifestyle or where elderly perceives the whole as a regenerating event at all times of the day. The bookshop project in Japan also displays a diagram of the richness of activities and spatial qualities that are constituted by the crossover of programmes reflecting the idea of the sports facilities in the middle in relationship with both the school and well-being centre generating different kind of qualities throughout the day.
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Rethinking the well-being centre as a service provider and an important element generating a sense of neighbourhood by welcoming variety of users from kids to elderly requires the challenge of conventional designs lacking range of activities gathered in a box without the effort to establish any kind of relationship within itself and within its environment. The sports facility in Golden Lane draws a successful image in terms of blending into the residential living without hindering physical and visual connectivity. Moreover, Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre gathers all range of activities within one body even so creates dialogue with its surrounding with the use of transparency in such places like swimming pool and climbing wall to offer a scenic experience for the observer as well as for the users inside the building.
The school itself poses the arguments of changing ways of learning and managing of student safety through design. Creating spaces that can enable collaborative learning are designed as a continuation of circulatory system. Moreover, to maintain the decorum within such continuities the staff room is positioned to overlook them at all times.
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Urban Intensification Overcoming the Block Dimensions A workplace environment on Camden High Street, on a site that is adjacent to an Underground station, needs to be a complex agglomeration of disparate functions and dimensions. The challenge is to combine the current trends in workspace design to the specific local conditions which bear heavily on the building form. The existing Camden block does not allow for the kind of adaptability and variety of spaces that are required by the new kinds of jobs and work teams which form the basis of the new economy. However, it does offer a reasonable block size which can be reorganised more imaginatively. A single building would thus be called upon to fulfill functions that are currently catered for by several buildings. Alongside it has to accommodate higher densities which will come along a developing station district. However, all this has to be able to generate positive value for development to take place on the site while also contributing to the urbanity surrounding the site in a way that harnesses the energy of a station area that is foreseen to expand considerable over the coming years.
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A workplace environment on Camden High Street, on a site that is adjacent to an Underground station, needs to be a complex agglomeration of disparate functions and dimensions. The challenge is to combine the current trends in workspace design to the specific local conditions which bear heavily on the building form. The existing Camden block does not allow for the kind of adaptability and variety of spaces that are required by the new kinds of jobs and work teams which form the basis of the new economy. However, it does offer a reasonable block size which can be reorganised more imaginatively. A single building would thus be called upon to fulfill functions that are currently catered for by several buildings. Alongside it has to accommodate higher densities which will come along a developing station district. However, all this has to be able to generate positive value for development to take place on the site while also contributing to the urbanity surrounding the site in a way that harnesses the energy of a station area that is foreseen to expand considerable over the coming years.
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Interchange : Co-working Space for London. The deficiency of larger corporations in Camden means the co-working spaces which proliferate the area are inwardly focused in a networking sense.Â
Camden is compromised by a pressure on the street. As soon as we start to densify if we do not change the organisation of the block, we are going to have a disaster on the streets in the form of more congestion. This poses an opportunity to create a more absorptive environment which encourages new lines of movement throughout the area.
Urban Intensification, Overcoming the Block Dimensions
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Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank HQ - Foster + Partners
The Leadenhall Building – Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) / Lina Bo Bardi
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For a long time, cultural buildings have recognised that the start and finish of any event is extremely important and the buildings which they are held in must be able to gather people, direct flow, be a lush space while empty and a dramatic space when full and operational. A great example of this is the Lina Bo Bardi, Sao Paolo Museum of Art. This is the very opposite of how we have see the office building of the past. The office building of the past provides a small lobby and directs you to your office. Now however, the way these two programs are starting to cross over more and more, taking a bit of learning from each of them and incorporating them into one another, its an ongoing experimentation. Foster and Partners HSBC Building in Hong Kong creates relationships on all four sides through a completely open ground floor lobby while the Leadenhall project by Richard Rogers flips the typical logic of the public space in london from the roof to the ground, acting as an absorptive space, the kind of which London is extremely unfamiliar with.
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Camden High Street
Arlington Road
Inverness Street
The Project has the ability to be seen as a collective whole or as three separate workspace buildings intertwined with a cultural space A503 Parkway Second Level
Ground Level Ability to compartmentalise the facade to reduce the scale of the building on the street
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Camden High Street
Arlington Road
Given the complex requirements that have come to bear upon cultural facilities and workspaces, the project starts by questioning the existing block morphology. The size of the typical block along Camden High Street is about 80 X 80, which is considered a workable dimension for several building typologies. Further experimentation in plan and section begins to hint at some of the possibilities of combining the two broad functional categories while generating a stronger link to the city.
Inverness Street
A503 Parkway Variations in workspace organisation to enable a diverse range of tenants and working opportunities
First Level
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There is scope for housing on the western edge of the site, over looking regents park, and withdrawn from the Camden high street. With access to increased amenities and services, its not unfathomable that housing in a more dense environment cannot be of high quality.
Moments within the building, cultural venue program intersect with the workspace to encourage new networks between the two disparate programs on the site.
Transparent circulation wall, providing vertical circulation to separate levels while also creating horizontal pattern of movement between the four separate yet seemingly connected buildings.
Variation between a ground floor rhythm and the ‘slab’ of workspace situated above
the drama of typical cultural venue entrances with the practicality of the Workspace entrance, the lobby brings an absorptivity to the project, opposing that of the typical roof terrace open space London is so used to.
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The ground floor is opened up to the outside but in a controlled manner, such that the existing pedestrian flows are directed through the block rather than around it. The lifting of the cultural facility off the ground floor opens up space on the ground in order to create a ‘lobby’ which is not an entirely programmed space. However it starts to play several roles at the same time. It acts as the lobby for the building complex which is similar to the conventional lobby of any commercial/cultural building albeit larger due to the size of the building it services. Furthermore it begins to absorb some of the urban flows that are generated due to the presence of an expanding Underground station. By easing congestion on the high street it becomes a part of the city fabric. The lobby opens up the block, diverging from the perimeter block logic which is the existing organization on Camden High Street. In this way, the block reorganization also channels flows such that the parallel streets are called upon to play a greater role.
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Typical High street block -Placing pressure on the street and exacerbating the problem of congestion
Compound block - made up of a large number of smaller individual buildings
The new block structures enables new lines of movement through Camden, moving away from the very linear flow along the high street to one which encourages flows through the block and begins to enable a new understanding of how Camden might adapt this model of development in the future.
Bigness Block - Large built elements with large amount of complexity which enable deeper floor plans and a porous block
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Food Ecologies Opportunities within Isolation
1960’s Typical Supermarket
To create viable neighbourhoods for living and working requires provision of well integrated services of which the supermarket is an essential one. A successful transformation of Camden into a central city area needs to take account of the recent trends in retail spaces. The supermarket has been rapidly changing over the past several years which reflects the broader social trends that are being shaped by the information-based economy. As businesses shift to more flexible modes of operation and dwellings diverge from a single-family
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Eataly Bredaquaranta : Milano
model, there are also radical modifications in the way people acquire and consume food. Places such as M&S Food, Planet Organic and countless other stores now depend on a daily supply of fresh and perishable food. This leads us to think of the ways in which supermarkets link up with other agents in the value chain leading all the way to the farm produce, thus becoming part of an integrated food ecology rather than operating as a ‘corner shop’ which they are normally thought to be. Such opportunities present us with critical choices about design of new spaces for living, working and shopping.
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Waitrose Kings Cross : The Cafe and Juice bar are catalysts for an informal organisation to complement the formal aisle arrangement at Waitrose, bringing a potentially larger customer base and a wider array of potentials for the Waitrose brand.
Waitrose King’s Cross, Granary square, London, Bennetts Associates
In terms of the interior, the new ways of operation have translated into considerable changes in the way the supermarket is organized. Design is utilized to create ‘micro-environments’ which are geared towards providing a varied experience of shopping and eating. Within the broader sea of shelves and rows, these micro-environments serve as anchor points which are used for advertisement purpose as well as provide an interface with the customers where diverse interactions take place. For instance, Waitrose has taken cue from people’s behaviour and started to provide more stationary spaces to try new products. These stationary spaces could be Juice Bars, Wine Bars or other such dedicated stations that are more experience and learning driven rather than mere cash counters. In a rather ambitious leap, Waitrose has also begun providing culinary classes to interested visitors. This has broader social implications which can be tapped into while designing living environments.
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Wholesale Warehouse Model Eataly : 5th Venue, New York - Eataly’s mixture of market-style shopping, counter dining, and traditional restaurants is a platform which has been appearing in supermarkets in recent years, making the supermarket more of a destination than a short stay program.
Typical Supermarket Model
‘Little Waitrose’ Express Model
The models above present themselves as rigid organisations focused on linear movements through aisles. Over the years, size has gotten smaller as the supermarket came under pressure to cater to new patterns of movement associated with central city living.
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Section through Housing with supermarket service yard hidden beneath
Collaged Elevation of supermarket micro-environments
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The changes in the way supermarkets have come to be organized provides a chance to harness the energy of the business to create lively environments for recreation, living and working. Large corporations such as Waitrose in the UK and Eataly in the US have come to realize the importance of a more devolved decision making and they do not operate on the logic of the 60s supermarket. A more flexible decision-making framework allows the supermarkets to be more organically linked to the locality where they are situated in which gives them greater resilience and also translates into a more sustainable relationship with the civic sphere. The supermarket thus becomes a more diffuse part of the neighbourhood – it aims to become Camden, as Camden becomes more than just a market.
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Hierarchy within Eataly enabling us to rethink relationships between what we eat and how its prepared
Market type stands decorating the supermarket in such a way to informalize the typical arrangements of product
Lowered shelving providing visual connections across the large space whilst reducing the imposing nature of the typically large shelves
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Camden Town Market: The more informal the organisation and congested the experience, the authenticity of the market experience is heightened.
The existing situation of Camden is understood as an accident of history whereby it has come to play the role of a backyard for the central city where heavy infrastructure and storage was dumped. As a result, any future intervention in the area would have to respond to this specific physical constraint which characterises the area. The Roundhouse, for instance, used to house a rotor which in the early age of railbased transport, would pull trains coming out of central London and has now been converted into a performance space. For this reason, the site chosen for this project is also one that presents such constraints in order to understand the implications of an architecture that accommodates or overcomes these hurdles.
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The Commons, Bangkok - Department of Architecture
Axonometric of site
At the same time, a new vision of urban living in Camden needs to be mindful of the fact that Camden is already associated with a certain idea of retail markets; that which is based on roadside strip markets or stalls arranged informally under a shed. This has been a powerful influence over the entire area of Camden which is now identified as a place to go for cheaper bulk purchases. In terms of experience, the more informal the arrangement, the more ‘authentic’ it is considered. In this situation, the challenge than becomes twofold: to free the identity of Camden from this rigid linkage with informal markets while introducing another concept of retail which is more in line with current patterns.
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F AA
Staggered built form allows for an opening and enclosing of spaces to proliferate the site. Hierarchy to the form of the office building produces deeper and shallower floor plates as the building staggers and hugs a central atrium.
Layered terrace spaces encourage varied relationships with a series of open air spaces and enclosed to cater to year round access.
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Supermarket servicing is located under the housing to the west, so remove dead facade which is easily accessible by foot.
Externally placed circulation cores express an emphasis on an interior urbanity.
The supermarket and its attached terraces bridge the gap between the Housing and Workspace, combining the two to create a 24 hour flow around the site and a fresh way of experiencing food retailing.
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Barbican Centre, mixed use development
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Supermarket Restuarnt Area Multipurpose Area Housing Slabs
Supermarket Plaza Office Space
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The site, which is currently occupied by Morrisons Supermarket, is situated on a plateau lifted around 9 meters above its surroundings and bounded on two sides by heavy railway tracks. While it presents a challenge of connectivity, this site also offers an opportunity to create a self-contained living and working environment along with exploring the latest trends in supermarkets.
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Section through office atrium and supermarket
ANZ Building, Hassel Architects
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ANZ Building, Melbourne
Bringing the various programs in close proximity requires creating transitions and intermediate spaces which come together to weave an integrated experience while providing variety of programs and services.
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Land Area: 6.1 ha Housing units: 2,100 units Workspace: 112,000 sqm Learning Center: 8,000 sqm Public Service - Sports Center: 20,000 sqm Commercial Retail: 6,000 sqm
Land Area: 4.0 ha Housing units Elderly Housing: 130 units Multi-residential Housing: 810 units School: 12,400 sqm Well-being Center: 11,600 sqm Sports Center: 3000 sqm
Uptown Conclusion
Land Area: 0.7 ha Workspace: 18,000 sqm Cultural: 3,000 sqm
Land Area: 5.3 ha Housing Units: 1280 units Workspace: 42,000 sqm Supermarket: 7,000 sqm
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Uptown
This team research by design delivers a series of ideas where by reasoning typologically all of our projects are about creating new patterns of collaboration. Intensity of activities within the blocks start to establish a sense of a stronger synergy and integration, not based simply on the difference between the high street and all of the parallel and crossing streets, but instead they all form a series of variations based on the establishment of new relationships. A highly differentiated grid where each of the elements has their own natural logic, contributing to a larger whole. It’s all done without having an over arching master plan that suggests that we have to pindown the rules, instead, it’s based on the idea that a series of trends would lead Camden to try to assemble the though leaders, the strategic decision makers and investors to look at the possibilities in a series of parcels. Things that in any case offer something new and special to the communities around.
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When considering how Camden is viewed today in the wider context of London, to fewer it is known for its few quiet lovely terrace streets, to most people its known for its youngster entertainment and market scene around the Camden Lock. Our desire is not to replace those existing varied identities, but rather we propose to co-exist with that, it is valuable, but just not enough as it is today, for what Camden ought to be and what it could evolve to be over the next decades. What the ‘new Camden’ offers in terms of the sense of belonging- you don’t have to be on the high street or in the market, it now starts to be for a greater number of people, and especially residents of the area who now find a new way of moving and a rich set of services, and those who live elsewhere within the borough of Camden now have a new center of cultural and educational facilities, new working environment, and more. It is not changing all at once, but rather a transformation over time, through a series of projects integrating into the existing identities.
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We did not start with the idea that things have to predefine the urban spaces and then work with what is leftovers after defining the street. Instead looking at the design constantly from multiple points of view- what is a school, what is a super market, what is a combination of office building with cultural facility. constantly asking the question how does that accommodate more; and in that way demonstrating that the role of the architect shouldn’t simply follow that of the planner in saying down the space types that define cities, instead the architect has to investigate trends, collaborative practices and types, and starting to see what sorts of opportunities begin to emerge. The projects are not an answer, but rather a way of thinking about the questions that avoids many of the prefalls of starting with a predefine stylistic convention, the predefined understanding of what makes a successful urban space.
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