Care-full cities. Proliferation of health and care in the inner periphery of London by Anna Shpuntova

CARE-FULL CITIES Proliferation of health and care in the inner periphery of London

AA School of Architecture Design Workshop. Individual Assignment. Author: Anna Shpuntova Supervisor: Anna Shapiro May 2022

Table of contents 4-6

Introduction

Cluster. Conceptualising the urban and architectural framework for care 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

Home and care. Typological starting points for care environments 7-11 Activating the ground as a spatial strategy 13-14 Extended threshold. Elevation as a tool for working with phenomenal transparency 15-18 Synergies 19 Inner periphery future 19-21

22-25

Vauxhall. Campus organisation for the new version of care environments

Conclusion

Bibliography

Table of figures

Introduction

It seems one can’t avoid the generic comment about how 'everything is changing so rapidly in all spheres of life today’ when talking about the transformation process of our cities. This work is acknowledging the same fact but concentrating on several very specific shifts and their implications in the context of the built environment.

One of the ways to do it is creating opportunities for gaining additional practical experience, education, diversifying career opportunities and offering a wider range of civic services. This leads to new programmatic overlaps between care, research, cultural and educational environments. 1.3 Inner periphery future: The Covid-19 disaster naturally changed a lot in our lifestyles, vocations and habits. Forced to stay within our domestic milieu and our neighbourhoods for very long periods of time, we shifted our work and life patterns and brought new habits into the post-pandemic world. Having blurred the line between the work space and the dwelling, having become more flexible in our everyday routine, we inevitably started looking more actively for new versions of urban domestic life. Another issue the pandemic demonstrated was the imbalance between various parts of our cities in the way they are organised and serviced. In many cities including London the central areas that would usually be associated with busting activity from the early morning till late evening, vibrant business environments and concentration of people, suddenly became ‘dead’ for a long time. On the other hand, areas mostly residential in nature faced an unusual level of activity. But many neighbourhoods were not ready to provide for this change. A question arose: should our residential neighbourhoods be better serviced and provide the same richness and complexity as the central city areas? Is there a potential in redefining the inner periphery areas of our cities?

1.1 Home and care: Today we see major changes in the way health and well-being are being delivered and how they are proliferated in the urban context. In general, the lifespan is increasing and the average retirement age is rising. People who require care or medical assistance, elderly people prefer not to downsize their domestic settings. They are looking for opportunities to receive care within their residential neighbourhoods or at home. In the case of moving to a care facility they are looking for richly serviced domestic settings of assisted living with a wide offer for everyday life choices instead of conventional serialised and isolated care environments. Consequently it raises a request for different levels of care being integrated into residential areas and their characteristics being rethought from the domestic settings point of view. 1.2 Synergies: Another important shift occurs in the knowledge economy. Science, research are conceived as public culture that should be accessible for everyone1. Life-long learning patterns, request for cross-fertilisation of ideas and multidisciplinary approach create a need for new synergies. It puts additional pressure on the health and care providers. They become more interested in building upon the potential and extending the skill and knowledge set of their workers, the medical staff and caregivers.

For example, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behaviour Institute in Manhattanville campus conducts an outreach educational programme on brain science and organises free exhibitions, film screenings,etc. Wellcome Trust in London funded a Science Museum to share the history of medicine with a wider public; launches cultural and educational events and offers premises like library, galleries, reading room for the public. 1

A new version of a cluster is put forward in order to address each of these shifts and offer a revised version of a residential neighbourhood in the Vauxhall inner periphery area in London. It brings the notion of care in the heart of the design development and offers a setting where dwellings and care environments form a diverse field offering a range of care spanning from domestic household to institutional care facility. In general, the cluster requalifies the broken morphology inherited by the site from the postwar era chaotic development. The project offers to think in terms of a campus-like organisation, freeing the ground for pedestrian and service movement, relaxing the dependence on the streets and densifying the centre of the block. [The issues mentioned above are not brought to light by this work for the first time and have been tackled before through design and in research2. However, the objective of this particular work was to address them in its own way, by learning from what is already being done in the field and making the design concepts work harder in a new setting] Search for an architectural and urban framework that could bring the care and wellbeing agenda into our residential neibourhoods.

By the Housing and Urbanism students as well. For example, in the ‘‘Eudaimonia’ and ‘Knowledge industries and the City’ publications. 2

Cluster Conceptualising the urban and architectural framework for care

2.1 Home and care. Typological starting points for care environments.

of the cluster in its heart. It is a ‘middle-ground’ between the care that is provided at the domestic level and the one in a specialised facility; traditionally called a ‘retirement or independent living’. This type of care balances between allowing the residents to lead independent lives and keep their daily routine unchanged and offering them professional assistance and support when needed. What these environments also proliferate are the opportunities for collective experiences as part of the care environment goal of combating loneliness. The interlocking type4 is suggested as one of the effective ways to organise such a combination of spaces. The corridors in such buildings are rethought and can become more than just circulation space: in combination with the ‘interlock’ itself they form another version of a collective space, one for social encounter and shared activities. This typology aims at making the floorplan as compact as possible, at the same time maximising the number of double-aspect dwellings and forming two courtyards of different qualities. Another typological starting point to consider in this case could be a rethought single core tower plan. The living units in such layout are conventionally placed along the perimeter but the corners are freed and given to other programmes: dining halls, places for workshops and artistic events or spaces associated with care delivery like therapy rooms.

Not relying on the street grid as an organising tool anymore, much more pressure is put on the cluster ground to become a mediating and linking device. The system of care in the cluster is delivered in 3 settings, offering different kinds and levels of care. The landscape role is to integrate all of them in a coherent system and to offer different qualities depending on the characteristics of the care environment. The first type of care environment is the one that is incorporated into the residential part of the block located along its eastern edge. From a typological point of view, this part of the block takes something from the linear frontages and enclosed courtyards of the estates that used to occupy the site. However, the floorplate layout is altered to optimise the interior organisation and plan a large percentage of dual-aspect units. It also provides an opportunity to work with a wider range of apartment layouts. The work on ‘Care hub’ developed by my colleague3 explores in detail the potential of a linear block to accommodate different typological applications of household sharing: from multi-generational dwelling and communal living to schemes of sharing between young people and elderly. Such a scheme provides younger generations with lower rent rates, in ‘exchange’ for what they take care of their elderly neighbours. These options demonstrate how systems of care can be incorporated directly into the domestic households and be supported by the residents themselves. This allows those who need support and rare assistance to exchange their homes for specialised institutions much later compared to when they live alone deprived of personal connections. Another level of care is housed in the high-rise part

This research was conducted during Term 2 Design Workshop sessions by Jieyi Lu. The interlocking type and its implications were explored in detail in the ‘Revaulting Pentonville’ M.Arch thesis by Yasmina Aslakhanova.

06 H2O / Hafencity, Spengler Wiescholek The plan typology aiming for the same qualities as the interlock. Can be possibly seen as an alteration of the ‘interlock’ typology, however it achieves less in terms of the apartments layouts efficiency and the landscape formation

15-17 m

multigenerational household layout

07 15-17 m

scheme for elderly supported by younger generation

Study diagrams on the interlock typology

15-17 m

flexible layout for varying programmes

16 m

Steinacker inter-generational residential complex Study diagrams of the single core tower organisational qualities

12 m

linear block application / deepened linear block. Key-worker housing in Eddington by Stanton Williams architects

units are oriented towards the exterior landscape and engage with the wider area, on the other hand they are also oriented towards the heart of the building and have access to the more private gardens inside. In the case of Belle Vue, a square module is used as a basis for the general scheme. It is repeated and connected into a sequence of volumes which are shifted in relation to each other. It is a simple but effective organisation as it reduces the required amount of circulation cores, and works effectively with the question of orientation. It also allows flexibility in terms of the floorplate configuration: the volumes can be shifted in different directions forming all kinds of spaces on the ground floor.

The third type of care provision shares the service yard with the residential part of the cluster on the southern edge. It is related to the highest level of assistance and biggest number of staff: a ‘nursing home’ or ‘assisted living’ facility. This type of setting can fluctuate between needed supervision from partial assistance to 24-hour control and care delivery as well as medical help. What significantly differs in this type of a care facility is that apart from care units for the residents themselves, there have to be provided spaces for medical and care staff as they have to constantly be on the premises. It also requires more consideration in terms of service logistics. A significant part of space is essential for the equipment, medication and appliances storage. Here the project used two projects as a ground for typological explorations: Peter Rosegger nursing home by Dietger Wissounig Architekten in Graz and the Belle Vue senior residence by Morris+ company in London.

The typology proposed in the cluster learns from these projects and elaborates on the modular organisation of the Belle Vue adapting however the interior layout as the case of the nursing home requires more differentiated spaces for residential units, collective environments, storage and service provision and spaces for staff. The designed artefact also adopts what Peter Rosegger project diagram offers in terms of orientation handling opposing needs for containment and exposure.

The nursing home in Graz uses a rather simple but useful diagram. An L-shaped segment constitutes the DNA of the whole organisation. Each segment holds together a strip of care units pushed towards the perimeter, a service area and a collective space located in the middle. Such a diagram provides two opposing needs. On the one hand, the residential

09 Sectional exploration of the cluster ‘thickened’ ground and its relation to the event spaces of the ground floor

Image credit: Sujay Choudhary

10 Study diagram of the elevations spatial system / exploration of the notion of layering

11 Peter Rosegger nursing home / Study diagrams of the organisational principles. Combination of a care unit, shared space and quality landscape unit forms the basic element of the plan

Peter Rosegger nursing home / Inner courtyard

Peter Rosegger nursing home / Shared space

15 12 Belle Vue senior residence / Study diagrams of the plan. Sequence of shifted universal modules connected via the circulation path

Belle Vue senior residence/ Raised terrace, shared landscape space

Belle Vue senior residence/ Inner sunken courtyard

17 Cluster ground floor plan

2.2

Activating the ground as a spatial strategy

Coming back to the role of the landscape as a structuring device, we can see how it works differently with the three types of care environments. The landscape that forms the perimeter of the block is porous enough to support the previously blocked east-west direction of movement and improve the micro mobility inside the block. If we look at the residential setting in the east, we can see how the ground floor starts to manage transitions between exterior spaces with different levels of openness. It creates a gradual shift from the highly permeable market square intended for community events and more collective experience, towards a quieter semi-public residential space to the south of the strip. The transition occurs through a sequence of green enclosed courtyards and corridors of different dimensions. The profiles of the buildings start to play an important role in these sequences. The ‘nudges’ in profiles create overhangs and additional bounded spaces on the ground floor. Each of these spaces becomes more than a landscape element but rather a social

device: one can imagine a diversity of scenarios for which they are fit. From reading a book on one’s own, a family picnic in the fresh air to a big gathering with neighbours. While transitioning towards the nursing home, the ground changes its character and is ‘thickened’ by creating additional levels of lowered courtyards and lifted terraces. The landscape around the nursing home is additionally defined by low partitions. These tools allow the care facility to find the required balance: the ground floor is less porous and offers more intimate quiet spaces for the patients’ time outside but it does not border off the area from the rest of the cluster. The fact that the heart of the block is densified and extended vertically, liberates the ground around it and allows to conceive a completely different version of the landscape. The care environment in the centre ends up being located within a rather contained and protected park setting while still taking advantage of the access to the services and activities provided by the artefacts around it.

Residential units of the cluster. Experimenting with layering in the drawing to reveal the role of the landscape and its relation to the ground floor organisation

18 Exploration of the ground as a structuring device and facilitator of event

Cluster. Assisted living facility

2.3 Extended threshold. Elevation as a tool for working with phenomenal transparency While thickened ground and landscape of different characteristics are useful organisational devices, the cluster also stresses the role of elevations in establishing hierarchies, directionality and transparency.This vocation of the design can be understood by looking into the notion of ‘phenomenal transparency’ proposed by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky . As opposed to literal transparency that suggests an immediate and direct reading of the building planes, the phenomenal one invites to see the lateral planes relationships, their layering, continuity and hierarchy. Rowe and Slutzky took their starting point in the aesthetic mode of reasoning they observed in some of the 20th c. paintings5. It introduced a new type of visual experience that embraced ambiguity and was open for interpretations. When translated into architectural practice, phenomenal transparency is a tool for enabling us to think that any moment in space belongs to more than one spatial system, ‘can be assigned to two or more systems of reference’6 .

not as boundaries but as useful organisational devices that allow to extend the notion of entrance and thicken the threshold between the interior and exterior. Facades become almost freestanding devices that articulate the ambiguity of these two conditions and at the same time allow to move between them seamlessly. In order to explore the notion of phenomenal transparency as an architectural tool, the work used several cases of residential and care environments. The aim was to investigate through drawing the vertical surfaces conditions and the way they translate the notion of a threshold.

In the case of a cluster, such layering is associated with the visual experience of moving through space and is supported both at the level of the morphological organisation and at the scale of the elevations thresholds. Instead of simply facing the street, each artefact establishes frontality according to its needs and priorities. Consequently, new networking opportunities are created in the depth of the block as things are drawn in relation to each other. The cluster suggests to treat the elevations

In their essay Rowe and Slutzky introduce the differences between 2 notions of transparency by comparing ‘The Clarinet Player’ by Picasso and ‘The Portuguese’ by Braque. 6 Colin Rowe, Robert Slutzky, Transparency (Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1997): 61.

21 Photographer’s house / 6a architects

Photographer’s house / 6a architects

Residential care home Andritz / Dietger Wissounig Architekten

Villa Savoye / Le Corbusier

26-27 Implications of the phenomenal transparency notion in the cluster design.

2.4

Synergies

The cluster brings together a research centre specialising in biomedical work, care facilities and key-workers housing. This combination allows to improve the process of research, education and practice for medical workers, caregivers and researchers. The staff gets a chance to get additional education or conduct research in close proximity to their future (or current) place of work. They can gain hands-on professional experience at a care facility while still receiving their undergraduate education and then continue building their career as employers at the same place. The science workers on the other hand can receive the information and field data from the first hands and in a short period of time. In addition to that, the research centre might become one of the main anchors in terms of civic value generation for the cluster. We can learn from the trends mentioned earlier and imagine a facility that opens its doors to the wider public and engages not only with trained professionals, but also attracts local residents as well as visitors from wider urban areas to participate in public programmes, educational workshops, conferences, etc. In addition, two pavilion centres occupy prominent corners of the cluster: cultural and learning hubs. Their position and programme allow us to see them as potential first steps in the neighbourhood regeneration. Placing them in accessible locations and bringing a new civic offer to the area would kick-start the implementation of the cluster concept.

Today, when looking for a type of building organisation that could handle complexity of various synergies and stakeholders collaborations, one of the common answers is a large-scale flexible container that is anticipatory in nature7. It allows to create short-term interiors that are future-proof in their ability to easily transform over time. The proposed cluster suggests an alternative way of operating within buildings like the cultural, educational or research centres. It offers creating relatively small spaces that reject the notion of vertical ‘stack’. These spaces can still handle complexity by valuing double-height spaces and creating alterations in section, aligning with the principles of the ‘tree organisation’ rather than with the ‘domino’ scheme. 2.5

Inner periphery future:

In his essay Rem Koolhas puts forward the concept of a ‘Generic city’ as a tool for liberating from the straitjacket of identity. For him our constant obsession with character rooted in history and context, insistence on the importance of the central city are a dead end, resisting city expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction8. He does, nevertheless, name a city that is an exception among those imprisoned in their identity – London. ‘London – its only identity, a lack of clear identity – is perpetually becoming even less London, more open, less static’9. London is truly a phenomenal city, a laboratory of urban conditions. However, perhaps we haven’t been paying enough attention to some of them, maybe we should indeed shift our attention from the exhausted city centre10 towards peripheral settings. The London Vauxhall area where the

For example: Here East UCL campus, Med City Campus in Whitechapel, London. Rem Koolhas, “The Generic city”, in B. Mau and OMA. S,M,L,XL (New York: The Monicelli Press, 1995): 1248-1264. 9 Ibid, 1248. 10 For the city centre it is getting harder and harder to deal with the growing population pressures, construction limitations due to the high density of the built and an overlay of requests from different stakeholders. 7

28-29 Exploration of the cluster scenery and spaces through speculative drawing

proposed cluster is located, can serve as an example of such an inner periphery area that has been abandoned for a long time but can now be seen as an exciting ground for exploration and change. As mentioned earlier, the last few years showed us that there is a need to rethink the issue of service provision in these kinds of urban settings. There are multiple reasons for that including changed work-life patterns, emergence of new collective formations and requalification of urban domesticity, questions of innovation in housing11. The notion of the dwelling, of housing in general becomes very important. As Dogma put it: ‘By virtue of their life in common, the household becomes a clearly discernible social-economic unit whose role in the organisation of the city is fundamental’12. In other words, the complex of the domestic realm is something that is closely affiliated with other domains of the city, and should be reconceived as an urban project that incorporates services related to fields like culture, education and care. In the case of the wellbeing realm, housing can become a subject to insinuation preparing for lifelong needs including those of care and health provision if we treat it as a liberal environment that is constituted around sophisticated understanding of everyday life and the way people relate to each other within a group.

The reasons behind the changing patterns of urban domesticity and examples of new types of collective formations were researched by the author in the ‘Home-platform for change’ essay [Housing and Urbanism, Domesticty course]. 12 Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara, Living and working (Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2022):10. 11

Vauxhall campus organisation for the new version of care environments

The character and qualities of the Vauxhall area themselves indicate why it is a ground of great potential for the future redevelopment. An area with an industrial past, Vauxhall had been forgotten by developers for a long time due to the lack of proper connections to the North of London. Now it is a residential neighbourhood that is well-linked to the central areas, with an extremely mixed housing offer: from social housing estates, opportunistic refurbishment projects and Georgian and Victorian vernacular fabric to high density high-rise developments that flooded the riverbank area. The concentration of height and capital along the river boosts the land value. In addition to that, Vauxhall has large and ambitious developments like Battersea Power station growing at its doorstep which puts even more pressure on the housing development and need for densification. From a morphological point of view, the fabric of the area is rather broken and lacks legibility. It results in a diverse set of block geometries and sizes that can be found in the area: from ‘distorted’ sites that have to negotiate between the curve of the river and the line of the railway and fairly regularly shaped blocks. The blocks are shaped by service roads and dead-ends rather than functional streets, the area is missing an effective multidirectional mobility system. However, despite all these qualities Vauxhall is an area that handles differences and still manages to sustain active and intense environments within its blocks13. The way to proceed is to find a certain logic behind the fragmentation and incoherence and start building

on the possibilities it offers. For the cluster design proposition, this logic can be found in the landscape assets and block structure of the area. If we look at the Vauxhall landscape characteristics, we can notice that a series of parks, courtyards, and public gardens starts to form an interconnected system that flows through the blocks. If we consider this network of highly differentiated landscape pieces together with the large dimensions of the blocks we find in Vauxhall, we can see an opportunity for these sites to be rethought in terms of the campus organisation supported by radical change in typological offer. Traditionally, the campus organisations are associated with knowledge environments, university realms that would be rather contained. However, things are changing14 and there are campus characteristics that can be useful not only for university premises. Here the notion of a campus should be defined more clearly as it is understood and implemented in this particular work. The campus is not relying on the streets as an organisational tool and is mainly accessible for pedestrians, bikes, service vehicles, but not the cars. As we already noted, streets in Vauxhall and specifically the ones framing the site in question are already underperforming and do not deliver any important urban function. Moreover, currently the potential of the landscape that is present is not being used fully. The potential of a campus is in articulating the relationships between the artefacts that constitute its built part and the landscape that becomes

13 Vauxhall already has an interesting offer of cultural venues, small local galleries like Newport Street Gallery, Cabinet Gallery. It also sustains rather active and popular venues like the Black Prince sport Community Hub, or the Vauxhall City Farm. 14

Campus organisation is used to organise the residential neighbourhoods like Mehr als Wohnen or Eddington proj-

ect for key-workers in Cambridge. However, these examples are still located in the peripheral areas.

30 Vauxhall landscape network connecting blocks with potential for campus-based redevelopment

31 Vauxhall diverse typological offer: predominance of the linear type in different variations, acumulative types and concemtration of density and height along the river.

a hard-working part and much more than just a natural element, a ground. It aligns with what Colin Rowe was arguing for: a balance and dialogue between the space and the objects, ‘a solid-void dialectic which might allow for the joint existence of the overly planned and the genuinely unplanned, of the set piece and the accident, of the public and the private, of the state and the individual’15. Establishing these relationships, campus offers a layered system that can accommodate complexity. And it is crucial when we are looking to house crossovers between stakeholders, settings and genres. Such crossovers mean that every ‘ingredient’ is entering the scheme with its own services, specialisms and requests. While care environments need a certain degree of privacy and security, a research and educational institute has to be ready to accommodate a high footfall, offering additional spaces for collective experiences both inside and outside. By virtue of its size and flexibility, campus is exactly a framework that can allow all these environments to come together, negotiate their needs and identity and form an administrative network. Exactly how we are looking for a balance between proliferation of a liberal subject’s freedoms and its relations with a wider collective, within a campus we want each component to stay independent but still offer and use services beyond its border.

Combination of the existing block stucture with the landscape assets as a starting point for the design.

Fred Koetter, Colin Rowe, The Crisis of the Object: The Predicament of Texture (Perspecta, vol. 16, 1980): 109–141.

Conclusion

Let’s accept the metaphor of the architects’ job being similar to the one performed by a surgeon or a doctor16. One has to become diagnostic of the condition he or she is facing and find a proper solution bearing in mind the experience that the field had already acquired and the possible external influencing factors. It is exactly in this manner how the design proposition of the cluster was put forward. The project rethinks the role care and wellbeing are playing in our cities today and the way they are proliferated in the built environment taking into account the shifts that happen in our perception of a dwelling, domesticity in general, education and service provision. It argues for opportunity of reviving a broken urban condition by introducing a new care domain, approaching it from a new morpohological starting point rooted in the existing urban condition. It contributes to the argument about new emerging crossovers and need for reconceptualising housing as an urban project via other domains. The proposition learns from the precedents found in the architectural practice and rethinks them in order to initiate change across multiple scales: from the dwelling to a wider urban whole. From the point of view of identity, the proposition is aiming at helping Vauxhall to acquire a new identity through a new vocation of a Care-full city.

This argument has been extensively used by Anna Shapiro within the Design Workshop Term 1 and 2 process.

Bibliography

Allen, Stan. “Infrastructural Urbanism”. In Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press (1999), p. 40-89. Allen, Stan. “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D”. In Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival, edited by Hashim Sarkis, 118-127. Munich London New York: Prestel Verlag, 2001. Aureli, Pier Vittorio, Martino Tattara. Living and working. Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2022. Christiaanse, Kees, Kerstin Hoeger. Campus and the city: urban design for the knowledge society. Zurich : Gta Verlag, 2007. Dahir, James. The Neighbourhood Unit Plan, its spread and acceptance. New York: Russel sage Foundation. 1947. Koetter, Fred, Colin Rowe. The Crisis of the Object: The Predicament of Texture. Perspecta, vol. 16, 1980, pp. 109–141. Koolhaas, Rem. “The Generic city”. In B. Mau and OMA. S,M,L,XL. New York: The Monicelli Press (1995), p. 1248-1264. Panerai, Philippe. Urban forms : the death and life of the urban block. Oxford : Architectural Press, 2004. Rowe, Colin, Robert Slutzky. Transparency. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1997. Ungers, Oswald Mathias. The dialectic city. Milano : Skira, c1997. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and contradiction in architecture. London : Architectural Press, 1977.

Table of Figures

Drawing by the author

02-04

Jieyi Lu, ‘Care hub’

13-14 ten

https://www.archdaily.com/565058/peter-rosegger-nursing-home-dietger-wissounig-architek-

15-16 https://www.archdaily.com/922550/belle-vue-senior-residence-morris-plus-company/5d4a471b284dd12fd700047a-belle-vue-senior-residence-morris-plus-company-photo 17-32

Drawings by the author

AA School of Architecture May 2022

Care-full cities. Proliferation of health and care in the inner periphery of London

Articles inside

Vauxhall. Campus organisation for the new version of care environments 22-25

Table of figures 28