Design Anthology UG14
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 Skopje 2024: AuthentiCity
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2023 Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2022 The Memory of Work
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2021 Remember to Forget
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2020 Repeat, Recall, Rewrite
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2024
Skopje 2024: AuthentiCity
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
Skopje 2024: AuthentiCity
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
UG14 continued its studies into how societies remember and forget through the built environment. This year we studied what we can learn when architecture has been exploited for the purposes of identity politics, becoming a propaganda tool to force new values on an unknowing public.
‘Skopje 2014’ was a project enacted by the then-ruling North Macedonian government, which transformed the country’s capital through the construction of new buildings, monuments and statues in neoclassical and baroque styles. The government’s ambition was to create a new national identity by rewriting history and claiming ancient figures like Alexander the Great for itself. It looked to its distant past – a time before anyone living today could remember, utilising collective amnesia to skip over its recent history.
We visited the city to experience the aftermath of the project and understand how divisive it has been for the community. Within architectural circles, Skopje 2014 may appear as a distasteful and insensitive project to create a kitsch postmodern fantasy. As designers, we are encouraged to find authenticity in our work by allowing natural and cultural forces to shape our buildings. However, the new identity introduced to the capital’s centre has arguably helped produce an upturn in tourism for North Macedonia.
As we live in an era of ‘fake news’ and AI-produced visualisations, questions of authenticity are now a reality of our day-to-day lives. This year we considered how our attitudes to the ‘truth’ can vary depending on the framing in which it is presented to us, and used this understanding to create a more democratic and genuine architecture. In designing our buildings, we aimed to allow its users and observers to construct new understandings and knowledge from the stories we tell.
On the tenth anniversary of the project, and with monuments already beginning to crumble, we looked to reuse and adapt the existing structures of Skopje 2014 to imagine evocative and innovative futures for the city and nation. As the boundaries between what is ‘real’ and ‘not real’ becomes increasingly blurred, we aimed to find space for both, to tell new untold truths in a knowingly fantastical world.
Year 2
Yury Balabin, Yuan (Becky) Bian, Oscar Brice, Tahiyah Karim, Gigi Lane
Year 3
Maria Bystronska, Lok Hang Chiu, Shu Yi (Sarah) Chuwa, Rosa CrossleyFurse, Kai Jackson, Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung, Nadiya Khan, Allyah Mitra Nandy, Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng
Technical tutors and consultants: Loukis Menelaou, Danielle Purkiss, Josef Stöger
Critics: Stephen Gage, Damian Iliev, Kevin Kelly, Christopher Lees, Benjamin Lucraft, Carlota Nuñez-Barranco Vallejo, Farlie Reynolds
14.1, 14.4 Allyah Mitra Nandy, Y3 ‘The Faculty of Macedonian Folklore’. Bridging the faculties of History and Literature at the St Cyril and Methodius University, the project addresses North Macedonia’s complex historical identity by presenting folklore as an alternative, authentic strand of history. Recreating moments of the fairytale forest in spatial fragments, the design restores an innate and long-lost connection between the writer and nature. Informed by the rich tradition of mythical birds in Macedonian folktales, the design also considers birds as users of the building.
14.2–14.3 Jingwen (Michaelia) Zheng, Y3 ‘Skopje 2034’. This project is a court and archive for the Skopje 2014 statues that encourages citizens to participate in deciding the destiny of the monuments of disputed Macedonian figures. The building catalyses the revitalisation of Skopje’s public spaces by repurposing these statues into architectural components and playground furniture. Children’s activities within the landscaped playground feed back into the bronzecasting process, creating a circular approach that enhances the public’s sense of ownership and pride in the built environment.
14.5–14.7 Rosa Crossley-Furse, Y3 ‘Phoenix’s Courthouse’. On a retrofitted fake ship, the trial of the government of Nikola Gruevski, former prime minister of Macedonia, continues. Luring the fugitive back under the guise of national forgiveness, Phoenix’s Courthouse offers ex-leaders a false comfort as their Skopje 2014 architectural creations are reflected back at them. The monumental trial swings the scales of democracy back into balance, as court proceedings now lie in public hands.
14.8 Maria Bystronska, Y3 ‘Algal Retreat’. North Macedonia is considered the most polluted country in Europe. Located in the biggest park in Skopje, this project addresses the pressing environmental and health problems in the city by integrating algae into the architecture of a green sanctuary where residents can enjoy breathing crystal-clean air.
14.9 Hye Kyo (Helen) Joung, Y3 ‘Speak Your Pattern of Skopje’. The building repurposes an abandoned folk clothing factory into an oral history archive with a textile workshop. Here, folktales and personal stories are shared and transformed into tapestry patterns, rebuilding the lost link between generations and preserving the authenticity of Skopje within the collective framework of the Macedonian community.
14.10 Lok Hang Chiu, Y3 ‘Accession or Hell’. The project explores an architecture that would violently decay within Skopje’s formal brutalist language, subverting expectations and introducing new perspectives. A North Macedonian EU Accession campaign centre is constructed with a designated lifespan of 10 years. Once obsolete, the ruins of the headquarters are designed to be repurposed by an expanded film school to further promote the nation’s modern identity.
14.11 Kai Jackson, Y3 ‘Polystyrene Densification Centre’. The building critiques the approach of the Skopje 2014 polystyrene façades by exploring the theme of authenticity through the lens of lost potential. Utilising the immense mass of marble to transform lightweight polystyrene into a stone-like material, the project underscores the irony of Skopje 2014’s decision to use cheap veneers instead of the locally abundant marble. This absurdly intensive process questions the logic of using one material to mimic another that would have been better suited for the original purpose.
14.12 Oscar Brice, Y2 ‘The Blue Sky Initiative’. The project imagines a future where an ‘airpocalypse’ has resulted in a humanitarian emergency in Skopje’s heavily polluted environment. In a bid to shift the city’s trajectory towards
sustainability, a clean air sanctuary is designed in the abandoned Central Post Office, alongside a new bicycle network and hub. This city-wide initiative becomes an act of protest, proposing methods through which the residents of Skopje can travel, educate and ultimately live sustainably.
14.13 Yuan (Becky) Bian, Y2 ‘Rehabilitation Treska’. As part of North Macedonia’s efforts to join the EU, the project constructs a rehabilitative facility for non-violent female inmates as a pioneering model of improved prison infrastructure. The prison focuses on reintegration into society by providing education and woodcrafting skills. Given the constantly changing prison population, the modular timber frame structure allows for future adaptations, addressing the evolving functions of the facility.
14.14 Tahiyah Karim, Y2 ‘Pagoda Lakewood Studios’. Examining the perceived authenticity in the architecture of the Pagoda in Victoria Park, London, the project explores issues of orientalism, the strategy of positive cultural exchange and the integration of communities within a creative environment. The workshop teaches woodworking traditions that may have been forgotten and implements them into new designs for the local multi-ethnic community.
14.15 Gigi Lane, Y2 ‘Imitation Skopje’. The project builds upon the existing structure of Skopje’s Old Railway Station, which was substantially destroyed by the 1963 earthquake and stands as a testimony to the city’s history. Imitation Skopje is a dementia care home for the elderly and a youth workshop, both benefiting mutually from a memory theatre. As a component of reminiscence therapy, the theatre presents daily plays using sets of Skopje’s historical architecture to trigger further memories for the patients.
14.16–14.17 Yury Balabin, Y2 ‘Institute of Preservation of Fragmented Brutalism’. The project envisions a future where Skopje’s Brutalist heritage is at risk of being lost, and proposes to physically preserve it in a new museum. The institute occupies the currently abandoned parts of the iconic Central Post Office, designed by Janko Konstantinov. A newly created structure, perched upon the bank of the Vardar River, acts as a space for the processing, remaking and documentation of architectural fragments.
14.18 Nadiya Khan, Y3 ‘Fit Fortune’. Targeting compulsive behaviour associated with gambling in Skopje, the programme rehabilitates users by replacing negative behaviours with healthier, long-term habits. Central to this is a commitment to progression and recovery, harnessing the power of gamification to reward positive behaviour. The integration of rock climbing and halotherapy creates an immersive fitness journey that forges a deep connection between the body and the mind.
14.19–14.20 Shu Yi (Sarah) Chuwa, Y3 ‘The Skin School’. The project is a college focusing on arts education where students are taught to embrace a new and alternative identity for Skopje. Inspired by the layers of mould growing over the Skopje 2014 polystyrene architecture, the building is an inhabitable skin combining mycelium and ceramics, constructed over the existing 2014 structures. The students are taught to craft artworks and ‘edit’ monuments using these materials to reveal an identity of the city true to their generation.
14.5
14.6
2023
Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
UG14 continued its studies into how societies remember and forget through the built environment. This year we focused on nostalgia –a particular manifestation of social memory which contributes to the collective identity. Nostalgia is comforting. In times of crisis, its psychological benefits for people’s wellbeing are undeniable; they act as a stabilising force in times of transition, uncertainty and change. But nostalgia is also dangerous. Throughout the world, we have witnessed how it has become a political tool to spread misinformation. It is the seed for powerful ideologies, a yearning for a different idealised time that only really exists in people’s imaginations.
The contradiction between two forms of nostalgia – the reflective and the restorative – formed the basis of this year’s investigations, in which we considered the benefits and dangers to the individual and collective psyche. UG14 explored how nostalgia can be utilised positively for the adaptive reuse of buildings while still being representative and relevant to a modern social identity.
We visited Serbia and explored Novi Beograd, a planned socialist city built with utopian ideals under communist rule in the latter half of the 20th century. On the trip, we experienced the cultural phenomenon of ‘Yugo-nostalgia’ – a longing for an era of unity and multiculturalism before the dissolution of the Yugoslav states. We toured the brutalist architecture built upon these principles – cultural establishments that radiated this yearning for the past – and the many spomeniks that memorialise events of World War II. We learned how this architecture fitted within the contemporary context of this polarised country and challenged ourselves to reimagine existing spaces as stages to newly-found events.
Today, in a world where economic factors require the changing of attitudes on a global scale and architecture is increasingly created in a vacuum through the selective synthesis of past data, we emphasise the importance of context and poetry in design, over the reproduction of a version of the ‘truth’. UG14 analyses what is left of the past, to decide how individual memories can fit within a wider societal framework for the future.
Year 2
Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Ibrahim Charafi, Kiran Gosal, Vladut Iacob, Laura Maczik, Jio Ryu, An Vu
Year 3
Ayisha Belgore, Zhun Lyn Chang, Phoebe Hampson, Katie Kamara, Jinyi (Athena) Li, Po (Tate) Yin Mok, Barbara (Basia) Nohr, Skylar Smith, Cosmin Ticus
Technical tutors and consultants: Loukis Menelaou, Danielle Purkiss, Josef Stoeger
Critics: Helen Floate, Stephen Gage, Kevin Kelly, Benjamin Lucraft, Carlota Nuñez-Barranco Vallejo
14.1 Jinyi (Athena) Li, Y3 ‘Living in the Moment’. Theatre typologies and philosophies are replicated at a retirement centre programme in Blok 28, Novi Beograd, to create a carefully evolving ‘set’ to cater for the residents’ needs. The project proposes to use hidden set designers to produce lightweight and mouldable wall panels on site out of paper-based materials to stimulate the residents’ experience within the building. It speculates on whether an adaptable architecture could aid in prolonging life.
14.2 Po (Tate) Mok, Y3 ‘Focus’. Inspired by traditional matte paintings in film production that create efficient and cost-effective solutions to constructing a scene, the project proposes a film school in Novi Beograd, adjacent to an existing drama school. The designs focus on applying concepts of image downsampling to architectural construction, as well as techniques of anamorphic illusions to curate a series of scenes that are revealed as users move through the building.
14.3–14.4 Barbara (Basia) Nohr, Y3 ‘Ederlezi:
A Bathhouse for the Unsettled’. The project proposes retrofitting an abandoned public bathhouse located in the Dorćol neighbourhood, to create a cultural hub for the Roma community living in squatter settlements across the city. The programme develops in three parts: sanitation provision through the baths; a workshop to convert waste materials into building components that could be reintegrated into the settlements; and a marketplace that transforms into a festival site dedicated to the celebration of Roma culture.
14.5 Kiran Gosal, Y2 ‘Lozionica Jazz Hub’. The building is a jazz performance space and set design workshops for choreographed performances, sited in an abandoned train depot in Old Belgrade. The original turntable becomes the area from which audiences can enjoy a dynamic choreographed series of performances, while the building is inhabited by the signature rhythms of Studentski Micky Jazz – Serbia’s first jazz band.
14.6 Laura Maczik, Y2 ‘Playground for Blok 63’. The project reacts to the architecture of the blokovi – a relentless landscape of Brutalist concrete high-rise housing in Novi Beograd – by creating a playground, nursery and café nestled at low level between the blocks. The building is placed atop an abandoned car park roof, creating a space where children can run around safely while pushing the boundaries of their physical abilities.
14.7 Ibrahim Charafi, Y2 ‘The Water Chamber’. The building project is a debate chamber and bathhouse underneath a bridge across the River Sava, where EU and local politicians can meet to discuss Serbia’s future with the EU under the watch of the constituents they serve. Bathing acts as a cleansing ritual to prepare for an honest environment within the debate chamber.
14.8 Alexandra (Sasha) Audas, Y2 ‘Slušaj ‘Vamo (Listen Here)’. The punk-inspired youth music and cultural centre is a performing and practice space, with a procedural design based on the famous Serbian anti-war song ‘Slušaj ‘Vamo’ by Rimtutituki. The space revitalises the abandoned buildings underneath Branko’s Bridge, which connects Old and New Belgrade, and celebrates the temporal nature of music and culture.
14.9, 14.17 Phoebe Hampson, Y3 ‘Synthesising Earth’. Paul Pignon, a lynchpin of Belgrade’s electronic music scene in the 1980s, returns to the city to spread his experimental and liberal ethos to help people relieve their Yugo-nostalgia through unconventional musicmaking methods and underground events in an abandoned warehouse. The materiality of the architecture applies synthesiser ideology to the principles and techniques of rammed earth construction and sorting aggregates to create spaces with varying acoustic properties.
14.10 Katie Kamara, Y3 ‘Weaving Patterns’. The project is situated within the ruins of the old National Library of Serbia, which was bombed during the Second World War. It was a targeted attack on Serbian culture which destroyed important historical literature. As a reaction to the library’s demise, the project proposes an archive and workshop space for Pirot carpets, a traditional Serbian textile craft of woven motifs and stories. The architecture explores fire as a constructive application and translates the methodology of woven Pirot patterns into timber construction.
14.11 Zhun Lyn Chang, Y3 ‘An Alternative Chinese Embassy’. The project is sited within the ‘Chinatown’ market in Blok 70, Belgrade, which was destroyed by a fire in 2021. Mirroring the transitional status of the market and the migrants who work there, the proposed programme is a hostel and ceramic workshop to draw in visitors and facilitate cultural exchange. By incorporating both recycled plastic and handcrafted ceramics as materials in the building, the design facilitates dialogue between cultures and improves the image of China that the market currently portrays.
14.12–14.13 Cosmin Ticus, Y3 ‘Museum of the Revolution’. The site is a fragile reminiscence of an ambitious Yugoslavian 1940s project, left abandoned due to decades of financing and legislature change. The project draws attention to the local Romani people by celebrating their culture and addressing the censorship that they have historically faced. It takes a technical interest in the adaptive reuse of built heritage, creating three different lines of inquiry that investigate questions of authorised heritage discourse and preservation.
14.14 Skylar Smith, Y3 ‘Neo Borba Printing Press’. The building is primarily designed as a printing press and archive for the publication of Borba –a revived socialist newspaper that encourages the intergenerational exchange of knowledge in modern-day Serbia. Cycles of news are reflected alongside natural weathering rhythms, as the building is designed to slowly erode into ruins over the lifetime of a generation. Popular stories become catalysts for the automated creation of memorials, producing future representations of collective memory defined by the people, not by the state.
14.15 Vladut Iacob, Y2 ‘Amateur Film School’. The project utilises an existing abandoned structure located underneath Branko’s Bridge to create a space for budding filmmakers, actors and the public to congregate. Different user groups are directed to enter and move through the building separately before meeting in curated spaces designed to shoot recurring film scenes, inspired by the golden age of the Yugoslav film industry.
14.16 Jio Ryu, Y2 ‘Serbian Fruit Archive’. This project creates a national archive that represents Serbia through its national drink, Rakija. As an alternative archive of the country’s regional diversity, the materials and form of the buildings take inspiration from geographical maps and the vernacular architecture found in the countryside, to achieve the slow pace and peace that Belgrade is longing for.
2022
The Memory of Work
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
The Memory of Work
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
This year UG14 continued its studies into how societies remember and forget through collective rituals, commemorative monuments and the built environment. This year we focused on post-industrial UK to consider how places rich in heritage and social identity reframe their futures while continuing to celebrate their past.
For the past half-century information technology has transformed lives in the UK and encouraged economic growth. The country has witnessed a seismic shift from an economy reliant on manufacturing to one dominated by the service sector, leading to the decline of the industrial heartlands and a desperate need for adaptation. As the government reflects on a need to rebalance the economy following the pandemic and considers options to increase investment in manufacturing, UG14 examined how these post-industrial communities are moulded to forget, but still able to remember.
We visited The Potteries in the West Midlands, one of the most important historical industrial sites in the world. The geology and infrastructure of the area led it to become a flourishing global industry – a seam of clay and coal supplied the raw materials required to create ceramics, while canals provided an effective means of transportation. We marvelled at the ornate Victorian architecture and were dismayed to learn how it was being disregarded by the local council. We visited active and former factories and redundant collieries. We questioned the validity of these buildings and challenged ourselves to reimagine the abandoned spaces as stages to newly found events. In so doing we sought to design a layered architecture that sculpts new histories and identities.
We took part in a ceramics workshop to learn some of the techniques passed down through generations and communicate ideas to people – the creativity, skill and haptic knowledge that forms the collective memory of work. All human-made objects embody the processes that created them, representing a moment in time, both for the artist and for society. In an era when LiDAR scanning and 3D printing are digitally incorporated into architectural design, UG14 is simultaneously interested in the intentional and unintentional clues and messages we leave through our hands, for others to discover.
Year 2
Ibrahim Charafi, Maria Hussiani, Chin (Shirley) Lam, Giulia Mombello Perez, Chisom Odoemene, Zeynep Okur, Charize Orio, William Tindall
Year 3
Chantelle Chong, Dylan Duffy, Jack Kinsman, Ling (Stefanie) Leung, Xavier Simpson, Libby Sturgeon, Hau (Charmaine) Tang
Technical tutor and consultant: Danielle Purkiss
Critics: Sarah Firth, Stefana Gradinariu, Mads Hulsroy-Peterson, Kevin Kelly, Eleanor Lakin, Benjamin Mehigan
14.1, 14.16–14.18 Dylan Duffy, Y3 ‘Where the Giants Walked’. The project inserts itself into the now unused Chatterley Whitfield Colliery in Stoke-on-Trent. The programme responds to the need for funding to maintain the historic site by creating a giant puppet workshop which holds a bi-yearly event to attract vendors and visitors. The workshop houses a series of specialist designers and ateliers manufacturing elements of the giant around a central construction table to form a reconfigurable building. The project investigates methods of efficiency and recycling in the construction of giant marionette puppets and buildings by utilising methods of material transformation and designing for the disassembly of different components at varying scales of construction.
14.2 Xavier Simpson, Y3 ‘Exploring Terroir’. Sited at the heart of Stoke-on-Trent’s ‘mother town’, the project reinhabits Burslem’s disused indoor marketplace. In order to shed light on the abandoned but not forgotten site, the programme proposes a community kitchen and garden with a central focus on the Staffordshire dish, ‘lobby’ –a stew traditionally eaten by poorly paid potters. The project also explores the potential of reusing the waste materials produced by cooking lobby to generate a new materiality that is unique to Burslem and its community.
14.3–14.4 Chantelle Chong, Y3 ‘At First, There Lay a Swamp’. The project explores a community space and wellness destination that provides tranquil yet surreal peat baths to visitors of the derelict Chatterley Whitfield Colliery. The bathhouse initiates a political discussion on the mining industry’s difficult relationship with public health and subverts ideas of dirt and preconceptions of coal, retelling its narrative as the product of fossilised plants being subjected to millions of years of heat and pressure, eventually leading to their decay.
14.5–14.6 Hau (Charmaine) Tang , Y3 ‘Non-Fungible Architecture’. In response to Stoke-on-Trent’s history and declining economy, the project researches trends in community currency, cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The project proposes a minting facility to produce an alternative clay currency and house a pottery workshop for six artisans to collaborate on unique ceramic artworks to be sold as NFTs. The programme celebrates the uniqueness and imperfection of ceramic handcraft through architecture, questioning the dialectics of financial and craft value. 14.7–14.9 Jack Kinsman, Y3 ‘The Community of Brass’. In the abandoned Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, the project uses the local mineshafts as a supply for geothermal water, combining programmes of a traditional brass band music space with a geothermal energy plant. The building design is formulated through a mixture of ceramic and laser-etched steel to control airflow and heat circulation through the space. As the building’s temperature increases, its bimetallic panel system causes the contortion and transformation of the generated sounds in the performance spaces. while alluding to the local historic steelwork culture of the potteries.
14.10 Chisom Odoemene, Y2 ‘Tintinnabulum’. The building programme is a handmade-bell and saggar factory and residency, which will revive Stoke-on-Trent’s past by supporting its near-extinct handmade ceramics culture. Traditional apprenticeships will be reinstated, as the craftspeople live, work and learn from each other until they graduate. This revival will be celebrated by the chiming of handmade bone china bells, swinging from a carillon. The bell tower will act as a timekeeper for the different processes and rituals taking place in the building and beyond.
14.11, 14.14 Ling (Stefanie) Leung, Y3 ‘The Earth Beneath My Feet’. Once known as the ‘Mother of Potteries’, the town of Burslem has deteriorated into a ghost town
marked by derelict bottle kilns. The project proposes a community centre including a ceramics studio and anagama kiln. In addition, a farm sustains the production of flour for the manufacture of the town’s iconic delicacy, oatcakes, made in a communal kitchen. This project proposes an alternative approach to traditional clay-based construction methods by integrating ‘cooking’ and ‘building’ to promote sustainable construction knowledge in the wider community.
14.12 William Tindall, Y2 ‘Reiterating the Potter’s Wheel’. A former pottery in Burslem is demolished and its parts used to construct the proposed building, imprinting the memories of the past onto the new. The building programme is a repair shop and gallery for the personal items of those heralding from Stoke. These objects will be repaired and curated into biannual exhibitions, telling the hidden story of those whose lives were drastically impacted by the decline in manufacturing in the region.
14.13, 14.15 Libby Sturgeon, Y3 ‘The Potter’s Senate’. Despite the 1910 federation of Stoke-on-Trent that combined six towns into a single borough, one of the long-standing problems of the city is its ‘six-town mentality’ and internal rivalries. The proposal is to introduce a local parliament building that has performance at the heart of its design methodology –translating stories of the six towns into performance and subsequently into architecture. By capturing these stories in the building, ritual and tradition become firmly implanted in the parliament and rekindle a sense of collective identity.
2021
Remember to Forget
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
Remember to Forget
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
Last year, UG14 studied how societies remember through architecture and rituals. This year, we looked at how we forget or, more specifically, the tension between collective memory and social amnesia.
Modern society is built on the prevalence of change, making forgetting a key characteristic of contemporary life. The political economy encourages us to live our lives at a progressively greater speed, accessing and producing immeasurable quantities of data. We are urged to feed into a consumerist culture, which is increasingly industrialised and globalised. In tandem, the world today has been designed as a topography of forgetting. The size and extent of our cities make them immemorable to the human brain, while the speed at which we repeatedly construct and destruct our built environment has eroded the foundations on which we build and share our memories.
2020 brought a halt to these proceedings. Despite the collective efforts of governments, the non-stop processes of 21st-century capitalism have been stagnated by Covid-19, presenting us all with a moment to withdraw and reflect. Unsurprisingly, this has provided an opening for the restoration of our communities, as well as for political expression and an unprecedented level of introspection. Statues have been toppled and new ones erected and cancel culture has left controversial public figures and companies isolated. Collectively we are asking ourselves whether the things we are told to remember are what we should remember. This leads to a fork in the road: After the pandemic, do we return to the way we were or change our practices? What do we really want to remember and forget as a society? If we rip down our statues, should we also demolish our buildings that no longer fit our new histories? And how does this tally with our need for sustainable development?
UG14 always considers architecture in four dimensions: buildings only exist when they are experienced and this can only occur through the axis of time. We believe in a design process with a focus on how people perceive, interact with and remember space – the connection between body, imagination and memory. To complement these studies in temporal architecture, we participated in a series of online workshops, run by film and theatre professionals, exploring ideas and techniques in immersive storytelling to arouse an emotional response.
Year 2
Praew Anivat, Thomas Bloomfield, Marten Hall, Eugene Kulakova, Natnicha (Amy) Ng, Chisom Odoemene, Alexander (Sasha) Pozen, Orm Sivapiromrat
Year 3
Ben Dewhurst, Brendan Du, Yushen (Harry) Jia, Anatasiia Stoliarova, Sharon Tam, Tianpei Wang, Oscar Wood, Leyun (Kitty) Zhu
Technical tutors and consultants: George Adamopoulos, Danielle Purkiss
Thanks to our workshop leaders: Loukis Menelaou, Henrik Pihlveus, Daniel Sonabend, Josef Stöger, Punchdrunk Enrichment
Critics: Stephen Gage, Stefana Gradinariu, Kevin Kelly, Eleanor Lakin, Benjamin Lucraft, Benjamin Mehigan
14.1, 14.3–14.4 Yushen (Harry) Jia, Y3 ‘Urban Resurrection’. The project explores our relationship to death and memorial through an alternative approach to body decomposition: the transformation of human flesh into fertiliser. The resulting soil is subsequently cast into a façade, which dissolves over ten years. As the façade weathers into a communal landscape, the commemoration transitions from the specific individual tribute to an ambiguous terrain of mass remembrance.
14.2 Marten Hall, Y2 ‘Requiem for a Futurist’. The project offers an alternative history for The Hill Garden and Pergola in Hampstead, London, envisioning a series of three occupants over the 50 years since its original abandonment. The invented narratives result in a proposition for a building in the present day that serves as a tapestry of imagined uses and moments; each able to be re-read and re-told through the physical proposal.
14.5 Anastasiia Stoliarova, Y3 ‘Donskoy Cemetery’. Sited in the old Donskoy Cemetery, Moscow, the project brings back erased memories of the past and connects them with new rituals of the future. A new crematorium and columbarium delicately thread between the old graves. The building uses concrete in forms that are usually found in steel, functioning as a form of visual play on the precast constructions commonly found in neighbouring Soviet-era buildings.
14.6 Orm Sivapiromrat, Y2 ‘Rice Capsule’. There is a saying in Thailand that ‘rice is the backbone of our country’. The building programme is a rice museum and restaurant, designed as a place where people of different communities can come together regardless of their background. The site – originally the British Embassy in central Bangkok – is a heritage home nestled amongst skyscrapers and luxury shopping malls.
14.7 Praew Anivat, Y2 ‘Reimagining Kemthong Nursery’. Kemthong nursery in Thailand was abandoned eight years ago, however, the land is designated by the government for educational purposes only. Thailand’s education system is known for its conservativeness, with teachers having full control over their pupil’s activities. The reimagined nursery envisions an alternative school environment that embraces the risk of frequent flooding.
14.8 Brendan Du, Y2 ‘London Wall Workshop Museum’. In the City of London, the urban fabric has been constructed around remnants of the London Wall. Some of these fragments lie preserved but forgotten. The project investigates how providing functionality to the London Wall can facilitate community engagement and lead to a future of better maintenance and protection. The building is a conservation centre and gallery.
14.9 Alexander (Sasha) Pozen, Y2 ‘Contingency Centre’. The project is located in South East Spain, in an area where challenges of sustainability and changing social values are threatening communities. A community centre uses data to find trends and predict the evolving needs of the local community. It reappropriates four holiday homes, formerly left uncompleted following the global financial crisis of 2008.
14.10 Natnicha (Amy) Ng, Y2 ‘The Gateway to Bangkok’. Sited at the old Customs House in Bangkok – a significant example of architecture in Thai history – the project explores Thailand’s cultural heritage through the management of indigenous plants. Throughout the design of the building, the story of Nang Phom Hom (The Fragrant-Haired Lady) is told and acts as an allegory for the delicacy and beauty of Thai handmade crafts.
14.11 Eugene Kulakova, Y2 ‘Eating Order’. Medical treatment for eating disorders can involve behavioural and cognitive therapy. The project provides a facility for an emerging method of treatment: rehearsed eating in varying levels of privacy. The architecture creates a range of spaces with varying levels of privacy and
enclosure. The design employs experimental calcite materials that challenge preconceived aesthetic expectations for treatment spaces.
14.12 Tianpei Wang, Y3 ‘The Crystal Palace Gin Farm’. Inspired by the design of the Wardian case – an early type of terrarium – the gin distillery represents and explores global food cultures. Gin derives flavour from botanical ingredients; some of these are native only to specific regions. The appearance, smell and taste of the plants cultivated, and the subsequent gins produced by the distillery, become representative of their geological origin and regional culture.
14.13–14.14 Ben Dewhurst, Y3 ‘Lichen are Queer Things’. Restoring the abandoned Abney Park Chapel in Stoke Newington, London, the project is a proposal for a Queer bathhouse, comprised of lichen, mud, algae and fungi to create a natural space that challenges notions of Queer bodies as unnatural. Lichen, as an example of biological symbiosis, offers ways of thinking about sexuality beyond a heteronormative framework. Blurring the boundaries between buildings, bodies and organisms, the project challenges preconceptions about architectural categorisation.
14.15–14.17 Sharon Tam, Y3 ‘Silo D’. A derelict grain silo in the post-industrial district of Silvertown, Newham, is turned into a brewery and is host of an annual festival. The brewery acts as a community hub that helps to counter some of the negative effects of gentrification, e.g. the displacement of long-term residents through rising rents, and celebrates the area’s industrial heritage, which is in danger of being forgotten.
2020
Repeat, Recall, Rewrite David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
Repeat, Recall, Rewrite
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
In UG14, we always consider architecture in four dimensions. Buildings only exist when they are experienced, and this can only occur through the axis of time. We believe in a design process with a focus on how people perceive, interact with and remember space – the connection between body, imagination and memory. This ‘temporal architecture’ can be described through the reading of drawings and models frozen in time, but is better experienced through films and animations, interactive models and installations. These modes of representation allow us to test out our theories and provide a method of storytelling that arouse emotional responses.
To complement these practices, we design our architecture as holistic ‘stages’ and ‘sets’: structures which can facilitate different experiences over extended lifetimes. This not only creates buildings of varying permanence and longevity, but also makes sense as a model of sustainable design. Buildings are able to exist for decades and centuries, hosting a plethora of relatively temporary events through minor modifications.
This year UG14 considered how societies remember. Shared memories are not only those that have been recorded in writing and images. They are the habits and traditions that are performed by people, which, knowingly or not, are reproduced to evoke an understanding of a narrative. When a society really wants to remember something as a community, it commits these stories into commemorative ceremonies. We began the year by identifying rituals that we observe around us, which remind communities in London of their past.
For our trip, we visited Georgia and explored the abandoned spa town of Tskaltubo. In its heyday, four trains would arrive daily from Moscow bringing thousands of visitors to its baths and sanatoriums. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the demise of the town, and the Abkhaz-Georgia conflict prompted the town to assume a new history, with its empty hotels and sanatoriums becoming makeshift homes for up to 10,000 internally displaced people. Today, the town lies mainly derelict: Tskaltubo is part museum, part amusement park, and part functioning town. It remains a fascinating reminder of the rituals of the past.
The building project questions what role these existing buildings in Tskaltubo can have for the communities that live and visit there. The abandoned spaces are reimagined as homes (stages) to newfound or rediscovered traditional rituals and events (sets), in order to design a layered architecture that offers new histories and identities. As designers, sometimes we need to decide what to remember, and what to forget.
Year 2
Finlay Aitken, Ivy Aris, Ye Ha Kim, Harris Mawardi, Rebecca Radu, Fergal Voorsanger-Brill, Prim Vudhichamnong, Xiaotan (Alex) Yang
Year 3
Nicholas Collee, Paul Kohlhaussen, Oscar Leung, Aaliyah McKoy, Loukis Menelaou, Jennifer Oguguo, Zaneta Ojczyk, Evan O’Sullivan, Josef Stoger
Thanks to our consultants George Adamapoulos, Alexis Germanos, Danielle Purkiss
Thank you to our critics Abigail Ashton, Sarah Firth, Stephen Gage, Kevin Kelly
14.1, 14.4 Paul Kohlhaussen, Y3 ‘Earthen Vinification’. Inspired by traditional Georgian feasting (supra) rituals, the project proposes a winery in an abandoned sanatorium, which hosts an annual programme of collective production of wine and ceramics. The building is structured to accommodate three key celebratory rituals, representing toasts dictated by the tamada (toastmaster) and the merikife (wine-runner).
14.2–14.3 Loukis Menelaou, Y3 ‘(Re-)Constructing Iosseliani’s Sonic World’. The project proposes a film residency which focuses on foley sound design. Architectural elements are redesigned as instruments whose form and scale are not only informed by orthodox spatial requirements but also by their sonic qualities and ability to recreate sounds from local film director Otar Iosseliani’s sound palette.
14.5 Evan O’Sullivan, Y3 ‘Psychosis Rehabilitation Centre’. The project aims to synthesise the evolving cognitive research on the relationship between the built environment and mental wellness. The building is designed through manipulating spatial qualities to favour the needs and desires of patients, thereby creating an opportunity for alternative treatment therapies that could alleviate the need for pharmaceutical intervention.
14.6 Josef Stoger, Y3 ‘P’arazit’i’. Inspired by the parasitic fungus Cordyceps, the Tskaltubo Cyber-balance Centre grows out from an abandoned Soviet-era bathhouse. Its mission: to protect the Georgian state from the threat of Russian cyber-attack. Designed as an individual organism, the funicular roof structure is packed with a myceliuminoculated substrate, which eats through and binds the building into a single monolith.
14.7 Fergal Voorsanger-Brill, Y2 ‘Tskaltubo Regeneration Station’. The programme is a portable construction school that teaches sustainable self-build skills through practical projects, and aims to teach students that construction can be as personal as drawing or painting in the design process. The brief discusses temporary and permanent material languages, as it is installed at each sanatorium for two years, but leaves behind repairs that will last for many more.
14.8 Rebecca Radu, Y2 ‘Indigo Dyeing Manufacture ’. The project provides employment for the local internally displaced population and aims to uphold the Georgian custom of decorating traditional supras with indigodyed tablecloths. The design is inspired by the the draping of these cloths and is elaborated with dynamic mechanical elements, which are adaptable to the external environment.
14.9 Ivy Aris, Y2 ‘Medea’s Herbal Apothecary’. The project honours the ancient ritual of herbal medicine, a practice rooted in Georgian culture. The apothecary celebrates the fertile land of the region and commemorates the country’s healing heritage. The proposal pays homage to traditional religious rituals and explores how placebo effects can be enhanced through architecture.
14.10 Finlay Aitken, Y2 ‘Skate Hostel’. Informed by the documentary ‘When Earth Seems to be Light,’ the skate hostel aims to relocate the youth culture of Georgia from Tbilisi to the abandoned Soviet spa town of Tskaltubo. The building plays with the relationship between old and new as it carves skate-able architecture into the fabric of the existing sanatorium.
14.11 Prim Vudhichamnong, Y2 ‘Art Restoration Laboratory’. The project proposes a conservation centre to reinstate the underappreciated art and identity of Georgia, along with the redevelopment of the adjoining semi-derelict Sanatorium Imereti as a gallery for their exhibition. The centre’s design is informed by the concept of layered transparency and controlled lighting to create interconnected but regulated restoration spaces.
14.12 Oscar Leung, Y3 ‘The Curious Parasite’. This project is a hostel for urban explorers who romanticise and broadcast the decaying sanatoriums of Tskaltubo. The programme utilises controlled weathering by combining new building spaces which accelerate the disintegration of the architecture they are entwined with. It explores the parasitic relationship between ruin and the tourist industry, and the concept that imperfect structures can have greater value than faultless preservation.
14.13–14.14 Nicholas Collee, Y3 ‘Carving a New Language’. This project fragments a Soviet-era bathhouse in order to demonstrate an active ownership of Georgia’s tumultuous past, and form a new cultural arts space. The design cuts away and replaces parts of the crumbling ruin with new elements which are stylistically informed by both the country’s traditional calligraphy and architectural ornamentation, as well as its contemporary art scene.
14.15 Zaneta Ojczyk, Y3 ‘Medea Teahouse’. There is a parallel between the decline of Tskaltubo and the Georgian tea industry; both collapsing with the downfall of the Soviet Union. Situated in the derelict Sanatorium Medea, this proposal functions as an educational visitor centre and aims to revive the forgotten local tea industry by devising a new tea ritual as a means to reinvent Georgia’s post-Soviet identity.
14.16–14.17 Aaliyah McKoy, Y3 ‘Khridoli Shadow Spa’. This programme is a theatrical sports and spa complex, focusing on the traditional Georgian martial art of Khridoli. Inspired by the Roman bathing ritual which incorporated entertainment as well as healing, it develops an architecture that explores the dynamic relationship between performers and viewers.
14.18 Jennifer Oguguo, Y3 ‘Food For Thought’. This project explores the history and politics of tangerine production in Georgia. The building programme is a seed bank and spa focusing on deploying tangerine-based analogies within a pre-existing Soviet architecture. Set ten years into the future, the importance of preservation in agriculture is presented through seeds, the human body and the building’s ruins.
14.19 Harris Mawardi, Y2 ‘Tskaltubo Performing Arts Centre’. The project provides an opportunity to celebrate the history of arts and culture within Tskaltubo. Sited in an abandoned bathhouse that is overgrown by surrounding parkland, the theatre’s porosity aims to blur the boundaries of stage and nature as well as the threshold between its auditorium and public spaces.
14.20, 14.22 Xiaotan (Alex) Yang, Y2 ‘Palace of Sakartvelo’. The ambition of the project is to revitalise an abandoned hotel complex into a multifunctional community and transportational hub, in partnership with an educational timber processing factory for displaced people to utilise the resources of the adjacent forests. Elements of traditional Georgian architecture and steam-bending techniques are central to the building’s design.
14.21 Ye Ha Kim, Y2 ‘Therapeutic Infrastructure’. The site is located adjacent to Lake Tsivi, which is heavily polluted with copper sulphate sludge materials. The project explores how waste materials extracted from the water treatment process can be incorporated into the design of a holiday retreat. The design proposes a water-cleaning landscape, where elements of the process are analogous to the detoxification organs within the human body.
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