Design Anthology UG9
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 Land
Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
2023 Festival
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
2022 Among the Trees
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2021 Tales from the Boundaries
Chee-Kit Lai, Douglas Miller
2020 Follow the Water
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2019 Superlatives
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2018 Met[a]ropolia 2046
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2017 The Ephemeral City
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2016 Lux::Umbra
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2015 Skilled Contrivance in the Age of Technological Abundance
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
2014 Performance
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2013 Brief City São Paulo – London
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2012 Blinding Light, Spectacle at the Edge of London/Beijing
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2011 Adhocracy
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2010 In from the Cold
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2009 Alter Ego
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
2008 Interface
Jason King, Gabby Shawcross
2024
Land
Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
Land
Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
Land is carved, compressed, sold and exploited – and the scar tissue is always visible. As a great shared medium throughout architecture, land is nebulous in scale and influence. It is essential to consider architecture as part of a landscape manipulated by politics, ownership and climate so that in a time of environmental crisis and socioeconomic upheaval, we can speculate practically about the future.
This year UG9 considered land as a medium to design architecture. The year began in Thamesmead with a series of experimental installations and research projects, establishing numerous dialogues between the cast concrete architectures and its softly fluctuating landscape condition. Our net was cast wide –playing with a choreographed interplay of shadows, stripping back and reconfiguring filmic representations of the town, and creating architectural narratives around the local effects of the climate crisis and ongoing protests.
Seeking to better understand the extremes of land, water and architecture, our field trip took us to the Netherlands. Here we explored its experimental buildings and famously mechanised landscape. We saw how mechanisation in the landscape, often an easy shorthand for control and exploitation, is undergoing a revolution. The Dutch defences are being tactically softened, while a greater focus is now being placed on ecological diversity, social engagement and long-term development of landscape stability. Eventually centred around Rotterdam, the sites for the year were varied, engaging in numerous ways with the intersection of ecology and technology. From the engineered docklands and dams to the soft flooding forests, we ventured to ask: how can we, as architects, engage with the future of our local landscapes?
Year 2
Alastair Ang, Marisa Lau, Irina Pirvu, Tina Xian
Year 3
Mason Cameron, Andrew Fan, Kiran Gosal, Aocheng Huang, Libby Ko, Lihui (Lily) Lin, Roland Paczolay, Besim Smakiq, Yaowen Zhang
Technical tutors and consultants: Alexander Fox, Donald Shillingburg
Critics: Richard Aina, Vitika Agarwal, Laura Allen, Bamidele Awoyemi, Ivan Chan, Jin Chan, Nat Chard, Robert Donnelly, Ben Foulkes, Alexander Fox, Will Jefferies, Karolina Kielb, Andre Sampaio Kong, Constance Lau, Isac Leung, Oliver Parkinson, Lynn Qian, James Robinson, Guang Yu Ren, Dougal Sadler, Isaac Simpson, Narinder Sagoo, Sayan Skandarajah, Ben Spong, Greg Storrar, Manijeh Verghese, Jane Wong
Special thanks to Amin Taha (Groupwork), Andre Sampaio Kong (Heatherwick Studio), Arthur Wong (OMA)
Sponsors: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd
9.1, 9.22–9.25 Yaowen Zhang, Y3 ‘Land, Building and Dwelling’. This project develops and tests experimental construction methodologies for housing in the context of Martin Heidegger’s concept of learning to ‘dwell’. Sited in Rotterdam, the project begins with detailed analyses of the local marine clay deposits and proposes innovative modular construction techniques using these local materials. On a local scale, the scheme develops continuous interaction between building, land and resident. Ultimately, traditional ‘linear’ models of construction are replaced by a series of circular processes that feed into a masterplan comprising factory, landscape and housing units.
9.2–9.4 Lihui (Lily) Lin, Y3 ‘The Ship Spolia Performance Art Theatre’. Situated in Delfshaven, Rotterdam, this communal theatre involves the retrofitting of the shipyard and dock along the Nieuwe Maas River. The project proposes the concept of ‘metal spolia’, which develops a continuous cycle of dismantling and assembling metals that once operated as ship components and now serve as building structures on site. Simultaneously, the building acts as a testing ground for the phenomena of metal deterioration, fatigue and rusting, embracing construction techniques that extend the material lifespan.
9.5–9.6 Aocheng Huang, Y3 ‘Ecoblade Haven’. As wind turbines undergo much-needed maintenance at the end of their designed lifespan, the recycling and reuse of turbine blades in the Netherlands is a growing concern with huge potential. This project proposes a self-constructing wind turbine blade structure that develops specialised joints and automated construction techniques, while also providing space for material research. The building and its construction processes showcase wind turbine blades as a valuable building resource and emphasise research-driven design to shape Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven urban landscape.
9.7–9.9 Libby Ko, Y3 ‘The Water Experience Centre’. Embedded on the riverbank in Rotterdam, this centre blends into the city’s distinctive hardscape. Its curved form and sunken profile soften the urban landscape, creating a natural integration with the surrounding environment. Water takes centre stage, domesticated and made visible through the design, transforming public perception by revealing hidden infrastructure and various water conditions through a series of time-regulated water clock courtyards.
9.10 Irina Pirvu, Y2 ‘Restore, Repair and Recharge’. This community forest centre is hidden within Stormpolder Forest, a landscape that floods twice a day. Constructed from timber grown in the forest itself, the building educates local communities on the forest’s ecology while teaching them valuable building techniques. Offering a nest within the deeper parts of Stormpolder, the centre creates an unusual atmosphere, aligning with and restoring nature rather than harming it.
9.11 Alastair Ang, Y2 ‘The Rijnhaven Glass Crucible’. This glass-making migrant integration centre is located on the reclaimed urban beach of Rijnhaven, Rotterdam. Arrayed around a central glass furnace, the reclaimed beach site provides sand for the community-run glass workshop. The building encourages the establishment of rituals by the migrant communities, allowing them to shape the building themselves. The centre is a nexus where migrant and native cultures come together to create a new future and common destiny.
9.12 Marisa Lau, Y2 ‘Merwe-Vierhaven Recycling Arts Centre’. This project is a hoarding hub based in Rotterdam, collecting waste from art exhibitions and festivals and transforming it into new artistic creations. The building’s carefully designed studio spaces provide room for the community to create, collaborate and learn. The recycling centre is designed to constantly adapt to
the life of Rotterdam, reacting to the environmental crisis and serving as a living example of sustainability and creativity in action.
9.13–9.14 Tina Xian, Y2 ‘Rijnhaven Water Performance Centre’. Located in Rijnhaven, Rotterdam, the proposed building serves as both a water research station and a community centre, focusing on innovative filtration systems, improvement of water quality and the use of sustainable building materials. The architecture engages the senses with water and is anchored in the constant tidal fluctuation, providing a rhythm for the water performance central to the structure and its occupants.
9.15 Andrew Fan, Y3 ‘Analogia in Sienne’. This communal stop motion film centre thrives on the collaboration of artists and the community, engaging them in the stop motion process from pre- to post-production. Drawing inspiration from the meticulously composed scenes in De Hooch’s and Vermeer’s paintings of domestic life, strategic lighting and framed views are tactically designed throughout the building. These spatial systems guide the visitors’ attention to film-making activities through focused perspectives between the boundaries of public and private.
9.16 Besim Smakiq, Y3 ‘Butts Canal Algae Apparatus’. Sited in Thamesmead’s canal system, the project creates a passive device that collects algae by harnessing wind power to float across the waterways. The collected algae is used as biofertiliser for an adjacent allotment, reducing the dependence on carbon-intensive processes used to create fertiliser through the Haber–Bosch process. The device acts as an interface between the wind, the land and the water, allowing the three to interact with one another, giving life to the soil and protecting life in the water.
9.17 Roland Paczolay, Y3 ‘Fleerakker’s Arc’. Speculating on a future in which the Netherlands is flooded by rising sea levels, this project tackles the unfavourable farming conditions of flooded land by harnessing the primary cause of plant growth inhibition: salt. Accumulated as a byproduct of water and soil desalination, this resource is implemented in the permanent and temporary construction of the building, livestock farming and leisure activities.
9.18–9.20 Kiran Gosal, Y3 ‘Submerging Soundscapes’. Sited in Rotterdam within the Stormpolder Forest, which floods twice daily, this project develops a bioacoustics research centre and frequency archive. Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology, ecology and acoustics. By manipulating and changing the frequencies on site, the building tackles Rotterdam’s port noise pollution problems. Architectural bioacoustic design is used to induce an acoustic gradient through the building, affecting the human user experience, vegetation and animals on site.
9.21 Mason Cameron, Y3 ‘Vierhaven’s Play Laboratory for Bodily Recalibration’. Playing on the heteronormative barriers of the Netherlands’ red light districts, this laboratory explores the architecture of the skin as a sexual organ. It seeks new and transgressive ways of testing LGBTQ+ landscapes through humanised spaces that require the body to mimic its material surroundings. With latex forming the basis of an architectural language for the body and building, categories of queer pleasure provide a role play between bondage and queer anarchism.
9.7
9.8
9.10
9.18
9.19
9.20
2023
Festival Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
Festival
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai, Doug John Miller
The festival has been a part of human life since antiquity. Reflecting the social and economic changes in our world, festivals consolidate social groups of all sizes from small (the family unit) to large (tribes and towns). They provide a temporal microcosm from which our relationships – between ourselves and with the spaces we inhabit – become distilled, intensified and amplified.
Recognising the intangible cultural heritage, practices, representations, knowledge and skills, as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated herewith, this year UG9 considered the festival as a transgressor of everyday routine. It is a departure from the ordinary that allows for requestioning of one’s individual and collective values.
In term one UG9 explored the festival theme through the design of an intervention on the site of the historic Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens; in doing so they considered the age of commercialised leisure and dedicated entertainment spaces and venues. Following the unit’s field trip to Berlin in term two, the festival theme was reconsidered alongside the German city which has cultivated individual expression yet also maintained a collective contribution to culture and society. Our architecture navigates the complex spatial conditions of the city and the opportunities that these relationships bring.
Drawing upon the unit’s continuing interest in ecology and technology, our architectural proposals address concerns around the climate crisis, urban development, culture and legacy through inventiveness and creativity, and by providing an active stimulus for the imagination.
Year 2
Nathan Cartwright, Wentong (Iris) Feng, Adam Klestil, Sean Ow, Kai Pentecost, Andrew Seah
Year 3
Myles Green, Ina-Stefana Ioan, Sze Chun Liu, Peter Moore, Roland Paczolay, Julia Rzaca, Yingqi (Izzy) Shen, Annika Siamwalla, Ilinca-Maria Stanescu, Mateusz Zwijacz
Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Budd, Thomas Parker, Donald Shillingburg
Critics: Vitika Agarwal, Richard Aina, Bamidele Awoyemi, Alex Borrell, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Nat Chard, John Cruwys, Alex Fox, Maria Fulford, Grey Grierson, Tamsin Hanke, Will Jeffries, Kyriakos Katsaros, Andre Sampaio Kong, Constance Lau, Stephan Lengen, Anna Liu, Jörg Majer, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Doug John Miller, Giles Nartey, Elliot Nash, Thomas Parker, James Robinson, Narinder Sagoo, Ellie Sampson, Gurmeet Sian, Ben Spong, Tom Ushakov, Manijeh Verghese
Special thanks to Tonkin Liu Architects
Sponsor: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd
9.1, 9.23–9.26 Yingqi (Izzy) Shen, Y3 ‘The Supernatural’. The proposal questions the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, and asks to what extent a building can be ‘supernatural’. It uses Tegel, Berlin, as a testbed to explore innovative timber construction methods with the assistance of augmented reality technology. The data collected by the project will be fed into the 2050 Tegel Airport vision to create a sustainable transport hub for Berlin’s future.
9.2, 9.7 Adam Klestil, Y2 ‘Kreuzberg Fusion’. The project is a proposal for a compact nuclear fusion power plant within the urban context of Berlin. It speculates on the advancements in plasma physics research and the return of nuclear power as a base -load energy source for Germany.
9.3 Ina-Stefana Ioan, Y3 ‘Visualising Landscape(s) 2023–2423’. The project explores old visual crafts through new AI technologies, merging them into an art and research centre on a small island in north-west Berlin. A machine learning methodology is developed by collecting visual data about the site from the past and allowing AI to make predictions about what it may look like in the future. The future site predictions allow the building to adapt by relying on self-sustaining building technologies.
9.4 Mateusz Zwijacz, Y3 ‘The New Omelas’. Situated in Tempelhof, at the intersection of Berlin’s three greatest utopian projects, is a proposal for a heterotopian town that challenges the notion of space ownership. It instead suggests that the right to space can only be expressed through occupation. As time passes, the town, constructed with straw bale, gradually decomposes and enriches the former airport’s brown site, creating the groundwork for a future post-human era and site rebirth.
9.5 Myles Green, Y3 ‘The Sonic Motorcycle Centre’. Situated in the central district of Mitte, Berlin, the project brings together bikers and observers to engage in a celebration of the intense sounds of the motorcycle. The building proposes a new mode of motorcycle performance. Through the acoustic design of the motorcycle track that weaves its way through the structure, different sonic environments are activated by the rider for specific performative requirements. As the motorcycle travels through the building, the sonic environments respond to the bike and perform their own song.
9.6 Kai Pentecost, Y2 ‘The Loophole Cemetery’. The proposal provides a legal loophole, allowing ashes to be scattered back into German nature via a connection to the River Spree which runs through Berlin. 9.8–9.9 Sean Ow, Y2 ‘The Cloud Agenda’. Nestled on the eastern riverbank of Plänterwald, a forest in south-east Berlin, the Cloud Agenda offers a solution to the city’s water shortage crisis. Conceptualised as a performative ecosystem, the research centre is an architectural testbed for urban cloud seeding operations, merging ecological principles of the biotic pump with marvels of hygroscopic cloud-seeding technology to conceive an architecture that actively restores the climate and in turn constructs its own microclimate.
9.10 Roland Paczolay, Y3 ‘Reminiscing a Sensory Dreamworld’. The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens are brought back to life through dance accompanied by a caustic refraction light show. The illuminations invite participants to follow the lead of organic projections in the nostalgic steps of a Viennese Waltz.
9.11 Julia Rzaca, Y3 ‘Vogue: A Masquerade Armour’. Set in the past, the device creates a masquerade outfit for a character that would provide personal protection. In the present day, the project investigates facial recognition systems. The project considers the loss of
control over our own privacy and examines where, when and how we are captured and how our data is processed.
9.12 Andrew Seah, Y2 ‘The Hammam of Secular Non-Duality’. The proposed bathhouse hyperbolises and subverts the spatial syntax of gender stereotypes in traditional Turkish spaces. Sited in Kreuzberg, Berlin, and embedded in its landscape, the building is a field of relationships between plural circulations. Moments of intersection and the confluence of entwined paths provide avenues for interactions within an interconnected whole, responding to the German-Turk diasporic community’s growing desire for more inclusive spaces within traditional heterotopias.
9.13, 9.16 Annika Siamwalla, Y3 ‘Techno [re]Barn’. The project creates immersive dancefloors in an abandoned barn situated to the south of Berlin’s airport, blurring the boundaries between music, architecture and art. Techno music transforms the space, distorting perception and reconnecting people and places.
9.14 Wentong (Iris) Feng, Y2 ‘The Intertwined’. A culturally infused community centre in Berlin addresses the refugee crisis by fostering the integration of isolated refugees into the local community. Located in the heart of Berlin, it confronts trauma by establishing a multicultural haven that celebrates diversity and promotes healing and reconciliation among different ethnicities. It serves as a unifying space where cultures can converge, forge connections and mutually enrich one another through shared experiences and learning opportunities.
9.15 Peter Moore, Y3 ‘A Special Place to Bond’. The project, sited in Vauxhall, London, is a shrine that can facilitate an unprecedented festival of bodies that will rejuvenate a tired old garden. It is a symbol and it is symbolic. It is – and is a symbol of – the ultimate hug.
9.17 Nathan Cartwright, Y2 ‘A Post-Orgy Playground’. Decompression emerges within Berlin’s counterculture as an opportunity to challenge the tenets of capitalism, offering a primal landscape for recalibration within the club scene. By bridging hedonism and post-consumption ideologies, this project explores the concept of a post-capitalist comedown while immersing individuals in a progressively natural and sensory-specific environment, suggesting new socio-spatial typologies in a speculative era beyond consumption.
9.18–9.20 Sze Chun Liu, Y3 ‘The Social Impetus’. Sport has long been acknowledged as an effective bonding medium between individuals. As people of contemporary societies become increasingly segregated, so does its relevance. Sited in Tempelhof, Berlin, the project speculates on the role architecture plays in encouraging social interactions between users. Rather than optimising athletic performances, this multi-sports centre focuses on maximising participation as a stepping stone to potential friendship.
9.21–9.22 Ilinca-Maria Stanescu, Y3 ‘The R43 Mesocosm’. Set in 2035, the proposed project is an ecological DNA research centre and manufacturing facility for robotic bees. While the spaces and programme aim to facilitate the manufacturing and testing of this new technology, the actual building façades, columns and structures will allow and encourage, through strategic design, the inhabitation of live bees, arguing for the importance of nature preservation and denying the ubiquity of the digital.
9.14
9.15
9.16
2022
Among the Trees
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
Among the Trees
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
Concerns about our natural environment are not an exclusively contemporary issue. The impact of humans on the climate has been known and understood since antiquity. Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle and the ‘father of botany’, speculated that land became warmer when the clearing of forests exposed them to sunlight. The increasing degradation of our natural world and the effects of climate change have brought about a new urgency to an old, frequently ignored imbalance – how can we support nature alongside humankind?
This year UG9 considered the forest in its many forms, assessing both its practical and poetic elements as well their cultural and social influences. The unit explored the forest as storyteller and spectacle, as well as the potential future of the forest. It also considered the different physical and temporal scales of forests, from the local (Flimwell Park) to the national (Northern Forest project) and international (The Great Northern Forest).
Our field trip this year took us on a road trip through the proposed Northern Forest, travelling coast-to-coast via Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull. In addition to students researching the local context and selecting building sites, we visited historic and contemporary architecture, explored forest trails in the Peak District, took nature walks in the Kilnsea Wetlands and investigated the tidal island of Spurn Point.
Students developed their own architectural proposals, addressing issues around the climate crisis, landscape, ecologies, community, protest and legacy. Our final building proposals are sited in and around the Northern Forest. Here they address highly contextual issues concerning local histories, economies, energy production, cultural regeneration and landscape restoration.
Throughout the year we reviewed and discussed our work with a diverse group of guest critics, including those from outside of the architectural profession. We continue the unit’s ambition to push the limits of architectural representation.
Year 2
Sara Abbod, Zhun Lyn Chang, Yongjun Choi, Rebecca Criste, Shiwei Lai, Maisy Liu, Rohini Mundey, Chi (Matthew) Wang
Year 3
Supitchaya (Praew) Anivat, Yiu (Raymond) Cham, Park Jin Chan, Hei (Eunice) Cheung, Wei (Keane) Chua, Eleanor Hollis, Ayaa Muhdar, Michalis Philiastidis
Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Budd, Thomas Parker, Donald Shillingburg
Critics: Bamidele Awoyemi, Alex Borrell, Theo Brader-Tan, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Nat Chard, Finbarr Charleson, Krina Christopoulou, Alex Fox, James Hampton, Rory Harmer, Kyriakos Katsaros, Ness Lafoy, Constance Lau, Doug Miller, Maxwell Mutanda, Giles Nartey, Thomas Parker, George Proud, Guang Yu Ren, Narinder Sagoo, Ellie Sampson, Sayan Skandarajah, Ben Spong, Sohanna Srinivasan, Manijeh Verghese, Viktoria Viktorija, Rain Wu, Fiona Zisch
Special thanks: Steve Johnson and Flimwell Park, Jason Coe, Amin Taha and Groupwork
9.1 Wei (Keane) Chua, Y3 ‘A Palimpsest of Vilified Rhododendrons’. This palimpsest model examines the contradictory relationship of the once sought after, but now vilified, Rhododendron ponticum, exploring the possibility of repurposing the existing plants as spatial beacons and mapping their chaotic spread and controlled removal.
9.2–9.4 Hei (Eunice) Cheung, Y3 ‘Reimagining Cohabitation: Offshore Energy Reskilling Centre’. Sited in St Andrew’s Dock, Hull, the proposed programme offers the community the opportunity to join and transition to the renewable energy sector. The building embraces the natural rhythm of currents and sediment movement and introduces ways in which architectural foundations can be modified to encourage habitats for marine species, while simultaneously responding to the reskilling journey of the workers.
9.5, 9.7 Park Jin Chan, Y3 ‘Beyond Carbon’. The project speculates on the future of coal beyond energy production, as the UK plans to completely phase out its use by 2024. Sited in Maltby, a former coal mining town in South Yorkshire, The Carbon Fibre Institute will be a testbed for the transformation of redundant coal stockpiles into carbon fibre building components. Its form is driven by the material possibilities of carbon fibre, while also responding to the extraordinary landscape in which it is embedded.
9.6 Park Jin Chan, Y3 ‘Unstable Grounds’. Drawing device for recording the changing topography of Flimwell Park, East Sussex. The instrument is embedded into the woodland and attached onto the trunk of a sweet chestnut tree.
9.8 Shiwei Lai, Y2 ‘Cows Mouth Quarry’. Located in the South Pennine Moors in Lancashire, The Cows Mouth Theatre, built on an ex-quarry of the same name, allows audiences to enjoy acoustic experiences within a natural conservation area.
9.9 Yongjun Choi, Y2 ‘Hull Maritime Museum’. Located in Hull, near the River Humber Estuary, the proposed museum is a memorial to the lost elements of St Andrew’s Dock. Its uneven hallway imitates a ship’s hull and its interaction with changing tides.
9.10 Sara Abbod, Y2 ‘Sheffield Seed Archive’. Sited in Sheffield, a series of spaces allow for the meticulous process of preservation, cataloguing and storing, to support the restoration of local species and their propagation in future landscapes.
9.11, 9.14 Rohini Mundey, Y2 ‘The Woodland Hostel’. Located in the Peak District, Derbyshire, the hostel supports a culture of self-sufficiency through awareness of timber and food growing cycles. The building responds to the constantly shifting managed forest landscape by growing commercial crops on a sustainable basis over the next 50 years. Surrounding the hostel, five towers are placed in different felling sites and constructed slowly over this time frame. A timber catalogue is produced reflecting these individual environments. The towers are then assembled using the itemised tree forks to inform their structural concepts.
9.12 Rebecca Criste, Y2 ‘Salford Community Garden Centre’. A garden centre for Salford, Greater Manchester. The focus of the building is to engage its users in collaborative activities that encourage social interaction and help strengthen the sense of community in the local area.
9.13 Yiu (Raymond) Cham, Y3 ‘Kersal Wetland Flood Retreat Centre’. A centre for visitors to the Kersal Wetlands in Greater Manchester, providing shelter and relief during times of flood. Built of mudbricks of varying porosity and water absorption, the structure mitigates the effect of flooding on the ground while also collecting water from its blue roof.
9.15 Zhun Lyn Chang, Y2 ‘Lower Broughton Community Theatre’. The theatre provides locals with a new performing arts space and community centre. Designed to encourage multifunctional use of its spaces, the building is constructed from cork due to its excellent acoustic and insulation properties as well as its credentials as a carbon-negative material.
9.16 Michalis Philiastidis, Y3 ‘Selenophile’. A selenophile – person who loves the moon – partakes in the process of meditation in this wellness centre that uses reflected moonlight as its primary ‘material’. Located in Derbyshire’s Peak District, the building is spatially arranged according to the phases of the moon. Its light is used for the purposes of navigating the building but also to create spaces of contemplation.
9.17 Eleanor Hollis, Y3 ‘Inhabiting a Continuity for Dementia Respite’. As a respite centre for dementia patients and their carers, the project addresses the exponential rise of dementia within the local area and wider society. Situated within the evolving Humber region, the building rests on a fragile landscape affected by the devastating impacts of coastal erosion. Constructed of chalk, the building is designed to erode over time to stabilise the delicate landscape.
9.18 Chi (Matthew) Wang , Y2 ‘Swillington Museum’. The steeply sloping clay landscape, sited in Leeds on a former brickworks quarry, provides the setting and inspiration for a building constructed from the Earth. The museum celebrates the quarry, excavating the clay ground to form the base and key spaces. The building itself is an exhibit, demonstrating an innovative use of local material to visitors while also creating a carbonneutral building.
9.19 Supitchaya (Praew) Anivat, Y3 ‘Museum for Trees of the Future’. Located in Hessle, East Yorkshire, the museum invites its visitors to experience the trees of our soon-to-be-warmer climate. By preserving a collection of trees from three biomes – tropical rainforests, savannah grasslands and deserts – the trees can be returned to their indigenous locations after they have recovered from overheating or rapid loss of greenspace through natural succession.
9.20, 9.21 Maisy Liu, Y2 ‘A Recipe for Waste Reinvention: The Biochar Centre’. A production and research centre in Beverley, East Yorkshire, the building illustrates the potential of biochar, a biomass-based material with innovative applications in construction and agriculture. The project demonstrates how biochar production and landscape development can support one another. Visitors are immersed in the process of biochar production through the kiln and skylit spaces. The heat generated during production supports the hypocaust flooring system and thermal baths, while a steam-filled walkway envelops visitors in the kiln’s interior environment.
9.22–9.25 Wei (Keane) Chua, Y3 ‘The Under-Bog Revival’. Peatlands – commonly vilified as vague terrains and places of death and waste – are the most ecologically productive land-based carbon sinks, storing up to 25 times more carbon than trees. Sited in the Colliers Moss Common in Merseyside, the project proposes a symbiotic alliance of architecture and peat. By treating architecture as a plug-in device that augments the carbon sequestration prowess of the ecological peat, the proposed building is an evolutionary catalyst to preserve, restore and protect these significant peatlands. The architecture adopts a long-term approach in tandem with slow landscape recovery. Through three construction and programmatic phases over a 50-year period, the architecture grows slowly, just like peat. Over time it will become a beacon of hope for peatland restoration and awareness across the UK.
9.5 9.6
9.12
9.13
9.14
9.16
9.20
9.19
2021
Tales from the Boundaries Chee-Kit Lai, Douglas Miller
Tales from the Boundaries
Chee-Kit Lai, Douglas Miller
Recording borders – the drawing of maps – has always had social and political ramifications. Used in warcraft to establish primacy over a territory, as an indicator of ownership over a place, it is a source of data on which an invader relies. As systems of cartography modernised, competition to develop maps created cartographic espionage, involving copyright traps secretly embedded in drawings. Now, Google, as a cartographic superpower, bleeds into every aspect of data collection, technology and tracking, yet glitches of imperial secrecy and political ambition persist.
This year, UG9 looked at borders across shifting scales and locales, beginning by interrogating the complex apparatus that surrounds and maintains them. With students scattered across the globe, themes of control, subversion and the political mechanisms that surround borderlines in multiple contexts began the year’s explorations. Inspired by illustrations, comics and films, we set out to draw new maps and create narratives, discovered and invented, which tell a story of boundaries by subverting and reimagining them.
Our first investigations touched on the political and the personal. In London, a battle for control over land rights in Walthamstow Wetlands was augmented with architectural structures that proposed to manipulate ownership data over many years by blurring digital and physical datums. Meanwhile, in Bangkok, Thailand, a forensic recording of childhood memories was designed as an interactive architectural game, to pick apart the logic behind the subjective maps we draw in our minds on a daily basis that often live with us forever.
Our main projects for the year were located in lands of contentious ownership, sites of material mediation and locales balanced between climatic conditions. Students were given total autonomy to find a site relevant to their research interests, including places in the US, Iceland and China.
Alongside our ongoing investigations, a select series of talks and workshops led by artists, architects and designers encouraged students to merge disciplines and techniques beyond conventional architectural drawing and gave insight into the world of graphic novels, game design, installation, model making, virtual and augmented realities. We drew upon these representational methods in our drawings and models throughout the year.
Year 2
Daniel Langstaff, Oliver Li, Sean Louis, Eleanor Middleton, Shannon Townsend, Nathan Verrier
Year 3
Xintong Chen, Tia Duong, Marie Faivre, Ben Foulkes, Guiming He, Harris Mawardi, Nandinzul Munkhbayar, Kirsty Selwood, Ewan Sleath, Prim Vudhichamnong, Yunzi Wang
Thank you to our technical tutors and consultants: Tom Budd, John Cruwys, Tae Woo Hong, Jessica In, Greg Kythreotis, Evan Levelle, Gareth Damian Martin, Anna Mill, Sophie Percival, Owen Pomery, George Proud, Ellie Sampson, Arinjoy Sen, Don Shillingburg, Kate Strudwick, The Bakerloos
Critics: Laura Allen, Bamidele Awoyemi, Tom Budd, Blanche Cameron, Nat Chard, Krina Christopoulou, Oli Colman, John Cruwys, Sam Davies, Tamsin Hanke, Penelope Haralambidou, Colin Herperger, Jonathan Hill, Jessica In, Will Jeffries, Madeleine Kessler, Asif Khan, Constance Lau, Stefan Lengen, Syafiq Mohammed, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson, Kevin Pollard, George Proud, Guang Yu Ren, Ellie Sampson, Bob Sheil, Donald Shillingburg, Ben Spong, Manijeh Verghese, Stamatis Zografos
9.1–9.6 Ben Foulkes, Y3 ‘Seeding Swanscombe Marshes’. On the isolated windswept peninsula of Swanscombe Marshes in north Kent is a regenerative and resilient courthouse. The slow and steady construction of the court subverts current proposals for the development of a London resort theme park. Acting under the guise of an ecological mandate, the court stands as a figurehead for our companionship with the landscape.
9.7 Eleanor Middleton, Y2 ‘The Debatable Forest’. Set against the backdrop of current politics, the project focusses on two villages – Nookfoot and Alberig – with opposing views on Scottish independence, located either side of the Anglo-Scottish border. The architecture facilitates debate between the two communities and offers a space for reconciliation.
9.8 Daniel Langstaff, Y2 ‘Hveragerði Water Cremation Centre’. The project addresses mass deforestation in Iceland and the lack of infrastructure to deal with the country’s death-cycle. Through micro-reforestation of the land and the provision of a carefully choreographed public cremation centre, a place for memorialising loved ones is created.
9.9 Guiming He, Y3 ‘Generations Under One Roof’. Sited in the mountainous region of rural Luoyang, China, a multi-generational house is proposed for four generations of the He family. The architecture is autobiographical, constructed using fictional narratives based on the author’s personal experiences. The spaces explore the relationships between different family groups and utilise traditional Chinese courtyard culture.
9.10 Nandinzul Munkhbayar, Y3 ‘In Season’. In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a community library is proposed on the border between the informal ger districts and modern centre. The community library looks to find robust and adaptable solutions to extreme weather conditions. Mobile built elements can be reconfigured by users throughout the year to encourage community engagement while maintaining optimal levels of comfort for occupants throughout the seasons.
9.11 Kirsty Selwood, Y3 ‘The Multiple Garden Houses’. A proposal for a mixed-tenure social-housing scheme, located in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. The proposal offers an alternative scheme for the site; currently a large high-rise development is under construction, which is widely considered to go against the values of the town.
9.12 Shannon Townsend, Y2 ‘A Shifting Landscape: The future of Cuckmere Haven’. Cuckmere Haven, East Sussex, has entered a stage of managed retreat, promising to reclaim the wetlands but, in doing so, disrupting life for locals. This project proposes architectural responses to aid the transition by representing the stages of grief that the residents will experience at the loss of their homes. The scheme unfolds into a sequence spanning 100 years, during which time four individual structures are built, aligning with key transformative moments of the landscape and resulting in ruination.
9.13, 9.16 Ewan Sleath, Y3 ‘Risen from Rubble’. On the border of the River Lea, where the channel splits in two, a wetland emerges from the cracks of a cloistered depot. Splitting apart the site reveals modest materials, which are reassembled into structures that take part in the terraforming process, with the old site gradually crumbling to create and maintain an ecologically complex and sustainable wetland.
9.14 Harris Mawardi, Y3 ‘Castle Lane Homeless Shelter’. The City of Westminster in London reports the highest cases of homelessness in the city. The project, sited in an unoccupied terraced building in Castle Lane – once home to local workers – proposes temporary accommodation for homeless adult men in the borough
through retrofit and careful augmentation of the existing building. The project explores themes of individuality, privacy and forms of rehabilitation for the most vulnerable.
9.15 Yunzi Wang, Y3 ‘Yangmeizhu Moving Market’. The design investigates the use of mechanics to create a transformable theatre and market in the Yangmeizhu hutong (street) in Beijing. The proposal is both symbiotic and modular. It responds to the needs of the programme and negotiates with the existing historic neighbourhood, which is under constant threat of demolition.
9.17 Nathan Verrier, Y2 ‘Lee Boatel’. The ‘boatel’ is a canal-side short-term residence designed for members of the local boating community. By carving a new channel into the neighbouring park, the project unites the secluded boating community with park users through a network of open space. The design recognises the established presence of canal residents and opens a dialogue with those that inhabit the land.
9.18–9.19 Prim Vudhichamnong, Y3 ‘Through Risk and Comfort: Education within bridging realities’. A day care and educational facility, centred around play spaces for children aged between 0 and 5 years, in Bangkok, Thailand. Each space is designed to maximise a child’s physical and mental development through a mixture of risk, stimulation, play and comfort in real-world and digital reality augmentations.
9.20–9.22 Marie Faivre, Y3 ‘Carbon Landscape Laboratories’. A proposal for a carbon sequestration landscape and research laboratory situated on the peninsula of the former docklands and London City Airport runway. Built using materials from the runway, the laboratory embodies as much carbon as possible in its design. The greater the embodied carbon in the structure, the more carbon is removed from the atmosphere. A research woodland adjacent to the laboratory allows mature trees to create a constantly deepening carbon sink.
9.23–9.24 Tia Duong, Y3 ‘The Little Hanoi in London’. The project recreates the atmosphere of Hanoi, Vietnam, in a small hotel in Beckton, East London, through the manipulation of environmental conditions and their effects on the building fabric. As the seasons change throughout the year, the building remains atmospherically entangled, shifting with the Hanoian climate, and responding to its local context.
9.25–9.27 Xintong Chen, Y3 ‘The Unauthorised Camp’. A proposal for an assembly of protesters on the site of the Former Embassy of Iran in Washington, D.C. The project seeks to desegregate the city by positing a landscape of power through guerrilla tactics and constructed protest structures, which provide long-term infrastructure to support these unauthorised communities.
9.14
2020
Follow the Water
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
This year, UG9 explored water as material, volume, inhabitant and participant. Our initial design projects involved the design of a drawing device that reveals a contextual relationship or phenomenon relating to water. Students considered the many forms water takes in the landscape – from droplet, ocean, cloud to glacier – and the different ways in which they can be measured, traced and quantified. We explored techniques for mapping, scanning, and recording, and design methods for translating these into a time-based drawing, to be considered as a spatial/cartographic or political enquiry that negotiates between micro and macro scales.
We embarked on our field trip to explore the water towns of China near Shanghai, specifically between Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, also known as ‘the Venice of the East’. We visited architecture by old masters of architecture, such as I. M. Pei, as well as new masters Wang Shu and Luwen Yu. We explored the classical gardens of Suzhou – a UNESCO World Heritage site – and the tea plantations in Hangzhou, stepping back in time to low-rise water towns dating back 1300 years.
Our site investigations this year considered the importance that water has had in the landscape of these areas. Bordered by the Yangtze river in the north and divided through the middle by the Huangpu river, these towns have traditionally prospered from rice growing and trade routes. The area is under threat from global heating and vulnerable to serious flooding that could potentially displace tens of millions.
Our building projects this year consider the relationship between humankind and water, as it increasingly becomes both a precious resource and a threat. We explored how water can drive design ideas around the (im)material and ephemeral vs. permanent, to create architectures of agency that go beyond the control of the architect. Key to the unit’s ongoing agenda, student projects consider how our design decisions can influence the lives of many people, how they move and how they live in their environments; the relationships between them, and the interaction and inhabitation of these spaces and moments.
This year for our technical skills development, we focused on photography, scanning, virtual and augmented reality, film and animation. We continued our interest in pushing the boundaries of architectural production and representation to bring the viewer or occupier as close as possible to the sensation of architecture.
UG9
Year 2
Sum (Victoria) Chan, Alfred Gee, Lucas Lam, Tianpei Wang, Jeffrey Wen
Year 3
Anahita Hosseini Ardehali, Ian Lim, Yixuan (Aurelia) Lu, Nandinzul Munkhbayar, Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang, Yunzi (Zoe) Wang
Computing Consultants: Alessandro ConningRowland, George Proud, Matthew Taylor
Photography Workshop: Sophie Percival
Year 3 Technical Consultant: Donald Shillingburg
Special thanks to Guang Yu Ren and Xin Zhan in the organisation of our field trip
Thank you to our critics Kirsty Badenoch, Theo Brader-Tan, Irem Bugdayci, Matthew Butcher, William Victor Camilleri, Krina Christopoulou, AnneHeloise Dautel, David Di Duca, Stephen Gage, Penelope Haralambidou, Jonathan Hill, Freddie Hong, Megha Chand Inglis, Kyriakos Katsaros, Constance Lau, Evan Levelle, Doug Miller, Tetsuro Nagata, Ian Ng, George Proud, Danielle Purkiss, Guang Yu Ren, David Shanks, Ben Spong, Sabine Storp, Nada Tayeb, William Trossell, Manijeh Verghese, Michael Wagner, Fiona Zisch
9.1 Yunzi (Zoe) Wang, Y3 ‘Personalising Death –Decomposing Coffin’. Funerary rites in China typically follow strict conventions driven by unquestioned tradition and commercialisation, and lack a contemporary response to current ecological concerns. This proposal is a highly personal approach to burial. The coffin and death suit, made from processed crab shell, consumed in life in abundance in Shanghai, is entirely biodegradable. Embedded with air pockets and mushroom spores, the suit intensifies decomposition in parts of the body that are slower to break down, such as joints. Given the country’s vast population, returning the body to the ground in this more natural way has the potential to make a significant positive environmental impact on burial in China.
9.2–9.3 Nandinzul Munkhbayar, Y3 ‘Seeping Through Time’. This device explores the physical properties and gestures of calligraphy with Chinese ink on layered ice. Different layers of salinity in the ice cause the calligraphy to change unpredictably over time, resembling micro landscapes. The drawing is fed through an artificially intelligent generator, transforming the data into a seemingly real macro Chinese landscape painting. The synthesised landscape is experienced in a virtual reality environment, allowing the viewer to inhabit an immersive and ever-changing Chinese landscape.
9.4–9.8 Ian Lim, Y3 ‘Tomb of the [Un]Known Soldier’. A memorial for those who died in conflicts during the Cultural Revolution, this project deals with the perception of the history, where two realities are present – the local government view, and the view by foreigners and dissidents. Considered a dark part of China’s modern history, a physical memorial dedicated to the victims of the Cultural Revolution cannot exist within China, and as such the proposed physical design is a tomb for the Unknown Soldier that follows the conventions of Fengshui, which would be acceptable to the Chinese government. The use of virtual reality in the building provides an alternate reality which foreign visitors can access through the internet via a virtual private network, allowing two spaces to exist within one.
9.9 Jeffery Wen, Y2 ‘Butterfly Farm and Nursery’. This project is a butterfly farm set in the Xixi Wetland Park in Hangzhou, which reintroduces native butterflies to the local area. The proposal focuses on the concept of duality, negotiating between inside and outside, light and heavy, butterfly and human, landscape and human-made. The building also offers spaces of contemplation inspired by the different stages of the butterfly’s delicate lifecycle, which is often used as a metaphor in Chinese aesthetics. Negotiating between spaces designed specifically for butterflies and humans, visitors are taken through subtle shifts in the datum and experience of the building in relation to the landscape.
9.10 Sum (Victoria) Chan, Y2 ‘Fabric Dyeing WorkshopGallery’. Sited in Wuchang, Hangzhou, China, this building uses natural and sustainable processes that minimise the impact on the wetlands. The programme rebuilds the wetland and fields for plantations to produce natural dyes for silk production in a responsible manner. The structure has been designed to collect rainwater for fabric dyeing, which will in turn be filtered by plants before being released into the main river.
9.11 Lucas Lam, Y2 ‘Hokutolite Mineral Laboratory and Museum’. Sited next to a natural stream in Beitou, Taipei city, Taiwan, water from the stream is pumped to recreate a hot spring to encourage the growth of the mineral Hokutolite on the roof. The form is inspired by studying the molecular structure of the mineral and photogrammetry data of the site. The architecture of the building and its joints are inspired by the additive process of Hokutolite forming, similar to 3D printing.
9.12, 9.14 Yixuan (Aurelia) Lu, Y3 ‘Alibaba Business Incubator’. A campus building for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in Hangzhou as part of their ongoing investment in tech start-ups. Facilities include co-working and co-living spaces. The proposal sits on the edge of an artificially created pond that connects to existing waterways to reintroduce an area of wetland to the landscape. Water is used to cool computers that facilitate the automation of the architecture, which is in turn used for heating before releasing back into the cool waterways.
9.13 Alfred Gee, Y2 ‘A Microeconomic Fortress for the Preservation of Shanzhai’. Located in Huangpu District, north of Shanghai’s traditional fortified city walls, this proposal digitally reinforces the marketplace to provide a haven for the prolonging of Shanzhai in the face of increased legal scrutiny. Shanzhai goods are those that liberally borrow from an original product but contain an element of originality. Through shameless reinterpretation they unlock cultural remixes impossible in the highly regulated Western economy. The Microeconomic Fortress thrives in the legal grey area, playing with formal economies such as karaoke bars and informal economies such as shanzhai tech shops, as well as physical and virtual layers of security and visibility.
9.14 Jeffery Hao Wen, Y2 ‘Water Map Machine’. Designed according to real conditions in China, water is moved along different vessels interpreting the three main rivers, the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and the Huaihe River. Pumps installed in the device lead to a chain reaction of water flow. Cones representing different cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, redirect water to different channels using fluid pressure. The device is annotated with projection mapping.
9.15 Tianpei Wang , Y2 ‘Digital Water Fountain’. Inspired by scenery paintings from a traditional Chinese Jiangnan garden, the Lingering Garden, digital water is used to create four overlapping scenes into the stair landing within The Bartlett’s building. The experience activates our brain to ‘see’ landscapes in the absence of object in between water particles. Digital water is manipulated in the virtual reality environment to reflect its different states throughout the four seasons of the year.
9.16–9.19, 9.21, 9.23 Chueh-Kai (Daniel) Wang, Y3 ‘Wetland (Re)treat’. A healthcare retreat sited in Wuchang, west of Xixi National Wetland Park in Hangzhou, this building fuses the natural and the human-made, and aims to heal both its occupants and landscape. Drawing on the traditional Chinese concept of ‘gui tu’ (meaning ‘returning ground’), through its construction process the project reintroduces water back to the wider landscape battered by neglect and urbanisation. Flooded in summer and dehydrated in winter, the negotiation of soil condition challenges methods of construction. At micro-scale, the project provides much needed aftercare facilities in the Chinese medical system. At macro-scale, the restructuring of earth reintroduces the wetlands to the wider landscape. The project deals with the limitation of available materials in reality and speculation. Through the reuse of modelling material, the building is renegotiated repeatedly at various scales, as an analogy to the reality of the wetland’s appearance being constantly reshaped by water.
9.20, 9.22 Anahita Hosseini Ardehali, Y3 ‘The Eleventh Scene: Slow Fashion Silk Workshop’. Hangzhou is the silk capital of China but due to mass industrialisation, silk production has caused considerable damage to the landscape. This proposal is sited on the edge of West Lake, known for its ten exquisite ‘scenes’ or views. The project creates an eleventh scene by using atmospheric byproducts of slow silk production, many of which relate to water. When viewed from the lake, these elements combine to create the illusion of a surreal mountain range floating in the sky.
2019
Superlatives
Superlatives
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
This year, UG9 considered the possibilities of superlatives to explore and define architectural identities. Superlatives are about being true to yourself as a designer. By invoking a superlative state that explores the edges, exaggerations or extremes in conditions, language, behaviour and style, we aim to push and question the borders of the proper or ‘normal’. Superlative architectures not only explore the extremes of the field but also solicit the best quality. We are critical of the use of superlatives in popular culture, where everything is reduced to the ‘most important’ and the ‘best’. In UG9 this year, we re-examined this idea in the context of architecture.
Our field trip led us to Seoul, a city that embodies what the author Michael Breen observes in his book The Koreans : an ability to interpret foreign systems and develop them to the most extreme or successful, often outdoing their mentors. Our architectural propositions this year have ambitions of the same order, with projects considering superlatives across reality and illusion, collective and self-identity, and reconsiderations between viewer and occupant. In a city that has historically been seen as inward-looking, and that has raced through modernism and postmodernism within a couple of decades, our architectures offer a reframing of Seoul’s identity on a global cultural stage. We aimed to address the qualities of the ‘soft city’ that Jieheerah Yun’s Globalising Seoul identifies as priorities for invisible things: cultural, emotional and aesthetic measures that move beyond the hard, industrial city and emphasise speed and efficiency.
The mediation between matter and form, the relationship between design and occupation, the spatial implications of new technologies, and the subsequent restructuring of social relationships are all themes that continue to interest UG9.
Year 2
Weiting (Terry) Chen, Ernest Chin, Peter Cotton, Eudon Gray Desai, Dinu Hoinarescu, Ye Kim, Olivia Shiu
Year 3
Vitika Agarwal, Kai (Kelvin) Chan, Carlota NunezBarranco Vallejo, Wei (Eugene) Tan, Tom Ushakov, Sung (Ryan) Wong
Thanks to our consultants Marcus Cole, Matt Lucraft, Donald Shillingburg, Denis Vlieghe, and to Thomas Chu for our Summer Show mechanism design
Special thanks to our critics: Laura Allen, Iain Borden, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Nat Chard, Alessandro Conning-Rowland, Peter Cook, Christopher Daniel, Tamsin Green, Penelope Haralambidou, Simon Herron, Jonathan Hill, Freddie Hong, Steven Howson, Parker Heyl, Soohyeon Kang, Constance Lau, Evan Levelle, Claudia Orsetti, Bakul Pakti, Pedro Pitarch, Donald Shillingburg, Giles Smith, Mark Smout, Sarah Stevens, Sabine Storp, Mohammed Syafiq, Michael Tite, Michael Wagner
Special thanks to our show sponsors: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd
9.1, 9.15–9.17 Ernest Chin, Y2 ‘Itaewon Stacked Bathhouse’. A smorgasbord building proposal, showcasing a selection of media including hand sketches, conceptual models, unfolded drawings and a final model with animated projections. Sited on the boundaries of three distinct areas – Halal Hill, Homo Hill and Hooker Hill – the project proposes a double stacked bathhouse using layered drawings, an animated projection on a physical model and an exploded physical model. The lower tier consists of a series of salted soak baths, whilst the naturally warmer upper tier houses steam rooms. Strategic roof lights, voids, fenestration and double and triple height spaces offer glimpses of the site context to an otherwise deeply intimate building. The staircases connecting baths and steam rooms are on the outside of the building, allowing boundaries to be blurred between inside and out.
9.2, 9.18 Wei (Eugene) Tan, Y3 ‘South Korean Women’s War Museum’. A museum proposal presented as an exploded large-scale model and a museum guide using unfolded orthogonal drawings. The museum’s spaces sensitively combine the imperial with the domestic to evoke the memory of war as told by female survivors. Visitors are given a small unfolded museum guide to navigate the central space of the museum, including an exploded axonometric highlighting the different public and private zones of the museum. The proposed plan allows visitors to peel parts of the roof back to reveal internal plans underneath, with the inside of the roof showing perspective views of those areas. A section drawing shows visitors’ experiences depending on the time of year.
9.3 Tom Ushakov, Y3 ‘Drawing a Parallel’. A proposal for an interactive painting device. In Korean culture, painted backdrops are used for formal events, such as a meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-In and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jung Un. The device creates watercolour paintings of mountainscapes using recordings of up to two participants, and measures levels of intimacy between them.
9.4 Tom Ushakov, Y3 ‘Making a Scene’. A building proposal to be sited in front of the South Korean City Hall. The proposal allows for future summit peace talks between the South Korean president, the US president and the North Korean supreme leader. Optical illusion creates the appearance of fairness between the three when they meet.
9.5 Carlota Nunez-Barranco Vallejo, Y3 ‘Reinterpreting the Hanok House’. A 3D-printed model of a 360-degree multi-scale device, on a robotic arm used for animated projection.
9.6–9.7 Carlota Nunez-Barranco Vallejo, Y3 ‘Beehive Housing’. A proposed courtyard view and roof plan for a series of hyper-dense housing units that reinvent traditional beehive housing – homes made from circles of stones with domed roofs – allowing for triple occupancy per unit. The architecture plays with occupying the oblique, with certain conditions presenting a paradox of representation. This is a plan that looks like an isometric drawing.
9.8 Olivia Shiu, Y2 ‘Stereoscopic Photography Studio’. Sited in Itaewon in South Korea, this building proposal allows for five overlapping photography studios within a tight site. Inspired by cones of vision, the proposal is presented as isometric moment drawings.
9.9 Sung (Ryan) Wong, Y3 ‘Superlative Crit Machine’. A prototype for an interactive audio-visual monitoring device that tracks a panel of architectural critics through voice recognition. The device identifies generic superlatives in the critics’ comments and, in turn, creates an uncomfortable consciousness.
9.10 Kai (Kelvin) Chan, Y3 ‘Virtual Dimensions’.
An interactive installation of a spatial construct that exists only in social media space. The protagonist is able to have a dinner party, meeting or event with themselves by occupying the time lag that inherently comes with re-projecting a Facebook live feed.
9.11 Weiting (Terry) Chen, Y2 ‘Internet Spotter’.
A dancer wears an interactive LED arm contraption that is responsive to an active internet signal. Through a carefully choreographed dance sequence, boundaries of internet black holes are revealed in the city, resulting in a light drawing.
9.12 Weiting (Terry) Chen, Y2 ‘Itaewon Cultural Centre’. An exploded axonometric projection of a building that acts like a giant staircase across a nine-metre drop site, thus, creating staggered platforms for cultural activities, market stalls and seating.
9.13 Vitika Agarwal, Y3 ‘Jongno-gu Sleep Centre’.
A physical model inspired by pungsu (Korean geomancy) of a sleep centre sited next to the Changdeokgung Palace, that takes the shape of hills surrounding a valley. The outer buildings provide public activities, such as a tea house, baths and saunas, whilst the more intimate multi-tiered sleep pods are located in the central deep basements.
9.14 Ernest Chin, Y2 ‘Rain Show(er)’ This installation recreates the sensation of Korean rain using only light and sound. Motion sensors detect the presence of people in the space and activate the upside down rain in recognition of Seoul being on the opposite side of the world to London.
9.6
9.5
9.11
9.12
Year 2
Daeyong Bae, Alexander Balgarnie, Miles Elliott, Yuen (Peter) Kei, Alessandro Rognoni, Malgorzata Rutkowska, Yaqi Su
Year 3
Daniel Boran, Wei (Vanessa) Chung, Xavier De La Roche, Aleksy Dojnow, Grey Grierson, Anna O'Leary, Edward Taft, Rupert Woods
Thank you to our consultants: Matt Lucraft, Sean Malikides, Andre Sampaio Kong, Donald Shillingburg, Denis Vlieghe
UG9 Photography Workshop: Brotherton Lock
Special thanks to our critics: Alessandro Ayuso, Paul Bavister, Amy Begg, Jason Chan, Nat Chard, Marcus Cole, Alessandro Conning-Rowland, Richard Difford, Florian Dussopt, Winston Hampel, Penelope Haralambidou, Jonathan Hill, Alex Holloway, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Asif Khan, Andre Sampaio Kong, Elie Lakin, Matt Lucraft, Patrick Lam, Caireen O’Hagan, Mads Peterson, Arturo Revilla, David Roy, Donald Shillingburg, Giles Smith, Andrew Tam, Ivo Tedbury, Nicole Yu Xuan Teh, Mike Tite, Tim Yue
Special thanks our sponsors: Panopus Printing PRS Ltd
Met[a]ropolia 2046
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
‘In Wong Kar-Wai’s films, there is not a single shot of Hong Kong skyline, that picture-postcard metaphor of Hong Kong, conjuring up images of power and desire. Wong’s Hong Kong is a city of a different kind, and the secret of that city is not power, but impotence…The city is not only a physical scape, but also a psychic one. This is one reason why the city is never shown whole, but only in fragments, in metonymies and displacements.’
Ackbar Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’
This year, Unit 9 considered identity not as a singular construct but as multiple entities. Spaces, like identities, are multiple in their definitions and are constructed – by ourselves and by others. The unit considered the spaces and identities of a city as a series of dynamic and layered abstractions, a Met[a]ropolia (Meta + Metropolis). These layers refer to each other to continually change meaning, and in doing so complete or add to the original. We are interested in using self-reflexive techniques to construct identity and space. Met[a]ropolia explores frames within frames, plays within plays, and cities within cities to ask: How can a meditation on space illuminate our understanding of identity?
Our field trip led us to Hong Kong, a city in which Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii recognised the ability of the city to take on new identities – the city for him was the perfect starting persona from which he could create his futuristic urbanism. Our main projects for the year are propositions for the year 2046 – the year when Hong Kong marks the end of the ‘one country, two systems’ constitutional principle formulated by China. In Wong Kar-Wai’s film of the same name, 2046 is never explicitly defined – it is a place, a room, a year, and a state of mind. Our projects this year draw influence from Wong’s multiple non-chronological narratives, saturated visual style and complex composition, to create reflective architectures that address questions about reality and illusion, identity and self-discovery, to continually question relationships between viewer and occupant.
The mediation between matter and form, the relationship between design and occupation, the spatial implications of new technologies and the restructuring of social relationships that follows are themes that continue to interest UG9.
Figs. 9.1 & 9.5 Aleksy Dojnow Y3, ‘Destructive Détente’. The building is a collaborative gift granted to Hong Kong –and therefore to China – by the UK, USA and Germany. Overtly it functions as a centre for dialogue and a mouthpiece for Demosisto, a pro-democracy political party run by students who co-organised and co-led the massive protests. Covertly however, it performs the role of an inerasable critique of the Chinese political system and ultimately the inevitable fate of the Hong Kong self-determination movement after 2047. The building gives Demosisto an illusion of dialogue and simultaneously distorts, disrupts and censors the student opposition campaign. Fig. 9.2 Alexander Balgarnie Y2, ‘Public Carpet’. Malls, subways, and walkways turn central Hong Kong into an urban-scaled interior. 380,000 migrant domestic
workers stake out rugs and mats in the public fragments of this domain every Sunday in a ritual of sociability, identity, and community. With these values in mind, a coded motiontracker projects back similar data to that silently harvested by intelligent surveillance systems, both political and commercial. Believing that the public domain is vital to the culture of any city, coded into the carpet are incentives for those who linger and socialise underneath, who through their being together turn striated metric spaces into ‘a space of becoming’.
Fig. 9.3 Wei (Vanessa) Chung Y3, ‘Calligraphy Drawing Device’. Traditional Chinese hand writing and the quality of calligraphy are explored and reinterpreted through tactile technological representations. Using a variety of engraved wooden plates, consisting of the eight basic Chinese character strokes, users
can recreate any Chinese character. The ultimate goal of the device is to personalise handwriting through the teaching of written Chinese characters. Fig. 9.4 Grey Grierson Y3, ‘Lui Xiabao Device’. Traditionally many people burn paper offerings at the gravesites during the Qingming festival for their ancestors to use in the afterlife. From the noughties onwards these offerings have included paper replicas of housing, clothes and iPhones. Assuming the future of this tradition would be entirely based in the digital world, the device enables people in the UK to honour their family shrine in Hong Kong. Through the study of Lui Xaiobo the final device is able to channel a new narrative of secrecy and subversion within the act of offering. The device utilises emerging photogrammetry technology, Arduino controlled sensors and Instagram to
create a new iteration of the Qingming ritual. Figs. 9.6 – 9.9 Grey Grierson Y3, ‘Negotiations of States’. A crematorium and columbarium for Hong Kong that speculates on the division between analogue death and digital life. Through the creation of a new funerary system, existing rituals that have been slow to evolve and inhabit existing digital realities are critiqued. The crematorium is designed to act as the spatial interface between virtual and tangible life. Each death leads to a physical addition within the columbarium’s landscape and a virtual addition to the data bank. The physical addition is soon lost under layers of erosion, addition and activity within the landscape whereas the virtual addition becomes perpetual. This curation of ancestural departure provides a spatial setting for contemplation, reflection and remembrance.
Fig. 9.10 Daeyong Bae Y2, ‘Kwun Tong Love Hotel’. The density and cramped domestic environments of Hong Kong often leave young couples without space for intimacy. Seedy hotels letting rooms by the hour are often their answer. By manipulating fog, and using sculptural forms that echo qualities of tenderness, the proposed hotel aims to break down the taboos and difficult thresholds of the typology. Fig. 9.11 Xavier De La Roche Y3, ‘Choreography of Decay’. Sheung Wan Sculpture Centre serves as a hub for creatives and non-creatives alike to make sculpture. Unlike painting, sculpture has the ability to physically manipulate the viewer, arguably making it more tangible than other art forms. The building is allowed to decay over time in a controlled manner, causing yellow rust to bleed into the urban landscape as a silent reminder of the recent
Umbrella Movement. Fig. 9.12 Alessandro Rognoni Y2, ‘Architecture for Visual Economies’. The project attempts to mediate between Hong Kong’s small independent traders and the government’s desire for recognisable (and controllable) commercial agglomeration. It preserves the intensity and diversity of independent traditional pharmacists within a department store framework by substituting traditional architectural elements like windows with the wares of the traders. Fig. 9.13 Yuen (Peter) Kei Y2, ‘Dai Pai Dong Hub’. The traditional streetfood stalls of Hong Kong, Dai Pai Dong, are highly endangered. This proposal considers Dai Pai Dong as much a part of Hong Kong’s cultural identity as its economy. The proposal increases the connectivity of the area with vehicle and pedestrian routes bridging over a large public
9.10
9.13
9.11
space, with ample room and some specific infrastructure for independent, rather than corporate, food stalls. Fig. 9.14 Rupert Woods Y3, ‘Re-Branding Hong Kong Pollution’. In 1997 Hong Kong was returned to China and the Hong Kong government feared that it would become ‘just another Chinese city’. To avoid this, the scheme Brand Hong Kong was launched to promote Hong Kong as ‘Asia’s World City’, advertising the city’s heritage and natural beauty as a key focus. However the scheme failed for many reasons, two of which were declining natural beauty and the erosion of heritage buildings due to acid rain from worsening pollution and air quality. Buildings have become indicators of pollution, due to acid rain staining and eroding buildings. This is considered a dirty and negative image for Hong Kong, however this project proposes to reposition the
perception of pollution. Using found data on the predictions of worsening pollution in Hong Kong, the artificial acid rain can erode materials to match the data and form a 1:1 collage of materials for visitors to experience and be informed on how the material world will look if pollution isn’t improved.
Fig. 9.15, 9.16, 9.18 Edward Taft Y3, ‘Museum of Hong Kong’s Lost Urban Fabric’. Within the next 30 years Hong Kong is destined to face an all-too-familiar situation of uncertain identity and a new nostalgia for the recent past, a time when there were still faint remnants of pre-handover culture. The memory of this culture was ingrained within the urban fabric, which has since been lost at the helm of redevelopment. This is ultimately the goal of the Museum of Hong Kong’s Lost Urban Fabric. The architectural proposal uses cinematic footage from the city’s Nostalgic Cinema archive to construct lost urban spaces into three-dimensional photogrammetry models. In an experience that relies heavily on the continuing development of augmented reality technology, the visitor will be able to wander through various reconstructions of sites
within Hong Kong that have since been lost. The resulting role of the architecture is to act as a backdrop for potentially infinite AR scenarios, whilst enhancing the scope for scale deception in order to fit as much of the lost city within the walls as possible. Fig. 9.17 Edward Taft Y3, ‘Dreams of Kowloon Walled City’. The project concerns Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, known as the biggest slum on earth. With the handover approaching, the snap decision was made to demolish Kowloon Walled City. By 1995 there was no evidence that the Walled City had ever existed. The suddenness of the decision to demolish the Walled City meant that there was very little documentation of the site prior to its demolition. A book called City of Darkness created by architect Greg Girard and photographer Ian Lambot is the only true documentation of life inside Kowloon. This
project attempts to recreate resident Albert Ng Kam-ko’s dream, tracing his journey through the stairs and alleyways to retrieve his family’s water, using photographs and accounts from City of Darkness . The project explores various methods of reconstruction, with the ultimate outcome being a digital recreation of the Walled City in Albert Ng Kam-ko’s dream. This reconstruction is then occupied through Virtual Reality to bring the user as close as possible to the dreamlike experience.
2017
The Ephemeral City Jessica In,
Year 2
Assankhan Amirov, Theo Brader-Tan, Eleanor Evason, Gabriele Grassi, Thomas Leggatt, Patrycja Panek, James Robinson
Year 3
Krina Christopoulou, Morgan Hamel de Monchenault, Arthur Harmsworth, Janis Ho, Jaejun Kim, Minghan (Tom) Lin, Xiao Ma, Samuel Price, Niraj Shah
Unit 9 also continues an ongoing collaboration with Denis Vlieghe, who runs a Physical Computing Workshop as part of Project 1 (Interactive Device)
Thank you to our critics: Sam Aitkenhead, Edwina Attlee, Paul Bavister, Alastair Browning, Nat Chard, Kacper Chmielewski, Richard Difford, Elizabeth Dow, Murray Fraser, Ruairi Glynn, Penelope Haralambidou, Jonathan Hill, Lilly Kudic, Constance Lau, Jamie Lilley, CJ Lim, Emma-Kate Matthews, James O'Leary, Jonathan Pile, Sophia Psarra, Arturo Revilla, Farlie Reynolds, Don Shillingburg, Andrew Slack, Giles Smith, Eva Sopeoglou, Ivo Tedbury, Manijeh Verghese, Denis Vlieghe, Patrick Weber, Nick Westby, Dan Wilkinson, Simon Withers, Fiona Zisch
Special thanks for photography workshop by Soma Sato
Special thanks for computing workshops by Steven Howson and Denis Vlieghe
The Ephemeral City
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
"The difference between a piece of architecture and an image is that people can move through architecture, meaning that the element of time is the crucial difference. Architecture is the opposite of an image. Architecture is not about space, but about time," Vito Acconci
This year, our investigations began by considering the concept of dimension beyond physical objects, negotiating between different planes of time to create the architecture of the Ephemeral City. Our early studies explored Mexican culture from afar, to design and create a time-based, spatially embedded device. Speculative in nature, these design explorations are nonetheless bound by determined roles and relationships and form the basis of an architectural analysis – measuring geographically defined qualities of space such as rhythm, tempo and speed, creating kinematic representations of place closely related to the performance of its inhabitants.
Our field trip led us to Mexico City, where we considered Mexican culture across multiple planes of time – the modern-day capital, the Spanish-colonial influence, and the ancient sites of the Aztecs – the combination of which creates the vibrant, complex and overflowing metropolis that is Mexico City today. Our main project is a complex building for a public programme that speculates on and suggests new forms of the Ephemeral City. The projects propose a new urban typology for an architecture that could act as a generator for future change, or as a resource for forgotten communities. The proposals are led by students’ initial curiosities, then are developed and driven by considering inhabitants not as passive receptors, but instead as active elements in the definition of our architecture.
Unit 9 is interested in an architecture that mediates between matter and form, and the relation between design and occupation. We are interested in the celebratory, the continually reconfiguring and reinvented. We see performance as intrinsically linked to the development of technology beyond the discipline of architecture. We are critical of the passive consumption of technology and instead support rigorous investigations into its application to design processes. We continually question the conventions of the production of architecture, pushing the boundaries of drawing, making and interactivity to actively promote both analogue and digital craftsmanship.
Fig. 9.1 James Robinson Y2, ‘One Drop at a Time’. The device is a micro-archive of different water samples found in Mexico City. It reveals apparently unnoticeable changes within the water system (of waste and pollutants, etc), allowing viewers a glimpse into Mexico City’s complex relationship with water and the environment over time. Fig. 9.2 Jaejun Kim Y3, ‘Flight Club’, interactive model with remote control and laser lights. The building is a proposal for a nighttime hand-gliding club. Located on an archaeological landscape northeast of Mexico City, the club offers visitors a different experience of viewing the Pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan (a UNESCO World Heritage site). The proposal consists of an indoor training section which allows beginners to practice, as well as multiple runways for more advanced users and viewing platforms for visitors. Whilst
gliders can also visit during the day, night-gliding is the main attraction and the architecture sets the backdrop for the ephemeral performance of light and flight after sunset.
Fig. 9.3 Minghan (Tom) Lin Y3, ‘Drug Rehabilitation Centre’. This proposal is for a drug rehabilitation centre in Mexico City. The architecture of the building consists of a series of carefully choreographed waterscapes that create soft barriers. This is juxtaposed against the rigid daily routine of the programme. Using only natural light, users are directed around the building throughout the day. Sunlight falling onto the different surfaces of the building, together with the presence of flowing water, creates moments in which matte concrete walls become mirrors of their context, and shallow ponds not only reflect the sky, but also create moving rainbows. Fig. 9.4 Janis Ho Y3,
‘Cinematic Courthouse’. The proposal is for a cinematic courthouse in Mexico City. The building openly engages in filming courtroom proceedings in an attempt to open up the country’s judicial system to a public which has arguably lost faith in it. The architecture intentionally dramatises key figures moving through spaces, by using cinematic lighting and moving cameras. Viewers attending court proceedings or viewing remotely via smart devices are fed live footage of the events, with all key figures portrayed as equals. It is hoped that justice can be served without prejudice. Fig. 9.5 Jaejun Kim Y3, ‘Flight’. Throughout history, people have had the desire to fly. The interactive device captures the essence of the ritualistic Mexican ‘Hopi’ run. Using Arduino, the device shows the basic gestures of the eagle’s wings, including the intricate change
of the direction of feathers, all in one smooth movement. The performance of the device allows viewers a sense of flight. Essential elements to the ‘Hopi’ tribe, such as rainwater, cloud and lightning, are represented with lasers, mirrors and fog.
Figs. 9.6 – 9.7 James Robinson Y2, ‘Hydrodynamic Landscape and Water Archive’. The building captures the lost lakes of Mexico City. The proposal includes private laboratories, a water archive, a public park, and nutrient-emitting cranes hovering above open lakes. Different parts of the building are allowed to be flooded as the landscape fluctuates with the seasons. The architecture is a cross between a building and a scenographic landscape. Fig. 9.8 Thomas Leggatt Y2, ‘Equilibrium Weather Device’. The device looks to engage an audience to question the balance between man-made environmental issues and the human intervention required to reduce their impact. It requires constant human interaction to create equilibrium, by way of interventions that allude to man’s misuse of water and nature’s way of replenishing such natural resources. The design
questions how man balances out these forces. Fig. 9.9 Thomas Leggatt Y2, ‘The Sound Archive’. Sited in Centro Historico, The Sound Archive uses an architectural language to act as instruments for rainwater during the wet season. The sounds created are recorded as an archive for future reference. During the dry season, the archive sounds are replayed to create a folly-esque representation of water flowing through the design. The experience of the architecture juxtaposes live and mediated soundscapes.
Fig. 9.10 Assankhan Amirov Y2, ‘Mercado de Niño Jesús’. The building is for a vertical market to accommodate the production of the much-loved baby Jesus dolls. Sited in Centro Historico, the programme also includes bars, restaurants, museums and platforms, which offer stunning views across the city centre. Much of the building is made up of large exposed ramps and stairs, which encourage informal trading and community life, all of which are visible to the public at street level. There are also plug-in pods for more permanent activities and back-of-house spaces. The façade is made of recycled tarpaulin salvaged from old market stalls and street vendors. Fig. 9.11 Gabriele Grassi Y2, ‘Ghost Recon Gaming Centre’. Situated in Roma Norte in Mexico City, the building is a labyrinth for gamers, developers and viewers. The proposal
offers a series of pixellated spaces that weave public and private, indoor and outdoor. To gamers on VR headsets, the spaces they occupy have the ability to appear bigger than their physical presence, thereby creating infinite possibilities within the game. To viewers, they are simply running around the same reconfigured spaces using sliding and rotating elements within the architecture. There is a park in front of the building, and the building sits on an island site with a front-facing public park. The blank façade act as a screen for the projection of gaming activities. Fig. 9.12 Eleanor Evason Y2, ‘Language Centre for the Indigenous People of Mexico City’. Here, the digital language of code is an allegory for verbal language. This project is an experiment in generative design which uses the cellular structure of the Voronoi mesh for the subdivision
of space as a result of pointcloud glitches. The building uses light, both natural and artificial, to choreograph the user experience of the spaces. Planar surfaces are used to reflect light and create moments of clarity throughout the building, echoing the visitor’s progression through a language.
Fig. 9.13 Niraj Shah Y3, ‘Complejo Deportivo’. The building is a combination of sports complex, public park and bus stop. Made from concrete panels of different bounce tolerance, occupiers are free to use its surfaces for impromptu sporting activities – thereby encouraging visitors from afar who have travelled there by bus, and local residents, to interact with it in a playful way. There is also a dedicated sports complex for more formal activities such as basketball, mini-football, squash and swimming. Fig. 9.14 Theo Brader-Tan Y2, ‘Street Vendor Hub’.
By day, the building deploys vendor carts across the local neighbourhood to sell street food popular with local residents and tourists. By night, the carts dock at the main building to create a large kitchen, turning the building into a series of restaurants and bars, housed in inflatable structures. The architecture is visually open in order to preserve the tradition of street food and aims to provide a more sustainable approach for the future.
Figs. 9.15 – 9.18 Krina Christopoulou Y3, ‘Digital Wonderland’. Located on the island of the Lago Mayor in Mexico City, the Cartographic Library houses maps of places that never existed. The proposed library archive is built underground, and upon retrieving a map with an augmented reality interface, the laser infrastructure on the roof recreates the phantom place through a triangulated laser-scape of the map’s topographic character. Upon arriving at the library, visitors may enter the underground archives of the physical maps. Scanning the maps with a smartphone reveals an augmented reality interface with which visitors can select the maps they wish to view on the roof’s laser-scape. The underground spaces are designed following principles of landscaping, and assuming arrangements that combine central nodes of activity
with smaller, more intricate connecting routes. Conceptually, the architectural experience of the building is structured around the concept of deja-vu, created by the duplication of experiences. This creates an stereoscopy of similar experiences, whose similarity questions the memory of the past, the integrity of the present and the assumption of the future. The library is built underground, assimilating the island’s topography, resurfacing on the site with its extensive roof.
Year 2
Aya Ataya, Natasha Blows, Wai (Thomas) Chu, Christopher Grennan, Zeng (Glen) Heng, Karina Tang, Connie Tang Koon Cheong, Tze-Chuan (Roger) Tung, Claudia Walton
Year 3
Carrie Coningsby, Alessandro Conning-Rowland, Judy El-Hajjar, Maria Junco, Jaemin Kim, George Proud, Ken Sheppard, Issui Shioura
UG9 continues to work with ongoing collaborator Arup Associates for Year 3 Technical Dissertations. Special thanks to Mick Brundle and James Ward
UG9 also continues an ongoing collaboration with Denis Vlieghe who runs a Physical Computing Workshop as part of Project 1 (Interactive Device)
Special thanks to our critics: Alessandro Ayuso, Scott Batty, Rhys Cannon, Luke Chandresinghe, Nat Chard, Tom Coward, Florian Dussopt, Stephen Gage, Penelope Haralambidou, Jonathan Hill, Carlos Jimenez, Manuel Jimenez, Kyriakos Katsaros, Andre Sampaio Kong, Dionysia Kypraiou, Constance Lau, Tim Lucas, Duncan McLeod, Mads Hulroy Peterson, Donald Shillingburg, Tom Slivans, Giles Smith, Michiko Sumi, Tomas Tvarijonas, Manijeh Verghese, George Wade, Nick Westby
Special thanks for photography workshops by Finbarr Fallon and Jim Stephenson
Please also visit: Facebook.com/Design.Unit9 Vimeo.com/DesignUnit9
Lux::Umbra
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
I decided to record "the life of a candle." Late one midsummer night, I threw open the windows, and invited in the night breeze. Lighting a candle, I also stopped open my camera lens. After several hours of wavering in the breeze, the candle burned out. Savouring the dark, I slowly closed the shutter. The candle's life varied on any given night – short intensely burning nights, long constantly glowing nights – each different, yet equally lovely in its afterglow. Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1995
Our investigations this year began with concepts of light and shadow explored via historical, contemporary and speculative technological interpretations. We are curious about the difference in meaning between Western and Eastern interpretations of light and shadow. We continue the threads from last year to explore the following question: in a perpetual overexposed day created by modernity, the Internet and contemporary globalisation, what can these themes of light and shadow offer our architecture in our constantly – allegorically and literally – overlit world?
Lux
The introduction of gas lamps was one of the most important social and political contributions to the Victorian city, creating not just new urban typologies but also new behaviours and a new experience of the city. This transformative nature of light sets the ambition for our preliminary studies into Japan from afar, exploring concepts of light, shadow, materiality, time and technology.
Umbra • Penumbra • Antumbra
The three distinct parts of a shadow set the theme of the main building project of the year. Often used to describe the shadows cast by celestial bodies, they are also used to describe the levels of darkness. Sited in Kyoto, we are interested in how design can influence the lives of many people (real and imagined), how they move and how they live in their environment, the relationships between them and the interaction and inhabitation of these spaces and moments. The role of light and shadow to design the immaterial, the ephemeral-permanent, and an architecture that is beyond the control of the architect are themes central to this year’s main project. UG9 sees performance as intrinsically linked to the development of technology beyond the discipline of architecture. We are critical of the passive consumption of technology and the lack of criticality in its application to design processes. We continually question the conventions of the production of architecture, pushing the boundaries of making, interactivity and drawing to become an integral part of the design process. We actively promote analogue and digital craftsmanship and time-based media to rigorously test ideas from inception through to final representation.
Fig. 9.1 Wai (Thomas) Chu Y2, ‘Hidden Beauty’, interactive dressing device. Inspired by the hidden boundaries of Yakuza tattoo culture and the Samurai dressing ritual, the device scans the user’s arm via a 3D scanner positioned on the outer orbit. The digital contour of the arm is fed into a computer and once processed, a 3D printer pen on a robot arm draws a live 3D tattoo around the user’s arm guided by the digital scan.
Fig. 9.2 Tze-Chuan (Roger) Tung Y2, ‘Interactive Time Fountain’, interactive device. This device is a futuristic time fountain based on the traditional Japanese cistern that tips to measure time through volumes of water. Stroboscopic light and shadow are linked with the viewer’s interactions with the fountain, causing the water to seemingly drip at different speeds, both forwards and backwards in time.
Fig. 9.3 Aya Ataya Y2, ‘Digital Purification’, interactive device. Gestures found in traditional Shinto purification rituals Onusa and Temizuya are reinterpreted into a digital light painting device to create mementos of the experience. Head and hand movements are tracked to recreate active voids in the light surfaces for an exposure of Sugimoto’s ‘life of the light’ that is unique to each personal expression of the ritual.
Figs. 9.4 – 9.7 Issui Shioura Y3, ‘Chano-yu Tea Ceremony Lighthouse’, interactive drawing, acrylic and acetate layered section with light. The concept of ichi-go ichi-e (a once-in-a-lifetime encounter), a tea ceremony (chanoyu) – is reinterpreted through Gibson’s theories of visual perception, affordance and occluding edges of perceived space. The traditional illusional qualities of Roji tea gardens
throughout the seasons is manifested through different journey pathways within the building that are perceptually altered – but not physically elongated – through the precise use of light tube columns and sliding walls. The creation of unique, memorable spatial moments with light induces a separation from reality, to allow for the deep conversations over tea to achieve the core quality and enhanced experience of chano-yu without the strict traditional appearance.
Fig. 9.8 Zeng (Glen) Heng Y2, ‘Kimono Fabric Dye Factory’, folded Kimono laser-etched final drawings. The proposal is for a fabric dye factory using natural colouring from recycled food waste collected from the restaurants across Kyoto. The final drawings on calico fabric plays with the conventions of pattern cutting and architectural notations. Through the unfolding, the Kimono orthographic drawings are slowly revealed.
Fig. 9.9 Ken Sheppard Y3, ‘Kyoto 4’33’, film still of physical model and audio recording with water. Kyoto 4’33 is a storm surge cistern that acts as an auditorium complex. The infrastructure for storm surge reduces the risk from the monsoon flooding of the neighbouring Kamogawa river, while utilsing the captured water to create a transformative event space for the asynchronous performance of Gagaku music
performed during the Jidai Matsuri festival in October. The filling of the structure triggers a transformation from three separate auditoria into one combined auditorium, through a series of floating mechanisms. During the asynchronous performance, sound produced by the three orchestras are reflected into the central cistern to mix and reverberate, depending on the water levels dictated by the region’s natural hydrological cycle. Fig. 9.10 Ken Sheppard Y3, ‘Ceremony’, final drawing of installation performance staging. Ceremony explores the concept of Ma – a moment of reflective pause –through a spatial sound and light performance. Three players interpret a Laban-type score on their motion instruments, which is translated into a light and laser projection to visualize the light boundaries created by their performance. As Kiri
9.8
9.9
(or haze) is used as a compositional technique to create visual Ma in traditional Japanese paintings, Ceremony continually redraws Ma through the immaterial medium of projected light volumes, momentarily capturing the ephemeral qualities of the ceremony space. Fig. 9.11 Issui Shioura Y3, ‘Chano-yu Tea Ceremony Lighthouse’, 1:50 model.
Fig. 9.12 Alessandro Conning-Rowland Y3, ‘Kyoto Motorcycle City’, detail model. The main building sited in central Kyoto and associated infrastructure around the city provides the framework for an annual motorcycle race for the thriving, but locally underappreciated, custom vehicle culture in Japan. The proposal is a symbiotic overlay of architectural artifice against the context of Kyoto’s key landmarks. Fig. 9.13 George Proud Y3, ‘The Yotsuya Sanchome Bitcoin Bank’, augmented sectional drawing. Sited in a residential area within Tokyo, the proposal is for a self-sustaining high-tech community. The bank houses a mine (for bitcoin), which is the primary source of income for the maximum capacity of 70 residents. Figs. 9.14 – 15 Alessandro Conning-Rowland Y3, ‘Journey through Shokintei’, light-drawing device. The viewer is taken on an immersive
collage journey through Shokintei using stylised images (by Walter Gropius, during his visit to the famous teahouse). The device is a series of interconnected Japanese timber screens lined with seemingly black double-printed shoji paper. Fig. 9.16 Claudia Walton Y2, ‘Kyoto Hiking Trail’, folded trail map drawing. Sited in Arashiyama, the Trail promotes slow tourism, encouraging visitors to reinterpret the landscape in a more personal way, instead of consuming views for their Instagram feeds. Pavilion structures and constructed viewpoints along the trail interact with hikers and with each other. Fig. 9.17 Alessandro Conning-Rowland Y3, ‘Kyoto Motorcycle City’, unfolded section drawing.
9.12
9.13
2015
Skilled Contrivance in the Age of Technological Abundance
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
Year 2
Yan Ho (Brian) Cheung, Jooyoung Cho, Lucca Ferrarese, Andrew Jack Leather, Adam Moqrane, Achilleas Papakyriakou, Sophie Percival, Soma Sato, Isaac Simpson, Nihal Tamang, Matthew Taylor, Tze-Chuan (Roger) Tung
Year 3
Douglas Croll, Jaemin Kim, George Proud
UG9 continues to work with ongoing collaborator Arup Associates for Year 3 Technical Dissertations.
Special thanks to Mick Brundle and James Ward. Unit 9 also continues an ongoing collaboration with Denis Vlieghe who runs a Physical Computing Workshop as part of Project 1
Special thanks to: Abi Abdolwahabi, Alessandro Ayuso, Scott Batty, Matthew Butcher, Mollie Claypool, Nat Chard, Marjan Colletti, Kate Davies, Murray Fraser, Stephen Gage, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Evan Greenberg, Penelope Haralambidou, Jonathan Hill, Bill Hodgson, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Jan Kattein, Julia King, Justin C. K. Lau, Guan Lee, Lawrence Lek, CJ Lim, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Claudia Orsetti, Sophia Psarra, Alisdair Russell, Sara Shafiei, Bob Sheil, Donald Shillingburg, Giles Smith, Michael Tite, Manijeh Verghese, Victoria Watson, Peter Webb
Facebook.com/Design.Unit9 Twitter.com/Design_Unit9 Vimeo.com/DesignUnit9
Skilled Contrivance in the Age of Technological Abundance
Jessica In, Chee-Kit Lai
Images, in the very act of showing, always hide the reality which they are supposed to show 1
Vilém Flusser’s philosophy on the technology of photography understood it to be not a faithful representation of reality, but rather, a cultural technique through which reality is constituted and understood. While his ideas are written in the context of photography and the news media of the 1970s and 80s, his vocabulary has proven influential for thinking about contemporary digital media technologies and their online uses. His essays highlight a critical and philosophical need to understand the media culture and its emergent possibilities and threats in an increasingly technical and automated world.
As architects operating in the age of technological abundance, we are curious about how imagination, technology and human desire are understood in the ‘digital age’ beyond the insistence of continuous reality being reduced into discrete binary units. The contrasting title – of binary technological and infinite abundance, and the skill required to wrestle them creatively – acknowledges that as technological development binds us to a set of infinitely evolving rules, the question of how we come to understand what is valuable in our environment is key to the development of the nature of our apparatus; how we view the world through our devices and architecture.
In acknowledging that technology has always informed the way in which architects work, we are interested in the how computation, fabrication and physical computing tools inform our spatial and interactive narrative of architecture.
Tokyo is famed for its unique urban mix of creativity, consumption, technology and tradition. What better place to explore a grand-scale technological spectacle, which seamlessly spans virtual and physical domains? This year the building proposals aim to identify and address culturally specific relationships that affect our infinitely connected, technologically abundant world, sited in a dimension of Tokyo between permanence and temporal, reality and hyper-real, virtual and physical. This year we visited University of Tokyo DFL, Atelier Bow-Wow and SANAA in Tokyo, Japan.
1 Vilém Flusser Lectures: We Shall Survive in the Memory of Others (2010) Buchhandlung Walther Konig GmbH + Co
Fig. 9.1 Achilleas Papakyriakou Y2, ‘Turn Me On’. Interactive prosthesis. The wearable device is inspired by Tokyo’s sex and fashion subcultures. The device consists of interactive touch pads for the voyeur, which in turn activates valves located at sensitive points across the wearer’s body. Certain valves are programmed to release soft puffs of air whilst others release frosts, thereby giving the wearer fluctuating sensations of pain and pleasure. Fig. 9.2 Matthew Taylor Y2, ‘Interactive Dating’. Interactive device. There are currently around 5.5 million vending machines in Japan, the majority of these are situated within Tokyo with a ratio of 1 to every 23 people. This project explores the vending machine – a machine that traditionally requires no social interaction – as a device for dating interaction. Taking inspiration from the stages of
Japanese tea ceremony, the table takes daters through seven stages, celebrating the completion of each. Stages 1 and 2, sitting and acceptance, release the metronome and the date begins. Stages 3-5, meeting for a drink: a teapot is placed on a pressure mat, when lifted a chime will begin to ring. Stages 6 and 7: if the dates touch, skin contact through the table and hands completes the current, which converts to a buildup of sound, an aural mark of the daters’ compatibility. Fig. 9.3 Yan Ho Cheung Y2, ‘Bowing Door’. Interactive prototype. This project explores the cultural differences in the Japanese understanding of gates and thresholds, prompted by an observation that the ticket gates on the Tokyo subway are by default open, closing shut only when an invalid ticket is presented. The idea is to implement the bow, a Japanese
gesture of social opening, to the character of the device. To open the door, one must bow first before the door bows back, indicating a sense of mutual respect. As the bowing door moves aside, another set of double doors open as if to invite approach, only to playfully close. Fig. 9.4 Adam Moqrane Y2, ‘The Fountain of Human Solidity’. Fluid dynamics installation. This project explores the socioeconomic theme of population density in an interactive and hyper-real spectacle which uses live human data to reflect a continually changing condition of the urban fabric. Initial research revolved primarily around population density in Tokyo and its resulting architectural outcomes of control. Mounting the device onto a façade with manipulated suction cups allowed the device to be transported to different sites, where each setting allows a hyper-real and
ephemeral quality within architecture to be captured. The device provides a spectacle of water that is driven by live human data captured by the Kinect/Arduino. Fig. 9.5 Andrew Jack Leather Y2, ‘Natural Disaster Landscapes’. Simulation device. Taking inspiration from the phrase ‘storm in a teacup’, Jack looks at capturing the essence of Japan’s natural disasters within a series of ‘picture frames’, much like snow-globes. Frame 1 recreates a miniature flood; frame 2 recreates tidal waves through reverse liquefaction; frame 3 recreates mini storm surges and earthquakes.
Figs. 9.6 – 9.7 George Proud Y3, ‘Secret 3D Tinder Vending Machine’. Virtual reality 3D model for Oculus rift and stereoscopic device. George’s latest edition of Tinder for Tokyo allows potential daters to upload 3D profiles at home via a webcam and a special app. The secret vending machines are located across Tokyo’s tight forgotten spaces marked on the pavement with interactive symbols. Users bow at this point to reveal a digital Torii (traditional gates to Shinto shrines) to enter the machine, which allows them to ‘check out’ potential dating profiles three dimensionally. Fig. 9.8 Yan Ho Cheung Y2, ‘Robots’. Exploded isometric drawing. Situated in Akihabara ‘electric town’ in the near future when robotic technology has matured and consumer robots within the household have become the norm. Reviving the electronic conglomerates of
Japan through its celebration of consumer robotics, the showroom houses a repair, research and development centre, providing the ageing population and their robots with aid and comfort. Fig. 9.9 Sophie Percival Y2, ‘Odaiba Digital Landscape’. Model with light/digital choreography. Sophie imagines a near distant future in which global warming has caused the famous Japanese cherry blossom trees to skip spring season altogether. The park is a nursery as well as a memorial to digitise the spring season, which is deep in tradition and attracts a vast number of tourists annually to catch a rare glimpse of the ephemeral spectacle. Other activities include glow-in-the-dark sprinklers, hologram cherry blossom, growing fog trees, cooling joggers’ track, laser fences and security drones.
Figs. 9.10 – 9.12 Isaac Simpson, Y2, ‘Engawa Transition’. Laser-cut concrete block drawings, orthogonal plan drawing, section-iso drawings. The project proposes to plant a seed of Japan’s fading traditional culture into the fast, ever-changing robot-like system that Tokyo possesses today. The architecture houses three main elements: the skin – an architecture that provides protection from detractors, wars and other outside influences proved to be a great destroyer to Japanese traditional culture; the memory – an archive for Japan’s arts, both new and old, also functioning as a public museum and library; and the heart - the practice and teaching of calligraphy (shodo). Offering a place for people to learn calligraphy and perform in, it gives the local people access to master calligraphers teaching and showcasing their shodo.
Fig. 9.13 Douglas Croll Y3, ‘Tailored Odds: A Future Proposition for the Gambling Culture of Japan’. Interactive gaming device. Investigating the idea of spatial negotiation through gambling, this conceptual model is designed to be operated by four players and a dealer. Drawing inspiration from Japanese pachinko, the game incorporates the concepts of control, negotiation, skill, chance, tension, secrecy, and competition. The dealer at the head of the table feeds the balls from above, whilst kneeling players turn their handles to control the tensile skin overhead, attempting to win as many balls as possible. The trick lies in that each player’s handle controls the mechanisms of a different player, and so the assumed control each player believes to have is false and compromised. Figs. 9.14 – 9.16
Douglas Croll Y3, ‘Keeping Afloat: Casino for Odaiba Island’.
Perspective drawings printed onto polyester film for lightbox effect. Situated in a waterfront park to the north-western corner of Odaiba, this casino challenges traditional methods in its manipulation and influence of its occupants through continual spatial disorientation. Traditionally achieved though labyrinthine floorplans and limiting the depth of vision, here the casino renders oblivious disorientation through moving elements of the building in a controlled and deliberate manner. The surrounding context of the gamers is in a constant state of change through the use of water to elevate and float the outdoor gambling spaces, minimising mass, friction, and energy required for subtlety spatial manipulation. The movement of certain spaces also creates temporary access to areas of the building only at precise points throughout the day,
further enhancing this concept of disorientation. One may find themselves in a space from which they cannot take the same route back.
9.15
Unit 9
Performance
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
Year 2
Tae Woo Hong, Angus Iles, Yangyang Liu, Rosa Prichard, Soma Sato, Anastasia-Christina Stan, Yu Xuan The, Ernest Zhi Heng Wang
Year 3
Yin Fung (Jacky) Chan, Duncan (Harry) Clover, Marcus Cole, Ruochong (Robin) Fu, Xiang (Robin) Gu, Claire Haugh, Abigail Portus, Ivo Tedbury
Unit 9 continues to work with ongoing collaborator Arup Associates for Year 3 Technical Dissertations.
Special thanks to James Ward and Mick Brundle
Unit 9 also continues an on-going collaboration with Denis Vlieghe who runs a Physical Computing Workshop as part of Project 1
Special thanks to: Abi Abdolwahabi, Julia Backhaus, Alexander Barretta, Peter Bishop, Greg Blee, Iain Borden, Alastair Browning, Mick Brundle, Ming Chung, Gary Edwards, Pedro Font-Alba, Murray Fraser, Maria Fulford, Stephen Gage, Joshua Green, Penelope Haralambidou, Catherine Harrington, Carlos Jimenez Cenamor, Constance Lau, Holly Lewis, Jamie Lilley, Ian Ng, Sophia Psarra, Jane Rendell, Peg Rawes, Sabine Storp, Ned Scott, Gabby Shawcross, Camila Sotomayor, Nick Tyson, Manijeh Verghese, Denis Vlieghe, Victoria Watson, James Ward, Nick Westby, Danielle Wilkins, Simon Withers
We see space as scripted, not a tabula rasa. Space is inherited and is always attached to geographies, histories, and policies. 1
We are interested in the Performance of Architecture, both as a set of scripted, artistic and cultural acts and actions as well as investigations into the ‘Performance Specification’ (particular properties) of buildings, assessed through their material and environmental properties. Vital to the ‘Performance of Architecture’ is the performance of cities, through their ecology, technology and infrastructure. The performances of cities are marked through events and actions such as protests (as seen in Rio 2013 and London Riots/Occupy 2011/2) and celebrations (World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2012/16). It is through the mediation of technology that performances between buildings and cities’ are linked. The use of digital social communication networks and the high-tech industrial revolution of digital technologies are changing the way in which we fund, occupy, produce and design architecture. An understanding of both the social and the technological are vital for architects to help shape the environmental and social performance of our future cities.
Architecture is in a constant state of construction and reconstruction, co-production of the social and technical. 2
For the last two years we have visited Brazil. This year the building proposals aim to act as new urban networks and as responsive generators for future exchange and adaptation for users’ changing needs sited in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. The specific focus of research was on the materiality of Brazilian Architecture, looking at its performance specific to both the environmental as well as social conditions. We have studied the links between a series of case study buildings, understanding their construction techniques, material expressions and social contexts as a means to inform a critical position in relation to each student’s choice of building programme.
This is why I’m interested, although it’s a dangerous phrase to use, in responsive architecture, that responds to appetites rather than problems. But I don’t want to have to define the appetites. The architecture has to be very responsive, but rather loose… 3
This year Unit 9 worked in collaboration with University of Columbia’s Studio X in Rio De Janeiro.
1. Rachel Hann, ‘Blurred Architecture: Duration and performance in the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 17:5, 2012, p.15
2. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory, (Oxford: OUP, 2007)
3. Cedric Price in conversation with Richard Goodwin, Public Life – Public Place, Issue 1 (London: Architectural Society, 1979)
Fig. 9.1 Ivo Tedbury Y3, ‘Ghost Landscapes of Rio’. These devices seek to communicate images of a demolished urban fabric which previously occupied the site, specifically, in what is now the 2016 Rio Olympic park. Responding to the strict public space advertising laws introduced in Brazilian cities, all that is visible to the naked eye are strips of shimmering LEDs – instead the experience is mediated by technology: when a camera is swiped over LEDs, the strip delivers the image in individual columns of pixels. Fig. 9.2 – 9.4 Ivo Tedbury Y3, ‘Circuit Atlantica, Formula 1 Track and Pit Building’, Copacabana Beach. A permanent structural intervention on the iconic site, which supports the temporary spaces that accommodate the race over the specific timeframe, but which can be stored underground during the rest of the year.
A ‘canopy’ of LED strips is hung over the track, allowing the viewing experience to be augmented by a motion-sensitive light display, but also generating advertising revenue through the ‘panning photography’ technique, specific to motor racing. This revenue in turn subsidises business start-up and community spaces which occupy spatial units along the strip for the rest of the year, forming a raised promenade which looks over the beach, linked to existing pedestrian routes using ramps across the road.
Fig. 9.5 Duncan (Harry) Clover Y3, ‘National Music Conference Centre and Lido’. Sited on the iconic Arpourador Rock between Ipanema and Copacabana beches in Rio De Janeiro the building acts as a wave energy hydro electric power station, seasonal music performance and conference centre while providing all round lidos. The sea wall is made up of oscillating water columns which shelters the lido bathing area all year round, these pools are tiered and once drained create a festival auditorium for the Rio music conference and other national celebrations. The building has three stages and each roof articulates and opens in festival period using hydraulic wave power.
Fig. 9.6 Ruochong Fu Y3, ‘iSportsPark’, Centro, Rio de Janeiro. The sports park is for office workers and local residents located in the Centro area of Rio de Janeiro. The building’s interactive façade pulsates according to athletes’ heart rates, allowing spectators and pedestrians to tell the intensity of the on going events. Together with other interactive and digital technologies it creates an immersive social and sporting environment. Activities includes gaming, training, relaxing, shopping and dinning. The building is visioned as a living architecture operating 24/7 and aims to use innovative sporting experiences to attract people and bring life back to the area, while also serving as an urban intervention and bridge within otherwise uninhabited business district. Fig. 9.7 Tae Woo Hong Y2, ‘Capoeira Performing Device’. The project looks at the key
characteristics and movements of Capoeira, a popular game and Brazilian maritial art. The key qualities of Capoeira are constant motion, balance and speed. Through a series of interactive prototypes the final device replicates the fundamental movement of Capoeira known as ‘Ginga’, activated through players interaction with light sensors. Fig. 9.8 Yin Fung Chan Y3, ‘Desalination Plant in Rio de Janeiro’. The building acts as an environmental model responding to two major conditions of the site: water and waste pollution in Botafogo Bay. Rubbish floating on the water surface is collected by boats for recycling and generating electricity with a Biomass boiler. The energy produced from the waste collected is then used to desalinate water from the bay providing fresh water for visitors. The systems and
processes of recycling and purification form part of the building’s fabric and are displayed to the public. Fig. 9.9 Ruochong Fu Y3, ‘iSportsPark‘, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, model.
Fig. 9.10 Xiang Gu Y3, ‘Interactive Sunflower Device’. Programmed with Arduino, the interactive device responds to the movement of light within Rio De Janeiro. The components rise and fall, tilting and turning to capture the movement of the sunlight throughout the day, creating a reflective field condition and solar collection above and shadow play below.
Fig. 9.11 Claire Haugh Y3, ‘Orchidarium’. (See also Fig 9.18)
Fig. 9.12 Yu Xuan Teh Y2, ‘Institute of Rio De Janeiro Landscape and Tourist Jetty’. Rio de Janeiro’s natural landscapes have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The project is sited in one of the city’s most picturesque locations. The project provides private spaces for landscape architects and UNESCO committees and researcher as a forum to discuss the preservation of Rio’s
natural landscape. The building also provides a public tourist jetty with cafe and viewing platforms allowing visitors to experience the landscape beyond. Fig. 9.13 Ernest Zhi Heng Wang Y2, ‘The Samba Rhythm Machine’. The machine’s performance incorporates various elements of Samba dance and music. Like a Samba drum bateria, the Samba Rhythm Machine is controlled by a Mestre (band conductor). A Kinect reads hand movements and translates these readings into motor movements, moving the device’s components and creating multiple performances akin to the carnival in Rio.
9.10
Fig. 9.14 Abigail Portus Y3, ‘Performance Centre’. The building is a performance centre and social hub, nestled alongside the Lapa aquaduct which accommodates a tram stop, between the Santa Teresa favela hillside and the main city. It provides an open community space with a central paraboloid theatre that projects an optical illusion of activity in the centre up to the floor above. This provides a virtual viewing plane, so visitors can benefit from a ‘secondary’ performance. Fig. 9.15 Ivo Tedbury Y3, ‘Circuit Atlantica’, Formula 1 Track and Pit Building, Copacabana Beach. (See Fig 9.2) Fig. 9.16 Rosa Prichard Y2, ‘Camdomble Church’. The Candomble ritual steps are translated into experiential spaces within the building. The two façades address contrasting neighbourhoods – one poorer and largely Candomble believers, and one wealthier and largely
observers. The synthesis of these groups is achieved through shared human experience – such as music, dancing and feasting – which are irrespective of class. Fig. 9.17 Marcus Cole Y3, ‘Reification of Data’. Taking precedence from Brazil’s ambitious plans to form its own internet, the project looks into the potential of depicting the digital within the analogue through the production of shadow QR codes. The device explores the potential for individual pixel blocks to form the basis of a façade system that responds to the sun. When positioned correctly, the cast shadows align to form QR codes. The physical model also explores the realms of sciography, acting as a prototype for a moving façade system that creates a link between the digital and physical realms.
Fig. 9.18 Claire Haugh Y3, ‘Orchidarium’. Woven into the grid of an old derelict hotel in the mountains outside of Rio de Janeiro’s city centre is the Orchidarium. A botanical gardens for Brazil’s native orchids, seed store and research facility, the project not only provides new jobs for residents within the local Canoas favela but also becomes the new outpost for the Darwin Initiative based in Kew, England. At night the building’s façade is visible across the city as three dimensional images are projected onto its wires. Fig. 9.19 Marcus Cole Y3, ‘Reification of Data’. Fig. 9.20 Marcus Cole Y3, ‘The National Institute of Data: Analogue & Digital Archive’. The National Institute of Data forms part of a speculative government scheme providing the first steps towards a technologically independent Brazil. Its purpose is to provide a platform for
the public to involve themselves in the undertakings of its government but also for the production of a data centre capable of fuelling Brazil’s ‘datapendency’. Thus as well as a modular data centre design, the building contains a public archive storing patents linked closely to Brazil’s technological past, present and future. Fig. 9.21 Duncan (Harry) Clover Y3, segment of a temporary floating pontoon venue for Rio’s carnival. Using the pressure exerted on the floor and waves passing underneath the fabric ceiling oscillates the jewels of mirror attached casting fragmented beams of light across the floor. Water is simultaneously pumped up to a Japanese cistern in the ceiling, which fills and tips at intervals then flowing down through tubes while vibrations from the venue’s sound system reflect the conditions of the waves.
Unit 9 Brief City São Paulo – London
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
‘…yes it was over, it was part of London’s past, it had joined all the other exhibitions, all the crashing military parades, the glittering state occasions, all the ceremony and display that come and go and help to make the public life of this city. Most of it had been pulled down now...’ Extract from Brief City, BBC documentary, 1951
Events such as the Olympics are a form of brief city and create opportunities for cities to reinvent themselves for the world but they also bring with them questions about legacy, sustainability, economic and environmental cost. This year Unit 9 investigated the architecture of the brief city, from the 1951 Festival of Britain via ‘pop-up’ and the Olympics to the World Cup 2014. The architecture of the brief city explores the celebratory and ad-hoc, involving energy and innovation, but, also considers the consequences of the transitory nature of the brief city for the environmental, organisational, spatial and social aspects of urban life. The brief city encourages short-term inventiveness as a testing ground for the permanency of future projects, both social and architectural.
The brief city inhabits places that are disused and overlooked and builds into unpopular or negative spaces, bringing with it the vital energy of a society expanding into the unknown, discovering itself and redefining the individual and their relationship to the collective.
This year we focused our research between two cities in the process of redefining themselves to the world, albeit in very contrasting ways; London in the midst of defining its own post-Olympic legacy, in contrast to pre-World Cup São Paulo, once a infamous city for poverty and crime, now a global economic and cultural powerhouse.
Unit 9 was interested in the lifecycle, performance and digital mediation of the brief city through hybrid forms of architecture that combine low and high technologies. The brief city needs to be adaptable
to users’ needs, through function and performance, viewpoints and constructions. In pursuing their architecture, students were encouraged to make proposals that revealed interdependent relationships between permanence and temporality, reality and the hyper-real, material and immaterial, the analogue and the digital, ownership and occupation, questioning the symbiosis required for such distinct opposites. The spectacles of the Olympics and World Cup transform cities during the celebratory and temporary events. The architecture of a brief city requires the design of spatial and temporal structures peripheral to the main events and asks how can these be reclaimed or reprogrammed for the afterlife of events.
Four Dimensional City
‘If temporary use is seen merely as the prototype for a long-term utilisation, then the plea for the temporary runs the risk of inadvertently demanding a right of asylum from the temporary.’ ‘The Temporary City’ in Four Dimensional City by Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams
The Royal Docks is situated between City Airport and the Excel Centre, adjacent to the London Thames Barrier. It forms an axis as a portal to the newly formed city of the east and Olympic sites, and a gateway into the heart of London. Opened in 1855, it was historically built on the Plaistow Marshes and designed specifically to accommodate large steam ships, innovative in its use of hydraulic power and strategically connected to the national railway network, the remnants of which are still visible. It was the shipping centre of London until its decline and eventual closure as a working dock in the 1980s, due to wartime damage and competing technological advancements in shipping.
Post-Olympics, the area was topical as the site was earmarked for change into a new ‘urban quarter’ with a focus on the knowledge and green technology industries, aiming to increase cross-river and local connectivity to become a logistics hub to
link into the newly forming east and to the centre of London beyond.
Infrastructure of Civility
‘São Paulo is vibrant, it has a very strong physical presence… Though the private sphere remains inaccessible, everything you think and do is perceivable in the streets. In other cities, the public spaces tend to separate very clearly from daily life.’
Olafur Eliasson
São Paulo, the third largest city in the world, is a giant metropolis with a rich confluence of cultures from around the world. Like London, it is ad-hoc in nature, a dense city with a layered and complex history that incorporates Brazil’s traditional and vernacular, colonial, pre-modern and modern history and is now at the heart of the country’s creative drive and outward expression to the world.
São Paulo contains a potent mixture of the temporary and the permanent. The temporary encompasses the favelas and carnivals, markets, short-term housing, spectacles and events from the Grand Prix, film festivals, experimental theatre and dance, to the International Contemporary São Paulo Art Biennale. São Paulo is also home to more permanent architectural masterpieces by Oscar Niemeyer, Lina Bo Bardi and Paulo Mendes da Rocha amongst many others. Unit 9 collaborated with Escola da Cidade in locating sites for the main architectural project of the year, sited in São Paulo.
Year 2
Arti Braude, Max Friedlander, Georgina Halabi, Hao Han, Carina Tran, Chenqui (John) Wan, Nicholas Warner, Camilla Wright, Yoana Yordanova
Year 3
Alexandria Anderson, Daryl Brown, Lichao Liu, Ian Ng, Rosemary Shaw, Carolyn Tam, Panagiotis Tzannetakis
Fig. 9.1 Max Friedlander, Y2, Social Service of Commerce (SESC). SESC is a private Brazilian institution, which operates not for profit. Run by trade, goods, services and tourism business the schemes is dedicated primarily to the social welfare of employees and their families, but open to the general community. The proposal provides a SESC for central São Paulo including a theatre, cafe and social space internally and an interactive public landscape externally that adapts according to the weather and public input. The facade system is performative and changes depending on internal occupation and the external weather conditions. (Internal perspective view).
Fig. 9.2 Yoana Yordanova, Y2, SEPASB Water Managment Plant and Culture Centre. The proposal aims to promote water recycling, integrate communities and revitalise the riverside,
through the filtration of the river water and introduction of an artificial ecosystem, which creates an urban oasis landscape along the riverside.The site is on the edge of the main river, where three underground sub-rivers meet. The built-over rivers in São Paulo cause many problems due to the lack of soil exposure and high rainfall, which results in many areas being flooded. Fig. 9.3 Hao Han, Y2, Mal Deldoro Bus Terminal and Market Exchange. The scheme is for a public bus terminal and exchange market. The programme is a response to the social fragmentation and poor transport system in the northwestern part of São Paulo. It is designed around local bus destinations, demographics and time cycles throughout the day.
9.4 Max Friedlander, Y2, Social Service of Commerce (SESC).1:50 Arduino working model of the intelligent facade and roof system.
Fig.
Fig. 9.5 Daryl Brown, Y3, Capoeira Social Hub. Located on a fringe condition between residential and an emerging business district the building faces an existing highway and artificial river culvert. The building design augments the public space into a series of interior and exterior public and semi public spaces though interconnected circulation. Facilities include rehearsal, performance and educational spaces. Fig. 9.6 Ian Ng, Y3, Sand Harvesting Device. The project is for the design of a mechanism that filters sand to create a prototype modular defence system for the shorelines of the River Thames, London. Fig 9.7 Camillia Wright, Y2, Cooperative HQ. The project is sited in Newham, East London. The programme adopts the six key principles of the co-operative movement and provides a central hub for displaced communities effected
by the 2012 Olympic developments. Fig.9.8 Alexandria Anderson, Y3, Plastic Surgery Clinic, São Paulo. The project addresses the increasing demand for plastic surgery and the strive for body perfection in Brazil. The proposal contains short, medium and long stay facilities and revolves around the concept of ‘beauty and the beast’. The clinical interiors are augmented with a series of devices that control users’ perception of space from light to dark, with apertures and mirrors which contrast with the surrounding road, rail and artificial river that makes up the urban infrastructure.
9.9 – 9.10 Chengqi (John) Wan, Y4, Palimpsest Landscape and Printing Forum. The project addresses the site’s history of failed urban landscape projects within the site in central São Paulo. The programme includes the headquarters of OCAS, the Civil Organisation for Social Action, São Paulo’s ‘Big Issue’. Included within OCAS is a printing press, training centre, recreational centre, and homeless accommodation set within a richly planted, programmed public landscape that is formally defined by the vertical layering of the site’s rich history. Fig. 9.11 Arti Braude, Y3, Silvicultural Centre, São Paulo. The project proposes the establishment of a Silvicultural Centre for the Brazilian Pine. It aims to encourage the proliferation of silvicultural stands on a larger scale through education, while acting also as a nursery to repopulate the city’s parks.
Simultaneously, the building functions as a physical commentary on the efficient use of native timber in construction. Fig. 9.12 Yoana Yordanova, Y2, Recycled Public Square and Bike Station. The project creates a new public square for local residents and visitors for the collection and exchange of plastic bottles. As well as a series of follies the design adapts used water bottles from nearby offices to create a floating cycle scheme. The contraption has been designed to clip onto a Barclays (Boris) bike to be used within the dock.
Fig.
Fig. 9.13 Max Freidlander, Y2, Flag Machine. Designed for the Royal Victoria Docks, East London, the project works as a 1:1 device that uses Arduino technology to control and mix an array of colour inks which ossilate between the colours of the UK and Brazilian flags. Light is projected out to create an area for performance and celebration. Fig. 9.14 – 9.15 Yoana Yordanova, Y2, SEPASB Water Managment Plant and Culture Centre. Fig. 9.16 Ian Ng, Y3, Institute of Materials. Utilising surplus waste materials the building acts as a prototype for the use of recycled and hybrid materials in construction, specifically paper. The building includes facilities for recycling waste paper, workshop spaces, social spaces and a library.
Fig. 9.17 Chengqi (John) Wan, Y2, Palimpsest Landscape and Printing Forum.
9.13 9.16
9.14 9.15
2012
Unit 9
BLINDING LIGHT, SPECTACLE AT THE EDGE OF LONDON/BEIJING
Max Dewdney, Chee-Kit Lai
“The thoughtful eye must turn to the edge of the blinding light of contemporary spectacles to catch a distorted glimpse of the barely visible media that allow the intense architectural broadcasts to take place. Eventually a rich catalogue of different forms of almost nothing will come into focus. Each of these overlooked, seemingly ephemeral conditions could act as the basis for the most substantial rethinking of our field. Almost nothing will again be the substance of almost everything.”
Mark Wigley, ‘Toward a History of Quantity’ in Anthony Vidler (ed), Architecture Between Spectacle and Use (2008)
Spectacle has particular resonance in understanding the image of London in 2012: an incongruous mix of Olympic excitement and fears of civic disorder in the wake of fierce summer rioting. Both events are spectacular albeit in very different and extreme ways. The Olympics produce highly controlled media images whilst the riots presented a spontaneous scene of urban violence and disorder. This year we looked at the ‘Architecture of Spectacle’ by studying London and Beijing, both cities famous for their pomp and pageantry in epic proportions. Project 1 looked at the juxtaposition of pre-Olympic London, and its imagined legacy through the design of temporary interventions, while Project 2 proposed public buildings within the reality of Beijing post-Olympics.
Spectacle produces different kinds of representation, both live and mediated, requiring the spaces and fabric of the city to tell a story. The infrastructure required to construct a series of controlled images is often temporary and ad-hoc in nature. In society increasingly obsessed with images, rendered views of buildings circulate in the press with as much force as ‘actual’ architecture, therefore virtual space and physical architecture must be understood in relation to each other.
The examination of architecture’s relationship to spectacle raises interesting questions of performance, time, functionality, materiality, technology, adaptability, users, viewpoints and constructions. Unit 9 is interested in architecture that has permanence and temporality, memory and loss, reality and the hyper real, fact and fiction, and in problematizing the notion that they are distinct opposites.
“Within industrial and post-industrial cultural and state formations, Spectacle implies an organization of appearances that are
simultaneously enticing, deceptive, distracting and superficial.”
‘New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society’, by T.Bennett, L.Grossberg, M.Morris, R.Williams, p335.
This year we visited Beijing; a city of Spectacle; a vast and symmetrical metropolis whose architecture has adapted to reflect the outward image its political leaders wish to project; from Kublai Khan’s rebuilding of the city in the 13th century, to the modern high-tech metropolis of today. Unit 9’s fieldwork investigations established connections with a number of leading professionals within the field of architecture, urbanism and curation, in our search for sites and issues of contemporary relevance to Beijing that the student projects are set within.
Special thanks: Architecture Department at The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Arrow Factory, Beijing; Arup Associates, Adam Smith and James Ward (Technical Consultants); Carol Lu Yinghua (Jury member Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale ‘11; British Council (Architecture, Fashion, Design); Caochangdi Workstation, Beijing; Dr Hilary Powell (AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts); Studio X Beijing (University of Columbia); Prof Yunsheng Su (Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design Institute)
Year 2: Caitlin Mary Abbott, Tahora Azizy, Benjamin Beach, Finbarr Anton Fallon, Qiuling Guan, Pavel Kosyrev, Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Panagiotis Tzannetakis
Year 3: Gary Edwards, Sarah Edwards, Ivie Egonmwan, Yin Sandy Lee, Jamie Lilley, Rachel Pickford, Sophie Madeleine Richards
Fig. 9.1 Benjamin Beach, Situationist Social Centre. The centre draws on the urban strategy of the Situationists to provide a community refuge with the aim to protect and preserve the urban fabric of the surrounding Hutongs through a photographic documentary process. The building provides darkrooms, cinema, exhibition space and artist residencies. Image shows site-strategy model based on Guy Debord’s ‘A Game of War’. Fig. 9.2 Qiuling Guan, Peking Duck Emporium. The project explores the lost tradition of local production of livestock within the city courtyard, reinventing the typology into a contemporary urban duck farm and restaurant within downtown Beijing. Image shows perspective view at night looking north towards Tiananmen Square. Fig. 9.3 Tahora Azizy, Urban Oasis.
The hybrid programme combines water, washing and play within the city’s emerging contemporary culture. It is a multilevel swimming pool, bath-house, café and restaurant sited within ‘798’ Art and Media district in the north-east suburb of Beijing. Image shows view from entrance lobby across swimming pool to waterfall beyond. Fig. 9.4 Rachel Pickford, Alternative Respiratory Clinic. The project addresses the city air pollution. The scheme explores the architecture of biomimicry to provide immersive environments for salt, mustard and chrysanthemum pools as a way to tackle breathing problems created by Beijing’s air pollution. Image shows concept model.
Fig. 9.5 Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Public Calligraphy School. See Fig. 4.9, Fig. 19 and Fig. 20 for more details. Image shows physical model. Fig. 9.6 Sophie Richards, Inverted Tofu Temple. See Fig. 11 for more details. Image shows cutaway axonometric view. Fig. 9.7 Sarah Edwards, Xi An Lake Institute of the Environment. See Fig.18 for more details. Image shows 1:500 masterplan model.
Fig. 9.8 Jamie Lilley, Sports and Social Centre for the United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) Outpost in Beijing. See Fig. 9.10 for more details. Exploded axonometric. Fig. 9.9 Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Public Calligraphy School. See Fig. 19 and Fig. 20 for more details. Model basement showing circulation. Fig. 9.10 Jamie Lilley, Sports and Social Centre for the United Kingdom Trade & Investment (UKTI) Outpost in Beijing. The building is an outpost in Beijing to act as a trade, leisure and business centre. The scheme addresses Anglo-Sino stereotypes, rituals and customs through an architecture of illusion and power. Image shows detail of 1:200 model which also functions as a 1:1 viewing device. Fig. 9.11 Sophie Richards, Inverted Tofu Temple. The project addresses the growing return to Buddhism
and vegetarianism within contemporary Chinese culture. The building provides an artificial urban well with soya allotments, tofu production and cookery school sited within ‘798’ Art and Media district in the north-east suburb of Beijing. Image shows sectional model with light study.
Fig. 9.12 Pavel Kosyrev, Celebration & Remembrance Centre. The project addresses the differences and similarities in the complex cultural customs and rituals of birth, death and marriage. The building provides a centre for celebration and remembrance for Weddings, Wakes and Birth Ceremonies. Sited within central Beijing the scheme provides space for families to celebrate and remember outside of the confines of their otherwise close living quarters. Fig. 9.13 Sandy Yin Lee, Jasmine Tea House and Gardens. The building acts as self-sufficient workers’ collective providing a local economy and gateway to the surrounding Hutongs. The design caters for the production of Jasmine Tea, from the growth of the Jamine flowers, to the sorting, drying and consumption of tea through collected and filtered rainwater. Image shows long section.
Fig. 9.14 Finbarr Fallon, Recycling Centre & Trading Cooperative. See Fig. 15 for more details. Aerial view of site and proposal. Fig. 9.15 Finbarr Fallon, Recycling Centre & Trading Cooperative. The building addresses the valuable assets of recyclable waste (that typically occurs on the city outskirts) within downtown Beijing. The Centre provides surrounding local Hutong residents a place to recycle plastic and turn organic waste into power, serving as a model for a cooperative micro economy. Sectional view across site and proposal.
9.14
9.15
Fig. 9.16 Gary Edwards, CAFA Union. See Fig. 17 for more details. Perspective plan view. Fig. 9.17 Gary Edwards, CAFA Union. The project proposes a student union in addressing issues of communication and democracy. Sited in the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, the building adjusts and adapts to signify and cater for a range of sporting and social events. The project addresses contemporary issues of the virtual and the real through an interactive architecture that utilises programming technology to adapt to the users’ needs. Sectional perspective view.
Fig. 9.18 Sarah Edwards, Xi An Lake Institute of the Environment. The project addresses Beijing’s issues of water pollution and congestions by providing an urban inner city retreat. The scheme is an infrastructural landscape for the monitoring and purification of the Xi An lake, located at the outer north east boundary of Beijing’s second ring road. Image shows final model looking south. Fig. 9.19 Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Public Calligraphy School. See Fig. 20 for more details. Exploded axonometric model. Fig. 9.20 Vasilis Marcou Ilchuk, Public Calligraphy School. The project celebrates the Chinese tradition of using public spaces within the city through spontaneous performance, fitness, play and learning. The building provides an open calligraphy school and student accommodation, archives, and exhibition hall,
whilst the architectonics provide open platforms for more spontaneous events. Image shows detail of exploded CAD model in relation to the building’s grid as a system to divide the use of individual spaces.
2011
A D H O C RACY
‘The word is a portmanteau of the Latin ad hoc, meaning "for the purpose", and the suffix -cracy, from the ancient Greek kratein, meaning “to govern”’
Bob Travica
The idea of Adhocracy is interesting because it sheds new light upon the contemporary political and cultural context of architecture. The historic strength of nation states as brands is increasingly challenged by forces that operate outside and beyond them, from terrorists to oligarchs, NGOs to international financiers This puts pressure upon the familiar iconography of nationhood, calling it into doubt. Traditionally the identity of the state is built upon military, religious and political/legal structures and manifested through a familiar iconography from crowns, passports, myths, monuments, skylines, cultural artefacts, and of course architecture. Adhocracy is in many ways an opposite form of expression which is why it can be deployed as a critical tool to explore the current cultural context of architecture. One example of an emerging Adhocracy is perhaps to be seen in unrecognised microstates, such as the Principality of Sealand, a former defence platform in the North Sea turned into an independent sovereign interest by an eccentric British family, or Transdniestra, a breakaway region in the state of Moldova. Micronations such as these can vary in scale from a 1:1 portal to an entire city territory
Project 1 entitled ‘Microstate’ was sited in London. The project focused on the physical and metaphysical boundaries of The Corporation of London Project 2 entitled ‘Archetype’ was sited in Shanghai, which the unit visited in December 2010. Shanghai is the world’s largest trading port and China’s most contemporary face. The city has free trade and comparative independence from central government dictate It is a city of adhocracy, with varying political controls between districts such as the French Concession and Shanghai International Settlement. Unit 9 would like to thank Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning for their generous help and support during the field trip Whilst in Shanghai the unit participated with Tongji in a symposium about historic and contemporary urban fabric. This formed the basis of a number of site investigations and led to the identification of key strategic areas of current governmental development in Shanghai, which was fundamental to the programme of a number of the students’ proposals.
Year 2: Amy Begg, Samuel Dodsworth, Geethica Gunarajah, David Hawkins, Jiatong Hu, Elzbieta Kaleta, Wei Ler, Hui Ng, Shiue Pang, Lok Siu Year 3: Georgina Goldman, Grace Mark, Ami Matsumoto, Louis Sullivan, Emma Swarbrick, Nada Tayeb, Rebecca Thompson
Fig. 9.1 Sam Dodsworth, ‘Shanghai Cycle Complex’ is an urban transport hub It connects raised train platforms, motorway and pedestrian thoroughfares The building acts as a centre for maintenance, innovation and spectatorship It creates a layered environment that invites examination of the bike in its many uses and enduring cultural significance Fig. 9.2 Nada Tayeb, ‘Bonfire Night Garden Party’, see Fig 9 10 for more details Fig. 9.3 Amy Begg , ‘Cinema and Ad-Agency for Chinese Films’ promotes the enigmatic yet distinctive Chinese Film Industry The scheme curates space to strategically evince advertising concepts of speed; the creation of desire and need evolved into rich immaterial architecture Through controlled movement the building is ethereal sometimes near invisible and at others aglow along key sightlines Fig 9 4 Shiue Nee Pang, ‘Dragon Boat Centre + Urban Waterscape Landscape’ provides a training facility for dragon boat racing in response to
Shanghai government’s efforts to revive the traditional sport The building creates an urban water landscape linking the traditional and the contemporary, aiming to provide a model for reviving the life of Shikumen houses and a community now under threat
Fig. 9.5 Emma Swarbrick, ‘Baoshan Rehabilitation Community’ is a bespoke facility for the treatment of incarcerated drug offenders, which runs the filtration of industrial canal water and rainwater The scheme is about refinement and purification, physical and physiological, of water and bodies It represents a desire to challenge stigma and encourages a more enlightened approach amongst the public and welfare agents towards rehabilitation of substance abusers in China Fig. 9.6 Hui Zhen Ng, ‘Dumpling Emporium’ is a multilevelled steam dumpling restaurant in Shanghai The building is an architectural translation of the actions of chopping, wrapping and steaming The dining experience ranges from ground level street food, to private banqueting suites The design aims to react to the often dramatic seasonal changes of the Yangtze delta Fig. 9.7 Amy Begg, ‘Courtship and Seduction’ is a mechanised building component that
toys with and evaluates the movements associated with pausing, shyness and blushing Inspired by the perambulations and dance of courtship displayed by Shanghai Mitten crabs (now inhabiting the Thames) the proposal also mimics the Chinese concubine performance of fan dancing in its exploration of seduction and spatial allure Fig 9 8 David Hawkins, ‘Laoximen Carpenters Guild’ forms part of a government initiative to preserve the vernacular architecture of Shanghai Located between the old and the developing city, it acts as a vessel between the two by using traditional craftsman’s techniques and materials in order to produce a complex contemporary architectural language, which forms the urban marketscape Fig. 9.9 Louis Sullivan, ‘Shanghai World Trade Organisation Affairs Consultation Centre’ is a walled free trade market complex in Laoximen, central Shanghai Contained within its boundaries is a rich architectural
landscape that utilises stereoscopic optical illusion It provides users with a dramatic encounter with a renowned depiction of 11th century Chinese trade: ‘Along the River during the Qingming Festival’ scroll in three-dimensional form Overleaf: Fig. 9.10 Nada Tayeb, ‘Bonfire Night Garden Party’ is a subversive event architecture, which aims to deconstruct the codes of conduct of the Inns of Court on Middle Temple lawn This explicitly and implicitly orchestrates a politically poised garden party, which tests the metaphysical boundaries of space and conduct The architecture is a complex negotiation between events and programmes, actions and transcripts
2010
Yr 2: Charlotte Baker, Alastair Browning, Connor Cunnigham, Emily Doll, Natalia Eddy, Maryna Kuchak, Nabi Masutomi, Joanne Preston, Arub Saqib, Hongmiao Shi, William Harry Tweddell
Yr 3: Joseph Dejardin, Joshua Green, Vinicius Machado Cipriano, Rebecca Thompson
In From The Cold
In from the cold is an idiom: ‘Out of a position or condition of exile, concealment, isolation, or alienation: Since the new government promised amnesty, fugitive rebels are coming in from the cold’.
It has been predicted that within nine years the world’s supply of oil will have peaked and as we enter a new unknown energy economy, the UK must acquire new energy sources – potentially a threatening state of affairs. The threat of a diminishing fuel supply is coupled with that of climate change, and as Britain adjusts to longterm weather changes, its notions of architecture will also undergo change. A new set of preoccupations for architecture is evolving, which aims to define and construct buildings that offer their users not only an enclosure and protection but systems to negotiate an uncertain future.
It is the contention of Unit 9 that the newly emergent energy economy brings with it a new ideological atmosphere, which has something in common with the one that developed during and immediately after the Cold War. The Cold War generated an atmosphere of high ideological tension, which, curiously, was very productive for architecture. Seminal proposals from Eastern and Western architects and designers alike stand today as proof of the Cold War’s creative charge, the implicit threat of total annihilation seemed to encourage countless visions of technology’s transcendence over humanity.
We studied Cold War propaganda strategies, adapting, revising and reinventing them as a means to address contemporary concerns and to redefine the agency of architecture in the making of proposals for buildings.
Max Dewdney & Chee-Kit Lai
Top and bottom left: William Harry Tweddell, Instrument for Activisim in Ballet Bottom right: Alastair Browning, Platform 10 Kursky Railway Station
Top and bottom: Alastair Browning, Platform 10 Kursky Railway Station Middle: Charlotte Baker, Factory for Moscow Architecture Preservation Society
Clockwise from top left: Natalia Eddy, Bandy Stadium; William Harry Tweddell, Theatre for Contemporary Ballet; Emily Doll, Viewing Device for St Paul’s Cathedral; Nabi Masutomi, Consulate for UNPO; Arub Saqib, Hotel + Transport Interchange; Vinicius Machado Cipriano, Winter Olympic Training Centre; Joanne Preston, Soviet Avant Garde Winter Cinema + Archive; Connor Cunningham, Moscow Mental Health Institute; Maryna Kuchak, Public Relations Factory Opposite: Charlotte Baker, Factory for Moscow Architecture Preservation Society
Above and opposite: Joshua Green, The Doronin Winery, East Moscow.
Yr2: Khalid Al Sugair; Nichola BarringtonLeach; Laura Brayne; Alexander Holloway; Yee Y Lau; Christopher Leung; Rhianon Morgan-Hatch; Linlin Wang; Clarissa Yee Yr3: Paul Leader-Williams; Keong L Lim; Louise Robson; Jack Spencer Ashworth; Richard A Sprogis; Tim Yue.
Alter Ego
The term alter ego; (Latin for “the other I”) coined by psychologists in the 19th century and popularised by the psychoanalytic movement, is said to refer to a second self or double psychological life. The alter ego is often used to describe identical characters within literature and film and is also used as a tool to analyse the relationship between a character and it’s author. Alter ego is the creation of an imagined other self, making a parallel or imagined universe, or second life, both absent and present. The architecture of alter ego explores multiple identities and layered memories of place. We investigate the spaces of heterotopia, that are neither here nor there, spaces that are simultaneously physical and metaphysical. In exploring the multifaceted psychological, literary, artistic and cultural dimensions of alter ego, Unit 9 aims to delineate a non linear architecture of duality. We investigate duplicated and mirrored spaces as a means of posing questions of scale and authenticity. The concept of alter ego also encompasses ideas about the relationship between an original and its copy and of parallel spaces thus creating two figures within a figure, two references within a reference, or two cities within a city. We focus our spatial explorations of alter ego on Istanbul or Constantinople, which has historically been a city of otherness to Northern European Capitals and which marked an edge of Europe a point of confluence for Europe and Asia. Istanbul forms the site for the main building project this year.
Top and bottom right: Tim Yue. Bottom left: Alexander Holloway.
Max Dewdney and Chee-Kit Lai
Clockwise from top left: Alexander Holloway, Khalid Al Sugair, Paul Leader-Williams, Keong L Lim, Jack Spencer Ashworth, Yee Y Lau.
Top left to right: Rhianon Morgan-Hatch, Christopher Leung. Middle left to right: Jack Spencer Ashworth, Linlin Wang, Nichola Barrington-Leach. Bottom left to right: Linlin Wang, Nichola Barrington-Leach.
Clockwise from top left: Alexander Holloway, Yee Y Lau, Clarissa Yee, Laura Brayne, Louise Robson, Jack Spencer Ashworth, Clarissa Yee, Richard A Sprogis.
This page and opposite:
Tim Yue.
2008
Interface
Jason King, Gabby Shawcross
BSc Unit 9
Yr2: Emma Bass, Diego Cano-Lasso, Theo Jones, Sonila Kadillari, Meng Liu, Harriet Redman, Claire Taggart, Yan Yan. Yr3: Min Gu, Alexander (Antony) Joury, Marina Karamali, Gordon O’Connor Reid, Paniz Peivandi, Marcos Polydorou, Ayeza Qureshi, Saman Ziaie.
Interface
Unit 9’s topic of exploration this year was interface. We were interested in exploring how human practices combined with interactive technology create ‘events’ that make the users’ experience of their world more significant.
In contemporary culture, the condition of interface has grown in importance with our increasing reliance on, and interaction with, new information technologies and media. Not limited only to the world of new technologies, interface explores the potential for exchange between a diversity of phenomena: people, time, space, material, logics and program. We explored this condition of interface and its potential at a number of different scales and in various contexts, acknowledging a preoccupation with time and experience as critical design elements.
Jason King and Gabby Shawcross
Top: Harriet Redman, Storyboard for an Introvert, Bottom: Emma Bass, Dream Mnemonic Device.
Top:Diego Canno-Lasso, Dune School H20 Pod and Site Model. Bottom: Saman Ziaie, Storyboard for a Remote Experience.
Sonila Kadillari, Carpet and Gossip Factory.
Gordon O’Connor-Read, Jack Kerouac Device.
Top (both pages): Saman Ziaie, Cyclorama, Rooftop Remote Experience. Bottom: Min Gu, Boat Building Yard and Museum.
