Design Anthology PG20
Architecture MArch (ARB/RIBA Part 2)
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 Neo-Agility (Neo-Aesthetics and Antifragility)
Marjan Colletti, Tony Le, Javier Ruiz
2023 Phygital Bodies, Cities and Architectures
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2022 Post-Digital Practices: Decentralised City 2.0
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2021 TOK(C)CITY (The End Of)
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2020 Out of…
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2019 Post-Digital Practices: Past-Future Hybrids
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2018 Nature 2.0: Constructing the Avant-Garde
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz
2017 High-Tech + Low-Tech Composites
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
2016 Convoluted Geometries, Hybrid Programmes, Intertwined Spaces
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2015 Incredible India
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2014 Newtopia
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2013 Porosity: A Material Shift Towards an Architecture of Permeability
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2012 Soft, Sensual, Synthetic: Green Paradigms
In The Post-Digital Era
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Hannes Mayer
2011 Unbalanced Boundaries, Undefined Limits, Uncertain Edges
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2010 Sacred Topologies, Profane Morphologies
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2009 Convoluted Flesh
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2007 Trade, Traditions and Ecosystems
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2005 Skeens: Hybrids Between Skins and Screens
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2004 Homo Sapiens, Robo Sapiens, Home Sapiens
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
2024
Neo-Agility (Neo-Aesthetics and Antifragility)
Marjan Colletti, Tony Le, Javier Ruiz
Neo-Agility (Neo-Aesthetics and Antifragility)
Marjan Colletti, Tony Le, Javier Ruiz
PG20 adopts time-based design processes, enabling designers to envision forms, spaces, behaviours and events in a state of constant transformation. Programmable, interactive and intelligent, this approach does not require any prior expertise. It views architecture and its design as a sequence of interplaying time-based systems. Consequently, our designs manifest as 4D, perpetually evolving scenarios created with advanced computational tools and cinematic techniques, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. We embrace the simulation paradigm, speculating about future architectures and conveying our concepts through time-based cinematic presentations. These are where the realms of poetry and immersive technology converge to craft unprecedented contemporary spatial experiences and strategies, emphasising individual empowerment while honouring collective values. The goal is to provoke critical discourse, incite curiosity and inspire new perspectives on the purpose of architecture.
This year PG20 embarked on a design journey centred on the concepts of ‘Neo-aesthetics’ and ‘Antifragility’. The first suggests a departure from established architectural styles towards innovative and potentially transformative design paradigms. The latter introduces the notion of bio-agile architectural strategies, indicating a shift towards responsive, resilient and adaptable architectures in the face of dynamic environmental and societal challenges.
In term 1, we delved into the ‘neo’ in architecture. Now that sustainability and social justice have gained importance, new architectural paradigms are being developed, breaking free from the rigid boundaries of stylistic ‘isms’ and aesthetic monopolies.
In terms 2 and 3 we explored architectural concepts that merge adaptability with nature-inspired ‘post’-fragile design principles, aiming to create resilient, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing buildings. Inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’, we sought to develop design strategies that thrive under stress, becoming stronger and more adaptable over time. Our building proposals, mostly sited in Sweden, were envisioned as living entities with life-cycle phases integrated into their design. They embodied bio-agility through flexibility, sustainability and technology integration. We believe that these principles ensure that our architecture remains relevant and resilient amid unpredictable environmental challenges.
This research-led brief encouraged students to explore, blend, remix and innovate without the burden of 20th-century ‘authorship’ preconceptions. Deliverables included 2D drawings, 3D models, 4D animations and simulations, as well as interactive and immersive environments.
Year 4
Christopher Baker, Ben Carpenter, Rares Comanescu, Edward Garton, Jina Gheini, Yuto Ikeda, Ye Ha Kim, Alina Von Olnhausen, Yue (Alexa) Wu, Antonio Yang
Year 5
Andrei Bigan, Matthew Choy, Yushen (Harry) Jia, Chrysostomos Neocleous, Zaneta Ojczyk, Muse Praditbatuga, Kehui (Victoria) Wu
Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Clewlow (Arup), David Edwards, Jeovana Naidoo (Atelier Ten), Michael Woodrow (UCL)
Thesis supervisors: Stephen Gage, Anna Mavrogianni, Michael Stacey, Tim Waterman, Fiona Zisch
Critics: Andy Bow, Kostas Grigoriadis, Damjan Iliev, Nikoletta Karastathi, Tom Kovac, Alexandra Lăcătușu, Sophia Psarra, Valentina Soana, Seda Zirek
Partner: CityX Virtual
Special thanks to Annika and Jonas Knutsson, Tess Johansson and Nacho Ruiz for their help and support during the student field trip to Hällesdalens Gård, Sweden
20.1, 20.12 Matthew Choy, Y5 ‘The Anthropogenic Leech’. Addressing pollution in our built environment, this decentralised community hub in Hong Kong converts carbon emissions into renewable energy. It attaches to energy-inefficient buildings, systemically exploiting their resources and operates as a holistic system, serving beyond its boundaries.
20.2 Chrysostomos Neocleous, Y5 ‘Bionic Constellations’. The project reimagines the Swedish fishing town of Astol into a bionic, net-zero and autonomous island. It transforms centralised housing into dynamic, decentralised and responsive units that adapt spatially and energetically to user needs, creating an agile network that merges structure and infrastructure. This approach fosters independent yet collaborative living, ensuring energy circularity and collective habitation.
20.3 Antonio Yang, Y4 ‘Lichenic Synthetica’. Situated within the industrial city of Gothenburg, this project investigates the symbiotic relationship between the project programme – a brewery – and its architectural skin. Influenced by the cellular configuration of lichen, the project proposes a photosynthetic algal skin interlaced within an assemblage of technical system networks that utilise brewing by-products to encourage algal growth.
20.4 Edward Garton, Y4 ‘The Language Machine’. Near Valhal Atestupa, Sweden, this project blends mythological symbolism, advanced technology and sustainability to create an antifragile data centre. Addressing Moore’s Law, it uses robotics to upgrade and recycle outdated components, with a visitor centre showcasing old technology.
20.5 Yue (Alexa) Wu, Y4 ‘Sarek Alpine Retreat’. This project in Sarek National Park, Sweden, combines biological motifs and Scandinavian themes to create climate-resilient structures. Inspired by comb jellies and the Norse serpent Jörmungandr, it uses phase change materials and 3D-printed façades with integrated fluid systems to optimise heat retention and energy efficiency.
20.6 Christopher Baker, Y4 ‘A Fleet[ing] Feeling’. The project is a shipwrights’ workshop for beautifully crafted wooden sailing boats, exploring neo-styles by fusing the legacy of ornate Scandinavian shipbuilding and the sacred geometry of Gothic cathedrals, set in Sweden’s western archipelago.
20.7 Kehui (Victoria) Wu, Y5 ‘[Re]claiming Wastelands of Extraction’. Identifying mining sites as conflict centres, the project tackles waste logistics and proposes a spatial solution for the fragility of Swedish mining settlements. Through interscalar design, it envisions resilient urban typologies bridging artificial and natural realms, crafting a landscape and urban framework for sustainable mining communities in Sweden.
20.8 Ben Carpenter, Y4 ‘Forging Feral Landscapes’. In the Torslandaviken Ecological Research Colony in Gothenburg, Sweden, a small community of 200 residents studies reciprocal relationships with new ecologies. The project encourages natural re-inhabitation by breaking large concrete surfaces, erecting flexible structures, focusing on sustainable stewardship and utilising ecological systems for improved ecosystem services.
20.9 Alina Von Olnhausen, Y4 ‘Delskär Marine Laboratory’. This marine biology research centre on Delskär Island addresses climate change impacts on the Swedish Baltic Sea. Inspired by local medusae and coastal architecture, the design emphasises antifragility. Prefabricated panels ensure ease of construction in the remote location, blending resilience with traditional design elements.
20.10 Yuto Ikeda, Y4 ‘Nordic Eco-Metabolism’. Inspired by antifragility and the Metabolism movement, the project on Gothenburg’s coast dynamically adapts to environmental changes, embodying regenerative,
adaptable architecture that continuously evolves with its environment. Floating bio-receptive rooms, prefabricated and made of recycled timber waste turned into bioplastic material, are designed to naturally degrade, fostering carbon sequestration.
20.11 Yushen (Harry) Jia, Y5 ‘How to Harvest a Crater’. In the year 2100, humanity sets its sights on the ice-filled craters of Mars, where pioneers, alongside AI-driven robots, transform ice and regolith into the building blocks of a new world. By melting out sub-ice colonies, the colonisers connect sprawling networks of transportation tunnels. A thriving underground civilisation flourishes, where human determination and technological innovation create a new frontier beneath the Red Planet’s surface.
20.13 Muse Praditbatuga, Y5 ‘Bio Genesis’. While the creation of organic shapes is variously approached in architecture, in biology there is only one system for generating environmentally stable bodies: morphogenesis. In strict adherence to the laws of science, this project operates at the intersection of biology and computation to imagine speculative architectures and inhabitable bodies that stem from a single strand of DNA.
20.14 Rares Comanescu, Y4 ‘Modular Metamorphosis’. The project envisions a deployable rehabilitation centre for patients suffering from various types of addiction, such as alcohol and substance use disorders. By rethinking the modular nature of the Metabolist movement, it creates adaptable, reusable and sustainable designs.
20.15, 20.20 Zaneta Ojczyk, Y5 ‘Museum of Multi-Realities’. The project de-stigmatises and re-engages the public with the layered history of London’s Crossness Pumping Station and Water Treatment Plant. A multi-reality project, made possible through emerging XR technologies, creates a novel spatial user experience enhanced by physical and phygital augmentation, hybrid reality and interactive architectures.
20.16–20.18 Andrei Bigan, Y5 ‘Fenestra Mentis’. Using brain–computer interfaces and biosensors, the project captures occupants’ real-time cognitive and emotional states, exploring the intersection of neuroscience and architecture and offering a new approach to designing spaces. ‘Fenestra’ visualises neural responses to visual stimuli while ‘Mentis’, a VR experience across three timelines, offers a commentary on the ever-changing nature of architectural styles and domesticity.
20.19 Jina Gheini, Y4 ‘A Rococoesque Field’. Situated within the growing urban fabric of Mölndal in Sweden, this project is inspired by the dynamic curves of Rococo ornamentation. The design employs vector fields to create varied spatial experiences tailored to each space’s function, determining and modulating natural light intake and illumination levels.
20.21 Ye Ha Kim, Y4 ‘Subterranean Kiruna Data Centre’. The project addresses data storage needs with sustainable technology, utilising Microsoft’s Project Silica glass-plate encoding to minimise carbon emissions. Located in an abandoned Swedish mine, it leverages the cool climate and repurposes excess heat for a mushroom farm, achieving a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.01 and setting new standards for environmentally conscious data storage.
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20.8
20.12
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20.17
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20.20
20.19
2023
Phygital Bodies, Cities and Architectures
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Phygital Bodies, Cities and Architectures
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
PG20 embraces time-based design processes that allow designers to think of forms and spaces, as well as behaviours and events in constant flux – programmable, interactive and intelligent.
Some may argue that the future is ‘phygital’ – a combination of physical and digital experiences. As architects, we believe that architecture can provide key skills in theorising and designing phygitality as it understands both the physical environment (materiality, ecology, sustainability) as well as the digital environment (virtual realities, Metaverses, videogame worlds).
This year PG20 studied Venice, one of the best-known and most culturally active cities. Elegant and beautiful, simultaneously introverted and extroverted, secluded and yet overrun by tourists, the city in the lagoon is heavily endangered by rising sea levels. More must be done to preserve the city for future generations. Based on their research into Venice, students developed their own visions to turn it into a prototypical phygital city, taking into consideration both human and non-human components.
During our field trip we visited the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, titled The Milk of Dreams and curated by Cecilia Alemani. Its three main themes – the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses, the relationship between individuals and technologies and the links between bodies and Earth – provided food for thought and a plethora of artistic phygital examples.
The Venice Biennale, established in 1895, today includes 29 national pavilions; in addition to the Giardini and the Arsenale sites, there are many more related venues. To make the Biennale more inclusive, students set out to re-imagine a new tradition, envisioning phygital pavilions beyond their scope of national representation and identity, activated not only during the Biennales, but all year long. The new pavilions were designed as flexible, adaptable and performative architectures; they catered for artists and architects exhibiting in loco, as much as for digital-native artists, architects and decentralised international collaboratives. By making them accessible to local physical visitors as well as to global digital audiences, these phygital pavilions may prove to be more equitable, inclusive and sustainable than the existing typologies.
Year 4
Andrei Bigan, Bianca Blanari, Chi Kit Matthew Choy, Yushan Jia, Chrysostomos Neocleous, Zaneta Ojczyk, Praefah (Muse) Praditbatuga, Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Kehui Wu
Year 5
Wojciech Karnowka, Paul Kohlhaussen, Isaac Plamiere-Szabo, Joseph Singleton, Luke Topping
Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Clewlow (ARUP), Jeovana Naidoo (Atelier Ten), Michael Woodrow
Design Realisation practice tutor: Dave Edwards
Thesis supervisors: Roberto Bottazzi, Stylianos Giamarelos, Sean Hanna, Abel Maciel, Oliver Wilton
Critics: Andy Bow, Barbara-Ann CampbellLange, Kostas Grigoriadis, Hanadi Izzuddin, Clara Jaschke, Nikoletta Karastathi, Andreas Körner, Tom Kovac, Laura Nica, Theodore Tamvakis
Partners: Yasushi Ikeda (University of Tokyo), Tom Kovac (RMIT, CITYX), Dagmar Reinhard (University of Sydney)
Sponsors: The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
20.1, 20.11, 20.18, 20.21 Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Y5 ‘Venetian Bladders’. The project tests the deployment of anaerobic digestion as a circular waste-to-resource system across the city at the scale of the body, the campo and the Giardini (mega-structure). It addresses sewage deposition in the lagoon by using bio-digestion to recirculate waste into electricity, heat and fertiliser. Infrastructure is devolved into the architecture as a generic strategy for all cities to become scalable, elastic and decentralised while connecting users to the built and natural environment. Using soft tectonics, the architecture convulses, changing the spatial character and programme in accordance with wider urban fluxes.
20.2 Y4 Pavilions ‘Venice Biennale 2029’. As part of the future architecture Biennale, fourth-year students envisioned a series of pavilion buildings situated in the Venetian Arsenale. These pavilions investigate the future curation of the Biennale and how it can be inhabited phygitally. The masterplan encourages each phygital pavilion to respond to the city’s contextual requirements, developing new design strategies to integrate flood defences, cultural spaces, clean energy, agriculture and smart infrastructure while tackling overtourism and refugee crises. Venice is transformed into an intelligent coastal hub by envisioning its future on multiple scales, from the micro-biological to the macro-urban.
20.3, 20.14 Praefah (Muse) Praditbatuga, Y4 ‘Symposia Zero’. This project proposes to establish an environmental forum in drowning Venice: inundated by the surging masses and rising seas, the city becomes the site for debating future challenges and opportunities. Symposia Zero interrogates crisis amid crisis by situating policyand decision-makers in the room – or the city – where it happens.
20.4 Bianca Blanari, Y4 ‘Cellular Venice’. This is a collection of modular cell prototypes that incorporate hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics as a medium for using salt and rainwater to grow crops as part of the Venice Biennale. These prototypes could be scaled up to a masterplan to address the city’s challenges in terms of flooding, food production and reliance on imports through its sustainable system integrated into the façade and floating foundations.
20.5 Chrysostomos Neocleous , Y4 ‘Self-Adaptive Research Facility’. The project explores the notion of an infrastructural ecology where architectural surfaces are transformed into architectural spaces of varied thicknesses, embedding structural, plumbing, lighting and HVAC systems within the building’s voids. Biological systems encourage the exploration of architecture in the phygital world to develop strategies and tools for a multi-layered integrated assembly that blurs the boundaries between infrastructure and architecture.
20.6 Andrei Bigan, Y4 ‘The Citadel of Venice’. The project takes a dual approach, establishing a permanent ‘national’ pavilion for stateless individuals at the Venice Biennale. This physical space offers a dynamic platform for artistic creation, exhibition and exchange. At the same time, a digital interface allows users to participate in co-embodiment, exploring the virtual pavilion alongside randomly paired companions. This immersive experience prompts reflection on identity, body perception and reality construction and fosters meaningful connections.
20.7 Chi Kit Matthew Choy, Y4 ‘Venice Mirage’. Responding to the Venice Biennale’s lack of infrastructure for digital mediums, the project proposes an immersive digital gallery for the event. Reflecting on the programme’s immense heat output, an aluminium skin with a simulated growth texture derived from existing site conditions acts as a heat dissipation device for the immersion pods throughout the gallery.
20.8 Zaneta Ojczyk, Y4 ‘Recrafting Venice’. The pavilion preserves community and cultural heritage by halting the displacement of the local population. With time, the pavilion will be augmented. Initially, the interior surfaces of the pavilion are blank; over time, they will be enhanced with physical and digital ornamentation by adding a digital layer of information into the physical fabric of the building through AR technology.
20.9 Yushen Jia, Y4 ‘Aqua Frontier’. This is an artist residency programme at the Venice Biennale that embodies the concept of the symbioscene and emphasises the dynamic interactions between built environments and biodiversity. Over time, the project will undergo a gradual transformation, reflecting the passage of time and the eventual reclamation by nature. It will be a designed ruin by the year 2100.
20.10 Kehui Wu, Y4 ‘Aural/Temporal Landscapes’. The project addresses how data-driven landscapes could become an integral part of the urban environment. By responding to the unique noise conditions of the site with masterplanning and the design of a phygital arts centre, it questions existing typologies while exploring relationships between sound, nature and the human body.
20.12, 20.15, 20.23 Paul Kohlhaussen, Y5 ‘Venetian Sand Engines’. In considering landscape and architecture as phygital bodies, hydrodynamic data is used to generate synthetically sedimented interventions that diversify the lagoon’s local geomorphology. Embedded within these, a decentralised research facility and educational campus are proposed for a new inter-institutional department of geosciences for regional universities. The project seeks to critique the anthropocentric relationship that the city has with its surroundings, and does so by functioning as a sand engine in an alternative approach to land reclamation that sustainably nourishes the lagoon’s starved sediment budget. Through its orchestrated deconstruction via controlled erosion, the dynamic system actively contributes to the regeneration of the wetland’s geomorphic diversity.
20.13, 20.19, 20.20 Wojciech Karnowka, Y5 ‘Ocular Envelopes’. The project navigates through body, vision and space, considering new paradigms of design through multi-dimensional technological and spatial protocols within the framework of virtual and physical reality. The visual perception data stream is processed to identify transient spatial perception voids and generates new spaces of collective consensus.
20.16 Joseph Singleton, Y5 ‘Inter-Grid’. Inter-Grid is a masterplan of Venice, morphing a physical, digital and diagrammatic 1:1 scale Venice into a system that enables new myths and futures for the city. A transitionary frame apparatus atop the existing system feeds into a community-led construction project, developed over the course of the lagoon’s encroachment into the city due to rising water levels.
20.17 Luke Topping, Y5 ‘Text in the Making’. Investigating spatial forms of text that have been overlooked in digital remediation, the project examines the potential of text to generate architectural mimesis. This concept envisions a situation in the text-driven AI world where a door is a page, a building is a book and a city is a library.
20.22 Muhammad Adam Ikhwan Saiful Rizal, Y4 ‘Mausoleum of Flesh’. This project tackles the energy crisis affecting Italy by exploring innovative ways to address it. It experiments with the unconventional idea of converting the bodies of the deceased into an energy resource through the process of decomposition. Specifically, it proposes the design of a tomb that explores the cycle of life and decay through multiple bio-stages with machine pods embedded inside the wall of the mausoleum.
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2022
Post-Digital Practices: Decentralised City
2.0
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Post-Digital Practices: Decentralised City 2.0
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Centralised society as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon. The invention of agriculture allowed people to settle and build larger communities which broke away from the smaller, self-organised tribal society standards of the past. These new societal systems grew much larger than the cognitive limit suggested by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar. He proposed that humans can maintain around 100 to 250 stable relationships (the so-called ‘Dunbar number’), beyond which people-based trust systems cannot scale up. Nowadays, as technologybased trust systems scale virtually without limit, we are experiencing a new decentralised trust system that promises to play a large part in the upcoming radical changes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Cities of the 20th century sought to bring citizens relief from traffic, pollution and congestion by proposing a non-hierarchical, growth-based system of urban densification in a closer correlation with nature and the countryside. Understood as a place of production (Fordian Industry 2.0), the city was formed of distinct and discrete parts: infrastructure, buildings and the natural landscape. In hindsight, the modernist design manifestations of this decentralised city appear outdated, unequal and not sufficiently diverse or inclusive. In fact, postmodern cities in the late 20th century provided a critique of such grand utopian visions of total planning and total design, reintegrating tradition, bricolage and iconoclasm within the scope of architecture. From today’s point of view these also failed, however, remaining too static and introverted to fit today’s dynamic societies. Digital cities in the 2000s attempted elastically to parametrise them. Here, too, the vision of urbanity became too self-similar and monolithic, rejecting collaging and noise, but failing to address environmental and humancentric aspects.
PG20 researched what post-digital decentralised cities might look like, learning from past strategies and suggesting alternative solutions. The projects resulted in complex hybrids, where technology and tradition, artifice and nature are equal: not put into binary (modernist), collage (postmodern) or parametric (geometric) relationships, but into a complex, feedback-driven exchange. Here such concepts are decentralised, fragmented yet connected, and ready for the radical changes for which architecture must be prepared. We understood the city as a trans-scalar entity that requires designing on multiple scales, from the micro (biology, material, technology) to the macro (nature, cities, infrastructure).
Year 4
Wojciech Karnowka, Paul Kohlhaussen, Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Luke Topping
Year 5
Nadya Angelova, James Ballentyne, Michael Brewster, Paul Brooke, Yuqi (Kenneth) Cai, Paul Kohlhaussen, Kar Bo (Thomas) Leung, Carolina Mondragon-Bayarri, Shenton Morgan, Luke Parkhurst, Michaella Tafalla, Abigail Yeboah, Zhong Zheng
Technical tutors and consultants: Tom Clewlow, David Edwards, Alistair Shaw, Michael Woodrow
Thesis supervisors: Camillo Boano, Amica Dall, Stephen Gage, Abel Maciel, Claire McAndrew, Rokia Raslan, Guang Yu Ren, Michael Stacey, Robin Wilson, Oliver Wilton, Fiona Zisch
20.1, 20.19 Yuqi (Kenneth) Cai, Y5 ‘The Second Border’. With the rise of AI-enhanced surveillance, the need for an architecture that exposes and counters these mechanical gazes is clear. Designed with a bespoke architectural system, the glitched data-scape on the Hong Kong border encrypts our multidimensional spaces and faces. The project raises questions not just about privacy, but also about the equilibrium between humans, machines and nature.
20.2–20.3 Kar Bo (Thomas) Leung, Y5 ‘Post-Mined Mongolia’. By analysing the tension between Mongolia’s urbanisation and its traditionally nomadic culture, the proposal focuses on the spatio-temporal rehabilitation of a decommissioned Oyu Tolgoi copper mine through scientific (agent-based) and intuitive (physical and digital) processes of experimentation. This imagines a decentralised urban settlement prototype that serves both mining and herder communities, alleviating the existing pressures of rural-urban migration.
20.4, 20.16 Paul Kohlhaussen, Y4 ‘Isle of Tides’. The project focuses on the phased construction of a flood defence strategy for Canary Wharf on a decentralised, per-building basis. By harnessing the naturally occurring biological processes of the intertidal zone, the infrastructural intervention becomes encrusted with a synthetically biomineralised architecture that hosts a hybrid programme of aquacultural production, seafood trade and a new raised public streetscape.
20.5 Nadya Angelova, Y5 ‘BioMorph’. The project envisions interplanetary biogenerative architecture as the final frontier for the survival of carbon life. A symbiotic relationship between humans and plants is fundamental for securing long-term existence. By exploring how algorithmic simulations of the natural processes moulding organic growth can be modified to the context of outer space, a generative spatial system is imagined that adopts and supports vegetative matter in an extraterrestrial environment.
20.6 Carolina Mondragon-Bayarri, Y5 ‘Cognisant Landscapes’. Advances in technology have resulted in buildings being reliant on heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and becoming increasingly detached from the external environment. The energy fields around us are alive, mutable and transient. Computational fluid dynamics and solar radiation simulations are incorporated into the design process to generate climate-driven morphologies, reflecting the aspiration for a symbiotic relationship between buildings and the external world.
20.7, 20.18 Michaella Tafalla, Y5 ‘Coastal Modding’. The project explores a decentralised fabrication method for the micro-town of Sitio Pariahan in the Philippines and speculates on how the coastal community will adapt to its changing material ecology. Experimentation is carried out through a computational process. Fabrication methods using salvaged synthetic waste as building material combine with traditional vernacular systems to create a new ‘Anthropocene’ coastal construction method.
20.8, 20.20 Isaac Palmiere-Szabo, Y4 ‘The Barbican Digester’. Anaerobic digestion is integrated into a dense mixed-use building to metabolise the surrounding neighbourhood’s waste and give its residents decentralised free energy with no carbon cost. It tests the integration of heavy infrastructure with architecture to create a productive ecosystem whose outputs feed into its inputs. Beginning life as a bodysuit, the system evolves into a building.
20.9, 20.11 Wojciech Karnowka, Y4 ‘Saxa Fractionis’. The project explores analogies between the rapidly evolving digital realm and the City of London – a highly centralised enclave that has failed to adapt to the
changes in our work-life environment. The proposal challenges the paradigm of how buildings are designed, constructed and managed through new systems of ownership.
20.10 Luke Topping, Y4 ‘Coalescence’. A new crafts quarter in the City of London that decentralises the trade, training, production, inhabitation and storing associated with the creation of craft goods. Looking to medieval working topologies as decentralised autonomous systems of production, the project investigates the relationship between the master and apprentice, guild systems and their contemporary translation.
20.12 Zhong Zheng , Y5 ‘Fortress Besieged’. The urban village is a unique alternative urban typology, an economic and social ecosystem formed because of failures in urban governance and economic greed. The spontaneous nature of the urban village puts it in a position to become the space that can resist the complete commodification of urban space and total urbanisation.
20.13 Paul Brooke, Y5 ‘Post-Industrial Ephemera’. Sited within the post-industrial scarred landscapes of the UK, this project reconsiders the decentralised infrastructural wasteland as a site of rich material opportunity. Through the development and data-driven deployment of novel symbiotic post-waste composite materials, a functionally graded infrastructural network remediates the toxic biome, establishing a new era of carbon-negative industrial production.
20.14 Michael Brewster, Y5 ‘VRAM’. In the age of big data, every memory captured by a digital photograph is forever stored online via cloud services. Virtual Reality Augmented Memories (VRAM) is a real-time experience designed to leverage these cloud archives and enable an individual to explore their digital memories and arrange these within a dreamlike architectural encapsulation of subjective experience.
20.15 James Ballentyne, Y5 ‘Terr[Air]Forma’. The project envisages the ‘city of the future’ in a world where the population is expected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050. With the overcrowding of urban areas, the possibilities of building in areas we have previously deemed too extreme to build on are investigated, to relieve the strain on the ever-growing urban environment.
20.17 Abigail Yeboah, Y5 ‘Lagos: An Amphibious City’. The growth of cities often increases the economic disparities contained within them. People in informal settlements live in areas with poor-quality housing. This project proposes a regeneration of Makoko by improving living conditions through incremental changes. It sets out to decentralise the construction industry in Nigeria and increase access to potable water by harvesting water from individual buildings.
20.21–20.22 Shenton Morgan, Y5 ‘Exogenesis’. The project develops off-world architectures capable of evolving to endure the extreme environments of outer space. It navigates cultural identity through juxtaposing domesticity with robotics, archiving vernacular architectures of Earth using machine learning and reimagining historical typologies through deep-learning methodologies. The project’s goal is to create a new, adaptive architectural system for human inhabitation, informed by the diverse vernaculars of Earth.
20.23–20.24 Luke Parkhurst, Y5 ‘Augmented Space Station’. The project provides inflatable spaces for the current International Space Station (ISS) and develops novel ways to address the confinement and isolation experienced by astronauts. Virtual reality headsets work in conjunction with the interior fabric of the proposal to free astronauts from the confines of the ISS and enable reconnection with the Earth’s natural environments.
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20.4 20.5
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2021
TOK(C)CITY (The End Of)
Colletti,
Marjan
Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
TOK(C)CITY (The End Of)
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
This year, PG20 researched metropolitan, super-urban and hyperdense megalopolises with increasing populations, buzzing lifestyles, developing infrastructures and huge social, environmental and spatial problems. With the majority of the human population living in towns, new paradigms are required to reinvent the rapport between city and nature, readdress generous civic and private spaces, reinvest in sustainable infrastructure, reintroduce technological and material advances into the built environment and develop objects, buildings and cities that can communicate with each other and us. In line with The Bartlett’s ‘Build a better future’ manifesto1 – in particular ‘Climate Change’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Data & Technology’ – and the United Nation’s ‘The 17 Goals’2 – in particular ‘Affordable and Clean Energy’, ‘Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure’ and ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’ – students investigated speculative and experimental green, sustainable, diverse and inclusive urbanisation strategies. As a speculative site for the unit’s objective to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’, 3 students researched (remotely) Japan’s capital city, Tokyo. Originally a small fishing village named Edo, the Greater Tokyo Area is the world’s most populous metropolitan area, with 38 million inhabitants. Tokyo is an Alpha+ city and is regarded as the largest urban economy in the world by gross domestic product. Some of our projects this year reflect on the devastating consequences of climate change on present and future Tokyo, e.g. how floods fully reconfigure the structure of the city, resulting in ambitious propositions and informed speculations where new typologies emerge and old ones adapt or disappear.
Japanese culture provides an extremely rich context in which to revitalise the relationship of architecture and nature. Students invented future scenarios between the poetics of ukiyo-e, the 17th to 19th century art form that has profoundly shaped Western perceptions of Japanese art and life; the dynamism of contemporary manga and anime; the animism of the ancient religion of Shinto, in which objects are believed to possess a spirit as much as people and other phenomena; and the country’s expertise in and obsession with robotics. A series of skills workshops on procedural design techniques, time-based generative systems and high-resolution hyperreal cinematic videos advanced students’ abilities to communicate their ideas in 3D and 4D.
Year 4
Nadya Angelova, James Ballentyne, Michael Brewster, Paul Brooke, Yuqi (Kenneth) Cai, Kar Bo (Thomas) Leung, Carolina Mondragon-Bayarri, Shenton Morgan, Luke Parkhurst, Abigail Yeboah, Zhong Zheng
Year 5
Harry Hinton-Hard, Sze Chun (Kelvin) Hui, Tony Le, Edward Tse, Lukas Virketis, Ning Ye
Thank you to our design realisation practice tutor David Edwards and guest tutors Junichiro Horikawa, Andreas Koerner, Jevgenij Rodionov, Shogo Suzuki
Thank you to our critics: Junichiro Horikawa, Damjan Iliev, Jevgenij Rodionov
1. The Bartlett (2019), ‘Build a better future’, The Bartlett, (accessed 22 June 2021), ucl.ac.uk/ bartlett/about-us/ourvalues/build-better-future
2. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2015), ‘The 17 Goals’, United Nations, (accessed 22 June 2021), sdgs.un.org/goals 3. United Nations (2015), ‘The 17 Goals’.
20.1, 20.3 Tony Le, Y5 ‘Neo-Ukiyo’. Tokyo negates hard infrastructural strategies in a speculative wet future. The ground is rejuvenated as the sea takes over and the new city hangs from the sky. The design employs a genetic algorithm to reconfigure the city, as the material of the old city undergoes a metabolic process.
20.2 Harry Hinton-Hard, Y5 ‘Decay and Deployment‘. Time-based decay is embraced within this project through the use of biodegradable matter, such as natural rubber. The rate of decay is programmed to mirror the predicted decrease in Tokyo’s population. As organic mass dissipates over time, a transition of occupancy is triggered whereby the remaining structure of previously inhabited flats are retro-fitted as vertical farms.
20.4 Edward Tse, Y5 ‘Cultivating a Hyphal Urbanism’. Seeking resolve to the global ecological crisis, this project proposes a transverse ‘ecologising’ of architecture and urbanity for multi-species urban coexistence, where human and non-human modes of living become ever-more intertwined. This is achieved through the use of biological and cultivated materials and reconfigurable generative urban plan and transient surface treatments.
20.5–20.7 Lukas Virketis , Y5 ‘Neo-Edo: Information age residences’. With the increase of digital culture and technological developments in data and computer science, this project proposes inhabiting environments for the contemporary network society. It explores how big data and machine learning can generate super-sitespecific architectural interventions, allowing the urban fabric to become a co-author of a building’s design.
20.8 Sze Chun (Kelvin) Hui, Y5 ‘The Soil-Healing Machine’. This project addresses the issue of contaminated soil in Fukushima, Japan. The proposed long-term decontamination strategy of mycoremediation introduces fungi to remediate the toxic soil. The design provides a system to incorporate mycoremediation over time, at an architectural scale, and integrates itself into the natural landscape.
20.9 James Ballentyne, Y4 ‘[Bio]Augmentation’. In 2016, the Cabinet Office of Japan published results of an epidemiological survey on hikikomori: a phenomenon of social withdrawal where individuals lock themselves away for several months or years without social contact. The design reintegrates hikikomori into normal society, providing space to access therapy and education.
20.10 Carolina Mondragon-Bayarri, Y4 ‘Kyōsei Kawa’. Japanese urbanism is characterised by constant rebuilding, with the current lifespan of timber structures being 21 years. The project challenges this perception by exploring the design of an inhabitable timber megastructure spanning the 500-metre-wide Arakawa River. The architectural strategy combines computational methods of voxelisation with the use of local materials to develop a new housing typology for Tokyo.
20.11 Paul Brooke, Y4 ‘Symbiocity: The Bloom Network’. Responding to chemical eutrophication – enrichment –of waterways and the resultant hyper-toxic cyanobacterial insurgence in shoreline biomes, The Bloom Network investigates data-driven algal symbiosis as a carbonnegative architectural solution in post-anthropocentric Tokyo. A complex cyanobacterial capillary architecture can bloom de-carbonised microclimates and catalyse the end of toxicity.
20.12 Nadya Angelova, Y4 ‘Sento’. The project explores the relationship between our spiritual and technological understanding of nature. The design mitigates a climate change-induced disaster: fresh water scarcity. The research studies the role and behaviour of water in Japanese spiritual awakening. A strategy for adaptation is proposed that enhances natural forces using technological solutions.
20.13 Yuqi (Kenneth) Cai, Y4 ‘Ginza Tera’. Set in Ginza, Tokyo, surrounded by luxury shops, the project is a mixed-use Buddhist temple that reminds people of traditional Japanese philosophies that are under threat from the consumerist values of the West. It is an architecture of thresholds, between perfection and imperfection, permanence and impermanence, contemporary and traditional, secular and religious, and life and death.
20.14 Michael Brewster, Y4 ‘Fluid(c)ity’. This project focusses on the contemporary office typology and envisions an alternative paradigm that is centred around the needs of the worker. Through the research and digital simulation of Physarum polycephalum, a voxelised building form and performant canopy is generated that utilises site-specific environmental data.
20.15 Abigail Yeboah, Y4 ‘Nōgyō Vertical Farm’. As of 2019, the food self-sufficiency ratio in Japan has greatly decreased. The ambition of the project is to design and construct an innovative bamboo tower that will be used for vertical farming. The existing farm of Honisshiki 2nd is integrated into the bamboo vertical farm tower, encouraging the local community to produce organic food and promote economic growth.
20.16 Zhong Zheng, Y4 ‘Hinode Pier Fulfilment Centre’. The Tokyo metropolitan area needs a new form of urban warehouse to accommodate the growth of e-commerce. The project proposes a new vertical retrieval platform, enabling the storage of containers and small parcels in the same space, thus reducing the building’s footprint. The BioSkin system regulates the ambient temperature and reduces energy consumption.
20.17 Luke Parkhurst, Y4 ‘Cyber Rehabilitation’. The project aims to tackle the micro-living of cyber refugees through the integration of landscapes common to many parts of rural Japan. Hokusai’s waterfall paintings present an opportunity to explore the representation of nature before Tokyo’s urbanity. A symbiosis of digital landscapes and micro-living provides a space to detoxify from the digital and reconnect with nature.
20.18 Shenton Morgan, Y4 ‘21st Century Hi-Tech’. By exploring the synthesis of the mechanised with the organic, and a Shinto shrine revived for the cyborg human race, the project redefines the anthropocentric relationship of humans and technology, and questions the role of ancient practises in an increasingly digital future. The result is a fully autonomous algorithmic architecture capable of self design and evolution.
20.19 Ning Ye, Y5 ‘Phygital Housing’. With the development of Industry 4.0, the link between machine, robot, nature and human becomes stronger, while the physical world and cyber space are increasingly blurred. The ‘Phygital Housing’ project connects physical living space, house ownership, the exchange of digital information and human and high-density urban environments.
20.20 Kar Bo (Thomas) Leung, Y4 ‘Golden Gai Kabuki Street Theatre: Irezumi architecture’. Exploring the varied histories of irezumi (Japanese tattoos) and the red-light district of Tokyo, the project proposes a regeneration of the Golden Gai quarter through the implementation of a kabuki street theatre. It develops a makeshift architectural language that embraces the alley through a gradating series of thresholds, or skins, that compose the journey from street to theatre.
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2020
Out of…
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Out of…
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Out of*…hand, mind, context, print, nowhere, Eden, breath, date, jurisdiction, love, reach, sync, touch, order, office, season, use, the box, bounds, focus, key, nothing, remit, time, place, control, sight, the blue, service, phase, curiosity, hours, line, question, range, here…
Architecture is not ‘out’ yet: humanity needs great design, but it must change and evolve ‘out of’ its comfort zone.
*Architecture ‘out of’:
1) is no longer in a stated place or condition, i.e. it is no more a static stand-alone discipline but acts transdisciplinarily; 2) shows what something is made from, and is a form of material alchemy;
3) is used to show the reason why someone does something, with a purpose beyond narratives and pretty illustrations; 4) is from among an amount or number, approximating variables among multiple possibilities;
5) is used to describe where something came from or began, and so has an origin intrinsic to human culture;
6) is no longer ‘involved in’, but supersedes its own dogmas and doctrines.
In term 1, students explored current – and speculated on possible – relationships between landscape, data, nature and architecture. They created digitally, and merged landscape and data, nature and architecture, making hybrids of one ‘out of’ or many. A series of specific skilling workshops on procedural design techniques, timebased generative systems and high-resolution hyper-real cinematic videos advanced students’ abilities to communicate their ideas in 4D.
After a field trip to the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife in Spain, a volcanic archipelago off the Atlantic Coast of northwest Africa, students looked at how climate geology, natural and manmade ecosystems have evolved. They envisioned how locals, tourists, future machines and automated systems may spread, not through aggressive and/or ‘classic’ processes, but through calculated and precise integration with and adaptation to existing scenarios, potentially with the involvement of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
In term 3, students considered how our proposed experimental and speculative architectures can play an active role in the real development of future sustainable hybrid conditions for a data-driven society in/formed by the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. Facilitating a new high-complexity symbiosis between natural life and artificial life, they designed ‘out of’ architectures for the future, learning from past mistakes.
Year 4
Harry Hinton-Hard, Sze Chun Hui, Tony Le, Edward Tse, Lukas Virketis, Ning Ye
Year 5
Madalina-Oana Blaje, Ross Gribben, Tzu-Jung (Dexter) Huang, Hanadi Izzuddin, Ziyu (Ivy) Jiang, James Kennedy, Viola Poon, Saria Saeed, Theodoros Tamvakis
Thanks to our Design Realisation tutor David Edwards and consultants Tom Clewlow and Pablo Gugel
Many thanks to our critics Charles Anderson, Marco Brizzi, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Matias del Campo, Tiziano Derme, David Edwards, José Luis Esteban Penelas, Georgina Huljich, Andreas Koerner, Tom Kovac, Elena Manferdini, Sandra Manninger, Hannes Mayer, Alessandro Melis, Paul Minifie, Mark Mueckenheim, Marcos Novak, Michele Pasca di Magliano, Yael Reisner, Karolin Schmidbaur-Volk, Theodore Spyropoulos
All images are stills taken from animations.
20.1 Tzu-Jung (Dexter) Huang, Y5 ‘Meta-prosthesis’.
An alternative salt sauna explores the synthesis of the natural and artificial to augment the basis in environmental design. The proposal also challenges the conventional construction sequencing by proposing the hybrid of 3D printing techniques and therefore promotes a new vernacular envelope on Lanzarote.
20.2 Hanadi Izzuddin, Y5 ‘Out of Body’. This project explores an architecture for the digitally-nomadicised posthuman subject that reconciles three temporal domains of contemporary reality: the human, the natural and the technological. Comprised of intelligent voxels, the resort masterplan delineates a multi-domain architectural language generated through colliding algorithms that are spatially consumed across gradients of experience; from the embodied to the remote, the muscular to the ocular, at once moored in reality and suspended in virtuality.
20.3–20.4 Theodoros Tamvakis, Y5 ‘A .T. L . A . S .’.
A deep-space senatorial station in lunar orbit, that has embedded in its formal DNA a multiplicity of artificial gravities. A field generates habitable and shielding zones creating a space-habitat that becomes a political common ground for space colonies. A closedloop ecosystem creates a living and ever-changing architecture that nurtures and protects the inhabitants of the station by creating a symbiotic relationship between architecture and humans.
20.5–20.6 Ziyu (Ivy) Jiang , Y5 ‘Out of Space’. This project investigates the possibility of subterranean human habitation on Mars. It proposes an underground test facility in Lanzarote, to research, simulate and experience subsurface living, that may one day support Martian civilisation. Locally extracted minerals are processed and reinstated within the leftover caves to construct spaces of comfort and familiarity, exploring macro to micro landscapes, gradiating from hard to soft, dark to light.
20.7 James Kennedy, Y5 ‘Library of Memories’. This proposal stems from an inquiry into mental health. What began as an attempt to find solutions to mental health through architecture evolved into a looser exploration. The library is an architecture that seeks to concretise intangible memories into physical space. As the brief was concerned with ‘where something came from or began’, here, memories are discussed through built space as the foundation of mental health.
20.8–20.9 Saria Saeed, Y5 ‘Out of Work’. This project is a critique on modern-day office architecture, which continues to treat office spaces as factories and warehouses. The project proposes an alternative work-architecture typology, that employs the science of circadian rhythms and neo-baroque architectural language to design workspaces that are in sync with our mind and body during the day. It uses architectural experiences to evoke creativity and a sense of productivity, ‘greying-out’ the boundaries between work and leisure.
20.10–20.11 Madalina-Oana Blaje, Y5 ‘Tex-Tecture’. A complex set of technical, social and cultural roles make fabric one the best-loved materials human beings have ever invented. An ancient technique of interlacing fibres allows us to make a textile anywhere in the world. Inspired by the traditional craft techniques, this study investigates ‘knitting activation’, particularly multi-layer weaving, simultaneously merged to create a skin, a structure, and a form.
20.12 Tony Le, Y4 ‘Out of Coral: Artificial Ocean Future’. As climate change continues to damage the world beneath the ocean, an architecture is speculated from the principles of coral, in a future where it has run out.
Differential growth is utilised, with bathymetric models to generate breakwaters on vulnerable sites. At the boundary between city and sea, the tidal-powered fish market in Tenerife will allow visitors to be more conscious of the ocean as a ‘blue economy’ is developed.
20.13 Edward Tse, Y4 ‘The Abades Mycoremediation Research Institute: Mycelium Protocell Architecture’. This project proposes an architecture formed from the integration of a mycoremediation-to-mycelium ecology and is achieved through a series of expressive and bio-integrated mycelium skins. Computational and physical research into fungal growth logics and mycelium construction is embedded within the integrated skins. The environmental control systems and peripheral ornamentation are here used as an approach to transparent architectural cybernetics.
20.14 Lukas Virketis, Y4 ‘Deus Ex Machina’. This project is set in the dystopian future, in which an interactive fabrication laboratory emerges as a response to the desertification and sandstorm-impacted Tenerife. Situated within the rock-strewn desert of Teide National Park, the facility explores the biological construction material through symbiosis between local sand and bacteria, enabling architecture to grow and adapt to the changing environment.
20.15 Sze Chun Hui, Y4 ‘Out of Addition and Subtraction’. This project aims to develop an artificial extension of the natural environment. It is achieved through the investigation of subtraction and addition in forms of erosion, speleothem formation and the transition between both elements. It emphasises the seamless transition between natural elements and the artificial construction and restores the balance between nature and architecture.
20.16 Ning Ye, Y4 ‘Anaga Ecological Research Station’. This project started from research into water droplets in microscale and the hierarchy that exists in the water harvesting process and biological structure. The research station provides living spaces and laboratories for long-term environmental research. Due to the watershortage problem on the island, the research station also works as a generator to harvest water from mist.
20.17 Harry Hinton-Hard, Y4 ‘Deployable Architecture’. A Hotel spa retreat, located in one of the most extreme and compelling sites of Tenerife, proposes a ‘reactive’ form of architecture which is directly informed by its natural surroundings. Through instrumentalising natural processes of evolution and growth of local flora within a computational framework, an architectural strategy is developed that renders the building adaptable to its unique local context.
20.18–20.20 Ross Gribben, Y5 ‘Out of Mind’. This project critically analyses the importance of memory, the power of association, and the benefits of nature in influencing architecture for the care of those with memory disorders. These spaces are designed to be both contained by nature and reactive to its fractalised landscape. The social and historical context is derived from the lifestyle contributions of Australian Aboriginal culture in developing memory-enhancing techniques through oral history traditions.
20.21 Viola Poon, Y5 ‘Datascape: Redefining Sustainable Architecture for Future Coexistence’. This project envisions a new understanding of the juxtaposition of ‘the cloud’ and ‘ecology’ within our built environment. It posits a future design approach involving a machine landscape that comprises of servers and computers. Through this, the philosophical shift from deterministic control to coexistence is symbolically represented as a ‘mesh’. The project redefines the anthropocentric relationship between humans, machine and landscape, and pursues the amelioration of both physical and psychological tranquility within inhabitants.
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2019
Post-Digital Practices: Past-Future Hybrids
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Post-Digital Practices: Past-Future Hybrids
Marjan Colletti, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
At the dawn of the fourth Industrial Revolution, categorised by a wide range of technologies that are hybridising physical, digital and biological domains, the post-digital paradigm looks at learning and capitalising from the digital: initiating novel, synthetic, transdisciplinary processes that shift and disrupt disciplinary knowledge, financial models and political structures.
The term ‘post-digital’ does not refer to life after, without, or against the digital. On the contrary, it refers to life in which digital technologies have been assimilated into most aspects, from air travel to banking, from medical procedures to shopping. PG20 refuses to revert to an outdated modus operandi of pre-digital juxtaposition. We are in a world of interchange, where cross-fertilisation and constant negotiation present the possibility of a future in which our lives are more intertwined and cooperative, and less confrontational. If digital is a caterpillar, still voracious and rapidly growing, post-digital is a chrysalis, representing the potential for astonishing metamorphosis.
Post-digital hybridity challenges old and obsolete binary and juxtaposed conditions, such as past/future, nature/architecture, man/machine, material/data, biological/artificial, object/space, analysis/artificial intelligence, craft/machine learning, fact/fiction, hand/robot, entertainment/science, vernacular/sci-fi, collage/ ecology, fragment/symbiont. It suggests far more complex, ambiguous and agile crossbreeds.
In Los Angeles and San Francisco we met architects, artists, space engineers, production designers, entertainment creators and teachers who make remarkable contributions to contemporary society. The resulting projects fuse architecture with ideas around artificial intelligence, machine learning, adaptive systems, biotechnology, fashion, multinational business, space colonisation, and more.
Year 4
Madalina-Oana Blaje, Magdalena Filipek, Tzu-Jung (Dexter) Huang, Hanadi Izzuddin, Ziyu (Ivy) Jiang, James Kennedy, Jonathan Rahimi (SCI-Arc exchange) Theodoros Tamvakis
Year 5
William Ashworth, Yan Ho (Brian) Cheung, Daniel Krajnik, Levent Özruh, Tobias Petyt, Shogo Suzuki, Hong Lien Tran, Hsin-Fang Tsai
Thanks to Michela Mangiarotti, Justin Nicholls, and Alexandra Toivonen
Thank you for generously hosting us in Los Angeles: Refik Anadol, Benjamin Ennemoser, Julia Koerner, Roberta Leighton, Clarence Major, Marcelo Spina, Madhu Thangavelu
We are grateful to the Directors Guild of America, Disney Imagineering, Goldstein Residence, UCLA, USC, SCI-Arc
20.1 Daniel Krajnik, Y5 ‘Tech-Hub Capriccio’.
A machine learning-based design, which merges reality with architectural fantasy, this project looks beyond a single database and integrates design with alternative, publicly available sources. This embedded data allows for mining the past – here, understood as the reconstruction of past architecture provided by data extracted through photogrammetry. Based on the rocks and underlying soil, a generative script hybridises what was there with what could have been there.
20.2 Tobias Petyt, Y5 ‘Amazon 3.0: San Francisco’. The architecture of Amazon 3.0 proposes a centralised system of operations for the tech giant, fully integrated into an urban environment. The scheme reinvents the inventory into a high-resolution 3D-plane voxelisation system, where machines operate exclusively, collecting and distributing items bought by customers online. The architecture wrestles with the dimensional paradigms of the machine and people, forcing them to adapt their movements.
20.3 Yan Ho (Brian) Cheung, Y5 ‘Stony Ridge Observatory’. Culturally situated within Los Angeles’ environment of constant reinvention and experimentation, the idea of an observatory as interface to the cosmos emerges from the process of computational morphological studies. The design language of the building and its interior spaces aims to inspire awe in users as they look up to the stars. 20.4–20.6 Shogo Suzuki, Y5 ‘Cyborgian Homes’. What if the spatial conditions of our homes could respond to our emotional states? As we enhance ourselves with artificial intelligence (AI) wearables and in effect become cyborgs, architecture too will become cyborgian. Extrapolating swarm 3D printing with a hypothetical reversible additive fabrication material, the project speculates how hi-res psychometric data available from wearables may manipulate a hi-res physical environment.
20.7-20.8 Hong Lien Tran, Y5 ‘MMM-Martian Magnetic Module’. The research studies the influence of magnetism on architectural design. Through form-finding and morphogenetic process, the project explores the interaction of ferromagnetic materials – with metal threads interwoven into fabrics – in accordance with the particularity of powerful magnetic crystal fields on Mars’ surface. These form potential landing sites for future human adventures.
20.9 Hsin-Fang Tsai, Y5 ‘Mars Colonisation’. In response to the extreme climate on Mars, a semi-underground, sand dune-like shelter is designed as a daylight-responsive inhabitable machine. Printed using locally-sourced materials, the shelter provides radiation protection and thermal stability for future human inhabitation, using inflatable membranes, mechanical systems and lava tubes.
20.10 Levent Özruh, Y5 ‘First of the Trojans’. In response to the growing interest in asteroids, the project proposes a colonisation process for a peculiar group of asteroids known as the Trojans, which are in a stable position in deep space. A hybrid approach of both procedural design steps and explicit modelling techniques is developed to deal with the unique morphology of each asteroid, in order to house ring-shaped rotating space stations.
20.11 Ziyu (Ivy) Jiang, Y4 ‘Therapeutic Landscape of Contemporary Tibetan Buddhism’. Located in Los Angeles, the project proposes an Anthropocene landscape for contemporary Tibetan Buddhism. Embedded in the terrain is a retreat for the growing Buddhist population of Los Angeles. The institution is organised by imprinting a digital reading of the Tibetan Mandala as a geological condition. This artificial and pixelated landscape becomes a device for spiritual enlightenment.
20.12, 20.17 Hanadi Izzuddin, Y4 ‘Deep-Space Structures Laboratory (DSSL-1)’. A training facility that trains astronauts using its compartmentalised configuration and indoor neutral buoyancy pool. A classified ‘space coral’ research laboratory that forms an integral infrastructural system is embedded within the building. The building operates systematically like an engine, drawing and filtering resources from the extreme and varying desert climate to test spacecraft technology on a micro-scale through its cooling capillary skin.
20.13 James Kennedy, Y4 ‘Kuuyam Centre’. The Tongva are the indigenous inhabitants of Southern California. They regard themselves as guests (Kuuyam), of the land on which the city of Los Angeles was built, and seek restoration of the landscape and the people through the healing properties of food and culture. The project addresses homelessness in the city, proposing a programme where people can work and live in a restorative, native landscape.
20.14 Tzu-Jung (Dexter) Huang, Y4 ‘Sutro Performance’. An alternative bathhouse explores performative and vernacular ornament by implementing atmospheric devices, which regulate the environment through the exchange of fluids. The building showcases this mesmerising behaviour in nature and suggests a prototype for a sustainable paradigm in San Francisco.
20.15 Magdalena Filipek, Y4 ‘Bioluminescent Lab’.
Based in Los Angeles, this NASA biochemical laboratory explores concepts of food production, oxygen and supplements for astronauts living on Mars during their eight-month mission. These products are obtained from algae located in the building’s roof tiles, which also supply samples for laboratory experiments. Photosynthesis within algae tiles produces electricity and illuminates the building at night.
20.16 Theodoros Tamvakis Y4, ‘The Icarus Silo Complex’. This project is set in a speculative future, in which a secret religious group repurposes a Cold War missile silo into a cultist cathedral. The complex explores negotiation and hybridity between the crude functionality of the silo and the spiritual significance of a cathedral.
20.18 Madalina-Oana Blaje, Y4 ‘3D-Printed Fashion Store’. A fashion store for unique, luxury 3D-printed dresses informs a filigree multidimensional façade. Its sculptural morphology protects the store from excess heat gain during summer, and allows for optimum light in winter.
20.19 William Ashworth, Y5 ‘The Pneumatic Terminal’. This project proposes a radical shift in the design of the train station typology, bringing together pneumatic technologies and embedded computation to enable programmatic flexibility. The Hyperloop train system provides large quantities of extracted pressurised air to feed the mechanisms of the terminal through a conduit structure.
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Nature 2.0: Constructing the Avant-Garde
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz
Year 4
William Ashworth, Yan Ho (Brian) Cheung, Naomi De Barr, Tsai Hsin-Fang, Egmontas Geras, Daniel Krajnik, Levent Ozruh, Tobias Petyt, Sophie Tait, Hong Lien Tran
Year 5
Yulia Amaral, Daryll Brown, Yinghua (William) Chen, Fadhil Fadhil, Yiki Liong, Cristina Manta, Jevgenij Rodionov, Ho Tsang, Shi Qi (Kiki) Tu
Thank you to our Design Realisation tutors, Justin Nicholls and Maria Eugenia Villafañe; to our critics Jonathan Bell, Roberto Bottazzi, Antonino Di Raimo, Andreas Körner, Dan Sibert, Theodore Spyropoulos, Barry Wark; and in Russia, Edas Kirpichev and Maria Kuptsova
Nature 2.0: Constructing the Avant-Garde
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz
At a time of radical change, Unit 20 is looking for a new attitude in which design adjusts to a new world order determined by technological advances, environmental transformations and socio-political confrontations. Students were asked to rethink traditional architectural practice in search of a new disciplinary avant-garde that is in tune with the challenges of the 21st century.
This year’s field trip was focused on Russia – Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Students took the Constructivist legacy as a key inspiration for how to break away from outmoded and obsolete traditions. We delved into its visionary approach, exploring the conceptual and formal influences that this pivotal movement had on so many leading contemporary architects. Most notably, Deconstructivism found its roots in early 20th century Soviet Constructivism. One of the few real avant-garde moments of our history, Constructivism can be said to have embedded abstract and dynamic compositional values within machine culture. In today’s post-digital era, cultural and technological parameters have fundamentally shifted. As well as ‘the machine’ we have machine-learning, AI (artificial intelligence) and robotisation. In parallel, nature has taken on a new role on the frontline of design, research and innovation.
Unit 20 has looked into nature as source of inspiration and subject for design. Students were asked to embrace new design paradigms that look at ‘Nature 2.0’, as an open toolbox for innovation and a focus for action. They explored nature’s extraordinary geometric and material complexity; found environmentally sensitive solutions in the extreme climates of Russia; worked with nature’s unpredictable and adaptable intelligence; and made use of its immense beauty. Students focused on projects that tackled various contemporary opposites: from artificial to natural, from mobility to housing, from industry to landscape, from high-tech to low-tech, from state to church.
Fig. 20.1 Yiki Liong Y5, ‘Dachniki Micro-Cities: An Alternative Micro-City of Russian Living’. An overview model of fractured landscapes constructed from micro-voxels, a medium used to explore the interplay between nature and synthetics, dynamic community densities amongst thermally stable, habitable environments. Fig. 20.2 Shi Qi (Kiki) Tu Y5, ‘The International Research Centre of Paralympic Performance: The Physiological Envelope’. A building model analogous to the human thermoregulation system. An architecture with environmental responses including vaso-regulation, shivering and sweating integrated into the building’s designed biological behaviours.
Fig. 20.3 Cristina Manta Y5, ‘Industrial Metamorphosis: An Automobile Factory Typology’. A speculative model of changeable architecture based on the dynamic flow of
self-organising, emergent systems. This model is used to generate ambiguous ‘soft’ spaces, constantly reorganising themselves according to the users’ participation and interaction with the environment. Fig. 20.4 Jevgenij Rodionov Y5, ‘The Anti-Monument of Revolutionary Pasts’. The Anti-Monument is a bio-informed cultural landscape materialising the stories of forgotten historical characters through a series of tectonically articulated spaces and environmental conditions. The narrative is embedded into the building skin itself, dynamically (re-)constructed to enable the ever-changing journey of cultural discovery.
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Fig. 20.5 Yinghua (William) Chen Y5, ‘Russian Cultural Centre with VISA facilitation Complex Centre’. A project inspired by the theory of space syntax, a human-guided ‘Attractor System’ manipulates geometry, influencing the relationships between, and the deformation of, experienced architectural space. The urban proposal is a multi-vertical layered recomposition of the city context within one system. Politically, this cultural centre introduces Russian art and culture to the context of New York and serves as a concentration of multicultural exchange, immigration and education. Fig. 20.6 Ho Tsang Y5, ‘The Revival of a New Russian Banya’. A new type of social environment inspired by modern digital culture, a reconsideration of the porosity of private and public environments. Taking fog as an environmental regulator, constant variations of visibility are
observed and the idea of adapted visibility becomes a design strategy, offering users virtual privacy amongst a communal public programme. Fig. 20.7 Fadhil Fadhil Y5, ‘The Living Cell’. Digital research focused on the evolution of non-relational architectural objects. It is a process that contextualises a fabrication process and decontextualises the resultant architectural product. This project develops the concept of manufacturing ‘the living cell’, a division of architectural objects into multiple systematically prefabricated parts.
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Fig. 20.8 Daryll Brown Y5, ‘The Protest Congregation Hall of Moscow: The Concrete Forest of the People’. A project of public congregation, creating a forest condition that can host the discourse and debate of those against the grand Moscow rehousing scheme. Lightweight rigidified concrete fabrics drape and stretch into naturally occurring, intuitive structural forms, empowered with the ability to radiate precious heat through their hybridised thermal mass.
Fig. 20.9 Yan Ho (Brian) Cheung Y4, ‘The Naval Research Laboratory’. A building understood through the phototropic behaviour of plants. The natural phenomena of diffusion and particle aggregation due to Brownian motion design a script to generate phototropic architectural responses, components dictated by their unique exposure to sunlight.
Fig. 20.10 Daniel Krajnik Y4, ‘The Automated Cellular Mosque’. Through cellular automata, social tensions can be realised within an architectural reaction – a dynamic automated building system that can result in a multi-objective religious space, created to respond to the rising demand of Muslim communities for a place to gather, socialise, and worship.
Fig. 20.11 Tobias Petyt Y4, ‘Phototropic Housing’. A phototropic response drives this housing scheme, an intuitive aggregation informed by the unique sunlight conditions of Saint Petersburg. The project aims to improve current living conditions whilst reimagining communities, proposing radical contextual design, and optimising sunlight in a town deprived of it.
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Fig. 20.12 Yulia Amaral Y5, ‘Global Cultural Exchange Centre’. A passive ventilation system made possible by applying the principles of Venturi, manipulating zones of low windspeed flow. Architecture designed as an environmental facilitator allowing users to experience different scales of wind in and around the building, an orchestrated engagement with nature.
Fig. 20.13 Sophie Tait Y4, ‘The Driverless City: Future Transport Hubs of Moscow’. A proposal that by the year 2040 Moscow could evolve into the world’s first driverless city. Efficient electric vehicles behaving as a shared transport service (a taxi, without a driver), housed and charged in a network of transport hubs; strategically placed at each of Moscow’s busiest railway stations. Fig. 20.14 Levent Ozruh Y4, ‘The Research Campus for the State Agrarian University of
Saint Petersburg’. Exploring the behaviours of biological growth, the project studies the organic vegetation logics of modular capsules branching from circulatory spines. By reducing architecture to the assembly of an articulated roof and ground condition, with the absence of walls, the spaces generate a dynamic flow between and around different programmes. Fig. 20.15 Egmontas Geras Y4, ‘HyperAgri(Culture)’. Model composition inheriting characteristics of the countryside and reinserting them into an urban context, reclaimed land on the edge of the city. This landscape is then cultivated as an architecture celebrating systems of growth, their cultural impact, construction methodologies and performance capabilities.
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Fig. 20.16 Naomi De Barr Y4, ‘The Saint Petersburg Food Market’. A cast fragment of a mass construction system for a dense rural condition, a hyper-agriculture assisting Russia in becoming self-sufficient in food production by the year 2020. Constructed with earthen materials, produce will be sold within the earth it was grown in, serving as a gateway between the rural and urban city. Masonry stoves provide thermal comfort for visitors to gather around during cold winters. Fig. 20.17 Tsai Hsin-Fang Y4, ‘The Inhabitable Bridge over River Neva’. An architectural response to the passage of water and wind through the city. This conceptually integrates the archipelago into the existing transportation infrastructure with an organic complexity of multi-bridge connections, integrated community spaces and water taxi services.
Fig. 20.18 Hong Lien Tran Y4, ‘Autonomous Urbanism of Moscow’. The building is located at the heart of the city, a plaza with grand areas of car parking. This between-building boundary is utilised for social activity, whilst maintaining the focus of car storage, embracing a future with autonomous vehicle transportation networks. Fig. 20.19 William Ashworth Y4, ‘The Inhabitable Bridge over the River Neva’. The habitable bridge masterplan proposes geometries of cohabitation for aquatic life beneath water level, and sustainable contemporary housing above. The cellular clusters have been optimised to maximise sunlight exposure, whilst creating internal winter gardens, with communal spaces protected from the often harsh weather conditions of Russia.
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High-Tech + Low-Tech Composites
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
Year 4
Yulia Amaral, Daryl Brown, Yinghua (Will) Chen, Fadhil Fadhil, Yi Ki Liong, Cristina Manta, Shi Qi (Kiki) Tu, Alexis Udegbe
Year 5
Thomas Bush, Mon Thi Han, Patrick Mawson, Matthew Pratt, Helen Oi Yee Siu, Jessica Wang, Ching Yiu (Tommy) Wong, Man Chung (Tom) Wong
Thank you to our Design Realisation tutors Justin Nicholls and Maria Eugenia Villafañe, and to our critics
High-Tech + Low-Tech Composites
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Javier Ruiz Rodriguez
In a time of increasing demand for sustainable solutions in technology and design, there has been much debate around the increasingly important relationship between low-tech procedures within high-tech environments. The main premise this year has been to engage with the composite conditions that make both advanced technological systems, and traditional ones, part of contemporary life. This has been a hugely significant step towards reducing the use of resource-hungry technologies and materials that have been overused in the 20th century.
Contemporary society has acknowledged that long-established techniques have been successful in the past and are often simpler, more environmental friendly and more ‘human’ than excessively synthetic procedures. However, the great advantage we have nowadays is that it is not mandatory to revert to the basics of vernacular architecture. We are currently witnessing the emergence of a new paradigm, in which an intensified use of new technology allows us to increase the precision of design and manufacturing and customised replication of components, and also helps us embrace a novel sense of materiality in architecture that can be both analogue and digital, conceptual and physical, hard and soft, technical and poetic, etc.
Designers are able to predict form and performance prior to materialisation and at the same time rethink traditional techniques in an entirely new, post-digital way. Besides the great advantages in terms of design control that allows us to invent forms that have far higher levels of complexity and space than before, this insight opens up architecture to a truly multi-disciplinary and contextual approach: not only can we now participate in co-authoring novel material-material assemblages, we can also co-author material-urban and material-nature aggregations, as well as a plethora of other composites.
Fig. 20.1 Matthew Pratt Y5, ‘Transitions of the Filigree’. Ideas of branching and connectivity influence the programme of the New York Forum to produce an architecture that transitions from micro- to macro-scale in its elements. Several investigations into origins of the filigree provide the basis for geometric, material and time-based studies into a transient architectural condition between one- and four-dimensionality, translated through contextual site responses to the Hudson Yards rail depot and surrounding High Line connection. Figs. 20.2 – 20.5 Jessica Wang Y5, ‘Tessellated Acoustic Symbiosis – A Chamber Hall and Church Interface’. The project investigates the acoustic qualities in a chamber music hall and a Pentecostal church (gospel) and emphasises the translation of precise high-tech digital sound
design into the low-tech fabrication of tessellated acoustic tiles which explore the possibilities for acoustical integration. The exoskeleton structure is bound within a rectangular form as an attempt to integrate into the New York cityscape. The interior is formed by Voronoi-inspired tiles that are intended to tessellate within an extravagant framework that simultaneously performs as acoustic control and enclosure.
Fig. 20.6 Helen Oi Yee Siu Y5, ‘Adaptive Patterning: Aqua Therapy and Spa Centre, New York’. The analogy of adaptive patterns is extended to an architectural scale. The patterned building skin acts as a filter for light, ventilation and a solar heat store. The building possesses the delicate, interlacing language of earlier knitted studies, whilst responding to external macroclimate and internal microclimate demands.
Figs. 20.7 – 20.9 Patrick Mawson Y5, ‘Brooklyn Cruise and Logistics Terminal’. The project investigates the sensual relationship between architecture, its ecological context and user, and how, through the construction of ‘sensuous cells’, one can establish meteorological gradients for environmental comfort and functionality. Air flow simulations and programmatic functions determine the carving of space through a hierarchy of robotically controlled scoops and slashes, establishing space for international cruise liners, down to the human scale. Fig. 20.10 Man Chung (Tom) Wong Y5, ‘Hair – Fibrous Invasion’. Inspired by the biological function of hair, this project explores thermal, structural and environmental potentials of fibrous systems in architecture. It proposes a Museum of Meteorology, which uses hair-inspired
responsive environmental components that generate a series of climatically controlled zones, exhibiting various meteorological phenomena.
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Fig. 20.11 Mon Thi Han Y5, ‘Fluid Integrated Building Skins’. The proposal is a 400-metre environmental residential tower in Hudson Yards, New York. The project is a research and design exploration into the thermal regulating functions of the human blood vascular system. It questions conventional air-conditioning technologies ingrained in our building design culture. Through design research, the project’s aim is to develop fluid integrated environmental building envelopes for regulation of thermal mass and temperature, and therefore it reduces cooling loads in buildings and significantly reduces energy consumption. Fig. 20.12 Ching Yiu (Tommy) Wong Y5, ‘New Hudson Yards Market, New York’. The project is an investigation into plywood’s bending properties as well as market typologies in New York City. Located at the end of the
High Line Park, the proposal aims to be a new tourist attraction that acts as an extension and a connection to the Hudson Yards redevelopment. Key design concepts include spatial fluidity and a flexible skin made from plywood. Fig. 20.13 Thomas Bush Y5, ‘Deforming Fibres’. Residential apartments with a public velodrome that integrates into the High Line in West Chelsea, NYC. The project investigates anisotropic deformations in analogue and digital methods, trying to create deformable enclosures that use fibrous materials. The dynamic moments are tuned to control light, through reflection and shading at various scales, from individual modules to apartments and the whole building scale.
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Fig. 20.14 Daryl Brown Y4, ‘The Maverick Fiedler Forest School for the Performing Arts’. An exploration of hybridising concrete, designing its formations as well as its casting recipes. Linear bridging forms generated by fabric formwork casting are explored using tensile nylon fibres as an aggregate. Crafted structural concrete formations challenge the rigidity of the solid formwork casting readily used in modern engineering.
Fig. 20.15 Shi Qi (Kiki) Tu Y4, ‘The Maverick Aquatic Sports Centre’. The building design stems from geometrical and functional investigations of porosities. Fluid embedded within the structure of the building canopy regulates the building environment through a solar water heating and evaporative cooling system. 20.16 Yi Ki Liong Y4, ‘The Maverick Centre for the Research and Conservation of Native Aquatic Plants’. The
brief envisions an educational facility that aims to revitalise the aquaculture of Boston Harbour. A series of biomes house regional aquatic plant species and an underground seed library, which encourages a diffusion of knowledge between in-house researchers and the public. The project challenges threshold boundaries between various environmental conditions within the building, and explores the use of a double-skinned system.
Fig. 20.17 Yinghua (Will) Chen Y4, ‘The Maverick Ferry Terminal’. This project aims to improve the economic and urban cultural environment in response to the government’s Maverick Revitalisation Plan. The proposal envisions a ferry terminal with a biological landscape as the skin of the building, with carbon fibre composites used as the main material for the building’s framework. Fig. 20.18 Cristina Manta Y4, ‘The Maverick Student Centre & Food Market’. The project provides street food, local seafood and a fresh produce market integrated into student facilities and learning spaces. The central twisting column celebrates the simultaneous interconnection of activities and circulation patterns, resulting in a conceptual spatial composite. Fig. 20.19 Fadhil Fadhil Y4, ‘Naval Immersive Simulation Laboratories’. Subtractive Boolean
methods and seaming techniques examine the insertion of one object into another, treating the interior space as an object existing inside an exterior object. Fig. 20.20 Yulia Amaral Y4, ‘Maverick Department of Artistic Expression’. The project is a public performance arts centre that aims to reinvigorate the local community of East Boston. The micro-environmental goals are achieved by a façade consisting of a waste product and titanium dioxide bio-composite, which aims to improve the surrounding air quality.
Convoluted Geometries, Hybrid Programmes, Intertwined Spaces
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Year 4
George Bolwell, Mon Han, Patrick Mawson, Matthew Pratt, Jessica Wang, Man Wong
Year 5
Daniel Coley, Chris Falla, Andreas Körner, Panagiota Kotsovinou, James Mills, Firas Saad, Jia Saw, Wai Wong, Selina Yau, Vincent Yeung
Thank you to our consultants and critics Moyez Alwani, Richard Beckett, Isaïe Bloch, Andy Bow, Andrew Haworth, Susanne Hofmann, Damjan Iliev, Hina Lad, Malca Mizrahi, Justin Nicholls, Michael Pelken, Laura Petruso, Yael Reisner, Javier Ruiz, Robert Stuart-Smith, Lena Vasileva, María Eugenia Villafañe, Seda Zirek
Thank you to our partners Grünhelme.de
Convoluted Geometries, Hybrid Programmes, Intertwined Spaces
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Students in Year 5 focused on Istanbul, Turkey, one of the world’s greatest urban hubs; a convergence of East and West located across two continents. The buzzing urban, historic, religious, political and entrepreneurial background of the city created the framework for projects that aimed at the urban contextualisation of public institutions where global and local needs are juxtaposed and confronted. Istanbul emerged from the cultural torrents of civilization. Today, in a time of extreme religious and political confrontations between the Western and Islamic worlds, and one of migrations and crises, the city has gained once more a pivotal importance with regards to the world’s future stability.
Students in Year 4 focused on Kigali, Rwanda. Scarred by the 1994 genocide and civil war, Rwanda is nicknamed the Land of Eternal Spring. With a small population that is expected to triple by 2040, Kigali, the capital city, is becoming the economic and cultural hub of central Africa. Our projects revolved around the brief of the world’s second Chrislamic Church-Mosque where hi-tech (computer-aided, digitally skilled, innovative) design proposals were translated into low-tech (affordable, easily and locally assembled, basic materials) building strategies, aimed to be realised and built in Kigali. The brief was developed in collaboration with the humanitarian association Grünhelme, Germany and in partnership with several other academic institutions that were also involved in charity projects in Africa.
Figs. 20.1 – 20.2 Chris Falla Y5, ‘Digital Genotype’. No longer a concept of the natural, genetic hyperspace emerges as an authentic dimension of digital virtuality. This machinic domain is governed by relational possibilities; whereby computation and biology converge within logical frameworks of timeinitiated algorithmic genomes, generating non-Euclidean evolutionary data morphologies of encapsulated information. Fig. 20.3 Man Chung (Tom) Wong Y4, ‘Crystal Lattices’. The Mihrab (Islamic prayer corner) structure is designed using particle systems that mimic organic crystal lattice growth to achieve a fragile and ephemeral structure that generates different light conditions. Fig. 20.4 Jessica Wang Y4, ‘Spatial Illusion’. The project is a compilation of modular, dynamic and light experiments in search of the optimum semi-permeable
form. Fig. 20.5 Firas Saad Y5, ‘Sinuous Tile’. Exploring the potential to create a three-dimensional tile with a skin-like, convex, concave morphology. The final component design of a glazed ceramic tile with a highly complex surface topology invokes suggestions of a material awakening.
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Figs. 20.6 – 20.7 Wai Yin (Vivian) Wong Y5, ‘Dress’ - ‘Feltcrete’. Study of Istanbul fashion inspired by the traditional Bindalli Entari design of the Ottoman period. The new pattern of the dress is created by digitally inverting and inflating the pattern of the Bindalli dress using sculpting software. ‘Felt-crete’ is a material investigation of felt composite to be applied to the building industry. The natural wool felt bonds naturally with cement/jesmonite to create a hybrid material for the building façade or interior wall. No additional gluing solution is needed to secure the two materials. Felt creates a natural acoustic, thermal waterproof barrier and the concrete provides structural support. Fig. 20.8 Selina Yau Y5, ‘Florid Beauty’. A 3D printed neckpiece exploring the materialisation of the blooming petaloid through the ornamental forms of the
petal and the stem. Fig. 20.9 Daniel Coley Y5, ‘Of Corpo. Reality’. Using the study of a recovery space for stroke victims, the project explores the notion of an architecture which derives as a prosthetic augmentation of the inhabitant body.
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Fig. 20.10 Jia Jian Saw Y5, ‘The Equestrian Guild of Istanbul’. Informed by human and equine form, the speculative redesign of the Equestrian Guild introduces varied layering to integrate soft materials which mimic the ornamental leather patternisation of saddles. Fig. 20.11 James Mills Y5, ‘Imaginary Archive’. The project investigates principles and methodologies of Sufism. It is developed through a sequential progression from the vegetal to the abstract, from the real to the ideal, or the circle to the square, by seven valleys. Each valley reflects its description in the famous Sufi story by Farid Attar, the ‘Conference of the Birds’, a figurative story that describes the Sufi path. Fig. 20.12 Firas Saad Y5, ‘Istanbul Institute for Gastronomy’. The philosophical idea of ‘Numen’ and its application to architecture employs animalistic
attributes, reintroducing ideas of aliveness and formal dexterity, usually absent from contemporary digital design protocols. Fig. 20.13 Panagiota Kotsovinou Y5, ‘Istanbul’s Branching Arcades.’ The project explores the potential applications of L-Systems and evolutionary growth processes in architectural design. Algorithms supplement the design of structures based entirely on identical or self-similar components, enabling modular repetition to coexist with variation and dynamic transitions in scale, density and tectonic weight.
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Fig. 20.14 Mon Thi Han Y4, ‘A Breathing Piece of Architectural Ecology’. A layered façade system creates a volumetric, porous array of modular bays, which are applied in the context of a Church-Mosque in Kigali. Fig. 20.15 Man Ching (Tom) Wong Y4, ‘Undulating Urban Landscape’. The Kigali Church-Mosque uses an undulating interior surface aligning with an urban open landscape to generate various spatial conditions to respond to diverse religious and communal activities. Fig. 20.16 George Bolwell Y4, ‘ Lofted Clay Vessels’. Volumes rise to form a shading canopy. Enclosed spaces accommodate Christian worship whilst sheltered interstitial areas provide a flexible Mosque plan. Roof lights are designed to allow varying levels of light according to the religious significance of a given space. Fig. 20.17 Matthew Pratt Y4, ‘Geometry and Resolution
of Fibrous Systems.’ Religious relationships between floor and sky are expressed as a heavy stepping contoured landscape, providing a platform for thin elastic structures and a light and an ethereal roof. Figs. 20.18 – 20.20 Andreas Körner Y5, ‘Environmental Ecoysis - Urban Forum Istanbul’. The forum houses a library, an underground archive, a datacentre and an open campus, including a palm house. The excess heat of the datacentre heats the rest of the program in winter by utilising the predominant natural wind directions onsite for distribution. Performative layers control the indoor and outdoor climate zones.
Fig. 20.21 Selina Yau Y5, ‘Florid Beauty’. Based on scientific and artistic abstraction of nature, this project explores the post-digitalisation of florid intelligence through the ornament and Alois Riegl’s ‘Kunstwollen’ as a creative will to drive the aesthetic condition of hybrid variance and beauty within the transfigurative classification of the contemporary flower.
Fig. 20.22 Patrick Mawson Y4, ‘The Blending of Architectural Entities’. The project brings forth a covert architecture of framed viewing moments by multilayered geometrical repetition, material voids and optically dynamic structural elements to reveal order amongst otherwise perceived chaos. Fig. 20.23 Vincent Yeung Y5, ‘A Breathing Piece of Architectural Ecology’. Exploring the softness in nature through silicone. Understanding the hardness of this particular type of
synthetic plastic allows the soft robot to perform a similar motion and body language to jellyfish. Fig. 20.24 Daniel Coley Y5, ‘Of Corpo.Reality’. Therapeutic processes are embedded into the design proposal which interact with the body during recovery, working as both a multiple-user prosthetic and a healing tool. Rather than the recovery space being a room filled with standalone tools, this research develops a synergic form of the machine/room/body mutant. The case study of the room becomes a malleable module within the wider context of a rehabilitation clinic on site in Istanbul. The definition of the medical prosthetic is intersected with the prevalent guidelines and provisions that shape recovery rooms; where user and room are hybridised for different operational purposes.
Incredible India
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Year 4
Daniel Coley, Andreas Körner, Panagiota Kotsovinou, James Mills, Firas Saad, Jia Jian Saw, Selina Yau, Vincent Yeung, Wai Yin (Vivian) Wong
Year 5
Shi Qi An, María Esteban-Casañas, Jianze (Arthur) Hao, Wiktor Kidziak, Jonathan Wilson
We wish to thank Justin Nicholls and Maria Villafane for their amazing contribution to the Year 4 Design Realisation project. Thanks to our critics: Moyez Alwani, Isaïe Bloch, Roberto Bottazzi, Andy Bow, David Edwards, Dirk Krolikowski, François Mangion, Andrei Martin, Justin Nicholls, James O’Leary, Joanna Pawlas, Michael Pelken, Alexandrina Rizova, Bob Sheil, Theo Spyropoulous, Vasilena Vassilev, Maria Eugenia Villafañe, Sam Welham, Seda Zirek
Incredible India
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
The design research of the unit this year was focused on one of the most incredible places on Earth, India. With its amazingly diverse culture and history, deep spiritual dimension, social richness, as well as extraordinary landscapes, it forms a subcontinent in its own right. India is growing and changing at a phenomenal pace, yet maintains great economic and infrastructural disparities. For example, medical facilities range from non-existent in rural areas to world-class in some cities and still only 60% of homes have toilets, whilst Bihar State authorities have unveiled a model of the world’s largest Hindu temple. Similarly, the very latest machinery and IT skills may be used in some construction projects, whereby most workers do without mechanisation on construction sites. Around 16% of the nation’s working population depends on construction for its livelihood. Additionally, increasingly extreme weather conditions are affecting India’s climate, which is leading to regular droughts and floods on unprecedented scale. Not only India, but also the world by and large is becoming more and more extreme and overpopulated, leading to unparalleled contrasts, scales and complexity, especially in what concerns our beliefs, habits and technological capabilities. In this context, Unit 20 explored various notions of ‘crowding’ as a phenomenon of our time: density as a fact; agglomeration as a strategy; flocking as a dynamic system; swarming as agent-based organisation; clustering as planning; large mass as a fluid dynamics; piling as vertical fields, and so on, towards the articulation of liminal geometries, radical materiality, extreme reality and awesome beauty.
We explored:
Liminal geometries – relating to a transitional process, occupying a position on both sides of a geometric boundary or threshold Radical materiality – revolutionary and progressive, reforming and revisionist materials
Extreme realities – ultimate conditions, severe agendas, acute situations, remotest places
Awesome beauty – breathtaking, stunning, stupendous, staggering, extraordinary, incredible, magnificent cities and landscapes
Fig. 20.1 Panagiota Kotsovinou Y4, ‘Pushkar Municipal Theatre’, Pushkar, India. Numerically controlled erosion processes reinterpret traditional jaali screens, focusing on the distribution of tectonic weight, porosity and transparency. Sandstone blocks are clustered and agglomerated into vaults, paying homage to India’s corbelled vault tradition. Fig. 20.2 Andreas Körner Y4, ‘Crowded Fields’, India. Formal and spatial investigation on crowded fields result in the design of a new transportation hub for Pushkar that links the linear flow of the railway with the chaotic crowd of the fairground and India’s biggest camel fair. Fig. 20.3 Wai Yin (Vivian) Wong Y4, ‘Mudras Columns’, India. Early crowd investigations result from the study of Indian hand gestures – mudras. Fig. 20.4 Jia Jian Saw Y4, ‘Dancing Catenaries’. Studies of digital cloth
simulations. Fig. 20.5 Daniel Coley Y4, ‘Ritual and Edifice’, Pushkar, India. The project merges novel construction systems with the traditions of the cremation ritual and pre-modern typologies. Fig. 20.6 María Esteban-Casañas Y5, ‘An Architecture of Pendant Drops’, Neasden, London. Ornamental roof studies for a new Sikh Temple where geometric permutations result from a process of abstraction of sacred iconography and patterns.
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Fig. 20.7 Selina Yau Y4, ‘The Garden of Ephemera’, Pushkar, India. Digital plaster cast vessels exploring intricacy and fragility, and the hybrid transition between 2D lines and 3D floral cellular patterns. Fig. 20.8 Jia Jian Saw Y4, ‘Silk Cultivation Centre’, Pushkar, India. Ornamental structures informed by fabric simulations. Fig. 20.9 Firas Saad Y4, ‘Audio-waveform Morphologies’, Pushkar, India. Sound input is investigated as a mechanism for digital crowding resulting in complex waveform audio morphologies.
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Fig. 20.10 Wiktor Kidziak Y5, ‘An Architecture of Porous Ceramic’. Jaipur, India. 1:100 model made of partly glazed slip cast terracotta forms, 3D printed components with a bespoke terracotta/PLA filament, and translucent SLA resin prototypes. The ambition is to revitalise the use of ceramic as a building material aided by the emerging rapid prototyping tools and technologies. Fig. 20.11 Wiktor Kidziak Y5, ‘Digital Terracotta’, Jaipur, India. A series of 1:1 digitally crafted terracotta prototypes of hollow and lightweight façade modules explore degrees of porosity in accordance to different parameters, such as temperature, surface finishing and slip properties.
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Figs. 20.12 – 20.13 Jonathan Wilson Y5, ‘Ramlila Maidan Festival and Protest Ground’, New Delhi, India. The project is centred on the subject of crowds, human mobility and the occupation of space. Agent-based modelling is used to simulate crowds of people, using over a hundred thousand individual autonomous agents, each with unique behavioural and physical characteristics to aid the design and optimisation process of the festival ground, public building, urban interface and the infrastructural interventions on the site.
Fig. 20.14 Wai Yin (Vivian) Wong Y4, ‘Yoga and Dance Health Club for Women’, Pushkar, India. The five elements of Panchabuta – Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Ether – are associated to the five fingers of the hand and used to develop a new ornamental language of various mudras forms. The building is designed specifically for women to perform yoga, dance and meditation. Fig. 20.15 Shi Qi An Y5, ‘Environmental Geometries: Buddhist Academic College’, Sichuan, China. Genetic algorithms are utilised to design an augment the relationship between environment and geometry, more specifically the creation of phonetic spaces, specific to Buddhist rituals and chants. Fig. 20.16 Vincent Yeung Y4, ‘Pushkar Stargazing Centre’, Pushkar, India. A juxtaposition of scientific astronomic research and religious Hindu spiritual
practices determines the design of a new cosmological centre on the hills of Pushkar. Fig. 20.17 Andreas Körner Y4, ‘Pushkar Hub’, Pushkar, India. Two folding structures of the new train terminal are juxtaposed in order to create undulating higher and lower densities in-between, resulting in a grand canopy to shelter humans and animals during the annual camel fair.
Fig. 20.18 James Mills Y4, ‘A Rejuvenation Of Pushkar Lake’, Pushkar, India. The project of a viewing tower and water filtration plant reinterprets ‘Ksiri Sagara’, a story of religious Hindu cosmology, and the abstraction of its embedded ontological process as a strategy to rejuvenate the holy pilgrimage lake of Pushkar. Fig. 20.19 Jianze (Arthur) Hao Y5, ‘Zen Buddhist Practice Centre’, Zhengzhou, China. The project reinterprets traditional Buddhist Chinese architectural principles within the context of the contemporary Chinese city. The masterplan situates the Buddhist practice centre within a large urban park for the citizen to practice and experience the traditional values of Buddhism. 20.19
Newtopia
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Unit 20
Newtopia
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Year 4
Maria Esteban-Casañas, Chris Falla, Jianze (Arthur) Hao, Wiktor Kidziak, Jonathan Wilson
Year 5
Anahita Chouhan, Daphnie Costi, Judith Shiow Yin Gillespie, Thomas Hopkins, Wai Yue (Ruby) Law, Olivia Pearson, Sam Rigby, Javier Ruiz, Emily Yan
Thanks to Justin Nicholls and Maria Eugenia Villafañe
Unit 20 is interested in crossing the boundaries of traditional architectural practice and envisioning innovative conditions in design. By considering a wide range of topics from science and art, students are encouraged to develop a two-year research study that is both individual and collaborative. Projects in the Unit aim to be poetic, people-centric and always multi-layered. They are developed with a focus on contemporary means of design and production while establishing an architecture that is built up upon social, cultural and historic strata.
Dwelling (boundaries, curtilage, proximity...)
This year the Unit explored the underlying geometries of dwelling within our cities. Dwelling is essential to human existence, and today more than ever it is at the centre of our architectural and environmental preoccupations. In a time where the world population is rapidly growing and with the majority of people living in cities, the need to house the basic needs of such a large quantity of people is unprecedented. Dwelling is not to be confused with housing. It is a broader concept that is at the heart of phenomenological thinking. It questions how we occupy, reside and inhabit the spaces of our contemporary city. It is a condition of primal importance that touches upon notions of identity, proximity, functionality, comfort and protection.
Novel Geometries (configurations, relationships, typo-morphologies, lattices…) Underlying all of these notions are the socio-politics of space, the fragility of our environment and a new geometric language of architecture that will determine the way in which we will inhabit our future buildings and cities. This year’s brief advances previous studies from last year, which investigated ‘Porosity: A Material Shift Towards an Architecture of Permeability’. The generation and expression of novel geometries, developed with the aid of contemporary digital and computational techniques, allows for open, porous, permeable and fibrous spaces to be configured – towards a higher degree of spatial complexity, material intelligence and cultural phenomena.
Trade (pearls, oil, spices...)
This year, Unit 20 studied one of the most fascinating and fast-developing areas of the world today: the Gulf. We explored various cities in the region which offered a great variety of historic layers, geo-political complexity, cultural specificity, environmental beauty and fragility. We toured Dubai and Abu Dhabi, through deserts and oases, along the fortifications of the old spice and pearl trade via the Strait of Hormuz to Muscat in Oman – the most strategically important checkpoint of oil trade in the world. Two students continued with their previous lines of research in the context of Hong Kong.
Fig. 20.1 Thomas Hopkins Y5, ‘The Dubai Amphitheatre’, UAE. The proposal is a multi-disciplinary sports complex and camel track located at the centre of the old creek district of Dubai. The varying patternisation within the canopies, inspired from the composition of ancient mashrabiyas, is optimised according to solar gain within specific time periods. They achieve environmental thermal comfort through the use of non-deterministic and performance-based design. The typo-morphologies subsequently produced help to create a new composition of space leading to a more homogenous integration of the building within its landscape. Fig. 20.2
Wiktor Kidziak Y4, ‘Recycled Baroque’, Dubai UAE. Scanned voxellised landscapes are transformed into urban shading devices constructed out of assemblies of objects that are
constantly rearranged to make up market spaces of Dubai.
Fig. 20.3 Jianze (Arthur) Hao Y4, ‘Dubai Cooking School’, UAE. The new Cooking School uses natural intelligence and cultural signs from Middle Eastern plants to simulate the form of the building, which is, at the same time, environmentally sensitive to its surrounding. The consumption of natural resources is reduced by the collection of dew and through balancing interior air condition to create a comfortable environment for cooking education, shopping, rest and catering. Fig. 20.4
Jonathan Wilson Y4, Dubai Marine Ecological Centre, UAE. Situated between the urban fringe of Al Ras district and the Creek, an aquarium and coral farm hinge the transforming urban and natural ecologies of Dubai. Cellular organisations and morphological gradients respond to the wide scope and
scale of the building’s programme; from its integration with the urban infrastructure to the growth of endangered coral species and marine life. Fig. 20.5 Emily Yan Y5, ‘Domestic Agglomeration: Urban Oasis’, Muscat, Oman. The beauty of Muscat lies largely in its voluptuous topography of mountains and valleys that create the backdrop of this agglomerative housing project. Grounded on Arabic cultural living patterns and people-centric design, a typological ‘kernel’ creates the core of each housing unit with a variable peripheral bounding veil. Through computational scripting a gradual transition of typologies respond to given parameters such as family size, visual distances, sunlight/shading, porosity and prevailing winds; resulting in a culturally and environmentally sensitive hybridised cluster of domestic spaces.
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Fig. 20.6 – 20.9 Javier Ruiz Y5, ‘Spatial Sprezzatura, Architecture of Gradients and Transitions’, Hong Kong. Material, light, structure, space, geometry and conditions of visibility shift gradually from an opaque, smooth and continuous surface to a highly porous and volatile structural fabric creating a highly variable and ambiguous in-transition space. Fig. 20.10 Olivia Pearson Y5, ‘Fibrous Lusters –Iridescent Trade Centre,’ Abu Dhabi, UAE. The project focuses on fibrous studies that are generated through analogue and digital algorithm feedback loops. It develops an intricate and innovative design language that integrates hybrid material responses between fundamental resources of Abu Dhabi pearl and oil. Located in the National Mangrove Park, the bulding is materiliased through the iridescence of its 3D envelope.
Fig. 20.11 Judith Shiow Yin Gillespie Y5, ‘In_Scribing Architecture: The National Library of Oman’. ‘Read, for your Lord is most beneficent, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know’ (Qur’an, 96:3-5). Calligraphy is one of the most important elements of Islamic culture. The architecture and language of the new National Library of Oman challenges how space can be redefined by the dialogue of 1) an extruded calligraphy and 2) the subsequent integration of its gestural meaningfulness into the surrounding topography. Using a set of traditional phrases specific to Islam, the Library shields its content by engraving it into the landscape and coating its externalised volumes with gold (reviving the traditional techniques of gild carvings). Fig. 20.12 – Fig. 20.13 Sam Rigby Y5, ‘A Reinterpretation of Sullivan’s
City: Ornament, Reform and the Extension of Dubai’, UAE. Through the study of Louis Sullivan’s ornament, the project traverses a variety of scales, as an infrastructural development and new system of dwelling exploring layering, density and porosity. In an attempt to piece together and weave within the fabric of Dubai’s disparate urban environment, the building proposal addresses typical notions of public and private space in an International Cultural House of America. Commenting on the current cultural identity and parallels with previous cities and epochs, it challenges the potential of introverted urbanism, as a typological condition, proposed for a city defined by its segregated societies and cultures.
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20.14 – 20.15 Anahita Chouhan Y5, ‘The Oriental Court of Dubai’, UAE. Dealing with a rapidly growing ex-patriate population and contemporary issues arising as a result of British imperialism and the Orientalist attitudes of the eighteenth century, the Oriental Court of Dubai helps to define a new era of architecture for the city. The programme addresses issues surrounding methods of Sharia law imposed on 90% of non-Emirati citizens of Dubai. The Courthouse uses a British model of precedent law in order to judge crimes, from civil to criminal in a non-Islamic system. The form and design principles for the court stem from Middle Eastern influences in order to help redefine cultural aesthetics in the region.
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Fig. 20.16 – 20.17 Daphnie Costi Y5, ‘Skin Clinic’, Hong Kong. The project of a Skin Clinic on the Island of Ma Wan exaggerates the existing widespread trend of cosmetic surgery in Hong Kong and China. It formulates an extreme scenario in the future, suggesting a ‘beauty factory’ where people undergo extreme body modification controlled by programmed technology. The clinic encompasses a voluntary initiative carried out by individuals who are willing to alter their bodies in the sake of beauty and eternal youth. Patients consider the body to be a flexible material on which they can act: a transformable, improvable and augmentable entity.
Fig. 20.18 Chris Falla Y4, ‘Trans.Market – Hybrid Trade Infrastructure’, Dubai, UAE. Derived through a superposition of history and computational swarm optimisation, traces of trade
and culture are reinterpreted into a fibrous new passage across the creek, facilitating trade in various hybrid and contemporary forms. Fig. 20.19 Maria Esteban-Casañas Y4, ‘Water-Based Morphologies’, Dubai, UAE. Reacting against a future of oil depletion, the proposal invests in a new trade of bio-fuel. The Salicornia Plant Nursery provides the seeds for plantation in the salt flats of the Gulf. The building and landscape design emerges from the logic of water irrigation systems and studies of plant growth. The building’s roof explores the multiplicity of possibilities of patterns through repetition, variation and deformation of a morphing hexagonal grid. The computational variability within this repetitive system allows for unexpected geometries to occur. Fig. 20.20 Wai Yue (Ruby) Law Y5, ‘Centre for Dharmic Faiths’, Muscat, Oman. Located along
the coastline of Muscat, the new centre hosts the temples of five Indian religions, encouraging respect, communication and discussion among the groups within a shared community. The building is proposed to be built out of a loam-concrete composite that triggers the revival of earth-bound architecture in the Gulf. It determines the building’s geometrical, tectonic and ornamental complexity. The project also aims at reinventing the traditional program with a neo-materialistic approach, marking the ambition to escape from virtual digital architectural visions.
Porosity: A Material Shift Towards an Architecture of Permeability
Richard Beckett, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Porosity: A Material Shift Towards an Architecture of Permeability
Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti, Richard Beckett
Architecture has long been determined by its prime necessity of protection and permanence, which has in turn led to a sense of hardness, closure and inertia that still affects our buildings and cities today. In the early periods of the Modern Movement, architects proclaimed the liberation from heavy and massive constructions by turning to a much more open and free-flowing architecture. The Miesian fluidity of transparent space and Le Corbusian Plan Libre prophesised a new era in which society seemed to have gotten rid of its constraining mass. But the crisis of the Modern Movement and the emergence of Postmodernity exposed the fallacies of previous beliefs. Architecture went back to its former closure and inherently opaque dimension. Designers rediscovered their love of the physical presence of materiality and colour, indulging with the embedded nature of architecture in historic form and style.
Contemporary architecture overcame such dialectic positions (of either/or logics) by advocating more hybrid conditions that explore both threedimensional depth and mass, as well as the ever-permeable condition of space, environment and matter. Profound transformations in our current society, new postdigital paradigms, and the emergence of an unprecedented environmental awareness are pushing architecture forward to discover a new understanding of social porosity and a new sense of materiality.
Social Porosity
The precincts of our information era have made our domestic environments in particular extremely exposed (even vulnerable?), pushing us to reflect on a new sense of intimacy and perception of space. The employment of new geometric, structural and material complexities is also allowing our cities to become physically, environmentally and technologically more sensitive and surely more pervious to cultural multilayering. The potential porosity of contemporary buildings is shifting towards an open architecture of ultimate permeability, including hybrid private-public
spaces, mixed internal-external areas, transitional enclosed-open voids, multi-layered façades etc.
Neo-materiality
It could be argued that the history of architecture is also a history of materials, material innovation, material assembly and fabrication and how they have drastically changed the discipline. In a contemporary debate, materiality as a driving force of innovation is reflected in a postdigital paradigm shift towards a new sense of materiality. Neomateriality marks the ambition to escape from the virtual and cyber architectural visions of the early days of digital architecture, as well as from the standardised, off-the-shelf and environmentally and financially unsustainable architectural production methods of the past, towards innovative applied theories, techniques and technologies.
Students in Unit 20 explored new material conditions through a broad range of material studies. These included for example the experimentation with concrete, rubber, Polyfloss, ‘sillycone’, wax, ‘foament’ (foam and cement), nylon composites, milled stone and ‘audio-bricks’ (acoustic responsive bricks). By combining both analogue and digital processes, students embraced a variety of material/tectonic experiments, which created the underpinning conceptual structure of their projects. The implementation of new 3D rapid prototyping techniques and innovative CNC milling technologies also reflected (on) the advent of Neo-materiality.
Unit 20 investigated these conditions in the cultural context of Hong Kong and Macau; two places with a strong hybrid identity resulting from merging Chinese and Western cultures. Whilst analysing the extreme topographic, urban and social diversity of the river Delta, students researched new modes of private/public life in this part of the world, which is undergoing arguably one of the most rapid, fascinating yet problematic transformation processes occuring in human civilisation. Extreme urban sprawl is leading to an unprecedented form
of verticality, density, (threat to) privacy, the proximity and/or segregation of wealth and poverty in these cities. By reinterpreting local habits, global typologies, old traditions and recent legislations, students developed projects that focused on contemporary domesticity and housing typologies, catering for an emergent open way of metropolitan living. Furthermore, the projects investigate how the sensorial presence of materiality can affect the generation and experience of space, both on a 1:1 bodily scale, as well as on a larger urban scale.
Thanks to Justin Nicholls for his invaluable commitment to supervising Year 4 students during the development of their Design Realisation report, and to all our critics: Jaime Bartolome, Kathy Basheva, Roberto Bottazzi, Matthew Butcher, Fernando Jerez, Marco Polletto, Yael Reisner, Stefan Ritter, Stefan Rutzinger and Marin Sawa.
Many thanks also to the Institute of Making, UCL for material sponsorship.
Year 4
Anahita Chouhan, Judith Shiow Yin Gillespie, Thomas William Hopkins, Wai Yue (Ruby) Law, Olivia Pearson, Sam Rigby, Javier Ruiz, Emily Yan
Year 5
Amittai Antoine, Steven Ascensão, Juhye Kang, Joanna Pawlas, Era Savvides
Fig. 20.1 Javier Ruiz, Y4, Dragonfly Colony. The residential project is sited over the Red Hill Peninsula, South of Hong Kong Island. The modular housing typology, developed through variable/iterative systems, focuses on circulation strategies for housing schemes. Fig. 20.2 Thomas William Hopkins, Y4, Coast Line Thresholds. Using the study of thresholds to question conventional notions of space and challenge traditional distinctions between public/private and natural/built environments this housing project develops around a mangrove ecosystem along the coastline of Hong Kong, suggestive of a more porous and permeable architecture. Fig. 20.3 Joanna Pawlas, Y5, Sonic Morphologies, The Compact Accommodation Tower. The proposal investigates ways of analysing and inhabiting the urban
soundscape of Kwun Tong to generate controlled sonic environments through creation of site-specific, parametric geometry of reflective surfaces and levels of sonic permeability by means of natural acoustics.
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20.4 Anahita Chouhan, Y4, Serendipitous House for Hong Kong. To stack and interlock housing equates to efficiency in the Mid-Levels of Hong Kong. There is a necessity for density and a growing urgency for verticality. This is maximised through the utilisation of the quintuplex apartment type, which focuses on fluidity of movement and circulation as the basis for its form. Fig. 20.5 Ammitai Antoine, Y5, The Embellished Image. Full perspective of 1:1 selective laser sintered nylon dress. The project hopes to explore the subjective affect of the ‘image’. This study accentuates the duality between the image one hopes to portray to the observer (through the dress), and the true condition of the body underneath, Dress of Petals.
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Fig. 20.6 Sam Rigby, Y4, Mid-Levels Introverted Living. Embedded silicone façade model testing light and density levels. The project reverses the local typological ‘cage house’ challenging traditional notions of space, light, adaptability and individuality. Fig. 20.7 Juhye Kang, Y5, Innerforest, Tsim Sha Tsui District. Through considering the highly densified and destructive façade of Hong Kong, vertical service pipes develop the language of ‘in-between’ space, created as an inner forest with innovative self-foaming porous structures.
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Fig. 20.8 Emily Yan, Y4, Inhabitable Thresholds, Undulating Apartments, Hong Kong. In response to the extreme densities of Hong Kong, the proposal develops a design system of maximised surfaces. The envelope creates tension between the interior and exterior. Fig. 20.9 Olivia Pearson, Y4, The House of Denaturalisation, Investigating The ‘Fibrous’, Mount Davis, Hong Kong Island. The Dematerialising Residence begins to integrate a hybridity between the topographical context and the fibrous concrete proposal. Through material experimentation and investigation a stringy language of algorithms began to interpret and represent the delicate nature of the design proposal.
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Fig. 20.10 – Fig. 20.11 Era Savvides, Y5, Digital Petrology. The project wishes to uncover the parallels currently emerging between the realm of digitality in architecture and that of phenomenology, as interpreted within the current post-digital context and through a primary focus on material poetics. What begins as an open-ended enquiry into the porosity of stone with a curiosity towards material translucency develops into a propositional idea concerned with the potentialities that arise from the synthesisation of various fabrication techniques into a system, which uses a subtractive method to create material for additive process.
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Fig. 20.12 Wai Yue Ruby Law, Y4, Toroidal Boutique Hotel. A spiral ramp staircase intervention evolves from the topological geometry of the torus, then further exploring the discourse between opaque versus transparent materiality.
Fig. 20.13 Judith Shiow Yin Gillespie, Y4, Colony of Epicentres, Sham Shui Po. In one of the poorest areas of Hong Kong, the entanglements of space aim to achieve connectivity with the discrete and public spaces in dwellings using multiple levels of translucency. Fig. 20.14 Joanna Pawlas, Y5, Audiobrick. Acoustic modular filtration system for sonic permeability of frequencies between 2 kHz to 3 kHz determined in the range of birds’ songs. Fig. 20.15 Steven Ascensao, Y5, The Grotel-egance of the Casino-esque Flamboyance. Layers of masking introduce new levels of prosthetics where the mask
provides the user with greater capabilities reflected upon the architecture. The performance reflects the casinoesque nature of a habitable gateway in Macau’s inner harbour; a connection point to mainland China. It uses the hybridisation of grotesqueness & elegance whilst embracing Chinese iconography as a figural language for the architecture. The two opposites interacts with one another where the soft, delicate fabric, penetrates the hard shell being left exposed and unprotected. This movement is also reflected upon the coexistence of the dragon and the phoenix is an important iconography for the Chinese culture as it symbolises the wealth and prosperity for the unity of polar opposites.
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Soft, Sensual, Synthetic: Green Paradigms In The Post-Digital Era
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Hannes Mayer
Unit 20
SOFT, SENSUAL, SYNTHETIC: GREEN PARADIGMS IN THE POST-DIGITAL ERA
Marcos Cruz, Hannes Mayer, Marjan Colletti
Unit 20 has formed a particular interest in crossing boundaries of the traditional architectural practice, envisioning innovative conditions in design. By looking into advances within a wide range from sciences to art — small-scale intelligence, bio-technology, new materiality and digital aesthetics — students are supported to develop an individual research field. The projects, on various scales, develop an architecture that is built up by many different strata of applied scientific knowledge, software based morphologies, urban contextualism, as well as local and global policies, traditions and cultures.
A critical positioning within today’s architectural discourse
Most of the contemporary and fashionable “green” concepts are the collectively acceptable mainstream leftovers or technological implementations of avant-garde thoughts, which can be traced back to the oil crisis in the seventies and the subsequent emergence of a green movement. The radical and holistic thoughts of the beginning were most notably and globally voiced in 1992 as Agenda 21 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro. However, the roots of such movement can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of biology as a scientific subject coining the now commonly used words habitat, milieu and ecology.
Being in the teens of the 21st century challenges us to look for new alternatives and visionary thoughts that uncover and re-integrate a relationship which has been lost in translation: man-architecture-nature.
Modernity attempted to formulate a reality that was independent from nature, a replacement of ‘sickly’ nature with perfect technology; as a metaphor of this growing divide architecture was raised on pilotis and sought refuge in visual abstract art. In the recent past however, we have realised the limitations of such approach and nature has regained its place as a quintessential reference for technology, for scientific advances and thus, architecture. Natural complexity and exuberance succeeded classical simplicity and reduction. Instead of opposition, man-architecture-nature is now seen as a more intertwined formation of an overall environmental/cultural/architectural manifold.
More than anything, this reflects our post-digital condition in which architecture aims at a more human dimension in digital design. Following a notion that was first brought up by Nicholas Negroponte, “being digital” looses its appeal as a paradigm to “being human“. This however, does not support the rejection of previous digital achievements as suggested by the crisisbenefiting advocates of analogue, orthogonal, handicraft architecture, rather, it calls for a shift from digital rationality to digital sensuality; a move towards a new fabricated materiality.
The question for architecture today is not so much about computational ability or whether designers are involved in scripting or other forms of mathematical processes that help manipulate complex geometries. Architecture goes beyond this. Future steps are about finding a new sense of materiality, one that allows us create new forms and spaces that ultimately engage us (the body) in a more intense way with our built environment. As a part of this exploration performative qualities of new materials are being tested: bio-concrete and highperformance concrete, bio-bricks, novel ceramics, a variety of silicon rubbers, fungal growth as binder of recycled materials.
Underlying is an understanding that programming has become an ubiquitous yet invisible element within our contemporary life whilst the interfaces become sensual, sensory, responsive, tangible — integrating digital, biological, cultural, spiritual and material systems. This is encouraging us to seek a hitherto unseen design approach, one that is soft, sensual and more synthetic.
This year our Unit trip went to Sao Paulo — Parati — Rio de Janeiro.
External Critics: Julia Backhaus, Nicolo Casas, Isaskun Chinchilla, Peter Cook, Oliver Domeisen, Colin Fournier, Linda Hagberg, Sean Hanna, Jonathan Hill, Branko Kolarevic, Justin Nicholls, Marco Poletto, Jose Sanchez, Sara Shafiei, Susana Soares.
Unit 20 would like to thank Justin Nicholls for his continuing unconditional support.
Archithese has also kindly supported the unit with additional Sponsorship.
Year 4: Steven Ascensao, Amittai Lee Antoine, Daphnie Costi, Neil Keogh, Joanna Pawlas, Era Savvides
Year 5: Chun Fatt Lee, Sheung Hok Lim, Rui Liu, Jiro Munechika, Barry Wark, Sam Welham, Maria Knutsson-Hall
Fig. 20.1 Steven Ascensao, Samba School, Morro da Providencia: Carnivalesque Flamboyance. Fig. 20.2 Amittai Antonie, Ornamental Investigation: Divine, Sacred and Transcendent Order. Fig. 20.3 Daphnie Costi, Carnival Museum, Morro De Providencia. Fig. 20.4 Neil Keogh, Hackney Wick Suspended Gardens. Fig. 20.5 Era Savvides, Museum of Primitive Art, Rio de Janeiro. Fig. 20.6 Joanna Pawlas, Auditory transgression, Bio-Acoustics Research Centre, Rio de Janeiro. Fig. 20.7 Sam Welham, Connect, Intersect, Redirect — Material mass versus digital linearity. Post-digital transitions at a textural scale. Mechanical marks and errors are scanned back into the digital interface, joints and components are modelled into tool paths; connecting stone to wires. The dual tooling tolerances exist within a single material articulation, obscuring and revealing
details and geometry. Fig. 20.8 Sam Welham, Masonic Lodge and Temple, Rio de Janeiro. Exposing a single elevation, the Masonic Temple occupies an interstice within the built mass. A focus on digital fabrication, as a craft, connects scales of milled-stone detail with a ritual passage of enlightenment; as degrees of initiation are reflected in strata of refined tooling.
Fig. 20.9 Chun Fatt Lee, Rui Liu, Sam Welham, TerminateOriginate. The strategy projects a new layer of density around Central Station of Rio de Janeiro. A gradual pixelation articulates a scripted city grid, creating an urban language unique to Rio de Janeiro. This urban image identifies the cultural frontage and represents an international presentation of the city. Fig. 20.10 Rui Liu, UN Water Conference Centre. The building is located on the Western end of the Avenida Presidente Vargas, which is a less developed spot of the avenue and an area prone to floods due to its very low topography. The building and surrounding landscape are planned for the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro, integrating a water purification plant and a flooding prevention system. Fig. 20.11 Chun Fatt Lee, Grandstand for Samba. A new grandstand is
proposed for the Sambadrome of Rio de Janeiro. The development aims to regenerate the surrounding area, whilst providing amenities and more comprehensive views of the parade. The curvilinear and sensual platforms rises from the ground, creating a museum for the Samba floats underneath. Fig. 20.12 Jiro Munechika, Olympic Gateway Station Hackney Wick. Fig. 20.13 Sheung Hok Lim, Guanabara Bay Transportation Hub — Lattice Landscapes. The project aims to create a new typology of transportations hubs where inhabitation of a complex lattice structure occurs on several scales. The subdivision of concourse and its multi-levelled continuity is designed to create a gradient of spaces from personal to anonymous are as well as the transgression of speed.
Fig. 20.14 Maria Knutsson-Hall, Olympic Forum for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics. The Forum is a public building for visitors to interact and communicate with the Olympic Committee both during and after the Olympics. The Forum will provide information about the Olympics and future Olympic venues with the aim to decentralise the decision making process of such complex structure to a more local level. The building works like a scaffold that integrates nature and growth throughout. During the Olympics the vegetated building will appear relatively controlled. Over time nature will slowly infiltrate the building structure and take over its full tectonics. Fig. 20.15 Rui Liu, UN Water Conference Centre, Final Model.
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Fig. 20.16 Maria Knutsson-Hall, Architecture and Nature — A symbiosis inspired by the sloth. Investigation into biophilic and biomorphic design has led to an evaluation of the experiential affect nature has on human beings. The sloth’s aesthetic qualities and behavioural patterns within its environment have been analysed together with the spiritual mystification of nature. The project explores natural symbiotic systems and processes to construct an ecologically responsive architectural proposal. The idea of integrating nature in the architecture is seen as a reaction for the decrease of natural environment in the rapidly growing zones in the north part of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Fig. 20.17 (Overleaf) Barry Wark, North Rio Pool Club, A Corpulent Architecture. The Pool Club provides public leisure space in the expansive North Zone of Rio that
is devoid of such amenties and gives the area a sense of identity. The project explores the potential of digital design and fabrication to create a corpulent architecture. The materiality folds, sags and conforms to its inhabitants to create a soft space that has a sense of heightened engagement and tactility between man and architecture. This materiality is tested through utilising additive layered manufacturing technology to create complex moulds allowing for the creation of soft composite interfaces.
Unbalanced Boundaries, Undefined Limits, Uncertain Edges
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
UNBALANCED BOUNDARIES, UNDEFINED LIMITS, UNCERTAIN EDGES
Unit 20 has formed a particular interest in crossing boundaries of traditional architectural practice, while envisioning innovative conditions in design By looking into advances within a wide range of sciences and art bio-medics, smallscale intelligence, light structures, advanced fabrication and digital poetics students are supported to develop an individual research field The projects, on various scales, develop an architecture that is built up by many different strata of applied scientific knowledge, software-based morphologies, micro-worlds and intelligent environments, as well as local and global policies, traditions and cultures
Boundaries (Unbalanced, Environmental …)
In a time when environmental preoccupations dictate our daily agenda
Unit 20 is interested in testing the ecological equilibrium involving our internal and external architectural boundaries The unit looked in depth at Wates House, our educational setting here at The Bartlett, and questioned the existing spatio-environmental constraints of the physical building, while proposing an overall different interface between its varied environments and users Students designed a variety of smallscale artefacts and components, working on 1:1 experimental prototypes.
Limits (Undefined, Urban …)
Simultaneously, the limits between the urban and rural landscape, centre and periphery, high and low density, global technological sophistication and local traditions are increasingly blurred and undefined The unit travelled to Taiwan, one of Asia’s most fascinating spots, and analysed the already consolidated, yet still changing urban scenery, where once large flows of people from Mainland China reached its shores. Students studied the indeterminate cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan’s booming capital
Edges (Uncertain, Architectural …)
The unit also looked at different notions of uncertainty in architecture, a term of significance in a number of fields, including philosophy, economics, physics, and engineering It also applies to the prediction of future scenarios, to physical measurement and to unknown conditions in architecture. Students investigated the distinctive typological features of Taiwanese traditional architecture and its rich wooden ornamentation, exploring future trajectories for contemporary and visionary buildings with uncertain tectonic, technological, aesthetic edges.
Year 4: Juhye Kang, Maria Knutsson-Hall, Chun Fatt Lee, Sheung Hok Lim, Jiro Munechika, Barry Wark, Sam Welham
Year 5: Amanda Bate, Richard Beckett, Sam Clark, Linda Elizabeth Hagberg, Marcin Kurdziel, Aleksandrina Rizova, Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Boon TingWendy Teo
Unit 20 was supported by Justin Nicholls and MACE.
Fig. 20.1 Aleksandrina Rizova and Richard Beckett, Infrastructural Ecologies, Neihu District, Taipei integrated pervious urban system The urban strategy is focused on minimising the amount of newly built impervious surface in this developing area of Northern Taipei A porous, multi-layered network of circulation routes, integrating transport infrastructure with sports fields and commercial, educational and residential units on different levels, is proposed This results in a complex permeable urban fabric which maximises ground surface Vertical algae bio-reactors and a horizontal strata of hydroponics offer a new agricultural urban ecology that is intertwined with the city fabric Simultaneous movement of cars, cyclists and pedestrians, as well as recycled water used for irrigation, is encompassed within the fluid system
Fig. 20.2 Chun Fatt Lee, Danshui Waterfront Cultural District, Taipei A convolution of transport infrastructure, urban courtyards and sedimentary banks integrates the new Taipei Opera, several museums and art galleries
Fig. 20.3 Maria Knutsson-Hall and Barry Wark, Turbulent Recursivities, Luzhou City, Taipei Intervention on the industrial Danshui river-front, integrating a mixed use transport interchange, research institute, street markets and housing Fig. 20.4 Luca Rizzi Brignoli and Marcin Kurdziel, Taipei Daan Urban Park-scraper Intertwining of interstitial public and private spaces merging architecture into nature Fig. 20.5 Amanda Bate and Sam Clark, The Hydrating Fringe, Sanchong City, Taipei New industrial waterscape created on the western bank of the Danshui River The programme includes aqua-ponics, leisure facilities and housing Fig. 20.6 Sheung Hok Lim,
Xinyi Cancer Centre, Taipei By applying the complexity of triangulated tessellation, the building defines space through the hybridisation of structure and circulation
Fig. 20.7 Sam Welham, Xinyi Qu Allergy Centre Located on the eastern foothills of Taipei the project explores a site-specific materiality creating an interface between the urban and natural landscape Fig. 20.8 Wendy Boon Ting Teo, Taipei Main Train Station A preliminary model that investigates the tectonic complexity of algae production in roof structure hybrid techniques of rapid prototyping, CNC milling and laser-cutting Fig. 20.9 Juhye Kang, Hydroponic Farm, Shezi Island, Taipei Sited along the embankment of the Keelung River, the project suggests a striated network of hydroponic allotments that interpret the surrounding agricultural morphologies
Fig. 20.10 Richard Beckett, The new Life Science Department, Taipei University The urban fabric of the northern Neihu District of Taipei is redesigned according to the biotic and climatic conditions of the site By utilising the natural variations in soil fertility and porosity it creates a geomantic approach that maximises the productive potential of the urban surface Fig. 20.11 Amanda Bate, North Shun Temple Extension, Sanchong City Adaptive paper architecture establishing Taoist festival routes to the Danshui River in Taipei Detail model of roof structure influenced by traditional temple constructions, integrating digitally generated paper components Fig. 20.12 Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Museum of Rare Books, Daan District, Taipei The building exhibits the vast collection of antique books of the National Palace Museum A complex stepped floor system displays the permanent archive that contrasts with
the ever-changing environmental conditions of the upper museum space Fig. 20.13 Sam Clark, The Unfinishing School, Sanchong City, Taipei Located amongst three existing schools, the project merges public and private, establishing a structural manifold of invisible boundaries that creates connections in the city through the schools Fig. 20.14 Marcin Kurdziel, Bereavement Market and Meditation Park, Taipei The project is located at the gates of the Western Taipei Cemetery It explores notions of randomness as a design methodology where complex urban settings are generated through the iteration of abstract digital models Fig. 20.15 Linda Hagberg, Taipei Herbal Baths and Aquatic Sports Centre Preliminary building model that illustrates the distribution network of heat and water in the building Fig. 20.16 Wendy Boon Ting Teo, Taipei Main Train Station The proposal generates
power through transforming redundant heat and air exhausted from the underground transport system Algae and hot water flow through the building skin expressing fluctuations in energy production The scheme acts as a city gateway recalling the ephemeral qualities of Chinese landscape paintings Fig. 20.17 Aleksandrina Rizova, Convergent building territories School Academy, Taipei
A system of inhabitable urban interstices converges on a complex network of sports academies with adjacent dormitories and fields and shared subsidiary facilities with the urban fabric Fig. 20.18 Aleksandrina Rizova, Convergent building territories School Academy, Taipei
The core of the proposal plugs into the surroundings through a multi-layered arrangement of spaces and circulation paths integrated in a pervious structural mesh
Sacred Topologies, Profane Morphologies
Colletti,
Marjan
Marcos Cruz
Dip/MArch Unit 20
Yr 4: Amanda Bate, Richard Beckett, Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Leonhard Clemens, Linda Hagberg, Wendy Teo Boon Ting, Aleksandrina Rizova
Yr 5: Daniel Baumann, Dave Edwards, Hyun Min Koh, Babak Niai Tizkar, Joanna Szulda
Sacred Topologies, Profane Morphologies
The theme of this year evolved around the complexity of sacred and profane spaces. It questioned those spaces not just in experiential, programmatic and symbolic ways, but also in terms of their geometric dimension: sacred topologies or profane morphologies.
The first field trip was focused on a site in Belem, Lisbon, in the vicinity of the famous Jeronimos Monastery. Here, the unit designed the lost facade of an old chapel of which the exterior and interior were demolished in the 18th century Lisbon earthquake. Currently used as a cultural centre, the chapel was seen as the centre of the programmatic expansion into surrounding urban voids. The second trip focused on Los Angeles where Unit 20 did a joint workshop with students of UCLA. A variety of interior spaces and prototypes were developed in the context of each individual work.
One of the main aims of the year was to construct projects on a variety of scales simultaneously, designing both a small, technical, as well as larger, urban, dimension. Rather than aiming for comprehensive master plans, students were asked to grow the work from inside out with a focus on advanced 3D modelling, along with careful consideration of cultural and historic values and atmospherics.
Marcos Crus & Marjan Colletti
Clockwise from top left: Leonhard Clemens, Façade Project – Belem Chapel, Lisbon; Group Project, Food Junction Kiosk, Camley Street Nature Park (Photography: Paul Smoothy); Amanda Bate, E-scape – e-waste recycling plant, Lisbon; Linda Hagberg, Façade Project – Belem Chapel, Lisbon; Aleksandrina Rizova Fado Music Centre, Lisbon; Wendy Teo Boon Ting Gem Cultural Centre, Lisbon; Richard Beckett, Burning Man Ephemeral City; Luca Rizzi Brignoli, Renewable Lisbon.
Sublime Flesh Exhibition, Christ Church Spitalfields. (Photography: Paul Smoothy; Digital Fabrication: ESA Studio at Grymsdyke Farm, Bartlett CAD/CAM Workshop and DMC London.)
Daniel Baumann, Fluctuating Landscapes – algae based water treatment plant and ferry terminal, Lisbon.
Top, middle and bottom right: Babak Niai Tizkar, Hanging Ecologies, Belem, Lisbon. Bottom left: Daniel Baumann, Fluctuating Landscapes – algae based water treatment plant and ferry terminal, Lisbon.
Top: Joanna Szulda, Sacred Womanhood – natural childbirth and women’s centre, Santa Monica. Bottom: Dave Edwards, The LA Forum: library of the four ecologies.
Top: Dave Edwards, The LA Forum: library of the four ecologies. Middle and bottom: Hyun Min Koh, Green Beacon, Cacilhas, Almada, Portugal.
Convoluted Flesh
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Dip/MArch Unit 20
Yr 4: Daniel Baumann, Dave Edwards, Marcin Kurdziel, Hyun Min Koh, Babak Niai Tizkar. , Brad Sliva, Joanna Szulda.
Yr 5: Jenna Al-Ali, Kasper Ax, Luis Carlos Reis, Jason Chan, Laurence Dudeney, Tsehayou Mengistu, Vicky Patsalis, Soraya Somarthne, Graham Thompson, MArch: Yousef Al-Mehdari, Johan Voordouw.
Convoluted Flesh
The convoluted (i.e. overlapped, intertwined and blurred) nature of contemporary architectural design, as we understand it, goes beyond the functions of opulence and intricacy, of technique and simulation, of module and optimisation. It invokes something ranking above notions of beauty, style, and elegance - it evokes the sublime, the blissful and the mysterious.
Simultaneously, our understanding of Flesh in architecture stands in opposition to the common, yet reductive metaphor of skin as a flat and thin membrane. In a time when a lot of the mainstream architectural discourse is essentially surface-bound - risking flattening and disembodying the architectural ‘skin’ ever more, the aim of Convoluted Flesh, on the contrary, is to stress the urgency of a Thick Embodied Flesh.
Our endeavour is then to establish a debate in which experimentation, technology and progress does neither exclude the intuitive and poetic freedom of designers as truly creative thinkers, nor the inherent relationship between the user and the depth of the architectural flesh. Hence, we consider a poetic, as well as ‘corpological’ approach that complement a typological, topological and ecological understanding of architecture. At the same time, we pursue an approach that develops from inside out, involving experiential qualities, inhabitation and use.
Marcos Cruz and Marjan Colletti This page: Graham Thompson.
Top: Jenna Al-Ali, Middle left to right: Jason Chan, Luis Carlos Reis, Jenna Al-Ali, Bottom left to right: Tsehayou Mengistu, Luis Carlos Reis, Gareth Evans.
Top and middle: Kasper Ax, Bottom: Laurence Dudeney.
Top: Vicky Patsalis, Bottom: Kasper Ax.
Top: Johan Voordouw, Bottom: Soraya Somarathne.
Top left: Jason Chan, Middle left: Jenna Al-Ali, Bottom left: Yousef Al-Mehdari, Right: Yousef Al-Mehdari.
Trade, Traditions and Ecosystems
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Dip Unit 20
Yr 4: Jenna Al-Ali, Kasper Ax, Kwok Kwan (Jason) Chan, Laurence Dudeney, Tsehayou Mengistu, Vicky Patsalis, Luis Reis, Soraya Somarathne, Graham Thompson. Yr 5: Minna Ala-Jaaski, Yousef Al-Mehdari, Edward Calver, Anders Christiansen, Yaojen (Alan) Chuang, Eric Smith, Filipa Valente. MArch: Hannes Mayer.
Trade, Traditions and Ecosystems
The unit’s agenda is aimed at global sophistication within a local context of trade, traditions and ecosystems.
This year’s brief responded in particular to the historical development of London and Miami’s socio-cultural space towards a thoroughly contemporary architectural proposal that incorporates ‘other’ sensibilities (relating to new manufacturing technologies, natural environments that are largely under threat - the Thames Valley and the Evergladesand eco-technologies). Such technologies are progressing extremely fast, having an immediate impact on design, yet the built environment seems to be limping behind, still stereotyped as monumental, heavy, and solid – traditional.
Hence, the focus rests on the reinterpretation of traditional building typologies and innovative technologies of architecture related to the context and content of trading and natural habitats. Student projects include, amongst others, a new fish market in Miami, a bio-technological greenhouse, a hydro-ecology on the verge of the Everglades, a visitor centre, a wellness centre, therapeutic sound environments, a liturgical workshop, and an institute for climate change.
Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz
Above: Selection of conceptual and investigative physical models.
Clockwise from top left: Minna Ala-Jaaski, Anders Christiansen, Yaojen Alan Chuang, Eric Smith.
Top: Filipa Valente. Bottom: Hannes Mayer.
This Page: Edward Calver. Facing page: Yousef Al-Mehdari.
Skeens: Hybrids Between Skins and Screens
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Dip Unit 20
Yr 4: Hong Tao Wei, Irene Siljama, Jun Shibata, Masaki Kakizoe, Kenny Tsui, Andreas Dopfer, Pouya Zamanpour, Tobias Klein, Ralf Eikelberg, Jackson Ka Hung, Vimal Mehta Yr 5: James Pike, Nat Keast, Masashi Miyamoto, Stefanie Sujio, Shaun Siu Chong
SKEENS Hybrids Between Skins and Screens
Skins and screens are two of the most challenging, yet commonly used terms in architecture, perhaps because they stand for what is understood as the contemporary and where architecture is undergoing its deepest changes However, as the result of objectifiable technological phenomena, they are also aesthetic and cultural clichés that risk reducing the architectural practice to an increasingly flat, topological-digital, and humandistant reality
Unit 20 propose SKEENS – a convergent and interactive process between skins and screens Skins embody a wider understanding of walls and membranes in their quality as primary architectural conditions Grounded in historical meaning as rigid boundaries, they become soft interfaces for social and physical interaction These threedimensional skins imply a sense of depth and thickness that is created by a new materiality of inhabitable spaces
Although determined by the flat geometrical nature of digital interfaces, screens convey more intricate spatial attributes than simple line drawings, for they appear spatial in the manifestation of surfaces, volumes and shadows As sites of convergence of different digital logics and interactions they create two-and-ahalf dimensional spaces – formulated circumstances, which require qualitative rather than quantitative data
The SKEENS were tested and informed by the cultural context of the People’s Republic of China, where the unit travelled between Beijing and Shanghai
Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz Clockwise from top left: Shaun Siu Chong, Shaun Siu Chong, James Pike, Andreas Dopfer, (group project) Kenny Tsui + Masaki Kakizoe, Stefanie Sujio,
Clockwise from top left: Hong Tao Wei, Jun Shibata, Masashi Miyamoto, Masashi Miyamoto, (group project) Ralf Eikelberg + Jackson Ka Hung, (group project) Pouya Zamanpour + Irene Siljama, (group project) Kenny Tsui + Masaki Kakizoe,Tobias Klein Overleaf, top: Nat Keast, bottom: James Pike
Homo Sapiens, Robo Sapiens, Home Sapiens
Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz
Dip Unit 20
Yr 4: Mark Andrews, Misae Furugori Gonzalez, Chikako Kanamoto, Nathanial Keast, Masashi Miyamoto, Rosemary Pattison, James Pike, Shaun Siu Chong, Benjamin Guy Thomas, Paul Thomas, Andrew Teng Ying Yek Yr 5: Ilana Brilovich, Sirichai Bunchua, Mark Exon, Shiu Lun Lam, Chun Yu Lau, Samuel White
Homo Sapiens, Robo Sapiens, Home Sapiens
Unit 20 is interested in crossing boundaries of the traditional architectural practice, developing innovative conditions in architecture By looking into advances in a wide range of sciences and art, each student develops an individual field of interest through a one or two year research programme: bio-medics, ‘extropianism’, small-scaled intelligence, light structures, material engineering, and digital aesthetics Objects in our daily life should be under reconsideration Architecture is built up by many different strata, scientific knowledge, micro-worlds and objects, which interact within the realm of time, speed, movement, periodical reproduction, and random connectivity
The work of Unit 20 has been published and exhibited widely Recent exhibitions include ‘Actions re Form’ at CAPC Coimbra and Architekturgalerie Munich, the Valencia University, the Framework Gallery in Berlin, the Cork Gallery in London, the Media Festival in Florence, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and participation in the Rotterdam Biennale 2003 The Unit 20 book was published by the University of Valencia/Actar in 2002
The Unit 20 field trip to Tokyo was supported by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
The exhibitions ‘Bartlett Experiments –Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz’ at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and ‘Summer Show 2004 – Unit 20’ were supported by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
Marjan Colletti and Marcos Cruz Top to bottom: Sirichai Bunchua
Above: Samual White