Design Anthology PG22
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 Rites of Passage
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2023 The Urbanism of Friendship
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2022 Dollhouse, Bingo and Ring
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Jan Kattein, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2021 Shaking POPS
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2020 The Caring City
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2019 The Mediterranean Perspective
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
2018 Campaigning!
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2017 The Post-Millennial Revolution
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2016 Women And Architecture
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2015 Empowering the Legacy of Generation Z
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2014 Designing the Future: Architecture as Hypothesis vs. Hypothesis as Synthesis
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2013 Wood And Fire: Towards a Definition of Mild Architecture
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2012 Dare to Care... Through a Year
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor with Helen&Hard
2011 (In-)Water Dwelling and Some
Other Clues
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
2008 Decadence
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
2007 Patterns
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
2006 Tales of the Unexpected
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
2005 Ordinary/Extraordinary
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
2024
Rites of Passage
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Rites of Passage
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Commonly held belief often refers to the provision of shelter as the origin of architecture. However, a more nuanced and interdisciplinary approach, incorporating knowledge gathered by anthropologists and archaeologists, points towards the accommodation of rituals as another reason for humans to have started building.1
Rites of passage are defined as ceremonies, rituals or events marking an important stage in someone’s life. Key rites of passage have historically been collective, but in recent decades in the West, they have evolved into individual and more private affairs.
This year PG22 students have reflected, through architectural and urban design, on spaces that facilitate the communal and collective celebration of rites of passage, re-empowering their social dimension through three design exercises:
The Paper Theatre
Paper theatres are a form of miniature performance dating back to the early 19th century in Europe. For the experience of a rite of passage, spatial elements are as important as performance aspects. PG22 students have created their own versions of a paper theatre, representing how a selected rite is performed and gradually designing a stage for the socialisation of the rite.
The Produced Ritual Space
Buildings for rituals usually communicate their purpose on the outside through decoration and on the inside through spatial arrangements. PG22 students have developed their paper theatres into platforms for contemporary rituals, understanding that spaces of ritual are shaped not only by humans actions but also by their impact on the inhabitants’ agenda, an iterative influence described by Henri Lefebvre. 2
The New House Society
Lévi-Strauss defined the ‘house societies’ as communities linked not by blood bonds but by inhabiting a shared house, inherited by several generations in a cluster. 3 PG22 students have scaled up their projects into urban designs, creating communities with strong social links reinforced by the presence of shared facilities that actively contribute to a social network.
Year 4
Jiahan (Ada) Ding, Serim Hur, Gulcicek Karaman, Sarina Patel, Stefan Vlad Pista
Year 5
Long Yin Au, Cecilia Cappellini, Brandon Chan, Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Cheryl Lee, Harrison Lovelock, Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Yan Ching (Ellie) To, Yue Yu
Design Realisation Tutor: Han Hao
Structural Advisor: Roberto Marín Sampalo
Environmental Advisor: Ioannis Rizos
Thesis supervisors: Brent Carnell, Gillian Darley, Daisy Froud, Joshua Mardell, Anna Mavrogianni, Tania Sengupta, Tim Waterman
Critics: Omar Abolnaga, Sarah Akigbogun, Fares Al Rajal, Albert Blanchart, Louise Cann, Hadin Charbel, Han Hao, Déborah López Lobato, Ana Mayoral Moratilla, Mathieu Moreau, Martín Ocampo, Angelica Ponzio, Vidhya Pushpanathan, Elly Selby, Joshua Thomas
1. Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici, ‘Familiar Horror: Toward a Critique of Domestic Space’, Log, 38 (2016), 105.
2. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991).
3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Mask (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982), 194.
22.1, 22.3
Brandon Chan, Y5 ‘Peng-Chau: Aqua-Pelago’.
Along Hong Kong’s coast, thousands of fishing families known as the Tanka people, once called sampans (small wooden boats) their home. Land reclamation projects in the 1960s gradually displaced sampans, causing a decline in Tanka culture. This project develops a strategy that safeguards the distinct history and culture of Hong Kong’s smaller islands through architectural interventions, blurring the boundaries between urban and natural environments.
22.2 Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Y5 ‘Heritage Haven: Preserving Sikh Rituals in the UK Diaspora’. This project designs a site for a Sikh wedding week in the UK diaspora, preserving cultural traditions while catering to a diverse community. The design serves as a cultural hub, where the rich heritage of Sikh weddings is celebrated and passed down to future generations. The preparatory process involving fabric and floristry takes on added significance in the project as it serves as a bridge between the old and the new, connecting ancestral customs with contemporary sensibilities.
22.4 Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Y5 ‘Urban Banquets of Care’. The design project envisions a utopia consisting of a housing estate that revolves around the concept of care for one another, the environment and architecture. The overall purpose of this project is to bridge intergenerational gaps in the city, creating a communal, caring environment where residents of all ages can experience and celebrate everyday rites of passage that are often overlooked in fast-paced lifestyles.
22.5–22.6 Yue Yu, Y5 ‘Cultural Landscape: Rehabilitation Craft Community’. The ancient town of Shaxi in Yunnan, China, with a history of over 2,400 years, is the sole surviving market along the historic Tea Horse Road. It was designated as an endangered heritage site in 2002 and uniquely restored by a team of Swiss scholars. Building on the preservation of key historical sites, the project focuses on safeguarding local intangible cultural heritage. It revitalises Shaxi’s cultural landscape, encompassing performing arts, tea traditions, folk gatherings and traditional crafts.
22.7–22.8 Harrison Lovelock, Y5 ‘The Houses of Hireth’. This project explores domesticity in postindustrial Cornwall. Beginning as an investigation into homemaking and seasonal living, the scope expands to address Cornwall’s housing crisis, driven by second residences and tourism. The proposal responds to this crisis using the disused rail infrastructure left over after the 1960s Beeching Cuts. It re-injects life into the trade sector through the manufacture and maintenance of mobile housing that adapts to seasonal patterns of work and inhabitation.
22.9 Yan Ching (Ellie) To, Y5 ‘Redressing the Streets of Cheung Chau’. The project reflects on life post-Covid and post-protest in Hong Kong. These events have induced a wave of fatigue, prompting an outflow of residents to other countries, but also to quieter territories within the enclave. The design proposal retains the local material culture of these islands, using bamboo to develop new and original tectonics. This material choice allows for high levels of openness, blurring the lines between buildings and public spaces.
22.10 Long Yin Au, Y5 ‘The Circular City’. The project explores how Hong Kong can find alternative modes of socialising and friendship through upcycling and recycling activities, focusing on Sham Shui Po, a district in Hong Kong renowned for its fabric and plastic trade. The scheme is a multiscaled masterplan, introducing a series of pavilions, a circular skywalk and retrofitted tong laus (tenement buildings) to enable residents to recycle their old clothing and household items, and share their memories through crafting, exchanging and recycling.
22.11–22.12 Stefan Vlad Pista, Y4 ‘Treatin’ Love’. Parallel to the rise and decline of dating apps, there has been a disturbing rise in the ‘incel’ phenomenon – an internet subculture linked to toxic masculinity and extreme resentment towards those who are romantically successful. The project establishes a multi-functional therapy centre that supports individuals with relationship challenges. This environment promotes healing, social interaction and personal growth.
22.13–22.14 Sarina Patel, Y4 ‘Building a Woman’. Female genital mutilation remains a rite of passage for Maasai women, and the recent prohibition of the practice has been labelled as culturally insensitive, driving it underground. This project proposes an alternative rite of passage through the learning of the vernacular construction of Maasai homes or manyattas Working in partnership with a local institute, the proposed architecture is designed using vernacular systems and materials, adapted to meet the lifestyle changes among Maasai communities.
22.15 Serim Hur, Y4 ‘The Healing Loom’. An exploration of traditional South Korean funeral biers and their ornamental features extended into a study of wider cultural practices surrounding death, with a particular emphasis on the role of craft. Building on this research, the project proposes to merge the tranquillity inherent in traditional timber ideologies with the comfort of woven textiles and cords.
22.16 Cheryl Lee, Y5 ‘The Nostalgic Domesti-City’.
An investigation into the wave of migration from Hong Kong to the UK is the seed for this project. The proposal is a residential complex for Hong Kong migrants in the UK to celebrate Hong Kong culture. The scheme challenges typical British and Hong Kong housing, as well as the typologies of the Chinatown and disused mall, to create a new typology – the ‘Semi-DetachedShophouse’, which embodies the convergence of British and Hong Kong culture.
22.17 Gulcicek Karaman, Y4 ‘Women as Infrastructure’. During the Ottoman period, baths were used for social rituals such as birth, marriage and death. However, this role has declined in favour of a more commercial framework. This project produces a new ecological and technological bath model with a non-hierarchical network, combining baths in a ‘hydrofeminist’ network of water, soil and air which heals and rejuvenates.
22.18–22.19 Jiahan (Ada) Ding, Y4 ‘The Red Peach Cake Townhall’. The Shazhou area in Chaozhou is currently undergoing urbanisation and experiencing population decline in favour of bolstering tourism. The project is built on a site where villagers resist forced demolitions and serves as part of a community intervention. The architecture enables residents to participate in village governance through the baking of red peach cake, which acts as a ritual medium for preserving culture and political agency.
22.20 Cecilia Cappellini, Y5 ‘Rites of Passage in the Italo Disco’. This project focuses on Italo Disco music as a rite of passage from 1965 to 1990, which led to its recognition as a mass phenomenon shaping the collective memory of Generation X. The design is a refurbishment of the Complesso della Misericordia, an old convent in the historic centre of Pesaro, Italy, creating a cultural centre for music, design, gastronomy and nature. This development leads to an urban-scale project reimagining Pesaro as a music city.
2023
The Urbanism of Friendship
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
The Urbanism of Friendship
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Infrastructures such as roads, buildings or transit systems have historically been the focus for most planners, designers and public and private bodies that commission our built environment. They are also the entry point into the design process for most planners and architects.
Lifestyles, however, are seldom studied as part of the design process. They are often regarded as of secondary importance – a mere consequence of infrastructure design, rather than its trigger.
This year PG22 students have been rethinking and redesigning cities from one specific lifestyle perspective: friendship.
The emergence, continuity and intensity of friendships in cities strongly depend on their material features, such as:
the ease and modes of mobility through the city and between neighbourhoods – whether this happens in private vehicles, public transport or active modes of transport such as cycling or walking;
building typologies – whether most people live in apartments or individual houses; whether uses are mixed in plan, in section or segregated by neighbourhood; the density of dwellings per hectare – how compact or how spread out the city is and how accessible its green and public spaces are.
Social and human factors such as citizens’ financial aspirations, the division of domestic labour or the age and ethnic makeup of the city are equally relevant.
City design and planning has evolved to cater for the needs of traditional families and business: housing is designed based on the model of the nuclear family and transport networks are optimised to take workers from their homes in the periphery to their jobs in the city centre. Other forms of organisation, activities or relationships, however, have been systematically marginalised. The work of the unit critically challenges this by designing urban pavilions, facilities, neighbourhoods and a visual manifesto of the ideal city driven by friendship.
We are conscious that by designing the city we are also configuring social networks, daily routines, meeting points and rituals. The unit has critically evaluated tools for design that go beyond the technological, geometric, visual or aesthetic, developing a common scale to measure the quality of architecture by how it is able to create inclusivity, civic culture, intimacy, soft normative values, social visibility, cultural mediation, ephemeral or long-term friendships.
Year 4
Cecilia Cappellini, Brandon Chan, Latisha Chan, Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Ching Tung Cheryl Lee, Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Yan Ching Ellie To, Ziyue Lorena Yan, Yue Yu
Year 5
Long Yin Au, Deluo Chen, Ayla Hamou El Mardini, Jack Nash, Hei Tung Michael Ng
Design Realisation Tutors: Felicity Barbour, Gonzalo Coello de Portugal
Structures Tutor: Roberto Marín Sampalo
Environmental Tutor: Lidia Guerra
Thesis supervisors: Camilo Boano, Stephen Gage, Guang Yu Ren
Critics: Farbod Afshar Bakeshloo, Fares Al Rajal, Stuart Beattie, Amanda Callaghan, Hadin Charbel, Carrie Coningsby, Naomi Gibson, Kaowen Ho, Marianna Janowicz, Alberte Lauridsen, Déborah López Lobato, Ana Mayoral, Matthieu Mereau, Oliver Partington, Alicia Pivaro, Yael Resiner, Lewis Williams, Simon Wong
22.1–22.2 Deluo Chen, Y5 ‘Let’s Play: Exploring Post-Covid Friendship through the Game’. During the Covid-19 pandemic, people lost connection with acquaintances and strangers, a connection as crucial for mental health as that between close friends. The project stages an immersive play in the neighbourhood of Shatou District, Guangdong, China. A section of a heritage building and an abandoned building in front of it are renovated in the centre of the play.
22.3 Ziyue Lorena Yan, Y4 ‘Shoreditch Urban Greenhouse’. The project takes inspiration from the study of traditional English gardens and steel structure greenhouses, merging them with a vision that reimagines London’s recycling system and city farm conditions. Repurposing the historical Shoreditch Goodsyard, the project creates a sustainable space for community engagement, urban agriculture and environmental consciousness.
22.4 Ayla Hamou El Mardini, Y5 ‘The People’s Congress’. This project proposes a market, town hall and food preservation and crafts workshops – all run by selffunded local civil society organisations. The project was initiated through the general critique of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, being a dramatically sectarian city, an aspect that is exacerbated by the city’s infrastructure.
22.5–22.6 Yue Yu, Y4 ‘Floating Farm’. The floating farm is a productive landscape reshaping the relationship of local neighbourhoods. Through the farm, residents can experience the impact that farm animals can have on an area like never before. The farm also serves as a centre for locals to gather and communicate, transforming the discrete social activities of local residents. The farm follows a carbon-neutral vision to build a sustainable community in which an organic waste recycling system and green energy are incorporated.
22.7 Hei Tung Michael Ng, Y5 ‘Absolute Obsolete’. This project empowers young adults in the city through a co-living lifestyle that encourages self-customisation of living spaces and self-expression, fostering collaboration in shared spaces. It revitalises a demolished To Kwa Wan industrial site in Hong Kong, serving as a testbed to reintegrate marginalised youth by equipping them with automobile and house repair skills.
22.8–22.11 Reem Taha Hajj Ahmad, Y4 ‘Timber Tinkerland School’. The project focuses on creating a timber school that nurtures friendship and creativity through architecture. The school provides a unique learning experience by encouraging children to engage in hands-on ‘tinkering’ through activities such as sewing and painting. Montessori pedagogies are integrated to offer diverse educational ways of connecting with the community through storytelling and theatre. The project emphasises the design of glulam columns and explores their adaptability to facilitate various forms of interactive play and engagement with the architectural structure.
22.12 Latisha Chan, Y4 ‘The Museum of the Oriental Odyssey’. This project is not simply a museum – it also takes visitors on a historic journey full of adventure through a series of immersive experiences that give an understanding of the history of Limehouse and that of Chinese settlement in London. Using the word ‘Oriental’, meaning ‘East’, allows the museum to be culturally inclusive and reflects the Chinese settlement in London which followed from the East India Company’s activities in the Far East.
22.13 Cecilia Cappellini, Y4 ‘The Paper Sail’. The proposal of the paper sail suggests a new form of urbanism of friendship in the context of Scampia, Naples. The design proposes a facility which redefines relationship dynamics in a context that, since the 1960s, has been extremely influenced by the hierarchical system of the criminal organisation, the Camorra. The building
design of the sail repurposes the empty lot of the knocked-down residential housing of the Vela Verde by exploiting paper construction in the envelope of the building and repurposing the construction material obtained by knocking down the Vela Gialla and Vela Rossa.
22.14 Mankiran Kaur Kundi, Y4 ‘Rethinking the Supermarket through the Dominance of Food’. The project is a pilot study run by a supermarket chain, looking to enhance the transition between the green belt and the city. The focus is to create a new approach towards the supermarket, reducing the distance between production and consumption. This will also enhance active governance and public engagement within the local community.
22.15 Jack Nash, Y5 ‘Vocation in the City’. The project takes a perspective on the crafters of historical urban centres, exploring how their collective dedication to the advancement of their craft, in learning, developing and exchanging skills, served as a catalyst for forging rich, close-knit communities.
22.16 Ching Tung Cheryl Lee, Y4 ‘York Road Poetry Station’. The project fosters friendship through retrofitting York Road tube station, an abandoned London Underground station on the Piccadilly Line, with poetry. The design makes poetry more accessible and engaging for the public while encouraging people to slow down and appreciate the beauty of art in everyday life. Sharing feelings through the medium of poetry allows people to feel closer to each other and more understood.
22.17 Yan Ching Ellie To, Y4 ‘The Kitchenless Estate of Friendship’. In the hope of creating a city of friendship, the project looks at improving relationships within an existing community, specifically within the housing typology. The project proposes a new type of housing estate management in Hong Kong, based on the idea of creating a close-knit community through a collective diet and collaborative housekeeping. The proposal puts forward a ‘kitchenless’ ideology to not only encourage bonds within the locality but also improve residents’ quality of living, restoring Cantonese home cooking into the daily diets of our fast-paced generation.
22.18–22.19 Brandon Chan, Y4 ‘Wardrobe Wonderland’. This project is based in the vibrant Shoreditch Brick Lane area, renowned for its rich fashion history. With a strong focus on sustainable fashion, the project creates a dynamic space that connects consumers, designers and ethical fashion brands, fostering meaningful relationships and friendships through fashion.
22.8
22.9
2022
Dollhouse, Bingo and Ring
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Jan Kattein, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Dollhouse, Bingo and Ring
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Jan Kattein, Daniel Ovalle Costal
This year PG22 students were invited to develop a design critique of mass-produced austerity in architecture, uncovering the politics behind it and proposing alternatives.
The ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, born in mid-19th century Britain under the auspices of figures such as William Morris, John Ruskin and Augustus Pugin, was suggested as an example of socially conscious anti-austerity. The title of the brief refers to three games, mostly played by women of that era, which inspired the three design exercises proposed.
Sociologist Richard Sennett highlights the importance of craftsmanship in books such as The Craftsman and Together. He argues that the ‘enduring basic human pulse’ that comes from perfecting a craft creates deep inner satisfaction. For Sennet, allowing principles of craftsmanship to guide an individual’s life at their own pace can provide benefits for both individuals and society. His writing on craftmanship provides an alternative reading of the Arts and Crafts as one of the most socially desirable architectural movements in history.
The movement did not merely propose a style or a visual repertoire; it rather offered an idyllic lifestyle in which people could work in quasi-domestic workshops, caring about the origin of materials, the choice of crafting techniques and the quality of the result.
In retrospect, it is reasonable to question why 20th-century architects abandoned the Arts and Crafts philosophy en masse, instead embracing the Modern Movement principles of industry and standardised mass production with great enthusiasm. The austerity inherent to mass produced design was introduced by the proponents of the Modern Movement to distinguish revolutionary new architecture from old 19th-century traditions. They dedicated far more effort to fighting ornament than to critically assessing the living conditions and lifestyle that mass production imposed upon workers who fabricated these new designs.
From today’s perspective, there is something perverse in the proposition that to democratise design it must be stripped of variation and visual and material richness. A century on, we should critically reconsider whether mass-produced austerity has satisfied its initial aspirations of supporting and empowering the working class, fostering intellectual honesty and cultural progress.
Year 4
Long Yin Au, Deluo Chen, Ayla Hemou El Mardini, Monika Kolarz, Jack Nash, Hei Tung Michael Ng, Sonakshi Pandit
Year 5
Asli Aktu, Annabelle Blyton, James Ford, Luba Kuziw, Verena Leung, Jignesh Pithadia, Cheuk Ying Sharon So, Olivia Trinder, Simon Wong
Technical tutors and consultants: Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Roberto Coraci, Roberto Marín Sampalo
Thesis supervisors: Hector Altamirano, Sabina Andron, Carolina Bartram, Jan Birksted, Amica Dall, Paul Dobraszczyk, Murray Fraser, Joshua Mardell
Critics: Lluis Alexandre Casanovas, Sarina da Costa Gómez, Pepe la Cruz, Naomi Gibson, Faye Greenwood, Kyriakos Katsaros, Matthieu Mereau, Ana Mayoral Moratilla, Adam Peacock, Pedro Pitarch, Guillermo Sánchez Sotés, Chrysanthe Staikopoulou, Joshua Thomas, Jonathan Tyrrell, Kate Woodcock-Fowles
22.1 Luba Kuziw, Y5 ‘The Modern Tradition’. An exploration of the use of straw as a modern building material, turning the industry inwards and developing a world of cyclical craft between communities. The project is situated in London’s Robin Hood Gardens and proposes the gradual replacement of the estate’s poorly performing façades with prefabricated biodegradable panels developed by craftspeople from the community using locally grown wheat.
22.2 Simon Wong, Y5 ‘The Maiden’s Tale’. The project introduces a different method of acquiring new skills while continuing to develop a sense of community for the low-income families that live in the Maiden Lane Estate in Camden. Conceived as a bottom-up initiative, the project proposes a retrofit academy to upskill residents and upgrade the estate. The academy will provide retrofitting not just for Maiden Lane, but for the entirety of the borough as well.
22.3–22.4 Asli Aktu, Y5 ‘The Social Stair’. This project is the continuation of the Dawson’s Heights estate in East Dulwich, establishing a new design agenda from a 2022 perspective, influenced by and in response to its architect, Kate Macintosh. The proposal combines social ambitions for the estate with a centralised stairwell which provides a new point of access alongside a variety of social amenities for residents of the estate and the wider community across 12 levels.
22.5 Ayla Hamou El Mardini, Y4 ‘Hideaway Gardens: Redefining Private Gradients’. A redesign of the traditional neighbourhood framework using a precedent from historical Islamic Mamluk architecture –the Qalawun complex in Cairo, Egypt. The project is a mixed-use building with residential units, carpet refurbishment workshops, a carpet-weaving academy and retail spaces. These programmes are configured around a sequence of semi-public courtyards.
22.6 James Ford, Y5 ‘Low Speed One’. A design critique of the High Speed Two (HS2) railway. The project challenges the benefits of a new high-speed rail service across England by instead proposing the reversal of the ‘Beeching cuts’ of the 1960s and 70s. Low Speed One speculates on whether the implementation of a slow transport network could have a greater impact on more communities, while helping to implement the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.
22.7 Sonakshi Pandit, Y4 ‘The Rewilding Hub: Remediation through Reciprocity’. Situated in the car-centric area of South Croydon, the proposal seeks to repurpose obsolete gas works, transforming them into hubs that support seed and soil preservation, as well as providing infrastructure to facilitate seed dispersal in a radical rewilding of road infrastructure.
22.8 Long Yin Au, Y4 ‘Tottenham Hale Cycletopia’. An alternative masterplan based on the principles of the 15-minute city, which proposes a cycling infrastructure to encourage more people to shift from cars to bicycles. At the centre of the masterplan is the headquarters of Pashley Bicycles, made up of workshops, BMX training grounds, offices and a bike-through kitchen. The building exemplifies how bicycle culture extends beyond cycling and into forms of creative expression, campaigning, performing and gathering.
22.9 Deluo Chen, Y4 ‘UCL Urban Agriculture Faculty’. The project proposes transforming Vauxhall City Farm into a mixed-use urban farm with in-residence research in the form of the UCL Urban Agriculture Faculty. This project reimagines the city farm and goes beyond its current form to create a living, breathing and thriving community for humans and animals alike, a place where coexistence between species is the driving force.
22.10–22.11 Verena Leung, Y5 ‘Urban Living Rooms’. An alternative regeneration of the Brownfield Estate in
Poplar, East London, that reactivates its domestic streets by dissolving private and public boundaries and creating a new urban living room. In view of the fashion industry’s revival in East London, the project introduces slow fashion programmes to transform the underused street into a collective live-work space.
22.12 Hei Tung Michael Ng, Y4 ‘The Bright Kitchen’. Reimagining cooking spaces as new agents of social sustainability, local empowerment and circularity. The project introduces a community-led food cooperative as an alternative urban regeneration scheme for a post-war estate. The proposal creates a bright, transparent and accessible food-sharing network that connects domestic and urban realms.
22.13–22.14 Annabelle Blyton, Y5 ‘The Walthamstow Water Collective’. The project collects water in the literal sense, while also bringing people together over the positive potential of water. New studies reveal that proximity to water has a similar positive impact to closeness to green space, with an added ‘psychologically restorative effect’. The project promotes a greater understanding of these therapeutic blue spaces and improves access to them.
22.15 Jack Nash, Y4 ‘Mixing Up Making in Clerkenwell’. The project puts forward a mixed-use strategy with a combination of live-work spaces for single crafters and makers. Concerned with reviving Clerkenwell’s historic reputation for making and crafting, it hopes to offer an updated form of the guilds for the 21st century.
22.16 Olivia Trinder, Y5 ‘Wasted Space: De-Growth of Tottenham Hale’. The design proposal is set in the not-too-distant future, where complications surrounding the current development of Tottenham Hale have led to its construction being halted. The local community has been able to buy up the abandoned site in pursuit of creating a shared living space. Utilising both traditional and modern construction methods and materials, inhabitation occurs close to the ground plane in this pastoral, slow-living high-rise.
2021
Shaking POPS
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Shaking POPS
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
In the 1950s, Som and Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson dodged Manhattan’s strict zoning regulations by building on a small fraction of the sites for Lever House (1952) and the Seagram Building (1957), designating the remaining land as private plazas. Their success triggered a change in New York City’s zoning regulations, linking a site’s permitted floor area to the provision of open space accessible to the public.
The appearance of Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) reversed a trend that had seen the transfer of private open spaces in cities like London and Paris to public hands. POPS have since proliferated in cities across the Americas, Asia and Europe. The provision of POPS has become key to the planning and delivery of large development projects. In the case of London, areas that have undergone large-scale regeneration often feature these spaces, such as around Kings Cross and Tower Bridge.
There is no consensus on the urban value of POPS. Some argue that POPS provide urban equipment at better value for the taxpayer, while others argue that private property goes against the very essence of public space, which should guarantee that any form of social organisation can access the structures of power.
While POPS may generally look and function like public spaces, they are governed by their own rules that tend to benefit and promote a particular lifestyle, namely one based on consumerism. POPS are often found in areas with a high density of retail, with elements of hostile architecture appearing more often. As a result, activities that do not lead to the consumption of goods and services are discouraged or outright banned. The institutions that instigate such bans are often hidden from public scrutiny behind layers of corporate bureaucracy. The lifestyle bias of POPS leads to a degree of discrimination against those who do not fit, follow or cannot afford the prescribed lifestyle.
This year, PG22 researched and critically challenged POPS in multiple contexts around the world, and the lifestyles they promote. Based on this research, students developed design mechanisms to foster diversity and inclusion of different socioeconomic, physical or ethnic subjectivities across discrete public and private spaces and, ultimately, at an urban scale.
Year 4
Asli Aktu, Annabelle Blyton, James Ford, Luba Kuziw, Verena Leung, Hei Tung Michael Ng, Cheuk (Sharon) So, Olivia Trinder, Simon Wong
Year 5
Jason Brooker, Carrie Coningsby, Karin Gunnerek Rinqvist, Megan Makinson, Joseph Poston, Chun Wong
Thank you to our technical tutors and consultants: Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Pablo Gugel, Nacho López Picasso, Roberto Marín Sampalo
Thesis supervisors: Jan Birksted, Eva Branscome, Gary Grant, Elain Harwood, Luke Lowings, Anna Mavrogianni
Thank you to our critics: Sarina da Costa Gómez, Karen Franck, Faye Greenwood, Alastair Johnson, Maggie Lan, Yuqi Liew, Jonah Luswata, Mireia Luzárraga, Matthieu Mereau, Lucy Moroney, Adam Peacock, Lucía C. Pérez Moreno, Gergana Popova, Guillermo Sánchez Sotés, Stefania Tsigkouni, Kate Woodcock-Fowles
22.1 Jason Brooker, Y5 ‘The Institute of Lost Craft’. The project seeks to preserve and protect both tangible and intangible cultures, to aid the national identity of heritage sites during redevelopment processes. It takes the stance that traditional Victorian markets should be retained for their social purpose and can be adapted to allow traditional crafts, which once thrived off the market’s footfall, to have a permanent home. Smithfield Market in London is used as a testbed to apply this theory.
22.2 Simon Wong, Y4 ‘Midnight Communes’. London’s night-time economy is one of the most vibrant in the UK. Many of its workers, however, have become marginalised, with their wellbeing neglected by employers and public bodies. The ‘Midnight Communes’ is a pilot programme, located in Marble Arch, initiated by the Night Time Commission. The scheme is designed to provide support and relief to night-time workers between, before and after their shifts.
22.3–22.4 Carrie Coningsby, Y5 ‘Hydrosocial Cities’. The project utilises the contradictory logic of privately owned public spaces and applies it to London’s privately owned water network, arguing that there are elements that should be made available to the public. The result is a multi-scalar design process that aims to ‘resocialise’ water within the public spaces of the ongoing masterplan for Greenwich Peninsula.
22.5–22.6 James Ford, Y4 ‘Festival Pier’. The research focusses on the rewilding of the banks of the River Thames and how the seasonality of nature can help to transform the role of transport in people’s lives. Developing a more natural system of transition throughout the city, ‘Festival Pier’ speculates on how Transport for London’s annual target of 20 million river bus journeys by 2035 can be achieved. Integrating the historic Thames wetland ecology into the river bus boarding process helps reconnect London with the river.
22.7–22.8 Luba Kuziw, Y4 ‘The Ciudad Elephante’. An investigation into the redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre in South East London. As a result of the development, it came to light that local residents and business owners were being unfairly treated. The project proposes a new home for the local Latin American diaspora. A number of ‘hubs’ are placed around Elephant and Castle, all within 15-minute proximity of each other, creating a new neighbourhood where the community can converse and thrive without being obstructed by luxury high-rise apartments.
22.9 Joseph Poston, Y5 ‘Unifying Opulence’. The project is a headquarter building for a new union of finance workers that tackles the working conditions and practices of the high-stress financial industry in Canary Wharf. The programme focusses on three different users: industry workers, union workers and the public. The facilities challenge how each user operates while fostering a mentally engaging environment. Light is a prominent factor in spatial environments, used to challenge the perception of how workspaces engage users.
22.10 Annabelle Blyton, Y4 ‘Gasholder Theatre’. The project analyses privately owned public spaces in Kings Cross. Inspired by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it proposes to transform the outdoor public spaces of Kings Cross for art and performance initiatives. Gasholder No.8 is transformed from an underused park into a multifunctional entertainment space. The structure becomes the main formal art and performance space, sitting alongside the informal festival activities that happen across the site.
22.11–22.12 Megan Makinson, Y5 ‘Up Down. Back Front. The Now’. The project looks to densify a Victorian terraced street, applying a bottom-up approach. The houses are flipped, disrupting the Victorian typology and
the relationship between the public and private. Domestic labours are no longer forced into small hidden rooms at the back and a new second skin façade creates communal intra-private spaces, both for socialising and economising domestic living and work. Space is unlocked and families can expand and contract into the new streetscape. Shared living spaces are formed to replace underused spaces in private homes.
22.13 Verena Leung, Y4 ‘The Alley Commons’. The project explores an alternative to top-down urban renewal in Hong Kong. It proposes the regeneration of a street block of tong laus (old tenement houses) of multiple ownerships into a co-living complex. It substitutes the undesirable living conditions of subdivided units with refurbished co-living housing that surrounds a communal courtyard. The major move of the project is to re-engage the alleyway that has become an underused backyard space, overshadowed by the tenement’s back staircases. Looking at the buildings collectively, redundant fire escape staircases are removed to widen the alleyway.
22.14 Chun Wong, Y5 ‘Mall City: Urban oasis’. Hong Kong has the highest density of shopping malls in the world. Malls are a major space for public gathering in the city, meaning retail environments play a crucial role in our daily life. The New Town Plaza mall is chosen as a prototype to develop publicly owned public spaces into an urban oasis. The project applies biophilic design principles to provide a new shopping experience that can reinvent the mall typology, while enhancing biodiversity across Hong Kong.
22.15 Olivia Trinder, Y4 ‘A Sitopia in Canary Wharf’. The project takes Jubilee Park in Canary Wharf as a template for an alternate masterplan that redefines corporate life. The existing masterplan and its manicured green spaces are replaced with a space that promotes slowness, employee health and wellbeing, and ecological awareness. The parks are to become inhabited with flora and food-centred biological and cultural diversity.
22.16–22.17 Asli Aktu, Y4 ‘Spitalfields Rooftoppings’. The project redevelops Fournier Street, formerly the home and workplace of the Spitalfields silk weavers. The scheme explores the ways existing buildings can be repurposed and transformed to better suit the users of today. ‘Rooftoppings’ creates domesticated community driven spaces, further extending the life span of the 18th-century buildings.
22.18 Karin Gunnerek Ringqvist, Y5 ‘Torsö Forest Campus’. Forests in Sweden are all subject to the ‘right to roam’. Granting everyone equal right to freely enter privately owned land for recreation and exercise, the forest is an important social and cultural space. As a result of urbanisation a larger number of Sweden’s forest owners are now urban residents. Living further away from their properties, these owners developed different values and experiences than is traditional. The project investigates what effect this demographic change might have on the forest as a social and cultural space and identifies strategies to bridge knowledge and culture gaps between newly urbanised and traditional forest owners.
2020
The Caring City
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
The Caring City
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
After decades of industrialisation, our cities are places geared towards productivity, both in their physical and their legal dimensions. They enable the daily marketing and distribution of goods, advertising and driving to work. In contrast, contemporary cities are hostile environments for non-productive activities: try to sleep; use a toilet; drink free, clean water; or have fun without consuming, and it will become evident how challenging the city can be. The normative interest in these practices has been marginal. Where regulations are in place, their main objective is generally to limit or even ban such behaviours.
Giving productive activities priority means citizens have been defined as individuals who contribute to that productivity, while their biological and subjective characteristics are not considered in the design, regulation or government of the city. This denial has been assimilated as part of our culture and, fundamentally, as a political principle. Our cities deny the right to rest, health or affection by considering them activities that need no protection, promotion, or collective agreement.
Women have historically performed tasks and jobs that are not given a market value, caring for others without institutional support or business regulation: reproductive activities. This has generated a unique and enormously rich capital: the heritage of care. Citizens who exercise reproductive activities have for decades been creating a hidden dimension in cities, in which biological and subjective aspects are fundamental. This year’s PG22 brief is purple: our students have developed projects that celebrate, recognise, and promote the capital of care and its intrinsically female character.
Students have worked towards building a live and active definition of care which addresses its complexity and diversity. Based on that working definition, they have developed projects that increase biodiversity and local food production; introduce play and games; raise awareness about the climate emergency; facilitate the sharing of space among citizens with different bodies and subjectivities; help maintain a healthy body and adequate mental health; promote affection and pleasure; socialise childcare and care for other dependants; and intensify social gathering.
Most importantly, this year’s projects have built a collective critique of our cities and proposed alternative urban environments that empower caregivers, consolidate their use of cities and place reproductive activities at the centre of design. In PG22, we think that this is a contribution that, in the long run, all citizens can benefit from, which will facilitate work-life balance and a superior form of social organisation that guarantees a more satisfactory urban life.
Year 4
Jason Brooker, Rachel Buckley, Carrie Coningsby, Karin Gunnerek Rinqvist, Megan Makinson, Joseph Poston, Chun (Derek) Wong
Year 5
Byungjun Cho, Siu Yuk (Daniel) Chu, Faye Greenwood, Janis Ho, Yan Ting (Lorraine) Li, Yuqi Liew, Yinghao Wang, Lewis Williams, Kate Woodcock-Fowles
Thanks to our technical tutors and consultants Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Kristina Goncharov, Nacho López Picasso, Roberto Marín Sampalo, Shane Orme, Rachel Yehezkel
Many thanks to our thesis supervisors Jan Kattein, Anna Mavrogianni, Clare McAndrew, Harry Parr, Alan Powers, Sophia Psarra, Guang Yu Ren, Oliver Wilton
Thanks to our fabulous critics: Alejandra Albuerne, Sarina da Costa Gómez, Pedro Gil, Marta Granda Nistal, Jonah Luswata, Matthieu Mereau, María Venegas Raba, Tumpa Yasmin
22.1, 22.6 Lewis Williams, Y5 ‘The Climate Change Spectacular’. Climate change will affect humanity on an unprecedented level. This project takes a cynical stance, which accepts the slow and inadequate approach by the UK government and its unfortunate climatic conclusions. Using an analysis of ‘spectacle’ as a tool for change, the architecture realises the now often meaningless shocking imagery generated by the media and transforms it into a politically powerful built extravaganza erected in anticipation of catastrophe on London’s Trafalgar Square. 22.2 Yinghao Wang, Y5 ‘The Resilient Urban Village’. Rapid urbanisation has transformed Shenzhen from a small fishing village into one of China’s biggest metropolises within three decades. However, it has also posed a threat to the area’s ecological cycle. In this context, this project is a resilient design, questioning the possibility of applying an ancient local ecological circular farming system, the mulberry fishpond system, in the residential blocks of the urban village.
22.3 Kate Woodcock-Fowles, Y5 ‘Waiting and Transition’. This project aims to create a more ‘caring’ city by reimagining the architecture which supports Nottingham’s public transport network, specifically spaces of waiting and transition. Taking privileges from car users, people are incentivised to travel in alternative active ways. With fewer vehicles on the roads, the tarmac is gradually reclaimed to provide more green space in the city. In the city centre, transport hubs are designed to provide cultural and historical markers.
22.4 Yuqi Liew, Y5 ‘Harlow Housing Eco-operative’. This project envisions a refurbished housing community, supported by shared ecological domestic infrastructures, which provide a sustainable, collective, and affordable way of living for the vulnerable tenants of Terminus House in Harlow, Essex. By deconstructing our laundry practices, a methodology to reconfigure domestic rituals through shared spaces was devised. These principles were brought back to the home and expanded into a new kind of housing cooperative.
22.5 Chun (Derek) Wong, Y4 ‘Fly the Flyover’. This project opens up the fenced-off lands underneath an overpass in Hong Kong for public enjoyment. Responding to the city’s ageing population, the project is a masterplan that includes housing for the elderly and playgrounds, using reminiscence therapy. The role of older people in society is challenged and reformulated as they are seen as both care receivers and givers.
22.7–22.8, 22.10 Faye Greenwood, Y5 ‘Cultivating Craft’. This project aims to rediscover and support the heritage, skills and beauty of crafts in the UK, in domestic and public urban environments. The architecture creates craft communities that revive skills and businesses with access to knowledge, tools, processes and objects. In parallel, the project explores how studio crafts can be translated into the building fabric.
22.9 Joseph Poston, Y4 ‘Lost Springs of Linfen’. The project explores the lasting effects of pollution to the elderly in the city of Linfen, China, and aims to explore new building strategies that can create a clean environment to live in and care for the elderly. At its core the design looks at the elderly and their role in modern China. The key architectural strategies aim to provide a new model of care home.
22.11 Karin Gunnerek Rinqvist, Y4 ‘Westway Trust Community Centre’. In order to meet environmental goals and lifestyle aspirations, private car ownership in cities is set to decrease. This project investigates changes in car usage and speculates about how it will affect spaces previously only used by cars. This project closely investigates the Westway and how outdated roads can be transformed to have another purpose, considering construction, community and environment.
22.12–22.13 Carrie Coningsby, Y4 ‘Hornsey Filter Beds’. Blending landscape, infrastructure, building and hydrological processes, this project aims to reposition public opinion of wastewater treatment by inserting it into the core of a public space and allowing people to experience the regenerative properties of treated water. Located in Hornsey, London, and partially submerged into the landscape of the redundant filter beds
22.14 Jason Brooker, Y4 ‘Gardens of the Northern Line’. This project is a community-based ‘living’ urban biome, set in Stockwell, which aims to increase the life expectancy of residents living along the Northern Line. The hub looks to utilise deep-level shelters constructed during WW2. Making use of the heat source that the underground provides, the project aims to create precise climates in which crops and plants can be grown as well as spaces for teaching, sharing and trading.
22.15 Siu Yuk (Daniel) Chu, Y5 ‘Tokyo Craft Village’. Traditional crafts are under immense threat from globalisation and technological advancement. Taking crafts as the medium to create a caring city, this project explores the potential of translating traditional Japanese crafts into architectural design elements and bringing ‘domesticity‘ into the public realm. The village seeks to provide a space for the craftspeople to form a community in the heart of Tokyo.
22.16 Byungjun Cho, Y5 ‘Amalgamating the Two Worlds’. This project proposes a design for empty peri-urban modern blocks of Fes, Morocco, using the traditional lifestyle learned from its medieval medina. Offering a new travel hub outside of the old town, it aims to reduce pressure on the population of tourists and craftsmen in the medina and to fill the infrastructural gap to empower low-income families in the peri-urban area.
22.17 Megan Makinson, Y4 ‘Community Food Centre, Tottenham’. Addressing growing food poverty in the UK, this project rejects the current models of food banks and engages with surplus food as an enabler to the already growing community agency around Tottenham, London. The building mixes different uses to create a new typology: food bank, community kitchens, feasting, counselling and residential. The spatial organisation removes doors, barriers and corridors, with the programme organised around a multi-purpose dining hall.
22.18 Yang Ting (Lorraine) Li, Y5 ‘School Without Classrooms’. This project reinvents notions of play and learning to create more inclusivity in the city. This is accomplished through a free school design proposal in Somers Town, London for an alternative learning environment promoting play for children, with parental support facilities. Using an existing defunct school building and the school network of Somers Town as a test bed, the proposed new school building design and curriculum seeks to reflect Reggio Emilia model.
22.19 Rachel Buckley, Y4 ‘Neckinger Festival’. The city has a role in caring for people’s imaginations; nurturing storytelling and memory, and a responsibility to keep its stories alive. This project looks to the past through performance, following the design of a floating theatre and exhibition/workshop space in a London dock, where the now underground river Neckinger enters the Thames. This theatre becomes a travelling fair considering events recorded along this route – turning the city as we know it into an immersive theatre.
22.20–22.21 Janis Ho, Y5 ‘From Play to Community’. The project addresses the decline in play spaces. It is inspired by the concept of a blanket fort where architects should work with the community, and especially children, to co-create an integrated and caring neighbourhood. The test ground for this socio-architectural experiment is Webster Triangle: a neglected neighbourhood of terraced housing in the post-industrial town of Liverpool.
2019
The Mediterranean Perspective
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
The Mediterranean Perspective
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Daniel Ovalle Costal
Europe has historically been organised through a network of ‘southto-north’ and ‘periphery-to-centre’ trade connections. These trade relationships were some of the core development questions Europe confronted early on and are embedded in its DNA.
Growing up in a southern, or peripheral, European country means being conditioned to see northern and central Europe as synonyms for professional development, the welfare state, financial success, stability, cosmopolitanism and cutting-edge trends. Besides the infrastructural construction of the south-to-north connection, there has been an aspirational consolidation of that same link, with citizens of southern European countries aspiring to access the opportunities that northern countries provide.
This year, the unit’s research has been focused on Mediterranean culture, which has traditionally valued quality of life over progress. It seems that central and northern Europe have accepted that industrialisation and technological development are the best partners for welfare. Societies on the Mediterranean shore, meanwhile, seem to be more sceptical of industrialisation and technology, an attitude which has gained in consciousness and has become part of the region’s cultural and social identity. Students addressed this cultural particularity from a series of perspectives: firstly, that of the family – looking at both the nuclear and extended family, and cultural approaches to ageing and retirement; food –looking at preferences for eating ‘clean’ or ‘real’ food, processes of growing and ideas on communal cooking and dining; skills – whether workers are hyper-specialised or multi-skilled; and tourism – how it affects quality of life, discussing ideas on discovery, and over-tourism and its impact on local communities.
This year, students looked at notions of ‘slowness’ and ‘disengagement’, in particular the Slow Food movement, which began in 1986 as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome, and advocates a cultural shift towards slowing down the pace of life. ‘Slowness’ celebrates the Mediterranean legacy, but its success and development require a global network. Many of the issues affecting Europe and the Mediterranean, such as migration, cannot be confronted in isolation. Using three shores as their focus –the UK, European Mediterranean and Asian Mediterranean – students implemented programmes that not only had individual relevance but also dealt with common problems: empowerment of citizens in different areas – balancing equity, education, research, languages, job opportunities, entrepreneurial support, vocational schools, food production and consumption; insertion programmes – social housing and the integration of migrants and refugees; and reconstructing quality of life – through slow communities, organic farming, and the preservation and revitalisation of traditional craft.
Year 4
Byungjun Cho, Siu Yuk (Daniel) Chu, Faye Greenwood, Janis Ho, Funto King, Yang Ting (Lorraine) Li, Yuqi Liew, Yinghao Wang, Lewis Williams, Kate Woodcock-Fowles
Year 5
Florence Bassa, Jun Wing (Michelle) Ho, Alastair Frederick Johnson, Jonah Luswata, Rui Ma, Yehan Zheng
Thanks to our fabulous critics: Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Freya Cobbin, Gabi Code, Sarina da Costa Gómez, Elanor Dodman, Laurie Flint, Cristina Garza, Kaowen Ho, Ann Kelly, Ifigeneia Liangi, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Arantza Otaeza Cortázar, Adam Peacock, Tania Sengupta, Barry Wark, Timmy Whitehouse, Izabela Wieczorek
Thank you to Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Marta Granda Nistal, Nacho López Picasso, Roberto Marín Sampalo and Ajay Shah
22.1–22.3 Alastair Frederick Johnson, Y5 ‘Augmenting Kayaköy’. After the fall of the Ottoman empire, the population exchange forced Greek residents out of the Turkish town of Kayaköy, previously a unique model of religious tolerance. This project proposes the redevelopment of the town in line with the Historic Urban Landscape approach: to truly protect delicate sites, inhabitation is essential. A phased programme of reconstruction, preservation of local crafts and active tourism is proposed. The programme is supported by a mixed reality platform to enhance Kayaköy’s history.
22.4–22.5 Florence Bassa, Y5 ‘Co-Komi’. ‘Co-Komi’ is the community cooperative of the farming village of Komi, on the Greek island of Tinos. The project demonstrates how the community can use local skills and EU funding with the goal of becoming a ‘Competitive Village’, tackling population decline and low incomes. The village engages with global discourses, such as plastic waste and the future of work. The architecture contributes to Komi’s new identity and breaks stereotypes about rural areas.
22.6, 22.8 Faye Greenwood, Y4 ‘The Boxed Sandwich Revolution’. This project aims to slow down the UK’s relationship with food, taking influence from Mediterranean food culture. With remote and co-working trends becoming more popular, this project aims to integrate flexible working spaces and communal cooking and dining programmes in London’s commuter belt. A modular system is proposed, with cooking at the core, within a landscape of allotments. The building’s construction, materials and organisation aim to use spare resources.
22.7, 22.9 Jun Wing (Michelle) Ho, Y5 ‘City as a House’. In the context of landmark-focused over-tourism in Mediterranean cities, this project proposes a familyfriendly alternative. A series of domestic spaces is scattered around the city at sites with strong connections to local heritage and population. By shifting the focus from landmarks to experiences, heritage is redefined around everyday life. Proposed architectural preservation does not freeze buildings in time but boosts their use. New layers of intervention act as mechanisms for learning about heritage as a historic process.
22.10 Rui Ma, Y5 ‘Hospitable Nomads’ Living Posts’. This project aims to update the living conditions of the Yörük nomads of Turkey whilst preserving their unique lifestyle. The proposal consists of posts that provide infrastracture for a revisited nomadic tent built in several layers. The scheme allows active tourism to be part of the nomads’ life and income.
22.11 Yan Ting (Lorraine) Li, Y4 ‘A Resilient Strategy Against Over-tourism and Seasonality’. The economies of many Mediterranean countries rely on tourism. The seasonality of the sector affects their economy by putting stress on public services and housing. This project explores the possibility of introducing residential units into an existing 1970s hotel in Ibiza, via small-scale demolition, retrofitting, and by creating new spaces. A series of timber trusses provides structural support for cantilevered floor slabs, acting as a buffer between residential and temporary hotel units.
22.12–22.13 Kate Woodcock-Fowles, Y4 ‘A New Town Square for Worksop’. Low-income families often lack the choice to eat healthy foods. In post-industrial, workingclass communities like Worksop, the resulting obesity epidemic is placing a huge strain on the NHS. Inspired by the Mediterranean diet, the new town square proposes to tackle this issue with a permanent programme of restaurants, kitchens and learning areas to promote healthy eating. The design takes inspiration from the rich industrial heritage of Worksop, with a focus on one of the town’s major exports: the Windsor chair.
22.14 Janis Ho, Y4 ‘Transport for Santorini’. Due to overtourism, Santorini’s authorities have limited the number of visitors to the island by half. This project proposes to enhance local agriculture as a second source of income. A system of bus stops celebrating the island’s agriculture introduces its products to tourists. The bus terminal doubles up as a market in which visitors can learn about and buy local produce. Built on reinforced local volcanic rock, the terminal aims to bring together locals and tourists in a new sustainable economy.
22.15 Yehan Zhen, Y5 ‘The Built Pension’. The ‘young-old’ are an emergent demographic of 50-70 year-old retired people with specific needs. The research questions the nature of pensions as a monetary entities and proposes a ‘socio-spatial’ pension as a flexible alternative. The Mediterranean ‘in-between’ condition inspires a split-level typology that integrates existing industrial communities with a retirement layer and an alternative ‘street’, linking disparate spaces. The built pension spans the domestic and corporate, resulting in an architecture of needs rather than economics.
22.16 Lewis Williams, Y4 ‘Museum of Mediterranean Memories’. British tourists, with the uncertainty of Brexit looming above them, can escape to a playful fairground full of tongue-in-cheek Mediterranean experiences. This project is strategically located in Dover, England. Making their way through border control, tourists embark on their own itinerary through a series of fairground-style rooms, harking back to the days of the Grand Tour, in a space designed to encourage irregular discovery.
22.17 Yuqi Liew, Y4 ‘The Giving Island’. This project aims to foster close ties between locals and refugees by participating in each other’s traditions and cultural practices. Architectural events around the island celebrate local traditions, trades, and landscapes. The main focus is an artisanal cheese-making facility where both communities can come together in sustainable craft. The building materials are made from the goat’s milk and hair in a bid to use local renewable resources.
22.18 Funto King, Y4 ‘Growing Gorreto: Repopulating Italy’s oldest town’. This project addresses the depopulation and ageing of rural areas across Europe. Through a masterplan of flexible housing and workspaces in touch with nature, the town is set to become a family-friendly, rural place where millennials can settle.
22.19 Byungjun Cho, Y4 ‘Extended Boundaries for the Integration of Locals and Refugees in Lesvos’. Across Europe’s Mediterranean shore, refugees are housed in camps that often lack basic infrastructure, and some of the communities where they first arrive are amongst the most underfunded. This project focuses on the Greek island of Lesvos and proposes to divert resources into building new infrastructure that helps integrate refugees in the local community, provides dignified housing and also fills gaps in local infrastructure.
22.20, 22.22 Yinghao Wang, Y4 ‘Working in the Garden’. Located in Athens, this project is a start-up incubator for Greek millennials to regain confidence in their future careers in the country, whilst emphasising a slow-paced, high-quality working lifestyle. Working spaces are outdoor or in-between spaces, creating a unique biodiversity-rich working environment that makes a positive contribution to the city’s microclimate.
22.21, 22.23 Jonah Luswata, Y5 ‘Socilising Childcare: A Strategy for Slow Living in Konuksever, Antalya’. A lack of childcare is preventing Turkish women from accessing the labour market. Through a series of urban interventions in the city of Antalya, this project aims to provide a form of childcare that engages the community to empower mothers. Turkish vernacular is reinterpreted in a scheme modelled on the pedagogic ideals of learning through play and discovery.
22.8
22.9
Campaigning!
Izaskun
Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Year 4
Florence Bassa, Jun Wing (Michelle) Ho, Alastair Frederick Johnson, Anastasia Leonovich, Jonah Luswata, Robert Newcombe, Rebecca Outterside, Yinghao Wang, Nimrod Wong, Yehan Zheng
Year 5
Alexandria Anderson, Isabelle Tung, Laurence Flint, Rufus Edmondson, Esha Thapar, Timothy Whitehouse, Xin Zhan
We are extremely grateful for support from our consultants Marta Grinda and Roberto Marin, and our magnificent crit panels during the academic year: Marcela Araguez, Julia Backhaus, Eduardo Camarena, Maria Elvira Dieppa, Theo Games Petrohilos, Pedro Gil, Christine Hawley, Fredrik Hellberg, Kaowen Ho, Bruce Irwin, Fany Kostourou, Chee-Kit Lai, Lara Lesmes, Ifigeneia Liangi, Thandi Lowenson, Paula Montoya, Daniel Ovalle, Barbara Penner, Sol Pérez Martínez, Pedro Pitarch, Yael Reisner, Manolis Stavrakakis, Sabine Storp, Paolo Zaide
A special mention to our academic field trip workshop tutor and coordinator Wendy Teo from Borneo Art Collective. And finally, thank you Stanley Ngu King Hieng, for allowing us to live out your 100-houses dream
We are grateful to our sponsors Luis Vidal + Architects and Borneo Art Collective
Campaigning! Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
When we announced at the beginning of the year that we were going to focus on the relationship between architecture and politics, one of our intentions was to raise awareness of architecture as complicit with politics, and with financial and industrial interests. But Unit 22 is a hands-on group, in all senses, so our focus will never be pure intellectual speculation: it will always involve a call to action. This year we invited students to engage with NGOs and activists. In partnership with them, we asked students to look for ways in which architecture might contribute to augmenting societal resilience, and find alternative paths for development. What are the problems that students of architecture think design can address? Looking at work produced this year, we observe that the environment, gender, wellbeing and identity have been our students’ four main areas of reflection. This is a complete change of paradigm from previous generations, for whom the four main areas of reflection would have been space, material, aesthetics and style. Together we investigated how projects in our four key areas could critically implement our aspirations for societal resilience and alternative development, step-by-step. In one way or another almost all the projects articulate some of the following scenarios:
Architecture can provide people with spaces that help them overcome immediate threats in what we can call an ‘absorptive’ strategy. This operates by designating space to plant, to talk, to meet, to represent or to live affordably.
Architecture can include the proactive (ex-ante) or preventative measures people employ to learn from past experiences, with which they anticipate future risks and adjust their lives accordingly. In this sense, designing a sort of transparent architecture has been strategic: an architecture that allows us to track the decisions linked with environment, gender, wellbeing and identity. Courtyards to catch water and be conscious of your reserves; rooms that directly address gender stereotypes; gardens promoting mindfulness, or market stalls that play with the symbolism of landscape are some of our examples.
Cities and neighbourhoods developed using public engagement strategies offer the potential for people to access assets and assistance from the wider socio-political arena, to participate in decision-making processes, and to craft institutions that both improve their individual welfare and foster societal robustness toward future crises.
Fig. 22.1 Alastair Frederick Johnson Y4, ‘Plastic Fantastic’. The project is designed around the needs of the NGO, the Marine Conservation Society. The complex of architectures caters for their need to campaign and inspire the younger generation about the importance of clean living, while also offering transportation, living quarters and facilities for Marine Biologists. Fig. 22.2 Yehan Zheng Y4, ‘Newham OffGrid Communal Settlement’. Set within the underused back gardens of Newham, the programme assembles communities to construct a co-living settlement that consists of varied degrees of editability and prefabrication. Using utility management techniques via a series of architectural cores, the scheme investigates the potential of domestic architecture to be a self-sufficient, yet interdependent tool.
Fig. 22.3 Xin Zhan Y5, ‘SLOW Valley’. In the context of China’s rapid urbanisation, the project rethinks the relationships between city, community and nature. Starting with an environmental restoration project, SLOW Valley is a co-working space for a regional craftsman community, educational and recreational space for local residents with open workshops, a market, allotments and landscape gardens as a campaign for slow living. Fig. 22.4 Rebecca Outterside Y4, ‘The3million Embassy Assembly’. The project aims to support EU citizens post-Brexit by encouraging collaboration via an assembly of European ‘Embassies’. The Embassies are temporary and will rotate around the five ‘leave’ boroughs of London, hosting a variety of community engagement activities, until the structures are eventually dismantled in 2020.
22.2
22.3
22.4
Figs. 22.5 – 22.6 Alexandria Anderson Y5, ‘Toys for Teachers’. The project is a set of gender-critical ‘tools’ to assist in constructing space and pedagogy that will act in the equalitarian future of education. By providing these ‘tools’, be it a sentence, or term defined in a particular way, a workshop adapted or newly created, teachers and students will be able to use this research to understand, expose, and rethink the capacity ‘the norm’ has over space and the bodies it acts upon. Figs. 22.7 – 22.8 Jun Wing (Michelle) Ho Y4, ‘Retrofitting the Community Estate’. Retrofitting the Central Hill Estate, a community estate in London, is an alternative method to tackle London’s housing crisis. With only a small scale of demolition, the project aims to increase the density, improve the existing conditions,
introduce opportunities for businesses within the estate, as well as bringing happiness to the community.
22.7
22.8
Fig. 22.9 Robert Newcombe Y4, ‘Hackney Ageless Co-Working Housing’. Campaigning for ‘ageless’ living, this new model of social housing is designed for the long term. Shifting living patterns inform a responsive mutating domestic setup. In contrast with typical excessive economic and social costs of displacing tenants, the re-configurable and neighbour-negotiated units allow the community to age in place and intergenerational lifestyles to emerge. Fig. 22.10
Florence Bassa Y4, ‘Bread & Roses HQ’. A project for social enterprise ‘Bread & Roses’, who empower refugee women with floristry classes, language lessons and employment. The building emulates the roles of floristry – tactile and interactive, filled with flowers, water and natural beauty – in order to build self-worth, and create communities and job opportunities.
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Fig. 22.11 Esha Thapar Y5, ‘Women Breaking Boundaries’. In the spirit of the era, this project explores the architect as the activist, enabler and designer through student-led feminist praxis. Collaborating with Sisters Uncut, this community engagement concludes a Women’s Building on the contested ten-acre site of HM Holloway Women’s Prison; embodying an extensive herstory of the imprisoned Suffragettes. Fig. 22.12 Isabelle Tung Y5, ‘Project UP!’. The project is a co-working and co-living scheme with the goal of diminishing the skill and wealth gap in Hong Kong, by upskilling and improving the housing quality of domestic helpers, minorities and low-income locals who are often disenfranchised and oppressed. Fig. 22.13 Nimrod Wong Y4, ‘Guerrilla Gardening London’s River Thames’. The newly formed
‘Guerrilla Gardeners’ Trust’ would commission the construction of a new floating headquarters that would operate along London’s major water routes, with the intent or rejuvenating and recontextualising the group’s underlying ethos of urban gardening in a water-based context. The barge would form the group’s permanent headquarters and would provide facilities to empower existing members and visitors to collaborate and exchange ideas towards realising green initiatives around the capital. Fig. 22.14 Anastasia Leonovinch Y4, ‘Mental Health Foundation Headquarters’. With the goal of preventing mental health illnesses across different generations, the building promotes the activity of talking and communication by providing a variety of spaces that seek to create comfortable and stimulating conditions to accommodate the personalities
and moods of the users. Fig.22.15 Rufus Edmondson Y5, ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ presents a new design strategy for LGBTQ+ cultural infrastructure in London. The proposal mediates varying levels of intimacy and visibility in order to define spaces for celebration and self-expression which are safe, open and inclusive for all. Fig. 22.16 Jonah Luswata Y4, ‘TRIPLE K School in Kampala, Uganda’. A study of contemporary learning environments. Questioning the values of colonial education at the same time as capitalising from the benefits of learning outdoors, while enjoining the academic possibilities of a fully supported and equipped infrastructure.
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Figs. 22.17 – 22.20 Laurence Flint, Timothy Whitehouse Y5, ‘Curating London’s Latin Quarter’. London’s Latin Quarter is under imminent threat from urban renewal. The project is sited in the context of the current negotiation between developer, council, Latin London community, and the wider London populace. Hacking into stalled planning applications, the design proposes to even the balance of power. Figs. 22.17 & 22.29 Through a market stall pop-up on East Street in Southwark, and classes with Cambourne Village College in Cambridge, participatory workshops explored how groups and individuals may represent their identity. Figs. 22.18 & 22.20 Working at a range of scales from 1:1 urban spaces to participatory video games we question the current urban regeneration mechanisms operating in London. This joint project has evolved through
collaboration between design students, activist groups, local architects, Southwark Council and local traders to propose an alternative vision for the community in Elephant and Castle.
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The Post-Millennial Revolution
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Year 4
Alex Anderson, Isabelle Tung, Laurence Flint, Rufus Edmondson, Timmy Whitehouse, Xin Zhan
Year 5
Georgina Halabi, Hei Tung (Whitney) Wong, Huma Mohyuddin, Jack Sargent, Kuba Tomaszczyk, Laura Young, Supichaya Chaisiriroj and Yuen Nam (Elaine) Tsang
Thank you to:
Pedro Gil, Practice Tutor, Edward Hoare, Structural Consultant, and our magnificent crit panels during the whole academic year: Fany Kostourou, Kristina Causer, Marcela Araguez, Sol Pérez Martínez, Sabine Storp, Lara Lesmes, Fredrik Hellberg, Manolis Stavrakakis, Adriana Cabello, Cristina Traba, Eduardo Camarena, Bruce Irwin, Paolo Zaide, Sean Griffiths
Thank you to our field trip workshop students and tutors from UDEM, Monterrey: Francisco Javier Serrano Alanís, Ana Teresa Furber Rodríguez, Sergio Gustavo Parroquin Sansores, Daniela Martínez Chapa, Rodrigo Gastélum Garza, Hilda Marcela Cabrales Arzola, Ana Paula Treviño Martínez, Alejandra Acuña Verano, María Catalina Gómez Elizondo, Lorena Guadalupe Cavazos Muñoz. Tutors: Arne Riekstins, Abril Denise Balbuena, Carlos García González (Dean Art, Architecture and Design)
Thank you to our sponsors: Luis Vidal + Architects and UDEM (Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico)
The Post-Millennial Revolution
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Those born between 1982-1996 (‘millennials’), and the generations born after this, are predicted to radically reform education and working systems not only via the massive resources of online activity and new relationships they engender, but also via a more qualitative aspiration: the search for new educational and working systems that also fulfil their potential. Millennials are the first generation that no longer require an authority figure to access information – they may enjoy external stimuli 24/7, be in social contact at all times, and learn more from a portable device than from a seminar. Unit 22 has explored how this will change the spaces in which we will play, learn, work and live in the near future.
Every year, we use our brief to break the tension between the traditional axes of architectural design, still experienced by many as a set of technical achievements, or the outcome of an aesthetic manifesto, and understood generally as the core of the creative enterprise of the architect, or as a linear solution applied to a local problem. We aim to introduce a fourth dimension to our students’ work: people, and more specifically, people who are connected both to each other and to their environment. The first stage in our four-dimensional architecture is to understand all stakeholders involved in a given situation, and then to devise ways to represent their points of view and practices, and finally, to design on these grounds.
Today, there is a pipeline of information available to everyone. The skills for making decisions have become dynamic. Co-working, for example, is the spatial translation of distributed decision-making. Our projects explore the political, spatial, urban and typological implication of such changes. Consequences in the architectural object have arisen: in most of the projects, the role of the furniture, soft materials and ‘software’ challenge the traditional role of structural elements. However, this has also allowed us to take a page from the analysis of power, as in the classic Bachrach and Baratz sense, and bring to the fore the relevance of nondecisions, in order to build isolated objects. We have discovered that transforming an existing building, offering the population better access to facilities, and providing services (perhaps not place-based) are sometimes much better solutions than a brand new building, in terms of reducing negative impact and creating benefits.
A way to visualise this is to see the changing role of architects as part of the transition from an ‘empty world’ paradigm to that of a ‘full world’, a formulation which we borrow from Herman Daly, an ecological economist. This means that the tools, references, habits and criteria of excellence we use must be completely overhauled.
Fig. 22.1 Yuen Nam (Elaine) Tsang Y5, ‘2027: The Reclaimed Japanese House’. As a remedy for the rapid housing disposal cycle and an ageing society in Japan, the proposal explores alternative strategies to ‘remake’ Japanese houses for a co-living lifestyle for the next generation. Using reclaimed materials, via communal structures, and connecting ground-level shared pods, the project empowers people in a wider urban context. Fig. 22.2 Rufus Edmondson Y4, ‘Hackney-Exchange‘. The Hackney-based school of culture uses empirical learning as a method of conservation in order to celebrate the world’s most threatened cultural characteristics - language, craft and culinary heritage. Millennials from Hackney will transform spaces within the building and construct their own cultural pavilions, reflecting the changing
identity of the borough. Fig. 22.3 Hei Tung (Whitney) Wong Y5, ‘University of Everywhere’. This project imagines how future education can be accessible without the constraint of time and location. Learning spaces become a community hub where learners, teachers, entrepreneurs, makers and designers all come together to work, learn and collaborate. The design of each spatial component reinforces the idea that learning can take place anywhere. Fig. 22.4 Alex Anderson Y4, ‘Bain Town Craft Quarter’ is a pilot scheme that’s part of the wider Bahamas Intangible Heritage Project. The design fosters community-based tourism, helping to decentralise the existing tourist market from a few large hotels to focus on smaller sustainable community initiatives.
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Fig. 22.5 Xin Zhan Y4, ‘2.5D Garden’. Based in Hangzhou, China, this project proposes an immersive learning experience via a 3D holographic projection combined with a ‘cosplay’ performance space. The bamboo reciprocal frame construction takes inspiration from traditional Chinese gardens, and when juxtaposed with fantastical projections, it blurs local and online experiences of the space. Figs. 22.6 – 22.7 Georgina Halabi Y5, ‘Whatever the Weather’. The project re-inhabits Bethnal Green’s historic gasholders with an interactive weather playground, a co-living community and a co-working hub designed for millennials. The programme reflects on our relationship with the outdoors and aims to recalibrate our comfort zone in the light of happiness felt from environmental conditions. Variable building skins choreograph
comfort and thus temper internal environments according to user preference. Just as we change our clothes, the proposal aims to make the façades of the future more flexible. Fig. 22.8 Laurence Flint Y4, ‘Yokosuka 2020’. The project proposes to use the energy of the Olympics to foster social ambition in response to Japan’s vacant housing crisis, and Olympic shortcomings. The lightweight canopy system explores the potential of a shrinkable building to relate to the shortand long-term needs of residents within a shrinking city. By integrating a theatre school with topographic connections, the building provides for a variety of local present and future stakeholders.
Figs. 22.9 – 22.10 Kuba Tomaszczyk Y5, ‘In Search of Kashubia’. An architectural speculation on the future of one of the most dynamic indigenous ethnic groups in Europe. The project explores Kashubian life on a number of different scales: urban, building and furniture. The masterplan discreetly combines the spheres of co-living, co-learning and co-working that interweave in the construction and on the landscape of the rural site. An emphasis on the inter-generational transfer of knowledge informed a strategic neighbourhood plan and approach to design. Figs. 22.11 – 22.12 Huma Mohyuddin Y5, ‘The New Women’s Club in Mayfair’. The scheme redefines the representation of female empowerment. By proposing a New Women’s Club, this project challenges the traditional values of a Gentleman’s Club and Mayfair’s brand of exclusivity. This new
environment empowers women by focusing on their current needs and allows for people of different cultural, ethnic, economic, educational and religious backgrounds to form a space with their own personal identity. Fig. 22.13 Timmy Whitehouse Y4, ‘Poly-hack Park’. An adaptive space for learning, play and production hacked by refugees, which cuts through an existing car park in downtown Athens. Multiple procurement strategies explore the potential of a ‘hacked architecture’ by re-appropriating the car park, and allowing refugees and city users to hack their own spaces.
Fig. 22.14 Supichaya Chaisiriroj Y5, ‘Lumphini Fitness Academy and Lifestyle Centre’. The project imagines an extension to an urban park in Bangkok, Thailand. The centre offers exercise-oriented facilities to the ever-increasing users of Lumphini Park. The programmatic design investigates how buildings could reduce heat gains by way of passive systems powered by the exercising public. Fig. 22.15 Isabelle Tung Y4, ‘Homegrown City’. The proposed masterplan and up-cycling education centre within the Kamala Nehru informal settlement in Patna, India, aims to encourage settlers to turn plastic bag waste into beautiful daily objects. The project explores the idea of using plastic bags as a construction material, whilst creating flexible housing typologies aimed at improving the living conditions of current and future settlers.
Figs. 22.16 – 22.17 Jack Sargent Y5, ‘The Broadway Super Triangle’. Forming a physical manifestation of the internet age, this scheme proposes a cross-programmatic, super-urban scaled intervention that aims to facilitate inter-community engagement in Brooklyn, New York.
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Women And Architecture
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Year 4
Georgina Halabi, Hei Tung (Whitney) Wong, Huma Mohyuddin, Yuen (Elaine) Tsang, Jack Sargent, Laura Young
Year 5
Ana Alonso Albarrarín, Ruben Everett, Max Friedlander, Hao Han, Lily Papadopoulos, Oliver Partington, Li Wang, Shuo Yang, Timmy Yoon and Nawanwaj Yudhanahas.
We would like to thank the B-made team for their valuable support to all Bartlett students! We are grateful to Fani Kostourou, Athina Lazaridou, Covadonga Gutierrez Busto, Adriana Cabello, Gonçalo Lopes, Pedro Gil, Frederik Petersen, Jan Kattein, Bruce Irvin, Barbara Penner, Sophia Psarra, Blanche Cameron, Diego Delas, Marco Godoy, Yael Reisner, Christine Hawley, Chee-Kit Lai, Javier Lezaun, Eva Alvarez, Oscar Brito, Anna Mill, Joanne Preston, Clarissa Yee, Claire Taggart, Lulu Le Li, Ronald Cheape and Nerea Calvillo for bringing all their passion and knowledge to the Unit crits and workshops, and to Victoria Bateman for her marvelous teaching support and coordination of our Ho Chi Minh City workshop
We would also like to express our enormous gratitude to the whole of the Bartlett Office – nothing could be achieved without you. What a team!
Thank you to sponsors Luis Vidal + Architects and Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture
Women And Architecture
From the Egalitarian Fight to the Female Brand Strategy – a Great Chance to Change Architectural Meanings
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
In his 1920s manifesto ‘Five Points of Architecture’, Le Corbusier proposed an architectural vision for the twentieth century. When we look at its five points, it is clear that they are all related to technology. Le Corbusier advised architects to support their buildings with pilotis; to design open plan; to show that the façade is independent of the structure; to design horizontal windows; and to design flat roofs that included gardens. Even this idea of including a garden was intended as a celebration of technology, given that the cityscape had recently become visible from planes.
This year, we asked our students to design spaces in which the female mindset was fully applied and empowered. From this, we extracted five points:
1. Allow your inhabitants to hold their babies while they work. Many students mixed uses on the same plot and construction, allowing personal and professional life to overlap.
2. Encourage your users to bake bread, just like their Grandma did. A significant number of our projects suggest that happiness can be easily achieved through time-honoured activities such as cultivating roses, reading or drawing. This proposes a sort of critical disengagement: you don’t need to change your car every five years or update the colour of your sofa according to a magazine; there are ways to balance life that do not have such a direct link with consumption.
3. But also enable them to search for bread recipes on their tablet. Many of our projects found that the internet and digital networking were the best allies for successfully empowering the female brand.
4. Treat your users’ bodies well – allow them to be naked, sad, tired or happy, but comfortable. Temperatures, textures, sound and subjectivity were part of most of our exercises that centred on user experience; these are important and should not be overlooked.
5. Push the space to allow full development of users’ lifestyles. In a world where people make a living filming their daily activities on YouTube, architecture can promote the strategic development of customized lifestyles, allowing people to build relationships or make money through the buildings that they own, rent or use.
The difference between our five points and Le Corbusier's is obvious: our goal is to empower people, rather than empowering industry. We can now ask our readers – are female architects more focused on improving inhabitants' lives, while their male colleagues are focused on pushing the boundaries of technological solutions? If this is the case, the idea of an egalitarian struggle doesn’t quite make sense. Female architects should not be fighting for the same identity as their male counterparts; they should instead develop their own. This, simultaneously, will improve what architecture is – and can be – for everyone.
Fig. 22.1 Oliver Partington Y5, ‘The Newham Cooperative’. The project looks to employ female-led principles of urbanism to develop a large, disused site in Newham. Through the celebration of the collective, the new framework for housing concentrates on establishing new typologies for shared housing, work spaces and childcare. The method of housing delivery also looks to empower the residents by creating a structure where households take an equal stake in the land, allowing the groups to develop their own piece of city.
Fig. 22.2 Max Friedlander Y5, ‘Women’s Community Bridge Saigon’. Traditional Vietnamese craft as a tool for social change is explored through the lens of the female user. The bridge forms a link between two contrasting communities, facilitating the urban cohesion of the city. It seeks to empower
women through challenging the existing domestic realities and allowing them to formalise an identity beyond the home. Workshops, parks, childcare and other functions are woven together into a playful landscape that reflects local cultural traditions and encourages dynamic engagement with the building. Fig. 22.3 Jack Sargent Y4, ‘Durbar Dharmasala School, Kathmandu, Nepal’. Via a series of interventions that work independently and alongside one another, this proposes a timeline of works that develop from small interventions tapping into broadcast networks through to purpose built communication, internet and structural systems. The responses combine programmes that empower women by facilitating and maximising their public exposure, breaking down the gender barriers and roles within Nepali society.
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The floating nature of the structure passively circumvents the issue of seismic activity in the region and lyrically embeds a sanitary operation within its programme. Fig. 22.4 Shuo Yang Y5, ‘Woman, Buddhism & Capital’. The project is a speculative proposal of a socially engaged Canary Wharf. It discovers how a new type of Buddhist built environment might apply female-centric principles in order to regenerate a socially engaged community within Canary Wharf. The challenge to the existing economic system is to integrate these new cultural and social forms of capital, creating new spatial networks within this revitalised context. The armillary sphere uncovers a new Buddhist archetype for Bhikkhuni activities.
Fig. 22.5 Hao Han Y5, ‘The Matriarchal Energy Industry’. A masterplan investigating the physical infrastructure of a ‘female’ form of environmental engagement. Through a study of matriarchal principles and the clean tech industry, a series of typologies and energy agents are developed to be deployed around the city of Santa Clara, California. Action-based engagements and curated routine disruptions are put forward to produce a new form of sustainable lifestyle. Figs. 22.6 – 22.7 Ana Alonso Albarracín Y5, ‘Sweet Conciliation’. Through YouTube, a group of Spanish housewives have created a network of support and influence about housekeeping, a job they are both proud of and brilliant at. The project interprets them as 21st century material feminists. A reality series to be featured on YouTube’s new
subscription service is proposed. This enterprise aims to pump new life into rural Spain, filled with abandoned villages. The design is informed by the housewives’ YouTube videos, and applies their tips to urban and architectural scales. Fig. 22.8 Rubén Everett Y5, ‘In The Big City’. A closer look at London revealed a lack of commemoration for women in the city. This project reacts to this by creating a feminist microcosm within the big city. Inspired by five female figureheads, the project explores an urban landscape that aims to invigorate, enrich and rejuvenate Silvertown, through the exploration of a new community built to commemorate the work of these extraordinary women.
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Fig. 22.9 Huma Mohyuddin Y4, ‘Learning Centre for Herbal Medicine and Building Construction’. It is common for women in rural Pakistan to be denied an education or the chance to pursue work. This proposal empowers women by allowing them to gain knowledge of herbal medicine, local construction methods and business skills, to help provide alternative means of health and income, as well as empowering other rural women through sharing their knowledge. Fig. 22.10 Georgina Halabi Y4, ‘The Lysistrata House and Forest Garden’. In response to the ‘New Homeless,’ the programme is a self-build shelter and edible landscape for a community of women in Athens, called Lysistrata. However, parallel to the misfortune that has hit the city, comes the opportunity for development – a rise in urban farming in the form of allotments and community
gardens. The project proposes common facilities and one-room housing typologies that accommodate vegetable gardens, walls, terraces, and of course, women. Fig. 22.11 Nawanwaj Yudhanahas Y5, ‘The Co-Op LAB of the Island of Widows Koh Kret, Thailand’. The project proposes four scales of interventions to raise awareness in everyday science and participation in environmental conservation. The typologies, located across the island, range from scale S: tool kits, M: mobile laboratories, L: field restaurants (pictured) and XL: the Co-Op Market. Each typology aims to empower the women, from their health, knowledge, and independence, to joining forces as a community. Architectural language is a hybrid between existing agricultural infrastructures and local architecture. Fig. 22.12 Hei Tung (Whitney) Wong Y4,
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‘The Maids' Cooperative’. The scheme empowers domestic workers by restructuring the domestic service industry into a cooperative. In place of live-in domestic helpers, the domestic service industry is restructured into a professional business where users regenerate and improve skills, utilising their knowledge through economic and social interaction. Using the façade of the building, the cooperative manifests the empowerment of these women and creates a celebration between culture, nature and the strength of women, by exposing the production and organisation onto its external envelope. Fig. 22.13 Lily Papadopoulos Y5, ‘A Life-Giving Catalyst’. The Greek islands face a lack of maternity facilities, forcing women to travel to the mainland to give birth. This project's aim is to alleviate this situation, creating everyday
environments which recall past childbirth events as communal and celebratory, in contrast to today’s preconceived role of the pregnant body as a patient. Expanding family houses, start-up agro-businesses and doctors offering services in exchange for hospitality, allows for the rebirth of depopulating villages, which potentially dissolves hierarchies and transforms power relations.
Fig. 22.14 Laura Young Y4, ‘House For Hillary [The New Transparent Parliament], Washington DC 2016’. Following Hillary Clinton’s elected presidency in 2016, her new parliamentary framework proposes a democratic forum of continued construction, both physical and digital, engaging the public with an equal and evolving politics accessible to all Americans. Originating from The White House Pavilions Project, the house will test architectural manifestations of Hillary’s key policies: domestic space, work space and climate. The scheme will grow into the surrounding National Mall, activating the key public space through political exchange and broadcast. Fig. 22.15 Yuen (Elaine) Tsang Y4, ‘Makers’ Market Community Project’. The project is used as the testing ground to reassert the programmatic relevancy of co-workspace, residence and
market as a place of collaborative enterprise led by online DIY communities favouring women. ‘Compartmentalising’ their lives into multiple cabinets encourages the fluid society to find the highest common factor of what could be reused and what is unique to each person to be shared to maintain near zero marginal cost through an online platform and offline physical world. Fig. 22.16 Li Wang Y5, ‘The Gentlewomen’s House.’ The project explores how weather recomposes the architectural environment, from the path to interior space through sensory perceptions. Where the sense of direction can be emphasised by silence and noise, physical boundaries can be soft. Spaces are defined by textures of the materiality, so that architecture is more intimate and sensitive to all users.
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Empowering the Legacy of Generation Z
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Year 4
Ana Alonso Albarrarín, Ruben Everett, Max Friedlander, Hao Han, Lily Papadopoulos, Oliver Partington, Li Wang, Shuo Yang, Tae-In (Timmy) Yoon, Nawanwaj Yudhanahas
Year 5
Xiao Ying Li, Jiao Peng, Sirisan Nivatvongs, Joshua Thomas
We would like to thank Pedro Gil, practice tutor, and Roberto Marín, structural consultant, for their incredible work. This year would have not been the same without the wisdom and expertise of the team of critics joining us: Julia Backhaus, Adriana Cabello, Rut Cuenca, Max Dewdney, Maria Elvira Dieppe, Ursula Orsaila Dimitriou, Marta Grinda, Sally Hart, Christine Hawley, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Nannette Jackowski, Jan Kattein, Fani Kostourou, Alice Labourel, Chee-Kit Lai, Ricardo de Ostos, Yael Reisner, Tania Sengupta, Bob Sheil, Sally Anne Stanton, Manijeh Verghese, Paolo Zaide
We would like to express our enormous gratitude to our sponsors Luis Vidal + Architects and our partners Universidad Veritas, Costa Rica
Empowering the Legacy of Generation Z
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
‘Generation Z’ refers to the children born between 2000 and today. This year, Unit 22 attempted to increase the rights of this community as citizens and to augment its urban legacy. The notion that design can empower community is fundamental for the unit and has allowed our students to build networks with existing institutions, researchers and designers from different disciplines.
Empowerment is about making people live better and have more rights both individually and as a community. Our approach to empowerment expands in a double action:
Extending benefits beyond target users
In most traditional school design projects, only teachers, students and some parents would enjoy good design. What would happen if a school was built as a high street or as a botanic garden? Then local shops, elderly neighbours or universities would start being empowered by design.
Designing potential heritage buildings of the future
This forces our students to explore how an architectural design can condense the identity of a place and of a generation in a unique and memorable way. We are conscious that associating heritage architecture with singularity might be a controversial intellectual exercise, but we state that buildings kept as common legacy always contain an element of uniqueness.
The brief for the year also contained strong political statements. We wanted our students to protest about how cities have become places which privilege drivers and compromise children’s physical integrity, denying them the right to play, walk, cycle, or exercise safely. We also reacted against the fact that marketing views children merely as potential future consumers when, we propose, they should be seen as builders of new jobs, new institutions and new spaces.
For both pedagogical and environmental reasons we invited our students to learn from existing complex and industrial objects: they had to reassemble, reinforce, recycle and reuse. We aimed to prepare our students for a future in which there will no longer be vacant places – all plots will have valuable preexistences – and we encouraged them to reflect on how to practice in a world that is already full of objects that are no longer useful. We have transformed bicycle wheels with covers and forced cloth lines to double their structural capacity. Our approach to technique is therefore pedagogically inductive and adopts a cradle-to-cradle creative logic.
Fig. 22.1 Sirisan Nivatvongs Y5, ‘Integral Human & Sustainable Development District’. The project focuses on the social and environmental vulnerability of Klong Toey’s Generation Z and considers the possibilities of self-empowerment by the cultivation of new skills brought about by a series of architectural interventions that ultimately leads to the invigoration of the community. The active research methodology for this project is documented extensively in the thesis, which comprised of a two-day workshop with Klong Toey children to promote environmental education through participatory and child friendly practices. Figs. 22.2 – 22.3 Lily Papadopoulos Y4, ‘An Urban Orchestra’. The proposal aims to implement the qualities of ‘musical play’ into the wounded landscape of the divided city of Nicosia. Improvised and formal
orchestral compositions act as tools of reconciliation for this territory in conflict. A special thanks to the UCL Electrical Engineering department for allowing me to perform an acoustical test. Fig. 22.4 Xiao Ying Lin Y5, ‘You Are What You Eat’. The project looks to empower the legacy of Generation Z through re-establishing connections with traditional Chinese food. Sited in Suzhou, China, the architecture is designed as a series of large devices allowing the children to investigate the tradition methods of food production, the importance of quality and the historical significance of food in their urban context through entirely active means.
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Figs. 22.5 – 22.7 ‘1:1 Building Workshop’. In December, Unit 22 travelled to Costa Rica to take part in an intensive 5-day design and fabrication workshop with Vertias University in San Jose. During the week the collective worked together to build two 1:1 devices and spaces to empower the students at the University.
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Figs. 22.8 – 22.9 Oliver Partington Y4, ‘Contextualised Learning on the Thames’. The proposal creates a new educational landscape that focuses on providing real, lived experiences. Conceived as an entirely public entity the collection of workshops, gardens, classrooms, sports facilities and public spaces move up and down the river using the city as its extended classroom and reconnecting the city for a younger generation. The project aims to empower the wider urban context by reconnecting the North and South banks, celebrating the creative output of the workshops and reestablishing an engaging relationship with the water.
Figs. 22.10 – 22.11 Tae-in (Timmy) Yoon Y4, ‘Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’. This project proposes to regenerate the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as a space for children of this generation
to engage with nature in order to bridge the gap between their concern and knowledge of the natural environment. Within the Botanical Laboratory, children are encouraged to participate in the plant growing process in a playful way most conducive to their learning.
Figs. 22.12 – 22.13 Joshua Thomas Y5, ‘Harrow Building Exchange’. The Exchange explores an alternative system of education and local governance. It focuses on the dissemination of knowledge, responsibilities and skills to younger generations through a framework which allows children to interact with and influence the creation of social, spatial and economic structures in a local region. The exchange takes an optimistic view of the results that this social reconditioning might produce. Compassion advanced through participatory design and construction is seen to aid an agonistic conflict, which helps to curtail the effects of inequality and social-spatial polarisation in London. Local residents are granted the agency required to create equitable sustainable development in their local borough by acting in
consistent dialogue with local government to support the effective devolution of funding from centralised bodies such as the Greater London Council (GLC).
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Figs. 22.14 – 22.15 Li Wang Y4, ‘Indoor Study’. Indoor study focuses on updating the habitable space for Generation Z by composing an indoor conditioned field that exceeds an architectural scale, yet is filled with minimum daily essentials that is less than a space in scale. Through the disappearance of architectural scale, the linkage between private and public becomes more permeable and extreme, so that the virtual world and the physical world of Generation Z meet. Figs. 22.16 – 22.17 Ana Alonso Albarracín Y4, ‘Children’s Urban Theatre’. This intervention seeks to bring Generation Z children out to the streets, and empower them to stand up as active citizens by giving them a voice of their own through theatrical performances on mobile stages. The project tackles current debates regarding children and gender, and urban regeneration
strategies on the site in Madrid. Fig. 22.18 Jiao Peng Y5, ‘Children’s Time Project: Less Commuting Time, More Fun Times for the children in Beijing’. This project proposes to reduce children’s commuting time in Beijing through new educational and residential environments. The proposal consists of two main elements, A Tutorial Bus that provides study spaces for children while they commute across the city and a series of new towers that look to provide study and residential spaces for families closer to their school districts.
Fig. 22.19 Nawanwaj Yudhanahas Y4, ‘Baan Krua Silk Weaving School’, Bangkok, Thailand. Over consumption of digital technology among young children leads to many development problems, including short attention span, a lack of interpersonal skills and a lack of inter-generational relationships. The proposal is a silk weaving school located next to an existing old silk weaving community. The architecture learns from vernacular knowledge including the structure and joints of weaving looms. Silk weaving process is revisited to make traditional crafts more interesting for Generation Zs. Time consuming crafts, such as silk-weaving, increase children’s attention span and the Baan Krua residents become the grandparents whom Generation Z can learn from, and who also learn from Generation Z.
Figs. 22.20 – 22.21 Shou Yang Y4, ‘The Interdisciplinary Centre’, Euston 2025. The new working environment and public interface is proposed in the roof of Euston Station providing flexible working space for future professionals of Generation Z. This architecture is created through a collection of small tectonic fragments which play on the plug-in nature of the future working environment. The dynamic construction system also allows the space to evolve and adapt to the ever changing needs of Generation Z. The research for the project was developed through 1:6 models and prototypes which investigated the relationship between the ‘plug in tectonic fragments’ and the existing station room structure.
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Fig. 22.22 Hao Han Y4, ‘Community Tinkering Garden’. This scheme is a celebration of the physical, experimental and haptic aspects of a child’s learning. A largely self-built construction, the building places particular emphasis on communal and family-oriented engagements; thus engaging various sectors, age groups and skill sets with equal prominence. Prefabricated and bespoke frames are juxtaposed with the handcrafted, fluctuating infills created by children.
Fig. 22.23 Max Friedlander Y4, ‘San José Botanical Garden’. This pavilion provides learning spaces focused on the possibilities of algae cultivation. The algae is grown in synthetic ‘leaves’ and then extracted to be allocated to various uses such as energy production, water purification and dye making.
Fig. 22.24 Ruben Everett Y4, ‘Experimental Music School’. External view showing the façade of the faculty of music. Opening up the faculty of music and reusing elements of the existing condition were key in developing a renovation strategy for the school. This image shows key elements of the façade that have been moved and manipulated in various ways. The image draws focus to the opening façade of the auditorium, which is designed to move in order to open and close the auditorium to the elements. This opening allows for the building to adapt its sonic scape depending on the needs of the musician or performance.
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Designing the Future:
Architecture as Hypothesis vs. Hypothesis as Synthesis
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Year 4
Xiao Ying Lin, Sirisan Nivatvongs, Jiao Peng, Joshua Thomas, Han (John) Wu
Year 5
Akmal Afani Azhar, Victoria Bateman, Ko Wai Cheung, Sarah Firth, Yuen Sar (Lillian) Lam, Zhiyu Huang, Hisham Abdullah Muazzam, Jose Ignacio Ortiz-Muñoz, Joanne Preston
Thanks to our supporters Vidal Associates and the Faculty of Architecture, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
Thank you to Pedro Gil, our Design Realisation practice tutor and Roberto Marin, our structural consultant
Thanks also to our critics: Julia Bauhaus, Nerea Calvillo, Freya Cobbin, Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Christine Hawley, Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Jan Kattein, Lulu Le Li, Sophia Psarra, Peter Scully, Anthony Staples
Our field trip to Thailand, where we developed the Future Natural workshop, was supported by Faculty of Architecture, Chiang Mai University (Thailand), Ajarn Sant, Julian Huang and 16 Thai students with their knowledge and generosity
Designing the Future: Architecture as Hypothesis vs. Hypothesis as Synthesis
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jimenez
Many architects define their design work as a synthesis of the present. Projects encompass the availability of local technologies, climate conditions, cultural preferences, contemporary aesthetic tendencies, and much more. History invites us to study buildings as a way to understand a period. The advanced version of this understanding gives synthesis the role of helping humans adapt to context. Christian Norbert-Schultz declared ‘modern architecture came into existence to help man feel at home in a new world’. 1
Several factors trouble this peaceful academic perspective. Firstly, the speed of change has suffered the ‘acceleration of history’. 2 Even while implementing a building, original ideas might become outdated. Secondly, our building technologies mix within the same body items that may reach obsolescence within different rhythms. Thirdly, the performance of a building can change dramatically throughout its life. 3 The notion of sustainability challenges any previous ignorance of the building’s evolution. Education demands students make decisions without knowing what is to come.
Unit 22 works on a radically different premise, designing not from synthesis but from a consciously built hypothesis of what may lie ahead: The architect tests whether he/she might be wrong. Her/his principal task is checking, comparing scenarios, providing alternative solutions or even finding ways to demolish parts.
There is not a simplistic vision of the problem-solving capacity of architecture. Wendell Berry proposes designs should act as a pattern; 4 solving several problems simultaneously, while minimising the creation of new ones.
Direct cause-effect relationships are broken. Architects are more aware when they are imagining or building their own definitions of reality.
The methodology for designing from hypothesis gives new opportunities for innovation. It encourages starting from the ‘state of the art’, avoids ‘design amnesia’ and values gradual innovation. 5 It helps integration of functions. It avoids potential innovation being rejected for not matching the puzzle. It allows true and subversive experimentation to take place.
1. C. Norbert-Schultz, Principles of Modern Architecture, (London: Andreas Papadakis, 2000), p.6
2. Lester R. Brown uses this term in Eco-Economy: Building and Economy of the Earth, (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001)
3. E. Hollis, The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories (NY: Metropolitan, 2010)
4. See ‘Solving for Pattern’ by Wendell Berry in The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural (NY: North Point Press, 1981)
5. A. Snodgrass & R. Coyne, Interpretation in Architecture: Design as a way of thinking (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006)
Fig. 22.1 Ko Wai Cheung Y5, ‘House of the Future – Hong Kong 2047’. Elevated walkways connect skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the ground level often becomes hazy and forgotten. Connected to an elevated walkway, the proposal explores the possibilities for innovations in a family. Flexible living spaces use exchanged components for constructing a home with the specific needs for each family. The house is an integration of technology, materials, ideas and innovations. Fig. 22.2 – 22.3
Sarah Firth Y5, Zhiyu Huang Y5, Joshua Thomas, Y4 and students from FACMU, ‘Future Nature – Canopy Group’. In December 2013, 13 Students from Unit 22 joined the Faculty of Architecture at Chiang Mai University on a 7-day intensive design and fabrication workshop to revisit the design of curtains, parasols, louvres, canopies and carpets. These
architectural interfaces act not only as protection mechanism for inhabitants inside the building, but also as wider protection strategies for nature against human actions. Fig. 22.4 Jiao Peng Y4, ‘Student Accommodation‘. This project is targeted at students in Hongcun City, China. The building provides accommodation for local students, collects rainwater to satisfy the daily demands, and encourages tourists to cherish the water resources. Fig. 22.5 Xiao Ying Lin Y4, ‘The Elephant Embassy’, section of the Interactive Feeding Station. The proposal aims to retain the elephants’ natural living habitats in Bangkok. The Bamboo structure is a temporary residence and a medical centre for the elephants. The higher level contains a cafe, food workshop, and nutrition lab. The lower level contains an interactive space to feed the elephants passing through.
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Fig. 22.6 Sirisan Nivatvongs Y4, ‘Bangkok Noi Flood Shelter‘. A 1:20 Scale Model to investigate hanging floor structures and innovate traditional façades. The proposal makes use of elevated public infrastructures to host a series of ephemeral floating structures to provide living and temporary shelters for a flooded Bangkok Noi District in 2050. The architecture seeks to innovate local sensibilities, vernacular techniques to interact to its bio-climatic conditions. Fig. 22.7 Joshua Thomas Y4, ‘Citizenry Association Hotel’, Penzance. Four coastal towns in Cornwall have been chosen to host Citizenry Associations in ‘Special Tourism Areas’, which contain the most affluent economies in the county. Inflated land values, however, make access to activity, property and work difficult for local people. The founding structure in Penzance aims to move local life,
decision-making institutions and government offices and skilled jobs back into the town, therefore empowering residents to partake in the discussion, distribution and use of the land and resources in their region.
Fig. 22.8 Jose Ignacio Ortiz-Muñoz Y5, Photo showing the tested structure as a layered inhabitable volume, allowing for cross-ventilation. Set in 2080, this project is based on a hypothetical vision of the city of Murcia in south east Spain. It aims to find an optimised archetype to improve the environment and meet the demands of an increasingly saturated city, respecting its best traditions and culture.
The project looks at geometries and ventilation of spaces and structures as a way to achieve to stop the dependence on air conditioning, abused at present by its increasing population.
Four main towers rise from in between the existing buildings to compose an ‘Upper City’ landscape: The Water Tower, the Orchard Tower, the Kitchen Tower and the Sleeping Tower.
Fig. 22.9 Zhiyu Huang Y5, ‘The New Urban Village, Shenzhen’. A reconstruction of the unique settlements occupied by migrant workers, promoting sustainable living and the value of agriculture. The knowledge of urban villagers is harvested to tackle the crisis and challenges faced by the city. The architecture is a response to the seasons and 24 solar terms, which is an ancient calendar that guides people’s daily routine according to the climate and the ecliptic coordinate system.
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Fig. 22.10 Hisham Abdullah Muazzam Y5, ‘Dhaka Adaptive Factory Typologies for Manufacturing Welfare’. A detailed axonometric drawing showing the infrastructural, technical and spatial programme layout of the proposed new garment factory typology in Bangladesh. The drawing envisages building above and around existing skyscrapers in the heart of the dense urban Dhaka landscape. Vertical expansion and flexible architecture is key to ensuring sustainable growth in the booming garments industry in 2050. The innovations present a more symbiotic relationship between consumers and producers within the industry by promoting positive dialogue through direct interactions and trading. Fig. 22.11 Akmal Afani Azhar Y5, ‘The New House of the Future in Malaysia’, Assemblage of ‘Train House’, ‘Bicycle House’, ‘Suitcase House’,
‘Flying House’ and ‘Floating House’. The designs are derived from one hypothesis: in the year 2050, human mobility will increase following the existing pattern of movement in the country from rural to urban areas. This future scenario challenges societies conservative perception of a ‘house’ being rooted in one place. New House of the Future in Malaysia deals with different cultural issues such as, bathing traditions, food culture, traditional performance and alternative healthcare influenced by multiple contextual and multicultural population of the country.
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Fig. 22.12 – 22.15 Ko Wai Cheung Y5, ‘Innovation Catalogue Component Kits‘. In the proposed masterplan of the Lok Ma Chau Loop in Hong Kong, the government uses a non-plan approach to encourage re-industrialisation in the rural parts of the New Territories with Shenzhen, the border. Villagers in allocated plots of land can choose kits from the catalogue of innovation to construct their own homes and industries within the limitation of the government’s main structure. This provides flexibility in function and freedom for further development, as kits can be reassembled and are highly adaptable. The kit of components combines advanced technology with indigenous techniques and materials to suggest an innovative approach to the future. Fig. 22.16
Sarah Firth, Joanne Preston Y5, ‘Group Project’, 1:10 physical
model. In response to London’s housing crisis, a new typology of vertical dwelling is proposed for disused brownfield sites such as old quarries, farmsteads, and golf courses within the London Metropolitan Greenbelt. Modular units are stacked to form a vertical terraces, with modest individual house plans and generous shared spaces which allow for home working, shared recreation and dining.
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Fig. 22.17 Sarah Firth Y5, ‘Negotiation and the Future of the New Town’. Showing Neighbourhood Block’s 30 years of growth (from top left, clockwise). Investigating the potential of government New Town, suburban Hemel Hempstead, to respond to the current housing crisis through densification by means of localism. Fig. 22.18 Joanne Preston Y5, ‘Garden Cities of “To-morrow”: A Manifesto for the UK’s Garden Cities of 2050‘. 1:50 Section Hybrid Typology, Welwyn Garden City, UK. Based on a more transient idea of ‘home’, a future is envisaged where everyone can have a place to call home in the city the, greenbelt and the suburb. Fig. 22.19 Joanne Preston Y5, ‘Desk Buggy’, 1:25 plan. A new infrastructure is linked with existing rail networks and made habitable by kinetic walls and furniture modules. These innovations bring together childcare
and working from home, that have been separated through the failures of Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 model. Influenced by Howard’s Cul-de-Sac formations, the tessellation of the proposed typology forms a patchwork landscape of contained gardens and terraces. The dwellings are designed to accommodate a community rather than a ‘nuclear family’. Divisions between one dwelling and the next are made unclear inorder to encourage neighbourly interaction.
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Wood
And Fire: Towards a Definition of Mild Architecture
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
Wood And Fire: Towards a Definition of Mild Architecture
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jimenez
Unit 22 researches, among others things, how architecture can welcome users through small details and a soft and cosy understanding of materiality. For that reason, two material facts provided the title for the year: wood and fire. Wood was selected not only for its technical qualities but for its contextual dimension. Using local wood consciously implies understanding the structure of an ecosystem and managing geographical notions, while maintaining perception of memory, craft and biology. Placing real fire in our spaces has forced us to think about thermodynamic functioning while offering a place to gather and talk.
Wood and fire have been inspirations for the beginning of our year and the small details that welcome and empower users have been one of our major interests. But we quickly jumped out of a linear methodology to go deeper into the contextual implications of material and energy. In this process, the objective and subjective values of wood and fire have been melded together. The technical skills of the students, the details which serve as interfaces to users, and a deep contextual reflection, have met.
If we began the year wondering around what ‘mild architecture’ could be, we now have new words and definitions providing a wider frame to architecture for its future.
Folk
Academic architecture typically avoids an association with folk. Architecture has been decontextualised and abstract languages and materials have provided the aesthetic. It is now time to look at human rituals, daily life and communal celebrations. In those episodes, space, objects and material systems reassemble the human figure and restructure community. Many of our students have researched ancestral rituals from different areas of the world. The decoration of the floating boats and platforms made by the Bajau Laut tribe in Semporna, Malaysia, for their annual festival; communal bathing rituals in Greece, Russia and Japan; rice
transportation in Kerala, India; craft activity in Beijing Hutongs, China or the puppet theatre in Indonesia have been part of the reflection of Akmal, Megan Townsend, Joanne, Lulu and Kirsty. Within their designs they have challenged the tradition in which technical aspects command the design process. Their architecture does not fundamentally follow an abstract function or occupy a structural frame. Their drawings and models take the footprint of human activity, assume its vernacular precedents and shape this activity in a soft materiality that wraps the inhabitants and occupies the place between their body and their shelter. Technical elements have to find their place and scope within this folk nature.
Cute
While Western cultures encourage women and children to value ‘cuteness’ there is also a real masculine tradition of fighting it. Architecture, as part of a masculine domain of knowledge and practice, has systematically refused cuteness as a major value. One obvious yet evident effect of this battle has been the colourblind tradition affecting architecture throughout the last century. Meanwhile Claire has placed sky blue tiles in her Coventry project, Akmal has been daring with pink chimneys, delicate star patterns cover Kirsty’s skins and embroidery gives character to Clarissa’s textiles. These students have found that part of the charm of British medieval cities can be underlined by bringing fairytales to visitors’ minds or that delicate embroidering can challenge the significance of digital fabrication techniques in the construction industry. Cuteness may have a strategic communication value in future decades; it is already used by advertising agents, pop singers and food brands.
Alive and Vibrant
The methodology of the year was planned to make the students aware of the types of life architecture has to preserve. The main project, ‘harbour’, forced students to face an open definition of the built
environment. Open air facilities, infrastructures, landscape treatment, links and connection between architectural objects have been framed in each exercise. Each project helps architecture to meet and organise different environmental levels. The architecture of many of our students presents exceptional continuity with its surrounding landscape. Many details have been designed to flow with the wind, to keep moving during their lifespan, to change with the rhythm of seasons and tides –to create an architecture that breathes. The roof over Lilian’s floating architecture swings slightly with the rainwater, helping its collection and its direct use. Jose Ignacio has learned from tropical architecture to keep his designs open to natural flows; he has even learned to knot them. Water is storage; it evaporates, forms cloud and mist, and softly condenses in Megan Townsend’s indoor bathing landscape. To use Megan Smedy’s hotel facilities one needs to cycle and walk. The movement around the landscape and its surroundings helps users find comfort and beauty.
A Bigger Pattern
Unit 22’s design core implies a strategic vision of architecture. Therefore we have encouraged students to propose specific combinations of sites and projects with strategic intentions. Many of our students split the project across several locations or transform a whole urban area in the frame of a new institutional activity. Most of the projects include benefits for locals and visitors. Some create typologies that can be replicated. All of them try to think on how architecture can help make a life. All act within a larger pattern. These principles can be found in the collaboration that Lilian established between Cambodian medicine, floating architecture and income coming from tourists. They are also crucial to how Clarissa has understood the participation of Tunisian workers in Sicilian agriculture. This sensibility has enabled Freya to distribute her student location tactically in Cartagena de Indias, enabling students and businesses to work together. This vision is the one
helping Lulu imagine Beijing Hutong can be an architecture school and a local necessity, with reinforced income ensuring not only preservation but a respectful upgrade.
This year Unit 22 has been generously supported by Vidal Associates and Roca.
Pedro Gil has supported the Unit as a Practice Tutor for Design Realisation. Roberto Marin has been our Structural Consultant. During the year Catrina Stewart, Hugh McEwen, Felipe Mesa, Miguel Mesa, Nerea Calvillo, Felipe Hernández, Nacho Martin of Mi5 architects, Carlos Arroyo, Nuria Lombardero, Curro Canales, Yael Reisner, Luis Vidal, Max Dewdney and Chee-Kit Lai have participated in our intense and deep crits.
Our fieldtrip to Colombia was especially amazing for the support of MAMM Museum in Medellin and the direction of Felipe Mesa or Plan B Arquitectura. Medellín Digital, Mesa Editores and Universidad Bolivariana de Medellin were also some of the welcoming institutions.
Year 4
Akmal Azhar, Georgia Follet, Jiang Dong, Yuen Sar (Lillian) Lam, Jose Ignacio Ortiz-Muñoz, Joanna Preston, Kirsty Williams
Year 5
Victoria Bateman, Freya Cobbin, Le (Lulu) Li, Megan Smedy, Clarie Taggart, Megan Townsend, Clarissa Yee
Fig. 22.2 MAMM Pavilion, Medellín. 1:10 scale prototype of the outdoor pavilion comissioned by Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (Colombia). Design was developed by Unit 22 together with students from Universidad Pontificai Bolivariana de Medellín directed by Felipe Mesa (Plan B arquitectos, UPB), Jorge Pérez Jaramillo (UPB) and Miguel Mesa (Mesa Editores, UPB). It is composed by six detachable units inspired by local palafito villages allowing them to be relocated in the future. Sponsors: Mamm, U.P.B, The Bartlett School of Architecture, Cluster de Energía de Medellín, Restaurante Blanco, Área Metropolitana de Medellín, Medellín Digital. Figs. 22.3 – 22.4 Le (Lulu) Li, Y5, Scale 1:10 model for Hutong Architecture School drawing studio. The model study aims to reintroduce paper as architecture material and test how paper can be used
together with wax to create temporary architectural elements fit for the culture and weather, through a combination of craftsmanship and contemporary digital fabrication.
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Fig. 22.5 Joanna Preston, Y4, Chimney Dwelling: A dwelling for a Local Historian, Batley. Sited at a local vantage point and drawing upon the mechanisms used in the local textile industry, the structure unfolds to become a gathering place where storeys about the towns prosperous history can be shared. Fig. 22.6 Kirsty Williams, Y4, Theatre for traditional Indonesian shadow art, Wayang Kulit. Sited on the Citarum River, widely acknowledged as the most polluted river in the world, it also incorporates a water treatment centre. Fig. 22.7 Akmal Azhar, Y4, A Fish Market for the Sea Nomad in Borneo, Malaysia. The fish pickling aquarium details; the external façades of the aquarium are made out of boat sails that are recycled from the annual Regatta Lepa festival. The sails will be propped open when the pickling process is done to exhibit
the product to the visitors. Fig. 22.8 Le (Lulu) Li, Wax and paper reading table designed for the ‘Hutong Architecture School’ library, to test the idea of revealing through time, and fire as the main source for lighting and heating.
Fig. 22.9 Claire Taggart, Y5, Start-Up City (Coventry). Adaptable live/work business incubation unit structure for temporary inhabitation in empty high street retail units. Fig. 22.10 Freya Cobbin, Y5, Harbour of Exchanges (Cartagena). Single cut pop-up technique enabled development of an inhabitable terraced roofscape.
Fig. 22.11 Megan Townsend, Y5, Bow Creek Cultural Bath House, sited on a derelict outcrop in East London, is a new community and experience driven proposal, for social interaction within London’s modern urban fabric.
Fig. 22.12 Yuen Sar (Lilian) Lam, Amphibious harbour: Traditional Khmer health care centre, Cambodia. Sited next to the Tonle Sap which constantly floods its surrounding areas, the design proposes a new approach to deal with
climatic changes and re-establish people’s links to their use of water within the architecture.
Figs. 22.12 – 22.13 Kirsty Williams, Y4, Theatre for traditional Indonesian shadow art, Wayang Kulit. Sited on the Citarum River, widely acknowledged as the most polluted river in the world, it also incorporates a water treatment centre. Fig. 22.14 Clarissa Yee, Y5, New Migrant Journeys, Sicily. A typology, to house migrant Tunisian agricultural workers in Sicily. The dwelling design draws upon Sicilian and Tunisian culture, each migrant worker is given a house, which is transported by lorries to agricultural lemon and almond picking sites, forming clusters of seasonal accommodation.
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Fig. 22.15 Freya Cobbin, Y5, Harbour of Exchanges: National Apprenticeship Centre, Cartagena. Section and Plan. Implemented over three sites within the city, the proposal draws together both informal and formal spaces for learning and living in response to Cartagena’s vibrant street life and urban activity, fostering the process of knowledge interchange.
Fig. 22.16 Megan Smedy, Y5, Eco-Hotel and Tourist Route within a South African landscape. The two main drivers for the design project are temporality (deconstructability) and a relationship with the natural environment. A series of functional carts have been designed to meet specific needs alongside the railway. These can be moved or deconstructed, as and when seasonal demands change. Fig. 22.17 Clarie Taggart, Y5, Start-Up City (Coventry). Adaptable live/work business
incubation unit structure for temporary inhabitation in empty high street retail units.
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Dare to Care... Through a Year
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor with Helen&Hard
DARE TO CARE... THROUGH A YEAR
Izaskun Chinchilla, Carlos Jiménez with Helen&Hard
Technification pushed us to hold onto the illusion that humans are invulnerable. It has allowed economic privilege and the short-sightedness of the commercial sphere to overwhelm ecological and social circumstances. Modernity established an official language based on success, on the message that “everything is under control”. Probably the main architectural expression of this tradition is the visual predominance: modern architecture is mostly the visual demonstration of what we can build as an act of dominance.
This year, Unit 22 has attempted to abandon the language of power and has embraced the language of care. To what extent we are enriching our context should be the main indicator of architectural quality. Through an architecture that Dares to Care, Unit 22 students have discovered the following:
Many of the public and economic systems associated with power and governmental control require amazing resources. Helping threatened minor communities inside these systems can provide flexibility. A good example is Kaowen’s work, in which the private life of the British Monarchy helps the promotion of the UK car industry; or Julian’s work, in which immigrant communities in London decrease public expenditure on health by providing domestic vernacular treatments.
Communal typologies will receive new benefits from preserving the particular intimacy and comfort of users renovating the archaic welfare state concept. Claire provided a double entrance and communication system to a dilapidated high rise enabling immigrant women to freely enjoy both public and intimate experiences together. By reassembling halls, stairs, courtyards and gardens in an office buildings, William went beyond the pure commercial image of the British office, instead providing a ‘landscape office’; thus ensuring a healthy and larger rentable working space.
Building materials have been traditionally chosen for their mechanics. A more integral approach to materials, that takes time into account, adds new capacities relating material and shape with further processes. Clarissa worked with existing site materials to improve their performance by changing their state. She is using only soft techniques, such as transforming mud into footings with ‘jet grouting’. Negin created a modular system suitable for organic urban evolution. Self-supported frames are designed only for their own weight while lightweight screens absorb efforts due to their position in a bigger scheme. Users have the opportunity to overlap screens providing all for family changes through their lifetime.
Cross design effects on different scales prevents sources of vulnerability. Urban architecture relies on the surrounding territory. Context not only provides ingredients for city construction, but it is also the source of energy, Unit 22
logistics and materials for maintenance. Paul’s Food Banks react to scarcity in the agricultural belt around cities, learning how it can affect supplies. Insects and Kombucha tea provides a successful urban daily diet while providing independency from the surrounding territory. Liwei developed a housing project in which the necessary footprint for recycling waste is absorbed on-site.
Understanding bodies can detail biological dimensions, which in turn gives enormous clues to reinforcing the ecosystem’s fragile balance. Preserving biological bodies help us to empower ecosystems when environmental complexity overwhelms our analytical capacity. Akmal prevents insomnia by living on the wild British coastline subjugating human behavior to natural rhythms. Rachel developed a way to promote laws for preserving American Landscapes by recording and playing back images and perceptions humans used to have.
Our goals should be small but related to different issues, incorporating varied range of materiality, they should be based on existing structures and create new patterns that are partly made out of analogies from visible and non visible parts of reality. Megan S. transformed Essex Road into a homestead facility to provide ingredients to Upper Street restaurants. Michelle combined two programs that together raise awareness on the relationship between the preservation of intangible heritages and climate change. An urban quarry is used to refurbish Paris monuments and provides a new type of performance space. Megan T. created an urban market that offers new ways of neighbours’ development through participation in the production of the distributed goods and the use of the market over night.
Preserving vulnerability requires other methods than just drawing plans and sections. ZOETROPES are a good alternative example. These devices produce the illusion of motion from a rapid evolution of static figures. Each zoetrope accompanies users in a time-based activity focusing on parts of architecture that interacts with human actions in a continuous space, the space of life. Zoetropes force a dynamic vision on a scale that connects industrial design with landscape. Let’s dare to try.
ROCA, VIDAL Y ASOCIADOS ARQUITECTOS and ARTEMIDE generously supported Unit 22. Richard Hyams has been practice tutor and Roberto Marin Sampalo has been structural consultant.
Year 4: Megan Smedy, Akmal Afandi Azhar, Clarissa Yee, Michelle Young, Megan Townsend, Claire Taggart, Kaowen Ho, Paul Leader-Williams
Year 5: Sung-Hwa Rachel Cha, Liwei Deng, William Fisher, Negin Ghorbani-Moghaddam, Julian Zi Liang Huang, Paul McManamon, Sinan Pirie
Fig. 22.1 UNIT22, Zoetrope device. Fig. 22.2 AkmalAfandi Azhar, Cuptopus. Cupping bath tub based on the traditional cupping method to remove the contaminant in the vulnerable heart. Fig. 22.3 Michelle Young, UNESCO Centre of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Paris. Weather defined as the state of the atmosphere. In the new museum the building will aim to recreate the contexts, or most specifically the atmospheres, of the heritages that are being showcased. Fig. 22.4 Michelle Young, UNESCO Centre of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Paris. Arrangement of Exhibition Spaces, within the building, the exhibition spaces have been organized so that opportunities arise where visitors can view other visitors engaging in a performance of cultural heritage. Fig. 22.5 Megan Smedy, The High Street Homestead,
London. Collection of traditional atmospheres and popular knowledge to organize Housing Units, Farms, Edible Gardens & Test Labs, Existing Architectures and Public Kitchen. Fig. 22.6 Megan Smedy, The High Street Homestead, London. Façade study, composition of casted windows from Essex Road traditional shops facades.
Fig. 22.7 Megan Smedy, The High Street Homestead, London. House Units plan. Vernacular and traditional techniques are combined with contemporary ones. Fig. 22.8 Megan Smedy, The High Street Homestead, London. The goat turrets are constructed of pre fabricated water tower components, however the wall system is bespoke. It is simply a double cable system that supports and constrains hay bales that sit between the two. Fig. 22.9 Megan Townsend. A Manifesto for a Local Consumerism Movement, Tower Hamlets Permanent Market and New Town Square, London. Long section (and small roof plan) of my building cutting through one of the germination towers and the main market and trading building, highlighting the community interaction with each of the buildings,
as well as how the building interacts with existing infrastructure, and the new landscaped area around the site. Fig. 22.10 — 22. 11 Clarissa Yee, Slow Housing Typology, Lancashire, UK. Familiar Kitchen and Comunal Kitchen desined to optimize the cooking procedures, maintining the highest level of vitamines.
Fig. 22.12 Clarissa Yee, Slow Housing Typology, Lancashire, UK. Communal kitchen modelled for video to explore user experience within internal spaces. Fig. 22.13 Claire Taggart, Social Housing, Creating social and extended community living spaces for a more sociable housing strategy in Ampthill Square Estate, Somers Town. London. Fig. 22.14 Claire Taggart, Social Housing- retrofit extensions to existing residential tower blocks in Ampthill Square housing estate, Somers Town stretch private social spaces into new connecting back garden balconies. Fig. 22.15 Claire Taggart, Social Housing — sequence model showing a typical day’s route through extended living spaces, play tower and library in Ampthill Square housing estate, Somers Town. Fig. 22.16 Claire Taggart, Social Housing- secondary façades extend
existing living spaces in Ampthill Square housing estate, Somers Town whilst new towers and decks provide library, exercise, childcare, garden and community hall spaces.
Fig. 22.17 Kaowen Ho, The Vulnerable Queen, London. An Investigation into the symbiotic relationship of HRM The Queen and her people. Fig. 22.18 Kaowen Ho, The Vulnerable Queen, London. Inside the media machine. Fig. 22.19 Kaowen Ho, The Vulnerable Queen, London. The Queen and the media; perspective long section. Fig. 22.20 Kaowen Ho, The Vulnerable Queen, London. HRM vehicle display and maintenance. Fig. 22.21 Kaowen Ho, The Vulnerable Queen, London. speculative views of Buckingham Palace interiors.
Fig. 22.22 Negin Ghorbani-Moghaddam, Modular Social Housing in Southall, London. Descriptions of a series of modifications of a privet modular dwelling following the needs of a family all through their life. Fig. 22.23 William Fisher. Cooperative office space in Euston, London.The project investigates how spaces in which people carry out office work can enable them to be more productive, more in control and happy with their work, and better placed to integrate work into a balanced life. Fig. Fig. 22.24 Sung Hwa Cha. Image Productions using Materials and Spaces. Pinhole camera photography Installation displayed in the lost landscape. The new artificial landscape integrated in the urban space allows Landscape Photographers to recreate impossible nature without digital technology. Fig. 22.25 Liwei Deng. Waste Issues And Vulnerable
Community. Newham, London. House typology designed thaking into consideration the collection and management of the domestic waste production in the UK. Recycling activities start just after consumption. The modifications, enlargements and dwelling improvements are encouraged by the regulations.
Fig. 22.26 Paul McManamon, FOOD BANK #4 Project, London. The project is a model for the extension of London’s ailing infrastructure which supports the urban dweller, and thus is a response to the classification of London as a city of serious food and energy shortages. The proposal looks towards the future when London’s consumption is expected to be unable to meet demand and when the global population reaches 8.3 billion. This project introduces a half organic, half industrial architecture supplying the City of London with a new series of production and distribution network hubs that adapt their sizes to the amount of resources contained inside of them, feeding the city, providing jobs and reusing the existing architectural infrastructure. Fig. 22.27
Paul McManamon, FOOD BANK #4 Project, London.
The project creates an alternative sharing scheme which provides a rapid and dedicated distribution route network across London via the reinvention of the London post office railway as the ‘Resource-Rail’. Kombucha Towers producing organic cellulose and gas. Fig. 22.28
Paul McManamon, FOOD BANK #4 Project, London. The project envisages a municipal food production and energy system located in the abandoned royal mail centres across London, giving a purposeful and sustainable legacy to the mail infrastructure in the City.
Fig. 22.29 Julian Huang. Instant Alternative Healthcare Service in Peckham, London. The proposal is set 50 years ahead in the future in 2060, when the NHS is predicted to have been fully privatised from the government. Instead it would be operated and ran by pharmaceutical corporations, who controls and manipulates who, why and how we access its health service. Collection of movable, semi-permanent and permanent Clinics. Each Clinic unit uses an specific medical procedure of the Peckham population. Fig. 22.30 Julian Huang. Instant Alternative Healthcare Service in Peckham, London. Instant access to healthcare procedures. Diagrams illustrating how local residents would be able to obtain healthcare as part of their everyday process; such as visiting the ‘Shiro Dhara’ clinic above the clothing store, the ‘Swedana’ clinic behind the hair salon, the ‘Pizhichil’
clinic directly from the patient’s own home and the ‘firecupping’ clinic above the supermarket. A critical goal of the AHS is to provide treatment methods that are based on the local demographics, as future health care should consider not just who, but what type of health service could be administered. As our society is becoming ever more multi-cultural, our health service need evolve and reflect this change, and adapt fully to the different needs of its patients.
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Fig. 22.31 Julian Huang. Instant Alternative Healthcare Service in Peckham, London. Axonometric of Peckham showing the relationship between the various health clinics and the local urban fabric, and how the implementation of an alternative health service would alter the urban landscape of the area. A network of over 25 mobile, temporary and semi-permanent alternative health clinics would offer instant access of health service to its local population, as opposed to the often arduous and long waiting time offered by the NHS. These health clinics would be diffused and saturated into the everyday places of the urban fabric. These include a variety of shops, bars, gyms, restaurants and entertainments complexes, the aim of this is to create a much more dynamic health care system, where places of medical practice is not an
end destination where one goes to fix one’s health, but an on-going, continuous process that can interact/intervene with our daily lives.
(In-)Water Dwelling and Some Other Clues
Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor
(IN-)WATER DWELLING AND SOME OTHER CLUES
Water’s essential nature makes it a strategic natural resource globally. Riparian water rights have become issues of international diplomacy, in addition to domestic and regional water rights and politics World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin predicted, ‘Many of the wars of the 20th century were about oil, but wars of the 21st century will be over water ’ The causes are many and varied; they include local scarcity, limited availability and population pressures, but also human activities of mass consumption, misuse, environmental degradation and water pollution, as well as climate change. Fresh water now more precious than ever in our history for its extensive use in agriculture, high-tech manufacturing, and energy production is increasingly receiving attention as a resource requiring better management and sustainable use. Water is, therefore, a whole REAL issue. For many other pedagogical techniques, the evaluation of the students’ work depends principally on academic facts representation, beauty, material ability. In contrast, Unit 22 tries to measure the value of architecture observing how it improves and rearranges reality This blurring of the academic goals in the final object of design will encourage the student to define what is necessary and desirable, achieving what we will call Meaningful Learning (Asubel,
1963), which drives the students to realise that their decisions have real and sometimes outstanding results and consequences for reality. The students’ design produces not only statements and reflection but also informs social and political realities Reality has been conceptualised as a wild field of crossinfluences not previously classified in typologies or styles in which everything is possible and everything is problematic. Reality has not been a previously fixed system providing limits to the action of the student, but the complex result of the highly defined student action and proposal.
Adam’s giant water canopy establishes a shared use of wet domestic activities, allowing to dramatically reduce time assigned for housework and coining the expression Water Socialism Jawad housing towers and soap factory make it possible to maintain, irrigate and plant seasonally stripes of lavender fields over all roofs looking south-east to downtown Marseilles, competing with the southwest visual identity of the Mediterranean blue. In Tony´s houses you can watch your baby oysters from the living room and the whole neighbourhood allows for the rearrangement of ecological balance. All students have worked on empowering the user capacities and have faced plenty of problematic and difficult situations
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONFIDENCE.
Year 4: Victoria Bateman, Liwei Deng, Catherine Francis, Negin Ghorban-Moghaddam, Julian Zi Liang Huang, Paul McManamon, Anna Mill, Sinan Pirie, Megan Smedy Year 5: Abdeljawad Abdelhafid, David Ronald Cheape, Jen Ting Chu, Adam Holland, Winston Luk, Anthony Staples
Fig. 22.1 Negin Ghorbani-Moghaddam Market Community Chiloé, Chile Façade studies for the Chiloé market community housing The programme for a market community is conceived as a new public and domestic focal point for Castro The mixed-use scheme provides: formal trading space, 50 live-work housing units, 25–50 bed space for visitors and a new ‘everyday’ public space Fig 22 2 Taling Chan, Market Restaurant, Bangkok, Thailand Partial section Partial section New kitchen buildings should preserve existing vegetation Fig. 22.3 Paul McManamon The Clesea Urban Reservoir London The project suggests a private members’ urban reservoir spa and water purification complex in Chelsea by the River Thames which provides luxurious flavoured drinking water for the affluent Chelsea locals, where each month flavour is added to the water via the existing chimneys, reusing the abandoned Lots
Road Plant Poweras, a lido/water reservoir The scheme will collect, store, filter and clean Thames water Fig. 22.4 Victoria Bateman Cookery School, Cornwall Landscape connections The surrounding landscape design helps to absorb the impact of human activity on the environment, especially in relation to critical nearby ecosystem services Fig. 22.5 Sinan Pirie, Balat Community Wastewater Gardens Istanbul, Turkey Greenhouse section A water treatment plant located in the centre of Istanbul treats waste inputs as a resource, providing benefits for the local community (water for the hammam located below the greenhouses, clean supply for the pleasure garden water features and irrigation) Fig. 22.6 Sinan Pirie, Balat Community Wastewater Gardens Istanbul, Turkey Mobile Hammam A specific sequence of preparation is undertaken each time the hammam moves to a new location involving collaboration with the local community
Fig. 22.7 Julian Huang East London Horticultural club cum Alternative Treatment Centre Section of Alternative Treatment Centre The East London horticultural club is a new hub of alternative and preventative treatment where the local community is invited to participate in the maintenance of the gardens and allotments which supply the alternative treatment centre with ingredients such as essential oils and herbs Fig 22 8 Adam Holland, Water Socialism Plumbed water from residents’ houses is removed and a new water-based infrastructure is created Rainwater is collected and filtered using a series of suspended glass canopies above the town, providing Economic, Environmental and Social benefits
Fig. 22.9 Leo Chu, Cultural Embassy for Southeast Asian Union Bangkok, Thailand Building configuration and urban relationship aiming to make ‘power ’ transparent
through its programme and the meaning it conveys, a democratic and ‘free embassy’ Fig. 22.10 Ronald Cheape, The Three Glens Dam Project Scotland Following on from the growth in the renewable energy sector in the NW of Scotland, the project proposes an inhabited multiple arch structure hydroelectric dam and a working holiday resort that inhabits the dam wall Fig. 22.11 Winston Luk Inhabiting Pripyat, Ucrania Pripyat Hotel The new tourism boom Pripyat has experienced has given rise to the possible requirement of a hotel in the area The curiosity of visitors to come to the area allows them to dictate their own fate; whether they want to live within the old abandoned buildings littered with radioactive dust or to remain on the outside Fig. 22.12 Winston Luk Inhabiting Pripyat, Ucrania Typical Housing Section Showing the hydroponic gardens, and mechanisms that provide clean water for the residents
and also that aid the decontamination process of existing buildings Fig. 22.13 Winston Luk Inhabiting Pripyat, Ucrania Elevational Section Showing the requirements of the housing units to be elevated off the ground to minimise the effect of ionising radiation
Fig. 22.14 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago
The negotiation boardgame Masterplan for Canvey Archipelago, a continual process of negotiation guarantees adaptation to changing realities Fig. 22.15 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago Ex-industrial fishing
The defunct industrial oil refineries on Canvey are reappropriated to desalinate water, breed fish and grow vegetables Fig 22 16 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago
The oyster pub Leigh-on-sea Fig. 22.17 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago Living in a crow’s nest The island’s maritime traditions and skilled local builders enable the construction of a floating destination equally attractive to migratory birds as well as visitors Fig 22 18 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago Oyster terrace As marsh and tidal mudflats begin to encroach on residential areas the existing housing typology must be modified
Fig. 22.19 Anthony Staples, Canvey Archipelago Oyster suburbs The suburbs are adapted to aid the inhabitation of oyster as well as human islanders; e
Jawad Abdelhafid
The Ultra-Rational, Ultra-Contextual, Ultra-Adaptable Unité of Purification, Marseille Landscape vision showing the purification of water, the city, the human and architecture
The Ultra-Rational, Ultra-Contextual and Ultra-Adaptable Unite of Purification purifies not only water It also purifies the human soul (this was Le Corbusier’s obsession) and the city; the man becoming a new part of a new industrial reality, and the city with a new post-industrial landscape of flowers Fig 22 21 Jawad Abdelhafid The Ultra-Rational, Ultra-Contextual, Ultra-Adaptable Unité of Purification, Marseille The Site-plan Semblant of the Three Corbusian Potentialities A Windy July evening on the site
Decadence
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
Dip Unit 22
Yr 4: Carrie Behar, Jonathan Harvey, Christopher Hildrey, Milad Hossainzadeh, Bceddyn Jones, Kevin Kelly, Raphaela Potter. Yr 5: Martin Brooks, Christopher Bryant, Han Chun Chen, Maria-Eugenia Chiotopoulou-Isaia, Anna Hastings, Lida Kokorelia, Gemma Clare Noakes, Natasha Telford, Evie Tsigeridou, Chung Ming Janice Wong.
Decadence
We live in a time of excess. In our work, our lifestyles, our aspirations - and in our architecture - we have thrown off the values of the past and indulged in a new freedom.
We live in a time of extremes. Great opulence exists alongside extreme scarcity. These conditions sprawl across the globe and compact themselves into cities.
But is opulence the same as decadence, and scarcity the same as modesty? Can decadence exist without decay?
This year, Unit 22 questioned what defines modesty and decadence at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The unit studied these conditions and questioned how they manifest themselves in contemporary life and architecture.
From this basis students developed projects that exploited and exaggerated the existing conditions of modesty and decadence, attempting to anticipate future trends
Peter Szczepaniak and John Puttick
Christopher Bryant, Contemporary Tower of Babe
The Nature Observation Centre; Milad Hossainzadeh, Bonsai Cultivation; Raphaela Potter, The Puppetry Guild; Christopher Hildrey, The Specialist Tobacconist; Rhys Jones, Auguracula; Natasha Telford The Snail Restaurant; Chung Ming Janice Wong, Butterflies and Plants Research Centre; Kevin Kelly, Dapper Dogs: Hair Boutique; Anna Hastings, Ode to Vellamo: the Finnish Fishing Village
Left: Maria-Eugenia Chiotopoulou-Isaia and Lida Kokorelia, dou, The Mechanical Garden
Patterns
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
Dip Unit 22
Yr 4: Martin Brooks, Christopher Bryant, Joanna Chen, Ki Wing May Ho, Lida Kokorelia, Evie Tsigeridou, Chung Ming Wong. Yr 5: Beatie Blakemore, Yeo Jin Choi, Shyuan Kuee, Hazel Levene, Jane Middlehurst, Amy Poulsom, Caspar Rodgers, Tristan Wigfall, Irene Yeung.
Patterns
An exploration of the nature of patterns will form the point of departure for the unit’s work this year. Adopting the position that the world as we perceive it is constituted by a kaleidoscope of patterns continuously evolving over time, the unit will examine the characteristics that define patterns and the possibilities that these present for the design of architecture. The relevance of such notions as simplicity, repetition and recurrence will be carefully considered.
During the first term, each unit member will identify a specific pattern or series of related patterns which they will analyse and interpret to establish a set of design parameters. The unit will encourage a plurality of different approaches to the selection of patterns and the manner in which they are subsequently translated into boundaries for a design. Patterns might range from those directly associated with physical phenomena such as geological traces, paths of migration and movement, ebb and flow and entropic dispersal, to patterns that are located within particular social and cultural rituals and behaviours, a poem or a piece of music, a mathematical model or a geometric abstraction. The design parameters and ideas developed in the first term will then be applied over the course of the year to create an architectural proposition.
As part of its initial research into patterns, the unit will travel to Barcelona.
Peter Szczepaniak and John Puttick
This and facing page: Caspar Rodgers.
This page: Tristan Wigfall. Facing page, clockwise from top left: Beatie Blakemore, Amy Poulsom, Shyuan Kuee, Yeojin Choi, Irene Yeung, Hazel Levene.
This page, clockwise from top left: Chris Bryant, Joanna Chen, Lida Kokorelia, May Ho, Evie Tsigeridou, Janice Wong, Martin Brookes.Facing page: Jane Middlehurst.
Tales of the Unexpected
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
Dip Unit 22
Yr 4: Yeo Jin Choi, Hazel Levene, Jane Middlehurst, Amy Poulsom, Caspar Rodgers, Tristan Wigfall, Irene Yeung
Yr 5: Marcus White, Sue Lyn Ang, Jeanie Chang, Harriet Comben, Serena Croxson, Pereen D’Avoine, Christopher Daniel, Konstantinos Karabatakis, Noor Abdul Aziz
Tales of the Unexpected
This year the unit endeavoured to explore, question and manipulate established conventions in order to reveal the Unexpected
Initially, students were asked to choose a set of distinct and separate conditions, which could relate to a particular site, context, form and/or programme
Following a period of research into each of the conditions, the students investigated the possibilities of cutting, splicing, weaving and/or stitching these together in order to create architectures and scenarios that would deviate from the normal
In pursuing the 'twist in the tale', the strategy adopted by the unit shared many similarities with the Surrealist technique of the 'exquisite corpse' - a method by which a collective collage of images or words would be formed on a sheet of folded paper passed bet ween participants Just as the resulting designs or writing would adhere to the Surrealist principle of metaphoric displacement, so the assemblage of conditions chosen by students would attempt to partially dissolve the conventions associated with them and reveal the Unexpected
The unit encouraged a plurality of different responses to the programme and the selection of initial conditions As part of its inv estigations, the unit travelled to Budapest and Venice with the majority of students choosing sites and programmes in one of the two cities
Peter Szczepaniak and John Puttick
Top left: Amy Poulsom Bottom: Harriet Comben
Clockwise from top: Irene Yeung, Noor Abdul Aziz, Konstantinos Karabatakis, Jane Middlehurst, Yeo jin Choi
Top: Chris Daniel Bottom: Pereen D’Avoine
Clockwise from top: Caspar Rodgers, Tristan Wigfall, Hazel Levene
Top: Jeanie Chang Bottom: Marcus White
Top: Serena Croxon Bottom: Lyn Ang
Ordinary/Extraordinary
John Puttick, Peter Szczepaniak
Dip Unit 22
Yr 4: Sue Lyn Ang, Jeanie Chang, Serena Croxson, Christopher Daniel, Catherine Fearon, Konstantinos Karabatakis, Sang Hoon Kim, Nicholas Stearns, Marcus White Yr 5: Eleanor Brough, Ji Hyang Ja Kim, Vanda Oliveira, David Roy, Fiona Sheppard, Jason Spiliotakos, Niek Turner, Thomas Van Hoffelen, Daniel Welham, Karen Wong
Ordinary/Extraordinary
Ordinary
1 According to established order; methodical; settled; regular
2 Common; customary; usual
3 Of common rank, quality, or ability; not distinguished by superior excellence or beauty; hence, not distinguished in any way; commonplace; inferior
Extraordinary
1 Beyond or out of the common order or method; not usual, customary, or regular
2 Exceeding the common degree, measure, or condition; hence, remarkable; uncommon; rare; wonderful
An interrogation of the distinction between ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ formed the central theme of the unit’s work this year
Beginning with an exploration of the apparently dualistic nature of these terms in relation to a set of specific conditions, the unit attempted to identify the boundaries that separate and define the ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ and to expose the territory which might lie inbetween Strategies for achieving this included juxtaposition, hybridisation, deformation, exaggeration and subversion The resulting architecture seeks to locate the extraordinary within the ordinary and the ordinary within the extraordinary
Unit 22 encouraged a plurality of different responses to the programme, both in the selection of initial conditions and the strategies adopted As part of its investigations, the unit travelled to Finland and Estonia
John Puttick and Peter Szczepaniak
Top: Karen Wong, bottom: Fiona Sheppard
Clockwise from top left: Eleanor Brough, Thomas Van Hoffelen, Daniel Welham, Vanda Oliveira, Ji Hyang Ja Kim, Niek Turner
Overleaf, left: David Roy, right: Jason Spiliotakos
