Home Work

home work

A NEW LIFE FOR VACANT OFFICE TOWERS

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A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment on the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Housing & Urbanism) in the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Tutor: Lawrence Barth Carolina Gilardi AmorĂłs October 2020, London. *quote on page 03: Koolhas, Typical Plan

Thank you, To the School, for its support, warm embrace and eye-opening character.

To my Housing and Urbanism tutors, specially Larry who committed to accompany this process. Thank you for this time of growth and inspiration, for the challenges, insightful conversations and above all, for always caring.

You are incredibly generous professionals and human beings.

I have learned more than I ever expected.

To my friends here and there, your love has kept me going.

To the H&U crew, this time together was priceless.

To my Quarter, for being here, for better and for worse.

Y a mi familia, gracias siempre, porque sin ellos nada de esto serĂ­a posible.

home work

3

“Could the office building be the most radical typology?

A kind of reverse type defined by all the qualities it does not have?�

abstract

Abstract The housing crisis in London has been tackled in many ways. Amongst them is the transformation of obsolete office stock into residential buildings, a phenomenon that has received a lot of attention because of its substandard production. Nonetheless, vacant office buildings are recently built, well serviced and centrally located assets. At the same time, the growing demand for the intertwining of living and working, new attitudes towards wellbeing and localism, and an inherent concern for extended mobility systems, call into question the character of central areas and make their transformation a topical case. This work will look at office towers as opportunities to address these through a change in lifestyle, in an agile and generous way. This attitude cultivates resilience and promotes innovation without demanding tabula rasa, understanding the value of continuities within a city’s culture.

[01] Rush hour in April 2020

pg.

Abstract

4

Contents

7

Mise en Scène

8

Operative Fictions

10

Expected Vacancy

15

London as a Laboratory

17

A Seat at the Table

24

State of the Art

26

Standpoint

33

Long Story Short

34

Typical and Topical

38

Vantage Point

40

Underlying Concerns

42

Deep Down

47

A New Contract

57

Work in Process

58

Added Value

65

Together and Apart

68

October 2nd

74

Conclusion

78

Afterword

82

Bibliography

84

Figure Index

88

Mise en Scène London’s uniqueness as an urban settlement can hardly be contested.

However, beyond its peculiarities, its centre is conformed of what makes most European cities: old housing stock and late 20th office buildings. In recent years, with the plateau of the financial sector, the latter have become somewhat problematic as demand has stalled. In addition to the overproduction that came about in the 1980’s, many buildings are being vacated, obsolete after changes in technology and the organization of work.

At the same time, the city faces a chronic housing shortage, that combined with London’s proven capacity for reinvention, hints towards the role these assets could play in the future. Would it be possible to think of vacancy as an opportunity to test more resilient approaches to central city living?

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The 2020 lockdown called to our attention the character of central areas.

Under the spotlight, London’s most coveted, serviced and expensive locations emptied out for months revealing an inefficient use of resources.

Stillness exposed the lack of permanent residents and the oversupply of workspace that lacked the agility to adapt and support the service infrastructure. Paralyzed, the centre shut down, exposing the fragility of the system. But the pandemic only highlighted already existing cracks. Far from supposing the doom of the agglomeration economy, it has evidenced the growing importance of local networks and resilience as the guiding values in the conformation of urban environments. This brings attention to the role of diversification, both of uses and stakeholders, which enrich everyday life while enabling agile responses in times of crisis. This appreciation for civil cooperation is grounded on promoting the responsible involvement of stakeholders to build a pluralist city, an approach based on stewardship and mutualism. Finally, resilience also supposes a material continuity with what already exists. It accentuates the importance of adaptability as the capacity to embrace change and understand the built as a generous platform for these to materialize.

This work will look at the transformation of office buildings into housing in London through existing and speculative projects. From the ones in central areas like Holborn’s Park Tower or Vantage Point in Archway, to fringe locations like Holloway’s Delta Point or the infamous Terminus House in Harlow, there is a rich set of examples that account for the complexity of the debate over their potential and validity. The current policy framework fosters these transformations without clear objectives beyond reaching housing targets. To clarify this phenomenon, we will look at typical examples to illustrate current approaches to commercial reconversions and clarify what might be the issues that remain unexplored. These will be set out through a speculation over future vacancies: the deep office plan and its capacity to enable a new way of life.

But let’s start from the beginning.

Developers

Local Authorities

In charge of developing the business model and present the project, they can rally support of locals, like busnessses and retail owners, to support the new project..

The local Council brings together the interests of the area’s dwellers, provides services like the leisure centre and promotes associations and alternative movility patterns.

MEET THE STAKEHOLDERS

The Agency introduces new actors to extend the conversation beyond the public/ private dichotomy

Civil Associations

Entrepeneurs

board members for Friends of the Area association.

new generation work environments for creative industries

A DAY IN THE LIFE

What do we engage with in daily basis?

Can this add to more efficient associations that shape our build environment?

Salsa Instructor

The Coach

Coordinates the Sunday dance sessions at the park

Leisure Centre Coordinator

Coffee Shop owner

Pub owner

21.00

19.00

Pints after work at the local pub

17.00

has been in the area for years

App testing at work. developers need feedback

Lunch with an old friend he was at the Friend’s meeting

12.00

13.00

just opened a new business

Noon meeting with the Area’s friends to discuss foundrasing strategies

10.00

Daily commute

Morning yoga

08.00

Morning bikers group

Salsa sessions at the park enjoying the summer nights

Bikers

Operative Fiction In the year 2020, a new Agency is formed to model and develop resilient strategies for London. This GLA 2 dependent organism identifies trends on how people live in the capital and seeks innovative ways to use the Council’s assets, bringing stakeholders together under a common vision for the city.

The aim is to develop design alternatives that increase the sense of purpose and responsibility for areas that lack a strong sense of localism and help shape a more resilient future. By understanding possibilities through design, not only is potential demonstrated but new ways of adding value emerge to advise new policies. This creates agenda and informs councils and developers alike to address long term shifts by considering current practices.

The Agency’s first project identifies, through literature and public data, both the need for new types of housing and the over-abundance of office space.

These conditions are addressed by the policy through an emphasis on meeting target numbers of both floor space and living units. Investors are held accountable through exemptions and restrictions that shape the action of the private sector but fail to provide a clear vision for the city.

If we were to address the matter of a qualitative approach to housing in central London, the current situation demands a projective outlook over the building stock as an opportunity. Nowadays, the legislation fosters the transformation of commercial to residential floor plates, but without a projective vision for how people are living in the city. As a result, poor-quality flats have proliferated without a clear benefit arising from the loss of office areas, that could have provided employment opportunities. It is evident that a new market is emerging for alternatives to the traditional family home, which is highly dependent on access to employment and services. Therefore, by bringing new generation employment providers and civil associations together with developers and public authorities, the Agency will show how their interests can align.

By building upon the existing, the Agency raises awareness over the value of the material support of everyday life. Buildings, infrastructure and the city itself are equipped with an inbuilt potential to embrace change and support new developments. Office building meant to last 50 to 60 years3, constitute over 30 million sqm of London’s fabric4. Consequently, by looking projective at their redevelopment, it is proactively looking at an urgent problem, posing mutually beneficial alternatives and taking steps towards a new paradigm for building urbanity.

Great London Authority, an administrative body responsible for Greater London’s administration.

Adler, “Offices”; Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, “Google Pancras Square.”

4 Peter Brett Associates LLP Greater London Authority, “London Office Projections.”

2 3

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[02] Archway Tower in the 2000’s.

[03] Vantage Point today.

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Chapter 01 Expected Vacancy Office buildings are the logical offspring of changes in the conception of the workspace and the relentless evolution of technology at the service of production. As work dynamics changed, the first compartmentalized structures gave way to the open plan and its infinite variations, rendering a significant amount of buildings obsolete in less than a century5. London offers undeniable testimony of this cumulative process, a situation that with the sudden changes generated by the pandemic, is only expected to worsen.

Expected Vacancy Experts predict a decline of roughly 25% in office occupancy in central 6 areas , normalizing a condition already present in peripheral nodes. Such is Office buildings are the logical offspring changesexpected in the conception of the the case of well-connected locations likeofArchway, to build upon workspace andtothe evolution technology at the service of their proximity therelentless centre without the of burdens of prime rental or more production.

As work dynamics changed, the first compartmentalized distant ones like Croydon, that attempted to create new centralities structures gave wayrise to the open plan and its infinite encouraged by the of delocalized services.

Bothvariations, conditionsrendering now face athe 5 significant amount of buildings obsoleteand in less than . London challenge of redefining their character, serve asaacentury cautionary tale foroffers undeniable testimony thisevident cumulative process, shift a situation that with the London’s inner centre.ofThe sociocultural in the distinction of sudden changes generated by the pandemic, only expected to worsen. living and working, from separated spheres to is the blurring of their Experts predict a decline of roughly 25% inthe office occupancy in central boundaries, ultimately brings into question necessity for such a volume of 6 7 areas , normalizing a condition already present in peripheral nodes. aboutis dedicated space . It is necessary to anticipate this change and thinkSuch the casestrategies of well-connected Archway, to build resilient that don’tlocations rely on alike single model expected of occupation.

Forupon these their proximity to the centre without the burdens of prime rental or more reasons, the role of the Agency becomes key to look at these assets distant onesand likegenerate Croydon,long-term that attempted to create centralities proactively value out of theirnew vacancy. encouraged by the rise of delocalized services. Both conditions now face the challenge of redefining their character, and serve as a cautionary tale for London’s inner centre. The evident sociocultural shift in the distinction of living and working, from separated spheres to the blurring of their 5 Neufert, “Oficinas.”

6 boundaries, ultimately question the“London necessity forProjections”; such a volume Peter Brett Associates LLPbrings Greaterinto London Authority, Office Georgeof 7 Hammond, “London yet to to Feel ‘True Impact’ Coronavirus, Landlord”; dedicated space Office . It is Market necessary anticipate thisof change andSays think about Evans, “Demand for London Office Buildings Falls as Staff Are Packed In.” resilient strategies that don’t rely on a single model of occupation. For these 7 DOGMA, LIVING AND WORKING: How To Live Together. reasons, the role of the Agency becomes key to look at these assets proactively and generate long-term value out of their vacancy.

Chapter 01

[04] How to describe variety - three generations of office space in London

Neufert, “Oficinas.”

Peter Brett Associates LLP Greater London Authority, “London Office Projections”; George Hammond, “London Office Market yet to Feel ‘True Impact’ of Coronavirus, Says Landlord”; Evans, “Demand for London Office Buildings Falls as Staff Are Packed In.” 7 DOGMA, LIVING AND WORKING: How To Live Together.

5 6

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[05] Atrium at SESC 24 Maio

[06] Murray Building, former government office turned into hotel

[08] The Cosmopolitan’s model and interior

[07] Generous units at the Studient housing by Knevel Architecten

Currently, the Government’s attitude towards obsolete office space is to encourage private investment for its transformation into residential buildings.

Pressed by a chronic housing shortage, Permitted Development Rights (PDR) were established in 2013 as a strategy to capitalize on the over-supply of commercial floorplates in well serviced locations. The effects of PDR are fundamental to understand the relevance of reassessing how we look at these assets and will be explained in greater detail later in this chapter.

Beyond the policy reviews and criticism documented in the press, the academic world has also become aware of the topicality of this issue, producing reflections like this year’s RIBA Rethink 2025 winner who proposed using empty office spaces as homeless shelters8 or Levitt Bernstein’s research of the products of PDR9. Not exclusive to England, redundancy of commercial towers is an observable phenomenon in the global scene. Recent projects like the social infrastructure in downtown Sao Paulo, SESC 24 de Maio by MMBB, or the luxury hotel adaptation of the former Council Offices in Hong Kong by Foster and Partners, expose the programmatic and geographic diversity of an emerging practice. In terms of housing, other European experiences illustrate a way forward without compromising quality, such as Knevel Architecten’s Student Housing in Amsterdam or The Cosmopolitan by Bogdan & Van Broeck in Brussels.

London as a Laboratory Urban areas are defined by density and difference. While one supports the concentration of services and people, the other generates opportunities that can only arise from the synergies of togetherness. But the city’s spatial configuration doesn’t always facilitate these encounters. Therefore, as the Agency looks at enhancing urban dynamics, current practices need to be clarified in order to define the criteria that will orient future action. Central areas, such as Holborn, even when there is a mixture between residential and commercial space the latter is undoubtedly imposing. The sequence of street facing buildings between partying walls with a single street access, coexist with the sporadic high rise that seats awkwardly within the tight urban fabric. Several houses were transformed into office space, eroding the character of the inner streets. Permanent residents nowadays live in Estates or above-store apartments the main road, that while well serviced by retail and transport infrastructures, do not participate in the daily dynamics of the area. As most buildings don’t relate to the urban context with any ambition other than to serve their primary function, the operative role of the commercial streets consolidates, relegating housing and civic life. There are institutes, libraries or coffee shops present in the area, but the layovers with the neighbours are limited. Once, the church or the school would have fulfilled the role of congregating neighborship, but in today’s complex social dynamics, these have failed to preserve their representativity. What should be the nature of public space in the future so that it can harness the presence of institutions and build a local network?

Young, “Get Everyone In.” Levitt Bernstein Architects, “Why the Government Should End Permitted Development Rights for Office to Residential Conversions.”

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Rathbone Square Central St Giles

[09] entrance to Rathbone Square fromRathbone Pl

Fitzroy Place

[10] interior courtyard in Central St Giles. Transparency and exten-

[11] Interior courtyatd in Fitzroy Place. Privacy and change of pace

Holborn serves as an example as it already shows an incipient change in the conception of central living based on the layering of functions. Projects like Rathbone Square, Central St Giles or Fitzroy Place combine linear blocks for dwelling with deeper commercial floorplates, clustering difference to address the specificities of each condition10. In the three cases the buildings take the scale of the block and create an open courtyard which acts as an urban mixer. It becomes a source of light and air, which can also offer privacy and a change of rhythm. They allow movement through the block, instaurating a more generous attitude towards urban mobility than the limitation of pedestrian movement along vehicle routes. Although they define a frontage to the street, their more interesting qualities arise from the opening of the ground floor: the glazed lobbies offer passage towards restaurants and shops which seamlessly bring in the plaza, attracting occasional users with ambiguous boundaries between public and private. Notably, they have embraced an urban vocation that exceeds the financial district’s preference for exclusivity and control, while they remain timid in their vertical integration, keeping a conventional stratification between public uses in the ground and private on top. All in all, they are pivotal testimonies of a newfound association between creative work environments, that value exchange and cooperation, and central city dwellers, that gain by sharing services and engaging with the knowledge economy. These partnerships consolidate the role of the workspace as a new kind of public space. With the raise of remote working, there is an acceleration in the change of the office into a space of collaboration and interaction. By bringing together living and working, not only does a new lifestyle arise for those who start to operate in a local scale, but it also impacts the neighbourhood’s culture which can find in spaces of exchange new possibilities for engagement, whether this might be through formal courses or informal collaborations.

If we compare this approach with some of the examples of transformations of office towers into residential buildings, it becomes clear how short they fall from having an ambition to transform the urban area. Vantage Point is a former Government office building, turned into a residential tower in Archway in North London. It consolidated around an underground station and is indicative of the condition of many obsolete corporate buildings developed on the speculation on new centralities connected through public infrastructure.

Built in 1963, the building was designed by GMW Architects and refurbished

by GRID Architects in 2015, winning the 2017 RIBA London Award and becoming a paradigmatic example of renewal of the office tower type. While not in the very centre of the city, Vantage Point sits directly on top of the station, in the corner of the busy Archway Rd and a wide pedestrian passage that creates an open plaza right on the junction. The ground floor preserves its double height lobby, but its rotating door facing the Road and the issue desk that controls access, hinder any unexpected encounter. On the back the building opens to an underground service yard as part of a larger complex that clusters a office building and a hotel, which rise from a podium equipped with leisure and health facilities.

10

Papa, “Midtown: Exploring Opportunities for an Inner-City Media Tech Cluster.”

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[13] Common terrace.

Vantage Point

[12] Double height common areas in Vantage Point.

[15] Compound’s synergies - podium, towers and slab.

[14] Access.

[16] Pedestrian passage and plaza- diagram and photo from Junction Rd.

Vantage Point [15] Section showing the connection with the Underground Station and the pedestrian plaza

Though the building’s renovation has undoubtedly helped improve the life of the area as it shows a commitment with renewal and the local economy, it is a timid and almost accidental consequence that does not make use of the transformation in itself to create new civic associations. The lack of inbetween spaces or public services appears as a missed opportunity in a ground floor adjacent to a commercial podium and plaza, so close to The Whittington Hospital, green areas and a road system that would easily allow the presence of retail. Young professionals find in the area a serviced location with easy access to central London. However, their lodging requests are currently met by the adaptation of terraced houses to new sharing patterns, exposing a demand not fully addressed by the market. Couldn’t we aspire to create a new character for the area so that these scattered elements become a more ambitious integrated whole?

If we look back at the set of examples in Holborn, they are all working on the bases of a cluster, assembling difference around an open plaza that articulates the layovers between residential, commercial and civic life. They work as a whole, where the qualities of the mixture are as important as the quantities it integrates. However, these values can’t be tied to the repetition of one morphology. While the deep block offers possibilities for the horizontal layering of uses and privacy, the street facing towers can explore these concepts in the vertical axe. Bringing the civic realm up is a challenge that would ultimately undermine the hermeticism and segregating nature of the tower’s morphology and will be explored later in this work.

22 Deep blocks, street facing slabs or point towers: it is essential to understand variation as a necessary condition for a resilient city. If cities are conformed by a repetition of the same morphology it becomes impossible to absorb difference and the inevitable changes in occupation. This understanding dovetails with the appreciation of the pre-existing which becomes as a resource to explore the proliferation of differentiated spaces at the scale of the neighbourhood. Adapting a building enlists an existing culture of use that is necessarily grounded in the space and materiality of an area. The abstraction of meaning while retaining a physical pattern, helps shed light over unforeseen possibilities so that new uses can arise: the consolidation of workspace as a civic entity and the exploration of housing options for emerging lifestyles. The minimum disruption caused by adaptation grants the agility to address changes without being contingent upon the completion of a masterplan as new developments would imply. On the whole, at the core of the argument is the conviction on a building’s capacity to create long term value through incremental change.

Vantage Point

A Seat at the Table Archway Tower’s redevelopment (and rebranding) was carried out by Essential Living, a private company that owns several Build-to-Rent11 properties across London. About 100.00012 people in the UK rely on private corporations to access the housing market. These promise better services and backup than independent landlords for a rent that remains within the area’s averages13. Priced-out of an inflated market, more people resorting to renting for affordability reasons, conferring relevance to these of these largescale investments14. But what is the extra advantage they can offer? Co-living entrepreneur James Scott15, defends renting as a market shift from an emphasis on acquisitions towards a value for experiences and lifestyle in younger generations. However, while the idea of shorter lets, furnished onebeds and hassle-free payments becomes an appealing prospect for a sector of the population, the emphasis on shared experiences and a new lifestyle is hugely banalized by the current offer.

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Vantage Point’s collective life is limited to the common amenities in the top floors. The former two-story service zone is equipped with exterior terraces, a gym, a small library, meeting rooms and lounges with astonishing views and a hotel-like feeling. Because of its former use, the height of this area allowed for mezzanines and crossed views, that combined with the floor to ceiling windows make these the most remarkable spaces in the complex. However, the role of the service provider in the overall management and generation of a social schedule subdues their character to a manicured version of millennial conviviality. Couldn’t this be enrichened by crossovers with other companies or institutions? What would be the spatial structures that would enable new associations to take place?

It appears a lot could be gained from the inclusion of other actors in the development process. To fulfil the Agency’s vision for integrated central areas, in chapter 03 we will speculate with the role of semi-private amenities and the crossovers with local communities. However, at this point, it is important to recognize the prominent importance of developers in the definition of a demand and a vision for the city. Since the 1980’s, the authorities have been limited to shaping the actions of private investors through policies and a competition-based planning system. Regimes like “Obligations16”, which are responsible for about half of affordable home production in London, are directed towards balancing equities with public “Build-to-Rent Boom Drives Significant New Housing Supply across the UK.” Judith Evans, “Generation Rent Finds a New Landlord.”

13 Rent in Vantage Pint is about 10% higher than other non-serviced apartments of the same size in the area. Source: Zoopla. “Area Guide for Archway .”

14 Judith Evans, “Generation Rent Finds a New Landlord”; David Byers, “What Lies Ahead for Millennials”; Lizzie Riviera, “Check-in with Your Concierge: London’s Build-to-Rent Boom Is Bringing Thousands of New Homes with Communal Living Spaces and a Hotel Vibe .”

15 James Scott is the chief operating officer of London-based co-living developer The Collective according to The Financial Times “Generation Rent Finds a New Landlord.”

16 “Planning obligations can be used to prescribe the nature of a development by requiring the inclusion of a given proportion of affordable housing” taken from Carley, M, and K Kirk.

“Delivering Affordable Housing.” Communities and Local Government”.

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Vantage Point

purlbic areas

typical plan

gain and bring up the housing offer. What this reveals is an emphasis on numbers on both ends, that accounts for the short-sightedness of the existing mechanisms for the reconversion of office towers and some of its sad implementations. Scrutiny over the poor-quality homes current policies enable, continues to place public authorities and the private sector as opposing parties and deepens a dichotomy that affects dwellers the most.

State of the Art Over 95.000 housing units 17 have been delivered by conversions of office space since 2013 under PDR, a legislation that exempts certain projects from undergoing a full planning application. PDR simplify the bureaucratic process that typically assesses issues of design, traffic or environmental impact to reduce the costs of uncertain timeframes and long presentations. This reduction in control is justified by the urge to provide new housing units and supported by a trust in the market to develop adequately sized and serviced apartments. While the decay that inevitably comes with these blighted areas is worrying, the current framework abuses the desperate need for shelter18.

Politicians, planners, architects and real estate developers coincide in the shortfalls of PDR, which after seven years in effect, have created a precedent of low-quality developments with substandard apartments and little urban impact.

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Within a sample of purpose-built office buildings converted to multi-unit housing through PDR, it is evident there are grounds for these concerns.

Shortfalls in the urban aspirations of Vantage Point have already been explained, and although its apartments have acceptable dimensions, it is an exception in the overview of cases. An apartment in Newbury Tower, for example, can have as little as 8sqm while one in St Anne’s House has 18sqm. The minimum according to the existing policy is 37sqm. In chapter 02, we will look further into some of these projects, however, it is important to anticipate the validity of the critiques that set the frame for revaluating the purpose of their adaptation. There is a clear pattern of exploitation of floorspace to an anti-hygienic margin, so much so that out of the fifteen case studies, only half comply with national standards. This alarming situation has created a stigma over these developments, labelling them “human warehouses”19 or “slums of the future”20.

Furthermore, the bibliography also makes a point out of the un-strategic loss of employment opportunities. The current real-estate bubble makes residential rents more profitable than commercial ones21, thus supposing a threat in areas with fragile local economies. It is argued they could expel Clifford et al., “Assessing the Impacts of Extending Permitted Development Rights to Officeto-Residential Change of Use in England.”

18 Levitt Bernstein Architects, “Why the Government Should End Permitted Development Rights for Office to Residential Conversions”; Copley, “Slums of the Future”; Clifford et al., “Assessing the Impacts of Extending Permitted Development Rights to Office-to-Residential Change of Use in England.”

19 Ella Jessel, “Ben Adams Architects’ Office-to-Resi Scheme Branded ‘Human Warehouse.’”

20 Judith Evans, “‘Slums of the Future’? UK Office-to-Homes Policy Sparks Fears.”

21 Conor Sullivan, “Landlords Attack Conversion of London Offices to Homes.”

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[16] KX200 collective areas.

[17] Newbury House, the smallest flats surveyd.

[18] Terminus House in Horlow, one of the most criticized examples.

[19] Delta Point in Croydon, the biggest development to date.

Newbury Tower Studio - 8sqm

St Anne’s House Studio - 18sqm

Vantage Point Studio - 40sqm

0

1

2

3

4

5

companies either by the loss of their premises or the rise in rent due to a smaller supply22. As a protection, PDR foresees exemption zones to protect “key” areas such as Canary Wharf or Tech City. Nonetheless, this delimitation constitutes a menace to the resilience of central areas by maintaining their mono-functionality. As companies diminish their office use and change occupation models 23, the emptying becomes critical precisely in central locations where coincidentally, the need for housing is most imperative.

The Mayor of London, in a document published as a response to a consultation of planning reform in 2019, recognized the shortfalls of PDR and the substandard housing it has provided. Changes were finally made to the framework in August 2020, demanding natural lightning in every habitable room and the requirement for submission of elevations and projected areas for the new units 24. While this is sensible, the focus of the policy remains on the delivery of self-contained units at any cost.

Furthermore, the policy updates have enabled new opportunities for PDR on commercial property on high streets, roof extensions and demolitions. This was presented as a pack of measures by P.M. Boris Johnson at the end of June, arguing for an update of an old planning system that wasn’t providing the right opportunities for growth. In his words, “Thanks to our planning system, we have nowhere near enough homes in the right places. People cannot afford to move to where their talents can be matched with opportunity. Businesses cannot afford to grow and create jobs. The whole thing is beginning to crumble, and the time has come to do what too many have for too long lacked the courage to do – tear it down and start again.” 25 With such a strong emphasis on innovation to address these pressing issues, we are left to wonder why the response to the pandemic still focuses on reaching a target number of flats per year and what will be the toll from such a quantitative approach.

London Councils, “The Impact of Permitted Development Rights for Office to Residential Conversions.”

23 Evans, “Demand for London Office Buildings Falls as Staff Are Packed In”; Mike Barnes and Jeremy Bates, “Reduced Leasing Activity.”

24 Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, “White Paper: Planning for the Future.”

25 Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government.

22

29

Burges Place, Camden 27 Units

Concord House, Croydon 130 Units 139 Finchley Rd, Swiss Cottage 35 Units

Merlin House, Kilburn 15 Units

Amber House, West hampstead 29 Units

102 Chalk Farm, Camen 46 Units

Newbury House, Hackney 49 Units

St Annes house, Croydon 130 Units

139 Clapham Rd, Lambeth 155 Units

5 Sydenham Road, Croydon 54 Units

101 Byam St, Camden 26 Units

Newham House, Hackney 49 units

258 Belsize Road, Kilburn 34 units

Vantage Point 118 units

Parker Tower 46 units

Burges Place, Camden 27 Units

Delta Point, Croydon 348 Units

200 Pentonville Road 190 self contained / 600 total

02

Standpoint Vantage Point is a typical example of the modern office tower. Its central core and concrete frame structure create an open plan that wrapped by selfbearing façade. Artificially conditioned and too shallow for today’s standards, it is also an example of what has made 1970’s towers less fit for purpose whilst creating a market for their adaptation. The original brutalist façade gave testimony of technology at the service of a symbolic statement of durability and austerity, aligned with its governmental function. Nonetheless, office buildings weren’t always high-rise towers, nor would they remain as slender or their functions so clearly represented by the envelope. In order to assess the potential of the office tower, it is important to clarify the defining elements of the type, framed within the workplace evolution and its relationship with the city. In England, purpose-built office blocks became popular only after the post-war period. Initially, “exchange”26 buildings were adapted within the fabric, converting housing stock to serve an emerging need for desk-based activities separated from industrial production. These consolidated tight, low-rise street-oriented urban enclaves, in the centre or the port.

Progressively, new hierarchies and internal arrangements called for a specifically developed space that could serve the office’s politics and workflows. With the upheaval of the Second World War, the dents created by bombings would become the ideal candidates for infill projects in central areas, directed to the budding commercial sector. In the 1960’s however, the growing importance of the car and the influence of modernist thinking, made companies partial to cheaper locations connected by highways. The expulsion to the periphery became a matter of governmental concern creating a Location of Offices Bureau in 1966, only to be dismantled in the 1980’s following the financialization of the economy. This first generation of office buildings would also be slender, slabs that allowed appropriate illumination for working with paper and natural ventilation inside its crowded interiors. Mounted over plinths that transitioned the scale of these new blocks with the existing fabric, these glazed structured popped both in inner and outer London.

The influx of foreign capital and deregulation set the conditions for a new wave of office spaces that could offer deeper floorplates, in line with international preference. These were allocated in new poles like Canary Wharf: well serviced and close to the historic city, but technically and symbolically differentiated. Finally, the last two decades saw the return of development to the centre and a pre-eminence of mixed-use developments that aim to bring the diversity of city life into the building keeping the preference for verticality and depth. As commercial spaces are now mostly towers, we should look at their evolution as the definitive space of urban economic production, understanding their symbolic and historic character, as well as abstract their capacities.

26

Franklin, “The Late 20th-Century Commercial Office.”

33

Long Story Short Office towers originated in the United States in the late 1800’s and are particularly related to the rebuild of Chicago after the great fire, when pressing land value and the improvements in elevator safety pushed the development of a new type27. This first generation was monolithic, limited in height by structural restraints and highly influenced by existing stylistic currents. However, Louis Sullivan’s writings28 on the aesthetic consideration of the envelope as an entity, already points towards one intrinsic characteristic of the tower: the ambivalent relationship between interior and exterior where the envelope acquires a defining, communicative role.

Additionally, the incipient programmatic separation between floors and the concern in the relationship with the public ground floor, would remain topics of reflection in decades to come.

34

During the heroic modernist period, the tower consolidated as the iconic product of an era marked by positivism and trust in technological advances.

Le Corbusier’s focus on the organization of complexity through urban abstraction and a redefinition of the model lifestyle led to proposals that explore the potential of density by design. The elevated patios in the Immeuble Villa or the cruciform towers for the Ville Contemporaine, show the exploration of the threshold between the artificially conditioned space in the sky and a staged relationship with nature, that is brought up to the skyscraper both materially in the patio or figuratively by the distant sight.

Notwithstanding, the hygienist principles that led the Modern Movement and its masterplans, remained detached from a market that was already producing the city of tomorrow. Heibersmeier’s Vertical City would contrapose the purist programming of Le Corbusier’s towers, setting the basis of a very contemporary debate. The bet on vertical superimposition as a tool for managing complexity builds upon the empirical study of the American City, where skyscrapers were already trying to bring theatres, offices and housing together.

Mies’ experiences are also inevitably present in any recount of the tower’s evolution. The expressionist glass façade for the Friedrichstrasse competition continues the dialogue initiated by Sullivan over the semantical autonomy of the envelope and its relation to technical expression. In addition, his staunch defence of the “universal space”, would be definitive in the conception of the tower typology29.

Apart from theoretical reflections, the post-war period was also a time of technical progress. The superation of the reticular frame supposed a liberation in height and horizontal occupancy. As structural bays expanded, the even distribution of comfort became the limit towards unobstructed neutrality. With the development of the suspended ceiling in the 1960’s, followed by the technical floor with the 1980’s computer systems, tower floorplates became isotropic landscapes. As not only air renewal and Abalos, Tower and Office.

Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.”

29 Carter, Mies van Der Rohe at Work.

27 28

lightning systems improved, proximity to the windows and the mandatory depths of no more than 12 meters became obsolete30. Hand in hand, the concrete core and perimeter structure had to evolve to allow greater depths and heights, showing a still present dependency between structural capacity and infrastructural prevision. As Abalos and Herreros explain, this change in conception was paradigmatic to understand the tower not as vertical and horizontal planes joint together, but as a whole entity with internal cavities that enable wiring, piping and circulation. Le Ricolais in the 1950’s working in tight relationship with Louis Kahn were the precursors of this logic that would be taken up by SOM later in the century could produce the most paradigmatic changes in this area of the discipline. Finally, façade systems and particularly the curtain wall, also experienced a great evolution from a single wrapping layer, to a thick, complex system that can be environmentally responsive. Nowadays, the extended notion that light, color, sound and air quality are important factors in workers wellbeing, has introduced new generation of mixed structures give users control over a customizable experience.

The changes in the urban character of the office tower have also changed over time. Notably the overlapping of functions that had historically been part of the city’s layout, was contested by the modernist discourse. Zoning, famously documented in the Athens Charter, was scrutinized towards the end of the 20th century, in a quest for understanding how to simultaneously organize the city’s chaos without hindering the complexities inherent metropolitanism. For some critics, the nostalgic account of the nuances lost in monofunctional developments served as inspiration for arguing in favour of a revalorization of traditional structures like the street or the parks. For others, the layering of difference had infiltered the scale of the building and found its natural place in the new types of the 20th century. Towers, like urban blocks, also had to find strategies to juggle the dissonance between commercial and residential demands. A paradigmatic example like the Rockefeller Centre deals with this issue by changing sections in an urban ensemble that is formed by different elements. Another, more recent strategy for combining living and working in the same building are towers with a variable section. Highly complex projects that bring together housing, hospitality and office space like The Shard, take advantage of the form to accommodate different uses, placing housing in the shallower floorplates at the top and reserving the deeper ones for commercial purposes. The point up to which buildings have become a new realm of contained urbanity, is shown by the OMA or Steven Holl’s Hybrids. This new generation of buildings does not subscribe to the logics of the tower and supposes a new category in itself.31

Neufert and Neufert, “Office Buildings”; Adler, “Offices”; Commission of the European Communities. Directorate General XII: Science, Research, Office Buildings : Evolution of the Building Type.

31 A+T, This Is Hybrid.

30

35

Typical and Topical “The ambition of the typical plan is to create new territories for the smooth unfolding of new processes.” says Koolhaas in his essay “Typical Plan” from 1995. He refers to a generic type of space supported by over-ceiling and under-floor installations and normally developed in vertical arrangements around a central core. As we have already established, it is the result of the 20th Century evolution of the office environment. The abstraction of this concept opens the discussion on the potential of the office tower as an a highly flexible space.

38

The typical plan became the ultimate real estate asset by multiplying the offer of “virgin sites on a single metropolitan location”32. Multiplication and concentration are inherent to the urban condition of the typical plan. This creates an interesting contradiction: each floor of the tower struggles to be a neutral, independent entity, however, it is necessarily linked to others for its basic functioning. Such repetition ultimately leads to an incredible mass of purposely flexible and undetermined real estate. Its logical layout, a product of economy and efficiency, is determined by a superstructure of bearing elements and energy outlets that dissolve the singularity of the plan to the point of corporeal abstraction. Federico Soriano defines this concept as the aspiration for limitless repetition and isotropy33; and analogy reminds us of a long-term quest in the discipline to inhabit a seamless infinite support, from the isotropic grid of the situationist’s megastructures to the endless commercial floor of the shopping mall.

The stripping of all specificity to allow maximum flexibility makes the typical plan transcend typological typecasting34. As such, its possibilities to support basic functions like living and working doesn’t seem too ambitious. The similarity between the diagram of the Seagram Building and the Lake Shore Drive apartments, with a central core structure and a load bearing façade, intriguingly suggest Mies’s pioneer understanding of the typical plan and its potential for interchangeability of uses 35. While the balance between structural constraints and necessary floor area make residential floorplans smaller, the structural and façades systems are interchangeable, as well as the ground floor strategy and open plan. The ground floor traditionally presents a different treatment, wether it might be street-based stores or interior lobbies that direct people up. This threshold between the urban, the commercial and residential realms is still an under-developed problem for design. As private space acquires a civic vocation, we are called to expand the role of the building at an urban scale.

By identifying these qualities, we liberate meaning; an affirmation based on the previous experience of the Loft, an industrial space that became typical and aspirational as live/work facility because of its spatial characteristics.

Koolhaas, Delirious New York : A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, 83.

Soriano, “Towards a Definition of the Deep Plan, the Anamorphic Plan and the Fluctuating Plan.”

34 Kuo, A-Typical Plan.

35 Carter, Mies van Der Rohe at Work.

32 33

Seagram Building

Lake Shore Drive Apartments

Similarly, the neutrality of the typical plan grants by definition a freedom of use that has become mandatory for contemporary dwelling. New practices expose the value of ephemerons appropriation. This provisional curation of a vacant streets or warehouse resonates with times of uncertainty and constant revision, and put in value these isotropic platforms as grounds for innovation.

The Typical Plan is inspiring in its banality. Its tireless presence in central areas amplifies the impact of reflecting upon its adaptability. Hence, when looking at the deep floorplan, vertical integration and infrastructural limitations, we are extending the conversation beyond a particular case of reconversion.

Vantage Point

40

Constructed with an in-situ expressed concrete frame with glazed cladding, Vantage Point’s 60 meters of height are organized as three joint slabs that create an open plan revolving around the central core. Distance from the core to the façades is variable, with a maximum of 10 meters, as the slabs are displaced to increase solar exposure and reduce mass36. The freedom granted by the unobstructed floorplan allows for a variation in unit layouts and facilitated the elimination of existing light partitions. It is divided into a total of 118 units, repeating the layout in its 13 floors dedicated to housing.

Although there is no difference between one floor and the other, each apartment within the same level has a slightly different layout, making for a more varied offer than most reconversions. Because of the slabs’ offset, only the studios are mono oriented, giving larger apartments two to three aspects.

In terms of size, as it was briefly mentioned in before, units in Vantage Point are directed to an above-average rent and don’t push the boundaries of habitability. However, this is an exceptional condition, as many of these redevelopments focus on maximizing profits by delivering very small flats which are then rented to local Councils as temporary solutions for homelessness.

Vantage Point is also particular within a set where linear blocks are evidently more abundant. This is due to their decline in corporate preference, in favour of deeper floorplans, and their natural similarities with traditional housing blocks. Linear blocks are organized in rows so that every apartment can have exterior light and ventilation, the multiple cores necessary for workspace volumes suffice housing demands. This over-capacity affects the ratio of units serviced per elevator, which has a positive impact in the quality of the dwelling. Thin slabs like 139-150 Finchley Rd by Levitt Bernstein Architects only allow for one line of single aspect units, while deeper ones like 139 Clapham Rd or Concord House, can be divided in two rows with one central circulation. The depth of the units circa 6m, the standard one in housing projects, however the sizes of windows and general layouts lack generosity and inventiveness making for a fairly dull apartment offer. Towers in this

This information, as well as the construction details, were taken from the “Prior notification” presented to Camden Council and are available for public consultation.

36

sense have the advantage of their freestanding condition. Shallow ones like Vantage Point are seldom built today as they are expensive to maintain and don’t offer a great amount of profitable floor area. This is precisely why these are the ones unoccupied today, making them the current targets of adaptation.

In terms of installations, GRID architects in Archway made use of the typical resources employed in reconversions. The elevated floor and descended ceiling cavities are repurposed to incorporate heating and create a new service system. Each unit has “service closet” where all pipelines and electrical connections concentrate, easily accessible for repairs. As floorplates are identical, these new “columns” align creating a new distribution system. Another strategy for servicing could have been to create an exterior installation concealed by the façade. This was the strategy in Parker Tower, a 1970’s hexagonal office tower in Holborn, which hides new pipelines behind the vertical ribbing of the envelope. The total height between slabs was only 2400 cm, which precluded the option of using a technical floor37. The recladding of the façade is also necessary to achieve adequate performance without resigning the large openings that make office floorplates so attractive. In the case of Vantage Point, the depth of the envelope is used to channel new outlets and creates an engrossed window as an inhabitable frame. Solar intake is regulated by perforated metal sheets, that also define the image of the new development. Re-cladding is used to enhance interior performance by improving thermal insulation and adding mobility. It is also important to replace harmful materials such as asbestos and change the overall perception of the project. When curtain wall systems are preserved, such as in 200 Pentonville Road building by AHMM, measures must be taken to reduce solar impact and allow manual operation. Comfort can hinder the spatial potential of the floor to ceiling glazing that is an unusual choice in affordable housing because of the high costs of maintenance and thermal conditioning, but in these projects it can become an inherited asset that extracts value from the former way of use.

Studies also emphasize the absence of non-residential uses beyond ground floor commercial units38in the former offices, which is surprising if we think of structures that are normally associated with other commercial services.

Parker Tower’s ground floor offices or 200KX restaurants and gym are some exemptions to this norm, which can be explained by their privileged urban locations. Even at Vantage Point, as it was suggested in chapter 01, the position of the collective amenities and their lack of associational relationships to other actors falls short to examine more ambitious uses for them. Diversity and complementary services are growingly present in contemporary housing project, as A+T’s39 studies suggest, giving great importance to balancing collective and individual arrangements as well as an

This information, as well as the construction details, were taken from the “Prior notification” presented to Camden Council and are available for public consultation.

38 Clifford et al., “Assessing the Impacts of Extending Permitted Development Rights to Officeto-Residential Change of Use in England.”

39 Per, “Dwelling Mixers: Three Generations. Complex Buildings.”

37

41

increased condition of exteriority that is only slightly suggested in Vantage Point.

All in all, these exemplars demonstrate the capacity of office space to be transformed into residences as well as their financial sense and existing market. The tower typology offers the freedom to explore different internal arrangements even if this not yet fully accomplished by the real estate sector.

Instead of taking advantage of the liberation of the open plan, developers renounce to the emancipation and the richness of meaning that can arouse from reconversion, in favour of market-proven solutions. The advantage of taking over an unconventional space and rediscovering its spatial qualities is diluted by the safety of reproducing normalization in a world claiming for diversity.

Underlying Concerns By acknowledging the possibilities inbuilt in a growing offer of vacant commercial space in London, there is an implicit contemplation of the existing as a platform for future action. Why should we aspire to reuse structures beyond market and technical possibility?

42

Recent views over reconversion defend it from an ecological perspective. It is paramount to reassess the dizzying pace of the construction industry, which in the UK is responsible for up to 40% of carbon emissions40, and has called for policy action and conscientization campaigns such as AJ’s RetroFirst41.

However, issues of energy consumption must also be considered to make these adaptations truly sustainable. As buildings age and change their use, matters of insulation become critical to support new uses and avoid energetic inefficiency. Some argue that new constructions can be cheaper, more efficient and better suited for purpose. As towers are modern constructions, there is easy access to prior documentation, which combined with reduced planning permission times and social appreciation of reconversion as an asset, positions them as ideal grounds for concerted action.

But adaptation is an old practice intellectualised in modern times. Civic roman basilicas were taken over by Christianity as places of cult, palaces were turned into town centres and stadiums into homes 42. Ancient history is filled with examples of the reconversion of a culturally and historically charged building into something different, affecting their structure, form and meaning. It wouldn’t be until modernity that it would appear as an independent field of study, separated from a simple pragmatist outlook.

Adaptative reuse is intrinsically related to Viollet Le Duc’s conception of restoration, the first disciplinary reflection over the issue in the 17 th century, which separated preservation from repair”: “it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could have never existed anytime before”43. Since This fact was presented by Sarah Castle in “The Rise of Reuse” and backed by the UK GBC. Will Hurst, “Introducing RetroFirst: A New AJ Campaign Championing Reuse in the Built Environment.”

42 Robbiglio, “Why Adaptative Reuse?”

43 Viollet-le-Duc and Wethered, “On Restoration.”

40 41

then, there has been fluctuating interest over the mater of reconversion, adaptation and authenticity. Heritage has become a market in itself, a source of validation in a present of ephemeral consumption 44. Without going into detail over this debate, it is safe to affirm the attention adaptative reuse has gathered in the post-war period is still present in the architectural discourse and a conscious evaluation of the built environment a necessary part of contemporary practice45.

The appreciation of derelict buildings finds in the ruin an awareness over the incompleteness of the present. This romantic sensibility, typical in during the 1800’s, is still frequently found in contemporary literature46. While this view is arguably too influenced by the poetic qualities of ruination, there is no denying the liberation that arouses from the physical engagement with a place stripped of meaning and program. This evocative capacity becomes a creative engine that has served to clarify changes in lifestyle. We find value in the “modernization” of a past that builds on the character of the ruin to create new meaning and is not bothered by historic fidelity. As Brian Dillon writes, “We ask a great deal of ruins. And divine a lot of sense from their silence”47. In today’s perception, authenticity is a matter of curation. Like the loft that became a “decontextualized element” that acquired new meaning through the colonization by the artist48, can offices become the object trouvées for a new generation? Born with the precarious occupation of vacant industrial premises in New York, the loft became the new paradigm of domesticity. The Factory exposed a new way of living that would become aspirational. The generosity and flexibility of the shed made the home a realm of possibilities where anything could happen. As Lacaton and Vassal would argue, it “teaches us to see the world in terms of the potential it holds for existence”49. In the same way, the city is redefined in its potential capacity to embrace change over time within its constituting morphology, as was enunciated by Rossi in the Architecture of the City.

This thesis advocates for an unprejudiced yet committed reading of the existing. A suspension of judgement that resigns moral contamination and, as Koolhaas suggests, proposes working with what is available to expand its limits50. Paired with a thorough comprehension of the material support, abstraction helps shed light over the unforeseen so that new patterns of use can arise. This notion dovetails with the recognition of commercial buildings as a new generation of convertible building stock, heir to the post-industrial transformation movement of the 20th century, and particularly to loft living51.

Lipovetsky and Charles, Los Tiempos Hipermodernos.

Robbiglio, “Why Adaptative Reuse?”; Leechmere, Castle, and Bates, “The Rise of Reuse”; Koolhaas, “Cronocaos Preservation.”, etc.

46 Pimlott, The Public Interior as Idea and Project.

47 Dillo and N, Ruin Lust. Artist’s Fascination with Ruins, from Turner to the Present Day., 5.

48 Abalos, The Good Life : A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity.

49 Baum and Christiaanse, City As Loft, 39.

50 Druot, Lacaton, and Vassal, PLUS: La Vivienda Colectiva: Territorio Excepción.

51 This line of research was suggested by a previous thesis of the Housing and Urbanism program by JU, Ziyue. “Offices into Residential Use.” Architectural Association, 2019.

44 45

43

[20] Andy Warhol in The Factory

[21] The Future Factory?

03

Chapter 03: Deep Down Up to this point, Vantage Point has served to clarify an emerging practice, indicative of a possible outcome within a system of variations. It is not abusive or substandard like others in the set, and offers a fair distribution of space and services. But then again, it could be so much more.

The intriguing possibilities opened by the typical plan can only be partially exploited by shallow seventies’ towers. It is when we look at the depth of more recent buildings that this condition exacerbates and becomes really seductive. Based on a history fuelled by social and technological development, it is reasonable to imagine that many of the buildings we use today, will cease to be occupied in a relatively near future. In this chapter, the Agency will capitalize on an expected new wave of vacancies, focusing on the questions raised by the deep plan as a means to rethink the essence of urban dwelling.

Deep office floorplates have proliferated because their financial value and changes in the way we work. As we have discussed, the emergence of a team-based approach and the accentuation of the workspace as a space of collaboration demands flexible, open plans where people can gather. This change in the work culture is exactly what allows us to think of the deep floorplate as the place for a new domestic life: the possibility of adaptation and change over time that recognizes individual needs while remaining open to collective formations. This notion is already being deployed in new projects across Europe that have looked at commercial depths as the base for innovative domestic formations. So, if the buildings on high demand today will be the offer of the future, what precedents can we see of the deep plan as an enabler of alternative lifestyles?

47

[22] Deep lock Cluster. Model from Mehr als Wohnen.

In Berlin, Zurich or Vienna, we can see ambitious explorations in residential projects through the expansion of the depth of the building. On one hand, like in deep office blocks, the ratio between area and envelope is economically auspicious. At the same time, deep floorplans are more compatible with commercial activities than shallow slabs, they demand bigger open areas.

Whether it be retail units on the ground floor or new generation factories, deeper floorplans are capable of bringing together housing with other activities which contributes to the building of urbanity. The deep floorplan then, appears as a way of dealing with complexity with relatively simple and compact buildings. However, what is most notable in these projects is the original exploration of the type. Instead of finding ways to replicate traditional homes, they expand the notion of the dwelling to take full advantage of the building’s depth.

What if we wanted to bring this back into our exploration of office buildings by looking at a concrete case? If the 80’s were marked by a focus on Canary Wharf and fringe locations, the 2000’s shifted the attention towards brown lands. The post-industrial era left available large lots in central locations that became the most sought-after investment opportunities. The King’s Cross redevelopment is a public-private partnership, which manages a site of 25 Ha52. The project started in 2006 and comprehends commercial, residential, leisure and civic facilities. Pancras Square is one of its areas, a sloping plaza squeezed between Kings Cross and St Pancras stations, which clusters six office towers occupied by leading companies and civic services.

49 This urban ensemble allows the two urban conditions explored in chapter 01 to come together in the form of a new vision. On the one hand, the clustering around an open space resembles the arrangements of Central St Giles or Fitzroy Place. The ground serves as a hinge for regular users to access services in the neighbouring block, while it creates a space of appropriation and passage for a greater public. The design is completely focused on pedestrian access, promoting alternative mobility systems that overlap with a privileged connection to the public transport network. Instead of articulating different typologies, variety is created by the triangular shape of the plot that allows different block sizes. In addition, the unevenness of the plaza helps create gradients of privacy for the different functions. More than just a filter to the office floors, the glazed lobbies allow a visual integration between coffee shops, co-work areas and meeting rooms. Mezzanines suggest semi- public services complemented by restaurants and stores. The Council’s library and leisure centre complete the civic offer and demonstrate the flexibility and richness that can be achieved using the same typology. It might be argued this concentration of services and the street life it promotes is only possible because of the presence of large companies. While commercial presence is key to sustain certain facilities, we can see how the clustering of deep blocks can still promote well serviced environments and civic engagement in less prominent conditions. The cooperative housing project Mehr als Wohnen is composed by 13 deep-block buildings, located at the fringe of the city of Zurich. The scale of the development manages a density that demanded 52

Christiaanse et al., The Grand Project.

more than housing to acquire urban qualities. Therefore, each building’s ground floor is devoted to collective services or businesses, like childcare or hospitality. The different block sizes allow for a variety of tenures that, at the same time, economically sustain the running of the cooperative. These type of uses make the ground level permeable, which is capitalized in the project to generate differentiated spaces that remain connected by the transparency of these transitions.

On the other hand, the vertical stacking in Kings Cross, allows the coexistence of services that function independently whilst in close proximity, hinting to the potential benefits of associating housing with other uses. The Spreefeld project in Berlin, another cooperative experience of the clustering of robust buildings, shows how a building’s internal diagram can relate to others and affect the character of an urban area. By locating public services in the upper floors, a sense of appropriation englobes the whole compound and extends its civic purpose beyond the limits of the block. If we were to learn from this and look at what we would be hoping in reconversions of office buildings, we would hope this attitude could expand to the cluster and generate political awareness.

50

The structure of the open plan enables big unobstructed spaces that are normally only achieved in ground floors, thus revealing a unique capacity to bring up a wild range of services, from group classes to basketball courts or climbing walls. In addition, as these temporary uses can profit from being artificially conditioned, they make sense of using the depth housing units can’t occupy. The interesting synergy between these uses and their elevated character has been tested at a greater scale in the super-dense city of Sao Paulo through recent vertical public infrastructures. One of them is SESC 24 de Maio, the former commercial tower adapted into civic centre mentioned earlier, brings up indicative range of collective uses. Its adaptation of a typical modernist tower in the middle of the city centre is exemplary in its generous management of space and integration of activities. Piling pools, a library and bowling alley, this civic centre manages complexity in the section in a way that resembles the seminal diagram of the exclusive Downton Athletic Club53.

The parallelism between these interiors and the “ludified”54 allure of contemporary offices, sheds light over the integration of life and work that are bringing into question the essence of the office as a private space.

All in all, the blocks around Pancras Square serve to prove a point about the concentration of well serviced generic space that can be compared to other downtown areas. As a “mass of in-determination”55 it remains speculative and uncommitted, fertile for appropriation and the assumption of new meanings.

Koolhaas, Delirious New York : A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.

Adjective used to refer to the application of ludic principles to non-game contexts.

55 Koolhaas, “Typical Plan.”

53 54

[22] Cluster of typical, universal and potential.

Mehr als Wohnen

[23] Mehr als Wohnen, block A.

[24] Circulation core,

[25] Collective Terraces.

[27] Courtyards inside the clusters.

Spreefeld

[28] Spreefeld project

[29] Common kitchen and cafĂŠ.

[30] Collective work areas.

[31] View of the cluster from the riverbank.

Exploration 01: The Ring

Exploration 02: The Grid

Exploration 03: The Spill

57

A New Contract Six Pancras Square (6PS) is the chunkiest of the set of towers in the cluster.

The original design by Wilmotte & AssociÊs is currently occupied by Google’s offices, adapted by the British firm AHMM. If we were to speculate, we could argue this is a very plausible candidate for Agency action as the new headquarters of the tech company are about to be completed across the street. So, when they move out, how can it become more than just another vacant office building?

The Agency proposes three ways of looking at the project. The Ring, based on a concentric organization that brings housing and workspace to the same plane, prioritizes their integration as fundamental elements of life. The Grid makes full use of the height between plates to create a diversity of layouts that can give more at the scale of the apartment by expanding its qualities.

Finally, The Spill looks at the relationship between individual and collective space to extend the meaning of the home through the association with others. Without trying to create a catalogue, each exploration presents an aspect of contemporary living that can thrive by looking protectively at the depth of the building. By presenting them in association with built exemplars, the argument thickens to trigger the dialogue among the actors that will take part in its development.

Work in Progress

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The changes in work dynamics that made the modern office redundant initiated a reconceptualization of the workplace’s role in everyday life. It is clear working and leisure have merged, creating a continuum that englobes our domestic space and social relationships. The experience of confinement in 2020 made this even more palpable, and access to dedicated work environments became a luxury in terms of ergonomics, productivity and sanity. Nevertheless, DOGMA suggests the home has been the epicentre of production since the rise of immaterial labour56, making the division between living and working a matter of social convention. It would be naïve to affirm working at home is totally new or naturally advantageous, as the history of their intertwining is one of class and gender inequality57. The extension of work into the domestic realm also implies the acknowledgement of the overarching mandate for productivity in our everyday life. Not only are we working the office and working from home, we work from the gym or the supermarket replying calls and emails. Even our beds have become a matter research to produce ergonomic equipment that can bring work to the last bastion of intimacy 58. Therefore, looking at the home as an extension of work life can seem like a surrender to the logics of extended productivity.

However, there are activities that thrive in these crossovers and produce value that exceeds the household’s boundaries. Creative work and the knowledge economy have traditionally been involved in domestic realm. From the atelier to the loft, they can be regarded as an emancipatory practice that resign the hierarchical control of conventional work environments in favor of personal directions. The loft took advantage of the industrial shed to merge creative activities, social life and self-development, thus became popular as an aspirational model that would foster the exploration of alternative ways of living in a global scale. Its spatial characteristics, privileging a flexible differentiation of spaces, enriched the possibilities of action instead of prescribing a routine. This encourages a positive outlook of the possibilities of an alternative lifestyle of creativity and liberation in association with others.

By bringing living and working together in one place we can explore a balance between the intimacy of the house and the collective synergies of workspace. Commercial uses can sustain spaces for social encounter and collective work, and in exchange, gain stability from the permanent occupancy of dwellers. The advantage of looking at former office towers is their proven capacity to serve as both making the stacking of functions a natural option to manage a mixed environment. However, is vertical coexistence enough? As we could see in Vantage Point, there needs to be a true involvement from external actors and an added value to the space for these crossovers to become a true culture of use. Creative industries are based on cooperation, a bond that preserves autonomy and enables competition. For cooperation to exist, according to Sennet, we need to exercise relating to others by physically engaging in spaces that encourage DOGMA, LIVING AND WORKING: How To Live Together.

DOGMA; Alice Rawsthorn, “At Home at Work.”

58 Beatriz Colomina, “The Bed in the Age of COVID-19.”

56 57

The Ring- Study of a typical Plan

at the same time resistance and porosity, to cultivate the skills for richer social interactions59. In Lacaton and Vassal’s Halte Ceva building in Geneva, the piling of dwelling on top of commercial is articulated by levels for shared use amongst workers and residents. Because of the flexibility of the open plan, these designed to evolve in time, both in their internal configuration and their disposition within the building. What today is composed of two thirds of housing to a third of offices, could seamlessly be transformed into a fifty to fifty ratio. Thus, it demonstrates the responsive character we might give to new proposals so they can react with agility to changes in market demands, sanitary emergencies or tenant’s preferences. This unique quality of the office tower allows the vertical stacking of virgin worlds and horizontal layering in the depth of the block to make this coexistence not only possible but desirable.

60

The generic, double tube structure of 6PS maximizes usable floorspace contrasts with Google’s reputation for producing stimulating work environments. To bridge this gap, AHMM’s approach to the building was based on the temporality of occupancy which inspired this projective reinspection. The architect’s refer to it with a theatrical analogy that understands the block as the “Theatre”, the permanent canvas over which they manage the “Stage Set” and “Props”, spatial devices that characterize the space but have different roles and expiration dates. The sculptural staircase in the central atrium is the protagonist of AHMM’s intervention to give relevance to the void as a gathering space and symbolic core. Lessons from this can be transposed to the realm of housing by looking at the atrium as a place of convergence where to integrate activities visually but managing a gradient of privacy. By taking this concept, we could look at the deepest part of the block as the natural space for the layover of living and working.

This would allow housing to preserve its traditional dimensions by adjoining the façade, leaving a 7m gap at the core of the building for collective use.

This area would be artificially conditioned like most work environments today, literally bringing living and working to an equal level thus evening their importance in the routine of the inhabitant. The interlocking spheres propose a division between the personal, collective and public realms separated by a “service ring”. The concentric scheme inverts traditional dynamics bringing the public to the core and the private to the façade, so that the busyness of the street spills up through the atrium. If the interior ring concentrates the semi-private realm where to “work from home”, we could imagine pockets that allowed common amenities and terraces to flourish in the height of the block sustained by the density of the occupation. The openness and dimensions of the platform, enables activities such as a sports teams or civic meetings to take place without structural impediments, building on a bearing capacity that housing never gets because of its high costs.

In the same way, exterior pockets give the ring a spatial projection to the urban landscape, finding in the depth the richness of layering and framing the connection with the exterior. In Spreefeld, we can see the importance of the flow of space from indoor to outdoor, looking at the envelope, not as a but as 59

Sennet, “The Architecture of Cooperation.”

[32] AHMM intervention in the atrium, the stair.

[33] Interior atrium.

[34] Visual integration across the atrium.

[35] Light Shat and connecting character.

[36] Possible conformations - Hate Ceva Building.

Commercial

Collective

Collective

Commercial

Collective

Residential

Residential

Residential

Immeuble de logements et bureaux, Halte Ceva [37]Maximum Plot occupation

[38] Typical Office Plan. Hate Ceva Building.

[39] Typical Housing Plan. Hate Ceva Building.

The Grid - Study of a typical Plan

a fluid membrane which allows a two-way exchange. This as a concept was explored by Inaki Abalos in his essay Thermodinamic Somatisms 60 where, by making an analogy with the artificial climatization of the interior, warns against the indifference of the contained to the fluxes of everyday life. A different example, Block A in Mehr als Wohnen, exposes a sequence of indoor and outdoor terraces of considerable size. Instead of betting on the private balcony, this project articulates larger collective spaces that allow more interesting opportunities of use, either in collectively or isolation. The terrace is just an example of what we could access through sharing with others, adding richness and variation at a reasonable cost, much like what is incipient in the reconversion of Vantage Point.

Added Value Only by looking at this first example, The Ring, we can start to see the richness that can be gained by working with the deep floorplan. The Grid, the second exploration, looks in greater depth at the possibilities brought about by the structural intelligence of the pre-existence. Can rigidity foster flexibility? Although this work has emphasized the abstract notion of the open plan and its isotropy, it shouldn’t lead to believe there is no value in the material support. Much on the contrary, the systemic repetition and structural clarity of towers is what makes them so suitable for manipulation. Their logical construction clearly laying out possibilities and restraints.

The infrastructure demanded by office buildings, as announced in chapter 02, hangs over suspended ceilings or hides under mechanical floors. As we could see in Vantage Point, this makes adapting new blocks of services much easier, but at the same time could support new spatial arrangements.

The units in The Grid take full advantage of the 4.5m height between slabs to create mezzanines and doble heights. This strategy allows usable area to multiply and thus generously extending the quality of the home. Small units can have an open plan that could work as an atelier on the ground floor with an overlooking private area for resting as a mezzanine, while larger ones can make use of the extra space to create separate workspaces for each occupier. The double height in the common areas brings light into the depth of the unit, taking full advantage of the glazed envelope of the office tower.

The metallic bearing system, like we saw on Vantage Point with the concrete frame, enables openings between beams to create vertical connections. In the case of The Grid, two new atriums add up to the original core and bring light to the larger units at both ends of the building. The internal atriums allow the apartments to bridge over the depth of the floorplan, permitting bigger areas without resigning interior quality. As the deep floorplan can be problematic because of light and ventilation, these new atriums create new shafts that enable a range of layouts that respect the preferences of a different users. In Mehr als Wohnen, Duplex Architekten used the deep plan to get light all the way through the heart of the building and use differentiated 60

Kuo, A-Typical Plan.

65

[41] Atelier: work and play adaptative reuse.

Ricardo Bofil’s Factory.

[40] Atelier: work and play generosity of space.

Le Corbusier’s Atelier Ozenfant

[42] Crossed views in Student Housing Chris Maker.

[43] Typical Housing Plan. Hate Ceva Building.

[44] Crossed views in Student Housing Chris Maker.

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wings to create richer domestic environments. This addresses a demand for flexibility and specificity with an experimental attitude, as each unit in the swiss project has a unique spatial configuration that is liberating without resigning spatial specificity.

Also, this vertical connectivity is key to unlock the stratified nature of the conventional office building. There is a value in being able to see from afar, to anticipate the presence of others who can encourage or prevent using a terrace or co-work area. As we walk towards the unit, one can see to the circulations in other levels to see if the common areas are occupied or empty, perceive the presence of neighbors or the crowds in the public ground floor. Sight gives users control over collective without policing and is a frequent resource in contemporary architecture. Particularly in hypercollective projects like student halls where the balance between private use and public amenities is key, the use of transparency and multi-leveled environments shows how this gradient can be managed. For example, in Chris Marker student residence in Paris, the collective circulations have a visual domain of the cascading collective lounges and open terraces that gives richness to the spatial experience while allowing each student to decide how and when to engage with others.

Together and Apart The Spill focuses on the balance between individual and collective through cluster living. The apartments are flexible in their size and associations, conformed by independent cells and a shared common space that spills between them. This inner fluid can be reorganized to allow smaller clusters, as the associations amongst tenants evolve, providing tailored measures for a growing family or group of friends. Each private pod is connected to the façade and is equal in size, 20sqm, which is generous as a room but insufficient as a studio. The minimal servicing is balanced by the extensive collective area exclusive to the flat.

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Although services are fundamental for the success of these formations, more so is reaching an equilibrium between being together and apart. The balance should allow each person to preserve their privacy without becoming anonymous, so that they can feel both responsible and participant to this shared space. We live in a time of contradiction over autonomy and belonging61, which still struggles to find an architectural expression. To explore it, the term idiorrytmy, used by Roland Barthes to describe the balance between solitude and collectivity in monastic life, serves to describe this duality. As he explains, it requires an “ethics (or a physics) of distance between cohabiting subjects�62, which can be interpreted as the balance between co-dependence and independence that has become a contemporary aspiration. The importance of cluster living resides in this fine balance and should be looked as an alternative lifestyle and not as a cheaper option where more can live in less space.

The dwelling as the realm of the nuclear family is a notion that has long been contested. Over time, the hotel, the American boarding house or the Komunas have supposed changes in the essential conception of what is a home and how the individual can operate outside the bonds of institutions63.

These typological innovations have in common their urban character, as living is cities has promoted density and accompanied changes in how we conceive life. However, from the practical adaptation of homes for travellers to the ideological statements of the Soviets, they are traditionally regarded as exemptions in a generalized production that preserved the idea of the bourgeois household as the prevalent model.

Recently, the concept of the cell in the collective has gained new relevance based on the spontaneous generalisation of flat sharing. Today, family homes in London are rented by the room to strangers through a website, without more adaptation than turning the living-room to add an extra bedroom. Ill equipped, where even six rooms can share a toilet and dispense with having no table to have dinner, it is no wonder these make do solutions have fuelled

Lipovetsky and Charles, Los Tiempos Hipermodernos.

Barther, How to Live Together?

63 DOGMA, Loveless.

61 62

The Spill - Study of a typical Plan

the growth of enterprises like the Collective64, the UK’s first purpose built coliving65. As an alternative to the overcrowding and lack of privacy of shared flats, co-livings offer a miniature home and serviced shared spaces, promising the perks of solitude while belonging to a “Colective”. The poorquality of the common amenities, insufficient and hyper collectivised, is battled by a centralized service provision that aims at reducing the possibilities of conflict, also minimizing their appropriation and actual use66.

There are several examples in London like the “The Italian”67 or “Roam”68, which fall within the same publicity of a sophisticated community life, but and far from dismantling the traditional home structure, reproduce minimal apartments without really exploring the trade-offs of living together. Some would argue that the units should be more generous or that the ratio of individual to collective space is insufficient69; however, what would happen if, instead of placing the debate over how many studios should share a kitchen, we would concentrate on the associative capacity of serviced units that could conform multiple typological arrangements?

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The isotropy of the open plan allows us to think of associative units70 that can give independence and specificity to each user while promoting a new culture of sharing that extend the possibilities of the self. If we think of associative cells, it can wrongly be understood as a restrictive module that limits activities and uses like the capsules of the Nakagin Tower. On the contrary, the unit of aggregation is an abstract compositional tool that understands the concatenation of spaces as the essence of the dwelling. It is the minimal piece to what we can dissect domesticity. If the associative unit in the traditional English block was the terraced house, today’s practice of flat sharing makes the room the essence to what the flat can be reduced thus becoming the new associative unit. In the same way, if we look back at some of the exemplars of current reconversions, we can see the restrictiveness to which the plan has been unnecessarily subjected. The office’s liberated floorplate is reduced to the restrictive autonomy of the studio, incapable of expanding, losing space in a precarious repetition of kitchenettes and toilettes. If instead we thought of the adaptation of the office through an

The Collective is a Co-Living service provider. It differs from essential living in offering studios and en-suites supported by shared amenities in a dorm-like fashion. It has been extensively featured in the press because of the tiny size of the apartments and their high costs. See:Helen Crane, “Inside Co-Living: The Flats Where Millennials Swap Space for Free Yoga.”

65 Agbonlahor, “Co-Living in London: Friendship, Fines and Frustration.”

66 Helen Crane, “Inside Co-Living: The Flats Where Millennials Swap Space for Free Yoga.”

67 The Italian is a Co-Living house in Berdmonsey, former office building developed under PDR. It is described as ““It is a cross between a large, chic shared house, a private members club and a wellness retreat.”. See: www.mason-fifth.com 68 See: www.roam.co 69 JU, Ziyue. “Offices into Residential Use.” Architectural Association, 2019.

70 The concept of the associative unit was introduced by Joseph Ferrando when comparing Kasujo Sejima’s Gifu Kitagatas’ apartments and the Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens as “the intermediate structure that dialogues between typology and the building connecting the apartment to the scale of the city”. See: Ferrando, “La Unidad de Agregación: Un Diálogo Entre Los Smithsons y Sejima.”

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Aggregation Unit - applied analysis to three living arrangements

Flatshare Rooms as Units

Reconversion Studio as Units

Apartment Cluster Rooms as Units

Flatshare Terrace House

Reconversion Open plan

Apartment Cluster Hieve

[45] Shared balconies in Mehr als Wohnen.

[46] Shared living in Mehr als Wohnen.

[47] Shared cooking area in Mehr als Wohnen.

[48] Watching a movie in Mehr als Wohnen.

associative strategy clustered by a shared domain, like in Mehr als Wohnen’s block A, it would allow the flexibility to conform variations, preserve intimacy and add value by shaping the in-between space as a realm of collective construction.

The value of collectivity departs from the recognition of Individual space as paramount for self-development. We live in a time, as Rose argues71, marked by a belief in the duty of engineering of the self: a quest to understand and deconstruct our physical body and immaterial identity. In this context, having a space of introspection and expression, detached from the cultural ties of family structures, becomes a value even when recognizing the family as an institution. It is its overarching mandate as a way of life which is ultimately challenged. In this context, a space for friction becomes de-numbing, a challenge to the comfort of uncontested routines. Living alone is easier than sharing and negotiating. However, in this simplified version, we are less likely to question what other alternatives are there for living, loving and caring.

In Mer als Wohnen’s Block A, we can see the clusters take full advantage of the depth of the block. Each cell, or associative unit, is formed by generous individual space formed by one or two rooms and a private toilet that serves to balance the collectivisation of all other functions of the home. The inbetween space supports domestic duties as cooking or doing laundry, as well as working or sharing a meal. The dimensions of the block allow generous dimensions while the large openings and balconies give quality to its depth.

The scattered units create pockets that define secluded areas within the collective spill, a strategy recreated in Pancras Square, which predicts simultaneous uses. Keeping separated spaces, unlike the open plan, creates bubbles of intimacy that promote appropriation and richness in domestic interactions. This aversion to the policing gaze governing the open plan resembles the office’s search for a balance between the integration of teams and sheltering comfort of the cubicle. The fractioned conformation allowing for different paces and routines, the freedom of coming, going and staying based on the respect of idiorrytmy.

71

Rose, “Engeneering of Selfhood in the 21st Century.”

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October 2nd At their weekly meeting, the Agency discusses the proposed models and how they align with their ambition for the Kings Cross area: to create an enhanced sense of localism in the tech-based urban enclave by creating an offer for an emerging way of life, committed with a idiorhythmic community that brings work and play into the domestic realm. In doing so, new stakeholders need to join the developers and local authorities, to create stronger, targeted responses.

The King’s Cross area has become a key node in the knowledge industry consolidated in East London. Coincidentally, the area has a proliferation of office buildings that will soon become part of the available stock. By looking at these factors, it is possible to think about them becoming a new type of housing for young professionals related to the sector. The growing importance of tech industries, an industry that accounts for a tenth of the city’s income and employs one of six people in the capital 72, attracts specialized workers who relocate without a support network or a knowledge of the rental system. Serviced apartments where the hassles of renting and bills were sorted by a service provider is already a profitable business. These become even more attractive for investors by being in a highly connected location like Pancras Square and within walking distance of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, which also play a great part in this growing economic sector.

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A scheme like the Spill can grant newcomers the possibility of integrating a community with a similar lifestyle and set of values, without renouncing independence or space. It defines a balance between internal life and conviviality that remains ambiguous, learning from the existing patterns of use that make shared life a realm of negotiation and mutual learning. It is, in Lacaton and Vassals terms, a “luxurious apartment”73. Based in a generosity of light and space that does not impact cost. As the emphasis is not in the in numbers, but in the service quality, the amount of rooms in the Spill equals those of the conventional apartment floorplan of the Grid, however, the floor ratio per person is doubled. This tries to maximize the benefits of a shared environment, allowing options to multiply by virtue of living together. The shared service delivery mechanism, which is already recognized as a living model by cooperatives and colivings, can be articulated by a developer or social landlord thus giving financial sense to a vision with greater ambitions than a traditional real estate development.

Unlike the exclusive spaces created by financial services, the creative economy thrives in the proliferation of new connections and exchanges.

Creative industries are based on cooperation, a bond that preserves autonomy and enables competition. For cooperation to exist, according to Sennet, we need to exercise relating to others by physically engaging in spaces that encourage at the same time resistance and porosity, to cultivate 72 73

Rocks, London’s Creative Industries-2017 Update.

Druot, Lacaton, and Vassal, PLUS: La Vivienda Colectiva: Territorio Excepción.

Purpouse built office space in East London differenciated by morphology

The public realm pours into the block.

the skills for richer social interactions74. While the well stablished companies in the area provide reliable and well-known services, they can fall short in the development of innovation; better served by smaller companies that can take more risks. These could be integrated by a new generation of work-space providers, like WeWork, which on the one hand offer smaller space and flexible contracts while providing stimulating, adaptable, and highly serviced environments. These are the ones preferred by the creative sector where collaboration is the added value to the traditional office. Although challenged by the pandemic that has undermined the notion of the hot-desk, the importance of the workspace as a place of reunion and integration dovetails with a growing reliance in the home-office which perfectly suits, as we could see in the explorations, with the capacities of the deep-floorplan. While the Ring explored bringing living and working to the same plan, their vertical stacking in a scheme like Lacaton and Vassal’s Halte Ceva building would allow a flexible division and mutual support of residential and work areas without committing to the internal occupation of the offices. If we imagined in the Spill commercial floorplates could preserve a level of independence, they could be more easily rented out to other service providers thus dividing risks while preserving the advantages of proximity.

By coexisting with the dynamics of housing, work environments can generate a rich urban dimension within the building. The multi-layered space perceived from the atrium extends into the urban plaza. The envelope acts as a membrane, allowing exchanges between the interior and a exterior. If the values of this ensemble are based on offering more by living together, it is worth wondering about the nature of these extra amenities. These could serve an extended community, building on the sense of trust and involvement within the neighbourhood. Civil associations or educative institutions can become partners for this endeavour and strengthen local networks. As explored above, there are many project strategies that can allow the spatial management of privacy and balance an undesirable loss of differentiation. By creating a “border”, to quote Sennet75, this separation acquires thickness and becomes the place of All in all, these new associations continue to build upon an both a material and immaterial continuity, betting on a minimal disruption that can intensify the existing patterns of the area. As an operative fiction, the work of the Agency served to clarify the challenges of the architect in assessing an urban issue, looking at its multiple dimensions so that an issue like the overavailability of commercial floorplates can be unfolded to reveal its many layers of complexity.

74 75

Sennet, “The Architecture of Cooperation.”

Sennet.

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Conclusion The dullness of the office building makes this exploration an advocation for appreciating the built environment, not based on the evocative nature of ruination, but on its capacity to adapt and support change: promoting and enriching new practices. If even these nondescript buildings can become a critical mass of inbuilt potential, how can we think of anything as rigid and eternal?

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This work should not be read as a comprehensive manual for the reconversions of office towers. On the contrary, it should inform how we should look at future projects to build in resilience by thinking in terms of difference and flexibility: fostering morphological variation and generous outlook to construction and servicing. The feeling of freedom and ambiguity cultivated by loft living, should be present in reconversions and new projects alike, without being restricted by morphological preconceptions. It isn’t a proposal for an acritical conservation of meaningless structures either, or a statement over the irrelevance of purpose-built housing. It is a pledge to look at the assets at our disposal creatively and understand that radical transformations are possible within continuity so that by recognizing the temporality of human practices, we can predict obsolescence and design open-endedness.

pd.

Afterword Abandoned office towers, new ways of living and working, the impact this have on the city and how we think about new homes are not questions exclusive to London. These are conditions that are also emerging in less privileged environments, and which consequently pose different challenges.

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The occupation of former financial centre, Torre de David in Caracas, presented in the 2012 Venice Biennale by Think Thank 76, brought light over the creativity and resilience with which a self-organized collective could adapt a derelict business complex into a housing solution. The position exposed by the authors, emphasises that while the living conditions in the squatter settlement remain precarious, there is an inherent logic to the way things work. The flexibility of the internal partitions, the adaptation of the envelope to allow ventilation, the new water supply system and the preservation of the ground floor for collective activities such as praying or playing sports evidently mirror more formal approaches to collective living, which up to a point questions the illegitimacy of the occupation. This example raised awareness over the collective intelligence embedded in tower occupation, particularly in critical contexts. In 2017 Columbia University’s StudioX initiated studies on Rio de Janeiro’s occupation of abandoned towers and in 2019’s Chicago’s Biennale would recognize Carmen Silva, Sao Paulo’s MSTC77 squatter movement leader, as a pioneer urban thinker.

These bottom up initiatives become important for disciplinary reflection.

They denounce space availability in a context of displacement and demonstrate the power of community involvement for creating targeted solutions. The intention of focusing on the specific, is to open the debate over the transformation of the built environment which is certainly not limited to the possibilities explored in this thesis. It is evident the processes could take a different trajectory in a different context, but the fundamental question remains over the validity of an approach based on the balance between continuity and change.

76 Klumpner and Hubert, Torre David. Informal Vertical Communities.

77 MSTC stands for “Movimento Sem Teto do Centro” (Homeless Workers Movement) a socio-political movement from homeless urban workers which reclaim urban presence through the occupation of vacant buildings in Brazil’s central areas.

[46] Torre de David

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Figure Index All non-referenced graphics were produced by the author.

[01] https://www.ft.com/content/e2b314aa-69d2-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3 [02] [03] https://gridarchitects.co.uk/projects/heritage/vantage-point-1/ [04] Dominic Papa

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[05] https://www.archdaily.com/893553/sesc-24-de-maio-paulo-mendes-da-rocha-plus-mmbbarquitetos [06] https://www.fosterandpartners.com/news/archive/2018/05/the-murray-a-new-hotel-for-hong-kong/ [07] https://www.archdaily.com/777123/student-housing-in-elsevier-office-building-knevelarchitecten/564572bbe58ecee8fb0002eb-student-housing-in-elsevier-office-building-knevelarchitecten-photo [08] https://www.bogdanvanbroeck.com/projects/cosmopolitan/ [09] https://www.gpe.co.uk/our-portfolio/rathbone-square/ [10] https://www.appearhere.co.uk/spaces/central-saint-giles-f-b-space [11] https://www.sheppardrobson.com/architecture/view/fitzroy-place-w1-1 [12] https://www.archdaily.com/894526/vantage-point-grid-architects [15] IIbid.

[16] https://www.archdaily.com/802750/chapter-living-kings-cross-tigg-plus-coll-architects [17] https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdb1/22526657229/in/photostream/ [18] https://www.onthemarket.com/details/4723624/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/flash_homer/34038109286 [19] http://www.208surveys.co.uk/projects/wellesley-way/ https://www.acorngroup.co.uk/buildtorent/property-lettings/flat-to-rent-in-delta-point-wellesley-roadcroydon-cr0/42829

[20] Andy Warhol on the Factory couch, 1965, photo by Jon Naar. <https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/79798224620099342/ [21] https://www.propertyweek.com/news/capreon-completes-office-letting-at-kao-businesspark/5109278.article [23] https://www.archilovers.com/projects/220150/haus-a.html#lovers [24] https://dac.dk/en/knowledgebase/architecture/mehr-als-wohnen/ [25] https://gramho.com/media/2367724706445739189 [26] https://www.mehralswohnen.ch/angebote/allmendraeume/ [27] https://dac.dk/en/knowledgebase/architecture/mehr-als-wohnen/ [28] https://www.archdaily.com/587590/coop-housing-project-at-the-river-spreefeld-carpanetoarchitekten-fatkoehl-architekten-bararchitekten [29] https://righttobuildtoolkit.org.uk/case-studies/spreefeld-genossenschaft-berlin/# [30] https://www.archdaily.com/587590/coop-housing-project-at-the-river-spreefeld-carpanetoarchitekten-fatkoehl-architekten-bararchitekten [31] https://righttobuildtoolkit.org.uk/case-studies/spreefeld-genossenschaft-berlin/# [32] to [35] https://www.ahmm.co.uk/projects/office/google-pancras-square/ [36] to [36] [40] http://tajvedelem.hu/Tankonyv/TH_en/ch03.html> [41] https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2015/12/02/t-magazine/in-the-studio-withm2malletier/s/02tmag-m2m-t-slide-KM69.html [42] https://www.subtilitas.site/post/182904641589/eric-lapierre-experience-chris-marker-student [43] https://www.archdaily.com/497357/lt-josai-naruse-inokuma-architects [44] https://www.subtilitas.site/post/182904641589/eric-lapierre-experience-chris-marker-student [45] https://www.amc-archi.com/photos/zurich-reinvente-le-logement-social,10886/appartementcommunautaire-avec.7 [46] https://www.communityledhousing.london/shared-living-in-community-ownership/ [47] https://www.amc-archi.com/photos/zurich-reinvente-le-logement-social,10886/appartementcommunautaire-avec.5 [48] https://duplex-architekten.ch/en/#/en/projects/more-than-living/ [49] https://www.ricedesignalliance.org/interview-with-alfredo-brillembourg-about-torre-david-and-thefuture-of-the-global-south%25e2%2580%25a8

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ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE SCHOOL PROGRAMMES COVERSHEET FOR SUBMISSION 2019-20

PROGRAMME:

HOUSINGand ANDUrbanism URBANISM Housing

Gilardi STUDENT NAME(S): Carolina CAROLINA GILARDI

SUBMISSION TITLE

Homework MONOPOLY

COURSE TITLE

MA Thesis CITIES IN A TRANSNATIONAL WORLD

COURSE TUTOR

JORGE FIORI Lawrence Barth

DECLARATION: “I certify that this piece of work is entirely my/our own and that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of others is duly acknowledged.”

Signature of Student(s):

Date:

December2020.

11th, 2019 October,