Choreographics of the City / Design Studio 19 by Choreographics of the City

design studio 19 Choreographics of the City

“the communal spirit that supports us all and transcends each of us individually represents the real power of urban drama and brings us back to the ancient religious sources of the cultic festival.” -Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘The Festive Character of Theatre’

Canterbury Festival

Table of Contents i. FORWARD contributors

Architecture, Creativity and Festive Mediation

ii. INTRODUCTION 13

The Choreographers of the Festive City

Performative Space

Capriccios + Cosmograms

iii. PEOPLE 30

Biographies

MArch I / MArch II

MArch I

iv. PROJECTS

Department of Architecture University of Westminster 35 Marylebone Road London, NW1 5LS. Tel: 020 7911 5000 www.westminster.ac.uk

Edited by Damien Reiss Clayton and Joanna Jones Printed in London, United Kingdom Published by ISSUU Ltd./ www.issuu.com

With thanks to Darren Deane and Elantha Evans

MArch II

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, expect in the case of brief questions embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial use permitted by copyright law.

Re-appropriating Distant Fragments

Aaron Fox

Stereotomy

Damien Reiss Clayton

Ethnography, Language and Welfare

David Hawkins

Orchard Economies

Georgia Follet

Unfold - Enfold - Refold

Guy Adams

Reclaiming All Hallows

Jacob Szikora

Rebinding Topographies

Jonathon Oswald

Treasury of the Intangible

Jack Rowlinson

Processing the City + System

Victoria Thong

The Leathermarket Archives

Camilla Bartz-Johannessen

Sanctuaries of Southwark

Charlotte Blythe

Proposal for New Leyhalmode

Dylan Main

Light Brutal

Flora Cselovszki

The Forgotten Sacrifice

George Kneale

Pre-Conditioning for the City

Jade Pollard

102

Festive Library

Jamie Kirkham

106

The Store of Stories chronicles of Southwark

Joanna Jones

110

The Neckinger Pools

Kathryn Edwards

114

Crossbones Crematory + Cemetery Memorial

Pavla Krejcova

118

Better the Devil you Know

Sam Cady

Architecture, Creativity and Festive Mediation Forward | Darren R. Deane, University of Westminster The analysis and interpretation of festive space as an urban phenomenon requires a bifocal perspective. Such is the spectacle and drama of these dense and crowded events, where the attention is usually focussed on the intimate scale of personified agencies (actors, neighbourhood associations and religious institutions), that the structuring role played by large-scale spatial conditions can often become concealed. This de-centering of perception brings into play the less-animate agency of architecture, and more remotely, the expanded context of the city. The investigations of DS.19 are motivated by a simple question: what articulating role does the city play in the ordering of festive space? The work of the design studio seeks to define how urban topography is adjusted and transformed in order to create something like a festive state. More importantly, we ask whether this reordering is a necessary pre-condition for ritual (itself a carefully orchestrated, intimate action) to gain traction within complex urban situations. Conversely, are festive states temporary symbolic abstractions that recast the city as a readable totality? Those lateral encounters, playful interaction, and ontological interplay between festive and everyday orientations are the subject matter of DS.19. Choreographics of the City, the title of this volume, refers to our drawn and designed attempts to capture these fragile and fleeting lateral orientations. In preliminary terms, the city in a festive state may be defined as an intensified re-presentation of the spaces of lived experience, rearticulated in the form of a meaningful order, and bracketed topographically. Under festive conditions the townscape is reshaped as an alternative civic image. Configured from institutional rooms, everyday spaces, iconography, orientation, views, implied relationships, the city is recast in a form that reveals the ontology of the public realm. Revisiting civic festival as a topic, and consenting to its continued legitimacy, thus has the potential to renew our understanding of the city as a carrier of meaningful practical action. Re-familiarising ourselves with their possibilities can in turn reinvigorate how we approach designed interventions within the city. Our interest in urban procession and festival is motivated by this professional pursuit, which has spanned five years of design-research that began with a year-long study, undertaken in 2011, into Salisbury’s contemporary processional order (inspired by Christian Frost’s historical study). This project led to actual involvement in the design of a procession in Preston, and persists into current investigations of DS.19 located Southwark and Canterbury, which are gathered together within this compendium. Festive and Processional Space are not ‘Human Flows’: A number of misconceptions about processional and festive space are common to architecture and anthropology (the other field with a longstanding interest in the orchestration of civic congregations). This misunderstanding relates to the status of movement, along with current definitions of the city as a process devoid of rhetoric. In

Michael Ashkenazi’s anthropological study of Matsuri the support structures of festival are referred to as sinews: “Whatever their structure or intent and no matter how seemingly wild and unstructured, festivals need some organising sinews to hold them together. [Quoting Grimes] ‘spirit must be generated, it does not occur on its own potential.’” - Michael Ashkenazi, Matsuri: Festivals of a Japanese Town ‘Sinews’ are often translated – somewhat literally by architects - as infrastructure, conduits, channels and networks of movement, as opposed to alignment, delineation, directionality and orientation. The latter, which refer to eidetic structures, represent both formal and experiential categories, unlike the former, which are pure objectivities that, when taken literally, impose upon human perception a false mental physics. Urbanism has become the ‘bad infinity’ of architecture; with typologies of flowing, transitional space increasingly the dominant paradigm. i. This has led to the invention of a genre of architectural drawing practice we know as mapping. The interpretive poverty of this model of spatial flow flattens human experience into a diagram, thus reducing our understanding of both the deeper spatiality, and poetic amplitude, of the city. A far more nuanced and intelligent quality is at work in these events, a quality that transcends the chaotic mass of kinetic crowd behaviour that sociological mapping attempts to make fully transparent and quantify as a quasi-biological system. The interpretation of festive and processional movement as a space of flow has significantly impaired understanding of architectural space since at least the 19th century, and with it the events themselves. ‘Flow’ also happens to be a problematic concept – not to mention an overused cliché in architectural theory - that architecture and anthropology share in common, in particular the notion of psychological flow the anthropologist Victor Turner borrowed from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to underpin his theory of festive ‘communitas’. Turner’s model is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, his explanation of ‘mass flow’ between participants is based upon an introverted, inner logic that fuses people into something like an unconscious experiential trance. And it is the idea of processions as un-critical, communitarian habits that generates ethical doubts about the political appropriation of collective celebration. Turner also defined festive experience in terms of a collapse of action and awareness taking place within the framed territory of a festive state; an experience which for all intents and purposes is oriented away from the civic. Here I quote from his later essay ‘Frame, Flow, Reflection’ published in the Japanese Journal of Ritual studies in 1979, which states that:

“Flow is a state in which action follows action according to an inner logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part; we experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next…in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present and future….[It is ] an act of total involvement.” - (487) This fluid model of the city in a festive state is based upon an implicit metaphysics that reduces collective civic action to the “mental physics” of crowd behaviour, ii. and by extension human experience to quasi-natural, elemental processes. Furthermore, it suggests that such experiences lack a cognitive, semantic dimension. In this respect festivals are co-opted as instruments of artificial culture under the imperatives of economic tourism, rather than devices for poetic revelation of civic meaning, which is their authentic purpose. The passage between ‘solemn and ludic’ for instance, is described by Turner as “interdigitated [and]penetrated into one another”, whilst in his most well-known account of the liminal stage of ritual, participants are said to be “reduced or ground down to a uniform condition to be fashioned anew”, an explanation that sounds more attuned to material science than people. iii. Congruent with this flattened experience is Turner’s definition of the festive frame itself, which is rendered analogous to something like a laboratory in which cultural action, de-situated from its natural life world, is displaced into an abstract, experimental field of interactions, separating and recombining to form new identities that only hold for the duration of the bounded festive frame.

urban memory, customary practices, congregation of craft and skill, calendars, the broader cycles of culture and nature, not to mention a panoramic field of communication ranging from language, human gesture, dress code, props and equipment, iconography, buildings and continuous topographic space. v. One useful way of describing festive and processional events therefore, is as a conceptual transection that mediates across a panorama of civic communication in order to construct meaningful relationships within the city. Rather than precise re-transcriptions following an infrastructural map, ideal geometry or ossified route, festive states are quickened, metabolic mixtures of representational fragments, gathered together within a ‘communicative space’. Such clearings, formed in the midst of a dense urban field, form pockets of clarity that offer the inhabitants of a place an opportunity to make sense of their own civic being. This might account for why processions and festivals have continued to persist since the early foundations of human civilisation: beginning in the middle, they are enriched cosmograms (as opposed to simplified diagrams) that unify ‘levels’ of urban reality, creating a composite, synthetic situation. That is to say they articulate the human condition: “Man is intermediate because he is a mixture […] in that his act of existing is the very act of bringing about mediations between all the modalities and all of the levels of reality within him and outside him.” - Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, p.3

The weakness of Turner’s model stems from its reliance upon artificial electrochemical metaphors, literalised and smuggled in as instrumental replacements for the poetic gathering of people into a meaningful whole the highest expression of which is the city. Turner’s festive communitas is an ontologically flattened, homogenised microcosm devoid of the perceptual and poetic amplitude of foreground, middle ground and background, and as such, denies the city a sustaining role in festive action. Movement is of course is an important element of the festive process, but Turner’s mistake lies in taking the most obvious part of festival (the congregational dimension) for the whole, which in the end concealed its primary condition - the narrative contribution of the city.

The need for festive and processional movement emerges very early in the history of the city as a counter-movement to the decompression of compact palace precincts into more expansive urban settlements. The spatial and temporal unfolding experienced by participants during these events is designed to accommodate an enriched spectrum of social and political life. In other words, they take on the role of mediating gaps and territorial relationships within a city defined by increasingly differentiated layers of institutional life, conflicts and split conditions. That is to say they operate as orientation devices or threshold machines with respect to ontological differences (of which the duality of sacredprofane is but one example). Significant structures and settings within, beyond, and on the boundary of the city, are gathered together as reciprocating gestures into a middle ground.

The true, formative purpose of festive states lie not in the production of introverted spheres of saturated presence in which aggregated crowds are open to touristic or atavistic communication. Rather, they depend upon the reconfiguration of urban context into background settings for prolongated, differentiated action. Festive experience “never consists in going from the simple to the complex, but always moves within the totality itself ”. iv. Such representational totalities are not pure inventions ex nihilo, but elevated out of the latent depth of the city, which allows for the intertwining of institutions with

The dynamic and creative concordance between people, symbols (both praxical and iconographic), urban rooms and background context, at work within festive space, generates an urban totality filled with paradox and ambiguity. Resistant to scientific appropriation or systematic measure, it is a totality that allows individual experience to participate within the universal order of the city. Perhaps the dialogue between the everyday and the festive is “a positive reciprocity” to use Paul Ricoeur’s words, where “each realises itself through the other.” vi. Our interest in the graduated density of poetic relationships that thicken architectural

settings, connecting each with progressively deeper ‘levels of reality’ (private experience, public body, culture, nature, myth etc.) guided this year’s research into the festive states of Southwark and Canterbury. In particular, we examined their potential to generate dialogue between institutions and inscribe urban rooms with mediating qualities that co-mingle the everyday with the symbolic. Our main intention has been to explore a type of architectural fidelity that, through its reciprocal interaction with the city in a festive state, produces settings, rooms, and by extension, human experiences, that are well-rounded in meaning and rich in circumstance. What impact does festive involvement in the city have upon our experience? In contrast to Turner’s pulverisation of the self into a state of material non-being, the process works by re-scaling our corporeality rather than atomisation: from the scale of the individual, but outwardly intentional body of the participant, to it’s dialogical extension via a mutual sphere of influence, and finally, communion with the urban physis of the city. (The point being that all three scales remain intact throughout, with synthesis achieved through continuity of identify within difference.) The prolongation and distension of human action into enlarged spatial vessels, which swell and ossify to become urban architectural form, is the threshold-building process we commonly refer to as processional space. This mysterious process has been described by Vesely as ‘communicative space’, which avoids the trap of literalisation that anthropology and material cultural often falls into, in which culture is treated as a second nature or seamless and fully integrated metaphysics. By contrast, the city in a festive state refers to a condition of ‘ontological movement’ that occasionally stitches together discontinuous ‘levels of reality’ into a compressed, symbolic elevation of the town. vii. To characterise processions as lines of flow becomes counter-intuitive when attention shifts from overt action to the covert dynamics of the architectonic setting. Processions such as Sanja Matsuri in Tokyo are not sustained by abstract models of movement and flow that result in a ‘loss of being’ but particular civic settings whose ‘depth of circumstance’ is intensified. Gadamer has given an alternative account of this poetic amplification in The Festive Character of Theater, which states that the “vital essence of festive celebration is creation and elevation into a transformed state of being” More precisely, something “takes shape before our eyes in a form that we recognise and experience as a more profound presentation of our own reality.” We also learn that festive space is a “true imitation”; one that:

of articulated structures. Heightened precision should not be confused with hierarchy, centrality or power; it simply means ‘being-in–the-round’ rather than in a redemptive state of being-above nature or below-culture. Processions are well-crafted and omni-directional orientation devices, whilst their communicative potential is anchored in a carefully edited civic realm, thereby setting-up points of coincidence between levels of urban reality and degrees of being. The scale of festive and processional events also means that participation and experience oscillates between the holistic and the partial. Involvement is always a matter of perspective, there being no overall transparency available in the midst of these dense situations. However, the manifold spectrum of representation at work ensures the availability of an extended experiential whole that, according to Paul Ricoeur, is progressively revealed “bit by bit” across the civic condition. Glimpse by glimpse we approximate and scope-out, somewhat like a cumulative, intermediate sketch, a sense of civic totality: “There remains the possibility that progress and order might develop in the course of a series of viewpoints or approaches that would in each case be a viewpoint on and approach to the totality.” - Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 4. What this part-by-part recreation of the city tells us is that festive meaning is not an “extra-temporal”, instant redemptive utopia somehow overlaid onto the world in one go, but a gradual formative experience that comes about in degrees and mediated by fabricated relationships in the city. In this sense a compendium of affective urban materials, experienced both sequentially (horizontally in time) and simultaneously (vertically across space), gradually producing an architectural abridgement of the city, is the principal support structure of festive urban states. Essential to their character is the manner in which they gather together a ‘depth of circumstance’ using intermediate-scale media such as language, bodily gesture, directional movement, setting, equipmentality and props. vii The resulting totality is a fragile whole with a ‘precarious texture’ contingent on context, one that is also temporal (appearing then disappearing). The festive concordance of a city’s parts always begins as a condition of being-unready-to-hand, held in latent relief as a background resource that awaits revelation in civic ceremony. Always already there but not immediately visible, festive space depends on latent conditions that, if subjected to permanent planning, are easily destroyed. End Notes For an account of urbanism as the ‘bad infinity’ of architecture see the work of Pier Vittorio Aureli. ii. This term is Paul Ricoeur’s. See Freedom and Nature (1948). iii. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, 95. iv. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man v. A term developed by Dalibor Vesely in Architecture and the Conflict of Representation. vi. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, xiii. vii. Along with communicative space, ontological movement is a term borrowed from Vesely, in ibid. viii. The phrase ‘depth of circumstance’ was developed by Peter Carl. i.

“does not simply present again something that is already there, [but one that] brings before us intensified possibilities never seen before…[in other words] an intensification of extremes”. What this suggests is that processional space is a clearing in the midst of the city purposefully designed so that dimensions of civic life can reach a heightened level of explicit re-presentation. Most importantly it is an ascent rather than a flowing descent into material non-being (Turner’s argument), as representational space operates as a symbolic compression (from the Greek ‘symbolon’, meaning to bring distant worlds into contact) as opposed to a ‘regressive decompression’

images from Sanja Matsuri, Tokyo | Darren R. Deane

The Choreographers of the Festive City Introduction We are guided by a simple principle: that architecture serves to reconcile two order of space – the pragmatic and the symbolic. It is this dialectic of function and meaning that enables buildings to act as a creative hinge between the settings of everyday life, and the public space of civic events. [taken from Studio Ethos]

The aim of our initial investigation was twofold: firstly, to understand the active role architecture plays in the formation and accommodation of group symbolic activity such as festivals, rituals, processions, political demonstrations and parades, and secondly, to analytically map the process of civic accommodation and the resulting transformations of the urban fabric into a ritual topography.

MArch: DS19

Our territory, the historic pilgrimage route between Southwark and Canterbury, was covered by some 20,000 pilgrims each year and is now bequeathed by traditional practice and modern festive activity. A pilgrimage defines space by the marking of a boundary or the making of an axis. Progression along these sacred ways lays claim to ownership of the space and the sequence of spaces passed by the pilgrims may carry the bones of the story, clarified through halting in key locations (stopping points) which are cumulatively reflected upon at the end. David Wiles sums up this sentiment well : “a pilgrimage is a journey past a series of sacred locations to a destination vested with antiquity [Churches] that became processional spaces which created their own closed system of symbolic topography”. The rich connection both Southwark and Canterbury hold with pilgrimage, processional, ritual and festival activities was evident through early investigative studies. These territories acted as anchor points for more intense research as exploration here evolved from the Meso Scale (Town Space) which looked into the past, present and future performances in Southwark and Canterbury to the Macro Scale, (Remote Space) which documented the pilgrimage space between the two town spaces, down to the Micro Scale (Experienced Space) which provided in depth analyses of specific festive activities. This analysis addressed how the macro-programme of social drama and festive space modifies and overlaps with the micro-programme of everyday space.

the material and the mundane to the abstract and the elevated (profane to sacred). Each programme could be considered as a ‘world within a world’; a minor-world or microcosm. These entities stand in for and mediate between the world of which the architecture and humans are part. By doing so, the situated rooms have boundaries that far exceed the visually perceived walls. All programmes encompass an explicit and implicit order that severs to extend between the architectural and urban conditions. Design development was approached using three techniques. Firstly, a form follows function method; inside-out: form as the crystallisation of inner programme. An organic process that works outwards, fragment by fragment, it results in a conglomerate form which leads to the overall crystallisation of a programme and its rooms forming the architecture itself. According to this method, form is the net-result of the gradual coalescence of inner content-programmatic, volumetric, adjacent inner surfaces (linings), envelope. Secondly, the outside-in: Gross-Form derived through contextual analogy which involves working from the background to the middle ground to the foreground; from the city context to the room. The building is configured through the assimilation of contradictory urban characteristics and it is the architectural setting which serves to resolve any existing urban conflicts. The final technique uses a synthesis of the two to design from the inner to the outer and vice versa. These projects resolve urban entities which align horizons of the city with the experiential qualities of individual rooms. The designs turn to landscape, hidden geometry and perceptual space to provide limits and dimensions to the architectural settings, lending significance to the scenery by restricting it and generating proportion. Ultimately, we are interested in architecture that is relevant to its place, socially interconnected, and above all meaningful.

Guided by this festive framework, Design Studio 19s schemes are located across Southwark and Canterbury. Analysing the festive topography from three standpoints facilitated the development of programmes which are sympathetic woven into the urban fabric and respond to the immediate surroundings and the city at large. The Studio believes that architecture is more than an impartial vessel of functions and that it is an articulated spectrum of institutional life ranging from

Ancient pilgrimage [main route of investigation] Contemporary walking pilgrimage Pilgrims Way Winchester to London Pilgrimage Departure towards Rome

LONDON

BEXLEYHEATH

LONDON

Points of Interest [religious and non-religious] Festivals Pilgrimage stopping points

DARTFORD

CANTERBURY WINCHESTER

ROCHESTER

SITTINGBURNE

FAVERSHAM

CANTERBURY

london to canterbury pilgrimage | Aaron Fox + Damien Reiss Clayton

Performative Space Preliminary Studies: ‘Field Work’ Processional Space: London to Canterbury Pilgrimage The tradition of the Southwark-Canterbury pilgrimage began in 1170, upon the murder and consequent martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Although killed by four knights upon an altar in Canterbury, he had delivered his final sermon at Southwark Cathedral. The 65 mile walk from London to his tomb became an act of penance, a demonstration of faith or a rite of hope for those seeking a miracle. Over 200,000 pilgrims would make the journey to Canterbury every year. The slow place of a walk allows one to truly engage with ones surroundings, God and our inner self; of letting the outward journey of our bodies enrich and enable the inner journeys of our hearts and minds. Immortalised in Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, the journey has survived in spite of the destruction of Becket’s shrine and remains in 1538. In recent years pilgrimage has undertaken a revival. It is estimated that in Western Europe alone there are 6000 pilgrimage sites attracting tens of millions of visitors every year. Today, those making the journey are not only the devout but also include those searching for additional meaning in their life. The journalist Simon Reeve explains in his account of his experiences, “going on a pilgrimage, whether to Old Trafford, Memphis or the Holy Land, can provide a sense of purpose often lacking from life and much modern travel”. As Will Self puts it, in taking part in such a significant journey “thought [can] unspool from my arachnid mind and silkily entwine with the places I go”. It is undeniably a journey of self discovery and the desire for that experience is as prevalent now as ever. In this way, pilgrimage creates its own unique type of festive space, analogous with but different to those statically located within the city. It is a processional space; a progressive rite of passage to a heightened state of mind that is stretched over a considerable distance. The Southwark to Canterbury pilgrimage is the link that ties the two cities together and provides the basis for our investigations. “Place works on the pilgrim … that is what pilgrimage is for.”

expression, and secondly by flattening out and untwining the different stages to the pilgrims journey. “A pilgrimage is a journey past a series of sacred locations to a destination vested with antiquity [Churches] that became processional spaces which created their own closed system of symbolic topography. Whilst late nineteenth-century bourgeois theatre was preoccupied with psychological interiority, and thus favoured the representation of human beings enclosed in inner rooms, the medieval world preferred linear representations. Life on earth was part of a longer journey to another world” - David Wiles

FESTIVALS: The Crossbones Vigil Out of all the events we engaged with, the Crossbones vigil was the most ritualistic and inherently symbolic. A monthly vigil settled in a quiet one way street in the centre of Southwark, this event brought together an eclectic group of people who participated in the ceremony at varying levels. Because the setting seemed not to be ‘pre-saturated’ - fully prepared for the ritual - there was a spatial conflict between the members of the vigil and those who were without. The setting for this ritual was focused around a large gateway to the Cross Bones graveyard that was set close to the narrow road. Due to the restricted space there was constant fluctuation of the populated edge. When traffic moved past, the crowd were forced to compress and when it passed, the participants made the most of the full width of the road- the gravity of the shrine (gate) was not sufficient enough to hold the crowd together when it was given the opportunity to retreat back into the road. The position of the parked cars created sheltered crevices for those participants who were slightly wary of the activity and who wished to just observe.

- Rowan Williams

The unfolded Cathedral: Crossing the Ritual Boundary The pilgrimage does not end once you reach Canterbury but continues to Thomas Becket’s shrine. Once entering the nave, the pilgrim moves through a low tunnel to the site of Becket’s martyrdom, the point of transition from the everyday into the sacred. They would then descend into the crypt, the site of his original internment, before ascending and falling to their knees to enter the shrine. The journey around the Cathedral has particular ritual and process in itself. The following drawings depict this crossing from the profane into the sacred in its 3D and 2D setting, first in its typical convoluted and compact

Various organising objects were present to give structure and meaning to the ceremony. There was the constant smell from the incense candles that gently illuminated the gate for the full duration of the event. Only the members who gave themselves fully to the ceremony experienced a sensory connection. Through the medium of speech, music and poems the ceremony had varied forms of communication with the city fabric and the participants.

FESTIVALS: The Melting House | Alex Chinnock The Melting House offers an interesting case study as it is a 24 hour, unsupervised installation with a physical process taking place over a 3 week period, but the opening night was a festive event in its own right. ‘A pound of flesh for 50p’ is a life size two-storey archetypal house made from wax that will melt to the ground during the festival. It celebrates the history of an old candle-making factory that was based in Bankside a couple of centuries ago, using the context of the site to invoke memory. On the 26th September, we were invited as a group to the opening night. An outdoor event, bouncers on the ‘door’ permitted the chosen to enter, whilst iron railings spatially excluded those who weren’t and created a boundary to the festive event. The railway arches and adjacent buildings formed the remaining edges and directed attention to the house placed at the centre of the space. A free bar, BBQ and live band focused the crowd at the eastern end of the site which became quite cramped whilst a smaller number dispersed around the outside of the house. It was visibly and audibly festive with an atmosphere that spilled out over the pavement, intriguing passersby but with defined boundaries which both included and excluded. We then returned to the site periodically to observe the progress of the melting process as well as to document how passerbys were now responding to it, if at all. In comparison to the opening night where the iron railing fence created separation between those who were invited and those who weren’t, the audience was now completely separated from the house by the site boundary. You can look but you cannot touch. Due to its position on an empty piece of land alongside the main road, the audience is now those who chance upon it. It is not a destination but an unexpected diversion.

FESTIVALS: The Canterbury Parade Whereas the previous studies in Southwark have focused on single and static events, the nature of a procession is that of movement through the city. This analysis thus takes the form of a sequence of moments along the route at important phases of the parades formation, existence and dissipation.

Once it began moving the structure of the procession began to be influenced by external elements. At narrow points the participants and observers were forced to compress and interact along the fringes. The sound of the drums enforced a rhythm and caught passersby up in the atmosphere, the symbolic edges of the procession extending beyond its physical limits. At one point the parade paused for a while. In this breather the procession swelled and distended, its boundaries stretching to fill the available space in dialogue with the fabric of the city. The symbolic edge continued to push against the spectators, keeping them in line with the kerb edge and creating voids of space between the two groups. Here, the abstract edges coincided with architectural ones, as the leader stopped just beyond the road marking and the children subconsciously lined up behind. The parade came to a halt in a town square, compressing to fit within the space whilst the audience could swell to fit the entire space. Before long the procession had once again broken down into its separate cells, the individual emerging from the collective. Within a few minutes the construct of the parade had dissipatedthe participants were absorbed back into the city. FESTIVALS: The October Plenty As stated by Gadamer, “drama makes visible, the ethical harmony of life that no longer can be seen in life itself ”. The autumn harvest celebration of ‘October Plenty’ held in Southwark produces a tacit link between the seasons, weather, crop produce and the historic Borough market. The event begins with a small performance at the Globe theatre before making its way towards the Cathedral activating Bankside, the Thames river and market lanes along the way. An effigy paraded along the route provides an embodiment of the crops and food produce supplied to the borough. Its dismantling at the end of the event during the ‘Execution of John Barleycorn’ signifies the distribution of this wealth through the city.

The participants of the parade collected in the car park outside the Cathedral, at first existing as a collection of separate cells, depending on their school or community group. As the collection grew, the procession began to come to prominence within the city. Once ordered to assemble, the procession formally became an object, linearly ordered along the subservient backdrop of the courtyard wall.

Nave City Extension

Bell Harry Profane Space

Pilgrim Tunnel Transitional Space

Martyrdom Stagnant Space

Descent

Crypt Invocational Space

Ascent

Quire Devotional Space

Trinity Chapel Sacred Space

the unfolded cathedral | Damien Reiss Clayton

Edge of Inuence

Historic Edge

Atmospheric Edge

Policed Edge

Historic Edge

Imposed Edge

Populated Boundary (Fluctua�ng)

Ritual Edge

Perimeter of Control

Crop of the Charged Setting

Geometry and Order

Cemetery

Ritual Presence

• Crossbones gates and leader focus a�en�on • Candlelit, in�macy • Cars moving along one way street force ac�vity to compress at points

Peripheral Zone

• Parked cars and narrowstreet limits ritual space • Also oﬀer nooks to watch from

Zone of ParƟcipaƟon (Exclusive)

Spectator Zone (Excluded)

• Bouncers on door- sense of privilege • Central wax house should be focus, but forms backdrop to fesƟviƟes • Band and stage for background sound • Free bar- alcohol consumpƟon fuels noise as Ɵme goes on • Free food- people stay longer • Al fresco, unusual locaƟon,excitement about the unconvenƟonal, out of the ordinary experience • Lit by dramaƟc spotlights

• Noise and lighƟng spills out onto adjacent pavement • The party is visible yet unaccessible sense of voyeurism and curiosity

Zone of ParƟcipaƟon • Wax house is now the only focus on site • AdmiƩance is not permiƩed, only viewed from pavement

Spectator Zone • Wax house doesn’t exert presence, largely unnoƟced by passersby unƟl someone stops • InformaƟon on fence sign keeps aƩenƟon for a few minutes

Architectural Elements

the crossbones vigil | Joanna Jones + Kathryn Edwards

the melting house| Joanna Jones + Kathryn Edwards Opening Night 6pm 25/09/14

Melting Process 3pm 05/10/14

Urban m arkings

Physical Edge

Edge of DissipaƟ Physical Edge on

Edge of DissipaƟon Edge of DissipaƟon

Edge of DissipaƟon

Physical Edge

Physical Edge Symbolic Edge

Physical Edge Symbolic Edge Edge of Compression

Edge of Compression

Physical Edge

Edge of InteracƟon Physical Edge

Edge of InteracƟon Physical Edge Physical Edge Edge of InteracƟon

Edge of InteracƟon

Physical Edge

Parade Limits

Physical Edge

Parade Limits

Physical Edge

CongregaƟon Edge

Physical Edge

CongregaƟon Edge

CongregaƟon Edge Physical Edge

Physical Edge

Crop of theCrop Charged of the Setting Charged Setting

Geometry and Geometry Order and Order

Urban markings enforce Urban markings parade structure enforce parade structure

e e structur structur parade parade enforce kings enforce ar Urban m

the canterbury parade| Joanna Jones + Kathryn Edwards

festival: the crossbones vigil

festival: the canterbury parade

festival: the october plenty photos of festivals | Jacob Szikora + Georgia Follet

Life in the festive city “- of which we are all onlookers of one and the same event- is a unification at a distance” (Gadamer, 1986, pp. 59)

Design Studio 19 utilise drawing as a speculative and analytical tool as well as a representational device. Our drawings frame the depth of work, rich in both academic theory and practical research. This initial exploration has been progressed into schemes which are well integrated into the city using Capriccios and Cosmograms. Cappricios are speculative urban drawings, typically of a specific place, public square and or element of part of the city. They frame the city in a transformed state and often from a curious position. Such viewpoints are intended to stretch perception and to experience beyond the norm. This results in a semi-abstract of an urban scene. The Capriccio represents a fragment of the city in a festive state and depicts the city through the lens of previously identified spatial arrangements. Dissemination

Binding

Printing

Recording

Internal Observation

Festive Southwark

External Observation

Capriccio is a pictorial strategy based on ars cominatoria, depicting the city in an idealized state, or condition of charged meaning … (by) overlaying real and imaginary, physical and symbolic space, real and virtual, resulting in an distended circumference of meaning of a situation. Capriccios are images that explain and interrogate densely packed fields of potential meaning in the city. The capriccio does nto simply visualize, render or illustrate … but reinvent (relationships),. It paints and crafts in four dimensions (space, time, reality and imagination) architectural and urban visions.

i. cosmogram: the city as a process| Joanna Jones How can performance be turned into a memory of the city? It is impossible to touch or interact with the performance of the city without a vehicle; yet such unique creativity can only be continued through maintenance of the living heritage. Through recording performance by inscription, the resultant archive of words provides an afterlife to the act and through crafting and publishing a festival book, the chronicles capture the festive nature of Southwark through festivals such as Merge (studied as a group). The festival book is an artefact which, when catalogued in the store of stories can begin to make the intangible, tangible.

-Lucien Steil / The Architectural Capriccio

Similar to the Capriccio, a Cosmogram produces a ‘distressed programme’. In essence it adjusts familiar human uses or typology in accordance with a structure of continuity; a structure which is ontological and poetic rather than prosaic and functional. Not dissimilar to the impact that ritual has upon everyday life, the Cosmogram gives typical settings a ‘depth of circumstance’. Stretched and enriched in order to construct peculiar relationships, a Cosmogram re-describes architectural programme so that it becomes ‘oriented otherwise’.

The City as a Process Making the Intangible, Tangible The Extended Setting

ii. capriccio: the framed view | Kathryn Edwards

iii. capriccio: the incredulous thomas | Damien Reiss Clayton

Meso Scale

Macro Scale

Mediation of Scale

Micro Scale

Macro Scale

Introduction

Meso Scale

Capriccios + Cosmograms

ii. PEOPLE

Biographies | MArch I Aaron Fox

Damien Reiss Clayton

David Hawkins

Georgia Follet

From a young age the exciting challenge presented to architects to create new environments for people to live, work and play within has drawn me to a career in architecture. Architect’s reside in the unique position, orchestrating a team of professionals as they drive towards a single built solution that aspires to promote social and economical sustainability whilst accommodating the requirements from clients to local government My travels have granted me the opportunity to explore and integrate myself within differing cultures around the globe, having been to Morocco, America, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain and Germany to name a few. These experiences have broadened my perception on architecture and its context. Building within different social, economical and political environments presents endless exciting challenges as architects strive to formalise sustainable architecture. In the future I hope to continue my travels to stimulating divergent cultures around the world further revealing interesting obstacles for architecture to overcome. After completing my degree at Portsmouth School of Architecture I joined a small practice in Surrey for 26 months as a Part I Architectural Assistant gaining valuable experience in residential and commercial projects. Priding themselves in building relationships to produce successful lasting results the practice is a professional consultancy providing residential, commercial and retail design solutions internationally. My experience in construction and planning on a number of live projects has given me an understanding of the process from design brief to post practical completion. Having worked on a number of conservation projects it has been necessary to push the boundaries of the current building regulations. It has been required that I review the building regulation documents as well as speaking to building control officers to reach agreement over construction details that conflict with conservation conditions. My interest in sustainable, functional architecture drives me to create exciting spaces that engage with the natural tools given to an architect such as light and shade whilst being fit for purpose. A diverse space that has the ability to evolve with its users creates interesting architecture that tells a story long after the architect as gone. Through my combined interest in construction and materiality I strive to unite good design with the environment. I believe in people driven design that promotes socially sustainable architecture. The interaction between the public realm and the architectural intervention to promote lively, active buildings excites me. Designing beyond site specific territory to a broader city context that has the ability to accommodate the social, economical and political identity of place is important in achieving this intention. Enriching space by elevating site specific activity with architectural interventions to create new destinations reveals successful architecture.

Charles Garnier said that “… all that happens in the world is, in essence, only theatre and representation”. Garnier sees the world as an elaborate stage, and that life is a set of scenes charged with: drama, tragedy, comedy and action. With this in mind we all adopt poses, cast ourselves in certain roles, and observe others doing the same. Moreover it is this constant involvement in the theatricality of normal life that sub-consciously injects us with a love for theatre. Essentially theatre is an idealised representation of life; it can become “the school of the people and the glory of humanity”. Garnier concludes his treatise my reducing architecture to two typologies: the church and the theatre. Essentially both are theatrical in that we go there to watch spectacles; to the church to witness the spectacle of the divine, to the theatre to be moved by human spectacle. It is this constant involvement of the festivity that should have an impact on architecture. But how can architecture compliment, distract or make sense of this festive world in which we belong to? Architecture can serve this festivity; it can act as a backdrop of frame rich moments of festive involvement. Designing a building with this in mind from the start it enables the bringing together of many arts, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. It brings together sculpture, architecture, art, culture, theatre, poetry, dance, choreography, drama, music, acting and spectatorship (all artworks) into one totality. It is the bringing together of everything into one cosmos that makes for a thriving festive totality. It is also this thinking that agrees with the festive window opened by the German architect Gottfried Semper. The city is a composite product of our modern creativity. It’s a manufactured lithic entity that organises us, arranges us, socialises us and separates us. The city in which we walk in can be seen as a live recording of our cumulative memory. These frames, snapshots, recordings of memory are stored in the earth below us, acting as storage for each individual experience. One then has to ask what lies above? This is the world in which we inhabit consciously. This world has horizons, physical boundaries and hidden geometry as well as being a conscious storage of the current status. Therefore the architecture we develop can start to make sense of this. It can act as a mediation device between our unconscious living (acting) and the conscious living (normal behaviour). The buildings can attempt to bring vertical and horizontal horizons into temporary alignment, of which generates moments of totalities. Developing this methodology results in rooms that allow for a temporary inclusive reordering of the city, in where one is separated from the mundane everyday life. Someone once told me “people endeavour to complicate architecture today, making every move imaginable, producing a jungle of architectural justification. It is the simplicity of architecture that provides the ultimate.” The purest architecture can be achieved in the fewest moves possible.

The proverb “An oil lamp uncut is not bright, a truth not discussed is unclear”, implies problems are best solved through debate and a combination of ideas. A good example of how I prefer to synthesise something new from a combination of distinct elements has been within Studio 19 this year, and finding that the contrasting scales of domestic and institutional spaces are mediated by the process of ethnography and turning spoken language into recorded material. I would argue discovering interstices that make cultures and ethnicities distinct are also a great source of inspiration for an architect and should not be considered problematic. Since completing my undergraduate at the Bartlett in 2012 I aim to explore cultural identities through ethnographic documentation and oral history to then create tolerance of cultural difference in architecture. It is often our habitual practices that form our identities and it is the role of the architect to facilitate them. An impartial and considerate awareness of cultures within societies and their differences therefore is integral to architectural design. Studio 19 adopts an objective view of ritual and festive acts and how they overlay themselves on the city and its infrastructure. We do not take the latent multiplicity of cultures in cities for granted nor the transformative effects of festivals and ritual as a powerful form of cultural expression. Whether it is the ambient quality of a room or the strategy for an urban block, I have found these design moves are indicative of societies’ consideration of the amalgams of people that live and inhabit the built environment. Currently I am researching occidentalism and representations of London from Chinese authors at the turn of the century to further interrogate the extent an urban subject is translated through an individual’s observations and the mediums they choose to record that information. How as architects we create social and architectural space for distinct cultural identities and at what scale will be a continuing consideration in our increasingly global cities.

I enjoy creating playful and fun projects. I value pattern, texture and colour. I am passionate about the development of narratives that explore and take inspiration from the social and cultural context of a project. The rigorous level of group study and research undertaken in the first semester enabled has enabled me to develop a rich brief, drawing on, and inspired by the festive spaces and rituals explored in Southwark, Canterbury and Cologne. Observing and engaging in live events and witnessing the impact of festive activities on the City and its users was fascinating. The deep level of understanding and knowledge gained during the group study enabled me to design a set of buildings that facilitate the formation and accommodation of group symbolic activity. I also like camping, drawing and cycling.

Guy Adams

Jacob Szikora

Jonathon Oswald

Jack Rowlinson

Society, culture, community; the products of human interaction. These are the dimensions of design that I believe architecture should engage with the closest. As constructs these elements of our built environment become manifest most acutely in our cities. As an entity that is so much greater than the sum of its many parts I understand the intricacies and vibrancy of the city to be analogous to what can be achieved through the essential collaboration of skills and balancing of needs that characterises the role of the architect. My ambition is to develop the sensibilities and skills to make considered and bold interventions within the existing social and cultural networks of the city. The projects that I have engaged with have always been programme driven user-orientated schemes that materialise as new frameworks or infrastructures designed to integrate previously disparate conditions or systems in order to enliven a neglected space with a new significance. I believe in a clarity of function and an honesty of materiality as essential components of an architecture of integrity. I believe in an adaptable and accessible built environment that is aware of its own temporality and resist the folly of the edifice. The city is composed of many private and controlled elements that swim in a medium that is the public realm. This is were the life is. It is my understanding that the greatest architecture occurs where the built form artfully guides the public realm - it’s activity, sights, sounds, atmosphere - through the intervention, choreographing the relationship between individual, private, enclosed experience and collective, civic, contextual significance.

As a student and practitioner of architecture, I have been reluctant to focus entirely on the proposed without fully understanding the existing. I strongly believe that a deep desire to interrogate the complexity of ‘place’ is required in order to conceive successful proposals which may serve to heighten, improve or rectify place. As a part of DS19 I have developed the ability to appreciate a wider field of context through the creative study of places in a festive state. The events witnessed have revealed the not always apparent meaning of the architectural framing in which certain moments take place. In doing this, as a studio we have uncovered and interrogated spaces which have provided resonance beyond the basic requirements of warmth, shelter and privacy.

A city is for its people, without such, place lacks definition and purpose. While architecture obsesses with the iconic and the projection of city image, it excludes people that shape such images. What engages me in the city is the interactions between its people and architecture, investigating thresholds and fragments to reveal the city as a series of conflicts between the formal and political. It is between the formal and political that urban space exists, as a place of interaction and often the location of the ritualised affairs of the city and the procession of the everyday. As a student of Architecture and Planning, these are the sites that interest me most; working with the complexities of the city to develop architecture that responds to both people and place, recognising and respecting that these are two different and distinct scales. The threshold and transition between the two provides the basis for architectural intervention and place making. In my time travelling through Europe, I have spent time in cities either side of the once iron curtain and have been witness to how layers of history collide within different cities. Heritage that is considered both positive and negative contribute to the shaping of place and identity. The implementation of a tabula rasa unto cites at times of political upheaval often results in the creation of new festive and processional space in order to unite formal and political representations into single spaces. This has always raised a curiosity within myself as to how the places are shaped, what the underlying purposes are and what do they mean for citizens. I believe in an architecture that is true to self, one which is driven by function and context, finding architectural coherence between the two. It should be designed of its time and mindful of the past, respecting that the city is made up of layers of fragments and that new architecture is part of this stratification process. It is with this in mind that I pursue my architectural work at the University of Westminster

Having come from a technical background, my approach to architecture has always been a pragmatic one. Being part of DS19 has allowed me to explore the symbolic nature of architecture and weave meaning into my architectural response. The combination of research, theory, technical studies and environmental studies has resulted in a well-rounded project. The studio ethos and extensive period of research into rituals, festivals and processions has provided me with a new way of looking at the city and the interaction between people and the built environment. Examining the city in its activated festive state reveals previously unseen relationships resulting in a deeper understanding of place. This has lead to a richer programme and more sophisticated architectural response than previous projects. The urban strategy is a key part to my project; it includes the creation of a new public square and movement pattern, acting as an extension of Southwark’s festive territory. I believe that understanding of the existing site condition is crucial when approaching an architectural project. This understanding coupled with subtle, considerate interventions has enabled to me to transform an urban block interior, adding value to its immediate and wider context.

Victoria Thong

I believe that architecture is a cultural product. The ethos and methodology of the studio appealed to me because I believe that good intentions make good buildings and it is only through rigorous research and investigation of the sociocultural conditions of a place that we can begin to understand how to create meaningful spaces. The processional dimension of the city is one way in which this socio-cultural condition is enacted in a real and tangible way. Having completed my undergraduate course in Singapore, this studio represents my first project sited in a new city and the studio’s anthropological approach to architecture has provided an insightful way into designing for an unfamiliar condition which itself has led to some new ways of investigating and testing ideas that I found particularly interesting as a designer/ researcher.

Biographies |MArch II Camilla Bartz-Johannessen

My architectural interest span from large-scale civic projects to the small-scale dwellings; from previous time in practice I have gained experience of both ends of the scale through working on projects such as the renovation of Chateau de Versailles, competitions for schools and museums as well as single-family houses. I am particularly interested in the way in which architecture can facilitate movement, travel and tourism, both in urban and rural settings, through which it has the potential to generate cultural and financial growth. These topics, along with the architectural impact on genius loci, the identity of place and curating of landscape were explored in detail in my dissertation on the Norwegian tourist route project, Nasjonal Turistveg. This project consists of small-scale architectural interventions along scenic roads in remote regions, where the route itself is the destination and the architecture’s role is to enhance the experience of nature through juxtaposing it with the man-made. The dissertation analyses the impact and value of such a project and explores the relationship between architecture, tourism, landscape and identity. These topics were carried forward into my design project and translated to an urban scale, with particular emphasis on issues relating to architecture en route versus architecture as a destination. In this case it is the juxtaposition of old and new that might enhance the experience, and the contrast of the two enhances the appreciation of both. Responsiveness and integration of the site’s history and how this might (or might not) influence the identity of place through figurative iconography was important to the design project and brief development. On an urban scale I am also interested in thresholds within the city; areas where different urban characters meet and are juxtaposed. The brief emerged from research into local history and site memory, as well as social, cultural and urban analysis of Bermondsey that built on the idea of the festive and social programme working as an “urban stitch” within the city. It explores the potential to mitigate tension within the city through the everyday programme. This is unified further by the festive occasions that tie the city together socially, culturally and architecturally.

Charlotte Blythe

Dylan Main

I am interested in the study of human behaviour and interaction with the built environment. I believe that design should seek to reveal connections between places and people, while being accessible for everyone. Studio 19 is focussed on the human composition of the city that can be observed by examining the festive territories and layers of ritual activity in our urban centres. In this sense, as a studio we have sought to observe the everyday in a heightened state as a way of revealing the often overlooked layers of meaning that lie beneath the surface of mass gatherings and festive occasions. This way of understanding our cities has instilled in me a sensibility for observing social patterns and looking beyond what is immediately visible to the latent qualities of space and place.

Within the festive, ritualised and processional parameters of the studio agenda my work focused on the ceremonial dimension of the City of London, and the ancient institutional and political civic structures historically held responsible for governing the city’s trade and commerce. This interest was developed through investigation into the inner workings of Borough Market, a place observed to chime with the ideas of spectacle as developed by Guy Debord. Through this case study I began to untangle the relationships that have led to the stratified situation of commercialisation, globalisation and touristic “Spectacle” that the market now finds itself in. This is one with just faint undertones of the gritty industrial trade and commerce that once defined the character of the Market, the surrounding area of Southwark and the South Bank. The project led me through a journey in which events of the sensory, the symbolic and the political, and spaces of memory, archive, trade and commerce became connected through a journey of human movement. These themes were found to resonate throughout the macro, meso, and microscopic architectural context, and have been used a means to explore and describe the “Spectacle” experienced within Borough Market. Most importantly these have provided a series of readings of the city that have been implemented within the design process and programmatic development of New Leyhalmode. In connection with these ideas, a further interest has been developed in relation to thresholds, and their ability to mediate ritualized, ceremonial spaces and crowd behaviour, enforce political power, and act as hinges that blur and delineate between the sacred and profane.

Flora Cselovszki

George Kneale

Jade Pollard

Jamie Kirkham

My personal experience in architectural education is rather bittersweet. On one hand it is the most exclusive and stimulating journey one can endure on: the extensive, after hours studio activities with the same people for years feeling constantly creative and challenged by one another, on the other hand there are the long design discussions with the tutors who always manage to through you off balance and make you feel like you were so sure just a minute ago. This is especially true for the DS13 tutors who invite students to participate in large urban scale master planning challenges and aim to brainwash you according to very specific – mainly OMA dictated – ideologies, which gave me the ability to always question the building typology and how the programme can create a new architectural shape that throws all we knew about ideal spatial layouts on its head. For the second year of my Masters Diploma I chose a more subtle and perhaps more soulful approach in the name of DS19 ran by the new head of the course, who challenged us to thoroughly analyse human movement in the city dictated by specific rituals which has revealed some very interesting and unexpected human behaviour patterns that can definitely be taken forward into professional design post university. My aim is to keep the better bits of both mind set and add them to my own which is to always look for what it already there, and select the valuable bits and use them as foundation for the new. Throughout these past years I’ve realized that my personal interest always ends up being how the proposal can manipulate the existing. To generate a creative and challanging outcome, one has to thoroughly analyse the given, and then slightly disrespect it by taking it apart and demolishing certain bits – using the proposed to alter the existing but built on the important elements. Having worked in a London based residential firm prior to the course, I’ve learned that altering is more complex and requires deeper respect towards the site than building entirely anew. At the end of the nothing in architecture is sacred but the true intention to only build to make the existing better.

I was born in London just a stones throw from where my thesis project is based in the borough of Lewisham. However I spent most of my early years growing up, living in Brighton this is where my interest in architecture began to grown and was then cemented as I completed my Art Foundation at City College in Brighton. I then went on to Newcastle University which helped to refine the skills I had began to develop on my Art Foundation year and deeply increase my understanding of the built form and relationships between architecture and its users. On completing my BA I moved back to London and started working at Buckley Gray Yeoman, an award winning architecture firm based in the heart of Shoreditch who work on a range of projects in a variety of sectors bridging a vast range of scales. Lots of the their work is based in the surrounding area and across to Farringdon restoring and re-imaging disused or forgotten factory buildings. I chose to do my part 2 at Westminster because it offered a range of diverse studios, which would help me develop my theoretical understanding but also my digital representation. My final year in Design Studio 19 has pushed my level of understanding of architecture’s relationships with the city and those who inhabit it. I was develop my work on a further than previously possible pushing up to civic and agricultural scales, dealing with the elevated festive state and the minutia of the everyday.

My interests lie in the highly contextualised design which seeks to create a dialogue with the existing and the proposed. The key movements and rituals embedded into the urban grain can only enrich and heighten the experience of a project. Having a background in set design, I am fascinated by highly ritualised and heightened theatrical environments, the study of which lead me to write my dissertation of the re-territorialistation of Indigenous groups in Australia through the use of Aboriginal Tent Embassies. This examination of traditional methods of place-making through the rituals of alighting the sacred fire and the tectonics of Embassy construction can be transferred into my project design as it is closely related to the studio ethos. The studies of pilgrimage and it’s servant and served space have directly influenced my final project design; creating my own lateral drift to the Armed Forces Day parade my project enhances the spectacle and experience of the procession as a whole. The project itself has been enriched by my interests in tectonics and textures of the ritual spaces and I enjoy texturally rich schemes which interplay with light and shadow.

My passion for architecture has led me to travel extensively throughout Europe and the Americas. This has enabled me to experience a diverse range of architectural languages, ultimately finding a passion for urban patterns and how architecture can be woven into the urban fabric of the surrounding landscape. This passion for architecture as an intertwined fabric of the surrounding environment is a key driving force behind my own design ethos as well as that of DS19. The principle of architecture serving to reconcile two orders of space, the pragmatic and the symbolic, engaging the functions of everyday life and the public spaces of civic events. My educational experiences so far have motivated me to focus on the learning process and the design approach of each individual project. To be able to explore and engage in new ideas in the studio environment is something that has been integral to my architectural education thus far. Engaging and communicating with fellow peers and professionals about all aspects of design is something that I enjoy and encourage in others. Keeping the balance between deadlines and maintaining a high level of work is something that keeps me highly motivated. I look forward to carrying this motivation onto my further part 3 studies in the coming years as my passion for the subject has never been stronger. My experience from both part 1 and part 2 has prepared me well for facing any future challenges. I would like my degree to lead me into a future career that revolves around design with architecture being the main outlook as well as remaining open to any challenges that cross my path.

Joanna Jones

Kathryn Edwards

Pavla Krejcova

Sam Cady

I am interested in human interaction with the city. Design Studio 19’s ethos, with emphasis placed on creating schemes which are fully synthesised with its context on a meso, macro and micro scale, responded to my existing interest in buildings acting as a hinge between everyday life and the institution of the city. The Studio agenda provided the opportunity to examine human movement and the city using festival, ritual and procession as a tool. The challenge of viewing the urban context through a different lens has allowed me to build upon and in some instances re-evaluate my position towards the order of the city. This thinking is represented through my thesis project which aims to repair the disconnected urban realm between the festive South Bank and residential Southwark through the Store of Stories civic press, publishing house and archive.

My personal interests span from the broad development of grand urban design masterplans right down to the highly detailed and intricate interior design of individual works of joinery. Two years in practice allowed me to explore the full range of architectural scales and those that interact with the direct experience of people have proven to be the most fascinating. From the pure and sensitive use of materials to the careful and intellectual development of joint details, the tactile experience of the user is of the utmost in architecture and it is those architects that respect the haptic alongside the visual qualities of elements that I respond to most. The power of quality detailing, innovative illumination and carefully selected surfaces have in influencing and invigorating atmosphere within space is undeniable. Similarly the planning of urban schemes that seek to relate to human movement and environmental enjoyment has always been a background interest. How do we, as architects, create place amongst space? How do we respond to the passing of time and heritage in the 21st century? How do we foster community life within the broader city? I had the opportunity to explore these issues both through my design work and through my dissertation, an in-depth and enlightening study of the current cultural and built changes occurring in King’s Cross. The studio ethos echoes my sentiments and the focus on context, the human as user and architectural narrative has led to a scheme that is rich with meaning. DS 19 are fascinated by the dialogue between occasional and everyday space, between the practical and the symbolic order of place. It is the relationship between human experience and the fabric of the city which we are exploring throughout our work. In these ways, the programme of the Neckinger Pools seeks to transform the site from the everyday into the extra-everyday, heightening its participants and adjacent territories into a charged setting; a vivid cropped moment compared to the indistinct surroundings which lie at the very edge of ones consciousness.

Born in the Czech Republic, I studied languages- Mathematics, Descriptive Geometry and Art. I moved to London in 2007 to study Architecture and I completed my degree at Ravensbourne College and continued with Part II at University of Westminster. Since 2008, I have involved myself with a diverse range of projects, including retail, hospitality, commercial, historic preservation, exhibition and memorial spaces. This year the focus of the studio was to discover the latent remains of ritual topography that persist within the contemporary city, the contested dialogue between occasional, festive space, and the territory of the everyday. I have decided to focus my interest on pilgrimage and processional space specifically, as I consider building to be a series of spaces and thresholds; the route through it is a procession with various purposes. As a result, the journey through is not perceived only as physical activity but also as a spiritual activity. These are then marked with thresholds and symbolize a shift and a progress. I have learned how to design around series of experiences, from inside out in order to enable the city fabric to accommodate the program of ritual festivity or any other activity as this process is transferable. Building on the history of the site I have learned how to connect the project to the wider context, how to find new solutions that enhance the value of the site and the project, find a clever design through new ideas, preserve a heritage of the site and how that could be then meaningfully weaved into the hyper-modern, functional mobility of the 21st Century. This year’s experience made me look at the city fabric in a different way and see the interaction of crowds and individuals with a specific site as a clearly navigated routes with pockets of spaces and thresholds and intermediate spaces in between, both with deeper meanings.

I have a strong background in the arts, initially training as a graphic artist and communication theorist. Seeking to enrich my work I progressed into Architecture. Before embarking on the Master of Architecture programme I worked as a set designer, a Local Authority Planning Enforcement Officer, Planning Consultant, Designer lecturer and exhibition curator; as well as running my own design consultancy. My architecutral style explores how the value of work can be enhanced via intellect. Drawing precedent from both the classical arts and new media agencies. Often the work explores how multidisciplinary actions can enrich architectural aesthetic and the communicative effectiveness of traditional orthographic drawings. My pieces are complemented by the addition theoretical study and the musings of cultural theories such as Barthes, Baudrillard, Gramsci, Pallasmaa, Venturi et al., gathered from a previous life. This method of consolidation allows my work to become impregnated with satirical wit, playful semiotics and perceptional questioning. For me architecture is not about “style” or a school of thought but a product and depiction of society, a reference. Architecture creates inhabitable semeiotics, which can be used to decode and recode our social norms. Architecture is then a social service, a signifier in a complex, hyper-real, and subversive urban milieu.

iv. PROJECTS

Aaron Fox Damien Reiss Clayton David Hawkins Georgia Follet Guy Adams Jacob Szikora Jack Rowlinson Jonathon Oswald Victoria Thong Camilla Bartz-Johannessen Charlotte Blythe Dylan Main Flora Cselovszki George Kneale Jade Pollard Jamie Kirkham Joanna Jones Kathryn Edwards Pavla Krejcova Sam Cady

Re-appropriating Distant Fragments Aaron Fox | MArch I Southwark is a culturally rich borough in the centre on London with large communities of residents from 4 continents. This programme looks to showcase this cultural depth within London Bridge through the medium of artefacts and festival. A museum of translated artefacts from the cultures found within Southwark displayed to provide knowledge through both visual and physical involvement to visitors through dress and ritual re-enactments. Drawing on the cumulative experience of pilgrimage visitors embark on an internal typography that is visually stimulating, accumulating into a single elevated memory that culminates into re-appropriated host space. Foreign objects are exhibited in extimate space that re-connect themselves to the broader context of the city either through visual links or festive activity. The programme includes textiles and wood workshop spaces to aid in the creation of festival dress and objects for public events held on site. Spaces that accommodate the everyday activity of Southwark bringing together local communities in the creation of culturally significant celebration. The intervention explores the bridge between the structures of the everyday life and the ceremonial dimension of the city. This poetic friction between layers of the world (everyday and festive) hopes to produce a charged state of affairs that reveals ambiguous space. To remove festival nature from its everyday concealment the programme creates a contemporary typography that is influenced by the translation of relics. Relics are symbolic objects that passively reflect only so much meaning as they are given by their particular community. To assist a new community that is in receipt of a new relic often Reliquaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s are used to describe the relics origins and symbolic importance to its previous source. During the Liminal phase to translation it is an unstable period where the relic is prone to loss of identity. The memory fragments retained as referential objects from this journey are what helps re-stabalise the relic within its new setting. This programme looks to reinstate the pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury as a memory fragment and re-invent a contemporary

artefact in a landscape to allow the translation of artefacts to resonate into the manifold of the current realities in Southwark. The residents of Southwark in receipt of this programme and its objects have the understanding and knowledge to re-stabalise these objects. They are already undertaking their traditional practices within enclosed communities and it is this building that aims to bring these cultures from concealment together and showcase them to the city. A programme that hosts extimate objects and allows for their dissemination back into the city can bring value to an area of conflict or neglect. If this dissemination process was regulated through interactions with the secular and given back to the city, would its value have a greater understanding in the everyday? And would the everyday be able to promote its activities to the extended topography of praxis? The workshop spaces take reference from the exhibited symbolic objects and display community activity to the everyday. Thus exposing the ceremonial dimension of the city within the everyday. To ensure we bridge the gap between festive space and the institutional life of the city with this intervention we can categorise active space as 2 phases: Events that spatialise time. (Stable Space) Processions that temporalise time (Mobile Space) By combining the mobile space to the north of the site and the stable space to the south this intervention begins to blend the present private to public zones in Southwark. To achieve this the building has both a representational and active role within the city. By this method the value of the space created has the ability to grow as the community adopts the programme and resolution to the current urban tension is eased.

capriccio: the extimate space 42

research pod

host space

the decompacted pilgrimage

Stereotomy Damien Reiss Clayton | MArch I Where do the edges of rooms begin and end? At what point are finite chunks of architectural programme weakened by the infinite imperatives and possibilities of context? The creative interplay between a thing/room and its context is a paradoxical totality - resistant to scientific appropriation (a poetic delay of reason or function), but one that implicitly orientates perception, understanding and anticipations of the built environment, a latency we cannot do without. Processional and ritual activity provide “anti-structures” (Tuner,1995) that allow for a temporary, inclusive reordering of the city [personally seen in the Canterbury Parade & Crossbones ritual]. This alliance results in lateral programmatic shifts within the festive spatial field, turning once neutral spaces into places of observation. It is through this activity and involvement of ritualistic behaviours that elevates the symbolic and pragmatic, making the inanimate animate. The city is an ultimate expression of society. It is the synthetic product of our collectivity, our shared culture, economy, dreams, our conflicts and fears. It is a live recording, simultaneously mapping the territory of our democracy, continuously in state of being re-written. It is a recording that can organise us, arrange us, socialise us and separate us. It is a repository of history “a material artefact , a man-made object built over time and retaining the trace of time as memories”. It is the unconcealment of memory, symbolism and stone that provoked the programme. The proposed programme aims to unpack the lithic unconsciousness of the city to reveal the inanimate nature of stone [symbolism]. The programme is what Heidegger would describe as being an entity in a consecrated space oscillating between the world and earth: a mediation device. The building is primarily a modern Lapidarium (stone museum) vested with an auction room and votive domus. The votive domus (room within a room) acts as a site of pilgrimage for the London to Canterbury pilgrims. This architectural setting discloses all orders of space. It is the buildings intentions to actively promotes the festive topography acting as an urban corner stone. The Semperian inspired theatricality of the building

discloses the fragment for the viewer, dishonest concealment, evoking emotion and swallowing. The theatricality allows the building to frame individual moments of lithic awareness (festive moments) whilst acting as a backdrop for others. The building is a site of pilgrimage yearly, a site of human ritual cleansing monthly, and a site of individual festivity daily. The lapidarium is designed to allow for a temporary alignment of sunlight and object. It is this alignment that elevates the viewer and fragment to a symbolically higher and more conscious state, similar to that of processional activity. The fragments and rooms alike are poetically arranged to evoke emotion and awareness. The design depends on landscape, hidden geometry and perceptual space to provide limits and dimensions to the architecture. It lends significance to the scenery by restricting it and giving it proportion. Views are blocked by walls which are only pierced a certain strategic points and there permit an unhindered view. “The Hearth is prepared or built up so that it may be used to detach something for the earth and the world as a whole: a consecrated place dedicated to some entity ... detaching it symbolically from the world” - Gottfried Semper / Style

locating an ‘urban cornerstone’ 46

topographical section

cumulative totalitiy: book / object / city

capriccio: festive moments

Ethnography, Language and Welfare David Hawkins | MArch I for a pilgrim after completing their pilgrimage is to share their experiences. These experiences are idiosyncratic and often take place in locations a pilgrim found by deviating away from the main route. Recording a pilgrims experiences was the mediating process between the physical territory of the route and the more intangible supporting network of institutions cumulatively forming lines of communication. Similarly the ethnographic archive establishes the ground plane as physical connecting horizon between the domestic and the institutional that is initially cut and then populated with a folding facade to form the architecture of the classrooms, translation offices, GP surgery and archive.

dynamic territory

INSTITUTIONS

CA AD

The CSJ is one of many institutions that have head offices in London.

A. BRO

STI NG USE HO

B. BU M PAL

HA ING CK

C ACE TER

INS STM

. WE AL DR HE

CAT

D. HO

INSTITUTIONAL SPACE are

received,

recorded

LIA

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experiences

and retained by the library, represented by

NT ME

lines converging from the servant spaces to the institutional space of the CSJ (the statue of St. James)

Pilgrims’

USES

E. EN ISH

GL EF AG RIT

HE . ST. PAU L’S AL

DR HE

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G. CIT LL

Y HA

E CONFRATERNITY OF SA INT H. TH JA

SERVANT SPACES The 13 sites deviating away from the served route represent the servant spaces that are sites of drama and transformative experience.

S: MY

ME SIT E

Southwark Borough Council commissioned two reports from the multi-method research agency ESRO. They identified 7 ethnic communities within the borough as “poorly understood”. The groups passed unnoticed as they avoided support from the local authorities in part out of fear of discovery of the irregular status of their leave to remain in the UK. This had left people vulnerable to exploitation and unemployment. Migrant communities are nonetheless integral to Southwark’s cultural wealth and their cultural identities characterise large areas of the borough. The ESRO reports prove that ethnography, the observation and documentation of cultural practices, is critical to capturing anecdotal and statistical information to better understand migrant communities. The reports also revealed that language is a seemingly insurmountable barrier to many. In response to this I proposed an ethnographic archive that would house a school of English for Speakers of Other Languages and a third sector notary and certified translator. By equipping migrants with language as a tool “poorly understood” communities might more readily access welfare services such as the GP, police, and job and housing support. Erecting an Ethnographic Archive of Southwark in Borough, is a means to root ethnographic study in the iconic institutional landscape of London’s Southbank. The close proximity of the site to the Southbank promenade is intended to encourage lateral drift (a process of deviation) away from the prescribed route of the river. This physically aligns the practice of Ethnography with internationally famous institutions such as the Tate Modern and National Theatre that act as archives of art and gesture in their own right. The site therefore forms a point of mediation between the domestic grassroots community and the iconic scale of the institution across a larger urban scale. As part of our brief, Choreographics of the City, in a group of four I mapped the distribution of spaces, events and people involved with the pilgrimage between Southwark and Canterbury. Our conclusions were that there is an entire network of institutions that support the pilgrimage and an important act

P I C T O R I A L REPRESENTATION : SUPPORTING NETWORK OF PILGRIMAGE

axonometric section 50

LOCATIONS PILGRIMAGE ROUTE

field drawing

reciprocal relationships

RO O F

Orchard Economies Georgia Follet | MArch I In contemporary Canterbury the threshold between City and Country has increased. The ring road, industrial estates and cul de sac housing has extended the gap between the two territories, both physically and mentally. An opposition between the Urban and the Rural has been created; the Urban has absorbed the Rural as an Urban condition. The Rural is seen as an extension, interstice or background for the urban. Once in the midst of rurality, the ‘village’ of Harbledown has been consumed by the housing developments and motorways and now sits on the periphery of the city of Canterbury. On this border between the absorbed Rural and the Urban lie 10 acres of apple orchards. A displaced fragment of the Harbledown Orchards, on the historic site of a priory, Solly’s Orchard lies in the city of Canterbury and was used by Benedictine monks to mill Cyder during the 13th century. In 2013 Justin Welby waged war on the likes of pay-day loan companies like Wonga, instead backing community based nonprofit credit unions as an alternative to the sky high interest levels. The Kent Farmers’ Credit Union is a community co-operative providing much needed financial support to local farmers and producers. In return for small loans to develop their businesses, members plant orchards, with the resulting harvest being used to produce cyder. In turn, the profits from the cyder sales are put back in to the Credit Union. The relationship between the City and Country has become diluted. The rural is seen as an extension, interstice or background for the urban. The proposed Cyder Mill, Inn and associated agrarian festivals and rituals seek to address this imbalance. A Harvest procession links Harbledown Orchard (Rural), Solly’s Orchard (historic City fragment) and the proposed Religious Precinct Orchard (Sacred). This ‘bringing in’ the harvest will generate a temporary, inclusive reordering of the City, allowing the Rural to re-inscribe itself in the urban territory and establishing a dialogue between the three orchards. No longer merely an extension, the Rural is brought into the heart of the City.

G +2 Pilgrim Hostel Rooms

THE WELBY INN

G +1

Farmers credit union back office Pub function room/ Ritual Prep

THE WELBY INN

G +0

The Welby Cyder Inn Farmers credit union meeting spaces

capriccio: the feeders and the fed

the Welby cyder inn: exploded plans

the Pagan Wassail ritual: 19:00 / 17th Jan

the allegory of bad government: modern tensions between city and country

THE WELBY INN

the Pilgrim path: the overlap of the sacred and the profane

Unfold - Enfold - Refold Guy Adams | MArch I Urbanity is a constituting context moulded and adapted by the legacy of festive action hosted. The way we navigate the city is choreographed by the tacit understanding of the festive grain of the spaces. Markers, anchors, malleable edges; these form the explicit residue of the occasion that has been enfolded and refolded into the fabric. This project understands there to be two cities; the elevated form of occasion and it’s neutral partner of the everyday. Festivity is the Omphalos, the axis that binds them. Through extensive exploration of this binary of urban states our group research revealed a series of spatial mechanisms woven into festive activity that, although appear transient in nature, leave a lasting impact on the urban condition. Appropriation (the claiming of a space via human occupation), Reorientation (the shifting of participants’ attention towards specific urban artefacts) and Distention (the expansion of the realm of the street into internal built fabric) are the three ways by which festive and ritual activity generate the elevated symbolic urban condition. With each repetition of the cycle of elevation to the symbolic and decent back to everyday a new layer of meaning is added to the city. Every elevation reveals the festive pattern beneath the everyday. This is an ‘unfolding’. When the festive state returns to neutral the effects that the festival has on the space is hidden again but incorporated. There is a new understanding of how to use this space. This application of meaning is called the ‘enfolding’. This process repeats and repeats. With every repetition the tacit understanding of the festive alter ego of the space is reinforced. This is the ‘refolding’ This project aims to harness this cycle of enrichment that festivity offers to reinvigorate neglected parts of the borough of Southwark and reconnect the vast and varied culture of the community territory of the borough with the ‘shop-front’ that is the South Bank territory. The proposal is a Treasury that accumulates and redistributes cultural wealth via an archipelago of enriched neglected spaces on the border between these two territories. The Treasury is a new infrastructure that facilitates the four phases of festivity;

organisation, creation, enactment and recording. The primary architectural intervention is a place that brings the recording and organisational phases of the programme into an intimate spatial relationship that allows each cycle of a festival to build on the knowledge recorded at the end of the previous cycle, thus closing the loop. Built up of many layers of stone brick, the perimeter element houses the Treasury Archives and forms the long-lasting structural exoskeleton. Suspended from this perimeter is a light-weight timber core housing the organisational zones, adaptable to the changing festive expressions of the Southwark community. Together these two elements frame and address the newly-liberated public realm that creates a unique urban connection between the residential community territory and the South Bank territory and is host to Southwark’s rich calendar of festive enactments. At ground level the Treasury adapts to not just accommodate but to encourage the appropriation of the structure, the reorientation of attention during festive occasion and the resulting distension of the street-scape into the Treasury. Although the general form of the building respects the urban format of the surrounding buildings at the road junction the envelope subverts the typical barrier that these buildings create by introducing a series of large hatches that open to maximise permeability of the facade at ground level during the highest festive moments and provide sheltered instances of pause during the everyday condition. The public realm flows through the scheme allowing activity and use to come to the fore and the built intervention become a facilitating backdrop, an infrastructure, for the festive cultural expression of Southwark.

cosmogram: a meaningful distribution of space 58

phase 2: creation & preparation

phase 3: enactment

a new infrastructure supporting the festive cycle

Reclaiming All Hallows Jacob Szikora | MArch I Using the crossbones burial site as a starting point, reclaiming All Hallows is a project about fragments or the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;things left behindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, in particular looking at the mementos and offerings left at the shrine to the Winchester geese. The project begins by identifying an existing fragment in the city, namely the derelict church of All Hallows which was damaged during the WWII, and looks to re-frame the object in relation to its context. This re-appropriation of the site uses the proposal of an archive facility and performance venue to tie the scheme in neatly to its wider context of Suffolk whilst the composition of the site serves to activate the immediate context of a homeless hospice and adjacent residential areas.

construction section 62

extracted arrival sequence

site plan

stairwell

Hallows square

Rebinding Topographies Jonathan Oswald | MArch I The pilgrimage via Francigena and the modern cultural procession on Bankside demonstrate a shift in Southwark’s festive territory over time. The result is an area of London made up of layers of history, with fragments remaining that elude to these complex pasts. Michel de Certeau states that:

“the way the plinth reorganises the connection between a building and its site affects not only one’s experience of what is placed on the plinth, but also - and especially - one’s experience of the city that is outside the plinth.’ They ‘reinvent urban space as an archipelago of limited urban artefacts.” - Aureli,P.V. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. 2011

‘it is the very definition of place, in fact, that is composed by these series of displacements and effects among the fragmented state that form it and that it plays on these moving layers’ - de Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. 1988. The proposed building is transitional between past and present, between the historic line of the object and the modern Bankside. It aims to transition between the object trajectory that follows the pilgrimage route (thus places of worship) into the City of London and the modern cultural procession along the Southbank. The programme elements seek to resolve confrontation between these territories through the interaction with and creation of public space. Each territory holds different a processional flow and the programme aims to materialise the confrontations between these. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provide the medium to do this. The Tales are a representation of society, following a group of Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. These Tales have materialised themselves through new forms of media as they have emerged, having begun as 84 handwritten manuscripts and provide a means to translate from the historic to the modern processional routes as society has changed over time. Elevation is used as a tool to visually connect the building to Southwark Cathedral and the Church of St George the Martyr, as this signals the beginning of the pilgrimage route. This elevated topography sees the city as a series of islands, an extracted topography away from that found at ground level. The process of elevation is noted by Aureli in discussing Mies van der Rohe’s use of plinths, stating that:

At ground level the urban topography is reorganised to create new urban spaces and routes. The ground floor of the building then becomes an extension of these spaces, creating a fluctuating festive space that inhabits both building and city, bounding these topographies and defining the beginning of a transition through enrichment to the elevated topography of the city.

the urban archipelago 66

capriccio - framed space

street as frame

elevated topography

Treasury of the Intangible Jack Rowlinson | MArch I The proposed buildings articulate the boundaries of the site whilst giving space back to the public in the form of a new urban square. Topographic alterations along with an outdoor stage and street furniture encourage integration, performance and exhibition. Minor interventions to the urban block create a new movement pattern drawing people through the site.

FUTURE

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Culture is dynamic and in a constant state of transition, it influences and is influenced by the views and traditions of others. We are in an age of rapid globalisation, with increasing flows of information, technology and capital. While this provides new opportunities and facilitates the integration of communities, it runs the risk of neutralising unique local cultures, leading to a loss of identity. For this reason managing the benefits of integration and protecting cultural identity requires a cautious approach. A management policy should investment in local skills, knowledge and resources in order to foster development and creativity. Despite the growing discourse surrounding the need to safeguard intangible cultural heritage, the heritage management system in England fails to recognise or address the issue. Heritage management in England is based on the National Heritage Acts’, which focuses solely on the management and protection of tangible heritage. The programme mediates between the tangible and the intangible. The programme will house the headquarters for intangible cultural heritage in England, accommodating an active research team and providing space where experts from English Heritage, UNESCO and other institutions can meet to identify and document England’s heritage. In order to promote cultural activity of the present and future, the programme will house educational facilities available to the Southwark community and local schools. The scheme is twinned with The Globe Theatre’s education programme; Sackler Studios and provides additional studios and community performance and exhibition space. Since the Medieval period Southwark’s South Bank has been a centre for entertainment and festivity. Through the 16th century the area was known for its inns, brothels, bear pits, and most notably its theatres. The site sits on the footprint of the 16th century Bear Gardens, a facility for popular ‘animal sports’. Today the South Bank has retained its reputation for entertainment and festivity and is home to the Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern and hosts a number of festive events. To facilitate existing and future festivities the project’s urban strategy acts as an extension of Southwark’s festive topography.

PAST cosmogram: field of influence reconfiguration of the processional route

architecture as a backdrop: artefact

architecture as a backdrop: performance

political framework facilitating festivity

Processing the City and the System in Elephant & Castle Victoria Thong | MArch I “Architecturally, the Elephant and Castle was a pretentious disaster”... but it is in “those left-over buildings, it’s here that we find the real creativity of civilisation. You can spend less money and you get more freedom- you can try things out” - How Buildings Learn, Steward Brand

The project is a proposal for retaining and reordering the existing Elephant and Castle shopping centre as a treasury. Treasury 1: Safekeeping of things of value against threat a proposed master-plan that accommodates existing patterns of use instead of the complete erasure of whole sections of the city as seen in the earlier eviction and demolition of the nearby Heygate Estate. The master plan proposes the maintaining of the subterranean pedestrian subways and murals, the cruciform internal shopping street of the shopping centre and traders market contained within the moat of the shopping centre. Treasury 2: A depository (a room or building) where wealth and precious objects can be safely stored. A new Elephant and Castle Archive and local history library will be inserted into the existing structure of the shopping centre. The Archive itself is supported by ancillary programmes contained within the shopping centre; products of local artists, film-makers, musicians, activists and urban researchers. Rituals and processional movements occur daily in the city in two states- the neutral, benign and everyday state of our daily activities and movements and the elevated, festive state of processions and pilgrimages that are endowed with symbolic meaning. The project begins with a detailed mapping of the everyday and elevated rituals that can be found beginning in Southwark and ending in Canterbury. Elephant and Castle provides a separate territory that acts as an anti-thesis against Southbank and Canterbury. It is however a point along the pilgrimage route from Borough High Street to Canterbury and hosts a range of festivities in its vicinity that is distinct to the specific character of the area.

As a core area within Elephant and Castle and the one of the busiest roundabouts in London, the shopping centre and various public institutions around the Elephant and Castle roundabout is a site of constant activity and movement. As one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe, it’s also now the site of intense social drama and urban analysis. Borrowing from the writing of John Dixon’s Lordship of the Feet, the chaotic movement within the Elephant and Castle roundabout is mapped into 3 modes of movement, namely- Commuting, Strolling and Processional Movement. The project looks specifically into the processional movement that takes place in the site- a storytelling odyssey performed by artists in residency at the shopping centre, an urban research “walk-shops”, anti-gentrification protests by grassroots groups, a Requiem for the Subways to give the 105 year old subterranean network of pedestrian walkways one last swan-song before they are filled by Transport for London. Processing the System and the City in Elephant and Castle The intervention will introduce a new series of spaces that are designed-systems that facilitate a particular mode of movement. Each space is designed to be specific and controlled in its programmatic-brief, but are activated by other systems through its physical adjacency to another system or temporary occupation by users of another system (hinge points) or symbolic connections further afield. As a designed system, each route is processional by default- whether they are everyday journeys or elevated symbolic pilgrimages. Each user of the space is a pilgrim moving from on beginning point to a destination. These spaces however function as a subset of a larger urban environment dominated by the Flâneur. The lower-ground floor (the expanded sunken market/ festival square) is a designed as an extension of an endless field which is the city- The City of the Flâneur . The upper levels (social enterprise offices, artist workshops, urban research laboratory and local history library and archive) within the shopping centre are designed as armatures- The System of the Pilgrim.

Rituals imply a “near-frozen relationship between space + event” -Sequences, Bernard Tschumi existing topographic performances in the field (extended) 74

view of shopping centre entrance foyer

commuting system

strolling space

The Leathermarket Archives Camilla Bartz-Johannessen | MArch II The Leathermarket Archive straddles two urban conditions of contrasting characters: the mixed-use, dense historic city and the single-use post-war housing blocks. The premise for the brief is the possibility for festivals to act as an “urban stitch” – connecting parts of an otherwise fragmented city. The initial group study of festivals in the city, Choreographics of the City, examined the way in which festivals are either accommodated or imposed in the city and its built fabric. The individual project investigates the idea of the festive and social programme as “urban stitch” further, and how tensions that exist within a neighbourhood in the city might be mitigated through the everyday programme. This is further unified by the festive occasions that tie the city together, socially, culturally and architecturally. The brief was driven by three key factors: an urban analysis of the fragmented “patchwork” that exist around the site, investigation into the local history and the site memory, and finally the local community who form the main user group of the proposal. In short, the project aims to bridge the divided neighbourhoods surrounding the site in the Leathermarket Gardens in Bermondsey through a community-based programme, combined with a local history archive. The latter is proposed relocated from its current location on Borough High Street. The new facilities will enable more of the archival content to be made accessible to the public. It will also include a visitor centre for the area’s rich industrial history, in particular of leather production, which took place on site until the 1970s. The project will thus attract visitors from outside as well as from the local communities. By introducing new cultural institution that has a civic significance the project established links that go beyond Bermondsey. The site is located in Bermondsey, an area that was once London’s (and even Europe’s) centre for leather working. Today there are no remaining leather tanneries in operation; the only remaining building from the industry is the Leather, Hide and Wool Exchange adjacent to the park. Most of the tanneries and buildings associated with the leather trade were entirely damaged by bombing during the WWII. However, research and

historic maps of the area give reason to assume that the old brick structures that once were used in the tanning process on the site remain intact. In most cases they were simply buried by rubble and demolition waste after the WWII bomb damage. Excavations and archaeological digs in the area have uncovered remains of similar structures nearby. The brief therefore assumes that these structures exists on site, and proposes to excavate three sections of leather tanning pits. These will be incorporated in the new archive as part of the exhibition space. Some of the old structures will also be used for small-scale leather tanning in the workshops, where leather and paper for bookbinding will take place. In addition to the local history archive and the bookbinding facilities the scheme incorporates programme that is currently located on the site, but in inadequate facilities. These include Bermondsey Village Hall, a small sports area belonging to the adjacent Snowsfield Primary School, and the offices for the Leathermarket JMB who manages 1.500 homes surrounding the park. The design has been highly influenced by the site history, and the architecture acts as a backdrop along a processional route.

COMMUNITY

URBAN STITCH : PROCESSIONAL ROUTE

“The experience and memory of humankind are laid down in layers in the physical environment, concretely and graphically. Every new part exploits ancient forms, materials and ways of making. Building is, at base, a sign of hope, a sign of society’s belief in future, a gesture forward in time.”

external view

- Carlo Scarpa, excerpt form the book ‘Layers’, by Anne-Catrin Schultz, Stuttgart, 2007

processional route to show 78

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internal view

axo of festive activity

Project Name Charlotte Blyth | MArch II The project is a therapy centre in Southwark for individuals with mental health illness. It is not a secure unit but provides respite and rehabilitation for individuals between hospital and home who would benefit from further support and therapeutic intervention before re-joining their day to day lives. The complex social history of Southwark has seen religious, political and festive regions of suspended order within the area that has given it the unique character we know today. It is the story of the people who were, and still are, attracted to the region to seek sanctuary that have become the focus of this project. The site is located on the edge of the old churchyard of St. George the Martyr Church on Borough High Street. The site shares borders with four therapeutic territories that include: the sanctuary of St George the Martyr Church; the festive territory of pilgrimage and procession along Borough High Street; the John Harvard local history library and St. Georgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden. These disjointed territories are absorbed into the project and their organisation reexamined in an effort to expose the therapeutic potential of the everyday. In light of this, the programmatic focus of the scheme has not only been to provide support for individuals during the various stages of recovery, but also afterwards, as part of the ongoing social support network that exists throughout Southwark to help people maintain their health and wellbeing while living in the community. In response to the institution, with which Southwark has a particularly notorious past, with examples such as Bethlem Hospital and Marshalsea Prison that have become synonymous with oppression and poor living conditions, a driving force behind the design and organisation of the programme has been social inclusion and integration. With this in mind, the design is based on the journey of individuals moving through the stages of recovery towards reentering the community and living at home. The private residential and 1:1 therapy spaces at the top of the building are highly controlled and regulated to encourage the feeling of safety and the sense connection, before the spaces gradually become more exposed to the public ground floor as you descend through the building. Exposure to the wider

community and stories from the past are intended to encourage a sense of history, place and belonging in users of the facilities encompassed in the scheme. The in-between is addressed throughout the intervention, with individuals suspended between the institution and their home, relapse and recovery, privacy and the public city. This suspended state is is made manifest in the central void space that is based on the idea of the Oratorio from ancient Greece, which brings together the separate elements of the site in a region for conversation, communication and chance encounter. The oratorio itself is given form by human interaction but structured by the territories that each announce themselves in different ways specific to the form of therapeutic intervention with which they are associated. The conceptual dependency of the therapy centre on the supportive therapeutic territories has been translated into a physical dependency, whereby the private therapeutic services are entirely supported by the structure of the public areas. As a result, the construction of the public area is designed with structure in mind from concrete and brickwork, while the therapeutic spaces are intended to provide residents with control over their environment and are constructed from lightweight flexible materials such as steel and timber.

opportunity, festive activity and community integration

in-between institutions and therapeutic territories

connecting therapeutic territories of the church, festive, garden and local history library

Images of Model 01 Between institutions and territories

in-between and the oratorio. a space for stories, communication and encounters

announcing the garden

Proposal for New Leyhalmode Dylan Main | MArch II

Fish Market trade space as sensory ritual.

Anchor Public house as gathering space of sensory ritual.

spot and tography Tourist pho ens as space of public gard spectacle. ritual and

Dock to Serve Fish Market

tive ma rfo Pe le tac ec Sp

NEW LEYHALMODE Ground Floor Plan in Elevated Festive State

le tac ec Sp al l litic itua Po d R an

October Plenty Harvest Processional Alignment [Clink St.] Institutional Space Winchester Palace Remains as space of Political Power and Memory.

Golden Hinde ship as symbolic of merchant past.

Ritual Gathering spot.

Cathedral grounds as symbolic gathering location.

erty Trustee Prop

the Symbolic, Politics, Sensory Ritual, Memory and Archive.

Tourist photography spot as space of ritual and spectacle.

Extension of Beadle St. Institutional Axis and jounrey conneting

A former institutional building for the political resolution of disputes relating to market trade and commerce. The project is for a new political headquarters to serve and re-politicise Borough Market, and a fish market that acts as topographic extension to the Market’s current function as a service anchor to the local community. Both are located within the context of Borough Market and at the end of Beadle Street that currently exists as the major connecting tissue between Borough Market’s institutional spaces. The ambition of the project is to provide a solution to a politically and socially damaged institutional structure in which there is a growing divide between the Trustees of Borough Market and the Market Traders. This has occurred for a number of reasons, the most important being the purchasing of property capital on adjoining streets by Market Trustees that is subsequently leased to global food and drink corporations. It is an act that represents corruption of their role as the governors of Borough Market’s independent commercial, ethical and social framework. Such commercialization is additionally realised in the increased introduction of franchised and branded businesses to Borough Market’s trade spaces. Over the past two decades this has resulted in a major decline in the profits of the Market’s whole food trades and has put the Market’s integrity and future in jeopardy. The introduction of a new fish market is therefore anticipated to strengthen and reinvigorate Borough Market’s whole food trades and re-connect the trustees with the foregone historic, symbolic, institutional and social roots of the market. The relevant ancient livery companies of the City of London Corporation, formerly responsible for governing the city’s trade and commerce, have been engaged with the project’s programme to provide valuable knowledge and expertise. This attempts to preserve the market as a functioning centre of social activity, consumption, and service for the local community and food economy. It is hoped that this will limit the Market as a place of touristic ‘spectacle’ in which foods are competitively displayed and exhibited as artefacts to be documented through photography rather than traded and eaten.

Ornamented facade symbolic of Southwark Cathedral’s historic Wealth and

political power.

Capital.

SITE RELATIONSHIPS 0

site plan 15

20M

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cosmogram: site relationships

VOTING BOOTHS Political Ritual and sensory engagement with the industrial performative processes of the fish market.

NEW LEYHALMODE Political, Performative and Symbolic Spectacle

north elevation

NORTH ELEVATION

section of spectacle

Whilst institutional user groups vote on market based policies derived in the debating chamber, they are immersed within a sensory environment that has been designed to re-engage them with the typically background, unseen industrial and performative processes that occur within the fish market. A dialogue is created between the two through the interplay of materials, levels, views, light and shadows cast by meshing that mirrors the fishing nets beyond. Users experience a discourse between the political ritual of voting, the performative ritual of the fish marketâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial processes, and are reminded of the defining character, ethos and independent nature of Market trade.

internal perspective: voting booths

Light Brutal Flora Cselovszki | MArch II Light Brutal is a new typology of a Temple, designed based on the modern day rituals of a city Religious architecture can perform a critical function in relation to this egoism (ultimately as painful as it is mistaken), because of its capacity to adjust our impressions of our physical - and as a consequence also our psychological - size, by playing with dimensions, materials, sounds and sources of illumination Instead of creating an imaginary festival or festive procession, the project aims to create an imaginary space for an existing, every day and common procession type – the pilgrimage of a pedestrian – as a form of an urban ritual. The proposed building breaks up the solid thresholds and the inverted ITV Studios and leads the pilgrims through the most desired insights of TV the production process. The existing building has the necessary large recording studios but has only one smaller studio with a view of the city, which on such a prime location and with a new pedestrian bridge leading directly to it is a wasted opportunity. Therefore the proposal provides adequate spaces for smaller shows to be recorded as well as the urban pilgrim (the visitor) to become the live audience that exchanges as they walk along the building. The design generates dense layers of the different users as none of the rooms are entirely enclosed and therefore each space has at least two different users and programmes. The areas for viewing are deliberately small and narrow – designed for short pauses - to get a moment and a feel but not to witness the entire show. The tower creates deliberate moments of contagion as the public always stop and stare when they see a celebrity in real life. As ITV is the place for such sightings, the tower creates the environment for the celebrities to be in a relatively secure and controlled environment whilst the public can get a brief close up. The design gives the full modern day urban pilgrimage experience infused with the obsessive celebrity culture which is the most attractive cause for public contagion. The focus is to capitalise on the multi-level pedestrian paths on the South Bank and use that to generate a new building typology. The site is indicated by the assumed erection of Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge connecting Temple Station on the North side with the

ITV Studios on the South. The proposal builds on the existing ITV Studios both programmatically and physically. 50% of the new is always already there. (Jean Philippe Vassal) As the building is ‘of no architectural vale’ according to the Conservation Area Consent, and adds very little to the area’s focus on lateral public movement and making buildings inviting, the design challenges the existing situation by selective demolition and the erection of an entirely new building, that is to host the vertical processional route leading through spaces offering insights into ITV’s smaller productions and recording taking place within the tower. The highly controlled TV production and live show recordings facilitate limited audience participation with advanced bookings. The proposal inverts the overly-enclosed, limited TV production activity, providing an open platform for smaller shows or celebrity interviews to take place and invite the public to interact with it and become part of the show. The design is heavily influenced by the characteristics of the experience of climbing the Cologne Cathedral’s Tower – dark and narrow stairwell, limited views and most importantly the extensive physical journey required to get to the top among large exposed concrete wall surfaces. All sacred buildings and temples present some sort of exaggerated architectural elements to create a specific atmosphere which in this case is the staircase. The idea of the multiple uses of steps and split internal levels, a means of creating or breaking up thresholds and linking one function with another, has been the interest since the first semester and has dictated the design decisions. Light Brutal is a manifestation of the tiresome journey of a pilgrim through which the glimpses of city views are framed as urban treasures and light rays represent the brief insights of one’s inner self along the pilgrimage.

capriccio: the urban pedestrian pilgrimage 90

sectional threshold drawing

contextual atmospheric section

capriccio: crowdology of the urban levels

The Forgotten Sacrifice George Kneale | MArch II My thesis project stems from a desire to reconnect people with the ritual sacrifice they inadvertently a part of by eating meat. I feel that there is a real disconnect and apathy about where food is coming from and the process by which it has got there. The Abattoir will become the main built form on the project but have a series of community buildings and consultation and educational services that will create a series of civic spaces extending the current urban condition. The Forgotten Sacrifice deals with connections to the community through additions of civic and recreational space. Civic presence and agricultural representation are themes that run throughout the project through the mediation of scale between industrial agricultural and domestic. The built form of the project has a multitude of influences and intentions. The site in Deptford previously housed a shipyard that built ships during the Napoleonic wars, when this become obsolete it was transformed into a cattle market that lasted another 50 years. Since then the site has been derelict. The Olympia Warehouse is the only remaining building on the site but is now Grade II listed. Internally the cast iron structure is incredibly ornate. This is an example of how industry used to be celebrated and decorated and an integral part of a functioning city. As technology and economy has taken over industry has been pushed from the city and reduced to mere necessity and nothing more. It is the celebration of form and functioning industry that began the architectural form finding in the project. Further strategic planning made clear that site would have to remain in part as a functioning wharf. Some of the surviving wharf buildings on adjacent sites gave clues as the how the form could develop in keeping with its surroundings. This began to drive forward the choice of the brick arch, brick as a material is familiar and abundant in the immediate context, but also the further reaching context. During our studio research trip to Cologne I began to develop an interest in the relationship and atmospheric conditions within churches and cathedrals. There was a sense of awe that despite not having any religious affiliations of my own I would feel in

these places of worship. I began to look at what architectural features are left after all the religious iconography and paraphernalia are stripped away. This then began to determine aspirations regarding the scale and the spatial relationships of my project. Using scale and techniques identified from a range of religious, agricultural and industrial buildings, I created a built form that housed, celebrated and gave access to what is now a forgotten sacrifice. The rest of the site accommodates a range of different buildings/functions/spaces that break down the scale of the site and allow it to lock cleanly into the community it serves. In his book Food City CJ Lim writes, “Food is an intrinsic and defining aspect of a city’s identity. It’s smells, textures and tastes manifest a city’s cultural heritage, define its social habits and bring vitality and joviality to its streets”. I believe that moving industry out of the city has undermined the relationship a community has with its food and its origins. By bringing the Abattoir back into the city I believe this relationship will be re-ignited. In his book the Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture George Hersey writes that early temple architecture is formed from the reordering of animal remains following a sacrifice to the gods. This was to celebrate the animal and even in death it was remembered and reconstructed to continue into the next life, whole. It is this celebration of the animal and poignancy of its death that will be paramount to the Forgotten Sacrifice.

view from observation loop 94

site plan

long section: formal/inhabited/festive

mediation of scale

Pre-Conditioning for the City Jade Pollard | MArch II A former institutional building for the political resolution of disputes relating to market trade and commerce. - David Leatherbarrow, Tabletalk

The Armed Forces Day parade takes place every year on the 30th June to commemorate the services performed by those in the Armed Forces. The route starts at Glazier’s Hall on the South Bank with the announcement of the Freedom of the City Award. From this ceremony the procession travels down Borough High Street towards the Imperial War Museum, where the salute is given and a mass lead by the Bishop of Southwark. My proposal lies just off of Borough High Street where a small detour will be etched into the route. This lateral drift from the route will create an opportunity for another ritual to take place, a ‘Passing Out’ parade for wounded veterans returning to civilian life. The pre-liminal experiences of life in the military are far more orchestrated in comparison to the post-liminal experiences of the soldier. Decompression consists of one day in Malta as an end to military life. After 4 years of service the transition from serviceman to civilian is far more complex, as servicemen and women often suffer from trauma and severe injuries. Whilst there is a ceremonial induction to life in the military there is not one for re-starting life as a civilian. As such I propose that the profane function of my proposal is a centre for rehabilitation and prosthetic development for amputee servicemen and women and the sacred be the ‘Passing Out’ which will intertwine with the Armed Forces Day Parade Route.

acceptance

rehabilitation

reflection

technical section: parade ground 98

Bishop of Southwark

As the procession arive at Imperial War Museum, around 12 noon, the Bishop of Southwark, Rt Rev Christopher Chessun leads a multifaith Ceremony of Remembrance

Salute

The Parade begins at Library street with the Salute to the Lord Lieutenant, Sir David Brewer HM the Queen’s representative for London.

Imperial War Museum

Section through Southwark Prosthetics Centre

A facility catering towards amputee veterans and civilians. This is where the veterans would gather and assemble for the parade, creating a ‘Passing Out’ parade for those who have been rehabilitated

Road Borough

This is the culmination of the Armed Forces Day Parade, the gardens are taken over by the festival and band stands set up for performers

eo G St

ad Ro e’s g r

Glazier’s Hall

Freedom of the City Award Announcement Bor ough High Street

City Hall

Borou gh

High S treet

The Band of Life Guards Usually there are at least three marching bands which lead the parade to the Imperial War

Raising of the Flag by the Mayor of London

Armed Forces Day Parade

Museum. In 2013, at the largest Southwark Armed Forces Day Parade the march was lead by the Band of Life Guards.

cosmogram: processional ground

Festive Library Jamie Kirkham | MArch II “Through unconventional organization of conventional parts [the architect].. is able to create new meanings within the whole. If he uses convention unconventionally, if he organizes familiar things in an unfamiliar way, he is changing their contexts and he can use even cliche to gain a fresh effect. familiar things seen in an unfamiliar context become perceptually new as well as old.” -Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

Spontaneous Moment Visitor Attraction

JUBILEE GARDENS

Ritualistic Moment

HAYWARD GALLERY

Ritualistic Moment ‘Southbank Bookmarket’

Spontaneous Moment

Street performance

Ritualistic

NATIONAL THEATRE

Spontaneous

IBM

GABRIEL’S WHARF

? BERNIE SPAIN GARDENS

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ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL

Skateboarding

Spontaneous Moment

The programme of the building is to reinterpret the ‘treasury building’ as a contemporary typology of cultural capital in the city. It will seek to re-engage and situate the occasional space of the festive (spontaneous) and the everyday (ritualistic) space, something that has been a driving force for the design studio ethos. The programme of the Library can be understood as a framework of ritualistic space and movement, to facilitate users’ individual spontaneous moments through the use of literature. Having spontaneous users, such as the fleeting tourist, and the ritual local user, who will frequent the library on a regular basis, the architecture becomes highly charged, creating a varied and layered architectural programme. This should be a nice place where people like to come and read the newspaper, where they enjoy the quiet comings and goings or where they can find someone to talk to. By reserving the ground floor for public activities, barriers are taken down as much as possible. The extra public space can be used for events and entertainment, creating an attractive stage for the library which in its turn is involved in the saturation of spontaneous events that take place along the South Bank. The design of the building is only the initial phase of a book that is yet to be written. The users of the library are taking part in the writing of the story. In that sense the library block is seen as a mystic element that prompts people to start dreaming, thinking, reflecting and reading… Libraries already deliver a wide range of facilities and services within local communities. Many local authorities are pulling their budgets for public libraries leaving 500 libraries under threat in England. Lambeth are too planning to sell on its Waterloo library. The introduction of a book warehouse into the project allows literature to be salvaged from library closers around London and showcased through the library as well as sold through a market area acting as an extension of the South Bank book market. This is the ritual process of salvaging the books and showcasing them back to the city, symbolising the ritual of giving the book back to the user.

street food vendor

Spontaneous space is the unnatural, the uncertain; a space or event which would appear as if it were happening for the first time. Jean La Marche’ commentary of the ‘Familiar and Unfamiliar’ denotes that “shock is all we have left to communicate in a time of generalised information”. The spontaneous is therefore demonstrated as a shock to its audience, a place of uncertainty. Ritual spaces and events oppose this state of fluctuation, instead drawing upon a prescribed, objective process. As Tshcumi describes, such ritual spaces can be considered as a predetermined form of narrative with an exaggerated structural program which “orders events, movement and spaces” into a single progression that either combines or parallels divergent concerns. In other words, the dominance of the program overshadows the particular character of spaces and events that comprise it, which was investigated in the initial insight study: ‘is the route more important than any one place along it?’ This design project looks to take the initial insight study of the neutral and elevated states of space as a backdrop to the identified spontaneous and ritual spaces that comprise the South Bank strip. The identity of spontaneous and ritual space is reflected in the user, as the South Bank has a diverse collective of users ranging from local residents, reoccurring employees and fleeting tourists, it emerges as a hotbed of activity. The South Bank offers audiences a predetermined route following the geographical constraints of the Thames, with the London Eye and the Tate Modern providing a start and end point. Dotted across this route are the pockets of ‘ritual’ and ‘spontaneous’ spaces trying to provoke a dialogue with the user that can be incorporated into a new composition.

BIG BEN

LONDON TELEVISION CENTRE Ritualistic Moment Ritual act of reading

cosmogram: programmatic study

RITUALISTIC MOMENT ‘Skating on the Southbank’

A series of drawings depicting the everyday moments along the Southbank.

external views

internal views

The Store of Stories chronicles of Southwark Joanna Jones | MArch II Developing a Brief Initial group investigation into the normal site condition alongside cropped settings and threshold diagrams allowed us to consider what activates the festival from an uncharged to a charged space. My Capriccio provides a tool to view the moment of withdrawal just before and just after an act from the perspective of the performer. It captures the interaction between the traces and the anticipated setting which led me to consider how one might begin to make the intangible performance, tangible. The Cosmogram acted as method to consider how a programme could pre-condition the site for performance and then package and archive words and equipment to create a Store of Stories. This is achieved through a civic press, publishing house with a written archive. The Store of Stories acts as the chronicler; an observer who records the performances of the city and whose findings will be represented in a book produced in the publishing house and stored in the archive. The archive also houses the some 2000 festival books currently held in the British Library which date back 400 years. These contemporary and historic festival books are artefacts which when together in the Store of Stories can begin to catalogue a memory of the city. Interaction between City and Site The site is located between the festive South Bank and the residential Elephant and Castle, along the boundary Southwark Council deems visitors do not cross as the area becomes ‘gritty’ and difficult to navigate. The tension between the two conditions creates an ideal territory to locate the scheme which seeks to repair the fractured urban realm. The site is surrounded by communications firms and the functioning railway line upon arches which runs through the site from North to South furthers the communicative nature of the area. Located where Newspaper House of Martin Lavel Newspaper Distribution stood from 1938 until 2013, the scheme not only seeks to reinstate the lost history of the site but also of the festive city as a whole by locking into connections at Meso, Macro and Micro scales. This is achieved by compressing the stories of the Southwark festivals as they transform from spoken word to written word through the process of the site.

The compression of written word in books in the archive is juxtaposed with the decompression of the retelling the stories to the city through the Children’s Library, on site literary festivals and the production of bi-monthly circular newspapers. The interface between the festive and everyday is further achieved through the formal and contained frontier created by the archive which acts as the back of the site to the porous and transient nature of the sunken courtyard. The continuous topography of the courtyard creates a processional space; a progressive rite of passage to a heightened state of mind that is stretched over a considerable distance. The historic pilgrimage between Southwark and Canterbury did not end once one reached Canterbury, and likewise on reaching the site in Southwark. Such pilgrimage is here condensed across the site as one transcends from the ‘profane’ of the extended city context through the courtyard, through the Internal Street threshold and represented street into the ‘sacred’ of the archive in a transformed and focussed state of mind. The complex spatial relationships within this cropped charged setting have been unpacked through studies to express how processional space creates its own unique type of festive space, analogous with but different to those statically located within the city. The monothematic material strategy stitches the seam between the festive and everyday condition. Repetition in form and scale of architecture along the historic pilgrimage route between Southwark and Canterbury highlights how the everyday becomes indistinguishable as the sacred rises above. This can be likened to brick which blends with the surrounding buildings, railway arches and heritage of the area, with emphasis drawn to the charged setting and openings by the use of a different material, zinc. In essence, the design approach utilises an architecture which is sensitive to the human scale of its immediate locality and that of the institutional city at large. The Store of Stories can be read as the charged cropped setting which responds to the extended setting of which it is part, acting as a medium to transform a story from the fluidity of spoken word into the solidity of written word and back again.

04 Formal Character

speculative capriccio: traces and anticipation a moment of withdrawal 4

Archive Entrance 1

Everyday Entrance

the pre-conditioned site: an inter-connected institutional topography connecting the festive and everyday 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Discussion Forum Festive Courtyard Children’s Library The Internal Street The Represented Street The Everyday Street

The original Capriccio from the perspective of a performer captures the interaction between traces and anticipated setting. It set out my design intentions. Reworking this early speculative capriccio for the Store of Stories shows how the scheme has responded to these original design aims. Simultaneously seeing depth of the cropped and the extended setting enables one to

Fractured Facades The three facades complete each other and are to be read as one. 7. Archive Facade 8. Publishing House Facade 9. Printing Press Facade

The Pre-Conditioned Site: an Inter-connected Institutional Topography connecting the festive and everyday 1 : 200

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ANew Civic Order The Literary Festival and The City understand the fabric’s everyday role and how it can become charged for human experience. In the charged setting, the courtyard- created by a facade of backs (archive building, arches, printing press and publishing house withdraw and “allow themselves to be overlooked during the meal – and that is not a fault of their “form”; actually it is the reverse, its relative perfection” (Leatherbarrow, 2009, pp.123).

The balcony and stepped courtyard are “pre-saturated” with indications of possibilities, (Leatherbarrow, 2009, pp.122) and become an auditorium for viewing (as seen in Cologne during the carnival day). The edge of this cropped setting is defined by the boundary trace of the audience and the stepped courtyard. The group analysis uncovered that boundaries are not just physical but also architectural or abstract.

responsive capriccio: a new civic order

The boundaries here are created by two states and materials- brick and zinc.

panorama of festive communication the processional site

The Neckinger Pools Kathryn Edwards | MArch II The Neckinger Pools seeks to bring the festive to Old Kent Road through the revelation of one of London’s forgotten rivers. Through the built intervention; an architecturally quarried bathhouse and community centre; alongside a sequence of seasonally animated liquid public spaces, water and its purifying qualities is used in two different states, both as an ‘immersive substance’ and as a ‘social medium’. The project not only allows the residents of this area of Southwark to rediscover the ancient benefits of bathing, it will also become a new centre for the community, addressing the need for both bodily and mental well being. The concept of the urban bathhouse lends itself to more than a place for bathing; Roman bathhouses simply prepared visitors for the activity of socialising. Such programmatic hybridity created not only complex spatial organizations but made the bathhouses truly public institutions of the time. The scheme therefore introduces lecture halls, community lounges, cafes, promenades, celebratory function rooms and spaces of gathering. The built intervention is but one aspect of the proposal; the programme contracts and expands across the adjacent territories seasonally. By introducing new outdoor bathing activities in the adjacent Burgess Park, the proposal becomes a fun, informal and festive sequence of liquid public spaces that create community through water. Site: Following several weeks of group work which explored thresholds, and through further reading into ritual classifications, I became interested in transitional rites- the passing from one world to another through a territorial passage. These rituals are often accompanied by water, symbolic of the purification necessary to pass from the profane to the sacred. One of the first stops for the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury was Thomas a Watering, the point at which Old Kent Road crossed the River Neckinger. This spot of rest offered refreshment for the pilgrims and their horses. It also represented the boundary of the city liberties- the extents of the City of London’s controluntil the 1500s. Throughout history the river has represented a political, physical and symbolic threshold between London and

the unknown. This river is now completely underground; one of London’s many forgotten streams. This history of the River Neckinger crossing as gateway, threshold and junction sets the location of my chosen site territory and its connections with water, transition and purification has evolved into my programme. Both the programme and site seeks to expose and reveal the hidden waters beneath as well as embodying the essence of pilgrimage. Programme: The Neckinger baths celebrates the ceremony of bathing and the power of water to cleanse, refresh and separate one from ones previous surroundings. An ancient rite inherent in the civilisations throughout time, today bathhouses offer a rare opportunity for visitors to luxuriate in the escape from the everyday world. Housed within a basalt plinth with minimal openings and a tactile stone surface, this is an intimate and immersive atmosphere of dark space; of touch, matter and substance. The ritual purification and removal of one’s daily surroundings is not simply about corporeal cleansing however, but concerns mental well-being and the need for the contemplative life. Just as in early drawings of the Southwark to Canterbury pilgrimage experience where there was a certain editing of the city, a removal of unimportant distractions, space for solitude or meaningful gathering is required to rid the mind of excess and reintroduce a sensitivity to thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. In this way, the programme becomes a metaphor for the greater experience of pilgrimage. The intermediate territories of gathering and communication are housed in the ‘rock’ like block supported by the earthy plinth. Whereas the baths are individual caverns eroded by water, the brighter social spaces above consist of open and planar interconnected voids that have been carved by light and human movement. Interpreting the architecture as mineral, the dark rough basalt exterior is cleaved apart by viewing corridors, the exposed surfaces of the corridors revealing a smooth, polished and reflective interior of marble with all openings framed in a bronze metal. the neckinger pools: site plan

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the neckinger pools: site plan

the unfolded charged setting: the cyclical programme

view of approach, the carved space and of the eroded baths

Crossbones Crematory + Cemetery Memorial Pavla Krejcova | MArch II Crossbones graveyard is known as a burial ground for poor and outcast people mostly from the fourteenth century who were denied a Christian burial. It is estimated that around sixteen thousand bodies are buried here. Since then many attempts to develop the site were made which have been resisted by the local community who treat the site as a garden of remembrance and hold a monthly vigil there. The project is a response to these efforts to save the spiritually and historically significant place and also to give it another purpose that will continue the tradition of remembering and honouring the dead outcast. While the southern part of the site is strictly protected by local residents as it holds the graveyard itself, the northern side is currently used as a car park. This will consequently be the part of the site I will focus the major part of the development. The protected part to the South will stay untouched regarding any excavation and ground-works and respecting the burial grounds. The project will continue to be a burial ground for forgotten and outcast dead (the homeless, people with no next of kin and people and those who cannot afford to pay for a funeral) and these funerals will be carried out by Southwark Council social services The main agenda is to rejuvenate the area and bring more public to participate with local traditions and learn more about the history of Southwark and also to reclaim part of the land that has not been used and use it with respect for the history of the site and the community. The programme takes on the link that exist with the site and the vigil and connects aspects of the site with the vigil rituals and make the settings more suitable for them. The repetition of the rituals in the old and new programme interweaves through the two sites and bond them together. The proposed complex is a series of routes, transitions and thresholds that depict the journey through five stages of grief. The projects explores the impact of light, elements and spatial configuration on a person and leads one through so the experience is easier to take in and reconcile with. The site offers two kinds of ceremonies- public, for the

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deceased with no family or friends and private, for those who cannot afford a funeral ceremony. These represent the two major movements through the site. The private ceremony takes place in a chapel in the corner of the site to provide a quiet and calm atmosphere for the visiting friends and families. The ceremony is a journey through a series of thresholds and contemplation spaces. One approaches the chapel on a long ramp under a stone colonnade to amplify the processional quality of the space. Once inside the chapel, the journey turns back to face the columbarium tower in the background. In the foreground there is the displayed coffin with a reflection pool as a backdrop feature. The departure from the chapel leads through underneath the columbarium where one passes the space where two movements intersect- the movement of the living and the non-living. The columbarium itself holds the customised urns and represents the Crossbones Graveyard in a vertical form. The tower is a steel skeletal structure with no walls or ceiling that refers to a fragment- a fragility of a human body. The man-made structure is then populated with the urns (the organic matter) which are together with the ribbons and ornaments bound on the structure in the same way the ribbons and tokens are bound on the Crossbone gate during the monthly vigil. The secondary function of the project is mainly concerned with the profitable aspect so that it can provide the partial funding of the funerals. To continue the tradition of an industrial and a trade district of the city, there will be a market spaces where upcycled possessions of deceased will be sold to raise money. This is a fund raising method that the council is currently using, where the estate of deceased is sold to cover fully or partially the cost of the funeral. Placing the market space to the programme helps to uncover the background behind funding those ceremonies to wider public. The project represents the missing link that connects the history of the site back to the city through a programme that is both beneficial for the city, the local community and which celebrates the history and value specific for the site.

Denial

Oblivious

Anger

Interested

Forming crowd

Depression

Involved

Transformed

Bargaining

Acceptance

Represented

capriccio: initial investigations

sections

ritualistic state

Better the Devil you Know: the Reorientation of Ritual Sam Cady | MArch II The brief explores the notion of a treasury as a Gynecological Urological Medicine (GUM) clinic, or Sexual Health clinic. A programme which arose during the analysis of the Crossbones Burial Ground’s Vigil of The Outcast Dead. The vigil remembers the site for its historic use as a graveyard at which some 150,000 outcast single women, paupers and sex workers are buried. The project deals with four themes: Liberty; Religion; Science; and Veneration. It uses the Vigil of the Outcast Dead to add gravitas and elevation to ritual, transforming it from meditative veneration to social action. It also encourages participants (and the wider city) to “know their status” and become responsible for their sexual health via use of the clinic & laboratory. The architectural narrative and tensions of the project are established by the positioning of architecture adjacent to a Catholic church; the Church of the Most Precious Blood. The programme takes reference from the urban setting of the Church, reconstructing and adapting the urban block in much the same way a virus might mutate a cell, and questions the alignment of ritual and religious iconography before introducing a new “shrine” and ritual through the creation of a self testing clinic and shrine room. A Rational Grounding: Sexual Health in London Lambeth and Southwark have the highest HIV prevalence rate in the UK and indeed London accounting for almost 25% of HIV cases nationwide and accounting for 40% of HIV cases in London. Southwark has some of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the country (11.7 per 1,000 adults aged between 15 and 59-yearsold) (Southwark Council & Southwark Stats, 2013 & 2014). Approximately 6 percent of gay and bisexual men in the UK are living with HIV, and this number rises to 13 percent in London. In 2013, there were 3,250 newly diagnosed; almost nine a day. Over a quarter of men diagnosed in 2013 were estimated to have acquired HIV in the past six months. It is thought that 16 percent of men in the UK are currently living undiagnosed (Herman, E. SoSoGay 2014).

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cosmogram: civic reordering

capriccio

exploring thresholds

visual from laboratory

UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER | MArch | 2015