Ebbsfleet RAVEcovery Centre by Elena Oliinyk

Portfolio Submission

Straight Lines to Cut People Off

My experimentation started with applying straight lines of tape onto the landscape of my house. Immediately I have noticed that the straight line evokes the notion of the border, separating territories and people.

Leaving the Trace

I took my chalk for a short walk outside my house. It lasted 35 and a half steps and cost me about £0.29.

I noticed that most of the adults were giving me judgemental looks, while the children while were smiling and wanted to take part.

Dividing Public Spaces

I used my tape lines outside in public places and streets to see how people would interact with them. Yet again, most engaging group were children and their parents, occasionally a brave adult will allow themselves to have fun, interact and play with them.

Two Neighbourhoods, Both alike in Dignity

The project is set in the new Garden City of Ebbsfleet, where the fast-growing development is trying to live peacefully with existing communities of Swanscombe, Northfleet and Greenhithe.

I chose to focus on border between Swanscombe and Castle Hill. I wanted to design a local landmark that would bring people together and would spread joy.

Castle Hill

Swanscombe

Stitching Up and Patching Up

After evaluating the top trumps categories we established as a studio, I selected Playfulness Accessibility and Embodied Energy as my top three criteria. As my key ideas, I wanted to use the scraps from the scaffolding from building sites of the new as my main building material. The design should be as simple as possible, so local children and their parents can take part in the construction.

My site is the green patch (“back garden”) on the hill between Caste Hill and Swanscombe.

Monkey, monkey, monkey bar

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”

Proverb

The playground city, a place for sensory exploration for all age.

The mundane of everyday journey paints any town’s sky grey. Repetitive days “work, home, school, home” endanger a new town becoming yet another suburban nightmare. Let us take brushes and paint Ebbsfleet yellow, orange, blue and pink. Let us bring play into the mundane.

Imagine having a potential adventure every time you are putting the rubbish into the bin. Each street has its own character and pattern. Your everyday life is enriched by a dose of joyful intervention. Perhaps, you never really played before, until today.

The structure of the playground city comes from a reimagined Cartesian grid. Every play needs a set of rules, but it also requires the rules to be broken. The places of the particular interest for each age group obey the grid, the rest is free for all to experiment and discover. Possibilities of the journey are limited only by your willingness to play.

This masterplan was developed together with Hasan Jamshed and Rojda Aslan.

Organasing Strategy

Town Halls and Community Centres

Recycling and Water-Waste Sport, Recreational, Wellbeing

Pubs and Night Life

Youth Centres

Playful Masterplan

Organising Strategy

Playful City of Ebbsfleet Masterplan, 30-minute Walking City My Future Site

Driving rules

Ebbsfleet RAVEcovery Centre

Design Research Questions:

1. What is 21st century interpretation of the sensory pleasures of the eighteenth-century’s Pleasure Gardens?

2. How to challenge the threshold between public and private spaces? How to unite the large and intimate spaces?

3. To what extend can I bring play into well-established typologies?

Through this project I want to lead to a new apprehension of social possibility.

Vision of The Big Civic

Play (noun)

A PHYSICAL OR MENTAL LEISURE ACTIVITY THAT IS UNDERTAKEN PURELY FOR ENJOYMENT OR AMUSEMENT AND HAS NO OTHER OBJECTIVE.

Play allows us to leave the everyday world and experience something rooted in a childlike nativity and curiosity, enter a different mental state, change the rules, and express ourselves without being judged. However, everyone should learn that all play and no work makes too detached from real issues.

Set in a potential future where the drug possession for personal use would be decriminalised, and the drug schedules would be revised to support harm reduction policy. Ebbsfleet RAVEcovery Centre could provide a haven to everyone, and everything underappreciated.

The Big Civic would consist of three organisations Addiction Recovery Centre (neighbourhood), Ebbsfleet Waste Recovery Centre (city) and Rave ‘Recovery Centre’.

Rave took the nation by storm in the ’90s, and the social panic caused by the conservative government and media tarnished its name and reputation. Almost every dictionary would mention drugs in their definition, but rave is so much more. It is about freedom. There are no barriers within rave since there is no authentic rave; each is just as much a rave as the other. The venue would ‘recover’ the name of rave, proving rave is an opportunity to bring people together in a judgement-free zone.

Addiction Recovery Centre would provide support and space for people struggling with drug addiction and educate the residents about the effects of drug use. It is a place of no judgement; people are given all the support and advice they want. According to the 2020 statistic, 1 in 5 young people ages 16-24 has consumed drugs at least once a month. They have a right to know what they take (drug checking facilities) and how it will affect their body. The centre will also provide a space for daily Northfleet NA meetings.

Waste Recovery Centre would sort out the rubbish from Ebbsfleet, cleaning the city and provide the jobs. As the Climate Strike spirit grows stronger among the youth, the centre would educate young people how to try and save the Earth.

Social Ecology

Do you remember the first time?

I can’t remember a worse time! Waste Recycling Centre

But you know that we’ve changed so much since then? Oh yeah, we’ve grown

The Programme

Emotional Landscapes

Emotional archetypes landscape conditions were defined by J. M. Messervy and S. Abell in The Inward Garden: Creating a Place of Beauty and Meaning. Each type evokes different feelings and thoughts while wandering within them, which is valuable for addiction recovery.

Sea “Within-ness”

Surrounded by something pleasurable like sea or trees

Island “Away-ness”

Centre of the space, watching the horizon 360 degrees

Cave “Inside to Outside”

Snuggling feeling Nooks, porches

Mountain “Up-ness”

Finding Enlightenment, inner piece and wisdom

Harbour

“Enclosed with a View”

Protected 180 degrees, explore but not fully vulnerable

Sky “Beyond-ness”

The value of the life cycle, Endless spiral

Sea Cave Harbour Island

Mountain Field

Park Progress

Rosherville Pleasure Gardens in Ebbsfleet

Rosherville Pleasure Gardens were a famous Victorian resort in Northfleet. The series of smaller paths dispersed from the main axes, creating exciting opportunity to explore the park.

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in Ebbsfleet

“SIMULTANEOUSLY AN ART GALLERY, A RESTAURANT, A BROTHEL, A CONCERT HALL AND A PARK, THE PLEASURE GARDEN WAS THE PLACE WHERE LONDONERS CONFRONTED THEIR VERY BEST, AND VERY WORST, SELVES.”

“...COMBINATION OF AVANT-GARDE DESIGN, FIRST-RATE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, DRAMATIC ATMOSPHERE AND ILLUMINATIONS, AND PURE ESCAPISM...”

Site Plan

Scale 1:1000@A2

“Sea”

Outdoor Foyer, Maesawa Garden House, APL Design Workshop, Kurobe, Japan.2020

“Cave”

Harbour - Enclosed with the View

“Harbour” -a space that provides protection approximately of 180-degrees, gives a feeling of being safe and relax, not fully vulnerable.

At the waste recovery centre (also known as the material recovery centre) the recycling is sorted into 1x1m bales, which are then shipped to be reused.

The bales could be used to create temporary structures for raves and festivals.

1:20 Elevation

“Island” -a feeling like a centre of a space; solitude.

“Mountain” -a space that evokes the feeling of solitude, a place where one can find enlightenment, inner piece and wisdom.

Waste Recovery Centre Plan

Scale 1:250@A2

Air-purifying Plants

Waste Recovery Centre have the occasional problem with odour. In order to battle bad smells and polluted air, the trees and plants would be panted in the sorting area.

Chamaedorea

Large-leaved lime

Dogwood

Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum

Citrus Tangerina