unit 12 2013
Christine Bjerke Graham Burn Feras El Attar Charlotte Knight Fiona Tan Cassandra Tsolakis Kieran Thomas Wardle Owain Williams Tim Zihong Yue
Emma Clinton Jason Coe Daniel Leon Fenster Alastair King Samuel Rackham Rodolfo Rodriguez Louis Sullivan Dan Wilkinson Xuhong Zheng
christine.bjerke@gmail.com christinebjerke.com 02gburn@gmail.com grahamburn.com feras.elattar@gmail.com feraselattar.com charlotteknight18@hotmail.co.uk fiona.tan24@gmail.com fiona-tan.net cassandratsolakis@hotmail.com cassandratsolakis.com kieran_thomas_wardle@live.co.uk kieranthomaswardle.com odhwilliams@gmail.com ow-works.co.uk yuezihong87@hotmail.com timmehhhy.tumblr.com
emmarclinton@gmail.com emmaclinton.tumblr.com jasonh.coe@gmail.com jasoncoe.co.uk leonfenster@gmail.com leonfenster.com ak342@kent.ac.uk alastairking.com samuelrackham@gmail.com rodolfoacevedorodriguez@googlemail.com louis@LSDart.co.uk louissullivan.co.uk dan@phenomenalarchitects.com xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk xuhongzheng.com
FACTUAL FICTIONS Jonathan Hill, Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow
English novels of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were perceived by many of the middle and upper classes as immoral and illicit not only for their criminal content but for their very enterprise of fictionalizing, inventing, forging reality, and lying. Novelists not only made up their stories, they also denied that their invented stories were fictions. Lennard J. Davis, 1983 Histories and novels both need to be convincing but in different ways. Although no history is completely objective, to have any validity it must appear truthful to the past. A novel may be believable but not true. But recognizing the overlaps between two literary genres, Malcolm Bradbury notably described his novel The History Man, 1975, as ‘a total invention with delusory approximations to historical reality, just as is history itself’. Objective as well as subjective, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present, transforming both, like a history. Equally, a design is equivalent to a novel, convincing the user to suspend disbelief. Part-novelist, part-historian, the architect creates ‘factual fictions’.
Sites of History The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. T.S. Eliot, 1917 The history of architecture can be conceived in terms of the need for individuals, or societies, to contradict, reinvent and distort as well as affirm a philosophical and aesthetic orthodoxy. These shifts may be necessary for the discipline to respond to changing social and cultural needs, or stem from a human desire for reinvention, which in turn affects social and cultural patterns. Students of Unit 12 were asked to challenge and expand a particular orthodoxy, to understand a particular aesthetic and philosophical position, and to create a personally driven shift in that stance.
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Specification and Craft On a wet day it may look drab and forbidding, and they might scuttle away from it. On a sunny day it’s magical, but then buildings are like that, they should be. Denys Lasdun, 1979 For an (architectural) factual fiction to be believable there needs to be a real understanding of craft, materials and detail, which should not only have a convincing provenance and be subject to rigorous testing but also be grounded in an appreciation of the political, cultural and meteorological climates in which they can thrive.
Industries and Infrastructures for an Independent London But, it is manifest, that those who repair to London, no sooner enter into it, but they find a universal alteration to their Bodies, which are either dryed up or enflamed, the humours being exasperated and made apt to putrifie, their sensories and perspiration so exceedingly stopped, with the loss of Appetite, and a kind of general stupefaction, succeeded with such Catharrs and Dissillations, as do never, or very rarely quit them, without some further Symptomes of dangerous Inconveniency so long as they abide in the place; which yet are immediately restored to their former habit; so soon as they are retired to their Homes and they enjoy fresh Aer again. John Evelyn, 1661 Even in the seventeenth century, London was ten times the size of the second largest English city. Today, it is culturally, socially and economically distinct from the UK and has more in common with New York and Shanghai than Aberdeen and Manchester. Proposing that London should have the degree of autonomy given to Catalonia in Spain or Scotland in the UK, we asked students to design industries and infrastructures for an independent London. In Unit 12 our discussions are dialogical. Some students supported London’s proposed independence, while a few suggested that it should become more dependent, and others focused on the independence of other regions. Unit 12 would very much like to thank Domi Oliver and Carl Vann, Design Realization tutors, and Ben Godber, structural consultant, as well as the critics: Alessandro Ayuso, Nick Beech, Shumi Bose, Carolyn Butterworth, Barbara Campbell-Lange, Nat Chard, Emma Cheatle, Tom Coward, Alison Crawshaw, Oliver Domesien, Bill Hodgson, Will Hunter, Jan Kattein, David Kohn, Adrian Lahoud, George Lovett, Hugh McEwen, Ollie Palmer, Mariana Pestana, Sophia Psarra, Natasha Sandmeier, Ruth Silver, Eva Sopeoglou, Catrina Stewart, Tom Weaver, Finn Williams and Danielle Willkens.
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the fx beauties club Christine Bjerke The FX Beauties Club explores the historical and contemporary link between women and money, power and mirrors. The study is based on a curiosity of the current phenomenon of the FX Beauties in Tokyo, established in 2007 as a virtual club of 36 Japanese housewives. From their personal domestic settings the women gamble money through the intertwined and ‘floating world’ of the FOREX web, outplaying the historical idea of the money market as being controlled purely by the male. The FX Beauties Club proposes a physical women’s club of the 21st Century, inhabited by the Japanese women of the FX Beauties. Situated in the ‘in-between’, the women’s club critiques the existing and historical gendered ‘man-made’ area of London by being sited in the space between the gentlemen’s clubs of the so called ‘club-land’, St. James. By using a palette of reflective and matte surfaces, the building begins to propose and invert boundaries between the clubs, the genders and the symbolic value of views crossing through both the feminine and the masculine clubs. The specific reflections are used as a method of constructing spaces that begin to suggest an architecture that reflects the position of the FX Beauties as being ‘in-between’ two genders, cities and timezones.
Christine Bjerke
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christine.bjerke@gmail.com
Christine Bjerke
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christine.bjerke@gmail.com
ROCOR (MDF) North london school Graham Burn Flatpack school redux. A Russian Orthodox faith school, church and community centre in Harringay. The Orthodox Church is at the centre of Russian life: religion, education and community have come together as the spine of the population, and are deployed here in an emerging migrant worker community. Constructed entirely from MDF, inherently fragile and responsive to change when exposed to weather and use, the building acts a barometer for shifting policies and politics on a local, national and international scale by being in a constant state of construction, decay and repair to counter erosive effects of occupation and to prepare for future use. Whilst being widely thought of as a harmful carcinogenic and environmental pollutant due to resin present in its production, MDF contains less resin than found naturally in fruit and dairy products and is in fact an environmentally-positive material which is formed entirely from raw timber industry waste. Spaces within the building are developed around a series of patriarchal routes which are established for the possible arrival of a high-ranking bishop. The presence of the church becomes more prominent over time as layers of paint and gold leaf are applied, transcending MDF beyond its original state as a base material into one of divinity. The process of ruination due to occupancy - relating to both weather and people - creates imperfections and tensions which go towards suggesting potential changes in use, structure or appearance. Damaged sections of flooring, for example, in falling into the space below, create facets which provide suitable acoustic performance for a choir rehearsal space and a group music practice room.
Graham Burn
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02gburn@gmail.com
Graham Burn
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02gburn@gmail.com
THE AEROTROPOLIS OF SHEERNESS Feras El Attar The Aerotropolis of Sheerness (AOS) is an airport that rejects the hermetically-sealed model. It is designed to amalgamate into the daily life of the inhabitants of Sheerness-on-Sea on the Isle of Sheppey, particularly taking into account Sheppey’s existing identity, social and physical condition. The Aerotropolis is an international-only gateway which specialises in trade with emerging economies around the world with a view to end Sheppey’s economic dependence on London. With reference to Robin Evans’ essay ‘Figures, Doors and Passages’, the AOS provides an architecture that is conscious of the collision and intertwining of architectural programmes and users. Arrivals and departures cross paths within a local Sheerness context. A local pub, for example, performs not only as a traditional pub, but also as an airport terminal – a border into Britain and a departures/arrivals point. The queues there are not only for drinks at the bar, but also for security, boarding, and immigration control. The architectural language has been partly informed by this social and spatial construction, but also through a reading of Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction, and the brutish bodily disposition associated with air travel and the multitude of programmes and people that collide and interrupt each other. Pop culture has also influenced the language and design process - Andy Warhol spoke of his love of the airport atmosphere and its successes. Sheerness helps the airport to achieve this atmosphere, and the airport helps Sheerness; together greater than the sum of their individual parts.
Feras El Attar
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feras.elattar@gmail.com
Feras El Attar
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feras.elattar@gmail.com
GRESHAM COLLEGE Charlotte Knight For 400 years Gresham College has provided free lectures to the public. Established in 1597 by Sir Thomas Gresham as a successful centre of learning in Thomas Gresham House, its physical presence is now diminishing as it moves towards a digital existence. A comparable institution is The Society of Bookbinders, founded in 1974, which also exists scattered across London. Gresham College and The Society of Bookbinders will relocate as a singular institution, a forum for the exchange of information. It contributes to the fulfilment of the city’s aims of promoting learning and development as part of its wider contribution to the cultural life of London. Deep within The City of London at Austin Friars Square, fragments of Gresham College will appear momentarily as it is framed and obscured by the narrow streets of the city. This experience is translated into the building by constructing a series of spaces that frame and obscure numerous layered views, which invite the viewer into the space. Focused around the eight Gresham professors resident in the college, the building sets out to produce a productive environment of study and contemplation, whilst creating residual spaces in which one can get lost in. As the building grows, duplicates and merges it creates a continuous space with imprecise boundaries, framing and blurring public and private space to allow spaces to bleed into one another. It questions the concept of boundary as it marks and delimits the urban territory and oscillates between traditional notions of outside and inside.
Charlotte Knight
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charlotteknight18@hotmail.co.uk
Charlotte Knight
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charlotteknight18@hotmail.co.uk
A Manual Towards a New London Fiona Tan In marking a clear distinction from Old London, a new architectural order is introduced through a Declaration of Independence for the newly formed ‘Londonia’. The values and ideals of this declaration suggest specific instructions for how its citizens are expected to live and interact, achieved through the deployment of symbolic monuments as well as 4 distinct typologies: the Community Workhouse (work), the House of Consumables (leisure), the School of Social Etiquette (education), and the House of Beds and Ladders (dwelling). The autonomy of Londonia is articulated through the capacity of these types to function as part of a closed loop, operating off-grid, selfsufficient practices. To assist the instillment of a common identity, a social etiquette is imposed on Londonia’s inhabitants through specifically designed components. In opposition to Alexander Klein’s The Functional House for Frictionless Living (1928), these elements are designed to encourage accidental encounter and social friction to induce tolerance and good behaviour between inhabitants. Doors that are only operable with the cooperation of two people (The After-you Door), tables that tip when one’s dining partner leaves the table prematurely (The Balancing-act Table) and other devices allegorically represent the ideals of Londonia as a society where the overall good of the community is prized over individual wants and desires. In so doing, the building both celebrates and enforces the arbitrary etiquettes that govern life in London. Beyond the physical proposal of a speculative prototype, the project plays on the of use symbolism and allegory as manifestations of power in a socio-political critique of contemporary Singapore.
Fiona Tan
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fiona.tan24@gmail.com
Fiona Tan
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fiona.tan24@gmail.com
school of structural intuitions Cassandra Tsolakis The School of Structural Intuitions is an alternative and privately funded architecture school, located at the south end of Blackfriars Bridge in London. Its principle agenda is to decode the underlying universal orders which structure our experience and in doing so it argues for freedom and insight into the design process by encouraging fragmentation as a key design technique. Its in-house research is based on the notion that there has been a significant paradigm shift in the way we see as a culture since the Renaissance, from whole to fragments. The school’s architecture becomes a theoretical and practical exploration of fragmentation as a process of creation. Reflective of the human endeavour to see and understand, the curriculum is an exploration of the ‘unseen’ dynamic structures in the natural world: material, visual and cognitive. The visually and physically challenging environment places the students in a state of awareness of their own position in the visual field. In order to recognise the transformation of the world into a picture, and indeed to navigate through the school, students and tutors alike must ‘leave aside’ their bodies and assimilate themselves within the geometric structures of the architecture. The extensive use of marble is an opportunity for the school’s inhabitants to discuss the value-laden system of architectural design, where often the message of the past has been used to verify meaning in the present. By extension and through its material excess, the school expresses its rejection of dogmatic principles regurgitated as design methodologies and as an alternative, encourages a process where “architectural work is articulated as narrative, metaphoric projection grounded on recollection.”
Cassandra Tsolakis
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cassandratsolakis@hotmail.com
Cassandra Tsolakis
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cassandratsolakis@hotmail.com
The Palace of Eastminster Kieran Thomas Wardle Architecture must be used to challenge the stagnation of Westminster, the disengagement between politicians and voters and the dominance of the party system over what should be a truly representative politics. The Palace of Eastminster has not only been designed to house Parliament whilst Westminster is refurbished, it also follows a strong line of tradition in using architecture to shift the focus of British democracy. In Power, War and Architecture, Paul Hirst states that, ‘spaces have characteristics that affect the conditions in which power can be exercised’. At Westminster, a process of shift, formalisation and ultimately spatialisation has dominated the development of democracy for centuries. The new Palace inverts the traditional arrangement of Westminster and Parliament Square. Through an object driven architecture the physicality of the legislative process is fragmented so that spaces for public congregation and protest are placed between each and every element of Parliament, reinforcing a degree of encounter and confrontation that has been lost through the sanitisation of Westminster. The semiology of objects and ritual is used in order to alter the way power is mediated within Parliament. Eastminster reduces the potency of backroom deals through transparency, limits the power of party whips through spatial arrangement and re-establishes the bond between Parliament and the public through a process of presence, encounter and protest.
Kieran Thomas Wardle
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kieran_thomas_wardle@live.co.uk
Kieran Thomas Wardle
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kieran_thomas_wardle@live.co.uk
Pontypridd Gasification Authority Owain Williams Located in a region once employing over 100,000 people in the mining industry, the Gasification Authority is responsible for licensing and recording contemporary industrial activities occuring in the mines of the South Wales coalfield. With just 40 years of coal thought to be remaining across much of the valleys, the project considers the ultimate redundancy of the Gasification Authority after the depletion of coal, and the opportunity of establishing a devolved regional parliament directly in its place. Having extended the industrial processes associated with gasification through the valleys, the building establishes a physical constituency that it may ultimately govern. The existing post-industrial landscape, marked by its repeating terraces and recurring points of industrial infrastructure has generated a field condition where slow, gradual changes or unexpected figures come to define local characters. The Gasification Authority is about the expression of these changes. The building is conceived as a set of parallel walls, where spaces appear as captured figures held between its layers. Nonstructural surfaces are made of polyethylene, a plastic occuring as a by-product of the gasification process. Holding the soot carried in the air on its translucent surfaces, the building becomes an instrument for indicating atmospheric pollution. A dirty legacy from an industrial boom, it rethinks the relationship between transparency and democracy assumed in early 21st century practice, and makes the suggestion that these properties should not be automatically assumed, but carefully maintained.
Owain Williams
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odhwilliams@gmail.com
Owain Williams
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odhwilliams@gmail.com
self-cultivation Tim Zihong Yue In Classical Chinese Confucianism, the practice of “selfcultivation� lies at the core of a good society. The sustained devotion of energy is the means of producing this gradual change, like the repetitive beating of steel under intense heat to produce a sword of fine craft. This project proposes a village of five families, responsible for returning the site of an ancient battlefield to the peaceful state of rice paddies. The heart of the village is a monastery, the architecture of which portrays a technology of the self. A giant steel lever grabs onto an ancient tree to rotate in increments of 3.25 degrees. This architectural instrument facilitates the cultivation of the tree, and is itself an expression of time - a tree clock. A concrete pendulum hangs underneath this steel lever, changing angle and weight from time to time to keep the system moving. The production system of the concrete pendulum is an allegory for the production of memory. Stored underground, the careful management of each piece underpins the stability and survival of a self-conflicting architectural system that stands above. The belief that the self can be cultivated towards betterment is no doubt idealistic, and a world-view produced from such internal facilities may be equally so. It dreams of a place where industrious activity lives eternally in harmony with nature, where men and women cultivate and harvest their love as the beginning of their families.
Tim Zihong Yue
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yuezihong87@hotmail.com
Tim Zihong Yue
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yuezihong87@hotmail.com
The Cloth HOUSE Emma Clinton The Cloth House combines the simple functions of a domestic house with that of a Roman Catholic Chapel, using the programme of a Catholic Seminary to unite these functions. The site is located in the City of London, at the heart of London’s financial district. Textile technology is used to construct all parts of the building: some parts decay quickly and need replacing and door handles have an expiration date, only turning so many times before they need to be replaced. The architectural language speaks of the impact our habitation has on our surroundings, highlighting our mortality. It becomes a celebration of Eros and Thanatos, of life and death. The project seeks to merge the practice of building and dressmaking, blurring the boundary between the two. Dress patterns become the instructions for a new form of textile construction, a scaled version of an architectural plan. The finished garment has a certain ‘performance criteria’ that becomes analogous to our personalities. The technologies of building garments are lessons passed down from mother to daughter through different cultural contexts and social intents. The completed building – or garment – is manipulated, adapted and transplanted by the dweller.
Emma Clinton
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emmarclinton@gmail.com
Emma Clinton
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emmarclinton@gmail.com
New Jerusalem Jason Coe A participatory democracy for London is realised through the implementation of a communication network of bells, which sees London reorganised into aural parishes. The bells are integral to the democracy, and are rung as a declaration and invitation - a call to vote, the aural manifestation of decisions, and definition of the parish extents. Bells, reminiscent of celebration and worship, give a potency to civil duties similar to that of religious ceremony which ultimately aims to revive a lost relationship between the city and the senses in London. The project is an interpretation of William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’. New Jerusalem forms a critique of the recently introduced Localism Act 2011 by questioning the destruction of human relationships and the desensitization of the city. The proposed infrastructure forms a part of London as an independent entity, one which revaluates human experience within our society. It questions the dominance of visual perception and human interaction in architecture, and demands levels of formal and informal participation from London’s inhabitants. A new civic architecture is proposed for London with a brutalist approach to materiality and form. Rammed earth, concrete and bronze construct large symbolic forms which display both precise craftsmanship and raw qualities when viewed intimately. Processes of gathering, ceremony, and of being together are further articulated through a series of contrasting spatial experiences that demand human engagement with the building.
Jason Coe
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jasonh.coe@gmail.com
Jason Coe
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jasonh.coe@gmail.com
Floating facsimiles Daniel Leon Fenster A facsimile of a manufacturing hub is berthed at the edge of the Thames Estuary, serving a consortium of companies that purport to export European architectural embellishments (decorative domes, columns and archways) from Britain to China. The fake factory, known to HM Revenue & Customs as Free Zone 302, is a mere facade of industriousness. It processes ornaments which are manufactured in Chinese port towns but shipped elsewhere in China via London to gain a coveted ‘made in the UK’ label. In the recesses of the building’s redundancy are hidden bathhouses and karaoke parlours used by the consortium to entertain clients. The exterior appearance of ostensible functionalism masks spaces given over to exuberant delights. The project inhabits the space of collision between radically different cultural models. The collision exposes polarised architectural treatments of history, facade, decoration and, in particular, the picturesque. It responds to today’s accelerated architectural globalisation in which architectural motifs and symbols are traded between cultures as demand rises and wanes. Wren’s domes, for example, are reappropriated from a London that, in rejecting the picturesque as naive, has ceased to find use for them. They are given new meaning and implanted into the Chinese city, echoing Chambers’ translocation of a pagoda to Kew gardens. The domical description of a heavenly ascent is flipped (both literally and figuratively) to become a joyous descent into glorious frivolity. The uneasy relationship between the floating building and its host city mirrors the curious fragmentation of Western architectural canons taking place globally: Emerging markets have ceased to be simply importers of Western architecture but are redefining its meaning.
Daniel Leon Fenster
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leonfenster@gmail.com
Daniel Leon Fenster
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leonfenster@gmail.com
Tower Hill Community Alastair King The Tower Hill Community is the first phase of a masterplan for a new independent city of London, bringing those industries and peoples who have been zoned out of the City of London, back to its centre. This first phase of a plan that could potentially take hundreds of years to fulfil proposes a building for a community of construction workers, including migrants (who form 40% of construction workers in London): workers who, despite being responsible for the building of the City, have come to live on the edges of society, both geographically and socially. This community at society’s edge is brought back to the city’s centre, from where they can begin to rebuild the new independent City of London. Sited on Tower Hill, overlooking the Tower of London, the Community fills a recently vacated plot which includes one of the few remaining fragments of the Roman city wall that once defined the boundary of the City State of London. The project is a critique of the banal architecture of the modern City of London, proposing instead an architecture defined by community, craft and complex spatiality through the application of A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander.
Alastair King
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ak342@kent.ac.uk
Alastair King
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ak342@kent.ac.uk
The Royal Meteorological Society Samuel Rackham There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more Lord Byron Childe Harold, Canto iv, Verse 178 This project is about the relocation of the Royal Meteorological Society from its current location, Reading, to the prominent location of Whitehall, London. London acted as an invisible college for so many great minds, fostering the birth of modern day science as we know it. But rather than reducing this understanding to a quantitative one, the project sets out to interpret these forces into romantic and fantastical forms. 18th Century Science produced an ‘Age of Wonder’, and it is from this philosophical and poetic spirit the architecture takes inspiration. J.M.W. Turner perfectly encapsulates the power of magnetism within his later works, reducing the power of the planet to its most violent, beautiful yet raw state. It is this ‘rawness’ found in nature and Romanticism that the work is seeking to understand. Romanticism, whilst prominent as an art movement, never strictly evolved into an architectural movement, which is the base upon which the project is constructed.
Samuel Rackham
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samuelrackham@gmail.com
Samuel Rackham
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samuelrackham@gmail.com
THE METEOROLOGICAL RAILWAY NETWORK Rodolfo Rodriguez The Meteorological Railway Station for the transportation of woodfuel and passengers is situated in the commuter town of Sevenoaks, Kent. The station will accommodate the flow of commuter passengers to and from London, whilst also supplying destinations with the necessary fuel to service the station building. The program of the infrastructure is based around the meteorological calendar and the cycle of the seasons. Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter will present stationary conditions with given conditions for the building to respond to, while transitory phases where one season shifts into another will prompt the building to make necessary changes more apparent. The schedule of the transportation will also incorporate the growth rate of locally planted trees. The purpose-planted forest will provide sufficient energy for the select destinations and therefore the programme must take into consideration the collection, transportation and seasoning of the wood, as well as the recollection of the ash residues for their disposal. Altogether, the utility of the station extends beyond the platform by regenerating the relationship between a community and the city that it relies on financially. It will fuel an economy emerged from its new independence.
Rodolfo Rodriguez
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rodolfoacevedorodriguez@googlemail.com
Rodolfo Rodriguez
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rodolfoacevedorodriguez@googlemail.com
THE realm of cockaigne Louis Sullivan The Cockaigne Academy of Sugar Production is an urban agricultural college and processing facility of sugar beet, constructed entirely of caramel and built to realise the realities of the medieval mythical land of Cockaigne. Cockaigne was a hugely popular medieval folk-lore of a utopic land of gluttony, greed and edible architecture – a land where pigs wonder in herds, deliciously roasted and carrying knives in their backs so that one may cut a slice of bacon from them. Or where fish are so plentiful, that they would fly into your mouth if you only yawned. During the 17th century only 4oz of sugar existed in the whole of the UK. But by the 1980’s it represented 10% of our diet, and in 2011, 16%. The Realm of Cockaigne is looking to expand and embody its intent within the built environment by constructing a supply network of sugar beet farms across the country, constructed out of caramel. The Academy of Sugar Production represents the initial phase of this development. It trains Cockney students in the growing and caring for sugar beet and in the art of processing quality caramels, instilling dependency on sugar through construction and maintenance of the Academy itself - they maintain the Academy both for communal identity and for selfish dependant reasons. Proliferating the interests of Cockaigne, the cockneys construct surrounding environments and contribute to the steadfast rise of sugar beet and sugar output. From this heartland, they will become experienced enough to go out to the colonies of Cockaigne, to farm sugar and construct Cockaigne-esque architecture.
Louis Sullivan
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louis@LSDart.co.uk
Louis Sullivan
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louis@LSDart.co.uk
Communism! I gave you my heart, you cooked it medium well Dan Wilkinson The idea had been in the air for years. The idea was a simple one, there used to be ideas in the air. Three five year plans from now, the CPC sat down. Nobody could remember when utopia was postponed, the only thing to blame seemed to be history itself. ‘Let’s switch back!’ said a comrade. ‘How! we’re castrated by the ability to remember’ said another. Knowing it to be impossible to forget the actual history of emancipatory socialism while surrounded by the footnotes of terror, the Communists accept they need to become Communist iconoclasts, to in turn become Communists. ‘To exist, we need to kill what defines us’ The party line is formed. ‘Iconoclasm!’ ‘Auto-iconoclasm!’ ‘But even an ideological Oedipus needs to hide the corpse’ said the Communists realistically. Economic wastelands are identified. Land handed over by failing European states for financial aid is used to dump this incorrect version of history. Infrastructural tower devices destroy and encapsulate leftist waste. A socioeconomics worth of broken hearts are laid to rest.The Chinese build, and then abandon the sites when ideologically saturated, congealed with the slurry of dilettantish thuggery.They leave quickly, they’ve got plinths to fill. Abandoned, the towers and squares decay. ‘But wont the liberals constantly need to repair what we leave?’ ‘That’s fine. They love patching things up, it can be a gift’ Like buildings, all ideologies contain their own rubble. ‘All successful revolutions end in statues coming down, this time we can do it ourselves.’
Dan Wilkinson
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dan@phenomenalarchitects.com
Dan Wilkinson
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dan@phenomenalarchitects.com
the new city hall Xuhong Zheng Under the current system of the London government, the Mayor’s office has become the epicentre of control. Despite the London Assembly’s role in scrutinizing and questioning the Mayor’s strategies and policies, it is difficult to make an impact. As part of the move towards London’s independence, the project proposes that the Assembly is given greater legislative power and for the various committees of the Assembly to establish bases across London. The New City Hall refers to a set of new civic halls established across different areas of London, housing offices for the committees as well as other civic programs and activities. They form a connected network, raising public awareness of the role of the Assembly and encouraging citizen participation. The project uses natural light as a material, proposing architecture that indulges in the intrigues of shadow and plays with the illusion and drama of changing light to determine how spaces are used and how events and politics occur within the building. For example, the council chamber allows for slow thorough negotiations lasting the length of long summer days whilst smaller meeting spaces force quick decision-making as the sun passes through fleetingly at a certain time of the day. Concrete model studies explore the effects of different textures and surfaces on the manipulation of natural light and its temporality. Acoustic consequences of the architecture on political discussions are also considered - using coffered ceilings to absorb sound and echo chambers to slow down speech. Ambiguities in spatial and visual relationships in the building begin to question and challenge the way spaces are programmed and occupied.
Xuhong Zheng
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xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk
Xuhong Zheng
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xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk
Special thanks to Graham Burn and Christine Bjerke. Publisher Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Printed in England by Print on Demand Worldwide Copyright 2013 the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 978-0-9572355-4-0 For a full range of programmes and modules please see the Bartlett Undergraduate, Diploma & Graduate Guides. Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB T. +44(0)20 7679 7504 F. +44(0)20 7679 4831 architecture@ucl.ac.uk www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk