12 Matthew Butcher Elizabeth Dow Jonathan Hill
Emma Clinton Jason Coe Leon Fenster Alastair King Samuel Rackham Rodolfo Rodriguez Louis Sullivan Amy Sullivan-Bodiam Dan Wilkinson Xuhong Zheng Akhil Bakhda Samiyah Bawamia Larisa Bulibasa Alex Cotterill Ben Ferns Helena Howard Tereza Kacerova Joseph Reilly Adam Shapland
Unit 12 Catalogue 2014
UNIT 12 2014
Emma Clinton Jason Coe Leon Fenster Alastair King Samuel Rackham Rodolfo Rodriguez Louis Sullivan Amy Sullivan-Bodiam Dan Wilkinson
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 r.rodriguez.12@ucl.ac.uk louis@LSDart.co.uk louissullivan.co.uk amy.sullivan-bodiam.10@ucl.ac.uk kaleido-park.tumblr.com dan@phenomenalarchitects.com
Xuhong Zheng
xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk xuhongzheng.com
Akhil Bakhda
akhilbakhda@gmail.com akhilbakhda.com samiyah_bawa@hotmail.com
Samiyah Bawamia Larisa Bulibasa Alex Cotterill
larisa.b11@gmail.com larisacbulibasa.tumblr.com alexcotterill@gmail.com
Ben Ferns
benjamin.ferns@gmail.com
Helena Howard Tereza Kacerova Joseph Reilly Adam Shapland
helenahowardarch@gmail.com terezakac@hotmail.com joseph.reilly5@gmail.com joseph-reilly.tumblr.com adamshapland1@gmail.com
THE SHOCK OF THE OLD AND THE SHOCK OF THE NEW Jonathan Hill, Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow
A Twenty-First Century Grand Tour Eighteenth-century architects spent at least three years in Italy, collecting ideas, principles, experiences and artefacts to transfer home, from south to north. Their purpose was not to copy what they had seen but to translate it to a new context and climate, thus inventing a new architecture and a new landscape. The Grand Tour continued into the twentieth century. Commissioned to design a house when he was 20 years old, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s first client paid for his tour of Italy, while Rome inspired Louis Kahn in 1950 and Roma Interrotta defined postmodernism in 1978. This year, we travelled to Florence, Mantua, Venice, Verona and Vicenza on a twenty-first century Grand Tour. The most creative architects have always looked to the past to imagine a future, studying an earlier architecture not to replicate it but to understand and transform it, revealing its relevance to the present and future. Twenty-first century architects should appreciate the shock of the old as well as the shock of the new.
Designs on History In 1969 Vincent Scully concluded that the architect will ‘always be dealing with historical problems—with the past and, a function of the past, with the future. So the architect should be regarded as a kind of physical historian … the architect builds visible history’. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present, transforming both. Equally, a design is equivalent to a novel, convincing the user to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a ‘physical historian’ and a ‘physical novelist’.
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What is a New City Today? Our site is Stewartby, a 1920s model town built to serve the world’s largest brickworks. The London Brick Company commissioned neo-classical public buildings and housing by Sir Albert Richardson, The Bartlett Professor of Architecture, who lived nearby. Today, the brickworks is abandoned and the town is empty, but just an hour from London. To imagine a new city, each student has designed its first civic building, which is a microcosm of the city and a catalyst for its growth. A hybrid of architecture, infrastructure and landscape, the civic building establishes a symbiotic relationship with its ever-changing immediate and wider contexts. Attentive to the environment, it recognises the co-production and creative influence of natural as well as cultural forces. Discursive, it encourages social and political engagement, and the interaction of public and private lives. Inventive, it reimagines histories and narratives, creating new myths for a new city.
Unit 12 would very much like to thank James Hampton, Design Realisation tutor, and Ben Godber, structural consultant, as well as the critics: Nigel Coates, Tom Coward, Tina Di Carlo, Catherine Ince, Michiko Sumi, Alessandro Zambelli, Mollie Claypole, Peg Rawes, Chris Pierce, Liam Young, Shumi Bose, Stewart Dodd, Ross Exo Adams, Moira Lascelles, Adrian Forty, Constance Lau, Barbara Penner, Fiona Zisch, Ben Campkin, Emma Cheatle, Marina Lathouri, Penelope Haralambidou, Charles Holland, John Macarthur, Tania Sengupta, Colin Herperger, David Roberts, Daisy Froud, Rahesh Ram, David Buck, Igor Marjanovic and Luke Pearson.
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CATHEDRAL OF ST THOMAS Emma Clinton Based in a disused clay pit, on the outskirts of Stewartby, the Cathedral uses the biblical figure of Doubting Thomas as a narrative device. It becomes a site for a new council, run primarily by the laity, slowly relieving the Bishop’s house in Westminster of its political decision-making. The project is designed through a series of fragments, exploring theological themes of the eschatology of the body and soul. Formed organically, using a combination of fabric formed concrete, a forever expanding scaffolding and a network of decaying finishes that are manipulated and adapted as the building ages, the Cathedral intentionally echoes the visceral, decaying qualities of the Baroque. In a constant state of disrepair, it becomes a celebration of our mortality, suspending disbelief through a tactile experience, explored through a series of incomplete pencil studies and 1:1 models.
Emma Clinton
7
8
emmarclinton@gmail.com
Emma Clinton
9
10
emmarclinton@gmail.com
THE NEW BEDFORD AGORA Jason Coe Sited in Stewartby on the lower Oxford Clay belt, the Bedford Cooperative Brickworks proposes the democratic model city of New Bedford. The city implements a participatory form of governance and a cooperative form of living where citizens are unified to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs through the jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise of the brickworks. The New Bedford Agora is a local parliament for a participatory democracy, proposing a new democratic architecture that encourages public participation within democratic activities whilst questioning existing spatial practices of government. The project proposes a smaller democratic unit of local government where its 12,000 citizens are able to gather and participate in the annual public forum which replaces local government elections and provides an opportunity for citizens to physically participate in decision making processes. The building adopts the collective spatial condition of the field; creating new participatory spaces that are open to appropriation and adaptation by their inhabitants. Democratic, civic and domestic activities are played out within the heterogeneous space, open to exposure and encounter by inhabitants while reducing formal barriers between its members and citizens. Specific democratic activities such as council meetings and committee meetings are reconfigured through the collective spatial condition, with particular moments physically manifest through articulations of the brickwork. The ruinous and seemingly incomplete quality of the architecture allows the mind greater opportunities for speculation. Forms are not necessarily prescribed; rather occupants bring a use to the space. When not in use, objects such as the speaker’s chairs and ceremonial routes lay as dormant ruins, suggestive of their potential for occupation.
Jason Coe
11
12
jason.coe@gmail.com
Jason Coe
13
14
jason.coe@gmail.com
EXILIC LANDSCAPES Leon Fenster Exilic Landscapes seeks a model for contemporary religious architecture through that half of Judeo-Christian history which has usually been overlooked architecturally: Judaism. A history of migrations, expulsions and a strong sense of portable identity has resulted in an almost total indifference towards architecture in the Jewish tradition. In anticipation of the reurbanisation of the London Jewish community and its desire for greater visibility, the project proposes a new ‘cathedral’ synagogue in the heart of the City wards in which Jews first settled when readmitted to England in 1656. The proposal builds on the great City Synagogues of the last major heyday of Jewish building in the city: the late nineteenth century. Exilic Landscapes asks what an idiosyncratically Jewish architecture might look like today and posits that it is one which embraces the notion of exile and the restlessness of uncertainty. A religious architecture not of the inaccessible sacred but of the disorder of human contradiction. A reading of history filled not with absolutes but with constant negotiation. As George Steiner puts it, this is an era in which increasingly large swathes of humanity are “becoming Jews,” as defined by a consciousness of exile and portable identity. Hence this approach to religious architecture is of great consequence for our age.
Leon Fenster
15
16
leonfenster@gmail.com
Leon Fenster
17
18
leonfenster.com
“A HOME, AN OFFICE AND A UNIVERSITY” Alastair King “A Home, an Office and a University”- Sir Albert Richardson (1880-1964) in 1956, when asked to describe his home in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. 50 years ago Sir Albert Richardson, architect, educator, collector and Modern Georgian Paradox died. In September last year Richardson’s unique collection was removed from his home in Ampthill, an 18th century house without electricity such that Richardson could authentically appreciate Georgian architecture, to Christie’s in London. As a response to the sale of Richardson’s collection, and taking the opportunity for a reappraisal of Richardson 50 years after his death, I have proposed a museum to hold Richardson’s collection, coupled with a satellite campus for The Bartlett School of Architecture and The Slade School of Art, (institutions in which Richardson once taught). Sited at Stewartby in Bedfordshire, the location of Richardson’s model village for the nearby brickworks, (which forms part of the museum’s collection), and a short distance from Ampthill, the proposal uses techniques allegorical to Richardson’s, through multiple scales, times and modes of representation (all found within Richardson’s collection). In this way, models become buildings, multiple architectures are present, and weather is represented- rather than existing. The proposal seeks to go beyond the caricature of Richardson as a living Georgian, a myth he himself perpetuated, and tease out his other fluctuating and myriad identities- reminding the viewer that the same man who would be taken to dinner parties round Ampthill in a sedan chair and Georgian costume, also taught a young Peter Smithson, (who had sought him out), and lecturing in the 1920s about the possibilities of architecture emulating the modern motor car and tube train, at a time when Le Corbusier was doing much the same thing. Truly a Modern Paradox.
Alastair King
19
20
ak342@kent.ac.uk
Alastair King
21
22
ak342@kent.ac.uk
THE ROYAL INSTITUTION Samuel Rackham Science and Art have been locked in a battle of growing complexity since the beginning of the nineteenth century, set into a stable oppositional framework that appears increasingly difficult to reunite; this project explores the temporary reunification of these two strands to examine what that changing relationship could offer to Architecture and Science today. Through the reinterpretation of a period where the objective and the subjective, fact and fiction, the visible and the invisible once held equal stature, that of eighteenth century Romantic Science, this age can be explored as what art historian Helen Hills calls a ‘conceptual technology’ that isn’t only to be understood as part of a historical narrative but as a potential formula for reinterpretation. The Royal Institution, an independent charity dedicated to connecting people with the world of science was the flagship institution of Romantic Science. Established in 1799, the RI celebrates the theatricality of experimental science with the aim of promoting the wonders and applications of the subject to the wider public. Currently located in Mayfair I propose to relocate the RI to the prominent position of the Thames Southbank, sitting adjacent to Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre. The display and inherent performance of science can here be placed at the centre of the national consciousness and the RI can again become a dual representative of science and the arts. The lecture theatre therefore provides the nucleus of the building and the ritualistic spaces that lead into this space immerse the audience into the world of science through interaction, displacement and experiment.
Samuel Rackham
23
24
samuelrackham@gmail.com
Samuel Rackham
25
26
samuelrackham@gmail.com
THE HOUSE OF EROS Rodolfo Acevedo Rodriguez The home was once the microcosm of the ideal society, with love and charity, replacing the capitalism of the outside world. Today, ancient mythology comes to life in Stewartby, relating the narratives of humans and deities which, together with contemporary technologies, introduce a new activity and meaning to that already there. Set among the reminiscences of The London Brick Company, in a landscape that echoes the once industrial setting, this unusual habitat serves as an allegory to the symbols and status by which we live today as a result of an age of production. The architecture questions the nature of human values and the means by which it is represented highlights the importance of each of the technologies being used, as well as their potential to be combined and be used more appropriately. The design of the house explores the potential for an architectural process to nurture the perception of desire. Through the concept of the human body, the object and the senses, the activity housed within the space focuses on the relationship between the physical, the human and the divine. The architecture includes pictorial and carnal themes throughout, which transform the habitation into a tacit engagement between the building and the body. The building presents elements and arrangements, at times explicit, at times concealed, which stage the transformations of mythical figures through physical objects and the emotions that are felt by using them. The contrast between the inside and outside of the building turns seductive by revealing the relationship between the material and the body.
Rodolfo Acevedo Rodriguez
27
28
r.rodriguez.12@ucl.ac.uk
Rodolfo Acevedo Rodriguez
29
30
r.rodriguez.12@ucl.ac.uk
THE LIVING DAM Louis Sullivan A proposal for the construction of Lake Stewartby, and a better typology of dam. In response to the UK’s imminent water crisis, the Government has registered the severity of the UK’s water need, and has proposed that a series of reservoirs be built to maintain hydrological self-sufficiency. Much of the UK’s existing hydrological infrastructure can be traced to the mid-19th century, when prototypical dams were created in response to the growing need of the Victorian Industrial Cities. The infrastructure was adequate for much of the 20th century, however with increasing despondency towards dam creation (in light of the controversy surrounding the ‘large dams’ of the 20th century, and the damming report of the World Commission of Dams) the UK has struggled to garnish public support for these essential infrastructures. Clearly, there is discontent for the current model of dam. For these reasons, ‘The Living Dam’ is a new typology of dam - away from the image of solitary hydrological infrastructures, and towards a model which is not only integral but also integrated with society, an Arcology which may help alter the public perception of dams and reduce many of the negative connotations associated with dam management. A ‘useful pyramid’ for the 21st century. With the integration of ecology, society and infrastructure, the Living Dam is a physical model of a modern ‘hydraulic civilisation’; a community and society sustained and dependant on its control, management and utilisation of water. Through the ideals of The Living Dam, it is hoped that our cultural attitude towards their creation will be re-addressed and that society will be capable of living with dams.
Louis Sullivan
31
32
louis@LSDart.co.uk
Louis Sullivan
33
34
louis@LSDart.co.uk
KALEIDO PARK Amy Sullivan-Bodiam Located on Deptford’s riverfront, the new Crystal Palace, a combination of the Master Shipwright’s house and new Kaleido Park, is a monument to Deptford’s industrial past and Sayes Court, London’s lost garden. Live-work opportunities are offered in a community built on respect for nature, industry without drudgery, equality and well being for all; ideals that resonate with those of the 1960’s counter culture and the American transcendentalists of the 1840s. Here, London is a State of Mind and its boundaries expand as far as the mind will let them. Nature, colour, pattern and beautiful forms create a kaleidoscope for living, an environment that contributes to a state of wellbeing, even on the dullest of days! Small industries grow and sparkle like crystals as the Palace evolves. Festivals are held regularly to celebrate the rich tapestry of spaces and minds within the Palace. By preserving and increasing the engagement of the local residents the project contributes to community integration and cohesion.
Amy Sullivan-Bodiam
35
36
amy.sullivan-bodiam.10@ucl.ac.uk
Amy Sullivan-Bodiam
37
38
amy.sullivan-bodiam.10@ucl.ac.uk
BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE, AGAINST CAPITALISM. Daniel Wilkinson Located in the dredged lake outside of Stewartby, a lake which exists only to obscure the economic appropriation of the area by the London Brick Company, the Courthouse of the 23rd Baroque positions itself as the legal starting point for a new city. Spanish philosopher Eugenio D’Ors (1881-1954) didn’t see the Baroque as a finite historical period, but as a recurrent political and aesthetic cycle found throughout history. He identified 22 previous Baroques, where a social order had reached its final static stages immediately before a Baroque irruption. He expected the 23rd Baroque to emerge out of the unavoidable ruins of modern capitalism. The Court acts as both the starting point and the central point of what will be the city of the 23rd Baroque. A landmark which both creates the legal logic of the new Baroque city, while emanating its aesthetic logic. As the starting point, the civic entrance through the Court’s colossal plinth is located beneath the Court chamber itself, while as the central point the court is located in front of a civic square. An ornamental strategy is employed throughout the project, beginning in the prisoner’s route and achieving its aim in the civic gate where structural components are merged and obscured with a sense of dominance being achieved through Baroque references and an overabundance of meaning mediated through ornament. The prisoner’s role in the system as the ‘meat of law’ is figuratively mediated throughout the project, a celebration of the oppression of those who do not conform to the law, and as such are paradoxically vital to its existence. Honest about its own dishonesty, any law is a faith. A new law and style to replace the shortcomings and banalities of our own, however, all systems need their meat.
Daniel Wilkinson
39
40
dan@phenomenalarchitects.com
Daniel Wilkinson
41
42
dan@phenomenalarchitects.com
THE SUBLIME WILDERNESS INSTITUTE Xuhong Zheng The project proposes a landscape and architecture of sublime wilderness through its relationship with nature and wasteland as well as its spatial qualities and juxtapositions of light, darkness and colour. Around the 18th century, there was a profound transformation in attitudes towards nature, as previously-feared wilderness landscapes became celebrated by the Romantics through transcendent portrayals of wild nature. This was followed by increasing concerns for the protection of nature, with the establishment of nature reserves, national parks and the green belt. As a reaction to the failures of the current green belt policy and as a strategy to offer intense pockets of wildlife, the project proposes the re-use of brownfield sites (wasteland) across England to become islands of wilderness, by allowing the land to lie fallow and for diverse ecologies to flourish. The disused brick quarries of Stewartby, Bedfordshire become key test sites. Situated around the edge of one of the disused clay quarries, the Wilderness Institute houses a community of researchers, ecologists, planners and artists who inhabit the sublime wilderness of both the landscape and the architecture, establishing a new research and planning centre. The building forms an inhabitable wall around the pit, controlling entry and views into the site whilst acting as a catalyst for wilderness to develop – through actions such as seed dispersal, wind funneling, and rainwater collection and release. The journey through the building is constructed as a journey through a landscape and elements such as water and wind are brought inside. The fluctuations of light and dark, expanding and contracting spaces are orchestrated in order to elicit feelings of tension and release, terror and exhilaration associated with the sublime.
Xuhong Zheng
43
44
xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk
Xuhong Zheng
45
46
xuhongzheng@hotmail.co.uk
MANIFEST DESTINY Akhil Bakhda American frontier history tells the story of the creation and defence of communities, the use of the land, the development of markets, and the formation of states. It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of the peoples and cultures which gave birth to and sustain life in America. Through treaties with foreign nations and native tribes, political compromise, military conquest, establishment of law and order, building farms, ranches and towns, marking trails and digging mines, and pulling in great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast fulfilling the dreams of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny, the widely held belief that American settlers should expand from east to west by God’s grace, has since been maligned by many politicians and historians due to its conflicts with slavery for instance. However, would the concept of Manifest Destiny work on a land untouched? Does Manifest Destiny allow for other nations ideas of democracy or otherwise? In its preliminary stages, the project seeks to explore and conflate the story of American Frontier history in seeking to understand the trajectory of how we will colonise Mars from 2030. From understanding that the first non-temporary architecture on Mars will draw from Roman brick vaulting systems, to understanding how a city might operate, the project hopes to describe an architecture beyond what is currently known about the subject of colonising Mars, namely temporary space pods that are commonly seen in media depictions of life on Mars. The project will speculate on whether Manifest Destiny has anything pertinent to offer for a future human civilisation.
Akhil Bakhda
47
48
akhilbakhda@gmail.com
Akhil Bakhda
49
50
akhilbakhda@gmail.com
THE PORCELAIN FOUNDATION Samiyah Bawamia The porcelain industry in England, particularly Stoke on Trent, which involves the production of singular, handcrafted and elegantly decorated porcelain pieces, has been hindered by cheaper mass produced products. This has led to a lack of support and interest in local porcelain artists. Hanson Building Products, in association with the British Ceramic Confederation, are therefore recruiting the skills of these artists to assist in the building and operation of the Porcelain Foundation. The Porcelain Foundation functions as a hybrid building, an industry, a school and a source of income for Stewartby. Experimenting with a polychrome architecture, its role is to attract an affluent audience while providing a canvas for material testing. The Foundation is conceived as an icon of luxury, replacing a forgotten territory. It is a critique of Venturi’s statement of ‘Less is a bore’ and investigates the idea of the building being a crafted object, relating to shrines and follies. As well as being a place to showcase talent, it is a centre to which ceramicists and craftsmen come to disseminate ideas. The school, supervised by highly qualified artists, invites its guests to experience and inhabit the nature of porcelain while representing an architecture of salvage and reclamation, involving the trade of objects and materials. Colours and their alterations are results of their surroundings, form, texture, and interplay of light and shadow, each of which determine distinct experiences. While a new iconic feature replaces the brickwork chimneys, once pride of Stewartby, the inhabitants thrive once again on a more delicate material: porcelain.
Samiyah Bawamia
51
52
samiyah_bawa@hotmail.com
Samiyah Bawamia
53
54
samiyah_bawa@hotmail.com
THE TOWER, THE LIBRARY AND AN ARCHIVE OF WOODLAND STORIES Larisa Bulibasa ‘Once upon a time there was a princess, as lovely as the dawn. She slept in the highest tower of her palace, which was flooded each day by the morning sunlight. She slept for 1000 years while the forest grew around her. Each dream took a whole year and so acorns became oak trees and deep within this forest she dreamt.’ The Forestry College (2014 - 2114) Captured in the form of the design are the spirits of Umberto Eco’s labyrinthine library from the novel ‘The name of the Rose’ and the twisted narrative from the Brothers Grimm story, ‘Sleeping Beauty’. The project engages with ideas of time and explores symbiotic relationships between architecture and nature looking at a physical and a poetical level of interaction between the two of them. Nature becomes a cultural layer for an academic exercise, and the architecture represents a constructed system in the context of an organic landscape. The Forestry College is constructed around the design of a Watch Tower which exists in 2014 and which relies on elements of contradiction, shifting its function from a tower, to an archive, to a library. Located in the Watch Tower is a view to another land. The Ethereal Woodland (1014 - 2014) The land is composed of a library, located deep within an ancient woodland of oak trees, which existed 1000 years before the Watch Tower came to be. The library is seen as a tower, a tunnel and a book that shifts its poetical and physical purpose; it spins and dances in the shadows that the forest casts on the architectural features at dawn. The library becomes both a mythical and a material space, with multiple corridors and intriguing walkways inhabited partially by the natural forces of light and shadow, and partially by people.
Larisa Bulibasa
55
56
larisa.b11@gmail.com
Larisa Bulibasa
57
58
larisa.b11@gmail.com
(STEWARTBY) LAND MILL Alex Cotterill The landfill can be understood as both a place of shared social significance, a collective repository for discarded material and an essential resource for exhausted material goods; it is somewhere between these three that the project sits. The Stewartby Land Mill is a prototype landfill mining plant located to the North West of Stewartby. It exists as a temporary model for future land mills, an apparatus for mining and recycling existing landfills throughout the Bedfordshire area to reclaim the land for future use, operated by a self-sufficient community integrated within the proposal. The land mill as a project responds to the overwhelming issues with waste and contemporary sustainability, creating an architecture that both acts as a monument and allegorical representation of sustainable modern living. The components use thermoplastics, recycled from the landfill, as the sole building material. Through the processes of separation and reforming, components are then used throughout the building defined by their own properties. Once the land has been ‘reclaimed’ the building recycles itself, leaving a shell monument to sit within its surroundings.
Alex Cotterill
59
60
alexcotterill@gmail.com
Alex Cotterill
61
62
alexcotterill@gmail.com
SOLFORICO CONSULATE Benjamin Ferns Through a composition of perverse juxtapositions and subverted hierarchies, the Italian Consulate is assembled to purify the Marston Vale. Sulfur, once expelled from the chimneys of the London Brickworks is recovered from a reforestation programme, to be transformed into an architectural material. For generations Italian workers “came to Bedford to eat the dust of the bricks because they had to earn a piece of bread. All this, but in the end, nobody wants to know about us anymore�, as the Consulate recently closed. The Solforico Consulate questions Neapolitan identity, perception, and transparency in hybrid spaces. Alongside programmes of attaining citizenship and recording civil affairs, the landscape reveals the infrastructure required for the sulfur industry. A CHP biomass plant with integrated desulfurisation pit, catalytic reaction vessels (recovering sulfur from limestone slurry), an artificial steam microclimate and monumental storage chambers that form part of an ecological cycle, a duality between alchemy and myth. The architecture is a montage of the Dadaist collage of perspective and contrast, and the Cubist collage of gaps and hermeneutic phantoms. Engaging spatial, sensual, semantic and temporal gaps over multiple horizons, to explore truth. Truth by Rowe & Slutsky defined as both literal exposure of construction, and phenomenological through multiple, overlapping, and contradictory perceptions, irrelevant of scale. By exploring tradition and language, to avoid a manipulation of Italian motifs on a surface level, the romanticism of Venetian assemblage is expressed. The travertine borrowed landscape becomes a plateau of polyvalent fragments, displaced forms, and absent thresholds in the landscape, offering transient views into the workshops and consulate scenography.
Benjamin Ferns
63
64
benjamin.ferns@gmail.com
Benjamin Ferns
65
66
benjamin.ferns@gmail.com
THE CITY OF GASTRONOMIC LICHENOLOGY Helena Howard Dr. Hansteen, the chief lecturer at the Agricultural School at Aas, Norway in 1911, prophesied that lichen was to become the great popular food of the masses due to its abundance, inexpensiveness and nutritive properties. Despite having a pungent and bitter taste, nearly all 40,000 known species of lichen are edible, having a similar nutritional content to maize and rice. The city of Stewartby acts as the world centre for research into gastronomic lichen as a potential alternative source of nutrition, with a vision to alleviating the inevitable food crisis brought about by climate change. Harvesters transplant and cultivate lichen onto the fabric-formed concrete walls of the city’s architecture, which include laboratories, experimental kitchens and banqueting halls. Every decennial year, the slowest-growing lichen, the yellow Xanthoria Parietina, are harvested and eaten in a sumptuous and celebratory banquet, in honour of scientist Simon Schwendener, the forefather of lichenological study. The site of Rookery South, an abandoned quarry situated in the post-industrial landscape of Stewartby, plays host to the catalyst of the city: The Stewartby Laboratory of Gastronomic Lichenology. The project explores the communal spirit of the harvest and banqueting within the context of a biological and textural architecture. Referencing the biological mechanism of the microvilli in the small intestine, the project explores the creation of a material with an increased surface area for lichen growth. A porous and highly textured concrete surface is fabric-formed in order to provide a lichen-growth substrate with a large surface area. As new lichens colonise the concrete surface and are harvested, the chromatic and textural character of the architecture alters with changes in seasonality and the weather.
Helena Howard
67
68
helenahowardarch@gmail.com
Helena Howard
69
70
helenahowardarch@gmail.com
CLAY NANOCOMPOSITE FABRICATION AND TRAINING GROUND Tereza Kacerova Building upon the industrial heritage of the site, which until 2008 has been a centre of brick making industry, the project aims to reestablish the area of Stewartby as a centre of emerging technology and the production of an alternative to an existing resource - Oxford clay. A clay nanocomposite membrane - light, yet strong, non-porous material - is proposed to be fabricated in one of the disused clay pits. Inspired by natural growth of shells, the process involves two components - polyurethane, and montmorillonite mineral extracted from the excavated clay. In its form the proposal aims to establish a continuous link in a fragmented landscape, a fixed datum above an undulating and ever changing ground. The sequence of spaces is established as a progression from dirty and dusty areas to the clean and controlled environment of laboratories and research offices. This is enhanced by the materiality of a transparent or translucent membrane and solid extruded clay blocks utilised in construction. In February 2014 a prototype of an HAV airship was built in the nearby Cardington Hangar. Considering the material qualities of the composite membrane, and the location of Stewartby being central to a re-emerging airship industry, the material is further proposed to be utilised in construction of a training centre for pilots of HAV airships. An experience of walking through the building aims to be analogous to the calm nature of an airship flight. Considered as a mediator, the proposal simulates a journey of a pilot to the moment when he boards on the airship, which for a limited time becomes part of the whole composition. The materiality of the composite membrane mimics the atmosphere within the airship; changing light and weather conditions become an integral part of the building´s spatiality.
Tereza Kacerova
71
72
terezakac@hotmail.com
Tereza Kacerova
73
74
terezakac@hotmail.com
ANACHRONISTIC FORESTRY IN THE NEAR FUTURE Joe Reilly The project takes as its premise a future Bedfordshire engulfed by woodland. In 1991 the brickfields region surrounding Stewartby was designated by the local council as the Forest of Marston Vale. The objective was to transform the area from a scarred industrial wilderness into a thriving woodland, increasing tree cover by 30%. John Evelyn remarked on the aesthetic and pragmatic importance of England’s “wooden walls” 350 years ago, yet woodland cover has barely increased since this time, despite numerous reforestation programmes; recent storms have damaged up to 10 million trees, and the UK remains the world’s third highest importer of timber. Using solely locally felled timber as the primary building material, the architecture suggests an alternative use of timber as a contemporary building material. The hand crafted, off-kilter treatment of timber is preferred to the precisely processed product of the machine. This is then combined with reclaimed fragments of the area’s industrial past in an attempt to coexist incongruously within the uncanny - appearing at once both familiar and peculiar. Within the vast burgeoning woodland a sawmill and forestry workshop form the first and last elements of a new, deliberately slower city.
Joe Reilly
75
76
joseph.reilly5@gmail.com
Joe Reilly
77
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joseph.reilly5@gmail.com
THE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY HEADQUARTERS FOR FLOODING Adam Shapland In January 2014, the Uk witnessed some of its worst flooding for over 50 years, causing widespread damage to homes, businesses and agricultural land. In response, the government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or (DEFRA) were forced to increase its flood defence budget by a further £300million to enable the Environment Agency and local authorities to implement an emergency relief effort to restore infrastructure, rebuild existing flood defences and invest in new flood defence schemes. With this in mind, the proposed New City Hall & Environment Agency Headquarters for Flooding is funded by the environment agency as a central civic building and catalyst for a prototype flooded city and landscape which attempts to address living in expectancy of the flood and subverts the perception of flooding through a ceremonial event that highlights and celebrates its sublime nature. The proposed building and surrounding landscape activates, and is activated by, the movement of flood water, which is re-directed south from the Great river Ouse at Bedford, in a seasonal relief effort. Earth, mud and sediment defence banks are constructed across the flooded wetland by using large scale barriers of semi-permeable fabric which allows the flow of water but retains an earth and sediment build up on one side, thus creating a flood barrier. Essentially, only the flood water and matter contained within can create a barrier through which it then cannot pass. Without the flood there would be no resistance and only using the wall can the flood water be controlled. The Environment Agency headquarters relies on a sudden increase in water level and aims to highlight the sublime nature of the flood by creating an atmosphere that reflects its physical magnitude and oncoming threat from adverse weather conditions. The flood and the subsequent activated processes can therefore take on characteristics that both physically inhabit the surreal wet-landscape and penetrate the buildings’ concrete internal spaces, as well as metaphysically inhibiting the subconscious.
Adam Shapland
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adamshapland1@gmail.com
Adam Shapland
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adamshapland1@gmail.com
Special thanks to Alastair King, Leon Fenster and Xuhong Zheng Copyright 2014 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.
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