Studio 1 / Studio XX
A manifesto for housing Hazel Cowie and Jess Davidson
”The built form of housing has always been seen as a tangible, visual reflection if the organization of society. It reveals the existing class structure and power relationships. But it has also long been a vehicle for imagining alternative social orders. Every emancipatory movement must deal with the housing question in one form or another. This capacity to spur the political imagination is part of housing’s social value as well.”
As with all disciplines and practices, architectural practice in 2020 is being reassessed through a series of intersecting and critical lenses the pandemic, the climate crisis and post-Grenfell analysis are forcing the profession to consider its role in public life. Taking the position that housing is not only a manifestation of power relations within society, but a vehicle through which an alternative social order can be imagined, the studio will work towards developing a new housing landscape for Newcastle. We will explore ideas about homogeneity, taste, anonymity and placelessness and question the conformist and compliant role that architecture is often seen to have in the production of housing. Our theoretical approach will also extend to material and tectonic thinking and in semester two we will explore creative uses of prefabrication and off-site manufacture and the effect these might have on the shape of architectural practice in the future.
Madden, D. J. and Marcuse, P. (2016) In Defense of Housing: the Politics of Crisis, p 12
“Architecture or, more precisely, space affects and effects social relations in the most profound ways, from the very personal (in a phenomenological engagement with stuff, space, light, materials) to the very political (in the way that the dynamics of power are played out in space). Adopting the feminist maxim (“the personal is political”) buildings conjoin personal space and political space. ... The key political responsibility of the architect lies not in the refinement of the building as static visual commodity, but as a contributor to the creation of empowering spatial, and hence social, relationships in the name of others.” Awan, N., Schneider, T. & Till, J. (2011) Spatial Agency, p59
Image: Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi, from “Learning from Levittown” (1970)
Studio Leaders Studio 1 (aka Studio XX) is led by Hazel Cowie and Jess Davidson. Hazel is an architect and researcher based in London, with experience of both individual private houses and large-scale housing developments. Her research is based on the representations of housing developments in their marketing and their effects on the design of housing as a product. Jess Davidson is an architect with Page\Park, working in the cultural and housing sector. She is core to their sustainability team and anchors work in Leeds and across the UK. She has experience in the mechanisms and economic systems that shape the delivery of homes, and her experience working with MMC & offsite manufacture processes will be invaluable to your progressive housing pinciples. We will be joined by Claire Harper, of architects and planners Harper Perry, who will be providing our theoretical fire power. We also hope to have input throughout the year from housing researchers, planners, developers and housing economists.
Studio Themes The studio will cover, but is not limited to, the following themes, to which we hope you will bring your own: •
Housing in its political context
•
Feminisms
•
Taste
•
Domesticity
•
Community and Civic Space
•
Intersectionality and Inclusion
•
Modularity and Environmental Responsibility
The studio will operate as a collective with knowledge sharing, discussion and collaboration at the core of the studio’s working ethos. You will be encouraged to question normative assumptions: space standards, typical configurations, expectations about the limits and role of architects, residents and other participants in the production of the built environment, and we welcome you picking us up when we do the same. We posit that structures surrounding the idea of ‘home’ are gendered, and that applying tenets of feminist theory will aid in challenging and defining alternatives to the failing current housing landscape. Images: Alt-Erlaa, Vienna (top) New Ground, Pollard Thomas Edwards (bottom)
Studio Description The tower block as a generic housing type is designed to suit the logic of capitalism - efficient for construction but inflexible in use. You will be undertaking a detailed study and propositional analysis of a tower block in Newcastle, examining the physical, political and social context in which it came into being, and most importantly of all, how it functions as a home. Post-Covid, the relationship to home and what functions it needs to accommodate, and communities that it needs to support, have rightfully come into focus. We will seek to understand how these places come into being, the social, cultural and aesthetic norms that are embedded within them, and the implications they have as spaces where the relations of domestic and communal life are established. We will work propositionally: challenging the practices of speculative housing through a manifesto for an alternative housing model. We will use a range of methods, from mapping and modelling as a means of building your project narratives, to precedent analysis to see how the site compares to other projects. The focus on fabrication and construction will be developed through large-scale models and drawings.
We will draw from feminist theory as a way of disrupting and complicating assumptions about what housing should be and the way that relationships: human, ecological and economic are constructed within it, but also as a way of approaching the practice of architecture. Reflection and narrative will be constant themes with an emphasis on storytelling through the portfolio. A key aspect of the design will be fabrication. Off-site fabrication is seen as the solution to the UK’s current housing shortfall and is being promoted increasingly by politicians as well as major housebuilders. These new modes of construction have the potential to fundamentally change the social and economic conditions of architectural practice, construction processes, as well as the role of housing as an economic commodity. Working at the scale of the tactile detail, we will be exploring how these technologies can be aligned with critical ideas about the individual and personal connection with home, distinctiveness and specificity to site and local and with more decentralised modes of housing production. Image: Barbican, London - Axonometric (left) Hoxton Press, London (right)
Phase 1: Framing The site for our primer study will be our tower block. We have selected one that sits slightly outside of the town centre. It offers a rich context of juxtapositions. The historical, political, economic, cultural and architectural factors that play out in the most intricate fragments of the city can be understood in this urban-ish site - we will be begin by unpacking our site through its physical and political context, and through precedent comparison. We will seek to understand its genealogy – how it has come into being, the lifestyles that it accommodates, the aspirations that find their home there. We will interrogate energy performance, material supply chains, economic frameworks and the lifestyles of residents who live there. The aim is to elaborate the simple spatial
characteristics of this place in terms of their profound implications for the interplay of relationships within the site, and their wider relationship to the city. You will be unpacking the site within it’s city-wide context, and considering it at the scale of material and threshold, using this to develop your own briefs and individual responses to the site and studio themes. These narratives will be compiled through models, drawings, writings and used to identify a series of hypotheses for “retrofitting” our site. The aim of this study is to set out our studio manifesto for housing, one that responds to the declared climate emergency, the housing crisis and other issues you will identify. The aim of the first phase is for you to Images: Potters Houses, 1948 (left), Extinction Rebellion and Focus E15 protest images (top and middle right), Bois le Pretre (borrom right)
Image: Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, James Corner (left); Pentonville, Sarah Wigglesworth (right)
develop an understanding of the context in which the site, and your proposals will sit, and to:
Week 1: Studio meeting and introduction to the site. Setting up of groups and choosing themes for investigation.
•
Extend historical, cultural and socio-economic understanding of the architecture of the suburban estate
Week 2: Studio meeting and group tutorials. Discussing material gathered and agreeing propositional analysis.
•
Make models to elaborate an understanding of your selected element as part of a lived domestic environment
Week 3: Studio meeting and group tutorials to discuss analysis
•
Compile a set of objectives for future housing
•
Consider, with your peers, texts, precedents and other resources and build up a studio resource library.
Week 4: Cross Studio Forum Week 5: Studio meeting and followed by group tutorials to discuss your individual brief ideas represented with drawn analysis
Assessment Criteria (in addition to module assessment criteria):
Week 6: Studio meeting if required, group tutorials to discuss your modelled site analysis and neighbourhood propositions
Creative approach to analysis of site as example of typical suburban landscape
Week 7: Studio meeting and group tutorials - neighbourhood proposition and brief outputs
Synthesis of theoretical themes and sustainability
Week 8: Framing Exhibition
Timetable and outputs - Semester One
Phase 2: Testing At this short stage, you asked to test your ideas by proposing and iterating your site specific proposals. This is the opportunity to take an agenda developed in framing, and translate it into spatial interventions. You will also be engaging with the material set out in the Theory into Practice exercise, using critical readings of theory and exemplar buildings to inform and bolster your own ideas. You will use this to articulate your ideas, developing them to define a proposal that addresses the wider issues of making buildings in our climate crisis - for example reusing material from the site, working with existing biodiversity, and creating homes that push sustainability in the long term - adaptable and suitable for use by different demographics. During this phase of the project we will begin to engage with construction, material and tectonics and test how these might be informed by your own theoretical position, by site and future inhabitants. The key themes in your projects will be specific to each of you and defined by your research. You will be expected to integrate your ideas at the site scale with those at the scale of the 1:20 section and technical strategies. A key element will be a space of interaction and exchange with neighbouring residents, and therefore will require you understand the multiplicity (Deleuze, Guattari, 1977) of a hypothetical future neighbourhood.
Timetable and outputs - Semester Two Sketch proposal response to the project set out at the scale of neighbourhood.
demonstrating a components of the at the end of framing the city and the
Dates: Week 1: Studio tutorials - reviewing your approach to framing feedback in progressing testing. Week 2: Small group tutorials exploring massing and site response, including precedents.
Images: Coldbath Town, Peter Barber Architects (top right); Lion Green Road by Mary Duggan Architects (bottom)
Week 3: Small group tutorials to review your briefs against your proposals. Week 4: Testing Review
Phase 3: Synthesis The final stage of the project will be a refinement of your initial design testing. You will be expected to articulate a proposal for a new neighbourhood at a range of scales, from the neighbourhood to the tactile qualities of the interior, but the specific focus of your design project will depend on your research and the approach you have defined for yourselves.
Timetable and outputs - Semester Two
You will be asked to develop in detail a proposal for the spaces around the building and the new programme provision that you are proposing. The exercise will be an opportunity to step outside of your own project, experiment with different media, drawing and modelling techniques and to reflect on your proposal in relation to the range of ideas within the studio.
Dates:
In conjunction with your technology brief, we will also be working on large scale models of key details that explore the use of prefabrication and off-site manufacture processes and how these inform the tectonics in your project.
Project proposal presented across a range of scales Key drawings describing spaces and relationships that draw out the key theoretical ideas in your projects Landscape model/ drawing developed collaboratively to describe shared, communal spaces
Week 5: Studio tutorials (tech input) Week 6: Studio tutorials Week 7: Studio tutorials (tech input) EASTER Week 8: Studio tutorials Week 9: Studio tutorials Week 10: Reviews Images: Erno Goldfinger’s illustration of efficiency in post-War housing (left) and Im Gut Housing, Peter Markli (right)
Tectonics The key driver for the tectonic consideration of your project is modularity. This allows for the careful consideration of materials and their origins, efficiencies in design and material life-cycle. More widely, the proposals should address the implications of the location of the site in relation to services and transport. You might also consider how the proposal is serviced - is there an opportunity for the site to be selfsufficient in water, energy, heating or food production? How is this expressed? Your designs should also test material and tectonic qualities at the scale of the civic and of the individual unit. This will be developed in the drawings and model that comprise your proposal, and also a reflective essay that will accompany your work in your academic portfolio.
Images: Barrett’s Grove, Groupwork (top left), Copper Lane Co-Housing, Henley Halebrown (top right), Tiverton House, Takero Shimazaki(middle right), The Aviaries study model, Mary Duggan Architects (bottom right)
Climate Crisis Particularly in housing and city regeneration, the classic narrative is to clear away ‘failing’ estates and replace them with new constructions, such as Pruitt-Igoe above. More recent alternatives, such as Lacaton and Vassal’s Bois le Pretre shows that retention can allow for significant material and operation improvements to existing structures. In this studio, your site will be an existing concrete podium and slab block, a structure that comprises a great deal of material and embodied energy. Your task will be to consider how to make alterations this structure in an environmentally responsible manner. Material re-use, design for future adaptation, energy use reduction, intensity of use and biodiversity improvements are just some of the issues that you will be expected to address.
Images: Pruitt Igoe demolition (top) and on completion (inset). Bois le Pretre, Lacaton & Vassal(centre) and Upper Street, Groupwork (bottom)
Architectural Theory The generic nature of large-scale, speculative housing and how this has come to be the expected norm in relation to housing in the UK is the critical question underlying the studio brief. Understanding what drives this homogenisation will underline much of our exploration. We will be looking at this from two primary angles – the development of the idea of the house as a product, and feminist theory that explores how the standard idea of home is developed to reflect traditional gender roles and domestic labour, such as the development of the Frankfurt Kitchen (bottom left). As a focus for your project you might choose to look at domestic spaces in detail, or to look at the effects of regeneration on residential areas. Equally, looking at the effects of suburbanisation on the city centre and on housing could be your starting point. There are lots of exciting references – Joy White’s Terraformed explored how inequality becomes materially evident in the inner city; David Madden and Peter Marcuse offer a manifesto against the commodification of housing, while Beatriz Colomina discusses the way in which modernist
architects such as Le Corbusier (top) employ subversive and voyeuristic moves that subjugate the women to the accommodated to the male gaze. You might consider the role of representation in legitimising housing models, such as in the Architecture of Appropriation (Boer, et al). Your theoretical basis will help you develop and test your proposals and give you a framework from which to discuss them.
References & Reading Awan, Nishat., Tatjana. Schneider, and Till, J. (2011) Spatial Agency : Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Oxon: Routledge. Boer, R., Otero Verzier, M. and Trujien, K. (Ed). (2019) Architecture and Appropriation: On squatting as spatial practice. Het Nieuwe Institut: Amsterdam. (pdf available here: https://architectureappropriation.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/ publication) Colomina, B. (1992) Sexuality & space : Symposium : Papers. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural Press. Duany, A., PlaterZyberk, E. and Speck, J. 2000. Suburban nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream, New York: North Point Press. Evans, R. (1997) ‘Rookeries and Model Dwellings’ in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, Architectural Association Press: London. Featherstone, M. (1987) ‘Lifestyle and Consumer Culture’, Theory, Culture and Society, 4(1987), pp. 15. Klingmann, A. (2007) Brandscapes : architecture in the experience economy. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: MIT.
Marking Criteria
Madden, D. J. and Marcuse, P. (2016) In defense of housing: the politics of crisis. London ; New York: Verso. Martin, R. (2010) Utopia’s Ghost. Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
In addition to the year-wide marking criteria, you will be asked to address the following as studio specific criteria:
Spigel, L. (2005) ‘Designing the Smart House: Posthuman domesticity and conspicuous consumption’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 8(4), pp. 23.
•
White, J. (2020) Terraformed: Young black lives in the inner city. Repeater Books: London.
•
A creative response to environmentally and socially responsible new housing practice, exploring modularity and material efficiency; Proposals to demonstrate a multiscale understanding of housing in its wider context - townscape, neighbourhood, unit and detail.
Zukin, S. (2010) Naked city : the death and life of authentic urban places. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Images: Felsted studies, Sergison Bates (top); Shrublands, Mae Architects (bottom)