HOSTILE WORLDS

The Student Zine

what if buildings melted?

what if there was no land left?

what if the rain was toxic?

what if the city was an organism?

what if we lived underwater?

what if we lived in the sea?

what if colonialism failed?

#10 Contents

M+ Team

Ben Fitzpatrick Graphic Designer @benfitzpatrick99

Gordon Wu Chairman @gordonmakesgroovythings

Keisuke Sakamoto Creative Director @dood.sak

Letitia Zhao Liason @lehexin

Matthew Tonge Secretary @matt.tonge

2022-23

An introduction to M+

The plus in M+ represents all things extracirricular.

This publication, the 10th Zine, is the first to emerge post-covid. Our rapid transition into life online has buried student life. Workshops, panels and guest lectures through Teams have lacked substance. Everyone had adapted differently, but many of us undeniably felt cheated of the real ‘architecture experience’.

Thus with this transition into a new academic year and a new zine team, we felt like the publication was deserving of a metamorphisis. Issue 10 is an experiment with a new formula. We want the M+ to be a sourcebook to help students come up with creative ideas in their projects. Framed around a “What if?” question, our hope is that we create an anthology of ‘mini-briefs’ that really express what architecture is about: a delicate balance between science and fantasy.

We’re also trying to become ‘reporters’ of sorts. Documenting the exciting up-and-coming things put forward by you, the students!

Issue 10 has been this mix between nostalgic love-letter to those pre-covid times, but also an energetic lense into a (hypothetical!) future.

We want to reiterate that the M+ Zine is meant to be your blank slate. We’re open to publishing anything you send over to us. Just message us on IG: @mplus_zine_mssa or me directly: 21437628@stu.mmu.ac.uk.

We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed producing it!

-Gordon Wu, Chair.

And enter a Hostile World.

At the rate Climate Change is progressing, our world may become uninhabitable in a not so distant future. We invite students to envision a dystopian scenario, and to promptly propose a design intervention to solve it (or at least make tolerable).

Submissions take the form of a ‘What if?’ question:

What if the rain was toxic?

What if the sun never set?

What if all land submerged?

There are very few opportunities beyond academia to speculate and design for a hypothetical future. After all, it doesn’t seem productive to solve problems that don’t exist. However, we believe there is merit in exercises like these- we may inadvertently develop ideas and solutions to future problems down the line.

Who knows- maybe one of the ideas in this Zine will come true.

What if the buildings started to melt?

With the current conversations around global warming, surface temperatures and heat waves, not to mention the visible and clear changes in weather around us, how often have we felt like melting under the sun? Especially for those hailing from more tropical countries around the world like India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the answer is most likely all the time. The same heat is also experienced by the buildings around us. What if it got to a point that the physical components around started to get visibly affected too? What if our buildings melted?

We live in a time and age where most problems are resolved in time with science and the tremendous role technology plays in our lives. If the situation does arise, it would only be a matter of time before a material, or an insulation was discovered to fight this and make buildings stand longer. In fact, as I write this, I can almost hear an advertisement saying “XYZ! Keeps your buildings solid longer!” Or find heights, angles, roofing, vegetation and other constructions techniques to cope with a catastrophe of this kind. And perhaps at that point there is also only so much that we could do. But what of those buildings that we have already built? The skyscrapers, the heritage buildings, the monuments; what about the infrastructure that we have built since the Knap oh Howar? How do we keep them from melting away?

We would have to find a way to cool the surfaces of these buildings from the outside during the daytime.

That would change from material to material. Perhaps something with marble cladding like the Taj Mahal would stay cooler for longer without having to be cooled that something with a steel or glass façade that would take longer to be cooled down if they heated up to melting temperatures. Although buildings with higher thermal mass such as brick, stone, etc., release and absorb heat much slower thereby smoothing temperatures over time. So, keeping them cool would take lot less time, energy and resources. For these buildings a sprinkler system with recycled water could be a sustainable and practical solution. Unfortunately, though, modern building of our time has very little thermal mass. Either because of the material or because materials with higher thermal mass have been covered up plasterboards, carpets, etc. Timber, as one of the common materials used in increasing amounts have dreadful thermal mass. To keep these surfaces cool, we could propose giant turbo fans on the outside of buildings to condition cool air on it during the day. Blankets or wrapping of coconut tree leaves or even large hybrid umbrellas made of both plant and solid materials. Or would be able to blast the insides of a building with air conditioning, so much so that the outside also stays cool? It’s hard to say. The hostility of the world if something like this were to happen is unimaginable. Frantic, constant, deliberate fight against the one source that makes all of life on earth possible.

Shreya Satheesh MLA1

What if there was no land left to build on?

Keisuke Sakamoto BA2 Instagram: @dood.sak

Emergence of record-breaking flood takes over Bangladesh, leaving many without an option but to leave. However, those really without a choice cannot leave. With an ever rising sea level, slum dwellers are forced to build up.

“Airborne slum” explores what the future of architecture may look like for a sinking country: Bangladesh. It seeks to shine light on informal architecture and the organic forms it takes on. The vast mobility and flexibility of such architecture, and people are what might flourish in the harsh environments of the near future.

Right: Visualisation Blender

Right: Visualisation Blender

What if the rain was toxic?

Gordon Wu BA2 Instagram:@gordonmakesgroovythings

I must confess- I absolutely detest rain! Being an international student from Hong Kong, a tropical climate, I’m used to consistent warm weather and sunny skies. I’m sure the locals are well used to it- I admit I was very surprised when it began raining and I saw no one on the street take out an umbrella. Daily occurrence I suppose. I think particularly as students, confined to walking or taking the bus, rain can be such an impediment to our day to day lives. A 10 minute walk to the shops in heavy rain is a tragically different experience compared with a sunny day.

Yet what confuses me the most is that if you didn’t know anything about HK’s climate and looked at its urban typology, you would think that rain here was as frequent as in Manchester. Sky-bridges, tunnels, canopies, cutting through buildings and landscapes as if the M60 was pedestrianised. If the rain was toxic, what would the UK’s urban landscape look like? What if we built infrastructure against rain?

Above: Umbrella House Elevation Revit, Photoshop

Below: Umbrella House Section Revit, Photoshop

Umbrella Houses in storm

Revit, Photoshop

What if the city was a symbiotic organism?

Buse Simon BA2 Instagram: @busesart

What if cities were symbiotic organisms that connect and learn from each other? In a world where humans have proven their mobility and power for change, can we say that a city cannot survive if it is not dynamic on its own? Considering the buildings as a collection of energies, sourcing from living plants to insects to us humans, a city is a collection of all of these unique energies. It is in fact hostile for all of these living things to experience cities that are so passive and static.

What if the public could have a bigger voice in introspectively shaping buildings and landscapes, considering all aspects of liveliness to produce a more open, inclusive and functional built environment for them to live and leave the world more peacefully? This piece is a metaphorical way of demonstrating that cities need a language of their own just like we have language to communicate our values and needs, erasing the barrier of race, age, gender and all the humanconstructed phenomena, to rather focus on the ways of nature.

What if we lived underwater?

Xii Don Lim MArch 1

Instagram: @arxiitecture

Linkedin: Xii Don Lim

With a 19% probability of human extinction before 2100, estimated by Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford University) (but in 2008!), as well as the critical impacts of rising sea temperatures, the need for speculative design is crucial for envisioning possible/probable/plausible scenarios of our futures, a sensory tool to inform policy and inspire citizens to act the challenging issue of climate change.

My submission provides an overview of how it could be like to live in Underwater Cities, an imaginative scenario where we collectively build and live in underwater cities while we regenerate the Earth’s surface remotely, a conceptual reverse of the legend of Atlantis - where we now possibly wield sufficient automation and technology to create this concept: but the question stands at an ultimatum, are we capable as humans to keep any systems running without conflict? Thus its impracticality, and our need to steward and nurture our environments today, to protect and

AI conceptualisaiton: Midjourney, Nightcafe, Dalle, Adobe software.

Coming to Campus: Treasure, not trash!

By MSSA Climate Action Group

We are launching a week where you can bring in your unwanted old models, scrap materials, drawings and paper.

We want to exhibit conflicts within making culture and our creative cycle showing the waste it produces, and highlighting the value of reuse, and sustainable material culture.

We then will have an event where students and staff will work together to disassemble and sort this ‘trash’ to give it a new home as ‘treasure’ for student use in their projects!

The event will act as a space to discuss the deeper issues in our creative and making processes, and gain inspiration from student work, through an interactive session (un-making).

More details soon!

If you are interested in joining the group or want to get more involved message, contact mssaclimateaction@ gmail.com or @mssacliamteaction or @tioluwao on Instagram.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/ mssa-climate-action-group/

From the archive: Earthships

By MSSA Climate Action Group

What are Earthships?

Developed by Arch. Michael Reynolds, Earthships are a form of architecture that uses natural and waste materials to create passive solar, energy-efficient spaces that respond to their surrounding climates and environments.

From my understanding, Earthships are one approach towards designing a circular and regenerative form of living, taking into account the ecosystems we dwell in.

What we did:

Through collective model-making and material experimentation, we explored responses to climatic design.

One group designed an abstract interpretation of an Earthship based on water management, the other group took a more pragmatic design and construction approach.

We were able to observe how designs can be contextualised to maximise climate resilience and mitigation, through form, materiality, processes and more. Peter Powell led deep discussions on the practice of making and material culture, linking it to issues of politics and economics within the built environment and as creatives.

The workshop increased our visibility to potential methods of living in a climate crisis. It stimulated questions about ‘why do we make?’, and what we need to make (or not make) to live and thrive as an ecosystem.

For more info on Earthships see:

https://www.earthshipglobal.com/ design-principles

https://earthshipbiotecture.com/

What if the colonial powers failed?

A lot of the way “the world just works” can be traced back to a specific time. A time where a few European countries staked their claim over most of the world, imposing their culture and beliefs, and shaping a future of racial, cultural, and social divide which put them at the top. But what if the Colonial powers had failed? Let’s transport ourselves to this universe.

The world is a much more diverse and equitable space. In this world, the lines of race and ethnicity are blurred, with nations and communities forming based on shared beliefs, values, and cultures, rather than on arbitrary borders imposed by colonial powers. A lack of drawn boarders by colonisers have removed conflicts across middle east and south asia.

Whilst we can not change the past, we can still influence the future through our present actions.

The Americas, Africa, and South Asia are thriving civilisations composed of various indigenous tribes and powerful kingdoms. Each have their own culture, tradition, and forms of government and social structure. English is not a dominant language, and instead each region, each tribe, is proud and loud of their own voice. The streets of major cities are filled with the sounds of diverse music and the aromas of various cuisines.

Reduced conflict and oppression

have allowed the arts and sciences have flourished, with innovations and advancements in all fields. There is a strong understanding and relationship with the local environment. However, not everything is peaceful. There is still conflict and struggle over power and resources, however war is not the primary mean of resolving it.This world teaches us the importance of what we could achieve if we listened and learnt from each other.

MSSA EDI FORA

Tioluwalase Olojede BA3

Arshya Mittal BA3

Aaria Anand BA3

Riya Ghosh BA3

Below:

Generated using AI software Dalle, these images reflect a more multicultural, diverse, and bright world.

@msa_edifora @delighttt_o

Arshya Mittal BA3

LinkedIn & @aaria_anand @Riyaghosh.arch

What if we had to live in the sea?

We are in an era of the architectscientist. Where design and science like never before govern the ways of life.

It was when scientists began to realise that soon the earth and all civilization would soon be submerged into water due to the swelling weight of human activity, that the scientist and the architect’s agency was how we would in habitat the under waters.

The research project became known as the ‘Ark’ paying homage to Noah’s Ark: starting as a research lab on a boat at sea, it was equipped to be later overtaken by the rises in sea level.

Technologies were used to create life sustaining ‘Bubbles’, that would work as semi-closed systems, recycling the air, energy and resources, with ‘new’ things engineered on the ‘Ark’.

The Ark became the source of innovation and civilization. The life sustaining ‘Bubbles’ were designed to fit different sectors of life in each bubble, with transition connectors between that act as a wind tunnel drawing people to their destinations. This model of living favours co-living and sharing of resources for the majority. Still, the 1% still find ways to harness the knowledge from the ‘Ark’ to privatise life and its resources.

Illustrations of The Ark Tioluwalase

Welcome to a new society:

So to explain MSSA International, or MINT - we’re looking to create links with student organisations of universities internationally, developing opportunities for all involved as we go. I imagine this could lead to joint competition entries, trips, and general communication between students on an international platform.

As proof of concept, I visited AHO (The Oslo School of Architecture and Design) over the winter break with the aim of establishing a primary link for MINT, and also got to visit the Architecture Diploma show. The Diploma is AHO’s equivalent of the thesis project in 6th year, however their deliverables so to speak are much broader than our own, resulting in projects taking on a variety of mediums in terms of submitted materials and scale of intervention. From bound books to VR, masterplans to adaptive reuse, the scope of work and how it was showcased was truly something to be celebrated.

You can find the digital exhibition here: https://aho.no/en/projects/ diploma

I then got to meet with SAHO representatives who were really positive about the idea of an international student network, and they’re in the process of talking to a national level organisation in order to develop a framework for our own approach. In the meantime, we hope to see some entries from AHO students in our photography challenges, and I would like to note that 120 Hours, founded by students at AHO, is now accepting registrations:

https://www.120hours.no/registration

The next university I’ll be reaching out to is the University of Nicosia, I’ll be planning a trip out there for sometime in March (provided I don’t have too much work on) and I’ll be reaching out to their students/ organisations/faculty before then. Realistically, the initiatives we’re trying to establish with MINT aren’t going to come into fruition this year, that’s just a given considering the scale of what we’re trying to achieve, but if you’re interested in joining us and seeing where it can go, please email: 21402712@stu.mmu.ac.uk , with the subject “MINT”

MINT

Winning Entry

Sally Ho MArch 2

@sasokeiho

Respite between punters for his wares on floating fish market in Sai Kung, Hong Kong. 400 asa Lomography Colour film, Olympus OM-2 Spot.

12th photochallenge: ‘People and Places’

How has architecture impacted your life? How has it shaped you? And how can it represent you?

Architecture has a profound connection with people. It impacts the way one lives, works, learns, connects, and experiences. Architecture can promote inequalities by defining access to resources, cost of living, and freedom to practice your beliefs. MSA photography and EDI fora come together to present "people and places". This photography competition asks you to capture the connection people (you or anybody) can have to a place, and to convey the story.

IG: @mssaphotography

Dan Oledan MArch graduate

Rushil Shah

Sally Ho

Rushil Shah

The Student Zine

what if buildings melted?

what if there was no land left?

what if the rain was toxic?

what if the city was an organism?

what if we lived underwater?

what if we lived in the sea?

MINT: New society Treasure not trash Earthships

Hostile Worlds.

The