Unit 8

6.16 Interior view into the robotic fabrication lab in the creative hart of Vltavska Prague. The aim of the project is to reach autonomy trough production by offering a platform where enthusiasts and professionals can produce and exhibit their work. This would be achieved by stimulating robotic fabrication alongside analogue building methods. The proposal aims to tap into the existing creative culture in Prague, offering fabrication facilities to those wanting to push their ideas without having to go on board with an industrial partner. This would allow the individual not only to design his work but also to be involved in the actual fabrication of the work. Thus avoiding the linear current workflow into a more organic relationship between conception and production.

6.17 Kyri Loizou `s proposal aims to give more autonomy to the next generation by allowing parents to be more involved in the educational cycle of their own and others children in a new typology for a Primary School. As a collective, they will lead the decision making process of subjects taught to their children and the facilities required. As the primary users they would be partially responsible for the teaching and running of the school combined with space for parents to work alongside their children. The vertical school offers a radical reaction to both the urban sprawl as well as the often so rigid divide of subjects, age groups and spatial organisation of primary schools. Rather then being layered horizontally the proposal aims to stack a series of boulders which are interconnected by a spiralling bleed-out space which aims to create more communal space throughout the whole building.

a.4

Market as a space of civic encounter

Armoro Gutierrez Rivas, Rosa Rogina

Unit 8 perceives architecture as a social and political practice, and therefore promotes mobilisation of architectural thinking and making as a tool to engage with current matters of concern, both local and global. It explores how can architectural design process be expanded beyond its conventional role and be utilised as a tool for a wider social, economical and cultural change. The unit looks more closely into territories of spatial and/or social tension and attempts to unpack and address these complex contemporary conditions. By balancing in between identified real-world context and radical imagination, the students are encouraged to use the identified tension as a main driver for their design proposal.

With a focus on Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, this year we are exploring how the architectural typology of a market, that was historically proven to be a place in Sarajevo where different cultures come together, can be utilised as attempt to revive pre-war condition of city’s successful cultural heterogeneity.

Already from ancient times, marketplaces were vital nodes in the emergence of cities. With trade being one of the oldest embodiments of collective urban activity, markets designated places where processes of exchange of goods were fused with political decisionmaking. However, with the ongoing economic changes and the evolution of ways in which people perform commercial activity, there is new sense of urgency to reinvent the notion of shared urban space as a catalyst of heterogenic coexistence.

Taking as an example Sarajevo ́s Markale market and its role as fatal place maker during the 1425 days of the Sarajevo siege, the unit looks into how public environments, both open and enclosed, can play a key role to promote inter-ethnic and inter-cultural relationships in post-combat communities. Students are asked to challenge the exisiting typology of a market by developing a hybrid program that introduces a secondary use to it, in order to resolve an identified socio-spatial problem of their interest. While building on Lefebrve’s idea of civic rights to change ourselves by changing the city, the unit searches for a new typology of an enclosed market and supporting facilities that play a leading role as facilitator of this restoration.

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization.”

Henri Lefebvre

Students:

Y5: Jinesh Amarasinghe, Yousef Bouzid, Athena Hylton - Thompson, Azlan Mohamad Johar, Jamie Simon, Siok Yee Tan Y4: William Barnett, Travis Daisley, Richard Davies, Austin Joseph, Jian Jun Lim, Kate Skinner, Ee Hui Tiew, Bjørn Selvon Bhola Wang, Nurul Nadhrah Zainal

Visiting Crits:

Tom Atkinson, Hester Buck, Rodrigo Garcia Gonzales, Ed Jackson, Isabel de la Mora

Special thanks to:

Amer Becic, Emina Camzic, Senka Ibrisimbegovic (University of Sarajevo), Dunja Krvavac

8.0

Previous page: 8.0 Drawing documenting change of use throughout the day, Kate Skinner, Y4.

Reconnecting Hastahana: Hybrid Market-Park as Healing Ground by Jian Jun Lim, Y4. The project questions how to improve the stagnant Hastahana park in relation to its function, usage perpetuation and urban role as a public realm. 8.1 Section ambience collage 8.2 Aerial view of the proposal showing proposed connections with the neighbouring urban fabric 8.3 Mapping of events - accommodation of existing and future functions 8.4 Exterior view highlighting the threshold in between the building and the adjacent park 8.5 Interior view of the market space featuring the proposed connection between the lower and upper park levels.

8.1

8.3

8.4

A Common Trading Ground by Austin Joseph, Y4. The project proposes a dedicated space in the form of a market where merchants can produce goods in a suitable workspace from which they can also sell, adopting a similar trade strategy as the one existing in the Old town. 8.6 Watercolour drawing of the existing riverside including the site and the surrounding buildings along the Miljacka river 8.7 Drawing showing the public realm permeability and interconnections between programs at ground floor 8.8-9 Sections of the new proposal in relation to the existing building 8.10 Diagrams of activity changes during the day 8.11-12 Ambience collages of interior and exterior public gardens

8.6

8.8

a.4 8.9

8.11

A Food Journey by Siok Yee Tan, Y5. The project researches the traditional culture of food production at a domestic scale in Sarajevo and transforms its processes into a public journey through with both locals and visitors can engage with its elements. 8.13 Exploded axonometric view explaining structural strategy 8.14 Axonometric view of individual food processes 8.15 Detailed section through one of the process volumes 8.16 Volumetric study with plaster and resin cast models

8.15