Unit 2 Open Space

MArch Unit 2 addresses urban and architectural conditions in locations undergoing critical change and over the years, has worked in North Africa, East London and other places in Europe. Through a combination of research and creative practice, we propose complex buildings, which respond to urban challenges. The Unit explores extremes of interrelated scales, from urban geographies through to building and detail qualities. Our strategies formulate responses to critical contexts, site conditions, architectural sensibilities, as well as structural and material conditions. We aim to create social, spatial and time-based habitats and environments.

This academic year, we focused on architecture between urban developments and green spaces in Kidbrooke, South-East London. Within this location, we explored the guiding theme Open Space.

Around half of London’s area is open space, with most of these spaces being in suburban neighbourhoods. But these kind of open spaces tend to be private, gated and fragmented, offering little public and communal life. This in return contributes to further car dependency and isolation. London’s housing crisis and the recent pandemic have sparked a move towards suburban locations. This opens urgent questions of sustainability.

Our research area is a microcosm of London’s urban, suburban and landscape conditions. During the early 20th century suburbanisation, the area was largely left undeveloped due to a risk of flooding. In the last decade, new developments have started around Kidbrooke station, with high-rise buildings, terraced houses and green spaces. But large parts of the research area remain disintegrated within local neighbourhoods. Here, the research area offers diverse open sites and spaces as well as underutilised sport areas, neglected green spaces, flood-lands and waterways.

As a Unit, we proposed a new urban development framework for the research area that integrates local contexts with a new network of sites, linkages and green spaces. Each student had a choice to work on one of the given sites within the framework. On each site, we combined housing with social amenities to support new landscape strategies and renaturation. The guiding theme Open Space relates to designs that open diverse future possibilities for people and natural habitats alike. We explored ways in which sharing and living together can be part of a synergetic urban life.

Students:

Y5: Shahul Hameed Sadhiq Abdullah Asan Mydeen, Tanvir Ahmed, Sina Fekri, Hussein Ali Kasim, Mariana Andrea Morales Munoz, Alexandra Rogojinaru, Erdjan Ruci, Omer Sabah, Julia Skiba, Karolina Skrzypkowska, Dan Strassburg, Nadira Sultan, Furkan Tarhan, Oliver Tibbenham, Dominika Zielinska

Y4: Luke Day, William Fullick, Thomas Hardy, Ziyad Hasanin, Julian Imossi, Bhakti Panchal, Khushbu Patel

Visiting Crits and Guests:

Kevin Widger, Philip Christou Baruti, Syliva Aehle

Isaie Bloch, Igor Pantic, Armor Gutierrez, Rosa Rogina, Teresa Serrano, Deborah Do-Rosario-Benros www.march-unit2.blogspot.com

Alexandra Rogojinaru

Oliver Tibbenham

Karolina Skrzypkowska

Hussein Ali Kasim

Luke Day

Bhakti Panchal

Dominika Zielinska

Dan Strassburg

Thomas Hardy

Tanvir Ahmed

Nadira Sultan

Julia Skiba

Shahul Abdullah Asan Mydeen

Ziyad Hasanin

Khushbu Patel

Omer Sabah

Furkan Tarhan

William Fullick

Erdjan Ruci

Julian Imossi

Mariana Morales Munoz

Sina Fekri

1 On the previous page, aerial photo-collage research area in Kidbrooke with student site locations.

7 to 8

13 New leisure centre and housing with river re-naturation, by Omer Sabah 14 River Quaggy re-naturation and creation of wetlands, topographical landscape transformation, by Tanvir Ahmed 15 to 17 Extension to Kidbrooke centre, station and public spaces with new public amenities, social landscape and housing, by Shahul Hameed Sadhiq Abdullah Asan Mydeen

23 Axonometric of urban framework design, building group and self-build community with growing houses and shared facilities,

“The neatness of architecture is its seduction; it defines, excludes, limits separates from the ‘rest‘ - but it also consumes. It exploits and exhausts the potentials that can be generated finally only by urbanism, and that only the specific imagination of urbanism can invent and renew.”