WSA Degree show booklet 2015

WSA MASTERS YEARBOOK 2015

WELSH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Graphic Design Tom Cooper-Cocks Editors Benedict Edwards Tansy Duncan

Introduction

This is one of the best things about being a Head of School. I get to introduce the amazing work of our final year MArch students. I am so proud of what they have achieved at the end of their studies on the MArch programme. They have done so through their own talent and hard work, skilfully channelled, directed and challenged by the tutors who work in and with the School.

The diversity of topics on offer across the seven units has allowed the students to develop a rich set of skills they can put to immediate use in architectural practice. At the WSA we promote a creative pragmatism that balances strong conceptual design with a commitment to realising this work in practice. As one student said to an external examiner, the School is “exploratory but grounded.”

The future of architecture lies with these young women and men. When you see their work, I think you’ll agree we are in safe hands.

Professor Chris Tweed Head of School

Sponsored By

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With Thanks to

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Unit XI Tectonics, Form & Place

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Rico Cacciatore Tom Cooper-Cocks Tansy Duncan Benedict Edwards Molly McIlveen Chloe Sheward Thomas Wakeman Alexa Walker Gemma Wheeler

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Unit XII Economy Joanna Chow Emma Dochniak Sophie Gunn Sarah Lionetti Madelaine Loftus Jai Patel Kitty Pratt

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Unit XIII Politics Yue Chen Azhar Kapadi Oliver Murray Jasneil Panesar Alexandros Savvides Chara Simatou Agnieszka Zielke

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Unit XIV Sensation Arief Ahmad Afandi Elin Davies Natalie Hamshaw Kenji Ikegaya Amber Luscombe James Morris Jenny Saunders Victoria Savage

Unit XV Environmental Imagination 1: Northern Light Qasim Ahmed Chua Chang Yong Fergus Dinwiddie Lydia Forster Daniel Hayes Carys Jones George Soare

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Unit XV Environmental Imagination 2: On the Level Fong Chang Miranda Dettwyler Shermin Tan

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Unit XVII Infrastructural Urbanism Thomas Fairbrother Jane Hakes Elliot Jefferies Yirong Liu Bryony Martin Adrian Musat

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TECTONICS

Unit Leader Kate Darby Students Rico Cacciatore Tom Cooper-Cocks Tansy Duncan Benedict Edwards Molly McIlveen Chloe Sheward Thomas Wakeman Alexandra Walker Gemma Wheeler

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In this unit we aim to develop an architectural language that links place and material through experimentation with a real material at 1:1, and the construction of ‘body scale’ structures in actual sites.

Our material starting point this year was oak from The Wyre Forest, 6000 hectares of ancient woodland 25 miles west of Birmingham. The forest has been unmanaged since charcoal production ceased in the nineteenth century resulting in a huge monoculture of low grade oak. Students were asked to propose ways of using this indigenous material in sites located along a rail line stretching from the centre of the forest to the centre of Birmingham, offering a range of urban scales in which to intervene.

They were asked to think critically about the use of a local material in a global economy where ‘vernacular’ is no longer synonymous with ‘cheap’; to be imaginative and innovative in their use of oak, to examine the impact of their material use on the forest landscape and to engage with the particularities of their site, the Wyre Line. At one end sits ‘Ruskin Land’, endowed by John Ruskin to promote his vision of a rural community and at the other Digbeth, an area intersected by the infrastructure of the industrial revolution, the antithesis of Ruskin’s utopian ideal.

The year’s work revolved around the design and fabrication of a body scale building fragment using oak from the Wyre. These structures were considered as both a primer for thesis development and a prototype from which building proposals could be drawn. Through this material engagement students re-imagined the links between place, craft and material.

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Tectonics, Form & Place Unit XI This unit began the year by focusing on a social, historical and geographical analysis of the Wyre Line, while capturing the specific character and nature of places encountered along the route.

This shared research raised issues around which to build individual thesis ideas and led each unit member to select a site for his/her own project.

Following this, a period of ten days was spent in the Wyre Forest constructing designed ‘fragments’ from the surrounding oak trees.

The weight and resistance of the timber made it instantly clear how interdependent the members of the unit would have to be. Despite the ambitiousness of many of the projects, ensuring everyone achieved their goals became the group ethos and valuable lessons in economy of design were learnt as projects were pared back to their most efficient versions. Each of the fragments had been designed to be dismantled and reassembled on individually selected sites along the Wyre Line, and over

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two days nine fragments had to be transported and constructed within daylight hours and without damaging the work in transit. Achieving this required the strength, coordination and cooperation of each team member, and meant that every project became a group activity.

The year culminated in a group fabrication project that depicted the essential characteristics of the Wyre Line over a model made from cubed cores of oak. Roughly hewn with chainsaws in the forest, the cubes were then individually carved using a robotic arm to illustrate the contours of the landscape at 1:10 000. Laid out geometrically, the cubes echo the grid lines of an OS map and piece together the areas along the Wyre Line that contain the sites for each project in the unit. As part of the exhibition, nine images are projected onto this map in a loop, to represent the extent of areas on which each thesis topic could have an impact, should the research be implemented beyond the scope of the year’s project.

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Rico Cacciatore Community Participation in Construction: Can a building be grown from its joints?

The thesis addresses the inaccurate connotation that oak construction requires a highly skilled labour force to produce beautiful buildings.

Research into joinery led to the design of a constructed fragment, which allowed an unskilled community group to build a form. It was concluded that these joints would need to be produced mechanically to eradicate inaccuracies in fabrication before scaling up to a full building proposal. In light of this, an advanced joint was designed and fabricated as a mock up using a KUKA robotic arm, this joint was later carried forward and used to define an entire structural system.

The system, using English Oak, is one that engages a community through its beauty, tactile quality, and the fun of assembly whilst also demonstrating the ability to be tailored to different social contexts.

Striving to make a connection with a site, the thesis searched for a dense residential area

incorporating a community group willing to participate in the building process. Ladywood, Birmingham was later pinpointed as an area that matched this criterion, an area in which a recent LEP master plan had established the need for community facilities. And so, Ladywood Birmingham, was selected to pilot this innovative, community constructed, building system.

The scheme has been named ‘Ladywood Community Complex’, and features 6 buildings each employing a different oak structural system.

The scheme aims to readdress the current aesthetic of community centre buildings and create a truly inspiring place for residents of the city. Mimicking the forest in aesthetic quality, the density of structure differs within the buildings creating a unique spatial experience.

The ideologies behind this scheme can be applied to any site, all that is essentially required is the wish for a beautiful oak building and a community to build it.

rico.d.cacciatore@gmail.com | issuu.com/ricocacciatore/docs/portfolio 16

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Tom Cooper-Cocks Searching for Identity in 21st Century Smethwick This thesis sets out to interrogate the ingredients of identity. Just as the rings of a tree act as a record of its life, this thesis explores what the rings of a place might reveal.

Subsequently, it seeks to address how this barcode of identity can be located within an architectural framework.

Thesis objectives were realised through the construction of an architectural vehicle; a movable oak machine that assisted in mapping the contour lines of place within the town.

The machine encouraged interaction with the people of Smethwick, who in turn dictated the path between key nodal points of place.

The proposal is sited in Smethwick, a town on the outskirts of Birmingham that played an integral role in the Industrial Revolution. The area has since seen an influx of immigrants throughout the 20th century and as a result the town stands as a collage of cultures, each having an impact on the identity of the town as it stands today. This thesis aims to propose an architectural solution that is representative of this collective identity: ultimately seeking to strengthen the sense of place in the area and to foster a sense of collective belonging.

One of the findings from this investigation was the lack of a common destination. There was a fragmentation within Smethwick’s collective identity. The community was composed of different groups and individuals each with their own atlas of place but lacking a unifying element. The proposed architecture seeks to provide a destination that is shared between different cultures. The architecture is intended to manifest itself as a ‘greenhouse of humanity’, a theory established by Peter Sloterdijk, with the ‘greenhouse’ providing a climate for cultures to coexist, communicate and collaborate.

thomas.r.cc@gmail.com | tomcooper.org 18

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Tansy Duncan The Place of Oak: Integrating Landscape and Industry in the Severn Valley This project investigates the potential of the properties of oak in relation to the current situation of the Wyre Forest management strategy, alongside architectural explorations into the tactile and visual surfaces of oak. It attempts to position oak between and within the contexts of industrial process and valuable material, looking at a possible application in a local rural environment where global products are often more economical. It is underpinned by seeking to produce an architecture that is integrated into the landscape, by making the microclimate visible through the different effects of weathering on the surfaces of the facade.

This architectural approach works in conjunction with a conceptual ‘Ruskinian’ argument for the modulation of the materials’ application across the site.

A 1:1 scale ‘fragment’ initiated the design process, testing the specific site conditions at a point in the Severn Valley region. This area of

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rich craft heritage - closely connected to existing geological conditions and to the abundance of oak - is linked to Birmingham through a large network of canals, which become the primary transport connection to the project and further reference John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice.

This research into environment, heritage and material properties culminated in the design of a cooperage, brewery and adjoining visitor experience. Further investigation into barrelmaking informed the design decisions, from the development of the structural strategy to the experiential qualities of the scheme at human scale; for example the way light falls through rows of excess staves, weathered and deformed due to knots or imperfect splits.

This attitude of combining the practical applications of oak with a very place-specific architecture is a way in which the regional identity of the place can be made apparent through an evocative showcasing of a beautiful material.

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Benedict Edwards Impact of Green Ecology - The Reimagining of a Disconnected Infrastructure My research has taken two routes from the unit’s original focus: Working in the Wyre forest, I found that “you do not know the quality of the timber until you cut it down” and the first route used a series of 1 to 1 studies to look at the structural differences between sawn and split timber. This found that split timber, as the fibres are intact, retains more of its structural integrity, allowing it to be used with smaller diameters and allows any timber to be useful structurally.

The major issues arising with split timber construction involve the connections, due to the timber having curves which in turn creates unique geometries. However, these geometries can be practically made now, with the use of new technologies, scanning and 3D printing.

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The second, which has formed the key for the thesis development, has been connecting ecologies to create more diverse environments, focussing on the gaps found with the green corridor created along the railway line from the Wyre Forest to Birmingham.

Within the city, a green ecology is found in areas that have been neglected or are redundant, which has meant that nature has taken over. By connecting these areas it brings new life to the city. The principle is that the structures created will become a tool for human connection, creating access to hidden areas and nature, and filling in the gaps in biodiversity.

This is implemented by forming a series of walkways, bridges, ramps and stairs that span across the multileveled nature of Birmingham’s infrastructure.

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Molly McIlveen Mediating Scales This thesis is an investigation into the oak of the Wyre Forest to develop an architectural language that mediates scales in an urban environment.

In part, this thesis is about creating an architectural resolution for this timber. I have been researching ways of laminating the Wyre Forest oak to create high quality structural members from the poor-quality oak hardwood resource.

Based in Kidderminster, just 6km from the Wyre Forest, the programme of my proposed architectural intervention is a timber lamination plant and a timber research centre straddling a new pedestrian priority route that links the residential area to the town centre.

a pedestrian travelling from the residential areas to the urban centre. The challenge for the project was to design a very large space with a human interface.

As a seed for my thesis, I designed and built a body-scale building fragment from the Wyre Forest oak. The aim of the fragment was to record a human-scale passageway in Kidderminster and deploy it in an alienating space – marking the juxtaposition of scales.

This thesis aims to demonstrate an architectural tectonic language, deriving from this 1:1 material investigation and research, which resolves a problem of alienating warehouse scales in the urban centre of Kidderminster. The primary device in this solution is the application of In terms of site strategy, the problem my thesis different scales of laminated oak structure at the aims to address is the pattern of very large-scale interface to mediate between the large scale and commercial warehouses present through the town the pedestrian zone. In the vision of my fragment, centre of Kidderminster, which fragments the the architecture aims to strategically conceal and urban grain. Experientially these are alienating to reveal the large-scale making spaces offering permeability to the passer-by.

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Chloe Sheward Weathering as a Constructed Language: the tectonic of the intangible past It is vital to record, highlight and protect traces of built forms that have been lost in the density of time. This thesis questions how these traces of the past can be revealed and how these intangible traces may allow the past to dictate a strategy for future development. Pressure to develop sites in major cities such as Digbeth in Birmingham is putting these historic traces at threat.

To make visible a patina of age, material investigations focused on the weathering of oak cladding. Chemical and natural reactions with oak tannin allowed for a tectonic language to be formed, and then established as a material strategy for construction, tested at 1:1 scale with a ‘fragment’ of the building. Panels of local Wyre Forest oak were constructed and installed in Digbeth. The language of weathering was accelerated in testing through the reaction of Ferric Acetate with the oak tannin.

This constructed material language highlighted that weathering is not only subtraction but also addition. The temporality of the marks can be controlled by application, leading to either protection of a surface or ‘accelerated weathering’. Developing of film photography tests a chemical process, as an irreversible change, a way of recording a moment in time.

Digbeth Photographic Projects provides spaces for a photographic collection focussing on locally important photographs, allowing public access to the collection for research, conservation works to protect the collection and eduction and display facilities. The historic layers of the site highlight the importance of the tanning and leather industry in Digbeth. Analysis of the local distinctiveness of the industrial layers in Digbeth can be used to establish historic hierarchy. The site is the past location of Deritend Tannery, where oak bark was used in leather production.

chloesheward@hotmail.co.uk | www.chloesheward.wordpress.com 26

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Thomas Wakeman Economy of Materials: Using Oak Efficiently The design thesis sets out to challenge the traditional use of oak in construction, to redefine the value of the material, and to question how we could be using it much more efficiently.

Oak is generally associated with a traditional architecture of heavy-weight frames, which, beautiful and structurally reassuring as they are, tend to be vastly over-engineered. The average oak frame build uses a staggering 50 trees in a typical 100m2 plan. This represents a fairly wasteful use of what is a precious, slow-growing material, both in terms of sustainability and economy.

Oak is exceptionally durable and versatile, and there is a large stock of the material in the UK, be it comparably low quality. Compared to building with a faster growing hardwood, or a softwood, oak cures to become almost as tough and robust as steel, allowing greater spans with smaller section members. Its ability to stand the test of time against the wear and tear of daily activities and the environment with very

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little protection, if any also makes it the ideal construction material. When used appropriately and strategically, it is the kind of material that improves over peoples’ lifetimes, and develops a character of its own which enhances the building and tells a story.

Both in the arguments of sustainability and economy, I have been very interested in the potential of using oak to build a wider range of architectonic structures of different scales and functions, but with the challenge of halving, or even quartering the amount of material needed to build the structure. Could you theoretically build from only the material that grew within the footprint of the building?

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Alexa Walker The Value of Nature in an Urban Ecology The natural and urban worlds are often perceived as completely separate. The built environment colonises spaces and all that is left beyond the boundaries of walls and cities is regarded as ‘nature’. Through the reintegration of Wyre oak into Birmingham’s urban fabric, a meaningful exchange of processes between these parts can be established. This exemplifies the value of the two components, which connect as part of a single, greater ecosystem. This exchange is manifested in the architectural approach, by expressing the ‘nature’ found in the forest and in the growth of oak in a built form.

Nature, in the sense of being something nonartificial and unaltered by man, is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon. Under this definition even ‘nature reserves’ do not constitute ‘nature’, since the act of conservation can only result in something man-made. By taking a making-led approach to research, aimed to extract the meaning of nature in oak, the thesis explores how it contrasts with the urban environment.

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Koert van Mensvoot’s essay, ‘Real Nature is not Green’, recognises the ambiguity of separating nature and culture. Mensvoot proposes a replacement of the culture/nature binary, with the terms controllable vs. autonomous (whereby culture is all that can be controlled, whilst nature cannot). According to this new classification, greenhouse tomatoes and nature reserves would belong to the category of culture. Computer viruses, traffic jams and ‘the urban’ (in its allpervading autonomous anarchy) would be considered natural.

This thesis explores how, by establishing a dialogue between the natural ecosystem of the Wyre Forest and the urban ecosystem of Birmingham, the value of local resources can be expressed. This is achieved by extracting the autonomous features of the oak that represent the environment in which it grows and subsequently expressing how it responds appropriately to the controlled boundaries of this urban situation through an architecture that encompasses these parts.

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Gemma Wheeler Re-Storying the Workhouse: An Alternative Conservation Strategy “Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from any influence of dilapidation … bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid.”

John Ruskin, The Lamp of Memory The patchwork of materials that comprise the medieval town of Bewdley tells the story of how it has grown and changed with the passing of time.

New materials have been spliced and juxtaposed with the old fabric where it has failed, creating a rolling narrative of adaptation within the texture of the settlement. Informed by Ruskin’s legacy of “anxious care”, however, Bewdley’s conservation policy tells a different story, vowing to preserve “existing assets … as a key objective for the future development of the District”. This thesis questions the foundations upon which such a staticising attitude to building conservation rests, and proposes instead extracting an alternative Ruskinian influence to inspire a conservation

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approach that de-objectifies buildings, enabling them to flow and change with the changing needs of their users.

Ruskin advocated a way of seeing the world that focused either on its minutiae of shifting details or sweeping drama of the sublime, capturing in his own and Turner’s paintings a worldview without boundaries or objects. It is this way of seeing that forms the basis of an Alternative Conservation Strategy for Bewdley, which demotes Form from its current position of priority and supplants it with Material, Use and Narrative, to enable Bewdley’s buildings to be re-modelled and recycled to better suit their occupants. The strategy is facilitated by a reinterpretation of Ruskin’s ‘unsightly aid’ from traditional prop into architectural device or structure. The flagship for this strategy is a derelict, Grade II Listed, 18th century Workhouse on Bewdley’s High St that is to become an Adult Education Centre. The ‘unsightly aid’ that facilitates this process is the timber frame over which the existing Workhouse brick is stretched; redefining, in the process, the traditional interdependent relationship between brick and timber.

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Acknowledgements Guest Critics: Alessandro Columbano, BCU Stewart Dodd, Satellite Architects Shin Egashira, Architectural Association Guan Lee, University of Westminster MJ Long, Long & Kentish Architects Hugh Strange, Hugh Strange Architects WSA Critics: Steve Coombs, Welsh School of Architecture Juliet Davis, Welsh School of Architecture Wassim Jabi, Welsh School of Architecture Oriel Prizeman, Welsh School of Architecture Consultants: John Iles, Wyre Forest Landscape Partnership Stephen Kite, Welsh School of Architecture Adam Mindykowski, Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Wade Muggleton Jez Ralph, Timber Strategies Pat Ruddock, Mann Williams Tim Selman, Wyre Forest Landscape Partnership Felicity Stout, Sheffield University Piers Taylor, Invisible Studio Architects

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ECONOMY

Unit Leader Federico Wulff Students Joanna Chow Emma Dochniak Sophie Gunn Sarah Lionetti Madelaine Loftus Jai Patel Kitty Pratt

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The aim of the unit is to understand from a critical perspective the current mutation processes of the deprived North Districts of Marseille, through the development of recycling intervention strategies and the design of an innovative and economically feasible programme for the pre-existing flea market of the city.

The flea market is currently a real economic and social driver for the northern districts. It needs to be reorganized to improve its health, safety and accessibility conditions, to provide a better service and to reinforce its integration within the neighbourhood.

From the sixties, a strong imbalance was produced between the industrial expansion of the metropolitan area of Marseille and the abandonment of the city, which lost productive activities, employment and population. The industrial architecture of the North Districts, the most important cultural heritage of the city, fell into ruins.

The Project Euro MĂŠditerranĂŠe (1995-2015), led by public administrations and funded by the EU, emerged as a new economic and urban strategy to overcome this degradation process. The plan did not foresee further expansion of the territory of Marseille and has focused on the regeneration of the existing urban fabric from a compact city model.

The economic crisis led to a paradigmatic shift in the regeneration model from iconic, expensive and unsustainable architectures of Euromed I to the strategies of social equity, respect for the environment and economic development of Euromed II (2008-2030), from easy-tech and low- cost criteria.

Students have been asked to develop a design thesis based on their research that could be translated into a coherent urban, spatial and tectonic strategy, as an innovative post-industrial proposal from social and environmental perspectives. We have explored with them concepts such as informality, flexibility, resilience, economic feasibility, temporality, mutability over time, identity, community participation, and the interaction between contemporary culture and industrial heritage.

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Economy: The Regeneration of Marche aux Puces, Marseille Unit XII This year’s economy unit was based in Marseille, a city that has recently started a huge transformation, in the form of one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe. Our site was located on the periphery of the second phase of the masterplan, Euromed II, in an area classified as low socio-economic status. This area is due to change dramatically in the next 30 years as part of the proposed regeneration project, which will create over 20,000 new jobs and provide housing for 30,000 new residents. We were allocated the site of the existing Flea Market, a thriving centre of existing community life.

As the only unit with a prescribed site, it forced us to work together to develop a thorough and detailed analysis of the site, and encouraged each student to question what about the site was most important to them. As a result we each strove to develop a different personal angle of research within this very complex context. We visited the site on several occasions, where we explored the local context and established a spectrum of views of the Euromed II proposal. These were based on discussions with the architect, the EuroMediterranee Urban Development Agency and the people who currently work in the existing market. These visits also allowed us to gain an understanding of the social environment of the flea market. This would prove to be integral to the development of our projects, due to the importance of the market within the existing community.

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Once back in the studio we were challenged each week to introduce new research material, and to expand our social, cultural, historical, political and economic knowledge of the site in both a local and global context. This was reiterated in our crits, where we were privileged enough to have guest critics from varied backgrounds, including critics with a specialist interest in the EuroMediterranee masterplan proposal. Due to the sensitive and developing nature of the site, the following projects each seek to provide a solution to problems identified in both the existing and proposed environment. These projects are deeply rooted in theoretical research to support the proposals.

The focus was on the creation of a clear and supportive narrative, which led to the development of ambitious, sensitive and explorative proposals, which were designed to adapt, advance and progress with the changing landscape.

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COMMERCIAL 1 established market stalls (fixed) 2 circulation cores to upper floor galleries 3 open ground floor - market stalls 4 overhead hanging bridges 5 water recesses in ground 6 semi-sheltered outdoor courtyard 7 food market 8 furniture stores 9 cafe 10 entrance to residential units above 11 restaurant 12 galleries 13 outdoor market street: Illot Allar

SECTION THROUGH BATHS, PUBLIC SPACE STRIP, MARKET HALL 1:100

PUBLIC FACILITIES 14 recreational baths 15 public WCs 16 tram stop PRODUCTION 17 hydroponics garden 18 allotments 19 above: design studios and library 20 workshop 21 composting facility

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JoannaChow Chow Joanna Re-establishing Productive Landscapes through Rhizomatic Strategies Re-establishing Productive Landscapes through Rhizomatic Strategies.

The project draws on the fluctuating nature The project draws onimplements the fluctuating nature of the of the rhizome and 4 rhizomatic rhizome and implements 4 rhizomatic characteristics characteristics as regeneration strategies as regeneration strategies thatand occur at different that occur at different scales points in scales time. The site northern is located on the time. and The points site is in located on the northern of an ongoing regeneration masteredge of edge an ongoing regeneration master-plan plan “Euroméditerranée”.

This project focuses “Euroméditerranée”.

This project focuses on on regeneration regenerationthrough throughphased phaseddevelopment, development,each phase corresponding to a rhizomatic strategy: each phase corresponding to a rhizomatic strategy: 1. Establishing connections between the existing and new communities 1. future Establishing connections between the The first phase aims tonew create opportunities of social existing and future communities interaction by carving out routes through the site, The first phase aims to create opportunities of connecting existing and potential public spaces. This social interaction by carving out routes through includes bridging the morphological divide caused the site, connecting existing and potential by a sunken road proposed by the Euroméditerranée public spaces. This includes bridging the masterplan and the negotiation of level changes on morphological divide caused by a sunken road site. proposed by the Euroméditerranée masterplan and the negotiation of level changes on site.

2. Introduction of a new multiplicity The establishment of new public recreational baths

joannaklchow@gmail.com joannaklchow@gmail.com 1

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EUROMED PROPOSED 22 hotel 23 concert hall: Dock des Suds 24 residential

2. Introduction of a new multiplicity withestablishment aims to bring different groups recreational of users to the The of new public site and a source that doesgroups not compete baths with aims of torevenue bring different with theto existing and a proposed surrounding of users the site and source of revenue programs, but addresses different need. and that does not compete awith the existing proposed surrounding programmes, but 3. Resiliencea different need. addresses Creating a framework for addition of production andResilience training facilities that support the existing 3. programsaon site. This may include urban farming, Creating framework for addition of production recycling, andsupport designthe studios and trainingworkshops facilities that existingto support the existing cafés, urban furniture programmes on site.food Thismarkets, may include warehouse and galleries.

These may temporary, farming, recycling, workshops andbe design for as long as the purpose is still valid. studios to support the existing food markets, cafés, furniture warehouse and galleries. These 4. Adaptability and growth may be temporary, for as long as the purpose is Enhancing still valid. the spaces of the successful flea market through renovation of existing building and enabling expansion through appropriation by 4.

Adaptability and growth providing athe structural along the edges Enhancing spacesframework of the successful flea of the building. market through renovation of existing buildings, and enabling expansion through appropriation by providing a structural framework along the edges of the buildings.

VIEW OF HOT ROOM IN RECREATIONAL BATHS

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Emma Dochniak Re-Marketing the Masterplan The city–led masterplan, as proven during Phase I of the EuroMed programme, has been largely alienating to those already living and working in Marseille’s development area. The focus appears to lie on the outward global image as glamorous ‘mega-projects’ inviting one-off investments and political kudos.

At the heart of the proposal is public space, and through the development of an intervention strategy, based on a set of specific urban space ‘tools’, the scheme reconfigures the site to improve the quality of and access to public space whilst integrating better with the existing and future context.

Therefore, as one of the first phases of EuroMed II, this project is proposed as an alternative method of development based on nurturing a ‘social economy’ that looks to creative and participatory enterprise as way of empowering people. The aim is to alter the city’s approach to regeneration and reroute the development path of EuroMed II, allowing people to build a social infrastructure that will steer them through change whilst growing the capacity to welcome new residents and visitors.

The aim is to help strengthen the existing market site by bringing a measure of dignity to the informal activities that already occur and allow them to invigorate the area, presenting a more inclusive and animated place. Three new co-operatives based around ‘market and enterprise’, ‘community arts’ and ‘recycling and reuse’, will occupy a mix of refurbished and new structures. Material use brings a human scale to these new, intimate spaces, expressing the themes of recycling and overlapping uses.

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Sophie Rose Gunn The Interacting of the Formal and the Informal as a tool to Integrate New and Existing Communities Positioned as a response to what Euromed hasn’t achieved in terms of social participation and multicultural integration, the proposal aims to act as a catalyst for social integration for both the existing and new communities that will be attracted by Euromed II Urban Regeneration.

The design thesis builds upon the existing qualities on site, aiming to harness the embodied productive energy that is evident in the informal environment of the covered market, as well as the flux of activity created by the existing flea market. Research has investigated urban informality as a transgressive practice in which the formal and the informal are interdependent.

The implementation of the masterplan in 3 phases aims to create a more socially cohesive response that is rooted within the community and is more sustainable, in both an economical and social sense.

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The intersection of the existing covered market creates a central public route that connects the site to the northern districts and becomes the melting pot for activities on site.

The architectural strategy for the site aims to reconnect with the adjacent communities and create an environment that has the qualities to sustain productivity and the embodied energy of informality.

Infrastructural formality removes the chaotic mess of informality on site and the introduction of flexible structures guide users, channelling social energies towards a positive and constructive aim. The interacting of formal and informal structures is key to enable the site to absorb the flux of informal activities, i.e. the flea market, as well as support more formal social, cultural and economic programs that operate all week.

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Sarah Erica Lionetti Informality as a Parasite: a local development strategy As the city of Marseille, France, undergoes a major urban re-development, the project focuses on its Flea Market, a meeting point of immigrant and local cultures. The nature of the market itself generates inspiration and insight in both architectural and social issues, relevant to this part of Marseille. The design thesis draws from the nature of the site, proposing the investigation of the relationship between temporary and permanent architecture in the creation of social resilience. The different strands of investigation have been incorporated into a coherent strategy, in which the needs of the site are met through the use of informality, as a generative architectural force, allowing the current pattern of use to be further manifested in the future.

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The design response stems from the use of informality a parasite, eroding formal urban and programmatic responses in the generation of a new architectural language. Its implementation connects the design at all scales, by identifying the specific parts of the programme requiring a formal production of space, whilst allowing for informality to generate a new interface to the public ground. The deep connections between the current state of development, and the proposed vision for the future are brought closer by the suggested programmatic and tectonic strategies. The temporal nature of the activities, both short and long term, has been designed to support the site users in their customisation and informal pattern of use of the site.

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Madelaine Loftus A Critique to Modernist ‘Objectification’: The Creation of an Urban Fabric at Marche aux Puces, Marseille As a city, Marseille has recently begun a huge transformation. Previously a thriving industrial port city, it experienced economic downturn in the 1960s when the demand for industry declined.

As a result parts of the city became associated with crime and unemployment. However, a solution is underway, in the form of one of the largest masterplan and regeneration projects in Europe; Euroméditerrranée. The site is located in the second phase of the masterplan. This area is disconnected from the centre of Marseille, and classified as being within a ‘triangle of poverty’.

My thesis research stemmed from an initial exploration into the differences between the two masterplan phases; Euromed I (initial development) and Euromed II (extension).

Euromed I takes an almost modernist approach, creating object-like monuments and following a top-down approach that has become known as the ‘Guggenheim’ effect. In contrast, the Euromed 2 developers have taken a very different stance, identifying that the first approach does

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not necessarily create a city. It was suggested that in Euromed II it would be much more effective to concentrate on the creation of an urban fabric, encouraging interaction with the existing community.

It is from this stance that I then began researching what makes a successful urban fabric, exploring key written texts on the subject and relevant precedents.

The question of ‘how’ to create an urban fabric was integral to my proposal, I explored solutions such as the creation of an urban ecosystem, through the creation of a ‘townscape’ , connections with surrounding fabrics, and finally ‘de-objectification’ of the existing buildings.

I explored how the Euromed II masterplan proposes to create a thriving urban fabric, and in response what the site and my masterplan needs to contribute.

Elements of the theme of an ‘urban fabric’ flow through my proposal from a masterplan scale to a detail scale. The intention of this is to create a new social central hub that enhances the existing market economy and bridges between the existing environment and the proposed environment.

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Jai Patel Economy: Towards a New Industry The Northern Districts of Marseille have been the subject of extreme flux, given their creation and subsequent abandonment as an industrial zone. Today, the Euroméditerranée masterplan looks to regenerate these marginalised areas in what is Europe’s largest regeneration scheme.

The site is a former locomotive factory that has been appropriated by the city’s flea market and has been marked as a focal point for social integration. The site sits within the second phase of the regeneration area, which takes on a regeneration paradigm based around social integration, urban sustainability and economic development. This is opposed to the first phase which attempted to use iconic architecture as a means to attract investment.

The masterplan proposal looks to impose a new identity on the Northern Districts that is at odds with the existing identity of the area’s current inhabitants and industrial past. This project sets out to explore how these clashing identities

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can be reconciled, using the site as an interface between the disenfranchised Northern Districts and the Euromed masterplan.

Research has stemmed from this standpoint, exploring the identity of Marseille, the Euromed masterplan, the Northern Districts and the site. To complement this, the current function of the site as an epicentre for resilient and informal occupation has also been interrogated to develop a response that can sustainably reinvigorate the area without further marginalisation of the existing population.

The programme is centred on the restructuring of the flea market, developed to return the site to a state of production via digital fabrication to create new trades on site as well as providing the facilities for both vocational and tertiary education. Reconnection to the rest of the city’s fabric is to be facilitated by infrastructural improvement and an open-source programme for urban intervention in surrounding areas.

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Kitty Pratt Economy of Means; Creating an educational model Through this project I have sought to address the growing fragmentations on site between the locals of northern Marseille, the city of Marseille and the products of the market.

The main aim of this project was to adapt the site and expand on the current successful attributes of the site as a place of exchange, as well as providing more facilities and communal spaces for the community. The project would need to address the increasing unemployment of the disadvantaged community in the surrounding area, the further loss of jobs due to the decreasing industrial landscape in Marseille and the 30,000 new higher income residents, which were about to move into the area. How could this multicultural foray of people integrate using my site as their catalyst?

In order to understand the nature of this transformation the key research areas for investigation were:

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- The different typologies and histories of markets, both in Marseille and further afield.

- The demographic of the site both now and proposed; programmatic, sociological and economical.

Through the research I deduced the most appropriate project would be a new educational hub where people have purpose built facilities to learn from each other, using the products already existing on site to form an educational model of a sustainable “economy of means�.

Here people can not only learn from each other in a supported environment but also learn about how they can take their products further, to branch out into new business or home projects.

Thereby creating an economy of means for the people in the community off site as well as on it.

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Acknowledgements Laurent Hodebert, Marseille, ENSAM Remy Marciano, Marseille, ENSAM Carles Sala, Barcelona, ETSAB Catherine Brown, Cardiff, WSA Marga Munar, Cardiff, WSA Neil Jon Turnbull, Cardiff, WSA Stephane Hanrot, Marseille, ENSAM Marion Serre, Marseille, ENSAM Clement Pecqueux, Marseille, ENSAM Aquiles Gonzalez, Barcelona, ETSAB Lorenzo Romito, Rome, Roma Tre Mark Campbell, London, Architectural Association

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POLITICS

Unit Leader Jacob Hotz Students Yue Chen Azhar Kapadi Oliver Murray Jasneil Panesar Alexandros Savvides Chara Simatou Agnieszka Zielke

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We like to call this Unit “P”, as in person, people and politics…: This unit deals with an integral discussion of economic, political (> “political philosophy”) and urban questions: Our investigation firstly, mainly focused on issues of “Political Philosophy” and their ramifications for the built environment within the urban and suburban context, and therefore stipulated a design thesis, nourished by theory and its contradictory offspring: “Architectural Politics”.

The goal of this Unit was to formulate alternatives in the form of an architectural proposal(s), condensing it (them) into a manifestation of “architectural form” and “political strategies”. The intended outcome was to make a unique contribution, raising issues worthy of discussion within an academic, professional, and social context.

This Unit came to the conclusion that “architectural form” is a rather biased term; it is more about strategies based on continuous engagements of dedicated architects within the theory and practice and politics of architecture, guided by various forces…

In the process of fashioning a set of theoretical tools capable of serving as both the basis, and guiding threads of our formal and conceptual investigation three texts proved vital: - Capital: Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx Volume 1 (first published 1867 in German, English Version edited by Frederick Engels 1887, close friend of Karl etc., parts 1-4) - Towns and the Land by Hans Bernoulli (first published 1946, Erlenbach-Zurich) - Aesthetic Theory by T.W. Adorno (first published and ultimately published posthumously in 1970) While Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory was useful in stimulating reflections on the specificity of architecture as a ‘autonomous art’, it quickly became apparent to those participating that the greatest insights for their practice were to be found in the texts of Marx and Bernoulli, since they spoke directly to the political materiality of architecture.

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Politics Unit XIII “Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.”

Karl Marx, Criticism of Capitalism A piece of art was the outcome of an amalgamation of knowledge absorbed after reading Karl Marx’s criticism regarding the Capital and its politics; Theodor Adorno’s views explaining how each generation developed on the historical timeline certain visions and aesthetics; and Hans Bernoulli’s concerns about the city planning battles between the rich and the poor. With this the group took lessons of Overforming and Deforming from Marcel Duchamp, using them to create two pieces of art, one the antithesis to the other. Each member expressed his or her views on what capitalism generates regarding the two pieces of art.

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We all have seen capitalism as a machine. A machine where politicians manipulate societies.

A machine where the media, the fifth power, uses advertisements to distort reality. A machine that generates currency and makes it the perpetual happiness pursuit. A machine as a roulette for gambling and drugs. A machine as the means to produce capital for the bourgeois society to be independent and have individuality, while leaving the proletariat as dependent with no individuality.

Having this political and philosophical background as the base, the unit began development of an adventurous journey forming our thesis ideas between humanity, politics and architecture.

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Yue Chen Fostering Urbanity Healing urban non-­‐places and nourishing social well‐being Milton Keynes illustrates the capitalist notion of time in the form of urban space. According to Karl Marx, capitalism is the modification of time by a system based on a non-changing repetition, which founded on standardized processes of production and reproduction, controls place for the benefit of reducing the time investment stored therein.

The resultant Fordist society, highly dependent on the automobile, divides the city into numerous isolated ‘cages’ configured to fit with a standard time sequence determined by the speed of the car, and this causes the emergence of sterile urban non-places. Thus, there arises a soulless city centre, drowning in a sea of parking lots, that threatens public health and safety.

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This thesis proposes an urban intervention that acts as an ‘ecosystem’ that grows within the existing urban fabric. It acts as a dynamic organism that identifies, and adjusts in response to, how people interact with the public realm.

Working synergistically with the existing infrastructure, the proposed buildings by blending the boundaries between public and private spaces aim to dissolve the rigid urban pattern into a high degree of complexity and connectivity.

The heart of this organism consists of trading, training, agriculture, healthcare, energy generation, affordable housing and other facilities, which combine into a mixed-use design complex. Here time will no longer be experienced as monotonous capitalist repetition, but as a rhythm that sustains life and nourishes mind and soul.

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Azhar Kapadi Exercising Urban Reform through the Bridging of Social Capital The town centre of Croydon is filled with derelict properties subjugating what was once the dynamic, social nucleus of the town centre.

Outdated buildings and a lack of public urban space add to the melancholy felt by local residents and those seeking refuge in the UK. In the present situation, the Home Office acts as interrogator, providing a distressing experience for those seeking asylum, while a new Westfield Shopping Centre leads the long queue of commercial developments vying to leave their footprint in this area of London.

The thesis aims to reverse this economically motivated rationale of urban development, to one that elevates the wider community to the upmost position of control and importance.

Recognising the importance of available facilities and resources for the successful integration of refugees to the UK, the thesis intervenes in the urban fabric by creating a

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network of provisions for refugees that assist in engaging and developing links amongst other refugees, voluntary organisations and the wider community.

Public Realm and Retrofit Intervention Planned developments for Croydon

The project envisages a prototype scheme advocating the conversion of redundant office stock to residential living through a strategy of retrofit. Maintaining for the most part the existing structure, two post-war office towers undergo a series of transformations to adapt to a space of living and community activity.

Similarly, the negative stereotype of the refugee may be challenged and transformed to offer new meaning. The synthesis of residential living, community facility and office space as a mixeduse model demonstrates the potential for reinventing redundant space whilst remaining true to the existing urban fabric.

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Oliver Caleb Murray Densification Zone 1, Lower Earley The UK Housing Crisis is understood as a longterm issue rather than merely as a short-term crisis of supply. Not only is it a crisis of un-availability, but its also a crisis of un-affordability (especially for the younger generation), and underoccupation (in particular by the older-generation), as well as of un-desirability, un-sociability, and unsustainability (Alistar Parvin). The building of more housing alone will not solve the problem, because the housing being built is not meeting the needs of those who need it most. In order to solve the housing crisis therefore, we must address the root of the problem.

A major flaw within the capitalist system is that we began to produce things not because they directly served our wants, but merely in order to exchange them, and at a certain point, we as a society ‘began to view our built environment as an investment vehicle’ (Eric J. Cesal). This is especially evident in the case of housing. House-building in this country has been dominated for the past 50 years by speculative housing developers who have churned out identikit housing developments

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and continue to do so, in suburbs up and down the country, and these developments are built primarily as short-term exchange values rather than as long-term use-values. This thesis argues that this commodification of architecture is at the root of the UK housing crisis.

Hence, in reaction to the UK housing crisis and the commodification of architecture: (1) A Densification Scheme is proposed that seeks to “urbanise suburbia” and quadruple the dph in a pilot densification zone, DZ1 in Lower Earley, to create a compact community with an appropriate density to support sustainable transportation and local facilities.

To achieve this three types of sub-urban infill are proposed; in-between infill (mainly garage conversions), above infill (adding up to three stories on top of existing two story houses), and back garden infill.

(2) Coupled with this, a set of Special Permitted Development Rights have been devised that are designed to ensure the creation of long-term usevalues, whilst allowing for an increase of density within “designated densification zones”.

(3) A new multi-generational, courtyard housing typology is proposed that will provide an alternative to traditional family housing.

DZ1 COMMUNITY PUB AND PLANNING ROOM

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KEY

SECTION B-B

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Jasneil Singh Singh Panesar Panesar Jasneil Rethinking the the Power Power Station Rethinking Station and and the the City City 2040AD | Nuclear fusion power is a reality | 2040AD | Nuclear power is a reality | Capitalism requiresfusion modification.

Capitalism requires modification.

The 20th century alternatives to capitalism The 20th around centurythe alternatives tothe capitalism revolved abolition of market or revolved the the abolition of the market or attempts around to regulate economy.

These failed, attempts to regulate These failed, returning each systemthe to aeconomy. new authoritarian returning each than system to athese new authoritarian society. Rather banish central tenants society.

RatherI propose than banish these central tenants of capitalism, a modification of one: of capitalism, proposethe a modifi money.

This is Ithrough use ofcation energyofasone: money.

This is through use of energy as a currency which beginsthe to dealienate labour athrough currency which begins to dealienate a ‘reification’ of energy.

Havinglabour energy through a ‘reififocus cation’ of energy.

Having model energy as the societal adapts the standard forthe a society and elevates thethe individuals as societal focus adapts standardinto model an advanced post-capitalist society.

Under into this for a society and elevates the individuals regime the purpose of the individual not solely an advanced post-capitalist society. is Under this to work the to satisfy their needs and those regime purpose ofmaterial the individual is not of capital, but to intelligently, creatively solely to work to think satisfy their material needs and artistically.

A reduction of to human will give and those of capital, but thinklabour intelligently, birth to a new in whichAthe society explores creatively and era artistically. reduction of human what towill do give with birth its energies. labour to a new era in which the society explores what to do with its energies.

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Taking this speculative premise, the project Taking this premise, the project attempts tospeculative study the significance of using energy attempts to study the signifi cance of using as a currency in a future setting where nuclear energy as a currency in a future setting where fusion power is functioning stably. A society such nuclear is functioning stably.

A as this isfusion a new power mode of society, where the notion society such as is this is a new modethe of act society, of transparency studied through of where the notion of transparency is studied observation. through the act of observation.

Here, the wilful ignorance prevalent in Here, the wilful ignorance prevalent in impact of contemporary society toward the wider society toward the wider acontemporary desired lifestyle is made apparent, and rather impact of acompartmentalised, desired lifestyle is made apparent, than being the negatives are and rather and thanalleviated. being compartmentalised, addressed Through confrontation and observation and the de-compartmentalisation the negatives are addressed and alleviated. of a society’s requirements, elements and Through confrontation andall observation required to sustain a society areofbrought forward the de-compartmentalisation a society’s and celebratedall rather than banished requirements, elements required to to the sustain peripheries ofbrought the city. forward and celebrated a society are rather than banished to the peripheries of the Energy city. as Currency | Nuclear Fusion Power Station | East London Test Society

Energy as Currency | Nuclear Fusion Power Station | East London Test Society

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Alexandros Savvides Crystal Palace Park in Transition Research conducted by the author into displaced populations suggested a critical yet overlooked paradox; the permanency of a displacement and the permanency of housing for the displaced are almost always by proxy tentative and intrinsically linked, yet possibly contradictory. Attempts were made to extrapolate these research findings to current affairs. Further research made visible the extent of the UK population, which for all intents and purposes, are ‘displaced’, leading a nomadic existence – the result of globalisation, neoliberal economic policies and the deterritorialization of traditional communities.

The cooperative is able to seize the opportunity left by the recent failed proposal by Chinese developer ZRG to re-build the Crystal Palace. The cooperative, inspired by the history of the park as a mass event space proposes to partake in the events management of the park in return for a share of territory for ‘transient living pavilions’. The inherent historical axiality of the park is heightened via the introduction of a flexible modular spine; a ‘jetty’ which anchors existing uses, unifies the dissonant territories of various park leaseholders, re-connects ‘found objects’ and acts as a catalyst for revival and further interpretation of London’s ‘people’s park’.

The project envisions a hypothetical cooperative of ‘city nomads’ who recognise their ambiguous status and aim to make a synergy between routine and the ability to sustain an uprooted lifestyle. The architecture conforms to the needs of the cooperative – short-term living space and the ability to exercise full autonomy over one’s immediate environment. The aspiration is to design ‘incomplete’ structures that are characterized by their permanent yet ephemeral nature; similar to the fluid population that occupy them.

The ‘transient living pavilions’ take precedence, yet deviate, from the notion that the Crystal Palace, with its highly sanitised, commodified ‘hyperinteriors’, could be considered paradigmatic of European modernity as a whole. The living pavilion comprises a vertically stacked arrangement of tabulae rasae in the air, providing the fundamental amenities and infrastructure for amateur building techniques to flourish, giving credence to alternative, peripatetic means of living.

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Chara Simatou Anti-Valorization. Towards a Built Solution for Unemployment.

A building comprising of a core and a body was the start of an investigation into a compact way of living. The core never changes, but the body accepts plug-in extensions for low additional cost. I designed this evolutionary building form on the basis of the idea that architectural elements could be transported like a virus, and undergo constant change and flux.

The project explores the possibilities for change and flux on an urban level, and on a more detailed level, the chance to continuously adapt and evolve within a certain frame into the future.

I used hemp, since it can be used as a building material. My desire was to produce a widely open system for the society that will work as a platform and will accommodate the needs of different lifestyles. It is an attempt to revive the democratic values and mechanisms that surpass unemployment that capitalism generates, and renders them self sufficient in a certain way. The design ended up having a distinctive different look, which should provide a unique and customized lifestyle for the user.

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Agnieszka Zielke Waste and the City: de-reifying and up-cycling the West Hampstead, London The Design Thesis research investigation undertaken began with a reading of Das Kapital by Karl Marx and Die Stadt und ihre Boden by Hans Bernoulli, concerning political philosophy and their influence on the built environment. The concept which motivated further architectural research was Marx’s idea of fetishism of commodities, understood as a reified perception of social relations involved in the production of goods. Implications of this are visible in the way we use and consume our resources throughout their lifecycle, with the legacies of planned obsolescence and the throw-away society being the reflection of the modern society’s attitude to excess.

The notions explored are manifested spatially in West Hampstead in London; originally an industrial site, associated with a strong community of low and middle income families and good public service support. Due to austerity, low public spending policies and strong freedom given to private investors, this

GLA Growth area is increasingly becoming a socially divided part of London, adding to the physical divides of living in between train lines.

The Design Thesis forms a critique to the status quo encountered, and an investigation to a different urban masterplan model.

The Design Thesis research is tested through a prototype mixed-use urban estate, which aims to introduce a new kind of economy, grounded on community self-governed creativity and democratic use of resources. This new economy will be based on re-using materials traditionally considered as waste through up-cycling them, and will attract certain groups of highly skilled but underqualified individuals, populating the scheme with their diverse capacities and aspirations.

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Acknowledgements Caroline Almond, Architect (Bath) Chris Donoghue, Architect (Bristol) Catherine Du Toit, Architect (London) Dr Jan Harris, Philosopher (Wales) Swan Hung, Artist (Wales) Kristian Hyde, Architect (Swansea) Rhys Jones, Architect (London) Ian Jones, ST Engineer (Wales) Hugo Keene, Architect (Cambridge) Sam Kendon, Architect (Bristol) Peter Thomas, Architect (London)

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SENSATION

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Unit Leader Jonathan Adams Students Arief Ahmad Afandi Elin Davies Natalie Hamshaw Kenji Ikegaya Amber Luscombe James Morris Jenny Saunders Victoria Savage

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The studio theme is Sensation: how spaces influence the senses, emotions and behaviour, and the ways that people interact. The students were encouraged to analyse their own feelings about architecture with rigour, and to engage with the public in a direct and meaningful way.

Each student designed and constructed an installation in a public space in the city centre. They observed and recorded how people interacted with their installations, in order to learn as much as possible about the impact of their interventions. The installations were included in the City’s highly successful ‘Cardiff Contemporary’ art festival in November 2014.

The studio theme was explored through the design of buildings for the performing arts. This is an ideal building type through which to investigate how architecture influences emotions and behaviour because every theatre is a social fulcrum, in which people share a collective experience, and a complex working environment with many technical challenges to resolve.

None of the projects is a conventional theatre: the students took on the challenge of re-imagining performance space, and each one of them has made a proposal that would bring audience and performers together in a new and extraordinary way.

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Sensation Unit XIV This year’s sensation unit has been an exploration into the manipulative qualities of architecture and its effect on the individual and collective.

We have explored and experimented within this overarching aim, experiments which began with a 1:1 installation forcing us to understand the complexities and unpredictability of interacting with the public through architecture.

Our installations, shown here, ranged from the obvious, in making bold statements about Cardiff’s urban discrepancies and interesting social situations. Then at the other end of the scale, subtle and peripheral installations altered our everyday environment slightly in order to question and interpret our surroundings a little more than we would normally. Each of us gained a valuable insight into how a piece of architecture can cause reactions in many more ways than we could have imagined.

This early 1:1 exploration was subsequently magnified, developed into masterplans and large architectural proposals to achieve similar objectives but at a greater scale. Places for performance were our chosen catalyst; an extraordinary and unusual space open to interpretation and manipulation.

Each individual within the unit took very different approaches in achieving this aim and the work shown exhibits a complete spectrum of theatres and performance spaces, all with the intention to impart a sensation or particular experience on those who would use those spaces.

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ABSTRACTION

Natalie Hamshaw NATALIE HAMSHAW

James Morris

Victoria Savage

Amber Luscombe

Elin Davies

Jenny Saunders

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Arief Ahmad Afandi The Haus of Phantasmagoria for James Turrell Art Foundation Inspired by the Phantasmagoria Theatre introduced by Etienne-Gaspard Robertson during the late 18th-Century for its magic of visual projections within dark & ruined spaces, its potential use within the contemporary architectural experience is explored and developed.

‘The Haus of Phantasmagoria’ translates the phantasmagoria spatial theory into a built architectural experience. The proposal accommodates seasonal events of sensoryspatial artwork exhibition and promenadetype theatre production through a series of intricate architectural spaces. The thesis begins with an exploration of the significance of the merging of Robertson’s Phantasmagoria visual optics, meanings and spatial imagination into contemporary architectural ambience using subterranean tectonics, light and mist.

From this vantage, this thesis then elucidates the inheritance of Robertson’s spectacle in phantasmagoria through sensory-spatial

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artworks such as those created by James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson.

The term phantasmagoria becomes the locus of a modern dialectics of truth and illusion, subjectivity and objectivity, profane and sacred.

With this in mind the thesis seeks to situate these concerns within the architectural realm.

The intended focus of the thesis is the close proximity of art, architectural illusion and the romanticism of dark spaces and ruins within a 21st century context, in particular that of exhibition spaces. ‘Haus of Phantasmagoria’ is built using eccentric architectural tectonics to accommodate theatrical architectural experiences. Drawings are produced in an attempt to unveil the ambience of this proposal: its spectre rather than just its physical being.

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Elin Davies The Theatre as a Machine of Entertainment: Expanding the performance of the theatre into the public realm Barry Island developed as a stage to entertain the public; the thesis explores how this idea can be developed through the architecture entertaining its user. The theatre can be seen as a machine for entertainment with the operation of the back of house as much as a performance as the show on in the auditorium. The thesis will explore this idea through blurring the threshold between the front and back of house and inviting the performance and entertainment into the street.

Going to the theatre is taking a journey from reality into the realm of fantasy, in many ways to the original purpose of the pleasure beach; removing the tourist from their normal day to day lives and helping them to seek fun and entertainment. The thesis will explore this journey and how architecture can play with the emotions and senses of the audience, building up the anticipation of the performance during the journey to the seaside and the arrival at the theatre.

The programme developed as a response to the historic image of Barry Island as a pleasure beach, carving out a niche market that built upon this image through performance spaces that break down the barrier between the auditorium of the theatre and the wider context of the great British outdoors.

The thesis serves to comment on how the British seaside could be taken into the twentyfirst century using architecture to expose the fascinating relationship between human society and the natural world to create a pleasure beach that is an all weather, all year round entertainment destination.

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Natalie Hamshaw New Sensations & a Time-Based Architecture A key catalyst to my design thesis was my interest in the regeneration of deindustrialised areas following my dissertation ‘Urban Design, Architecture and Gentrification’. I set out wanting to design a scheme for the sensitive regeneration of a Welsh area in need of investment, trying to minimise the displacement that often accompanies renewal while repurposing a deindustrialised building, keeping the essence of its original experiential qualities.

The scheme ‘The Platform at Penallta’ is a performance and arts exhibition centre, located in the power hall of the old colliery at Penallta. It will concentrate all small arts groups in the area in one place and provide an international platform for local talent.

My key concept and inspiration for the scheme was based on the principles behind Cedric Price’s ‘Fun Palace’ and a time-based architecture readily adaptable to changing wants and needs daily, and that is easily adjustable for future needs.

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Constantly moving and transforming, the whole hall can be thought of as a theatre, with the top of the main theatre within the hall able to become a stage.

The ceiling structure holds a fly system that lowers structures, screens, scenery, lighting and so on, down from above the main hall.

These objects can be moved horizontally by the restored gantry crane. I am not proposing to treat the existing as a sacred relic but to bring it back into life as a piece of architectural machinery, what it was designed to be. This new system takes advantage of what the building was originally built for and the strength of the existing walls, which were built to hold the gantry crane that held up to 40 tonnes. Just as the coal industry was being replaced by creative industry as a key part of the economy of the area, the building’s new use reflects this change and its adaptation will keep the building alive. It is hoped that the building will transform with the community, and with their evolving needs new uses for the building will be found.

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Kenji Ikegaya Umbrella Urbanism: Sustaining political discourse and promoting equality in the urban realm The recent Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (26 September – 15 December 2014) saw thousands of people occupy its shopping and central business districts in protest against China’s increasing control over Hong Kong’s self-governance. An outpouring of support for the grass roots movement sparked an influx of political discourse and showcased a community spirit defined by the informal appropriation of Hong Kong’s streetscapes. To quote John Lin in a recent article detailing the Umbrella Movement on the Architectural Review – the protest was in part, a “critique of the established urban rules of the city and a de facto demand for an urban equality of space.” The protest represented a call for the reinvention of Hong Kong’s public realm a new form of “umbrella urbanism.”

Yet with little to no change in Beijing’s approach to Hong Kong, the collective memory of the Umbrella Movement threatens to dissolve. This collective memory represents a crucial part of Hong Kong’s eroding sense of identity – its desire

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to remain distinct and its keen awareness for political discourse.

My thesis aims to address how architecture can crystallize political discourse and how this may offset the boundaries of the defined urban realm. My site in Admiralty is currently being constructed into a new MTR (Mass Transit Railway) station, and is adjacent to the arts, shopping and civic districts of Hong Kong, as well as Connaught Road Central, the main site of protest during the movement. Its pivotal location, as well as the potential to attract the high footfall of MTR passengers, makes the site a perfect candidate for a new umbrella urbanism. My goal is to create a programme that grants the political discourse sparked by the Umbrella Movement a physicality, by creating a public performance stage rooted firmly in the public realm.

Simultaneously I aim to link the MTR and adjacent districts via a public space that caters to both formal and informal appropriation of the urban realm, subverting the established vehicular hegemony of Hong Kong’s streetscapes.

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Existing Christina Street

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Amber Luscombe Architecture of Disconnected Communities An exploration of architecture’s ability to act as a catalyst mediating between two disconnected communities.

The thesis proposes a solution to the issues resulting from the current dramatic disconnection between two wards of Butetown in Cardiff, divided by infrastructure and physical barriers; a 3 metre high (almost) impenetrable barrier.

The proposal puts forward bold infrastructural interventions which aim to provide immediate relief to the found ghettoisation of Cardiff’s historically diverse and multi-cultural centre.

mediator between the two communities – a tool for stitching together the disconnected communities, resolving the cultural and social drift formed as a result of the physical.

A theatre based on the experience of immersive theatre becomes a further distillation of this thesis, aiming to achieve the same aims as the wider masterplan. The theatre is proposed as a landscape of surfaces, removing the barrier between performer/audience, stage/seating and participant/observer. The individual and collective are immersed within the performance in a 360˚ experience where boundaries are removed and a participatory, cohesive experience is had by all.

Building on the initial interventions, a programme is proposed; an entirely new experience of the contemporary arts for the public and the artist, an exploration in the participatory and non-preferential nature of all disciplines of contemporary art as

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James Morris The Various Spectacles of a Travelling Circus For a very long time the Circus has taken on a migratory nature; passing from town to town in its convoy of vehicles looking to provide entertainment and performance to all those that it meets along the way. Quiet, unassuming communities are transformed in the space of a few hours by its energy, and in few days all signs of its visit become lost. By this time the troupe has already moved onto its next location.

Despite this history of traceless migration, we now see a growing trend in the travelling circus looking to leave a clear mark on the different communities that it visits. This was idealised in the Chautauqua movement in the mid-19th Century and is now re-emerging with the New Old Time Chautauqua - who look to provide cultural, education and creative workshops in addition to the typical performance characteristic of circus. I have proposed a UK model based upon these ideas in which the different members

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of the travelling troupe run various workshops throughout the bulk of each visit, and only collaborate on the very last day in a grand final performance.

This combination of individuality and collaboration is inherent in Circus and is something I was keen to explore closely throughout the project. Additionally, it became clear that the design of a travelling circus also brought about a series of technical challenges including those of transportation, setting up and taking down. A scheme which involved individual daytime workshops transforming into a unified performance venue allowed me the chance to explore both issues in great detail.

The assembly/disassembly processes involved in any travelling circus are crucial in its success and, if designed seamlessly enough, can become a performance in themselves. Thus I devoted a great deal of time in the creation of such alluring mechanical transformations.

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Jenny Saunders Eavesdroppers Welcome: Blurring Boundaries in Classical Performance Through the design of spaces to hear and perform music, the intention of this thesis is to break down perceived formalities between listener and player in classical performance. In the context of musical education, a programme is developed that includes extensive public outdoor space, rehearsal and teaching spaces, and a concert hall. Moments of interaction between audience and musician are extended beyond the realms of formal performance, allowing passing members of the public to eavesdrop on rehearsing musicians, by leaking sounds into public space.

As a satellite extension to the Birmingham Conservatoire, a musical landscape is created to form a circular route along which places to make music and places to listen are situated.

The metaphor of interdependence between musician and listener is employed to inform an architecture that blends the boundary between the two. The comparison is extended to musical

counterpoint, whereby two melodies interweave and interact with one another. In this case, public spaces and musical spaces interweave.

A sturdy viaduct structure is utilised as a base from which to counterbalance musical spaces, reinforcing the notion of counterpoint between the two forces of player and listener.

The pinnacle of the musical landscape is a concert hall for 200 audience members. The conventional arrangements of performer and audience are rejected in favour of an immersive experience. The orchestra is broken apart and arranged around the edge of a large volume.

The audience move around the space at will along a series of suspended ramps and platforms. Conventions are rejected, allowing both audience and musician to choose how they experience a performance. After the performance, the return journey along the canal begins. The cycle is complete.

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Victoria Savage The Power of the Liminal “One works at the liminal, one plays with the liminoid.”

- V W Turner: From Ritual to Theatre Initial ideas which laid the foundations for my thesis project focused on people’s differing reactions to elements of performance, and from there concentrated on the concept of threshold spaces and capturing in-between moments through design. Addressing this on both macro and micro scales, my intervention sought to both invest in a liminal location and reach those who would not normally engage with performance.

I wanted to challenge the general perception of theatre experience and used the precedent of the groundling’s standing experience at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London as a starting point for designing an unexpected performance space.

Selection of my site for such a performance venue considered the extremes of either a busy thoroughfare or else somewhere where a theatre would be completely unexpected. In tandem,

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there was also motivation to draw economic investment outside of the capital city of London.

Reading ticked all of these boxes and the specific site adjacent to Reading Station responds to the recent £895million station redevelopment (2014) and preparations for the imminent arrival of CrossRail (2018). The opportunity to engage with office commuters, tourists and station users only increased the desire to explore what plethora of in-between experiences could be designed.

A world-class theatre venue would be the missing piece to the puzzle of Reading’s current strengths in the football, music festival, business and retail industries. It might even finally clinch the town’s long coveted bid for city status.

Working with Reading Station, and the existing office development Apex Plaza, saw the appropriation of existing structure coalesce with intentional architectural intervention to create a dynamic visual landscape. Inserted elements co-exist against the backdrop of exposed structural elements, seeking to inherently formalise and express what it means to work at the liminal.

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Acknowledgements Guest critics: Andy Roberts Iwan Bala Patrick Hannay Richard Parnaby Simon Unwin Will McLean Consultants: Chris Ricketts Pat Ruddock Ruth Cayford Nofit State Circus The Danter Showmen The Morgan Motor Company Tom Morris Oscar Morris

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NORTHERN LIGHT

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Unit Leader Wayne Forster Students Qasim Ahmed Chua Chang Yong Fergus Dinwiddie Lydia Forster Daniel Hayes Carys Jones George Soare

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This Unit was founded on the creative potential of architectural science combining with more sensory (phenomenological) and cultural characteristics of place. The quest of this Unit is to probe architectural design through questions of history and culture as much as technology.

This year attention turns to the phenomena of Northern Light, where the particular prevailing conditions of light in the higher latitudes have inspired and given rise to some of the most influential architecture of the modern period.

Extreme variations in season present swings in the amount of illumination.

Long, dark and gloomy winter months are followed by summer months when daylight creeps toward midnight. The angle of the sun in low altitudes also adds to specific characteristics of long shadows, refracted colours and a high ratio of reflected light from ground and more critically water.

Matching painters who precede them, the students within this Unit were challenged to observe and depict these subtle conditions and manipulate building form and envelope to collect, filter, modify and allocate daylight and sunlight. All had to demonstrate a commitment to study of the visual environment, atmosphere and place and have high-level skills in representation and draftsmanship. A background knowledge of the principles of daylighting and a willingness to experiment and test ideas through drawing and physical modelling was also a pre-requisite.

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Northern Light Unit XV During the year, Unit XV has been engaged in testing the potential of the environmental dimensions in place making at a multi sensory level, encouraged by the Unit’s interest in the phenomenon of light in higher latitudes.

Aspects of place and atmospheric conditions have been explored, using a wide range of analogue and digital techniques, including physical modelling and expressive drawings.

Model making became an elemental component to our approach, allowing us to explore the sensory and atmospheric qualities of the spaces and landscapes.

Scandinavian paintings of everyday scenes awash with natural light. These representational models and other lighting studies created throughout the year were tested utilizing the artificial sky and heliodon facilities within the School, allowing us to develop, study and understand the characteristics of light in spaces.

Focusing our attention and understandings on particular lighting qualities associated with high latitudes, for instance the oblique washing of light over a landscape due to the low angle of the sun, defined the positioning of our projects above the 55th parallel. Our sites ranged from As an initial primer, we were asked to create the urban settings of Glasgow and Edinburgh, representational models of a particular place or to the Scottish Highlands and Lochs, to the space situated above the 55th parallel, which coastal terrains of Northumberland and isolated encapsulated a special quality and ambience Cramond Island in the Firth of Forth, venturing from which our thesis derived. These varied from further afield to Iceland and our most northern the shadow-filled, theatrical scenes of the film, destination in the Arctic Circle, the Lofoten Nostalgia, to a pure white, ethereal chapel by Islands in Norway.

Aalto, to Japanese interiors and 19th Century

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Qasim Ahmed The Sensual North - Corporeal Experiences through the Bathhouse This thesis explores the role of the body in architecture through investigating varied spaces and sensory sequences within the bathhouse.

The thesis explores how specific environmental and atmospheric qualities can be articulated to affect the body through materiality, natural light, temperature and scale. The bathhouse serves as an instrument for the development of sensory rituals The site is situated between the domesticity of the local settlement and the extreme environmental conditions of the surrounding landscape. These external contrasts form references within the building, an architecture emerges which internally stimulates the body, whilst addressing the landscape and incorporating some of its environmental contrasts and characteristics.

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The Bathhouse is situated in the ‘everyday’, owned and used by the community whilst meditating use by tourists. This communal function provides opportunities for meeting and encounter, as well as a place for the rejuvenation and stimulation of the body and well-being.

The project proposes a specifically Icelandic typology, a unique sequence of spaces which explore variations in the light, temperature, atmosphere, privacy and exposure to the landscape. The key zones of Invigoration, Stimulation , Rejuvenation and the Soporiphic provide a sensory sequence which addresses the body and communicate with the adjacent fluvial landscape and hills.

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Chua Chang Yong Existence and Emptiness – Choreographing Scenery and Northern Light of Transcendence, Transience and Tranquillity.

The thesis’ key principles, ‘Transcendence, Transience and Tranquillity’, or ‘3Ts’, are derived from my dissertation about the way Tadao Ando integrates Western philosophy of light and Eastern tradition of shadow in his contemporary architecture. Transcendence is associated with Shintoism where the existence of natural elements such as light and mountain is believed to be sacred, and thus transcend human affairs. Transience refers to the changefulness and fragility in nature. Tranquillity links to the Japanese Buddhism idea of spiritual emptiness and peace. In architecture, these 3Ts are achieved when materials interact with light and shadow creating visual effects of non-existence, existence, and the in-between.

I feel that ancient Scottish architecture, particularly the Heart of Neolithic Orkney and the Scottish landscape, possess these principles.

I would like to question whether integrating both ancient Eastern and Scottish architectural principles will enhance the sense of place in

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Scotland. Among so many great places in the country, Glencoe is chosen as the building site because its atmosphere, sun path, and the 360 degree panoramic mountain views match my thesis and enable me to investigate the idea of existence and emptiness in sequential order within a single day. For instance, when viewing the sunset between two mountains, the particular soft shadow that is cast from the dying light creates a very strong sense of emptiness and silence.

Setting itself in this scenic place, my building is called Glencoe Contemplative Centre, a place that displays peaceful, spiritual and meditative artworks in the form of paintings and stone carvings. My proposal aims to accentuate the undiscovered experience of the 3Ts that Glencoe has in abundance. My primary strategy to achieve this is by designing an experiential journey consisting of a series of pavilions that orientate in different ways to frame different mountain-scapes at different times; in a sequential order following the sun’s movement.

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A DIS LOCATED WESTMINSTER

THE YES CAMPAIGN

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Fergus Dinwiddie A National Square for an Independent Scotland Edinburgh is a city torn between two distinct identities. The first is characterized by Edinburgh Old Town, which encompasses the medieval, organic heart of the city. Edinburgh New town, however, is characterized by a wholly different ideological approach. Built during the Age of Reason, the area articulates the attitude of the Enlightenment in which the fundamental importance of human reason was elevated above all other considerations.

The light, spacious New Town of Edinburgh sits in complete contrast to the dark, dense Old Town, as a foil that highlights its alternate development. The character of these two regions of Edinburgh do not work in spite of one another, but enjoy a symbiotic relationship where one enhances the experience of the other.

The same can be said of Scotland’s national identity. In part derived from the archaic representation of its landscape and people A NEW SILHOUETTE III

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during the Romanticism period by its most celebrated sons Walter Scott and Robert Burns, and partly on the international prestige generated by the Scottish Enlightenment and its influence during the industrial revolution, Scotland’s national identity oscillates seamlessly between fact and fiction in such a way that the boundaries between the two are barely distinguishable.

This proposal for a National Square - inserted between the medieval Old Town and Enlightenment New Town - looks to exploit the tension between these identities by creating a space that not only speaks about what defines Scotland today, but also the type of country that an independent Scotland would aim to become; one which is more socially open, democratic, sustainable, self-reliant and prosperous. The scheme looks to reach beyond Edinburgh, to represent the climatically diverse regions of Scotland through programme, materials and a manipulation of Edinburgh’s environmental conditions, particularly light.

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Lydia Forster The Fabric of the Landscape - A Stitched Architectural Landscape This thesis examines the poetic inter-relationship between nature and constructed form, creating an architectural language which stitches together the geology as ‘found’ with a geology as ‘constructed’, so becoming inherent to the natural phenomenon of the place. The study is underpinned by the qualities of light on material surfaces and tactility.

Seeking to paint ‘the North’ in a new light, the beauties of the Northumberland Heritage Coast, it’s little-known geological treasures and atmospheric conditions, are celebrated in a piece of architecture embedded with a sense of place and encapsulating a narrative of the land, water and elements. Stitched into the landscape, the built form becomes a sculpted piece of land art, forming an intrinsic extension of the terrain.

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Acknowledging that “the limited mass of the walls must be drawn from the earth in order to withdraw a limited piece of space from the space of nature”,1 the building is formed by excavating geological matter to create habitable volumes, whilst utilising the extracted material to fabricate a ‘constructed’ geology, emerging out of the Earth’s surface in strata, hinting at the building beneath. Partially penetrating the Earth to form exposed rock chambers for exhibitions, whilst also protruding from it to merge with the rugged surface of the terrain, the organic material patination and artificial interpretation of constructed elements knit together to form an integrated fusion, with piercing beams of natural light lending atmospheric qualities to the spaces.

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Translucency

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Daniel Hayes The Imagination City - Creating an Emotionalised Reality This thesis investigates the ability of architecture to act upon the emotions of it’s inhabitants.

Starting from an exploration of ‘northern light’ as found in Swedish, Japanese and Scottish climates, this project pursues an architecture of evocative ambiguity, achieved through declarification of the rational senses and a corresponding openness to the projections of the imagination.

Using the guiding principles of film, the school captures a slice of Glasgow’s City Centre and within it aims to create an emotionalised reality. Like a film, the school consists of independent emotional scenes tied together by an overarching tone or atmosphere. These scenes are arranged in discorded spatial sequence to encourage complex narratives and their emotionality is achieved through the lighting, materiality and structure of each space, achieving a holistic embodied experience.

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The tone of the school follows the typology of Film Noir, related to Glasgow’s urban and climatic character. It dictates narrative, the incorporation of existing buildings which are treated as hollow ruins within which new meanings can be inserted, and three different lighting types: screen, shadow, and translucency, which all have the effect of evocatively abstracting reality.

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Library - ‘Tension’ - Screen

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Carys Jones Design Freedom and the Laws of Nature Can freedom in design be preserved when the laws of nature are observed?

preferences of designers be mediated by conditions that are necessary to the project?

The study of Landscape enables architects to recognise the nature & task of designing buildings, as if the building is environmental, not only architectural. Only when architecture and landscape discover the full scope and complexity of their relationships and buildings acknowledge and seek to express their topographical character, will both recover their standing and role in contemporary culture.

The project is located on Cramond Island, Edinburgh. The island’s natural form and topography has enhanced its use as a defensive island. The existing architecture found encapsulates the grounded and resilient nature of settlement.

Research into the characteristics and conditions of the area began to unravel the architectural needs of the place, as well as enhancing Landscape is important to architecture the cultural and ecological qualities. The because attention to materiality, spatiality, and architectural dialect and programme are temporality of terrain shows how alternatives to developed around the theme of the learning the pictorial approach can increase architecture’s landscape, integrating the architectural situation cultural content. Theoretically the thesis begins with the freedom and laws of nature. The to unravel the question of how the technical and conclusions begin to unravel how architecture aesthetic operations of a building acknowledge can be integrated into the topographical story the natural, cultural and ecological processes of the landscape. that characterizes its location. It also begins to ask: how can the very personal aesthetic

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George Valentin Soare The Primitive and the Primordial Under the heading of the ‘Primitive and the Primordial’, the design thesis explores the potential of the environmental dimension in place making.

Located in the village of Å, Norway, ‘The Maelström Center’ is essentially a museum that is named after the infamous tidal current located just off coast of the Arctic archipelago of the Lofoten Islands, a place of myth and legend.

Home to one of the world’s most primitive landscapes with mountains billions of years old, and enjoying a teeming marine life, the pristine archipelago is threatened by the prospect of oil exploitation. The fairly recent discovery of the world’s largest and oldest deep water coral reef stands as proof of how little we actually know about the islands. Additionally, as the world’s fish stocks are in decline, the islands still enjoy the largest and one of oldest cod fisheries in the world. A ten day site visit revealed a place where it is still impossible to escape the presence of nature: strong winds affect the way the locals walk, the arrival of the cod still dictates the economic life, while the lack of light during the long winter nights coupled with its

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other extreme, the midnight sun, shape the social life of the islands.

In an attempt to better convert the spirit of the place the project takes inspiration from literature and from music. Famous stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne that describe the tidal current, and the minimalist piece of music by Philip Glass for a theatre play, ‘A descent into the Maelström’ informed the development of the design thesis.

A journey across the museum is synonymous with a journey back in time which is experienced as a descent into the Maelstrom. The visitor is carried away from the safety of the wooden ‘boats’ where he learns about the village`s fishing heritage, into ‘the water’, in a space that is inspired by the foundations of the local stilt houses. The inhabited foundations therefore represent the areas where the visitor learns about the rich marine life of the islands and where the presence of the water is unavoidable; it can be seen, heard, smelled and even tasted. The promenade ends inside the granite rocks, the oldest element of the site, where the visitor can closely interact with the mountain and experience its crushing pressure.

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Acknowledgements Guest Critics: Rhian Thomas Simon Unwin Richard Weston Guest Tutors: Ian Jones Rob Stevens Phil Nedin Phillip Jones

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ON THE LEVEL

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Unit Leader Wayne Forster Students Fong Chang Miranda Dettwyler Shermin Tan

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In this Unit which traditionally has focused on the integration of architecture and landscape faces the proposition of an M4 relief road across the historic landscape of the Gwent and Wentloog levels.

Described as Britains’s Mississipi, the River Severn largely forms the boundary between South East Wales and England. Between the hills that roll down from the North and the River is an area of fenland known as the levels. Here the River has the second biggest tidal range in the world.

The Levels are a landscape of extraordinarily diverse environmental and archaeological potential.

The Levels are therefore a uniquely rich archaeological and historical resource in Wales, and certainly of international importance and significance.

Parts have been designated as Sites of Scientific Interest and are registered as a Historic Landscape of Outstanding Historic Interest in Wales.

This all now threatened by two impending events – a new relief motorway for the existing M4 and climate change.

Welsh Government plans to build a new motorway that will cut through four sites of special scientific interest (SSSI) and sever, disrupt and isolate large parts of the levels.

This is in spite of much opposition. The counter-projects that emerge from within the Unit will set out to minimize impact on the landscape, enhance the awareness of this cultural landscape but aim to enhance productivity, sustainability and culture.

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On The Level Unit XV This Unit began with a desire to reimagine the rural for the 21st Century. Our site, the Caldicot Levels north of Newport, Wales, is an area of historic beauty and natural abundance. The Levels have been managed as a productive landscape for thousands of years through the digging of reens and reinforcement of the sea wall, allowing agriculture, energy generation and trade to flourish. But they are now under threat by a proposed M4 Relief Road, cutting through areas of ecological and archaeological importance. In addition, rising sea levels imperil the intertidal zone, a vital feeding ground for hundreds of endangered species. Our task has been, through detailed site analysis and research, to identify and develop means for revitalising this ancient landscape, reframing the human relationship to the rural through thoughtful interventions designed to harvest the natural resources of the levels, while preserving them for generations to come.

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Fong Chang A Productive Landscape The inception of this thesis is the proposal of the M4 relief road by the Welsh government which will cut through three protected SSSI regions.

This sparked a persistent protest by the Friends of the Earth (FOE) as the proposal will cause great damage to local wildlife. An inspection into statistics showed that 50% of the trucks crossing the Severn Estuary transport food for major supermarket chains in South Wales. This led to a critical analysis of the correlation between traffic congestion and the Newport food chain. Close to the M4, the overly protected levels lie barren while regions of Newport are suffering from nutrient deficiency.

In my opinion, the significance of the landscape is misunderstood by both FOE and the Welsh Government. The landscape is neither just a beautiful postcard nor an invaluable asset. What if the Caldicot Landscape can be transformed into a productive one using high-tech methods which sustain a wider community, protect the local ecology, and reduce congestion across the M4?

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Making use of the abundant water reens left by the Romans, aquaponic technology is used to top up the nutrient deficiency in Newport. Researching the soil quality of the levels allows infrastructural programmes such as farmhouses, aquaponics and monorails to inhabit the levels. The programme consist mainly of research facilities which develop the land in accordance to the local ecology, public ventures, and a produce distribution and manufacturing centre.

Model horticultural farm of the future: on a smaller scale, the model farm inhabits a region where a postindustrial steelwork site crosses over to the historical Roman Field.

Beyond the functional programme, the thesis explores the concept of interdependency at a deeper level, concerning how the architecture becomes a vehicle which drives the growth of the landscape and in the process of doing so, become susceptible to the effect of the landscape. The building becomes more vulnerable to weathering as the landscape matures. Landscape is seen as a force which is in tune to nature whilst architecture is against it. This is expressed through construction language, tectonic and building engagement with the landscape.

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Miranda Dettwyler Dinas Llanw: Living on the Tide A proposal for the construction of inhabited offshore tidal lagoons.

This thesis began with a desire to reimagine the rural for a 21st Century context, looking specifically at the future of the Caldicot levels, an area of great natural beauty and historical productivity. Investigations into the potential of this landscape revealed a number of key assets to be explored, including my focus, the 14.5m tidal range of the Severn Estuary, second-highest in the world, running along the levels’ Eastern border. This tidal range can be exploited to generate clean energy through tidal lagoons.

Beyond the potential to generate energy, these lagoons provide a platform for permanent inhabitation; this thesis is an investigation into the feasibility of creating carbon-positive ecologicallysensitive settlements by building highly integrated and compact three-dimensional urban colonies into and onto the lagoon walls.

Exploring ideas of flat ecology and the human relationship to the planet, these colonies would transform attitudes to essential large-scale

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infrastructure, towards a new typology of energy production - away from the dichotomous image of dirty factories far from humans, and towards a model which is not only integral but integrated with society, altering the public perception of essential infrastructures and providing a new model for sustainable human inhabitation of the planet.

These colonies, dense unto themselves, but remote from landfall, create new and interesting architectural problems. Such an isolated environment requires careful consideration of provision for the essentials of life, while creating a strong and joyful sense of place that will sustain this community in the long term. The climate plays a major factor as well, with high wind speeds and increasingly violent marine storms requiring the careful laying out of both public and private outdoor spaces to facilitate a sociallysustainable enterprise. The architecture born from these conditions speaks of refuge and prospect and an ancient enduring relationship with the landscape.

The Caldicot Lagoons are an integration of ecology, society and infrastructure, a physical model of a modern carbon-positive civilisation, a community in symbiosis with the planet, interdependent and sustainable.

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Shermin Tan Caldicot levels, Interpreting the Cultural Landscape The design process mainly follows the principle of water ow from land to the intertidal zone, derived from the drainage system of the reclaimed landscape by the Romans, reminiscing the journey of the intended visitor’s journey through the proposed building. The water owing pattern also symbolizes heavy and light, where water flows from multiple sources on land, and ends in a single destination (the sea).

Based on the group and my own research, I am proposing an archaeological museum with a part dedicated to intertidal ecology research.

Situated in between land and intertidal zone over the seawall, this proposal aims to educate visitors about the history and importance of the formation of the landscape, at the same time emphasizing on the visitor’s journey through the building, across the seawall. Intertidal ecology research aims to tackle the issue of rising sea level, PH value and temperature, coming

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out with a solution to protect its ecology in the future. This will further complement the existing tourism industry of the landscape and give it a greater social and economic value.

In conclusion, the thesis aims to protect the cultural and ecological aspects of the landscape to educate current and future generations about their importance, and vice versa, essentially forming a ‘Protect to Educate; Educate to Protect’ relationship.

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Acknowledgements Simon Unwin Richard Weston, Richard Weston Studio Richard Wood, Landscape Architect, Newport City Council Rhian Thomas, DRU Gareth Clubb, Friends of the Earth Cymru Phil Nedin, Arup Rob Stevens, Hassell Ian Jones, iDesign

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INFRASTRUCTURAL URBANISM

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Unit Leader Peter Salter Students Thomas Fairbrother Jane Hakes Elliot Jefferies Yirong Liu Bryony Martin Adrian Musat

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The work of the unit this year explored the notion that the building of large-scale structures such as stadia involves a responsibility to provide a legacy and aspects of social cohesion for their neighbourhood and environment.

The site of the year’s work was Brynmawr in the Heads of the Valley, South Wales. The projects were to be located like ‘ghosts’ on the floor plate of the demolished Brynmawr Rubber Factory, designed by Architect Co-Partnership in the early ‘70s and demolished in spite of its listing in the 1990s, at the behest of its community. The community presented a contradiction in relation to that building; the local museum displays paintings and memorabilia of employment and the factory as a focus of the community, but there is still no love lost.

The community suffers from chronic deprivations, ill health, poverty and unemployment. The work of the unit attempted to provide a basis for change by exploring how large scale structures have a duty to their neighbourhood, unlike the failed attempts at ‘legacy’ of so many recent international sporting venues.

Based on data collection, individual projects explored, for example: the lack of confidence and body image in relation to incidents of skin melanoma and the number of tanning shops in the town; incidents of chronic lung disease due to past industrial processes and the nearness today of opencast mine sites to settlement; the extension of the Asda Superstore community outreach programmes through new industries of market gardening and an industrial fish farm that safeguards slack space for community needs in relation to the reestablished town square; the encouragement of outdoor pursuits and tourism, through strategies for new training facilities and others that nurture small businesses.

These programmes were developed through a workshop on catenary structures and chain models that became the foundation for architectural proposals that included: an indoor international ski jump; a utopian structure that covered an open cast pit site in the manner of Buckminster Fuller; a works tower for salmon production that was reminiscent of a pit head in the landscape with a golden fish; a hotel school; and a velodrome that offered a strategy of grass-roots training for local schools, similar to the system of developing rugby talent in Wales; a new factory of the scale of landscape, in which neighbourhoods were likened to team hubs; and land fill sites that became production grounds for local agricultural economy.

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Infrastructural Urbanism Unit XVII Initially students were encouraged to work both conceptually and strategically in order to deduce a stance from which to address the facing problems of ill health, deprivation and unemployment. The explorative data collection led by the students aimed to enrich the individual projects, providing details and documentation of the current problems crippling the isolated community of the South Wales Valley.

A group visit to some of the Heads of The Valley Towns allowed for a first hand insight into some of the current problems with a lack of social cohesion.

From this, students were able to pursue a strategy by which to address either the most significant, alarming or personally interesting areas of ill health and social suffering.

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A workshop with Tim Macfarlane on catenary structures encouraged the students to explore their social interests and strategic findings in a way to such develop an architectural proposal.

The intension of large scale structures aimed to locate the individual projects as ‘ghosts’ to the demolished shell structure of the Brynmawr Rubber Factory.

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Thomas Fairbrother From ‘ASDA’ to Golden Salmon: Reconfiguring the Community Table How can Asda react to market change and reconfigure the community table to benefit the people of Brynmawr, re-establish a place specific identity and address some of their underlying chronic problems?

public closure of these landmark buildings risks compounding current problems of isolation.

After the public closure and shrinkage of Asda, existing structures and unused land will play host to a new land-based salmon industry fed In 2005, Asda replaced Grade II listed Brynmawr from the River Usk, reconnecting the community to the local source of oily fish. The golden rubber factory and it’s success has lead to a salmon banqueting hall will sit proudly upon a decrease in high street activity. It is now an new salmon processing plant and sushi factory. important place of social exchange and, for It will be a symbol of Brynmawr’s new identity some, a visit to the store may be their only seen from miles around. Formalised sociopoint of human contact. Whilst in the past commercial activities will reconcentrate around valleys communities were identified by pit heads, the nearest thing now is a glowing green a pedestrianised market square through which ASDA sign. Although Asda run a ‘Community a new salmon canal will allow the public to Life’ outreach program, more could be done observe the migratory species. Running pipeline considering the profitable large scale nature of curtains will capture and conceal a landscape the organisation. of friche as slack space for informal recreational purposes and the concrete ground slab of the A rise in online sales is forcing supermarkets to former Asda store will play host to impromptu change how they operate at a local level and the happenings, heated via an exchange with the salmon factory’s cooling process.

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GOLDEN SALMON 1 2 3 4

Banqueting Hall Lounge Kitchen Garden

FACTORY 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sushi Factory Salmon Processing Recirculatory Aquaculture System Salmon Raceways Laboratory Light Cannons

SLAB 11 12 13 14 15

Communal Eating Hall Food + Drink Kiosk Personal Cloche Red PVC Curtain Subterranean Sushi Resturant

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Jane Hakes Safeguarding the Common: The Merthyr Biome How can the Reconfiguration of the Mine Pit Create New Social Circumstance?

Despite the trials and tribulations the community went through in the Thatcherite and previous eras of coal, the Heads of the Valleys are now facing a new threat from coal industry; the rise of the open cast mine. The dust associated with the current mining operations again starts to cause deteriorations to local health, just as pit mining provoked the ‘black lung’ (silicosis) of miners past.

The proposal addresses the present Ffos-y-fran open cast coal workings currently replacing the common north-east of Merthyr Tydfil. The mine will extract 10 million tonnes of coal over a fifteen year period followed by a subsequent ‘landscape reclamation’. The nearest settlements are 30 metres from the pit, in clear breach of the present guidelines recommending no mining should occur within a 500 metre buffer of a residential area.

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‘Land reclamation’ is being used as a euphemism for coal mining.

By recognising the opportunities of the site in creating isolated climatic conditions, economic opportunities are created for companies that may require specific isolated territories for their operations. A cap will span over the pit, creating a biome housing variable climatic conditions. A test laboratory for GM Crop Trials will occupy the northern and most isolated area of the pit providing the funding needed for the rehabilitation.

Occupying the main pit, an Amenity Forest with the climate of British Summertime becomes a ‘green lung’ for the town, providing a local carbon sink facility and harvesting oxygen from the canopy. Bridging the East wall of the mine within a tropical biome sits the Scargill Sanatorium Resort, supporting victims of Pneumoconiosis both present and future, addressing the most common right of all, the right to clean air.

Proposed 500m Buffer Zone from Opencast

Asthma Silicosis, lung cancer

Rhymney

Mine Boundary Miller Argent Dust Monitering Point

Abandoned Mine Shaft Mine Adit Motorist Fatality A456 Heads of the Valleys Road

Nant Llesg Opencast 2016-2029

Pneumoconiosis

Trecatti Landfill

Depleted Ffos-y-Fran Opencast 2006-2025

Air Cavity Oxygen

Breach of Zone

Merthyr Tydfil

Legal Safeguarded Zone

The Pairing of the Mines Future Valleys Landscape 2025

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ascent / descent slope and gravity controlling velocity

Elliot Jefferies A Platform for Social Cohesion: Combating outlying health issues and Community cohesion In preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil anticipated that their newly built stadia would stand as symbols for a greater legacy and act as tools for a wider regeneration across the country.

The formality of these stadiums directly contrasted the informal ad-hoc growth of the urban poor.

These pieces of iconographic architecture, meant to symbolise and represent Brazil as a prosperous place and act as a positive attraction to outsiders, became the direct opposite for many of the locals.

They began to ignite connotations of repression and a feeling of neglect from the local and national authorities as they offered little to the local residents.

Like many other coal regions across the British Isles, the industries that ignited urban growth had a somewhat parasitic relationship with their landscape and their people. Blaenau Gwent County has the highest smoking rate in Wales, highest unemployment rate, and one of the highest obesity rates. On top of this, many of the residents are affected by life-altering incurable respiratory illnesses from the industries of

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the past. These incurable diseases are only partly remedied by reducing smoking, which alternatively can increase obesity levels as the metabolism slows, exacerbating an already pressing issue. Looking at general exercise levels across our nation, huge spikes can be witnessed leading up to the 2012 London Olympic Games. Cycling is quickly becoming one of Britain’s more exemplary sports, and subsequently seeing a large increase in popularity. Drawing on this, and reflecting issues highlighted from the FIFA World Cup, I am proposing an intervention located on the site of the old Brynmawr Rubber factory consisting of an infrastructural Cycling landscape orbiting a central hub of cycle-related activities, married with healthcare and tourism. This architectural place-making complex will nurture social cohesion through a grassroots encouragement of cycling, a community polyclinic and through the insertion of a new public realm.

What are the strategies employed when enforcing these large-scale sporting structures into predominately dormitory settlements; can they become a symbol for social gentrification and cohesion? Or are they simply blights on the local people and only serve those who are visiting?

BRYNMAWR BICYCLE CLUB

FINISH

APPROACH architecture as a place maker

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DECEMBER

KALE 200MM AVERAGE RAINFALL

12 DAYS AVERAGE AIR FROST DAYS

6°C 19% 40 HOURS

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PARSNIP

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ASDA

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70MM 20°C AVERAGE TEMPERATURE

COURGETTE BROCCOLI

187 HOURS AVERAGE SUNSHINE HOURS

TOMATO PEPPER CUCUMBER BEANS & PEAS CAULIFLOWER CABBAGE LETTUCE SPINACH SPRING GREENS ASPARAGUS

Community Orchard

POTATO SALAD LEAVES CARROTS

FRUITING AND LEAFY CROPS ROOT CROPS SELF-EFFICIENCY LEVEL

JUNE

Fields are plotted with great precision and care in the relatively cold and humid climate. Community farm supplies COOP-ASDA with seasonal vegetables and fruits. The land is divided into twelve equal portions according to harvesting time of different crops. The seeding, sprouting and blooming times of various crop involved in a healthy diet find expressions in the dimensions and rotational schedules of the farmed landscape. The plot is as much about time and sequence as it is about spacing and making the ground.

Yirong Liu

PLANTING CALENDAR, CLIMATE AND LAND

COOP-ASDA: The New Heads of The Valleys Community Agriculture The South Wales Valleys suffer from neglect.

Years of mining activities left the valleys with a distorted landscape and contaminated land. People are trapped in isolated towns, unemployed and disabled by physical and mental illnesses. The ambition of building a better valley once embraced by the Brynmawr Rubber Factory has shattered into pieces.

Replaced by an ASDA supermarket with shrinking business, the Brynmawr factory together with the bright future it promised - has become a phantom that constantly reminds the community of the painful reality.

metaphor of localisation and a means of selfhelp, as opposed to mass-produced commercial loaves. Both the decline of out-of-town supermarkets and the re-emergence of local markets offer an opportunity to re-establish self-sustained societies in the valleys through collaboration between new valley CO-OPs and the major supermarket ASDA. CO-OPs provide fresh bread, seasonal fruit, vegetables and byproducts, to spare ASDA from vicious price competitions and reduce food miles. ASDA continues to supply the valleys with essential living products, exotic and processed food.

How can the community in such conditions escape from the vicious cycle of deprivation?

Can the valley authorities’ own negligence turn the pit towns into new hubs for social and cultural transformation?

The project revisits the co-operatives that were set up in the valleys for locally sourced self-help. Artisan bread emerged as both a

In essence, the projects seeks to recapture the faith and confidence of the Valley people through appropriation of landscape as infrastructure to incubate social cohesion.

By remediation with industrial hemp and revitalisation with fruit and vegetables, contaminated landfills become a remedy: both for the community as a whole economically and socially, and for the individual physically and mentally.

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Allotments

Demonstration Farm: Pick your own

THE REVITALISED LAND: ALLOTMENTS AND COMMUNITY ORCHARD

Natural Ventilation

Hot air

Community Design Workshop Cool air

Napping

Sauna Changing

Showering Chopping Fresh Vegetables and Fruits from COOP-ASDA Farm

Oil Tank

Hemp Oil

Making Tea Hot air

Sunbathing

Arriving

Fitting

Mixing Hemp Oil Production

Cool air

Crafting

Cooling

Designing

Tailoring

Hemp Fabric from Textile Production

Recieving Office

7.4 tonnes of raw fibre / day

Bale opener

Chilling 9.7 tonnes of raw seeds / day

Quality Control

Cleaning

Flour Mill

Spinning

Carding

HEMP FLOUR (OIL) PRODUCTION

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Bryony Martin The ‘Artificial’ Mountain, Mynydd Carn-y-cefn, Wales Underpinning the work of the thesis lies an understanding for the celebration of sun in juxtaposition to the sun’s very darkness, whereby one becomes concerned with both the mental and physical health benefits and the subsequent pitfalls of the skins exposure to the sun. The poetic understanding between the shift work and ones lack of exposure to daylight, synonymous with a miner, who spends his days in the pitiless darkness beneath the landscape, highlights the very frictions which surround the idea of health in relation to sunlight. For a lack of exposure to both sunlight and daylight resonate in deficiencies of Vitamin D which can lead to further implementing of medical conditions such as rickets, osteomalacia and depression. Within the town of Brynmawr itself, a community of less than 6000 people, an astonishing 3 sun tanning salons play up to the communities concerns of body image where ever increasing concerns rise over the number of incidences of skin melanomas.

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The architecture becomes the poetic exchange between the natural and artificial environments of the black coal dust pit beneath the white snow structure whereby the artificial ski jump becomes a measurable landform, promoting health, the environment and outdoor pursuits.

The ski flying hills and the subsequent ‘resort’ provide an infrastructure with the capacity to appropriate and transform social, cultural, economic and environmental agendas, initially captivating the local community by ultimately playing upon the promotion of glamour to further import and encourage a lifestyle of health and well-being, instilling ambition with great aspirations. Both the ski flying hills and the resort offer perspective, allowing one to understand their location from within the community of Brynmawr; from the ’inside, looking out’ to the resort, and thus, when up in the heights of the resort on the Mynydd Carny-cefn ridge one can look back towards the community; from the ‘outside, looking in’.

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Adrian Musat New Gateway to Brecon Beacons After the iron and coal industries stopped, the heads of the Valleys were prone to depopulation. Without the extraction of these, the now densely populated settlements became unemployed and in poverty. Following these events were a number of unsuccessful industrial schemes that further added to the frustration, as half of incapacity benefit numbers are now in fact hidden in unemployment.

My thesis looks at gateway towns and how their geographical position can regenerate a broader area. The chosen programmes, once established locally, can further benefit surrounding settlements through interacting and engaging with society.

Depopulation of The Valleys can be stopped by generating sufficient employment and educational possibilities. However, in order to encourage businesses to operate locally, a new image for the HTV is proposed so that it attracts investors. Tourism development is proposed

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in an attempt to restore HTV culturally, economically and also socially. In order to ensure long-term sustainability, these three dimensions have to be suitably balanced.

The masterplan consists of a landscaping project and three main programmes that will restore the Valleys as a vibrant and reliable business hub.

The tactic is to regenerate the area through sustainable tourism: Mountain centre, Hotel, Hotel School and Plywood Factory. At the moment both social and economic issues are contradicting each other by having different aspirations: locals believe that improving industries will benefit them by providing jobs while the economy encourages depopulation of the Valleys and an extension of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The proposal engages with both sides by promoting Tourism as a new industry meant to supply both employment and educational facilities. The outcome is supplying locals with the necessary skills to get easily employed or to open a business in their natal town.

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Acknowledgements Michele Roelofsma Tim Macfarlane Peter Beardsell Fenella Collingridge Alice Harwood Marga Munar Bauza Simon Lannon

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WSA_5 Committee Chairs Benedict Edwards Jasneil Panesar Curation Thomas Fairbrother Jane Hakes Bryony Martin Coordination Jenny Saunders Tansy Duncan Alexa Walker Finance Chloe Sheward Agnieszka Zielke Daniel Hayes Branding Tom Cooper-Cocks

With Thanks to Juliet Davis Janice Coyle Charles Drozynski Amber Luscombe Miranda Dettwyler Maddy Loftus Chara Simatou George Soare Gemma Wheeler