Team Intro OAT 2019

Team introduction

FF Forest Futures is an architecturally-educated collective with an agenda to disrupt the status-quo of urban and lifestyle development for capital accumulation, and redirect it towards improving quality-of-life for every member of society. Our collective interest in furthering society, towards communal happiness rather than abstract economic growth, has led us to use our design-thinking beyond spatial solutions and into engaging with and redesigning politico-socio-economic systems as a way of realising our agenda.

The collective formed while it’s three members (Saskia, Aleks and Jack) were undertaking their Masters of Architecture, in the Urbanism and Societal Change studio, at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. During this time they experimented and developed their shared interest in achieving an egalitarian society through design-thinking skills beyond the traditional scope of architecture. It was through a group project, Forest as Infrastructure Space, that they discovered an interest in depopulation and degrowth as a positive urban change that creates many new potentials for improving our quality of life. Some imagery from this project are attached to the Abstract.

Alternatives’ Association’s skills across all scales of design and varying approaches for achieving our shared goal combine to create a vast repertoire of techniques to infiltrate the status quo. From community engagement and academia to collaborating and twisting the opinions of the wealthy elite, the collective continues to increase it’s pallete of tools for creating opportunities for alternative futures.

Mapping of Copenhagen - Impact of Flooding on Socio-Spatial City Layers

Saskia Blake is an urban designer based in London.

Saskia’s interests and particular skill set allow her to work at a variety of scales from planning to detail design. Her work is directed towards design as a social innovator in a collaborative, community empowered future, she strives towards developing innovative proposals which engage with the key aspects of urban design, sensitively unravelling all the social and cultural conditions which they present.

Aleksander Nowak is a researcher, architect and urbanist based in Copenhagen. Aleks has a particular interest in emergency architecture, urban and strategic planning for alternative futures. His recent work ranges from post-war reconstruction strategies for Aleppo, through displacement analysis of refugees in Lebanon to research on data visualisation and spatio-political changes within the Danish Welfare state. His greatest pursuit is to discover ways in which architecture could be used again as a tool for societal wellbeing rather than economic speculation.

Jack Perry is an architect and spatial-identity consultant based in Copenhagen. Jack’s work is driven by how spatial designers can use their skills, beyond their designated scope, to help improve society. His work explores how design-thinking can re-imagine current economic, political and societal norms and protocols to unleash potential better futures. Therefore Jack works in many new constellations of collaborations to achieve this, while always contributing by bringing strong spatial identity to projects through all scales of design.

At ground-level, the pavilion used optical illusion to a functional advantage, where a semi-circular pool of reflective water is completed by a mirrored bar surface.

In the Charlottenburg Kunsthall where the pavilion made its first appearance, the normally benign Northern sun baked food against it’s mirrored surfaces and set alight sheets of stray paper. At night, a focussed beam shone through the lens of water creating spectacular rainbow caustics that would bounce off the reflective pool at ground level and decorate the surroundings in colour.

The pavilion operated as a restaurant during the CHART - Copenhagen Art Fair at the Kunsthal Charlottenburg. Attendees were required to walk through the water to be able to order champagne and oysters selected by restaurateurs L’Esprit du Vin. Initially hesitant people removed their shoes and played in the shallow pool all night.

Winning Proposal Team: Enlai Hooi, Tamara Kalantajevska, Nicole Strelcheva, Trine Thy 2016

Mapping Aleppo City region scale strategy for post-war Aleppo, maps based on osm GIS and Humanitarian Response Data

The conflict is staggering not only in terms of numbers - 250.000 people killed, 130.000 missing 7.6 million internally displaced, 6.130 mln refugees who left the country - but also condition of the current global social, human rights, economic, political matters. e same as rubble-ruins are an obvious re ection of the conflict, the pre-war, rich and diverse urban fabric of Aleppo epitomizes the socio-economic circumstance where nine di erent civilizations held power throughout the millennia.

Space is a social product, or a complex social construction, based on values, and the social production of meanings which a ects spatial practices and perceptions. One might argue that the Syrian con ict, with all its national and transnational players is a spatial embodiment of the planetary state of emergency (Cauter, 2012).

Aleppo reconsturction has a chance to be not simply a rebuilding process of a middle eastern city but a chance for careful re-evaluation of the current means which drive urban formal and informal growth, as well as their mutual relation.

Aleppo with its rich, long history, level of resilience to wars and multicultural in uences is a perfect evidence of how urban structure represents a physical, three-dimensional projection of human beliefs tand socio-political conditions. The city is often referred to as one of the oldest cities in the world, which continuously inhabited, has been always a site of urban transformation and renewal. Historical development of the city shows how societal, political and recent climatic changes, evolve together and in uence the urban form; lead to its expansion but also destruction.

Catalogue of details based on postwar rubble recycling is beeing developed.

How does alteration of the construction chain modifiy the whole city? The details and new construction methods have a chance to contribute to more cost effective and efficient post-war city shaping.

In the case of Aleppo and Syrian civil war it might appear naive to bring notions of ‘sustainability’ and ‘urban mining’ into discussion of post-war reconstruction. However examples from the past show us that practice of rubble reusal is not new.

The rubble women, from post-war Berlin, sorting debris and bringing it to spetial Zwischenlagestellen (initial collection points to which the rubble would be taken further by heavier machinery).

The presented set of details constitute an exemplary catalogue of systems which multiplied thorughout the whole city not only reuse the ‘local ressource’ but also bring back, not obvious, public domain to the city.

Here, a flexible scheme of mixed reinforced concrete frame and the rammed rubble wall is proposed.

The prototype is strong enough to withstand structural loads of a 6 to 7 high floor apartament block. Inner rubble core does not contribute to structural strength of the wall. Its production might be more time consuming than of a new reinforced concrete frame structure, however costs and use of concrete might be significantly reduced.

Forest as infrastructure space Post-soviet Microrayon.

Riga as a shrinking city.

F

orest as infrastructure space. This 200+ year speculative strategy treats the forest - Latvia’s greatest asset, as flexible infrastructure for future.

The city of Riga is an example of a shrinking city. In this context, the project reimagines how future urban population fluctuations could be approached.

Together with the shrinking population - and economy as its potential consequence - the patches of forest appear in the city, Every patch of this flexible, reconfigurative membrane should be read as a stack of various layers of value.

Forest in this case becomes more than a space-filler for the emptying urban tissue. It gradually creates a new type of re-countrysized urban scenario, embodies an economical asset, raw ressource and insurance for future generations. The forest, when curated, constitutes an integral part of the city economy- when “left behind”, starts to expand on its own, overgrowing the dying city.

The forest infrastructure by encasing Riga, limits the urban sprawl and compresses the moribund society.

Menchester Shopping Mall Restoration Proposal - 2017

Public square - Open Competition - 3rd Prize

Phase 0 Masterplan for Winstanley Estate in Clapham Junction - a master plan and landscape strategy for a large scale development in Battersea, London.

The project included a new park as well as producing a complex phasing plan, and community engagement scheme.

The town of Treherbert in Wales is given ownership of the landscape which surrounds their town. This project is an exploration into what happens when a new relationship is frond between town and landscape. Pursuing the moment when buildings become the symbolism for a planning logic.

Thank you