Theory Book

The School of Anarchic Construction

The School in 2097, looking west

The School of Anarchic Construction This project is underpinned by a rejection of traditional master-planning and its replacement by the concept of non-plan.

But, non-plan taken to its logical conclusion can lead to the market failure exemplified by American car-driven strip development.

This scheme addresses this critique, the masterplan creates a route across the site, linking disconnected neighbourhoods and forming an armature around which the first development will coalesce, the rest of the site is scattered with a grid of supports for new development, interspersed with circulation that reflects the historic density of Salisbury.

My building begins as a simple timber construction, aligned with the new route, itself an armature for adaptation and expansion and its programme intended to facilitate the development of the site, training craftsmen, builders and designers.

The Site

The starting point: a critique of traditional masterplanning - the difficulties of creating true mixed-used neighbourhoods.

The flawed imposition of ‘desirable’ uses, with no way of testing if they work and no alternative if they fail.

Is there an appropriate alternative?

The Non-Plan - posited in the 1960s by Cedric Price, Reyner Bahnam, Paul Barker and Peter Hall (New Society 1969) Non-Plan embraces change and freedom and allows for constant adaptation to new situations.

There should be no ‘positive’ planning - no designations of areas for ‘cafe-culture’ or ‘high-tech mixed-use’ only proscriptions against truly harmful development.

Lagos, Nigeria

But, the Non-Plan is flawed and susceptible to distortion, its tenets are not easily distinguished from true free-market capitalism and its outcomes could be as extreme, and homogenous, as American car-dependant edge-city development.

Los Angeles, USA

The Non-Plan is modified, the notion of Bernard Tschumi’s superimposition (1996) - happening figuratively in the Non-Plan through the layering of a huge variety of uses can be extended literally, overlaying the Non-Plan site with a series of structures, that restrict and define, but not directly promote any one kind of development.

Tschumi’s plan for Parc de La Villette

The Route - A social condenser, from Soviet constructivist theory, described by Koolhaas as ‘programmatic layering upon vacant terrain to encourage dynamic coexistence of activities and to generate through their interference, unprecedented events.’ (2004) The route, cutting diagonally through the site, connects previously disparate neighbourhoods and brings together the entire variety of new uses that coalesce along its length.

+ Minor routes through the site reflect the historic scale of Salisbury

+ The Route

New route - city centre to neighbourhoods cut off by railway line.

Socially beneficial route - a ‘magnet’ - Cedric Price

Mixed uses coalescing along route - a social condenser

Grid of concrete pads, buried just below the surface, ready to be uncovered and used to support new development

The Grid - A reflection of the historic scale of Salisbury, limiting the ultimate size of new development and creating a familiar new space.

+ The Grid

Minor routes through the site reflect the historic scale of Salisbury

+ New route - city centre to neighbourhoods cut off by railway line.

Socially beneficial route - a ‘magnet’ - Cedric Price Mixed uses coalescing along route - a social condenser

Grid of concrete pads, buried just below the surface, ready to be uncovered and used to support new development

The Supports - A randomised layout of pilings, buried just below the surface, ready to support new development and influence its shape and scale. Supports are designed and built by ‘professionals,’ architects, engineers and construction companies, while infill is completed by individuals. Separating the infrastructure into support and infill allows for greater adaptation, high flexibility and for self builders to have a meaningful involvement (Habraken 1972).

+ Minor routes through the site reflect the historic scale of Salisbury

+ New route - city centre to neighbourhoods cut off by railway line.

Socially beneficial route - a ‘magnet’ - Cedric Price Mixed uses coalescing along route - a social condenser

The Supports Grid of concrete pads, buried just below the surface, ready to be uncovered and used to support new development

The full master-plan

site of the School of Anarchic Construction

Development of the site over time

The first tentative steps.

Temporary, mobile uses colonise the site, those that are successful take root, those that fail are swiftly replaced. A new community begins to establish itself.

2015

A new quarter of Salisbury.

The buildings and structures of successful colonisers begin to ossify, as they replace canvas with concrete, timber with steel frames.

2097

The Building

Programme - to facilitate the development of the site, a construction school, training anyone willing in the skills and ideas needed to exploit the Non-Plan Teaching Building Canteen Workshop

The whole complex is arranged along the newly created route, an unravelled cloister of buildings, strung like beads, the mixed programmes and interference with the public route furthering the aims of the Social Condenser.

Layout Precedent AAF’s Pavilions and follies of the Parc des bords de seine

Layout Diagram

The combination of Non-Plan with a superimposed framework, the buildings are simply constructed in over-built timber frames and lightly clad, a ‘low-road’ building (Brand 1994).

Simplicity of construction

Shearing layers allow the building to be easily adapted by its users, a central services and circulation core allows the free re-interpretation of the rest of the structure.

Core and frame

The building reflects the ad-hoc nature of the rest of the site, responding to its users needs and changing when it becomes less useful. Over time structures burst out of the building, accommodating new and expanding uses and testing different technologies. The form and design of these extensions reflects the whims and ideas of the building’s users, free from restrictions, designs for their own sake.

(Rudovsky 1964)

The building expanding

The Extensions

The goal of this building is to enable unpredictability, ‘to give people a high degree of freedom in how and why they need or use designed space’ (Lebbeus Woods 2004). The interventions are parasitic forms, enabled and allowed to exist by the strength and inherent mutability of the original building.

Lebbeus Woods Parasitic intervention

2019 - An idiosyncratic teacher realises the building sits perfectly over a river teeming with fish and an informal test of extensions allows for an ‘office’ to be built.

Using leftover construction materials and scaffolding poles, the office is the first intervention into the new building.

Exyzt’s RAB Reclaimed materials precedent

Office

2044 - The building becomes too busy to function as a library and meeting space, the library use is thrust out to the side, balancing on the imposed piles, its shape dictated by their position and the view of the Cathedral its top floor allows.

Didier Faustino’s extension to Frederic Lefever’s studio

Library extension

2085 - The site is completely established and starts to generate massive amounts of paperwork and records as people argue over and develop the huge number of new uses. An archive is built to house this material, using a steel frame that can be easily and constantly extended, clad with cheap industrial materials.

Durisch + Nolli’s Construction School

Archive

Completed building and site section

References Hughes, J. & Sadler, S. 2000, Non-plan: essays on freedom participation and change in modern architecture and urbanism, Architectural Press, Oxford.

Tschumi, B. 1996, Architecture and disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Koolhaas, R., Brown, S. & Link, J. 2004, Content: AMO-OMA, Rem Koolhas, Taschen, KĂśln.

Habraken, N.J. & Valkenburg, B. 1972, Supports: an alternative to mass housing, Architectural Press.

Brand, S. 1997, How buildings learn: what happens after they’re built, Phoenix, London.

Rudofsky, B. 1964, Architecture without architects: a short introduction to nonpedigreed architecture, Academy Editions.

Woods, L. 2004, The storm and the fall, Princeton Architectural, New York.