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MANSOUR ALHAZMI Bartleet - UCL Summer Studio 2018

LOCATION

DRONES CONQUERING THE STREET

The main concept of this project is to radically reimage and explore how technologies will transform the streetscape of the future. In order to do that, we must ask three main questions. First, what will the street of the future look like? Second, how will one use the street of the future? Finally, what’s your street like, e.g., windows, plantation, layering?

The location runs from the heart of London at Euston Station all the way to the Senate House Library. The location is also divided m into three parts. The Euston station which is very crowded, the Square garden where people sit and relax, and finally, Torrington Square where the Haymarket is located and sets up every Tuesday.

To answer the first question, I observed and looked at people, as they bought their needs at the grocery, market, meals, etc…. I wanted to see whether people went shopping and to the grocery, or ordered what they needed online. Therefore, people will wait a few days in order to receive their packages that they ordered depending on the courier, or they wait for enough free time to go shopping physically. With the use of drones that can now land on towers actually constructed in the street, people can receive their packages within an hour.

Moreover, a drones system doesn’t need employees to set them up. Other drones can take packages automatically from the warehouses and deliver them to the towers where people can come and get them. Drones will be widely available in the future, and people will be able to shop or buy their groceries and even their meals using their phones or tablets.

Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU)

Finally, drone towers will be spread around the city streets for receiving these packages. The towers can also be connected to different levels for pedestrians, thereby allowing people to sit, relax or maybe even gather socially. The design of these towers will be inspired by the exciting architecture buildings and towers on London’s streets. Most of these inspirational buildings were constructed from concrete; therefore, I used the same material for the towers’ design. The collage below explains the main theme of these ideas and separate them into three levels -- Street, pedestrian, and air—for both the drones and the towers.

Gordon Square Garden SOAS University of London

Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

University College London

Senate House Library

Church of Christ the King London Euston Station

Birkbeck,

University London

of

Exploring & Observing

At the Bartlett School of Architecture, we spent the first three days observing and exploring London’s streetscape, starting at Bloomsbury and the Barbican, to understand the ideas from the past. Then we moved through North-South Regent’s Canal to explore London’s streets as they are today, and finally, we visited West-Victoria and the Albert Museum to develop more ideas for the future.

Inspire by London’s Street During our exploration, we observed the details of London buildings, their materials, and the streets. We tried to understand how these components interact with each other, to thus be inspired by these unique interactions. Therefore, the design and material of the drone towers should be inspired by the look of London’s towers. I tried to mimic the shape and texture of the exiting towers to make it align and be homogeneous to the current London streetscape.

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The existing location was viewed and compared with the first proposal from all the students’ working on the canvas. Each student explained and presented his/her ideas in precise models.

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Existing Street Proposal Street

GROUP POSTERS The entire project was group work, where each student was responsible for developing and reimagining the future through a collage and a model-making process. Eventually theses ideas were combined together to make the final point where each individual’s work was added together to create the students’ poster with their model further explaining their ideas and their vision for a future street.

DRONES & TOWERS Connecting Delivering Gathering

Working Process The entire process passed through different stages and iterations, starting with exploring and observing the past, then the current, and the future. Then, the project was developed, sketched, and collage work was utilized to generate ideas.

Below is some of the work that was processed during the final week.