Unit 12 would like to thank Dominique Oliver, Carl Vann, Ben Godber; Rachel Cruise, Oliver Wilton, Shibboleth Shechter, Brendan Woods, Peg Rawes, Hilary Powell.
Year 4: Graham Burn, Charlotte Knight, Lulu Le Li, Anders Strand Lühr, Fiona Tan, Cassandra Tsolakis, Owain Williams, Kieran Wardle, Tim Zihong Yue Year 5: Emily Farmer, Jerome Flinders, Patrick Hamdy, Benjamin Harriman, Ifigeneia Liangi, Yifei Song, Gabriel Warshafsky
— page 1 75 — B A RT LET T 2012
The following pages give a glimpse of the work of the unit produced within this last year. The work can also be seen as a continuation of themes that have developed within the unit over recent years, with each year having added something new to the unit’s agenda, ambition and passions. Unit 12 has always encouraged the work of each student to be particular to his or her own interests, allowing them to develop a particular and distinct architectural voice that can be tested and developed through research, programme, drawing and making. This year, and in recent years, the work of the unit has also been able to continue a theme that we have become increasingly interested in: monumental buildings. In particular, those buildings designed and viewed under construction, in use and in ruin, with each phase to be seen as neither distinct, nor unique nor final. In Unit 12 we have continued to consider and develop a contemporary meaning of monumentality. Allowing a diverse range of influences, including social, political and meteorological, to play a part in the life and the material of the monument. Rather than static monuments as a unit we have proposed buildings that are in a state of flux, caught between the monument and the ruin, the material and the immaterial.
MArch Arch Un i t 12
for these investigations we looked at, and researched, the waterfront area of Zeytinburnu and its attempts at economic regeneration after the disappearance of the area’s tanneries. We examined underground economies within the city, including a previously state-supported black market. We looked at a city with its history of immigration and its many different communities, not all now welcome. We considered the place of religion and its architecture in a secular, but significantly Muslim, state. And lastly we sought to understand the slow extinction of the artisan industries in the area of Sishane, an old commercial centre in pre-Ottoman and Genoese times. Through this interrogation a deeper understanding of the city, its future as well as its past, has been established, acting as a catalyst to each student’s individual approach to their architecture, their reading of site and understanding of history.