Unit 16
Bridges Johan Berglund, Josep Miàs, Dean Pike
Year 4 Robin Ashurst, Richard Breen, Ashley Fridd, Chelsea Hodkinson, Elzbieta Kaleta, Janice Tsz Lau, Catherine Prudence, Amy Wong
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
Year 5 Negin Amuridahaj, Leif Buchmann, Jack Morton-Gransmore, Matthew Hudspith, Rebecca Muirhead, Rachel Pickford, Michael Pugh, Alexander Sutton, Jonas Weiss The unit would like to thank the following people for their support: Andrew Best and his team at Buro Happold, Dan Neal from Double Negative, all the thesis tutors who have enriched the projects through their input, Joachim Granit and Karin Englund at Färgfabriken Art Space, Niklas Svensson at Stockholms Stad, and all our critics and fellow tutors for their invaluable input throughout the year
Unit 16 aims to exist in a close symbiosis between academic research and architectural practice. Our way of working is close to how projects exists in a practice, with constant testing and reflecting through action, in order to challenge the limits of architecture. Our work is centered around the production of buildings, landscapes and spaces, with a clear understanding and interest in their relationships with the city. We see architecture as an act of realisation; of making something real which was only previously a brief thought, a vague concept, a utopian dream. We believe that actions speak louder than words, and we seek to educate architects who will use their proposals to challenge the lives, habits and actions of the world’s inhabitants. Stockholm, September 2014 Stockholm is a disconnected city, not only physically but also socially, financially, legally and mentally. Although it is known for its beautiful archipelago location, the centre is a land-locked, autonomous, highly gentrified urban island, disconnected from the larger metropolitan region. To make matters worse, the city is struggling to cope with the pressures of 50,000 new residents a year, most of whom aspire to live in the inner city. Stockholm needs to grow, and grow fast. Yet, the inner city cannot expand, due to both its geographic position and also the legal framework that protects a green belt that cuts off the inner city from the rest of the metropolitan region. At the same time, Stockholm is very well connected to Europe and the rest of the world. It is highly influential in contemporary culture, with strong music and fashion scenes. The region has also for a long time been at the forefront of the digital revolution. Early on, companies like Ericsson paved the way for a normalisation of technology, which created new generations of early adopters, and soon the country had one of the highest number of mobile phones per resident in the whole world. We find the contradiction between these dual conditions for connectivity interesting, and we explored concepts for both the physical and ephemeral city during the year. Stockholm, 2050 and beyond We encouraged students to venture deep into the future in order to predict and imagine new and imaginative ways for us to live. Taking inspiration from science, philosophy, technology and progressive environmental thinking, we sought to bridge the physical and technological idea of the city and create holistic, forward-looking, hyper-modern, self-sufficient, constructible, and beautiful architecture and urban space. We imagined and created possibilities of a new, upgraded Stockholm, for a connected yet unstable future.
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