UG1
Living Patterns: Housing Sabine Storp, Patrick Weber
Year 2 Yangzi (Cherry) Guo, Úna Haran, Karolina Kielb, Tobias Petyt, Calvin Po, Ngai Lam (Michelle) Wang, Meng (Tony) Zhao Year 3 Annecy Attlee, Uday Berry, Naomi De Barr, Thomas Cubitt, Alice Hardy, Rikard Kahn, Robert Newcombe, Oliver Parkinson The Bartlett School of Architecture 2015
We would like to thank Samson Adjei, our technical tutor, for his support. A big thank you to our critics: Shumi Bose, Matthew Butcher, Mollie Claypool, Gonzalo Coello de Portugal, Rebecca Fode, Jamie Hignett, Johan Hybschmann, Carlos Jiménez Cenamor, Inigo Minns, Tim Norman, Emily Priest, Safia Qureshi, Peg Rawes, Matthew Springett, Rae Wittow-Williams and also to Florence Bassa, Jamie Hignett, Alan Ma, Aiko Nakada, Timmy Whitehouse and Emily Priest for sharing their work with UG1 For their amazing support, special thanks to Shamsul Alam from Camden Council and Momota Kathun from the St Pancras Estate Tenancy Association, Dr Caroline Newton from The Bartlett DPU and Boonserm and Paula Premthada from Bangkok Project Studio
50
In his book A Pattern Language (1977), Christopher Alexander catalogues altogether 253 patterns in architecture. Each pattern, or (architectural) element is described as itself and in the context of a bigger system – architecture. They are presented as ‘prototype solutions’ to common problems. The work is based on his earlier work, The Oregon Experiment (1975). In it, communities were encouraged to get more involved in the shaping of their ultimate environment and the architecture they inhabit. This resulted in a community encyclopedia, offering sample solutions to specific issues. According to Christopher Alexander, architecture only exists to solve human problems. London’s population has grown by a million since 2001, the fastest ever rate in the history of London. All these people need somewhere to live. Current predictions forecast that an additional 809,000 new homes are needed by 2021 to meet ever-growing demand in London. This works out as an additional 115,500 households a year, or 9630 a month, or 321 new homes per day. Unless these figures are achieved, house prices will rise to an unaffordable level, the prosperity of the city is in danger, key services will have to be cut because keyworkers are unable to afford to live or commute from where they live to where they work. Combined with ever-growing restrictions on where new developments can take place, restrictions on building on flood plains and destroying green belt land or areas of natural outstanding beauty, an aversion to living in high rise developments, and other local interests that seem to be adversely affected, this creates a problem that seems impossible to resolve. In term 1, our students worked with the St Pancras Way Estate in Camden to develop ideas to transform communal spaces and to initiate a positive change in the use of the public spaces by introducing small-scale architectural interventions. This was followed by an excursion to Bangkok. Students explored the canals (klongs) off the beaten track to discover how the informal approaches of living in this city allow communities to knit tightly together. In the final stage, our students speculated and (re)invented new housing typologies and ways of living in the dense urban context along the Regents Canal in Kensal Town and Ladbroke Grove. The projects include a variety of different living concepts along the canal: communal living, self-build initiatives, housing for the elderly, co-housing typologies, shared housing for young mothers, and new buffer housing on top of the local supermarket for tenants evicted from demolished estates in the area.