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ERIC TURNER

A LUDDITE FALLACY

2024, third year final project

A Luddite Fallacy proposes an alternative political system and way of living in Grays, Essex, to a backdrop of increasing workplace automation. The project tests generative AI and chance-based workflows, with AI as an inevitable collaborator with the architect of the future.

The proposal is a new city hall for an independent, self-governing Grays, where the local community gains stewardship of the landscape and engages in debate over the construction, conservation and rewilding of the Thames estuary. An empty political testbed is left following the council’s 2022 bankruptcy, allowing a post-scarcity economic system to be established, similar to Aaron Bastani’s concept of Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Situating itself between the Procter & Gamble soap factory and the 13th Century St Clement’s church, the city hall acts as a base point for resistance against further industrialisation, mediating the boundary between production and conservation.

Landscape / fragment model - projection onto fragmented and varied scale model of site and proposal. Left is St Clement’s church, top is Procter & Gamble factory, grids and projection describe landscape treatment and architectural fragments rise above the ground plane.

- disrupted workflows - showing how a ‘conversational’ back-and-forth design process with AI was realised: (1) where AI abstracts an input and (2) a response in which the human designer asserts themselves to rationalise an

POST-SCARCITY SINECURE

2023, third year explorative research

Post-scarcity sinecure is an investigation into class divide and automation in Tilbury. The Amazon LCY2 fulfilment centre, Tilbury Dock and the Tilbury2 port are all sites of advanced workplace automation - the project imagines a post-work future brought about by a full automation of all essential tasks, including devolving local government planning decisions to AI. Two emergent classes are present, the ‘free agent’ and the ‘bullshit worker’, representative of the theories of Aaron Bastani and David Graeber respectively.

DELIVERANCE

2023, second year project

Deliverance speculates on a future in which Deliveroo is banned from operating in London due to it’s poor treatment of workers, similar to Uber in 2017. The riders, represented by the IWGB union and still posessing the means to deliver, organise as a worker-owned delivery cooperative and occupy the ‘Deliveroo Editions’ dark kitchen in South Bermondsey.

The proposal retains the existing kitchen (now to be run as a community kitchen), as well as incorporating bike repair facilities, a street-facing space for the IWGB union, emergency accommodation for riders and saunas for relaxation and easing the muscular strain that delivery entails. The whole building is accessible by bicycle, superimposing onto the existing building a network of ramps, gangways and bike racks.

The nurture extends into the city - mapping of deliveries and items identified common waypoints passed by riders, which are the sites of ‘cabby shelters’: small havens within the city with provisions and space for the riders to rest.

Saunas on the first floor - interior snapshot

Long section - segments of activity and materiality overlaid

Short section - cutting through IWGB presentation room, reconfigurable event space, sauna pods and ramp up to residential level.

Winner of second year portfolio prize

ISLINGTON MOVING MUSEUM

2022, second year project

The Islington Moving Museum is a direct response to Islington council’s archive - where a handful of archivists decide what is and isn’t culturally important and worth inclusion in the archive.

The proposal is an independent archive that uses digital methods of archival (photogrammetry) and encourages donors to talk about the objects that they are digitally ‘donating’, attaching an oral history to each object, accessible to all.

Started with an investigation into markets in Nag’s Head, an initial intervention involves moving the outdoor Holloway car boot sale indoors into the Nag’s Head shopping centre, a underutilised and often

Postering in Nag’s

Posters

INSTALLATION CONCEPT

2025,

RALLY FESTIVAL ‘VISIONAERE’ STAGE

Visionaere

Prefabrication - building and staining wooden flats in the workshop

canopy - prefabricated in workshop

RALLY FESTIVAL ‘AGNES’ STAGE

2024, CAKE Architecture

Design and fabrication work with CAKE architecture on the larger ‘Agnes’ stage for RALLY’s second festival. Time was spent in the workshop with set designers constructing demountable elements that would fit the scaffold structure, as well as during the install on-site.

A meditation in pink, blue and white, the stage references Agnes Martin’s subtle paintings and draws a comparison between the meditative states entered while dancing and viewing art.