Cass Architectural Diploma Unit 3 Topography and exchange Julian Lewis, Dann Jessen, Judith Loesing and Richard Hall
Walthamstow reservoirs, Tottenham
This year the unit has been working with two valleys. We started and finished the year around the Walthamstow reservoirs with an intermission in São Paulo’s downtown valley Vale do Anhangabaú. These urban landscapes formed the sites for an interrogation of the relationship between architecture and topography. Projects are concerned with how architecture might engage with this topography, how it can contribute to an understanding of a larger landscape, and how a topography of place can be understood and implemented as an architectural and spatial strategy. The unit started the year walking in Tottenham – recording and describing the urban landscape, it's spatiality and economy. Emphasis was placed
142
The Cass Session 2014–15
on unpicking what was particular about this landscape – to articulate the specific and varied qualities of the place in a way that would provide a productive architectural context. Students were asked to 'show us what they could do'; to utilise an existing making skill to develop a piece of work that would capture and communicate something essential in their interpretation of the place. Outcomes included castings, origami landscapes, stitched blankets, metal work, bookmaking and printmaking. In São Paulo the unit worked with downtown sites around the Vale do Anhangabaú - a buried river whose valley helped shape the original morphology of the city. Students were invited to propose a new industry based on their reading