Building upon Building

I Newcastle University I School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape I

STAGE 3 - ARC3001 GRADUATION PROJECT I 2020 – 2021 I

BUILDING UPON BUILDING

The PENGUIN’S POND

STAGE 3 - ARC3001 GRADUATION PROJECT I 2020 – 2021 I

The PENGUIN’S POND Studio Leaders Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes Tom Ardron [+ Guests]

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Building upon Building This studio challenges students to design upon existing buildings – i.e. a new building related to an existing one, or a major addition or transformation to an existing heritage building. This approach is grounded on the idea that any architecture work can be placed within a cultural continuum and is the outcome of a complex cultural, social and political struggle. This is an understanding of both architecture and heritage as a process rather than as a revered object to be preserved. It requires understand the existing building in all of the ways its architecture and materials express the values it sought to represent and serve at the time, and in the ways that this meanings might or might not be extended, enriched or transformed and reshaped by the new addition.

The goal of the studio is to give the students the skills to read, understand and document buildings, and to define their own educated criteria to deal with heritage and preservation. Therefore the course interrogates and challenges the current contemporary notion of heritage and preservation, while provides students with tools to work on the whole update, extension and reuse of existing buildings from a contemporary approach to architecture. Emphasis is placed on the articulation and refinement of the architectural project, and the studio requires a highly resolved design.

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Lubetkin’s model of the building presented to the penguins in the Royal London Zoological Society before its construction. p. 3

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Photograph of the Penguin’s Pond in use with

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The PENGUIN’S POND

Research Center for Ecological Change and Wildlife at the Royal Zoological Society of London Berthold Lubetkin and the Penguin’s Pond London’s Royal Zoological Society was founded in 1826 with the aim to lead the scientific research on natural sciences. Its management team has since comprised of innovative medical, zoological and biological scientists with cutting-edge research agendas that have been linked to the zoo. Some of the most exciting work at the zoo developed in the 1930s, when scientists like Chalmers Mitchell – the secretary and director–, Solly Zuckerman, and Geoffrey Marr Vevers were leading the institution and the zoological park.

At this time, scientists at the Royal Zoological Society thoroughly believed in the importance of habitat to shape the health and prosperity of all species and considered the zoo as a place where humans could reflect on their commonalities with other animals as well as a privileged observatory to experiment with their research agendas.

The study into the role that habitat plays in the life of animal species was indeed ground-breaking at the time, and widely spread beyond biology and the natural sciences. The Modern Architectural Research Group –MARS– was founded to represent the United Kingdom at the CIAM and also held a key interest in the impact the environment has upon public health and the habitat, regardless of whether this is natural or architectural – i.e. human-made or artificial. Hence, in their manifesto they pointed out that “there must be no antagonism between architecture and its natural setting”, as they included a drawing of a tree growing through a building: “The architecture of the house embraces the garden. House and garden coalesce, a single unit in the landscape” (MARS 1938, 20) –with manifest resonances to the Esprit Nouveau pavilion from 1925.

The expansion of the premises in London’s zoo offered unique opportunities to delve into these ideas. When two young gorillas arrived in 1932, Zuckerman published a pioneering article on the reproduction of primates while he led the construction of an experimental cage to host them and to foster their reproduction in captivity. He persuaded his peers to entrust the works to the novel Tecton Company, which had no previous experience in the field, but included MARS members between its partners, and was led by Berthold Lubetkin along with the p. 5

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engineering support of Ove Arup (whose father was a renowned London vet). The group envisaged modern architecture from a cutting-edge, scientific and technological approach and as a means to bring the required standard of public health into human habitats –i.e. the house and the city. Most of them lived in Hampstead, like many of the scientist in the zoo, and socialized in parties together with a mix of active scientists, biologists, artists –like Henry Moore–, and writers – like Agatha Christie.

Instead of the somewhat common design of cages as reproductions of the natural habitats of each animal, Zuckerman and Lubetkin envisaged the possibility to create cages in modern architecture to provide the perfect habitat needed for each specie. To this aim, the new cage for the gorillas included an accurate climatic control scheme and guaranteed the healthful living and reproduction of the primates, whilst allowing a superlative theatrical display to the public to generate a stream of income from entrance fees and donations. Its sound success led to a series of commissions for Tecton in London’s zoo which soon became cornerstones for the modern movement. With the Penguin Pond being the most famous of these works.

Despite the long fall of modern architecture, the impact and influence of Lubetkin’s works in London’s zoo remained an inspiration for decades, as it became a reference for Cedric Price when he designed his Snowdon Aviary in the same zoo in the 1960s – which is now under restoration by Foster and Partners. However, during the last few decades the role of zoological societies in contemporary society has been hugely questioned, with a growing number of ideological groups claiming for their closure. This change in the perception of the zoo has been parallel to a decrease in the awareness of their scientific role as they become hugely touristic attractions for the amusement of families and children. It is revealing of this change in the understanding of the zoo the abandonment of the use of Lubetkin’s constructions due to their misunderstanding, which recently have been followed by the claim by his nephew to demolish the mythical Penguin’s Pond despite its current status as a listed heritage building.

The story of the Royal Zoological Society of London and Lubetkin’s Penguin Pond are an illumining example of the twists that scientific, architectural, and heritage debates have made in the last century. They constitute a privileged case-study to reflect on the role that preservation has had in this process, and still, to think of what preservation can do to redirect its future beyond the current sterile and recurrent debate.

This design studio, thus, proposes to research on the Royal Zoological Society of London and Lubetkin’s Penguin Pond and to work on an experimental preservation of the pond that must include a new extension to host a Research Centre for Ecological Change and Wildlife aimed to repurpose the aims of the zoo in today’s society, to investigate into the connections between nature, ecology, wildlife and human beings in order to face the current material and ideological challenges of our societies.

Therefore, this studio interrogates current architectural debates with a special p. 6

Detail of the Penguin’s Pond.

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attention to the on-going discussions of heritage and preservation. It explores tools to work on dense historical landscapes, and to face the update, extension, and reuse of existing buildings from a contemporary approach to architecture.

The studio asks the following key questions:

→ What will the future of heritage and preservation be? → Do we need to rethink what we understand of heritage and our techniques and regulations to preserve it?

→

Would it help to bring creativity back into the heritage-making and preservation process as it originated? Maybe this will be the only way to preserve the future from the past.

The projects for the new Research Centre for the Ecological Change and Wildlife at the Royal Zoological Society of London must:

→ Propose the design of a new building to host the Research Centre for Ecological Change and Wildlife as an extension of Lubetkin’s Penguin’s Pond.

→ Must decide the location and its position as connected to the Penguin’s

Pond. The new volume must have a physical contact with the pond and must be predominantly placed over the ground.

→ You must define a typology for the Research Centre for Ecological Change

and Wildlife. As a minimum requirement, you must include at least: a lab (2.000 m2), spaces for the inhabitation of animals (1000 m2), and a residence for two researchers (120 m2).

→

A landscape approach to the massing of the volume is required.

→ You must create a landscape strategy for your proposal and for the whole Royal Zoological Society of London in relation to Regent’s Park. This must deal with both the design and its ecological aspects.

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Detail of the Penguin’s Pond.

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Studio Leaders → Josep Maria Garcia-Fuentes, Josep-Maria is an architect and Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape of Newcastle University. He qualified as an architect from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2005), where he also completed a Masters in the Theory and History of Architecture (2007), and a PhD in Architecture (2012).

Josep-Maria was awarded First National Prize of Spain for university graduates in 2006, and has been fellow by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the Society of Architectural Historians, the Caja de Arquitectos, and the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain. He is also a Fellow at the London School of Economics, in the Catalan Observatory (UK), and Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy). He has been previously Assistant Professor and Vice-Dean at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura del Vallès-Barcelona in the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona TECH (Spain, 2010-2013), as well as Visiting Professor at Tongji University (China, 2013) and at Universidad de Concepción (Chile, 2014).

As a practicing architect, Josep-Maria has worked with Robert Brufau, Juan Navarro Baldeweg and Josep Llinàs, and he also runs his own professional practice on architecture, landscape and ephemeral installations. He is the author of an extension project for the Montserrat Library, the first draft for the new Museum of Montserrat, and other projects in which he confronts his professional, research and teaching practices. ```XP](vX

→ Tom Ardron, Tom is an alumni of the Building upon Building studio and graduated with First Class Honours in 2016. Upon graduation from BA (Hons) Architecture, Tom co-authored the zine ‘Post Crit: An Undergraduate Appraisal of Architectural Education” which gained coverage on Dezeen and the Architects Journal. Tom has since written contributions for Dezeen, The Architecture Foundation and most recently a book by Shared Press entitled “Town Hall: Buildings, People and Power”. In 2019, Tom graduated from the University of Cambridge’s Part II programme with an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design. His thesis centred p. 9

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around the relocation and distribution of UK government as a proposal to begin to rebalance Britain and was complimented by a period of fieldwork based in Whitehall, Westminster, Holyrood, Brussels, and Berlin. In the summer of 2019, Tom led a Sutton Trust Summer School at the University of Cambridge which gave a week long taster into architectural education for sixth form students.

Map of the Royal Zoological Society of London in Regent’s Park, 1854.

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Calendar Building upon building Mid-term Work in Progress & Beyond During the primer part of the course you will research in depth the history of Lubetkin’s Penguin Pond, the Royal Zoological Society of London and the connection to Regent’s Park. You will also explore a creative analysis of the sites landscape and existing building, and get familiar with contemporary debates on architecture, ecology, heritage and experimental preservation. All these will serve to set the ground for the first ideas and intentions for your project, and to define a first design strategy for your building: Outcomes:*

→ (1) Analysis of Regent’s Park and the Royal Zoological Society of London landscape through history. Site model and historical mapping. Research on Lubetkin’s works for the zoo.

→ (2) Key readings and discussions on heritage and experimental preservation. → (3) Intentional analysis of the project site and massing explorations, →

including proposal (taking into consideration interim findings from 1 & 2).

(4) The design of the Mid-term Work in Progress Presentation and Exhibition. This consists on the presentation and display of all the work created by all students in the studio –to be discussed and agreeed.

→ (5) The collaborative preparation of the presentation for the Mid-term Work in Progress Presentation and Exhibition.

→ (6) The organisation of an alternative individual local Studio Field Trip within the current pandemic context.

In parallel to these exercises, you are expected to research on Berthold Lubetkin, and to get familiar with him and his work –with a special attention to his works for the Royal Zoological Society of London and Regent’s Park. Specific support and reading suggestions will be provided where these are needed during the Primer tutorials.

This year-long design studio is organized in two semesters –autumn and spring semester. The organization and the goals in both semesters are organized and articulated throughout them according to the RIBA specific criteria for a comprehensive approach and development of the students’ Graduation Project.

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Experimental Preservation

This studio investigates the production of experimental preservation and architecture in dialogue with other existing architectural works that are considered of value for their cultural or political resonances. This approach blurs the distinction between architecture and –built– heritage, or more precisely between architecture and preservation, as it understands that both architecture and preservation are means for the interpretation of our built environment. As stated by the Soviet preservationist Evgenii Mikhailovskii in the 1930s, the work of preservation does not involve changing architecture but changing the way that architecture is perceived. Preservation –and architecture– therefore can be conceptualized as an exercise of framing and reframing our built environment as they create meaningful and relevant understandings of it and contribute to envisaging a better future. This is an understanding of both architecture and heritage as a process rather than as a revered object to be preserved. Buildings –preserved or not– are always under a permanent transformation.

This debate is investigated in the studio at both a theoretical level –in relation to key readings and the discussion of specific case-studies– and a practical level –as related to your design projects. To this aim, the challenge of designing a major addition to an existing building of heritage quality, inescapably involves the debate on the ways in which –consciously or unconsciously– the new relates to the existing and frames its perception and interpretation, as well as on the ways demolition or destruction of selected parts in the current architecture might impact its interpretation. This is a debate on preservation, indeed, which is inescapably and strongly entangled with contemporary architectural debates embedded in early historical examples of architecture.

This studio, therefore, explores the concepts of architectural production, heritage, authenticity and preservation. We will understand these as dynamic concepts and the outcomes of an ever-changing political and cultural process, which means that these constant changes cannot be avoided or stopped. What then do we mean by heritage? And what does it mean ‘to preserve’? Furthermore, is it really possible to preserve? Should we explore new techniques of experimental preservation to better suit the profound essence of heritage and respond appropriately to its current challenges? We will challenge the most common notions of these concepts and define an alternative practice of experimental preservation whilst locating references across both historical and contemporary architectural production.

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Detail of the Penguin’s Pond.

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Heritage, Nature, Preservation and Climate Change

The emergence of modern architecture is closely linked to the rise of the debates that led towards the shaping of modern sciences and the current widespread idea of heritage and preservation. It is not by chance these concepts are closely linked.

For this reason, we can only envisage a sustainable future for architecture and the survival of human life on earth by applying mutual consideration to both.

The dynamic understanding of preservation as described above sheds a new light upon what is both built and natural heritage. Heritage is then understood as the most sustainable architectural resource, as it allows us to fully appropriate existing buildings and sites through preservation, and to repurpose them for present needs in a constant ever-changing process. Thus, we can only approach the complexity of ecological thinking through this simultaneous approach to heritage, architecture, and ecology. The aim is to find ways to overcome the current climate and environmental challenges beyond the limitations of the idea of nature that has been shaped in the last two centuries – or, in other words, to think of ecology without nature, to use Timothy Morton’s words.

It is only through preservation that we can achieve the highest profit with the minimum ecological impact, since any intervention is based on existing architectural structures and ecological systems. This is made possible as preservation, like architecture and any ecological system, is a constantly evolving process. The aim is not to restore or preserve nature, which is impossible, but to design and use technology together with ecology in order to achieve the survival of human and animal species.

Old postcard of the Penguin’s Pond. p. 13

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Assessment The studio specific marking criteria focuses on two aspects:

→ Relation NEW & OLD How the project responds to the tension between the existing architecture and the new one. In terms of design, tectonic, and material approaches. Long-term thinking.

→ Reflection on Berthold LUBETKIN and the PENGUIN’S POND How the project responds to Lubetkin’s original ideas, and the architectural and preservation debates linked to them –as discussed during the first part of the year, and through the development of your graduation project. How the project relates to the historical landscape of Regent’s Park in London and the Royal Zoological Society of London?

Beyond these aspects, the general Assessment criteria will be defined according to the course organization and to the specific goals that students must reach at each stage. On the completion of the two semesters students will acquire all the abilities necessaries to reach these goals:

→ [RIBA criteria] Assessment includes a jury review panel integrated by faculty and visiting practitioners and/or academics. This BA Graduation Studio course concludes with a public design exhibition on the building explored and discussed in the studio.

Fieldtrip(s) Due to the pandemic context and the public health advise there will be no fieldtrips this year. This will be instead a journey round our rooms, to borrow the words from Xavier de Maistre. However, you are encouraged to visit buildings and sites close to where you live, if the public health advise and safety allows you to do so. You are also encouraged to visit the project site if you live nearby and it is safe and possible to get into it.

→ If the pandemic is over and the situation improves in 2021 we will be delighted to explore the possibility of organising a short fieldtrip then...! p. 14

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]

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Edited by Garcia-Fuentes © 2020