CONNECT – The London School of Architecture 2018

The theme of this year’s LSA annual, Connect, evokes for me the importance of the link between architecture and cities. As the ‘urban glue’ that binds cities together, infrastructure and the spaces between buildings form a vital aspect of design in our urban environments. The LSA’s pioneering approach aims to support young architects who want to shape the city as part of a shared endeavour, to join other professionals – designers, engineers, planners and civic leaders – in their attempts to improve urban life.

Encouraging the ability to think and act independently is vital for the next generation. The LSA must be commended for its efforts to help a new generation of architects to anticipate the future and be bold enough to experiment with new ideas. Ambitious research projects, such as the LSA’s Design Think Tanks, which have much in common with the work being pursued by the Norman Foster Foundation, are vital for architecture, responding to the new challenges faced by humanity.

The LSA’s mission to broaden access to architecture is at the heart of my own efforts to break down social barriers and channel the creative energy of young people. I would like to wish this year’s cohort of graduating students every success with their careers.

Norman Foster, Founder and Executive Chairman, Foster + Partners

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REPORTS 04 –08

DIRECTIONS 09 – 80

AGENDAS 81 – 119

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR 04 – 05

GLOBAL CURRENTS 96 – 97

LIFE AT – AND AFTER – THE LSA 06 – 08

NEW KNOWLEDGE 98 – 101

FLEET VALLEY MAP 10 – 11 PRODUCTIVE CITY 12 – 31 SERVING SOCIETY 32 – 55 NEW LIVING 56 – 80 DESIGN THINK TANKS DEBORAH SAUNT 82 – 83

METABOLIC CITY 102 – 107 THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL JAMES SOANE 108 – 109 CRITICAL PRACTICE MANIFESTOS 110 – 113 DESIGN IN URBANISM LARA KINNEIR 114 – 119

ADAPTIVE TYPOLOGIES 84 – 87

REMEMBERING WILL ALSOP 120 – 121

EMERGING TOOLS 88 – 91

CREDITS 122 – 123

ARCHITECTURAL AGENCY 92 – 95

SKETCHBOOK 124

WE SEEK TO CONNECT ARCHITECTURE WITH THE WORLD’S MOST FUNDAMENTAL SHIFTS, WRITES LSA FOUNDER / DIRECTOR WILL HUNTER

SEPARATION DOING OBJECTIVE ONLY FUNCTIONAL DEVICE INDIVIDUAL BUILDINGS APPEARANCE (LOOKING GOOD) WOW CONCEPT GENIUS COMPETITION EXPLOITING NATURE PLANET AS RESOURCE

CONNECTION BEING OBJECTIVE & SUBJECTIVE CULTURAL ARTEFACT URBAN FABRIC EXPERIENCE (FEELING GOOD) NUANCE CRAFT SCENIUS COLLABORATION DIALOGUE WITH NATURE PLANET AS PARTNER

The most reported motivation for establishing the London School of Architecture was the rise in tuition fees in England to £9,000 per year, which demanded an alternative financial model for architectural education. But beyond this immediate trigger – and, indeed, transcending it – are a series of more fundamental, complex and global shifts that prompted a fresh approach to how architecture is taught. In 2011 – at around the same time as the coalition government was putting up the tuition fees – I commissioned Peter Buchanan to write a year-long campaign in The Architectural Review called The Big Rethink. Exploring how we can reach true sustainability by enriching the basis on which architecture is conceived, the essay series has become a key LSA text.

The headlines left are drawn from the foreseen transitions Peter presented at a two-day symposium in May 2018 staged by the LSA with Drawing Matter. These are no mere baby steps, but whopping leaps forward from positions that have been entrenched over centuries. Moving away from the mechanistic, isolating effects of modernity, an idea running through these transitions is connection: how we – humanity – connect with each other and the world around us; how the discipline of architecture connects to other fields of knowledge; how buildings connect with cities; how professionals connect to collaborate; and how the built environment connects and integrates with the natural environment.

These connections underpin how the school is organised and the projects we seek to produce. Operating as a professional network, we currently work with 100 architecture practices in London and a growing coalition of organisations from developers and engineers, to arts institutions and think tanks. We use the city as the campus, basing all our design projects in London, and teaching in spaces donated by our practices and partners.

In First Year, the Urban Studies module kicks off by looking at the capital and architecture’s relationship to the city (p114-119); in the Design Think Tank Project students and practices collaborate to make proposals that address pressing problems or opportunities (p81-107); and in the Critical Practice module, students position themselves within the wider sea of ideas that surround the profession, to project a personal route forward (p108-113). The LSA is a school without a unit system and in Second Year students develop their own briefs and design approach. The subsequent projects are arranged into three themes – Productive City (p12-31), Serving Society (p32-55) and New Living (p56-80) – which have emerged during the year.

This year we set a higher-level vision for the LSA: that people living in cities experience more fulfilled and more sustainable lives. Though students have creative freedom, what unites the work is a shared interest in how the world is changing, and where design can intervene to create impact. A shift in emphasis from viewing architecture as a seductive object, to a focus on its systems, processes and relationships, creates the opportunity for architects to apply their spatial and strategic intelligence to a wider range of challenges and to have a more profound effect on how our built environment develops.

Has there ever been a more exciting time to be an architecture graduate?

A pivotal moment In other transitions, the LSA is moving from start-up to stand-up. The school has covered a lot of ground since we opened in 2015: our Practice Network has tripled in size; we’ve received over 600 applications; our first graduates are finding success in practice (p6); and, for the first time next year, we anticipate having a full cohort of 40 students.

In 2017 we achieved Part 2 recognition from the Architects Registration Board and the Royal Institute of British Architects. And I’m delighted to report that from October 2018 we have secured access for our students to the state package of financial support for tuition fees and living costs. Now on a level playing field with universities, with this final barrier to enrolment removed, we will be stepping up our drive to widen access to the programme.

All these milestones have only been made possible by the huge commitment of the profession and the very generous contributions of our founders and supporters (p122-123). The school is immeasurably grateful to you all for your vital role in getting this innovative venture in education off the ground.

Thank you to everyone who has played a part in this most pivotal of years.

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LIFE AT – AND AFTER – THE LSA

2017 GRADUATES ALEX FREHSE AND ALEKS STOJAKOVIC TALK TO VICKY RICHARDSON ABOUT SETTING UP STUDIO 8FOLD, WHILE OVERLEAF STUDENT TOM BADGER REFLECTS ON HIS FIRST YEAR

Where does the name of the practice come from?

We were discussing what we wanted to do as a practice. We were interested in the idea of taking a brief, breaking it down and seeing it in a completely different way. There’s a myth that you can only fold a piece of paper in half seven times – until recently it was thought that physics simply doesn’t allow it. But a group in Japan figured out that if you have a different shape of paper you can go beyond even eight folds. The name Studio 8Fold encapsulates our idea that if you reassess the framework within which you’re working, you can achieve things that no one thinks are possible.

Left Aleks (left) and Alex photographed at aLL Design, where Studio 8Fold is based.

Above German co-living project, which was unveiled at the Venice Biennale in May. Below Detail of Studio 8Fold’s Clerkenwell Design Week installation.

How did you hear about the LSA? There were 20 Part One students at PDP London [an LSA Founding Practice] all in the process of applying to typical schools. A debate about architectural education came up among us and a few students were interested in the LSA, but said they didn’t have the guts to apply.

Why did it take guts to apply – did you see it as a risk?

It was a calculated risk. We weren’t so worried about the lack of RIBA/ARB accreditation [now completed]. The risk was the model of education, which was completely new; although with both us coming from South Africa – where you walk the earth and design for the people – it seemed more familiar. The LSA seemed to have a similar hands-on approach but with more rigorous theoretical teaching. We were also encouraged by the fact that we knew there would be like-minded people with us taking this leap.

So how did you find it?

We felt fully engaged with the LSA as a new project – you had to be engaged just to know where you were meant to be. Education is becoming a kind of service-based industry, but it definitely didn’t feel like that. We were helping to make decisions about the future of the school. There were platforms where the whole class was engaged in discussion, and equally we were able to have informal conversations with teachers and staff.

Have ideas from the LSA carried through into practice?

The idea of agency is still really important to us, that as an architect you connect people from different industries rather than working in a vacuum.

Among other projects, we’re continuing to work on Aleks’s thesis project, Wasteminster, which dealt with the food crisis in London and proposed a new type of small-scale infrastructure, community based that provides education, living, research and energy in the form of biomass. The thesis project was sited at Brewer Street car park in Soho. At this stage we know there’s a lot still to be done to turn a thesis into a real world project, but we’re in early discussions with the GLA and feel optimistic.

What else are you working on?

We’ve just exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In collaboration with fellow LSA graduate Timm Lindstedt, we unveiled a 60-unit co-living housing scheme for inter-generational occupancy. The brief for the project came from the residents of a German village who had no alternative to a single family home or a highly standardised frail care home. The local council are in favour of this model, and site clearance has already commenced, which is very exciting!

We also designed an installation for Clerkenwell Design Week. One of our LSA tutors, Lionel Real de Azúa, put our name forward for the commission. We also have an interesting project for Rohan Silva in Sri Lanka – a children’s library in a rural school – which aligns with our interest in socially driven projects. In July we travel out there to make it with the contractor.

Our first completed project was the conversion of a maisonette in Notting Hill. Aleks and I started designing this during our final year and two days after we graduated we were on site!

What’s next for Studio 8Fold?

Our ambition is to operate in the UK and across Africa. The idea is to join up with a colleague in South Africa and connect Europe and African cities, where we see most of the future development of the world happening.

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Left Tom Badger, a current First Year student, works at DSDHA. Here he is using their blackboard to explore his Design Think Tank’s theme for a healthy city. See p102 for more on the project.

Below Tom presenting his Design Think Tank at the Roca gallery live pitch event in June 2018.

2017/2018 First Year Tom Badger writes: Since joining the LSA in October 2017 I have found myself reflecting on my choice of school and where it might lead. This feeling is only heightened by the fact that I live with two other trainee architects. When I get home from the LSA (or from my placement at DSDHA) I’m faced with the alternative routes to becoming an architect: the choices I did not make.

With one of my flat mates continuing his work as an architectural assistant and the other returning to full-time education, the ‘how was your day’ conversation plays out like a game show where the contestant is presented with the choices they might have made: ‘Let’s take a look at what you could have won!’ Should I have taken another year out? Should I have returned to a more traditional Part 2 course?

No sooner had I completed Part 1 at Newcastle University in 2016, I found myself considering where I might want to study for my diploma. It seems intimidating to say the least: where and what you study for Part 2 can have a lasting and profound impact on your progression as an architect. My choice to apply to the LSA was ultimately determined by the enthusiasm shown by the students and tutors alike when I visited for an open day. The school had an energy that I had not experienced at other open days.

So was the LSA the correct decision? As you might expect from a such a young school it has been a challenge at times: adjusting to the work-study balance has been tough. However, the course has encouraged me to explore the possibilities (and limitations) of architecture.

The LSA has thrown me head first into a very exciting and very real world. My first term was one of contradiction: of intense practice and intense theory, of difficult questions and difficult answers. But isn’t that what architecture is about? The LSA curriculum addresses the most current and pressing issues, placing itself at the collision of practice and theory.

The LSA suits those who wish to deeply interrogate the role of the architect and the professions relevance in a rapidly changing world. But that does not mean it is the model that must be taken forward by all schools of architecture. Why should we be expected to follow one limited path to becoming an architect in such a varied discipline? We should imagine a future for architectural education in which a diverse range of courses are offered to a diverse range of people.

Living with other architects has allowed me to do so and gain insight in to different ways of thinking and designing. As well as reflecting on my choice of school, it has encouraged me to reflect on the type of architect I would like to become. Working alongside those immersed in both the profession and academia, I’ve concluded that I’m most excited by the moments in between.

I believe the LSA provides a platform for the continued exploration of the tension between practice and theory. In the short time I have been at the school I have been constantly asked to explore current issues and evaluate the role of the architect. It has encouraged me to think critically about the systems of everyday life and the part architecture can play.

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Life at the LSA

DIRECTIONS

FLEET VALLEY MAP

Productive City 1. Hari Tank (p13) 2. Ben Brehney (p14-17) 3. Tommaso Sordon (p18-19) 4 Lloyd Evan Martin (p20-23) 5. Francesca Merton (p24-25) 6. Louis Austen (p26-27) 7. Alice Moxley (p28-29) 8. Matthieu Courtade (p30-31) Serving Society 9. Alexander Jonathan Bell (p33) 10.Elisabeth Day (p34-35) 11. Robin Chatwin (p36-41) 12. Abigail Portus (p42-43) 13. Sarah Sheehan (p44-45) 14. Sheenwar Siti (p46-47) 15. Jacob Dix (p48-49) 16. Lisa McDanell (p50-53) 17. Hannah Bowers (p54-55) New Living 18. Calin Barbu (p57) 19. Christian Georcelin (p58-59) 20. James Cornish Hignett (p60-63) 21. Charlotte Hurley (p64-67) 22. Molly Judge (p68-69) 23. Charlotte Madgwick (p70-71) 24. Yasmin Lokat (p72-73) 25. Claire Seager (p74-77) 26. Katrina Duncan (p78-80)

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PRODUCTIVE CITY

THE PROJECTS FEATURED HERE PROPOSE NEW WAYS FOR ARCHITECTURE TO SUPPORT INDUSTRY AND PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY IN THE CITY

DIGITAL COMMONS HARI TANK

Sited in the heart of King’s Cross, Digital Commons is a technology headquarters which represents a current reaction to the prolific expansion of technology and content in society. Its central intention is to provide a meaningful set of spaces back to the city, breaking the typically limited public access most technology headquarters are often constrained by. Following the increased attention being paid to the role of technology in society and its surrounding issues, the proposal makes a case for its urban relativity, creating a vastly open development and maintaining a dynamic programme with permeability, transparency and adjacency the central themes of the design.

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Section in relation to the city and King’s Cross.

Top to Bottom A central thoroughfare between buildings forms a permeable street through the development allowing visual connections to form with emphasised public spaces; literal transparency between public and typically private spaces facilitates a unique interaction as adjacent programs meet; terraces atop cantilevered elements offer a distinct view of the city.

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LIVING WITH INDUSTRY BEN BREHENY

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Productive City

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A sports hall overlooks the goods yard and beyond to the city, bringing together residents, workers and the wider public.

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Across the upper floors, shared working and living spaces branch off from the communal circulation.

Between 2010 and 2016, London lost industrial land at three times the rate recommended by the GLA. Typically, the land has been developed into residential uses, encouraged by planning policy ostensibly intended to tackle housing affordability in London and primarily driven by the lucrative housing market which, on average in central areas, commands a 7.6 times higher land value than industrial land.

This wholesale clearance of the centre is unsustainable, externalising increased costs to businesses expelled to the suburbs, while creating homogeneous, generic and alienating pieces of city in the process, stripped of the dense mix that

has previously defined London.

Increasingly, this is being recognised, and the New London Plan mandates that all but three boroughs should retain or increase their industrial capacity.

If London, as a compact city, is to deliver the required housing without compromising its functional and creative industrial underpinnings, it must consider new models for combining these seemingly unlikely neighbours.

The idea of combining space for light industrial activity with space for living is explored on an existing industrial site along Royal College Street in Camden, that once defined the marshy bank of the River Fleet

and sat at the centre of experimental Victorian infrastructure and industry which was able to develop outside the old city’s walls.

The same amount of industrial floorspace as currently exists will be delivered alongside the 200 dwellings Camden anticipates can be provided on the site.

Continuing the pioneering spirit that defines the area’s history, the collection of solid and robust buildings creates a new minor centre which can host radical overlapping opportunities between the public, residents and workers, as a proposal for creating a more resilient, unpredictable and enriched urban condition.

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Above Containing the industrial yards within each block, three hybrid building typologies; the loft building, mews and raised courtyard block, respond to particularities of the site. These buildings in turn respond to each other to create a range of public spaces and intensities

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Productive City

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Robust and adaptable industrial spaces face onto a working yard during the day that becomes a more domestic social space in the evening.

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Learning from the Victorian warehouse, a load-bearing, precast concrete front facade unifies the varied and changeable programme behind.

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Productive City

THE SOCIAL MUSEUM OF FOOD TOMASSO SORDON

In the last fifty years, the way we consume and buy food has drastically changed. However, the architecture that contains these activities remains the same.

By controlling over 87 per cent of consumers’ expenditure on groceries in the UK, supermarket chains dominate the food market and therefore dictate the spaces where we buy food and the experience related to it.

Essential activities such as food consumption and learning are outside the equation of the supermarket scheme. While buying groceries, the consumer doesn’t eat or learn anything about food.

Food is one the most important components of our lives. London should go beyond what supermarket chains can offer and host a new type of food institution; a hybrid space, both public and private, where people can go to have an adventurous and formative experience about food.

This project can be identified as an ‘active’ museum of food: a place where visitors can observe food preparation, while enjoying the many meals prepared in the food incubators at ground level, or the vegetables and fruits grown on the green roof next to the animal farm.

In the redevelopment of the Smithfield Meat Market, the food museum will be positioned as an independent structure inside the preserved facade of the market, which is now completely renovated and open to enhance the public ethos of this space that for centuries has been the focus of public interaction and activity.

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CONSERVATORY LLOYD EVAN MARTIN I propose a mixed-use market and residential complex above the new Farringdon East Crossrail ticket hall and Barbican station, capturing and exploiting the vast amounts of valuable heat resources endemic to the site. The development is envisaged as a hybridisation of open plan market infrastructure and a self-sustaining, off-grid neighbourhood of bioclimatically enclosed housing, fostering a truly economical and sustainable building type that is otherwise impossible within the climatic conditions of London. The character and overall scale of the design will be developed to convey a sense of spaciousness, openness and comfort. The generous proportions celebrate Farringdon’s role as a key modern transport ‘hub’ for London, providing the users with an enhanced natureorientated experience.

By installing a greenhouseindustrialised system that opens and closes its mechanisms

automatically, the solar gain and ventilation are regulated. This way, it is possible to raise the interior temperature naturally and guarantee a base of comfort in the circulation spaces as well as in the in-between spaces. The design of which is the combination of a series of complex systems of relationships both in a programmatic and functional way and in an experiential, emotive and social way, all based around a new form of heat and energy utilisation.

Instead of incoherent optimisations here or there on waste reduction, it is a better idea to develop a new, integrated architecture in which economy, ecology and spatial diversification are coupled with city, nature and landscape.

Individual unit: Structure Overview

Individual unit: Elevation

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Productive City

Individual unit: Sustainability Overview

Above Detailed Section through 4x4m household showing varying levels of privacy and public-private interaction at the ground level.

Varying scales of the housing level seen at the urban, community and neighbourhood level.

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Above Longitudinal section showing the different layers of the proposal, from the new Crossrail Farringdon east station, existing Barbican Station, Market and housing above.

Below Interior render of market place, showing the quality of light and greenery permeating through the proposal.

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Productive City

Ground Floor

Below Render of a typical neighbourhood housing cluster. Showing integration of housing with natural systems and the public/private.

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STRIPS AND SLICES FRANCESCA MERTON

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Camley Street Sustainability Zone (CSSZ) is a radical community land trust. The non-profit organisation proposes to re-address the issue of living and working affordably in London, while integrating industrial land that is being sold off at a rate three times faster than set out in SPG guidance. The Strips and Slices project initiates the ‘gregarious sharing’ of the CSSZ by providing a hub of existing food production alongside some much-needed social amenities, as set out in Camley Street’s recent neighbourhood plan.

The intervention is divided into five themes for sustainable growth: meeting, eating, making, memory and growing.

The Strips and Slices proposal slices into the existing railway line and inserts four strips of programmed building within its arches, simultaneously integrating adjacent land parallel to the railway line. At roof level, the fifth strip extends and links up Camden’s highline infrastructure with other nearby industrial land.

The proposal site at ground level is sandwiched between train line and road. In response, the perimeter buildings are ‘defensible walls’ that investigate memory and existing context. They are designed to literally hug the existing arches.

Towards the centre, the buildings promote larger open rooms that scoop in light and visible activity.

They stand free from the existing railway arches.

Across London, as Project Condor begins to sell off Network Rail land for commercial use, this scheme counter-bids with cohesive redevelopment. Strips and Slices is about colour and the vitality of industrial sites. It is about initiating and opening up the industrial programme by using food production as the buffer and the glue for local communities. It is also about the unusual opportunities and adjacencies a truly integrated industrial architecture can initiate.

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Left The 5th ‘growing’ strip: The buildings spring out or slowly undulate upwards from the arches and its high line.

Fragments of the buildings break off and grow taller.

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Productive City

Above Plan view of Memory, Making, Eating Meeting strips: sandwiched between a trainline and Camley Street the defensible walls are to the top and bottom of the image, while larger central spaces scoop in light and activity.

From left to right The Memory: the last defensible wall. A skeleton walkway with poche walls on the left and industrial market to the right; Serene views framed with pockets of light where the different buildings nudge against one another; The smell of bread being cooked in the memory building permeates through multiple niche slices.

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KING’S CROSS PRO-AM LOUIE AUSTEN

Pro-am is a term combining professional and amateur, recently adapted to define the network that connects a passionate group of knowledgeable consumers and industry professionals. King’s Cross Pro-Am proposes to facilitate the mobility of inexpert occupation through an integration with the increasing numbers of highly skilled workers in the area. The resource is there, the space isn’t, and in turn the skills gap is increasing and the expansion of office space in the area threatens to polarise the borough further. In the growing Knowledge Quarter, the Pro-Am seeks to enable government initiatives for opening up big business by condensing the existing public functions into a single campus. A city block on Euston Road containing a mixed programme of research, development and exhibition, provides spaces for meeting, testing, making, teaching and learning, work and play, culture and content.

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Productive City

Above

Urban axonometric highlighting the existing local members of the Knowledge Quarter.

Below

View from Argyle Square towards Library, Lecture and Café block with office behind.

Top Short section through multi-resident office stack and central connecting quad of cellular meeting spaces.

Above Workshop block with contained making booths and open classes. Connection to central quad building beyond.

Left Library and cafĂŠ block, view from triple height entrance space.

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Top Unfolded section demonstrating new route through Hatton Garden stitching existing and broken fabric together.

Below A striking articulated roof mediating between disparate and ill-matching neighbouring buildings as with the Japanese art of Kintsugi.

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Productive City

Above and Left ‘The Civic Educator’ A permeable building forming a piazza at ground level where meeting exhibtion and educating for Hatton Garden takes place.

‘The Rabbit Warren’ A place for designer-jewellers retail at ground floor with workshops above accessed by external walkways.

‘The Rabbit Warren’ Slices into an internal courtyard allow for interaction between makers and public on thoroughfare above.

SOLDERING ON ALICE MOXLEY

‘The Diamond Den’ Intended to house the activities of the Diamond Bourse vitrines are layered for maximum display effect.

‘The Workshops’ Here is where the jobbers of Hatton Garden are housed. Each floor is workshop as what is sold here is a skill not a physical product.

Hatton Garden – the place where platinum was first purified, where De Beers first traded diamonds and where metalwork has been produced for more than 1,000 years – is on the brink of existence.

With the arrival of Crossrail, rent hikes, ineffectual council policy and an ever-eroding relationship between city and craft, the craftspeople of Hatton Garden are leaving in droves.

This project proposes a new age for Hatton Garden by providing state-of-the-art workshops, with the makers at the core, while seeking to connect the public to hitherto very hidden activities. It will be funded by effective and proactive council planning policy.

The proposed workshops take advantage of awkward backland sites, stitching existing and broken fabric back together, generating public routes on the ground floor with workshops above, reconnecting both visually and aurally the public and the maker. Optimal spaces

for workshops are achieved with a gridded concrete frame with buffer spaces for light, services and circulation created where the frame hits the irregular site boundary.

In section, the grid responds to adjacent heights, resulting in a striking articulated roof mediating between disparate and ill-matching neighbouring buildings.

These spaces will become part of a larger conversation about the conservation of craft in the city.

They seek to explore the inherent tension between private workings and public display, the former unable to survive without the latter in an age of consumerism, commercialism and hedonism.

As you might see a plate smashed and reassembled with gold cement in the art of Kintsugi, these new architectures will act to cement the broken fabric of Hatton Garden, both physically and programmatically, forging the lost relationship between the city, craft, public and maker.

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ATELIERS IN THE CITY MATTHIEU COURTADE

The relationship between cities and production spaces evolved from a co-existence within the urban fabric. Since the industrial revolution, this intrinsic connection has become tenuous, leading to a strict divide between the city centre and the spaces of production.

London retained diverse cultural and industrial building types from this era, in large open areas where artistic production now takes place.

However, the sprawl of the city and the current housing crisis have resulted in the rapid loss of such territories, due to industrial land being developed for more lucrative housing projects, meaning 30 per cent of artist workspaces will disappear by 2019.

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Productive City

How can London be preserved as a capital of cultural content?

I believe the city still offers potential in places and existing situations that could become productive environments, actively contributing to shaping London as a metropolis, in which cultural production will co-locate with cultural consumption. Rather than thinking of the creation of autonomous building types in identified areas, I propose the contrary: nurturing in existing central districts specific conditions for the preservation and exploitation of productive situations. My proposal is for a mixed-use development providing creative workspaces with rent subsidised by a residential

tower that acts as a ‘patron of the arts’, as part of the ongoing Cultural Mile strategy of the City of London.

The City of London, throughout history, has found ways to absorb radically different functions and scales. Its organic growth has created true urban moments that resolve the apparent impossibility of the cohabitation of production and the centralised district.

Providing such sites within the city context highlights the importance of cultural infrastructure and the value that production spaces can bring to a centralised district, by not only seeing them as a functional component, but also aiming to create more urban dynamics inside the city fabric.

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SERVING SOCIETY

PROPOSALS FOR NEW TYPES OF COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS TO CONNECT FUNCTIONS, PEOPLE AND PLACES

PROSPERITY PLACE ALEXANDER JONATHAN BELL

This project is about how to drive prosperity in the fourth industrial revolution across all ages, through nurturing a community of intergenerational skillsharing and education.

Prosperity Place, in the deprived heart of Somers Town, is a communal facility for all ages, ethnicities and abilities. It focuses on innovation, reskilling and lifelong learning, at a time when the threat of automation is failing to drive prosperity from the ground up moving into the fourth industrial revolution. This has led to intergenerational isolation, lack of social mobility and perpetual distraction by the technologies that were meant to liberate us.

The scheme interweaves an existing brief for the Maria Fidelis secondary school with a new skillsharing exchange and learning facility through densification of the site, tapping into the limitless resource of digitally available information and the apprenticeship model of skill acquisition.

Through rethinking spatial environments that evoke awareness, participation and immersion for the production and consumption of knowledge, Prosperity Place narrows the societal divide, providing new systems and spaces for public education, and cultivating an invigorating social culture of use, allowing people of all ages to prosper through communal interaction and the pursuit of meaningful work.

The campus has a programme of open-access civic education space, a secondary school, elderly day facilities and private office/ incubator space for local startup businesses.

Top This interior school perspective highlights the variety of learning spaces for individuals and collaborative groups.

Above Prosperity Place creates a welcoming entrance and urban linkage into Somers Town.

Below The main atrium has a variety of learning spaces for all ages, created around the concept of ‘tree trunks’ of various densities.

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BLUE LIGHT DISTRICT ELISABETH DAY

In the last decade, the UK’s public services have seen unprecedented funding cuts in the name of ‘austerity’, with our emergency services one of the worst hit. These 24-hour institutions are embedded in local communities, serving those who need them around the clock. In London, over 50 per cent of police stations have closed in the last six months, and 10 per cent of fire stations were closed in 2014. This strategy of centralisation leaves communities feeling under-served and less safe, while call-out times get longer and low-level crime is deemed unworthy of attention.

The proposal looks to provide a new way of delivering local blue-light services by creating a self-supporting network between existing public services, lost community assets and new commercial functions. The strategy looks at better utilising these often large, underused public sites, intensifying their use to make space for new functions.

Offering an alternative to local councils’ current short-term approach whereby public sites are sold off for lump sums to outside investors, the proposal, instead, invests in local public services and community facilities – together raising the value of the local community. The project focuses on a site in Holloway, Islington, with the aim that the Blue Light District prototype will be distributed throughout the UK’s emergency services.

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08 ACCOMODATION

Top Cutaway axonometric showing improvement and extension of public realm.

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Above Rooftop view showing community allotment and sports pitch below.

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Left and below Diagrams showing programma24 01 tic layout through the building (left) with 24 hours 23 0 uses22mapped in the diagram 2below.

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01 NEW PUBLIC SPACE

Existing building Police + Fire service

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Health centre 24 HR Workspace

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Shops Restaurants Market

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Sports/ Events space

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Gymnasium Growing space

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01 NEW PUBLIC SPACE

Existing building

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Police + Fire service Health centre Workspace Shops 00

Restaurants

Above

View of proposed market hall with housing above.

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PUBLIC LUXURY ROBIN CHATWIN

Public Luxury looks at amplifying the role our municipal and public buildings have within the city, focusing on the architecture of local authorities which are the primary providers of public space within London. In their current guise, it is often difficult to see the ethics and imagination that went into the creation of our public services – indeed, when we think of the council we perhaps imagine our bins being collected or the clunky website where we pay our council tax.

Instead, this project focuses on highlighting the communal treasures gifted to the public by local authorities: universal healthcare, social welfare and childcare; communal sport, culture and leisure.

The building aims to be as generous and meaningful as these ideas and services, giving form to them as societal ideas and creating a setting in which people can encounter them. Naturally, using relatively limited means, the architecture is reduced to its most essential form: communal spaces at a series of scales within which life can unfold in all its complexity.

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Previous page The surrounding road permeates through open ground floor public space.

Top Looking west across the rooftops of Islington with King’s Cross and the city centre in the distance.

Left The shop window, bench and column create a threshold between the two complementary functions, forming a space for people to sit, stand or watch people skate.

Above The void which the central stair occupies is left half open to the sky, making the heart of the building feel more open.

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Above The apparent excess of a rooftop pool is contrasted with the primitive growing of vegetables.

Right Sliding glass doors allow the mezzanine level GP to open out as a balcony to the gallery.

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Ground floor plan

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Second floor plan

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STAGE 12_RAPID FILTRATION

STAGE 15_SLOW SAND FILTER

STAGE 16_CHLORINE & UV

STAGE 17_REMINERALISATION

STAGE 18_DRINKING WATER

STAGE 13_POST AERATION

STAGE 14_BACKWASHING

[Academic use only]

ART-HALL SECTION_SCALE 1:100 Section through the Maker’s Pool, showing Arts, Science Labs & Food Areas.

Water treatment process: Stages 12 -18 shown, arriving as drinking water in the cafe

[Academic use only]

REFLEET

King’s Cross Filter is one institution within the REFLEET network and combines a central London water treatment centre with a secondary education school programme. At the Filter, phenomenal learning meets the workplace, redefining the concept of an apprenticeship for young people and creating a cultural centre for learning and working.

The scheme incorporates the ancient River Fleet which flows in a subterranean tunnel adjacent to the site. Revealing it alongside the waste water processing infrastructure and canal, it creates a new waterside space in Camden, where inhabitants and the general public are encouraged to interact with all aspects of the water treatment process.

This unmasking process brings the River Fleet to the fore and re-establishes the presence of these hidden or inaccessible waterways

within London’s Blue Ribbon Network, bringing improvements for public space, air quality, wildlife ecosystems and mitigation of traffic noise.

The educational institution inhabits this essential infrastructure, where all programmatic spaces of water treatment, education and work facilities become intertwined and dependent on their juxtaposition: qualities of the water process at particular moments have a direct relationship to desired internal conditions. The calming and energy generating properties of water are used to enhance aspects of the education and work programme, becoming an integral teaching tool.

The workplace allocations are aimed primarily at young startup companies who can benefit from the subsidy and support framework while contributing back as teachers and role models.

ABIGAIL PORTUS

Left Illustrated composition of the REFLEET scheme, showing a birds eye view of the site, juxtaposed with views of the water treatment process being celebrated in the internal and external environments.

Top Section perspective render, revealing water treatment tanks that flow above and below the teaching spaces and main hall.

Above Across the Pond; a snowy day view from the canal towpath, showing REFLEET in its winter context.

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HIGH STREET 2 SARAH SHEEHAN

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When planning transport infrastructure at a large scale it can be easy to lose sight of its effects upon individuals who actually use it or live in its proximity, as well as its capacity to act as multiplier of social equality or inequality. Somers Town is a district in central London located within the Borough of Camden. Its history has been intimately linked to the railways and it has developed a reputation for being a secluded and deprived neighbourhood.

The physical imposition of the historic transport infrastructure on the area has segregated it and led to deprivation within the Somers Town area. With the arrival of HS1 and the coming of HS2, there is a unique opportunity to create a link from Euston station to St Pancras and King’s Cross through Somers Town, to develop a piece of public infrastructure that will benefit the people of Somers Town while facilitating the commuters passing through.

High Street 2 provides a physical and social network for public benefit, by offering a design that gives the local community opportunities to benefit from that which is growing around them by providing a new link for commuters moving between stations. St Pancras, the front door to Europe, meeting Euston, the gateway to the rest of the UK. This new piece of city infrastructure is intended to promote a successful and inclusive neighbourhood economy, while protecting and enhancing the existing community, cultural facilities and services in the Somers Town area.

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CAMDEN & ISLINGTON LEISURE CENTRE SHEENWAR SITI

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I am proposing a mediating urban space between psychiatric care and public wellbeing. Inspired by the WHO model – treat, prevent and promote – the programme aims to treat mental health cases with an outpatient facility. This is integrated with a public leisure centre to encourage prevention through physical wellbeing, and ultimately promotion through the public interaction, to reduce the stigma attached to mental health.

This proposal examines how architecture can unblock the stigma of mental health treatment.

As one in four of us suffers from depression or anxiety, mental health is a society-wide concern.

The prevailing traditional approach, however, favours treatment in isolated cases, be it private visits to or by a psychiatrist or, in more

serious cases, individuals admitted to closed care facilities.

The success of drugs alleviating symptoms of mental ill health since the mid 20th century has meant a substantial increase in people being treated in their homes within the community, referred to as community care.

The proposition aims to take this historical shift toward community care one step further, with an integral programme that involves incorporating a community-based consultation centre in a typical community leisure centre.

The role of architecture will be to understand current typologies and practice in mental health care and, where possible, to mediate between the centre and the sensitive adjacency of a local facility such as a leisure centre.

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OLD OAK COMMONS JACOB DIX

Above The scheme through time. The project has been designed to accommodate uses in different time periods.

Below Post-parliamentary use the temporary elements of the scheme are removed and the nature reserve and park are pulled through into the centre.

Plagued by faulty electrics, ancient plumbing and an infestation of mice, the Palace of Westminster is in desperate need of refurbishment. MPs were presented with two options.

First, to stay in place with rolling closures for refurbishment. This would take an estimated 32 years with an expected cost of ÂŁ6bn. The second option was a full decant, moving out entirely for a six-year period, reducing the total cost of refurbishment to an estimated ÂŁ3.5bn, this second option also allowed for the delivery of enhanced amenity and functionality.

MPs recently decided on the second option. This development takes advantage of this decision in the creation of a temporary parliament building within the Old Oak Common masterplan, which is set to become one of the most connected locations in the country.

For the expected six-year duration of the renovation, the building will facilitate all functions necessary for the running of parliament.

Subsequent to this six-year period, permanent elements of the building will remain in place, providing a theatre, community centre and offices.

Other elements will be dismantled or relocated.

Parliament will act as a catalyst for the masterplan, offering a seed of activity which can be utilised to assist in making Old Oak Common a national destination.

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Above The proposed temporary commons chamber.

Top and above parliament.

Views inside the temporary

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ROOMS OF REQUIREMENT LISA MCDANELL

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Above Perspectival section showing the contrast between solid and void: generous public amenity spaces enclosed by small cellular personal object storage.

Right Birds eye view showing the significance of the proposal in its city context.

This proposal aims to create a new sustainable, shared amenity type that brings the benefits of co-housing to the existing terraces of London.

The scheme responds to the subdivision of London’s terraced housing: the majority of terraces now have many overlaps of service space and living space, but few of these are sufficiently generous to be enjoyable. The scheme removes some of these banal duplicates, such as storage or laundry, and combines them into a generous social service space. This frees up living space and provides services at a district scale.

By combining amenities, services, storage and leisure into one new building type, terraced flats become more aspirational as residents gain access to a network of localised services that allow them to spill out of their dwellings. More entertainment space and better public amenities encourage a feeling

of wellbeing which means people stay in their locality for longer, nurturing a more active and inclusive community of otherwise isolated Londoners.

Creating impact, the scheme: —Encourages a sustainable, circular, local way of living – socially and environmentally as well as economically – by providing services and reducing waste.

—Encourages connectivity between individual dwellers. Unexpected social encounters in offices typically happen in the bike store or lift lobby where routine is shared, so this is imagined on a neighbourhood scale, creating shared routines between private residents in a neighbourhood.

—Provides generous entertainment and leisure space as well as rethinking the role of storage in the light of the sharing economy, for a more sustainable and quality-based way of life which can be replicated across the city.

Overleaf Perspectival plan highlighting the separate functions. Bringing together neighbourhood amenities under the same roof allows for efficiency as well as unexpected crossovers between isolated dwellers.

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Above The indoor jungle acts as an extension to Argyle Square to the South.

Below Enfilade view from the laundrette, to the pool and through to the shared bookshelf.

Right A level change from the indoor jungle to the pool and laundry ensures a degree of privacy for residents.

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HERITAGE HACK – A MUSEUM OF MODERN LONDON HANNAH BOWERS

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The cycles of demolition and construction that play out across the city have reached unprecedented levels.

As development land becomes ever more scarce, environmental concerns progress and material resources are all the more restricted, the need to retain, preserve, adapt and reuse our city’s existing buildings has never been more pressing.

Yet, as the city expands, the prohibitive and prescriptive rules around conservation, restoration and renovation seem all the more perverse.

Heritage Hack is an alternative policy for the reuse of existing buildings within London, which, which accepts the need for alteration and adaptation of existing buildings in accordance with the city’s changing needs. By eschewing precious preservation and retention and instead focusing on the inert material energies and inherent qualities of existing buildings, the Heritage Hack policy provides a sustainable alternative to new construction.

The existing Museum of London is due to relocate to Smithfield Market in 2021, siting ‘lack of space’ and ‘difficulty of access’ as key drivers for the move. The following proposal is developed in response to this condition, reusing the existing museum buildings and providing a test bed for the Heritage Hack.

The initial ‘cut and carve’ approach is employed to enhance the spatial qualities of the existing museum buildings, while responding to its complex urban topology and historic setting. Additional circulation cores are also added to address concerns over the site’s accessibility, with the preserved Pedway providing a comprehensive access network that connects the museum to the surrounding city. A series of further strategies are then applied, forming interventions in response to these erosive moves: wrapping, propping and reconfiguring the buildings to redefine the museum for contemporary use.

Above Heritage Hack interventions at the Museum of Modern London.

Opposite, clockwise from top left Moments of intervention: Extend, Trace, Prop, Carve, Insert, Extend.

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NEW LIVING

LONDON’S CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS, DENSITIES AND DESIRES REQUIRE UPDATED VISIONS FOR HOUSE AND HOME

NEW RIVER QUARTER CALIN ANDREI BARBU

The third in a series of projects that mitigate the effects of climate change in the city, the New River Quarter is at once a piece of infrastructure, a residential area and a cultural attraction.

The scheme is part of a series of existing reservoirs, daylit in order to hold the (now) overflowing New River. Since the 1640s, New River Head has collected fresh water from Hertfordshire.

The Quarter will be built on land currently belonging to Thames Water, as an extension to Sadler’s Wells. One of the oldest theatres in London, it will take control of the derelict listed buildings on site and transform them into performance, rehearsal and production spaces.

A new, small theatre will be built on the waters of the New Pond.

There is an old tradition of theatres hosting their artists within.

Whether visiting or settled, ample space is provided for living and pleasure. Two new blocks, the Marsh Block and the Myddelton Block, will be built in order to accommodate all.

Top The Water Theatre, perched above the swollen waters of the New River, provides a room for people to dance in.

Above Sometimes in the New River Quarter curtains hang heavy, the proscenium is no more, and the buildings themselves become props for the sets of immersive performances.

Left Steam, streams and static waters become omnipresent features to interact with, while unlocking the unexpected activities on site.

Below Two people stubbornly row a boat on the Pond during a windy autumn day.

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Top to bottom Independent artisan market plot; Designated module loading bay; Personal accommodation module interior.

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North-west facing cutaway isometric.

MEANWHILE …

ACCOMMODATION CHRISTIAN GEORCELIN

‘The first ever comprehensive register of public land in London, revealing 40,000 sites across the capital including the capacity to deliver a minimum of 130,000 homes, has been published by the London Land Commission.’

Being the cultural and business hub of the United Kingdom, London fights its boundaries as its population continues to rise, taking in a record number of overseas and local professionals year on year.

The oxymoron being year after year, London land values continue to rise at an extortionate rate, locking out the majority of city-goers, especially the young, from home ownership and even rent. Initiatives such as ‘Help to Buy’ seem realistic; however, they’re still extremely out of touch.

‘Meanwhile Accommodation’ is a development scheme partnering with London’s local authorities, utilising publicly owned brownfield sites through meanwhile use development. It focuses on developing a network of bespoke residential buildings with interchangeable prefabricated living modules, in which the tenant has the freedom to move from build to build along with their living unit. The nature of meanwhile developments suggests a semi-permanent build, therefore a defining factor is a quick and environmentally considerate development. Further, city-goers are able to purchase the living modules at their build cost, designed with complete flexibility in mind to suit the buyer’s budget and lifestyle.

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HOLLOWAY COMMON JAMES CORNISH HIGNETT

HMP Holloway was the largest women’s prison in Western Europe before its closure in 2016. The Ministry of Justice is now seeking a preferred developer to dispose of their four-hectare site. The One Public Estate programme states that public assets must achieve ‘best value’, but how we define value is unclear so it defers to the highest financial value. Yet the Treasury states that public bodies hold assets ‘in the pursuit of policy objectives and not for its own sake or for the creation of profit’. There is now a conflict between public interests. What defines the public good – money for the MoJ to build new prisons, or affordable housing for Islington? Islington council’s SPD sets out a brief for the site of 800 homes and public space.

Starting with this mundane brief, how can we redefine what is meant by a public good beyond mere planning obligations? We need to move beyond public as owned and controlled by the state, to build a new common for the people of Islington.

For 165 years the site has formed a void in the urban context, the common proposes to preserve this void but transform it into an aspirational and much-needed public space in Islington.

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Above The language of each facade is defined by the public space it forms. The residential courtyards broken up by the shared outdoor rooms. Blind windows reinforce the open space of the common.

Right The one hectare open space transforms the former prison into a site for collective joy.

Below A public plinth forms the habitable edge of each public open space, only opening at the shared entrance for residents and the nursery.

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Left The urban form is defined by four courtyards opened at each corner along the site’s desire lines in to the central common, stitching this historic void back into its surrounding context.

Below right To allow for more varied ways of living, multiple living spaces are offset from each other but feel enlarged by having views out in two directions.

Above Flats share the same spatial layout, connecting rooms at the corners to allow various activities to overlap and co-exist.

Below left Each flat is entered from a shared external terrace giving more space for children to play in view of the living spaces inside.

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Below

Facade sketch studies exploring rhythm.

Right The proposed ground floor plan ties in with the local context creating characterful urban rooms of varying sizes both internally and externally.

CITÉ ROOMS CHARLOTTE HURLEY

The way we live and work in the city is changing. The proposal explores City Rooms across the metropolitan and domestic scale within Farringdon, a prime example of the changing city, which faces the arrival of Crossrail and the increased connectivity it brings locally and globally.

Located at the Farringdon Road railway cuttings, the site has historically formed a void in the city since the Metropolitan Railway was carved through the area in 1863. Currently it separates the surrounding islands of public life – Clerkenwell Green, Hatton Gardens, Leather Lane and 64

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Exmouth Market – and limits the potential for the area to connect both spatially and socially.

The proposal bridges the railway cuttings to create a series of lively urban rooms which become a continuation of their urban context and frame connections with the surrounding city. A series of buildings shaped around these public rooms offers new forms of hybrid live/work which provide moments of social exchange and opportunities for chance encounters by embracing the overlapping programme.

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Left and above

Farringdon Road views.

Below left View from Ray Street across the newly pedestrianised Clerkenwell Green.

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Above Right

Connections through shared spaces.

Thresholds for chance encounters.

Far right Doorways which are carefully placed to allow control of privacy by the occupier.

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DEN CITY MOLLY JUDGE

Higher-density development is increasingly being integrated into our urban landscapes, to cater for the rapidly growing populations of our ever-expanding cities. By 2041, if London builds in the Opportunity Areas according to the London Plan, it will reach density levels that cities such as Rio, Osaka and Bangkok experience today.

But is there a space for families within these inner urban regions?

Does the design of our city amenities, residential developments and infrastructure cater for children that require a range of open, recreational and family orientated spaces?

Amenity space is increasingly being absorbed by new 68

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developments, and the road no longer offers the same landscape for play as it did in the early 20th century. A fundamental challenge of density is designing housing and infrastructure that nurture successful conditions for childhood. In London, children living in high-rise blocks tend to suffer from more stress, mental health difficulties and neurosis.

The proposal for Den City seeks to create a landscape mat architecture where, over five storeys, every floor has the same generosity of outdoor space as the ground floor; fostering a safe environment for children to roam, as the foundation of community life.

Above Left

Individual concepts for each floor, from top-bottom: courtyards, passages, sun decks, crescents and ring.

Axonometric showing the physical and visual connections, from ground floor courtyards to communal rooftops.

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The scheme’s relationship to Amwell Street.

Relationship between the dwellinggs and the internal streets.

A room’s relationship to the shared courtyard.

Right View of scheme from the South West demonstrating how the architecture forms a boundary to the site.

SUPPORTED HOUSING FOR WOMEN CHARLOTTE MADGWICK

Last year, Islington was found to be the worst place to be a woman in the UK, performing particularly poorly in its vast gender pay gap and its high rate of child poverty and domestic violence. This, coupled with the dramatic cuts in funding for women’s refuges, is leaving women even more vulnerable than before.

I am proposing specifically designed housing for this section of society – women and children at risk of homelessness and survivors of domestic abuse.

Adopting the Housing First model used in Finland, this project proposes a stepped system of supported homes, ranging from emergency accommodation to

six-month supported homes and longer-term low rent almshouses.

The architecture is focused on a ‘clustered’ housing module, which contains a six-month single unit, a family unit and an emergency bedroom. It encourages a system of companionship centred around shared courtyards.

The cluster module is then repeated surrounding the community spaces and shared gardens, as well as forming a natural and secure boundary to the site.

It is important that each woman can control their degree of privacy, therefore the project offers a series of secluded niches as well as more open communal spaces.

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NEGOTIATING THE URBAN BLOCK YASMIN LOKAT

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Many of the recent examples of collective housing, particularly within London, exploit the idea of sharing and efficiency of space to maximise profits rather than to promote social reform. Similarly, early 20th-century models of experimental Modernist housing owe much of their failure to their Functionalist utopian ideals, leaving many to be experienced as monolithic and austere housing blocks.

Responding to this, the proposal shows a mixed-use co-housing scheme which investigates ideas of experimental housing to challenge future ways of living in the city. It does so by promoting a new idea of housing which negotiates rather than imposes collectivity, providing a scheme which emphasises the generosity allowed through collective living rather than efficiency, and as such being careful not to overrationalise the act of living.

The scheme provides 48 interchangeable units of multigenerational living, focused on housing marginalised groups being priced out of central London, yet for whom city living is based on necessity rather than luxury.

Specifically, groups able to benefit from communal living and who do not require a traditional nuclear family home or single-person apartment, for which London and its suburbs develop much of its housing stock today.

The chosen site houses a multi-storey car park leased by National Car Parks (NCP), a piece of infrastructure built during an era of Fordism which now, with a paradigm shift away from a city dominated by the car, has proven inadequate to meet the needs of the post-industrial society. The site therefore becomes an opportunity to challenge the future social organisations of life.

Above Axonometric drawing highlighting the proposal and its relationship to the existing community and surrounding urban context.

Opposite page top to bottom Long section showing arrangement of unit types within the scheme; Typical floor plan highlighting overlap of blocks which discourage the use of boundary walls between apartments to encourage the negotiation of shared space; Ground floor plan, which uses the geometry of the units above to form a colonnade and activated streetscape fronting Farringdon Road and an internal protected courtyard.

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THE COLLECTIVE REAR EXTENSION CLAIRE SEAGER

The Collective Rear Extension is a new housing co-operative in the back gardens of Lloyd Street in Islington. It offers housing, mixed-use and communal facilities for young families and live/work individuals.

These are people who are currently being pushed out of the area due to the increase in house prices.

The proposal seeks to expand the supply of housing in central London through the collective rear extension. While an extension of one house only benefits the individual homeowner, the extension of a multiple occupation house in a Victorian urban block enables the development of connected interstitial spaces – the underused back gardens in backland plots. As the city of London struggles to meet housing demand, the repurposing of the Victorian terraced house for collective back garden development offers an opportunity to densify London and help to foster diversity in the city.

The sharing of facilities enables meaningful opportunities of overlapping life and greater variety and offer. The project will focus and define new ways for people to live in close proximity without compromising their quality of life, enhancing their access to amenities via sharing. Holarchies of sharing will determine which facilities are shared.

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Above The garden edge threshold between the collective rear extension and existing terrace house. Gardens are enjoyed among all residents.

Below Terraced houses are opened up through a new principle entrance, which becomes a symbol of collective life in the city. Facilities such as a pool, square for congrugating and kitchen are elements which are shared.

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First Floor Plan 1:200 [Academic use only]

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Top

Ground floor plan.

Ground Floor Plan 1:200

use only] [Academic use

Bottom

First floor plan.

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1.

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6.

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Catalogue of spaces that make up the Collective Rear Extension, which acts as a development framework that can be applied to mutliple sites at different scales. 1: The urban block; 2: Opening up the terraced house; 3: Communal entry way; 4: Balcony personalisation; 5: Collective rear extension; 6: Swimming pool, jacuzzi and slide; 7: Shared kitchen and living; 8: Threshold to the individual apartment; 9: Shared backgardens; 10: Badminton and boules; 11: The podium sqaure; 12: Activities and features.

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Left Typical layout of interlocking duplexes above a civic ground floor condition.

Above The project situated around Red Lion Square.

Opposite

INN-STITUTION – A 21ST CENTURY INN KATRINA DUNCAN

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Around the neighbourhood archipelago of a central London garden square, the project brings together a situated community and a transient population in shared accommodation. As patterns of living in the city are evolving, the project asks ‘what dwelling means one’s home is hardly anywhere and when it is something between a house, an office and a hotel’.

(Fulcrum : ‘Home 2014, Airbnb Pavilion’ Issue 96, June 2014). If community fosters a fulfilling and sustainable form of life in the city, how can situated communities continue to form in this shifting landscape of transient populations?

Residences are imagined room by room, allowing dwellings to expand and contract as necessary, with visitors using the remaining space. The opportunity is created for a range of fortuitous exchanges between visitors and longer-term residents, to benefit socially

The view from the square.

and economically.

Red Lion Square is imagined as a central garden ‘lobby’, a public space for all, while a network of surrounding courtyards recall the form of the historic London inn, creating spaces with communal programme. Further reference to the galleried inn is made, as dwellings are accessed via a system of terraces encircling courtyards and integrating the new with existing residences.

New dwellings are arranged around these gallery spaces, with kitchens shared between living spaces, opening out onto these communal areas. All bedrooms, or studies, can be accessed independently, allowing use by short-term visitors. Long-term tenants can take advantage of this arrangement, with rooms able to be let out or additional rooms rented, while retaining a private secondary circulation access for each bedroom.

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Above left A sheltered place to sit looking out into the primary civic courtyard.

Above right From a balcony looking into a courtyard of gardens and games.

Below left A staircase from the living space gives permanent residents private access to bedrooms. Doors can be locked and storage used whilst visitors rent a room.

Below right Independent access for visitors allows rooms to be let without disruption to residents.

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AGENDAS

DESIGN THINK TANKS DEBORAH SAUNT

THE DESIGN THINK TANKS’ DISRUPTION OF THE LONG-PERCEIVED SCHISM BETWEEN STUDENT SPECULATION AND PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINE COULD CREATE WIDER IMPACTS

Above Student Molly Judge and DSDHA’s David Hills disseminating the Cultural Infrastructure project (2017/18) at Theatrum Mundi’s London Salon at the Museum of London.

Left Opening of the Design Think Tanks exhibition Idencity at the Roca London Gallery during London Festival of Architecture.

Below Emerging Tools presenting at the final Design Think Tank symposium hosted at Squire and Partners’ new office in Brixton.

What sets the LSA apart from other architecture schools, and one of the reasons that drove us to establish the school in the first place, is our desire to see closer ties between practitioners and students in addressing real world issues, using their spatial expertise to speculate on solutions that meet head-on the challenges that people face in cities.

Critically, the world is changing at a fast pace and we believe that architects are uniquely placed to help deploy their spatial intelligence to negotiate this complexity; across scales, disciplines, networks and over time; proposing spatial configurations at the intersection between human life and our constantly evolving systems and environments.

As a new school, three years ago we set out on our experimental proposition to create a new form of architectural education – a curriculum for the 21st century; one that would recast the relationship between the individual and the wider community, questioning one’s own role as part of a collective endeavour in facing our rapidly shifting environment. We asked bright people to work together to find the best solutions, in the spirit of Jane Drew’s assertion that ‘architecture is 10 people thick’, reflecting the reality that many people have to work together to make the built environment.

From this the Design Think Tanks were born – a unique opportunity to develop a previously untested way of working collaboratively within architecture – bridging practice and theory, the academy and the profession.

Each year, half a dozen Design Think Tanks link students with practice and profession at a fundamental level and focus intensively on real design issues in London, while also tackling the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Over just four months, students work in small groups, guided by and in partnership with practising architects – the Practice Network – focusing on a shared topic based on the interests of both the individual students and the practices.

Topics over the past three years have ranged from developing agile and responsive large-scale masterplans that challenge conventional practice such as Healthy Neighbourhoods or High Street typologies, through to specific housing solutions that address particular demographic needs such as the ageing population or millennials. Wider concerns such as ‘The Right to Breathe’, Redesigning Death or Cultural Infrastructure have also been explored, alongside The Future of Work and new forms of practice developed by the collective SWARM. Design Think Tanks iteratively test their research question through design, informed by discussions with experts, local authorities, startups and investors to encourage implementation and debate, on-site in London.

It makes the work not only relevant but vital, as by engaging with the authorities and agents that shape the city on live projects, students create proposals that can have real impact beyond academia.

Since its inception, the Design Think Tank projects have been widely disseminated, featuring in numerous publications, and with several students and practitioners from different groups presenting their collaborative ideas both within the UK and beyond, and even winning a national competition last year with an entry based on one of the group’s research ideas.

One of the key outcomes from these Design Think Tanks has been to redefine the profession of architecture itself, and to see it adjust to today’s requirements by offering a tangible effect by connecting research with practice, and through creating space for reflection on wider issues beyond those perhaps offered to architects by their day-to-day client commitments in a traditional setting.

As an innovation within architecture, the Design Think Tanks have disrupted the long-perceived schism between student speculation and professional discipline with positive effect and refocused practising architects to look towards the future, as Rae Whittow-Williams, senior project officer at the GLA says: ‘We can really see the benefits of connecting research with practice; the resulting schemes are so much richer in terms of their contextual awareness to the issues we are facing within the built environment sector’.

A special thanks to this year’s Design Think Tank Leaders from the Practice Network – a full list of whom are in the acknowledgments on page 122-123.

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ADAPTIVE TYPOLOGIES

FINDING THAT NEIGHBOURS SCARCELY MET IN CURRENT DENSE DEVOLOPMENTS , OUR PROPOSAL CREATES A THRIVING SOCIAL ORGANISM WHILE DOUBLING THE TARGET DENSITY

Typology 1

Typology 2

Typology 3

London’s population is growing rapidly, and thousands of new homes need to be built to accommodate this. However, the common approach of massproduced ‘one-size-fits-all’ flats ignores the complex needs of the culturally and socially diverse mix of people who call the city home.

How can we build at the necessary densities to house the population, while making these places inclusive, sustainable and sociable?

Our investigation began by visiting three dense housing developments in London and interviewing residents. We found that despite living among many people, residents rarely knew their neighbours – which we came to refer as ‘the Density Paradox’.

Through analysing the residents’ journeys around these buildings, we found that all three had compromised circulation spaces to maximise unit arrangements.

The journey from the street to the flat tended to consist of vacuous lobbies, lifts and narrow corridors with no natural light or indication of the life behind anonymous closed doors. Circulation spaces were purely transitory – for passing through swiftly, rather than to enjoy or display signs of ownership. If there was any other common space, this was poorly considered and separated from the places residents naturally pass through.

A site in London on the Old Kent Road was chosen as the testing ground for our hypothesis.

An Area Action Plan currently in development is proposed to radically transform the district from a low-rise, low-density largely industrial zone into a dense urban area, with thousands of new homes over the next twenty years.

Barratt Homes has noted that ‘the extension will provide a significant increase to the area’s historically low property values’, which is great news for developers and landowners, but less so for existing residents benefiting from relatively low rental values.

A demographic study of the local area revealed the rich diversity of cultures, backgrounds and ages of residents, such as groups of up to 11 undocumented migrants living in one flat. The typical offer of standardised apartments found in many new developments is inadequate to serve the complex needs of residents that don’t fit the criteria of the developer’s target market.

Instead, we have developed five distinct typologies that explore alternative approaches to density: Typology 1 A 19-storey tower at the north-west corner of the site achieves density through a tight floor plan coupled with height. A void cuts down the building through the common

Typology 4

Typology 5

Left and above A site on the Old Kent Road is transformed with five distinct typologies that cater for different social organisations.

Above

Section through Typology 3, exploring the dynamics of a co-living unit.

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Key 1. The Old Kent Road 2. Amenity space on roofs 3. Proposed park from AAP 4. Walkway connecting blocks 5. Service yards for Typology 2 6. Activities for all ages 7. Reconnecting the area 8. Active street frontages 9. Secluded courtyard 10. Greening at OKR

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areas allowing the sharing of space vertically through the building as well as horizontally.

Typology 2 To the north, a block of live/work units achieves density through narrow unit plans. A portion of double-height space helps to bring light deep into the plan while giving it a sense of generosity.

Typology 3 The block to the west achieves density through eight-bedroom units that can allow living spaces and bathrooms to be fewer but larger, responding to the need for shareable spaces for groups of migrants, students and young professionals.

Typology 4 Achieving density by incorporating a deep plan, the block to the east takes an intimate approach to the sharing of common space, with front doors arranged in clusters of three on either side of a landing.

Typology 5 The largest block facing onto the Old Kent Road reimagines the mansion block typology, with an extra deep plan made possible by light wells that pull light into its depth. Common spaces ooze around the units, allowing a more direct connection to them and an invitation to inhabit the space outside one’s front door.

The five typologies form separate blocks on the site, creating smaller sub-communities within the scheme. This gives dense buildings a more comprehensible human scale.

The blocks are arranged around a central courtyard which is where all of these smaller communities come together alongside industrial and workspace uses on the ground floor.

The proposal achieves a density of 1,910 people per hectare, well above the target set out in the Area Action Plan of 1,000 people per hectare. In addition to being able to provide much-needed homes for a growing population, the scheme delivers a mix of unit sizes ranging from studio flats to eight-bedroom co-living flats, a variety of outdoor amenity spaces at every level from ground floor to roof and not a single internal corridor without natural light or ventilation.

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EMERGING TOOLS

THE CIVIC STATION – PROPOSING A MODEL OF TRANSPORT INFRA-STRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT THAT WORKS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD

Emerging Tools proposes a Civic Station as a new model of transport infrastructure development that prioritises social wellbeing. Using Seven Sisters as a testbed, the project demonstrates how an alternative procurement route for Crossrail 2 can achieve a more equitable approach, creating skills, jobs and new housing.

Our proposal critically addresses the lessons learnt from the delivery of Crossrail 1. The aspiration is to ensure London and the UK’s future infrastructure adheres to the aims of UN Sustainable Development Goals 9 and 11: making cities inclusive, safe and resilient for the future.

With Transit Oriented Developments usually encouraging professional and economic growth in the suburbs and the city, Seven Sisters is an ideal pilot scheme. The area, mostly residential in character, has clear needs and presents vast land availability for development.

We address six agendas to achieve a truly sustainable Transit Oriented Development: 1. Seven Sisters is in one of the UK’s 10 most deprived boroughs. With unemployment rates and skill shortages being the two most pressing issues in Tottenham today, one quarter of its adults have no qualifications at all, despite the relatively young population. This agenda addresses the local conditions and promotes the benefits of the proposed development to the area.

2. This agenda represents our actions in response to the socioeconomic divide of Haringey.

By first implementing a new act of parliament, the Skills Act, contracted private infrastructure stakeholders must provide micro colleges to train the local workforce.

3. To ensure that the time and environmental impact throughout construction is minimised, we deployed a mix of on-site production and materials from the site, as well as prefabricated components.

With seven million tonnes of earth excavated for Crossrail 1, our proposal uses earth more sustainably in the design, in the form of clay bricks, rammed-earth walls and 3D-printed clay products.

4. This agenda demonstrates the various building systems that are

Above Section through final proposal. both an integral aesthetic choice in our design, populating the flank walls Below The traditional Transit Oriented of the station, but also contributing Development model.Models Transit Orientated Development Transit Oriented Development Models to the efficient, sustainable role of the station’s environmental benefits. Bottom Our proposed new model.

5. Building on such decentralisation, a line-wide vision of a sustainable grid arises. Moreover, through designing for local needs, different stations along the line will cater for various contextually driven purposes. This will further propagate our vision of enhanced connectivity, Orientated Development Models life. allowing forTransit a sustainable urban Transit Oriented Development Models 6. Our final Agenda is to deliver a fully integrated Civic Station that contributes to the betterment of its locality, not only through an increase in connectivity and corresponding land value, but also enhancing social infrastructure. This is achieved through the incorporation of civic functions, such as the Latin Market and other retail opportunities into the perimeter of the station as well as the newly permeable Overground viaducts.

PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

CONTEXTUALLY DRIVEN

PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

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61 Left Above

Breakdown of business case and implementation of the Skills Act through the use of Micro-Colleges and a proposed Land Value Tax.

Sectional perspective detailing relationships between the Oversite Development, the Civic Station and Social Infrastructure enhanced in the perimeter.

At a masterplan scale, the proposal aims to use the inaccessible land as an opportunity for additional housing and better connecting the surrounding neighbourhoods to what will be a new Civic Station and District Centre. Crossrail 2 will be a catalyst for development in Seven Sisters over a long period of time.

Key design moves are driven by the idea of ‘decentralised fabrication’: how should we retain industrial spaces in London?

Our proposal explores new typologies where various uses, housing, industry and infrastructure can co-exist.

The station is made up of two main design elements: the station box and the oversite development which are divided into three building masses that step up towards the north-eastern side of the site, allowing for a maximum amount of natural light. To further assist that, light wells penetrate the rammedearth ceiling in the main escalator entrance area, forming viewing platforms in the proposed public realm areas created between the massing above. A series of flank wall shopfronts house Latin Market stalls, other retail and civic functions (also located in the permeable viaduct and wider masterplan).

Micro colleges and services populate the internal flank walls, with the former also occupying space in the over-station developments.

Lastly, the station forms an interchange connecting the Seven Sisters Overground and Underground stations with South Tottenham station, allowing easy access from the Victoria line straight to Crossrail 2 through a subway connection. Learning from our own experiences, our new Civic Station subverts what it means to be underground and celebrates transport infrastructure as a tool for an equitable society – a London built for all its citizens.

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ARCHITECTURAL AGENCY

THE BOROUGH OF HARINGEY IS REINVENTED TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN THE SELF AND THE CIVIC

Civic engagement with local government is at its lowest point in recent times, with many feeling disenfranchised. The relationship between the people and their local council is increasingly being characterised by conflict rather than collaboration, not aided by the continued reduction of central government funding Almost two-thirds of Londoners report not a single instance of contact with their local authority, 85 per cent see no council improvements, while 90 per cent of council officers feel deflated and powerless to make any impact.

Using the economically and politically divided London Borough of Haringey as a testbed, Architectural Agency sought to reimagine the ways in which the council and the public come face to face. Our agenda: —Engage and empower residents, giving them a sense of validity; —Emphasise the local and reduce the influence of national parties; —Celebrate democratic acts as a moment of collective action; —Enable serendipitous interactions within the council, and between the

council and the public; —And create an approachable and legible face for all residents.

The new model for the civic sphere operates across several scales: reimagined street furniture adds humour and animation to everyday interaction with the council, while turning every lamppost and bin into an opportunity for communication across the borough; digital tools allow for the distribution of democratic acts and debate; a new centralised and reorganised civic centre gives a welcoming face to previously austere office buildings, while allowing a more efficient and holistic approach to council business; and new participatory systems of democracy – inspired by current and ancient precedents – enable citizen-led, political decision-making to take a new form as a celebratory shared ritual.

Our strategies seek to address the borough as a whole, to increase engagement, which is as low as 30 per cent in disadvantaged areas of Haringey such as Tottenham Hale. We also propose to enthuse residents by augmenting the everyday encounter with the local

Top The new town square filled with people during a voting celebration.

Above The debating chamber’s mesh facade glows at night when in use.

Below The debating chamber follows a circular precedent, but has no single location for a speaker. Any person may stand and speak from their seat. The chamber sits at the heart of the prominent Alexandra House, within the stripped back structure of the existing building. Around it are smaller, informal discussion pods, with the removal of the floorplates allowing for a continuous public journey through the building.

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F AF

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5x LOCALBUSINESS ADVISORS

FROM EACH OF HARINGEY’S 19 WARDS...

2x ELECTED COUNCILLORS

2x MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC OFFICERS & EXPERTS

POLICY & PROJECT PROPOSALS

DELIBERATIV E

CIL UN CO

FROM EVERYONE IN THE BOROUGH...

OFFICERS CARRY OUT SELECTED PROPOSALS & POLICY ACTIONS

REFINED AND VIABLE PROPOSALS

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P O SA LY FO R T H EIR PREFER RED PRO

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Top and left The covered yard’s brick paving defines the primary route, blending into warmer timber flooring in the quieter nooks and meeting spaces to the side.

Middle Proposed democratic system: representative democracy is combined with the lottocratic selection of local residents, to serve for two years. Experts and officers are directly involved in the decision-making processes of the non-hierarchical deliberative council.

Bottom Participatory budgeting where the development and direct selection of proposals for the borough directly engages residents in the decision-making process, and lends tangible stakes and excitement to the process of casting a ballot

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authority. Innocuous street furniture such as bins, road signs and bus stops are constant, if unassuming, evidence of the council’s presence.

We took a more romantic approach to these objects to create hybrid typologies that define public interaction with the council.

Street-railing radiators and filtered rainwater dispensers may become gathering points for social exchange.

Further, the reinvented functional objects are used to facilitate direct communication between the public and the council, with bins and lampposts forming a new communicative nervous system for Haringey. These systems enable the flow of information from every street to the new centralised point of contact at the heart of the borough, and vice versa The new civic centre, a counterpoint to the unclear and disorganised layout of services and operations in Haringey, is in Wood Green, just north of the geographical centre of the borough.

A consolidated and restructured

council enables ease of contact between council staff, as well as between officers and the public.

All new offices are amalgamated onto the current primary site of council operations, along with a new debating chamber and auditorium, and a new library to replace the existing Wood Green Library. The existing buildings are stripped back and repurposed, and the current dead-end street River Park Road is converted into a lively covered yard, which becomes the new focal point of the council.

To fund our proposals, current council sites such as those of Wood Green Library and the former civic centre have been earmarked for council redevelopment. Within the boundary of the Wood Green Area Action Plan, these sites form strategic opportunities in anticipation of a Crossrail 2 station.

The current organisation of council departments too easily allows for the confusion and obfuscation of accountability, and precludes joined-up thinking.

Architectural Agency proposes a reorganisation of the internal council structure, which recognises the key overlaps of function, and enables better communication between silos. New overarching departments allow for a holistic approach (such as Natural and Built Environment, which recognises the intersection of Planning and Regeneration with Housing, Environmental Services, and Highways).

At the cornerpoint of the new civic centre, directly opposite Wood Green station, is housed the new debating chamber, giving a defining civic presence to the offices, and an immediately discernible identity to the area. Skinned in a translucent fibreglass, the new chamber sits within the stripped-back structure of the existing building. It forms a focal point for borough-wide celebrations and events in the new town square, the setting for the publicly facing civic centre, which provides a stark and much-needed contrast to the faceless and unwelcoming council offices of today.

Reimagined street furniture, from left: turning railings into radiators to form a gathering point for social exchange ; a sensitive lamp post whose changing position reflects the public mood; and the Whispering Bin, an everyday location where policy and proposal ideas may be collected.

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GLOBAL CURRENTS

A NEW OWNERSHIP MODEL FOR SELF-BUILD HOUSING SEEKS TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE ACCESS TO FAMILY HOUSING IN LONDON

The average house in London is only affordable for the top seven per cent of the population. The 100 per cent mortgages of the early 2000s were bailed out with the money for the next generation, those only now coming of age. New rules reining in those excesses prevent this generation from getting a mortgage of their own. In the search for enough space to start a family, young people have two choices: to continue the unstable and transitory living of their early 20s, or leave the city.

They can continue to rent, thereby transferring wealth upwards or abroad; or they can move out as far as it takes to get a mortgage.

We have attempted to understand what high density should look like when creating housing and ownership for young families in London. The nature of this challenge means we have had to address ideas of adaptability and culture, two aspects we see as key to success in dense situations. Young families are seen as a vital constituent to facilitate social cohesion and community, so they are the barometer from which successful housing must be measured.

Ownership is really the overarching theme of the project – how the house becomes a home. We contend that ownership is the key to good housing, promoting longevity in the community rather than the passthrough housing of today.

We propose a new way of funding affordable housing for young

Left Above Right

families; a way to cement their lives – family, social and professional – into the city fabric. Land values are the root of the London housing problem, yet councils are selling land to developers in the hope of paltry ‘affordable’ housing hand-outs.

Our non-profit developer is called Homely, an enterprise aimed at promoting ownership for young families in London. Its method is to build adaptable units on council land recouped by Section 106. To further increase their affordability, these flats are sold in two stages, the first when families arrive, with a 15-year tenancy agreement, and the second when that agreement expires, allowing for much smaller mortgages spread over time.

However, young families are not just moving out to the suburbs for affordable prices, there is something in the way of living that has been ingrained in the British psyche over the last century. We believe some of this should be retained in highdensity proposals, to make them an aspiration rather than a resignation.

We reject the pancake floorplate blocks of today for a more sensitive and receptive typology.

Instead we incorporate into our high-rise accepted British staples: the loft, the subconscious of the house where memories are stored and identity is retained; the stairs, which divide functions in the house and act as an incidental space for the occupants; the front garden, a mediation space between public and

private; and the bay window, a space for overlooking and keeping watch on the public space.

The unit itself is centred around a desire for adaptability, allowing inhabitants to take ownership of their space. At the most basic level, this comes from the L-shaped section. Both flats enter on a shared Level 0, but step either up or down to a level that is the full width of the bay. This allows much of that second storey to be left open so that, to begin with, each flat has a large double-height space.

The genuine adaptability comes from the materials: timber is easily workable by the majority of tradespeople or any DIY-enthusiast owner. Externally, cross-laminated timber has been used to create a kit of facade modules as an off-theshelf choice for most residents, yet, being based on a standard grid, they are easily replaceable and modifiable down the line.

The reality of this adaptable approach is that units can take on the shape of their users. With ownership over their space and long tenancy agreements, there is real value in investing in your home, adapting and changing it at will. Although this may sound aspirational, it is a pastime that is deeply rooted in the traditional British home. Walter Segal’s British self-build, the house extension and the loft conversion are real indicators of a taste for this kind of agency in housing.

Unit arrangements and fit-outs based on survey response from young families in the UK. A view of how the balcony access and pocket gardens could be inhabited by residents.

One of the units being assembled (top) and after residents have moved in.

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NEW KNOWLEDGE

Meadow Lost Rivers

Orchard

Thames New London Flood Plain

Site

SYNTHESISING THE BUILT AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, THIS PROVOCATION IMAGINES HOW HUMANS AND NON-HUMANS CAN LIVE IN HARMONY IN WITH EACH OTHER

We are facing an environmental crisis, caused in large part by our anthropocentric hold on the world.

Called The Hedgehog Disco – a reference to Timothy Morton’s ecological rhetoric – the project is a new way of living in collaboration with nature; not in nostalgia for Eden, but in an optimistic vision of the future.

Our proposal brings the human and non-human together as one collective, using design to break down the distinctions we make between humanity and nature. The tower’s mix of materials – simultaneously natural and sustainable – forms an armature into which specific species-led spaces can be carved.

The design is, therefore, flexible and also modest; playing host to only that which is necessary for a more natural way of living with nature.

Sited both in the Thames and on its banks, all the site’s elements are used to host spaces for basic living, as well as for celebrated activities: the rituals.

We have developed a manifesto that, along with our design, should be read as a propositional polemic to provoke contemporary attitudes and lazy invocations of the ‘sustainable’.

1. Love the disgusting, inert and meaningless.

2. Celebrate conflict and tension, rather than avoiding or controlling it.

3. Allow decay, enabling nature to become a host.

4. Remove barriers and invite exchange, reconnecting with each other as well as our world.

5. Accept transient communities, and realign with nomadic tendencies.

The Bathing Ritual where dwellers orientate themselves through the natural phenomena that shape their surroundings and activities.

Below Habitat mapping; explorations into food chains and conflicts between species; and the total number of each common nomadic dweller who would pass through and inhabit the proposal.

The proposal started with sensual site analysis, mapping such atmospheric qualities as its smells and conflict to understand it in a more animalistic way. Having calculated the average nomadic population of each species on the site at any one time, and the average spaces required for these ‘dwellers’ to inhabit, the project became a tower, where different species make use of a variety of heights, from underground to tree canopies, and higher.

This information and the site investigations informed material proposals: limecrete sourced from materials including the shellfish

inhabiting the Thames River (a durable underwater building material and more permanent core) incorporates detritus as an aggregate; waste that is usually considered a disgusting nuisance becomes simultaneously useful and beautiful.

Having studied the ground composition, readily available clay could be used to create mud bricks that are burrowed into in order to accommodate a range of humans and non-humans: an inhabitable skin. Decay of these materials, which we observed over time, provides further opportunities for various species to inhabit.

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drone congregation area

bird nesting

bird dying

bat crevice

human

fox birthing

ant colony

bee hive

insect nest

fox nesting

squirrel nesting

squirrel dying

rat birthing

human

decaying mouse colony

insect nest

core

bat birthing fox birthing

The Lifecycle Ritual takes place across a series of burrowed spaces within the mud brick envelope.

The Three Rituals We focused our design on spaces for the enactment of rituals: day-today activities elevated to post-anthropocentric acts that encourage engagement in nature. These take the form of architectural elements that mediate between the private individual and the world at large. By using the design of the ritual spaces to help to create a closer connection between the human and non-human, the community we propose draws inspiration from the kibbutz, where community is valued over blood ties.

The Seasonal Ritual Surrounded by meadow and hedgerows, both non-humans and humans congregate to share food.

Nature is encouraged to grow freely and, surrounded by water, the area becomes verdant. Boundaries are blurred between external and internal: dining spaces are more open, dwellers are sheltered by nature, while smaller spaces or pods are carved out higher up the tower for dining as individuals or small groups.

The excavated space’s size dictates how public or private it is.

The Tidal Ritual At spring tide (twice a month) the Thames rises high enough to breach the limecrete dyke, and the community engage in the act of washing. Dwellers process down through a series of vaulted chambers, and, as a group, enter the deepest waters where, unconcerned by the muddiness of the ground or the non-humans sharing their bathwater, they begin to wash themselves and one another. The banks provide space for lounging: facilitating storytelling and teaching among fellow bathers. The ritual lasts until the waters have receded.

The Lifecycle Ritual Higher up, undulating, burrowed-out areas are shared among different species for a range of rituals: reproduction, birth and death. A contrast is evident to the usual sterile and open conditions of a hospital, once seen as the norm.

Similarly, most species seek peaceful, quiet spaces when dying. This is accounted for at the top of the tower, where last breaths are taken surrounded by nature, less sterile than pre-Event conditions. Instead, it allows dwellers to reflect on their connection to the Earth and the role they play on it as an equal, not its master.

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101

METABOLIC CITY

THE SPATIAL HEALTH NETWORK PILOTS AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM OF INFRASTRUCTURE, ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE THAT COMBATS THREE MAJOR HEALTH ISSUES IN NORTH ACTON

London is sick. Pollution, stress, poverty, lengthy commutes and restrictions on council amenities mean that despite the opportunities available to some, many are unable to live well. The project explores how architecture and city design can help to relieve the pressures on the NHS, one of our most important and valuable institutions.

In North Acton, we designed a system of infrastructure, architecture, public space and street furniture that encourages healthier uses of the city. The focal point of the work is the adaptive reuse of a hotel situated on the A40.

The building becomes a new form of urban commons. Part car park, part library, part living room, the building reimagines elements of the everyday, piloting a model that could be replicated elsewhere.

We identified three demographics, each of which established issues in health and wellbeing that we addressed through spatial design: —Over 40 per cent of children in North Acton are obese or overweight, with obesity costing the NHS an estimated £7 billion per year.

—Mental health and loneliness have become nationwide epidemics in the older generation. In a recent survey, 50 per cent of those aged 65 or over felt detached from civic

participation and leisure activities.

—Finally, in ethnic minority women exercise participation rates are a significant 14 per cent lower than the national average.

We asked: can reimagining our transport infrastructure, education spaces and food rituals improve participation rates in marginalised societies?

We proposed a new car park to take parked cars off the surrounding suburban streets, which can then be reclaimed as public space. The car park initially takes enough cars from the road to provide a car-free route between North and West Acton. As the scheme grows in scale, more cars are removed to provide a carfree zone.

A landscape is then ‘draped’ over the car park, creating an undulating parkland. The park would act as a productive landscape, providing planting for new ‘wild lanes’ on the surrounding roads.

Finally, the existing hotel on the site would be reappropriated as a new form of urban commons.

We examined the elements of a typical street – a lamppost, a bus stop, a bollard, the crossing, the kerb – reinterpreting their use as infrastructure for a healthy city. By addressing the street typology, our project has the opportunity to reach a demographic of society that is

Top A new car park – landscaped above – is made to free suburban streets from parked cars.

Left

Old parking bays become public spaces.

Above The new Spatial Health Network relieves pressure on the National Health Service.

Below A curved bus stop promotes chat to prevent loneliness in the older generations.

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3PM IN THE CARETAKER’S LIVING ROOM...

WE CARETAKERS LOVE TAKING A BREAK IN OUR OWN LIVING ROOM

IN THE ART CLASS...

I COME TO THIS ART CLASS EVERY WEEK. THE NORTH LIGHT REALLY HELPS MY LIFE DRAWING!

SHARING IS CARING!

THE VIEW IS AMAZING AND SO IS THIS HOOVER!

Previous page Section cut through the repurposed hotel showing the intergative public commons.

Above and right A day in the life of the commons, featuring the three demographics.

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too often forgotten, encouraging a healthy lifestyle for all, not just those who can afford it. Each element aims to provoke and change thought processes that determine the ways in which we use our city.

Where society is heavily reliant on the market and state, we will re-establish the commons as fundamental to our society and in doing so increase a sense of shared value and responsibility in the city. This manifests through the building’s programme, which is split into three sections encouraging the sharing of objects, knowledge and experiences.

The ground-floor spaces create low threshold activities. A series of sheds provide workspaces for the local residents. A second space on the ground floor references the kitchen table philosophy established by Maggie’s Centres for cancer patients. Between the two spaces a ‘cut’ through the building encourages movement across the site. With the limited provision of space in homes across London, the ‘cut’ also provides a bank of objects that would be shared within the community. This reinterpretation of the traditional library encourages empathetic connections and a sense of social cohesion.

A common hall provides for large-scale events and activities. A miniature forest offers an intense point of nature in the building (contact with nature has been found to have a profound impact on mental health and obesity).

The building is crowned by a series of pitched roof forms, in which the foundations of our new way of living in the city are established.

Above the forest sits the caretakers’ lodge. This space would house an intergenerational living complex, where caretakers would live and look after the day-to-day running of the commons. Retirees and PhD students would live together, sharing their knowledge with users of the building and researching the building’s effect on health and wellbeing.

Further along the roofscape, a series of greenhouses lead down into a kitchen and dining space.

These spaces seek to establish a new relationship to community and food, creating healthier and more sustainable ways of eating.

EXPLORING THE LIBRARY OF THINGS...

MY NEW CYCLE ROUTE FEELS SO MUCH SAFER - I NEVER NEED TO TAKE THE BUS! I’VE JUST FINISHED MY ENGLISH LESSON, I’VE MET SO MANY INTERESTING PEOPLE! JUST PICKING A BUNCH OF CARROTS FOR THIS EVENING’S DINNER!

GETTING TO THE TOP IS LIKE A GAME OF SNAKES AND LADDERS! CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO SNOW...

THAT HILL WILL BE GREAT FOR SLEDGING!

JUST FINISHED SHOWING A GROUP HOW TO USE THE LATHE...IT’S GREAT HAVING PEOPLE TO SHARE MY SKILLS WITH!

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THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL JAMES SOANE

THE CRITICAL PRACTICE MANIFESTOS – SEVEN OF WHICH ARE EXCERPTED HERE – PROVIDE THE SPACE TO SPECULATE ON HOW TO RECONSTRUCT THE WORLD

Left Model and drawings of Parc de la Villette

by Bernand Tschumi at the 1988 seminal Deconstructivist show at MoMA.

1.

Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon (2012)

As a practising architect, who teaches, perhaps one of the biggest shifts I have witnessed since studying in the 1980s is the change in rhetoric and debate around the purpose of architecture. Back then discourse was self-referential and absorbed with conceits that linked the language of architecture to the semiotics of the written word. On visiting the seminal 1988 Deconstructivist exhibition at MoMA, New York, it seemed that the world was on the cusp of massive change. The catalogue talks about contaminated forms that disturb our thinking, suggesting that perfection is secretly monstrous. New forms and urban building types were communicated through complex drawings, whose opaque ‘readings’ were much debated, while a series of models suggested radical constructions that promised a new urban realm. We never saw the people. Thirty years on it is clear that the exhibition was a harbinger of a new kind of architectural production, one that owes its genesis to the power of the microchip inspired by the potential of linguistic framing. Still, where are all the people?

At the LSA we are suspicious of form over content and gymnastics over programme. More important is the possibility that propositional architectural thinking can improve the city, and start to address ethical questions of inequality and climate change. The act of thinking critically is one that demands an understanding of what shapes our physical environment; which is never as simple as the will of an architect. Far more, we have begun to see that Intersectionality, a theory of oppression, is one of the invisible gearing mechanisms that favours certain forms of capital growth over societal values.

Increasingly, the purpose of architecture is understood as the appreciation of an asset, which in turn shapes the physical environment. The cost of this approach to those not inside the virtuous circle of investment and return, is an erosion of community, an increase in living costs and the degradation of the environment. The contribution of the construction industry to the decline of our ecological system, increase in pollution and rise in CO2 emissions is huge; yet there is little incentive for private enterprise to take on these threats and creatively challenge the status quo.

To make sense of the conflicting forces that inform the production of our environment, we need to understand better the practices of architecture.

The pedagogic model that underpins the LSA is to encourage collisions between grounded ideologies that inform how architects work, with readings and theories whose purpose is to provoke, re-frame and take on our own embedded prejudices. Only by learning from each other can we begin to imagine alternative roadmaps towards the future. The act of constructing a relevant written argument is subverted into the form of a personal manifesto: a space to build a call for arms; an alternative world order; a kinder society. If architecture is a project of futurity, then the question of design inevitably is charged with taking on these forces with the hope that the future can be an improvement on the present. While thirty years ago we were deconstructing the world, we now urgently need to reconstruct it with sound intentions. The writing is on the wall.

Manifesto Excerpts— Robin Chatwin—Fake News ‘I have broadband at home! My new tablet lets me work anywhere! With my smartphone, I always know what’s going on!’ 1 Written five years ago by political theorist Jodi Dean, in hindsight her sarcasm shows she really did know what was ‘going on’. While the faults of non-stop information reached new heights with the dawning post-truth era, Dean’s work chronicles the underlying currents that led to this position: ‘Investment in information technologies drove the nineties dot-com bubble, feeding New Economy hype, generating excess capacity, and leading to no discernible increase in productivity apart from that in the hightech industry. Even after the bubble burst, New Economy rhetoric continued to extol digitalization for enabling capitalism to overcome its contradictions.’

According to Dean, technology ‘made capitalism acceptable, exciting, and cool’, while also providing the basic tools necessary for its neoliberal acceleration. Meanwhile, capitalism rewards the competitive individuals willing to ‘be connected, receive and process continuously’, in turn further 109

Left The Leave campaign’s much debated use of figures exemplifies the fugitive nature of statistics in Robin Chatwin’s Fake News.

adding to the ‘growing mass of data’ of information. To Dean, capitalism and communication technologies are incestuously enmeshed, each enabling the other. (Perhaps post-truth is an offspring of this hazardous relationship.)

Moreover, architecture’s dependence on both capitalism and technology makes for an even gloomier image. To extinguish the post-truth, we must liberate ourselves from its formative capitalist routes. Through understanding and unpicking architecture’s setting within the world Dean describes, can the profession practise from a more truthful position?

Charlotte Hurley—A Policy on Policy There is an ingrained complexity to London as it exists in its state of permanent, comfortable chaos. The urban form has arisen from the city’s convoluted history of architecture and policy, with each layer responding directly to the events of its time, and the recent policies such as the London Housing Design Guide beginning to have visible effects, with the effectiveness of policy limited by its clarity and method of application.

Various subtleties and conflicts of interests are negotiated, from private developers interested in the viability of proposals for financial gain, to local authorities interested in the welfare of their area. The architect navigates the complexities of the system with a level of agility, however policies are further reaching than simply the professions of architecture and developer.

They are evident across all aspects of daily public life and at all scales, even reaching individuals interested in one-off extensions to their home who are required to consider overlooking issues and rights of light.

‘Consciousness is the premise for change. You can only change things if you are in the know.’ 2 It is imperative to understand policy, not just at face value but what caused it and the unintended consequences on the city, before trying to manipulate it. In challenging conventional policy, there is the opportunity to negotiate an increase in the levels of generosity and the quality of design. Good designers are adept at creatively manipulating the rules, as suggested by Alvar Aalto: ‘without constraints there is no creativity’.

The architectural potential of the constraints must be embraced.

Charlotte Madgwick—Sustainable Feminisms It needs to be understood that advocating the empowerment of women does not undermine any progress men have made in the battle against climate change so far, or in the history of architectural design. Nor is it saying women are better equipped to deal with it. But it is about recognising that women account for half of the people in this world, therefore hold half the opinions, knowledge and ideas of how to live sustainably on the planet. So if they are not given a voice, then we are only half addressing the problem. To build a climate movement of any sustenance we need to 110

Critical Practice

2 J Schubert, E Schütz and L Streich, Something Fantastic: A Manifesto By Three Young Architects on Worlds, People, Cities, and Houses.

Right Protestors including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and actress Emma Thompson protesting about climate change from Charlotte Madgwick’s Sustainable Feminisms.

3. C Fenton, The Climate Movement is Stuck in ‘Groundhog Day’ (2016)

4.

N Klein, This Changes Everything (2014), p13.

Above

Assemble on site from Alice Moxley.

work with and learn from the historically oppressed. As Cam Fenton says: ‘If we approach learning from these movements not just as harvesting their best ideas, but building relationships, this could also be our best means to find the “fault lines” of our movements. Through this we can get beyond the politics of token solidarity and dig deep to build the kind of transformative power that a climate movement really demands.’ 3 Adding architecture into this equation, we have the opportunity to build a world of physical permanence in an intangible world of laws and politics.

Giving us some leverage on Naomi Klein’s quote: ‘the answer is much more simple than many have led us to believe, we are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of avoiding catastrophe are extremely threatening to an elite minority that have a stranglehold over our economy, our politics and most media outlets’. 4 If we take the initiative to begin to build the world of the future, we can have a huge influence on the way people live their lives and what they attach value to: spanning the rhythms of the natural world and the constructed cultures of humanity, tying the two together into something meaningful that resonates with us as biological beings, allowing us some control over our environment and blurring the boundaries between where one starts and another begins.

Alice Moxley—Alright: Stop, Collaborate and Listen Poletti’s statement that ‘architects must step out of themselves and put themselves in the shoes of future residents’ 5 is an astute one. To pursue a more meaningful result, architects must recognise the power of working with each other, as well as the end user. Collaboration should not be seen as weak, but as empowering. Given a long history of single names, it is not surprising that those of us just starting our careers see the profession as geared towards individual authorship. Yet today practices must embrace change, especially with the rise in contractor-led procurement methods.

New practices are changing the profession, outwardly looking to foster a more collaborative working method. There is an innate understanding among younger practices that to stay relevant, architects must engage with the communities that they are designing for. Brand identity is no longer restricted to the individuals that drive practice, but through the meaningful work created. It is through this methodology, focused wholly on the end user, that the architect should foster a new role within the industry. Furthermore, if design methodology is truly geared towards those who occupy the spaces, we will as a society arrive at more socially relevant buildings.

Take ownership of your work, only in a collective sense, because ultimately buildings are built for people, not for the satisfaction of the individual ego, so please, collaborate!

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Ben Breheny—Architecture against Neoliberalism While architecture is strongly buffeted by the forces of neoliberalism and its complex power arrangements, the intensity of the political framework in which architects work should serve to remind the profession that they must understand their actions politically too. Perhaps the inherent nature of architecture as a co-ordinating, central profession, with architects acting as the mediator of the complex relationships of an architectural project, gives them the power to influence as well as serve. Rather than accepting the stripping away of the role of the architect as a political entity, architects should monopolise and develop their position as the crux of the building contract for change.

The privileged position architects hold in projects engenders a responsibility to be critical and use the skills of spatial thinking and the ability to integrate complex competing demands to achieve excellence in an outcome that contributes to the common good. If these values could become enshrined in the regulatory bodies of the profession, or in a new organisational structure, architects could begin to orchestrate change on a wider scale without concern of being dropped from a job.

It should again be acknowledged that architecture as a profession does not operate alone. As Jeremy Till writes, ‘we are all mutually reliant – not just in terms of economic exchange, but also in the context of intellectual exchange’ 5 and the profession concurrently has to accept its ‘fragility in the face of contingent forces’. Till advocates that architects act ‘modestly and partially and politically, making small moves towards a slightly better place rather than large moves towards a reinvented world’.

As a pragmatic and hopeful position, this is clearly a valid starting point, but the urgency of our socio-economic and environmental conditions requires some far-reaching imaginative design work, against neoliberalism and towards a new world.

Jamie Hignett—Occasional space for a more playful city Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is place, and time in the image of man is occasion.’

First written in Forum 7/1959, quoted from A Van Eyck and V Ligtelijn, Writings (2006), this was Aldo Van Eyck’s thundering response to the dead Functionalism of CIAM at their 11th conference in Otterlo, the Netherlands.

As a founding member of Team X, he led the rebellion against their dead technocracy. CIAM’s methods had been hastily adopted by postwar states eager to rebuild after the devastation of the war, supporting heavy top-down planning, industrial construction methods and erasing the irrational, historic street patterns. Van Eyck would once more be enraged to see the same ‘development’ shaping our cities.

The scale of development now comes without the grand utopian ambitions of the postwar housing projects and has instead become ‘accumulation by dispossession’ 6. Developers are extracting huge amounts of wealth from urban centres, yet killing the life that generates this value.

While placemaking is now ubiquitous in the lexicon of every developer as they set out to build new communities, they do not acknowledge occasion.

If our built environment is to reflect our habits, we need space for occasions.

We need to create occasional space.

Calin Barbu—Atlas Paddling The wall is a barrier between two different conditions: one worth keeping, the other, not so much. It is also the catalyst for a metamorphosis, from a place of tall towers despised by many, to an uncanny one of exoticism and attraction, where soothsayer and savant, artisan and critic, thief and jailer break bread together, whether by choice or circumstance. An arrondissement of its own authority, where those too many to be oppressed, but too few to make a change, linger on the sidelines, as history has always placed them.

When the waters came in and took the derelict docklands with them, a voice was quick to declare it is addressing two pressing ailments of the city – floods and heritage. ‘For what is the spirit of this metropolis if not one of equal love for both our future and past?’ It was addressing the floods 112

Critical Practice

5.

J Till, Architecture Depends (2013), p166.

6.

R Moore, Slow Burn City (2016)

Right Proposal by Jeffrey Inaba for treating Venice’s historic fabric, while flooding parts as to encourage part of the decay.

by welcoming them into the city, building gargantuan cylinders to act as trepanation, directing the water towards the skies so that they would not spread horizontally. But, within this decision, sacrifice was implicit, as neighbourhoods would now need to be flooded – or, as some remarked, ‘conserved’ for posterity, a submerged Pompeii with starfish, coral and crabs as fresh citizens.

And such is the story of this part of the city – it began with an encasing wall, while displacement was running in parallel. The river then started growing within, foaming and meandering its course through what once were streets, now an extension of its muddy bed. Reflected in the swelling pool you could only see tall, lagan towers, a lonely clue of the city which once stood there.

When the sounds of the rushing waters ceased, they were soon replaced by ones different in nature. Bandsaws, hammers, drills, chisels and cutters were cavorting within the decisive grasp of inhabitants new and old, swaying in a syncopated rhythm, giving birth to a new city from a cloud of dust. Above shop, sports pitch, town hall and house, a new shop, a new sports pitch, a new town hall and a new house arose, an inversion of the district’s old patterns.

‘When will it be finished?’ you might ask in earnest, struggling to see beyond wooden catwalks, extensive hoarding and ladders. But you see, permanence or completion were never ambitions here – the solid foundations of the buildings which were supposed to make them stand forever, had assured that now they had to lie dozens of metres below the water. The foundation of the new district will be change. You will then realise – while looking at a floating street, or a house anchored in the side of the wall, metal supports clamping uncomfortably at the brilliant white – that something cannot be destroyed if it stays unfinished.

A selection of full manifestos is published on our website.

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DESIGN IN URBANISM LARA KINNEIR AIL RET AL CI SO

Butchers Grocers Tea dealers Wine merchants Off licences Beer retailers Cheesemongers Confectioners Takeaway outlets

Pubs Cafes Restaurants Internet cafes

FOOD & DRINK

Fruiterers

Cinemas Casinos

Dairy suppliers

Health food shop

OTHER ITEMS

Clothing shops Bridal shop Shoe shops

Electronics and phone shops Builders merchants

CLUBS AND ORGANISATIONS

General stores

Political organisations Men’s club Fraternity Religious institution

Music and musical instrument sellers

DIY shops Horticultural sundriesmen

Churches Art school

Shoe manufacturers / merchants Tailors Milliners

MATERIALS / CRAFT

Pharmacies Herbalists GP surgeries Physician/surgeons Sexual health clinic Dentists

MEDICAL LEGAL

Accountants and tax consultants Engineers

Solicitors

PROFESSIONAL

Theatrical costume makers Corset makers Dressmakers Watchmakers

Tobacco manufacturers / merchants Gas lamp manufacturers / merchants Furniture manufacturers / merchants Printers

Drapers Oilmen Timber merchants Coal merchants

Firework manufacturers

M A

Sewing machine Bicycle manufacturers manufacturers Tablet manufacturers Carriage builders Ostrich feather manufacturers Artificial teeth manufacturers Scale manufacturers Whip manufacturers Rug machine manufacturer Ladder manufacturer Brush manufacturer

Motor tyre vulcanisers Metalworkers

Post office Auctioneers Business service centre Post office, bank and Pawnbrokers telegraph office

Lawyers Insurance providers

Hosiers

Stationers Charity shops

Toy dealers Surgical instrument Glass / china Newsagents dealers dealers Sports supplies shops Stamp shops Jewellers Florist Card shops Beauty supplies Gramophone Appliances shop shop dealer Furniture shops

Medical association

Cocoa manufacturer

G RIN TU AC UF N

ENTERTAINMENT

Ethnic food shops

CLOTHING

Bakers Corn manufacturer / merchant

Dyers

Leather manufacturers / merchants

Dry cleaners and Pawnbrokers launderettes Opticians Photo developers Banks

Tax collector Town Hall, library and museum

Publisher Creche

Money transfer Specialist library shops Lodging Hairdressers Car servicing and barbers

Photographers Nail and beauty After school club salons Estate agents Betting shops Funeral directors Council service point Gym

Servants’ registry offices

Mini cab office

NON-PROFESSIONAL

SE

CE

R

VI

S

FIRST YEAR STUDENTS COMBINE OBSERVATION AND PROPOSITION IN THE LONDON BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK

Left Uses along the Walworth Road. In white are uses in 1910, in black are uses in 2017 and those in bold black have continued to exist from 1910 to 2017.

Below left Maxim Sas maps land ownership in Elephant and Castle.

Below right Fraser Morrison’s analytical roundabout studies.

who owns what.

The concept of urban studies can be traced back to the 1900s. Today it is a large and diverse area of research, practice and academic programmes.

With current market offers providing ‘urban services’ and ‘urban analytics’, and skills such as ‘urban observers’ and ‘urban data intelligence’ being listed on job descriptions, one could be left wondering what this discipline now is and for whom.

At the LSA we are focused on the process and application of design, its inclusion of many varied sources of knowledge, and its diversity of outputs for the betterment of the city and its citizens. As designers, we are in a unique position to engage in these new and old forms of urban ‘knowledge’ and ensure we are at the heart of the translation process between their evidence and its spatial implication, proposition and outcomes.

City-making is a process involving many different people and disciplines. We are interested in the physical shaping of cities, and the social, economic and political processes that contribute to the production of urban environments. We believe that design should be central to how decisions that shape the urban future are made, and that this requires a framework that can collectivise these different processes, irrespective of their differences, and mediate a route to deliver positive outcomes.

The LSA’s Urban Studies module enables students to understand the city, and learn how design can be applied to enable such a framework that supports and nurtures the role of design. Uniquely, all our students begin their two-year course with Urban Studies. This is a deliberate positioning, to allow students to explore the breadth of topic and expand their understanding of the city. We seek to create a platform of knowledge that is continually strengthened and refined as students progress through the proceeding modules, leading to deeper and more meaningful spatial outputs.

Urban contexts involve a multitude of challenges that relate to the physical, social, economic and political fabric of the city, the agendas and involvement of those shaping it, and the processes that determine how much of the city shaping occurs ‘by committee’ or by default, as opposed to a genuine and effective design process. Our agenda is to ensure students are exposed to these contexts and skilled to bring incremental and disruptive propositions to a valued design process in innovative and entrepreneurial ways.

The Urban Studies module is organised to create a continuous design cycle of observation-response-proposition-reaction-refinement repeated and recalibrated regularly in response to the ever-changing conditions. A suite of skills is required for this, and exercises allow for the development of these skills, to apply this thinking at varying speeds, to varying audiences and participants, under various conditions. This requires a strong culture of communication and discussion, which is instilled through regular group discussions, debates and presentations as part of the teaching programme.

Each year we choose one specific London borough to investigate and connect with, which remains the focus of attention throughout the student’s

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Old Street Roundabout

倀䔀䄀䈀伀䐀夀

䰀伀一䐀伀一 ☀ 刀䔀䜀䤀伀一䄀䰀 倀刀伀倀 䰀匀䈀唀 䰀☀儀 匀伀唀吀䠀圀䄀刀䬀 䌀伀唀一䌀䤀䰀

Lambeth Bridge Roundabout

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THE LONDON SCHOOL O

‘They’re segregating us!’

‘If you come [into] one hairdresser and you can’t get your hair done, they’ll point you over the road.’

MORRISONS

In recent years, Bellenden Village - arguably the poshest part of Peckham - has grown in size, with middleclass establishments . . . moving into [Rye Lane locations], including those formerly occupied by black hairdressers.’

Fig. 6 / Typical Rye Lane shop layouts: subdivision, openness and linearity

AY L E S H A M C E N T R E

‘Hairdressers believe footfall (a key driver of their business) will be reduced.’

BOOTS

PRIMARK

SPORTS DIRECT PECKHAM LEVELS

ARGOS

R Y E L A N E S TAT I O N KHAN’S

M&S Foodhall Nov 18 / 860 m2

Topshop + Topman Aug 18 / 320 m2 H&M Jul 18 / 510 m2

INTERVENTION

ASDA

INTERVENTION B A R C L AY S

‘The council has bought out the complex network of leaseholders and owners of the Blenheim Grove buildings containing African hairdressers and eyebrowthreading kiosks.’

THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

M J A Cradock / michael.cradock@the-lsa.org / @mjacradock

URBAN STUDIES / THE RYE LANE EXPERIMENTS

Above Michael Cradock’s study of Rye Lane, Peckham, with its distinct retail typology of subdivided micro-shops. Current proposals are suggesting these ‘urban subversions’ should be relocated to new developments away from the high street in order to make space for chain stores and ‘diversify’ the shopping on offer.

Above Cradock’s visualisation of a proposed planning policy to permit homeowners who integrate their basement floors with the new retail spaces to build upwards, while maintaining a residential feel by planting front gardens on the roofs of the new high street.

Left Cradock’s proposal to provide space for micro-businesses along Choumert Road to link two existing retail centres in a way that maintains a high street typology beneficial to the existing local business models, while integrating the two socio-economic populations.

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Urban Studies

M J A Cradock / michael.cradock@the-lsa.org / @mjacradock

M J A Cradock / michael.cradock@the-lsa.org / @mjacradock

HE RYE LANE EXPERIMENTS

Green space

High-street zones

5

Tower View

4

3

2 6

1

Ground View

Fraser Morrison’s new Latin American market, urban learning centre and viewing platform located at Elephant and Castle roundabout: 1. Open ground floor market zone; 2. First Floor Independent Stores; 3.

Second Floor Independent Stores; 4. Gallery Space; 5. Viewing Level; 6. Green space.

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Left Maxim Sas’s multimodal interchange incorporates the local market and a new Underground station entrance to enhance public space and activity at the Elephant and Castle roundabout.

Right William Bellamy’s proposal to create Consolidation Centres at Underground and network rail stations to provide an automated courier service for London; minimising traffic and making it more user-friendly.

Below A group proposal for Old Kent Road offers a predicted future street scheme that encourages employment, commercial and residential shared spaces.

two-year programme. This year we have investigated Southwark, a central London borough with some of the starkest physical and social contrasts between the glistening new London and an older, wearier one that seems at risk of being forgotten. Cheek by jowl, new and old, living and dormant pieces of this part of the capital are experiencing the strain of change.

The students have investigated the numerous clusters of historical, current and proposed developments across the borough, considering the density of activity and growth alongside the connectivity between them.

Beginning in Peckham, they have explored from south to north, west to east, from the Elephant and Castle to Canada Water, Old Kent Road to Bermondsey, and not forgetting the powerful Thames’ edge that runs along the top of the borough. Through on-site research and secondary evidence gathering, the students have become experts on this piece of the city.

As we explored the area, we continually addressed the fundamental question of who shapes the city, and what is the role of the architect in this process. We considered the forces and ‘shapers’ at play from the public, private and civic sector, and met with these participants regularly whether through formal meetings or on-site investigations.

While students have developed their own brief and agendas, exercises have been set that guide the students through iterative design-based research and propositions for the opportunities for impact that they have uncovered. Alongside local and city-wide opportunities, their work has also considered the global context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), which the school has pledged to address, indicating how a framework could be introduced to enable the assessment and evaluation to achieve a number of the most relevant UNSDGs within the current areas of development.

From this shared resource and set of investigations, individual and group projects have emerged, both as a critique of current development models, and as a response to the particularities and potential of Southwark. From addressing and progressing what is now a familiar topic of mixed-use industry and housing models, to sustaining the high street as a focus of strong community culture, there has been a strong emphasis through all projects on the economic argument for value beyond the immediate payback, alongside the desperate need for a deeper and more collective purpose beyond coffee shops and retail within the spaces of our city.

Next year, our site will be a very different piece of London with a growing interest from the political, built environment professionals and community sectors. We are looking forward to pursuing the next chapter in gaining further in-depth knowledge of a diverse piece of our city and enabling students to generate architectural proposals that respond to the challenges and opportunities of our time to become nimble agents of change within London, and beyond.

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Urban Studies

THE NEW OLD KENT ROAD AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE

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REMEMBERING WILL ALSOP

THE LSA PAYS TRIBUTE TO WILL ALSOP (1947-2018) WHO WAS ONE OF OUR EARLIEST SUPPORTERS

Alsop with Will Hunter at last year’s first LSA graduation exhibition at Somerset House.

Will Hunter, LSA Founder/Director aLL Design was one of the first practices to sign up to the LSA’s Practice Network. I think such a new (and improbable-sounding) venture appealed to Will’s renegade spirit, and he became a firm advocate and sounding board.

Will was my first boss: I joined Alsop Architects (as it was then) for my year out in 2002, a heady time in the office shortly after the Stirling Prize win, and with commissions flooding in. He seemed to be challenging the establishment from inside the gates, right at the centre of things. The time in his office was my first proper formative experience of architecture.

Will was forthright and articulate, but in conversation, I will always remember him being at his most communicative not with words, but via his wide range of ‘hmmm’ or ‘mmms’ or ‘ahms’, which could variously be deciphered as ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ or emphatically ‘no’, and be anywhere between twinkly-eyed enthusiasm to furrowed-brow scepticism.

He was a very generous supporter, both with his encouragement and his enthusiasm; his time and his wine – memories I will cherish. He had five LSA students in his office at the last count – Dan, Tim, Jacob, Alex and Aleks. He will be hugely missed by the school and its students, and by me personally.

Daniel Lee, LSA founding graduate 2017 I first met Will Alsop on his beach at Testbed 1 in Battersea in 2015. I had prepared lots of drawings for my interview naively thinking I’d impress him with images. His response was: ‘Hmm, you must really like people, do you like people, hmm, hmm?’ ‘I love people,’ I replied. ‘Very good,’ said Will.

I worked with Will as part of my practice placement at the LSA for two years. He seemed to find delight in throwing people in at the deep end, knowing that they would be fine. In the office he’d surprise us every day – with each turn of his sketchbook he showed us that to design can be endlessly enjoyable if you’re honest, self-confident and naughty. Each and every scribble gave a witty middle finger to convention.

He always encouraged us to look in different directions: when the computer was asking too many questions he inspired me to pick up a paint brush, something I wish I had thanked him for. We have all been touched by Will’s independent vision, wisdom and generosity. We’ve lost an irreplaceable mentor, boss and friend.

Nigel Coates, chair of the Academic Court Let’s be honest: Will was no ordinary architect; he painted, and not timid little watercolours in a sketchbook, but big bold canvasses of sweeping gestures in gaudy colours. This was his way into architecture, what gave energy to his forms, and how he imbued buildings with a flagrant immediacy.

He studied architecture at the Architectural Association during its post-pop anything-goes era of the early 1970s. By mid decade, the AA scene had evolved into performance more than building. Having apprenticed with Cedric Price, Will edged towards artistry, and took up tutoring at an art (rather than architecture) school, which is how we first met. We shared a taste for punky, misshapen forms. Whether inside or outside the academy, group initiatives were de rigueur. When the first real projects were won, they too were shaped in the atelier spirit, no matter how institutional the clients.

Will’s brash painterly personality was a breath of fresh air in architecture.

Bringing the ludic to bear on the corporate or the institutional, he constantly flirted with what architecture is normally afraid to be. His buildings carry his vitality with them; they connect with the narratives of popular culture, hence buildings as chips or skirts or hairdos. Larger than life, he liked to orchestrate non-architectural forms alongside blunt architectural archetypes, like the puffball about to burst from inside the shed. Size never fazed him; he once gave a lecture on turning Middle England into a single S-shaped city.

Will had an unusually generous way with people who would normally shy away from architects. He could corral communities and give shape to their dreams. Like all truly creative people, he was happiest when inventing something new and sharing it at the Doodle Bar, an adjunct of recent manifestations of his office where conviviality was a true test of whether an idea was worth floating. The architecture scene will miss him terribly and will be all the poorer for it.

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The London School of Architecture Charity number 1159927 Established 2015 the-lsg.org www.instagram.com/lsoarch twitter @LSofARCH Trustees Crispin Kelly (Chair), Harbinder Birdi, Nick Bliss, Davina Mallinckrodt, Robert Mull, Elsie Owusu, Roland Oakshett, Diana Rice, Deborah Saunt, Margaret Stephens Founder / Director Will Hunter Deputy Director (on leave) Nicola Read Acting Deputy Director and Leader of Urban Studies Lara Kinneir Associate Director Vicky Richardson Director of Inter-Practice Deborah Saunt Director of Critical-Practice James Soane Director of Proto-Practice Clive Sall Leader of Historical Studies Alan Powers Leader of Technical Studies Lewis Kinneir Critical Practice lecturer Peter Buchanan Operations Manager Stephanie Rice Registrar Marilyn Dyer Academic Court Nigel Coates (Chair), Farshid Moussavi, Leon van Schaik Academic Partner London Metropolitan University External Examiners Alessandra Cianchetta, Susannah Hagan

18

2018 Graduates Louie Austen. Calin Andrei Barbu, Alexander Jonathan Bell, Hannah Bowers, Ben Breheny, Robin Chatwin, Matthieu Courtade, Elisabeth Day, Jacob Dix, Katrina Duncan, Christian Georcelin, James Cornish Hignett, Charlotte Hurley, Molly Judge, Yasmin Lokat, Charlotte Madgwick, Lloyd Evan Martin, Lisa McDanell, Francesca Merton, Alice Moxley, Abigail Portus, Claire Seager, Sarah Sheehan , Sheenwar Siti, Tommaso Sordon, Hari Tank Second Year Design Tutors Jesper Henriksson (Hesselbrand), Jessie Turnbull (MICA), Lucy Styles (SANAA), Paolo Vimercati (Grimshaw), Paolo Zaide, Philip Turner (Allford Hall Monaghan Morris) Urban Studies Tutors Hana Loftus (HAT Projects), Steven Smith (Urban Narrative) Technical Studies Tutors Carolina Bartram (Arup), Hugh Quail (Arup), Tara Clinton (Arup), William Whitby (Arup) DTT Architectural Agency Led by Andrew McEwan (Orms) and Maxine Pringle (aLL Design) Students: Annecy Attlee, Simon Banfield, Josh Fenton, Vojtech Nemec, Craig Page DTT Adaptive Typologies Led by Angie Jim Osman (Allies and Morrison) and Rafael Marks (Penoyre & Prasad). Students: Seyi Adewole, Cristina Gaidos, Alice Hardy, Pierre Longhini, Tim Rodber, Nelli Wahlsten

Ambassadors Carolyn Larkin, Charlotte Skene Catling, Eleanor Hill, Kate Stirling, Matthew Claudel, Rohan Silva, Theresa Simon, Tom Leahy

DTT Metabolic City Led by Christophe Egret and Mark Warren (Studio Egret West) and Tomas Klassnik (Klassnik Corporation). Students: Tom Badger, William Bellamy, Alessandro Carlucci, Sam Nicholls, Katie Oliver, Eloise Rogers, Joe Walker

Alumni ambassadors Aleksandar Stojakovic, Alexander Frehse, Chiara Barrett, Daniel Lee, Fiona Stewart, Phelan Heinsohn, Raphael Arthur, Milly Salisbury, Maeve Dolan, Dawa Pratten, Andrea Nolan, Fearghal Moran

DTT Emerging Tools Led by Harbinder Birdi, Krists Ernstsons, Benjamin Graham (Hawkins\Brown), Tessa Baird (OEB Architects), Rae Whittow-Williams (PDP London). Students: Matthew Barnett, Sara Lambridis, Fraser

Futures

Morrison, Nic Shewan, Maxim Sas, Persa Tzemetzi DTT Global Currents Led by Steven Kennedy (Grimshaw), Javier Quintana (IDOM), Joseph Zeal-Henry (Jestico + Whiles), Chris Worsfold (Wimshurst Pelleriti).

Students: Robert Buss, James Clarke, Abiel Hagos, Cameron Lintott, Roni Zachor Barak DTT New Knowledge Led by Anthony Engi-Meacock and Giles Smith (Assemble). Students: Michael Cradock, Maelys Garreau, Matthew Lo, Toby Parrott, Živilė Volbikaitė, Philippine Wright Workshops Diana Rice (teamwork), Tilly Blackwood (presentation), Katya Duffy (graphic design) Visiting Critics Isabel Allen, Simon Allford, Amanda Baillieu, Angela Brady, Jane Briginshaw, Peter Buchanan, Andrew Carr, Paul Davies, Sara L’Esperance, Adrian Gale, Lee Mallett, Fred Manson, Niall McLaughlin, Maurizio Mucciola, Alicia Pivaro, Oliver Richards, Annalie Riches, Johanna Roberts, Emory Smith, Dan Taylor, Christopher Woodward Design Think Tank panelists Pooja Agrawal, Louise Duggan, Leon van Schaik, John Bingham-Hall, Hardin Tibbs, Hanif Kara, Carolyn Steel, Alicia Pivaro, Robert Bevan, Shumi Bose, Paul Karakusevic, Chris Foges, Alison Brooks, Finn Williams, Alan Baxter, Sam Jacob, Barbara Campbell-Lange, Susannah Hagan, Ed Jarvis, Nigel Coates, Philip Turner Drawings Matter contributors Peter Buchanan, Paul Davies, Indy Johar (00), Gemma Riberti (WGSN), Anthony Vidler, Alex Arestis and Victoria Wägner (Publica), Maria Fedorchenko (Architectural Association) Show & Tell lecture series 4 December: Keb Garavito Bruhn, Jesper Henriksson, Clive Sall, Lucy Styles . 29 January: Anna Liu, James Macdonald Wright, Kay Hughes, Brent Dzekciorius. 26 February: Petra Marko, Richard Lavington.

19 March: Jay Gort, John Puttick

Practice Network 51% Studio, 5th Studio, ACME, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Alan Baxter, Alan Higgs Architects, aLL Design, Allies and Morrison, Alma-nac, AOC, Astudio, Aukett Swanke, Beasley Dickson, Brady Mallalieu, Buckley Grey Yeoman, Carl Turner Architects, Carmody Groarke, CF Moller, Chris Dyson, Citizens Design Bureau, Clive Sall Architecture, Coppin Dockray, Cullinan Studio, Dallas Pierce Quntero, David Chipperfield Architects, David Kohn Architects, Daykin Marshall, DeMatosRyan, Dow Jones, DSDHA, Duggan Morris, Erect Architecture, EVA Studio, Foster + Partners, Gensler, Grimshaw, HAT Projects, Hawkins\ Brown, Haworth Tompkins, Henley Halebrown Rorrison, Hesselbrand, HOK, Hopkins Architects, HUT, Idom, IF_DO, Interrobang, Jamie Fobert, Jan Kattein Architects, Jestico + Whiles, John McAslan + Partners, Karakusevic Carson, Liddicoat & Goldhill, Lipton Plant Architects, Maccreanor Lavington, Marcus Beale Architects, Marko & Placemakers, Mikhail Riches, NBBJ, NG Architects, One Works, Orms, PDP London, Penoyre & Prasad, Piercy & Company, Prewett Bizley, Project Orange, Red Deer, Robin Partington & Partners, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Scott Brownrigg, Scott Tallon Walker Architects, ScottWhitby, Simpson Studio, Skene Catling de la Pena, SODA, Solid Space, Something & Son, Squire & Partners, Stanton Williams, Studio Egret West, Studio Octopi, Surman Weston, SUSD, Tate Harmer, Terry Farrell and Partners, The Klassnik Corporation, Tonkin Liu, vPPR, Walters and Cohen, Waugh Thistleton, We Made That, What Architecture, William Smalley Architect, Wimshurst Pelleriti

A very special thank you to the practices, partners and patrons who have supported the school and made our work possible: Gold Patron Practices 2018 Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Foster + Partners, Grimshaw, Orms, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Silver Patron Practices 2018 Carmody Groarke, Hawkins\ Brown, Jestico + Whiles, Squire and Partners, Stanton Williams, Studio Egret West Bronze Patron Practices 2018 Alan Higgs Architects, IF_DO, Red Deer, SUSD Founding Patrons Niall Hobhouse, Crispin Kelly, Sir Terry Leahy, Nadja Swarovski Founding Practices Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Allies and Morrison, Grimshaw, IDOM, Orms, PDP London, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Scott Brownrigg Founding Partners Stanhope, Savills Founding Benefactors Richard Collins, Martin Halusa, Sir Peter Mason, Davina Mallinckrodt Bursaries 2018/19 Davina and Philip Mallinckrodt Foundations The Garfield Weston Foundation, The Schroder Foundation, The Drake Trust Strategic Partners Caro Communications, Cultural-Agenda, Drawing Matter, Makerversity, Somerset House Teaching programme hosts Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Alan Baxter, Allies and Morrison, DSDHA HOK, Intbau, KCA, MICA Architects, Pilbrow and Partners, Project Orange, Squire and Partners, Studio Egret West British Council Venice Fellow Cameron Lintott

Connect magazine Š 2018 The London School of Architecture. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the publisher. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.

Editors Will Hunter and Vicky Richardson Sub-Editor Julia Dawson Project assistant Divya Patel Design and Template Studio Mathias Clottu Graphic designer Oriol Arnedo Printed by Cambrian Printers The LSA Summer Show 21-26 June 2018, Somerset House Exhibition Design Alaric Campbell-Garratt (Assorted Studio) Exhibition graphics Studio Mathias Clottu Printed by Personal Printers Supplies donated by Jewson Idencity: Six Design Proposals from the LSA to Challenge the Identity of London 4 June to 11 August 2018, Roca London Gallery Exhibition Design Studio Mathias Clottu LSA Summer Lecture 6pm Saturday 23 June LSA and LSE Cities Summer Lecture: Kengo Kuma on Architecture and Identity In partnership with the London Festival of Architecture, Japan Foundation and the Ace Hotel Lecture Poster Design Caterina Izzo

19

These drawings by Daniel Lee (Founding Graduate, 2017) are a live notation of the space, material and sound at Walmer Yard recorded for the Royal Acadamy event as part of their Encounters series.

Main image Constant chatting near a concrete wall.

Above

Noise and light on a steel stair.

Left Artists and architects table top discussion.

124

Sketchbook