Initially my investigation took the form of a study of London’s existing transport infrastructure from a range of perspectives including energy use, experiential qualities and efficiency, alongside a theoretical overview. It was during these studies that the focus of my interest became clear. What is needed is a change of perspective. A different approach that can challenge the predominant 20th Century trend of personal automotive transport, but also help people to fully embrace a rapidly burgeoning urban lifestyle, advances in the speed of digital technology and the seeming contradiction presented by a necessary emphasis on a more sustainable life choices.
Architecture that champions a cultural sustainability could start to address these criteria, balancing the fast changing and seemingly inhumane nature of the city with our want, need and desire to live in such a place.
Early investigations into this notion of cultural sustainability led me to the Slow Movement. This established and popular alternative encapsulates many of the aspirations of those torn between the desire and motivation to speed up in tune with the world around them, never missing a second, and the untold psychological and physiological benefits of pausing, just for a moment, to take in your surroundings.
Essentially, slowness is not something that can exist without speed. It is a relative concept, and yet it’s just the small things in life from which people can often gain the most pleasure. Whether it is walking that last leg of your journey rather than jumping on the tube on a sunny afternoon, or removing yourself from the daily rush to relax and do a crossword for five minutes, the benefits can be plentiful, ranging from increased concentration to greater composure when under pressure. The aim of my architectural proposal is thus: to provide a pervasive opportunity for calm, escape and the other benefits that this may bring to the central areas of London.
Al Scott
Project Title: Unité d’Sanitation
Project description:
As a response to wasteful processes, this project aims to reconsider existing preconceptions surrounding sewage, and proposes a new approach to urban domesticity: a community focused around faeces and food – a system of sustainable town living through a return to the sensitive, closed ecological cycles of nature. These cycles in turn drive a new form of social interaction through the occupational engagement with the system.
Contact:
alscottdesign@yahoo.co.uk.
alexander.scott@my.westminster.ac.uk
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Robin Phillips
Project Name: London: An Alternative History – Exploring Density
Project Description:
My approach to the challenges set out in the brief was to investigate density. Over a period of time, it became apparent that to properly investigate this issue would require studying an entire city. My proposal looks at what London might have been like had history taken a different course in 1795 by hypothesising what might have happened if the green belt was introduced then. The project is therefore highly speculative, but this study has unearthed all sorts of interesting considerations.
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Contact:
Kate Ashley
Project Name: Consuming London
Project description:
Investigation of urban agriculture and concept of self-sufficiency, from this: today’s lost and much needed reconnection between the growing urban population and food production.
Large majority of space available is brownfield / post-industrial, posing a number of issues such as contamination etc. This led me to investigate bioremediation as an intrinsic element of today’s urban agriculture.
Introduction of a new public space and agricultural resource will aim to knit together surrounding fragmented communities including Elm Village and Maiden Lane , providing an employment/productive resource reflecting the historical social context of the St Pancras Workhouse (i.e. allotments: ‘gardens for the poor’).
The scheme network comprises of a Central/primary and subsequent secondary sites, feeding off of an arterial link, the canal.
Intensive agricultural production and manipulaton (e.g. GM ‘super black tomato’) reflecting changing social and climatic conditions will be explored as a beneficial resource through crop adaptation and mitigation.
Contact:
Jessica Rostron
Project Title: ‘Bug Juice: Beneficial Bacteria’
Project Description:
Contact:
jess.rostron@gmail.com
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Francis Lam
Project Title: Barefoot
Project descrition:
he project is about walking and how to treat our feet, therefore, the whole scheme will embrace the idea of barefoot walking. The site is between Hyde Park and Paddington Station and the scheme is also tried to encourage commuters and locals to walk between them, hence barefoot walk in the park
Contact:
g_verve@hotmail.com
Otman Gusbi
Project Title: Hidden Places, Secret Spaces
Project Description:
“if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey its innumerable little lanes and courts”
- Dr Samuel Johnson
A great many of the byways of Central London are richly endowed with characterful events, courts whose very walls are blackened by age, sometimes leaning, sometimes bulging. Alleys, some so narrow as to barely allow the passage of a single body, where the paving slabs are worn hollow by the passage of centuries of tramping feet. By contrast there are the humble back waters which recline in a more sombre past – characterless passages, with no apparent antiquarian values. There are those which over the years have been greatly widened, reshaped, and effectively removed from the categories of ‘alley’ or ‘passage’ in all but their surviving name.
This project explores the notion of secrecy in London. My intentions was to explore these hidden streets tucked away behind main roads and experience these spaces and their atmosphere and propose a project which function for the entertainment community but tucked away from the outside world. A series of buildings linked by a public walkway. The buildings function as mixed use; apartments and venues for bands and entertainment, and a market in the afternoon. The site also accommodates an underground venue and cinema which can be reached through a hidden lift system in the middle of the public square. Along the upper public walkways are open public spaces.
Contact:
otmang@hotmail.com
Filed under: 03_Students 2008 - 2009
Alexandre Lou
Contact:
m.0798 5454 351
