DS16

BEN KIRK   (Dip Yr 1)         The New Religion, Finsbury

With the decline of Christianity in London, and the resulting emptying of churches, remaining devotees get to commission praying machines to represent them in churches. But as they too die off, these machines begin instead to dismantle the churches and recycle them into centres for a new religion — cryogenics, a different kind of search for immortality.

LIBBY BLUNDELL   (Dip Yr 2)         Lost Love, Paddington

Nothing divides London’s citizens quite like the failed relationships between its one-time lovers. Here, on an astonishing infill site hidden behind a false terraced house and above the underground line in Paddington, is a collection point for the capital’s old love letters. It becomes a place to see how love flourishes and dies — a heartbreaking museum like no other.

NATALIE BENES   (Dip Yr 1)         The Company of Mudlarks, Southwark

A secret society — London’s mudlarks — thrives by scavenging antiques and more prosaic debris along the banks of the Thames. Here they are given a new base on a jetty in Southbank, hidden beneath a vertical storage tower for our semi-desired objects, as well as a new auction house run no doubt by flashy guys who are strangers to the taxman.

SARAH CUSTANCE   (Dip Yr 1)         Artists’ Collective, Broadgate

Starting off with a fascinating study of a threatened artists’ collective in Hammersmith, this atmospheric project imagines a new force for urban development on the fringes of the City of London. Here a new facility allows artists to work and display their work, while also providing a new gateway marker to start to diversity the activities of the financial area.

JACK GREGORY   (Dip Yr 2)         The Paupers’ Graveyard, Southwark

Southwark’s Crossbones cemetery was for many of the poorest in London, including so-called outcasts like prostitutes and criminals. Today its supporters have turned it into a place for worship and performance, London’s closest thing to voodoo culture. This project suggests a scientific research centre to exhume the dead coupled with spaces for the cult of remembrance.

ALEX COOK   (Dip Yr 2)         City of the Dead, Bloomsbury

London cannot cope with the requirements of burying/cremating its dead. This project suggest a new method for the disposing of the dead, returning to the earth and providing soil fertiliser for loved ones to remember them. Dealing with all the needs for the southern half of Camden, the design is subtly and seamlessly integrated into St George’s Gardens, south of Kings Cross.

ALEX CHAN   (Dip Yr 2)         Smells of the City, Islington

Set on the bank of a busy canal basin along the City Road in Islington, a new urban smokery is there to treat fish and other food for the social activity of eating. The importance of smell in London, slowly eradicated since the nineteenth century, is brought back inside a giant pleasure park that is concealed behind what must be the city’s largest inhabited hedge.

JESS ROSTRON   (Dip Yr 2)         Back from the Front, Soho

How can our society deal with the return of traumatised soldiers from quasi-colonial wars in the Middle East? We could, as normal, exile them once again to suburban institutions, or else, as here, offer them a base in Soho to campaign for compensation and receive soothing aromatherapy treatment in rooms off a hidden fragrant courtyard, complete with bee-keeping.

GRANT SHEPHERD   (Dip Yr 2)            Dementia Centre, NoHo

On the currently empty NoHo site off Goodge Street, a new dementia centre is set within a vibrant urban park. Based on the idea of walking as a therapeutic treatment for mental disorders, a snaking route offers access to various medical rooms while also framing glimpses of the existing chapel building and surrounding context, as a means to trigger useful memories.