DS16

Project Name: Street Life – Communes for Urbanites

Project Description:

Set within the tough reality of repetitive modular design – and located between Old Compton Street and Oxford Street in central London – this design project proposes a new urban streetscape which can embrace the simple and seemingly banal acts of commercial and domestic everyday life within Soho’s particular vibrant and (it should be said) voyeuristic context. While acknowledging that there is an apparent inability to conceive a genuinely globalised context even in a city like London, for to do so would result in an undeniable flattening of individuality, it is still clearly the case that we live similarly modulated lives as modern urban dwellers. How can we mix the feeling that we are special and unique with the knowledge also that we are not? Hence it is within the subtle idiosyncratic acts of personal desire and commodification, as well as our often near-invisible mannerisms and behavioural patterns, that the shared space of the contemporary street truly comes alive. We perform, we consume, we blend in, and we feel energised by our daily links to others whom we do not even know. Thus this project seeks to provide the sense of a physical ‘commune’ that can address the sense of temporality experienced by urbanites in a place like Soho. It does this though by proposing a new hybrid between a domestic and a commercial street, set within a design strategy which equally embraces but also indefinitely shatters the typical cliches of modular dwelling systems. The project’s aim is to deliver a generic, self-made and fluctuating urban environment which will help towards the creation of an even more eclectic and vibrant condition of street life.
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Project Awards:

08’ RIBA Presidents Silver Medal 2008, Commendation (dip. 5th yr)

08’ RIBA Sergeants Award for Excellence in Architectural Dwg.

Contact:

e. mrist83@hotmail.co.uk

m. 07966370843

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Contact:
cillek@hotmail.com

Project Title: Eel Farm

Contact:

HenryHumphreys@piercyconner.co.uk

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Eric Sze on Chan 07′

Graduating Year: 2007

Contact:

echan@ahmm.co.uk

Contact:

yu.bonny@googlemail.com

Graduation Year: 2007

Contact:

pta.de.silva@gmail.com

Project Title: Carbon Fibre Recycling Centre

Project Description:

We are becoming increasingly reliant upon the high-performance properties of composite carbon fibre, yet there is an international shortage of virgin yarn. Furthermore, all carbon fibre waste now goes into landfill. New EU legislation demands that composite materials become recyclable, stating that all vehicles – for instance – must be 95% recyclable by 2015.
This community conscious proposal includes an integrated three-tier recycling hierarchy, a flexible system capable of processing, cross-processing and re-using a multitude of domestic, commercial and industrial waste. This activity is coupled with a composite testing and research facility for innovation and development of high-tech materials.

Project Title: Swimming in the Thames: Floating Pools at Gabriel’s Wharf

Project Description:
The Thames provides a breathing space through the centre of London, and has to be appreciated as such by designers and urban planners. The Victorian embankment wall needs to be re-addressed by a modern and more delicate approach to engineering. My proposal offers such an example, by involving Londoners visually with their constantly shifting river. The project brings passive and active forms of leisure out into the river without narrowing its course any further. An exploration of new malleable materials adds to the sense of a unique and sensual place, surrounded by water.
My experience of living in London is one of a crowded and neurotic place where individuals fight against their ambitions with a ferocity that counterbalances the discomforts inherent in a dense urban metropolis. The easy availability of goods and services necessary for life have given rise to a population that increasingly turns to the gymnasium for physical exercise, where turbines and weights allow their bodies to experience the struggles that they were designed for. The ‘endless pool’ turbine lanes that float in the water echo this simulation, and also serve as a public exhibition of their occupants’ immobile struggle against ambition.

Awards:

Guzzini Travelling Award 2004