efstathios gerostathopoulos_robin hood gardens v.2.0

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MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE THESIS 2014 EFSTATHIOS GEROSTATHOPOULOSR O B I N H O O D G A R D E N S v 2 . 0

Thanks to my parents.

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INTRODUCTION

As buildings in metropolitan regions around the world grow further away from the ground, architects and urban designers are confronted with the question of re-inventing the ground as a place for collective activity between, through and above buildings, independent from the earth’s surface.

British architects Peter and Alison Smithson popularized the term “streets in the sky” in a series of unbuilt projects that eventually led to the commission of a public housing estate in East London, Robin Hood Gardens (1972). Unfortunately, the project was characterized from the beginning with neglect from the State and vandalism. Despite the complex’s important place in the history of Modern architecture, it is scheduled to be demolished within 2014.

This thesis proposes a mixed-use development to replace Robin Hood Gardens, which takes into account the Smithson’s legacy and the relative successes and failures of the original scheme, in order to suggest a new design methodology and a hybrid building typology for dense urban areas. It is a design application of the year-long research in uses of elevated public space through the Branner traveling fellowship.

University of California, BerkeleyMaster of Architecture Thesis, May 2014

Title: Robin Hood Gardens v.2.0Name: Stathis GerostathopoulosAdvisors: Renee Chow, Renè Davids and Nezar AlSayyad

This document is organized in six sections:

I. The Smithson’s legacy

II. Blackwall Reach regeneration project brief

III. Urban design general principles

IV. Site analysis

V. Precedent studies

VI. Final design proposal

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THE SMITHSONS

IMAGESTop: view of the housing estate from Blackwell Tube Station, September 2013. Photo by the author.Bottom: Alison and Peter Smithson in Stockholm. Source: Alison and Peter Smithson, The Charged Void : Architecture, 556.

I.

Alison and Peter Smithson never belonged to the mainstream of architectural practice. However, during their lifetime and even today, twenty and ten years after their death, respectively, their work and writings remain relevant for architects across national borders. They continue to inspire heated debates in architecture schools and even the popular press, as the recent campain against the Robin Hood Gardens demolition plans shows.1 It was in the wake of this campaign that architects with practices as different as those of Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Richard Meier and Peter Cook, all took a stance for the listing of the estate as a historic building, an initiative that nevertheless failed to produce a positive outcome.2 In his contribution to the campaign, Richard Rogers stated that “Peter and Alison Smithson were two of the greatest architects of the second half of the twentieth century. They produced a cohesive and impressive body of work combining buildings, theory and teaching which has had a major impact on the development of architecture and assured them an outstanding place in the history of architecture.”3 He refers specifically to Robin Hood Gardens as one of their most important works, which has earned its place in the late modernist canon. Despite their elevated status among their peers, their buildings always created a backlash of negative responses, from their first built project, the Hunstanton Secondary Modern School, which, in Peter Smithson’s obituary, a teacher who worked there for thirty-two years called “a building more suited for a prison than a school”4 to the mature work they did for Bath University, largely overlooked even in their own catalogues of built projects. The impending demolition of their one built housing project, would certainly signify their demise as architects, if it was not for their carefully curated writings, un-built projects and a handful of successfully built ones that allow their legacy to grow beyond the limits of physical structures. The Smithsons were intimately involved with the establishment of Team 10, a group of young architects and theoreticians who saw the “inadequacies of the processes of architectural thought,”5 mainly orthodox modernism, as represented in the nineteen-fifties by CIAM, and sought to develop new ways of thinking about architecture and urbanism that take into account the local context and were engaged in social issues of their time. In the Doorn Manifesto (1954), they connected the discourse on housing to that of community: “it is useless to consider the house except as a part of a community owing to the interaction of these to each other.”6 Nonetheless, the Smithsons, as well as other Team 10 members, were first and foremost architects who addressed complex social issues through design, as the last imperative of the Doorn Manifesto makes clear: “the appropriateness of any solution may lie in the field of architectural invention rather than social anthropology.” This is perhaps the power of Alison and Peter Smithson’s legacy for young architects today: there are no prescribed solutions to architectural and social problems. One must seek answers for each problem as it arises, to the best of his or her ability and knowledge of specific circumstances, and always with the specificity of a well thought-through and carefully drawn design project.

1 Nicolai Ouroussoff. “Rethinking Postwar Design in London” 18 March 2009. The New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/arts/design/19robi.html?_r=0>2 Rosenfield, Karissa. “Robin Hood Gardens to be Demolished” 26 Mar 2012. ArchDaily. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=220448>3 Alan Powers. Robin Hood Gardens: Revisions, 120.4 Design Museum London. “Alison and Peter Smithson” <http://designmuseum.org/design/alison-peter-smithson> 5 Alison Smithson, Team 10 Primer, 3.6 Alison Smithson, Team 10 Primer, 75.

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Robin Hood Gardens was completed in 1972 under the auspices of the Greater London Council in order to provide affordable housing on the grounds of the former East India Dock, a shipping port on the Thames, which by that time had become defunct. The housing project was placed in an area of dense, semi-derelict working class dwellings, some of which were razed by the state developing company. It was also adjacent to Blackwall Tunnel that crossed the river southwards with constant vehicular traffic. Site zoning was at 136 persons to the acre and there was a lack of green spaces, both considerations that the architects addressed in the final design, which achieved a density of 142 persons per acre.1

The design scheme consists of two tower blocks, a shorter ten-storey to the East, blocking traffic noise from the tunnel approach, and a longer seven-storey building to the West, creating a sheltered courtyard between the two. This space, with public access on the street level was conceived as a garden for the residents, where children could play in safe distance from traffic and the noise of the city and indeed it still functions as such, albeit with some of the leisure infrastructure neglected and in disrepair. Nevertheless, the central mound, consisting of building debris on site at the time of the project’s construction, surrounded now by mature trees and the remnants of a whole generation that grew up in this estate, evident in the broken tiles on the pavilion’s floor and the names of young lovers on the benches, functions still, if not more today than when it was completed, as a pleasant grassy field in the midst of a busy city expanding eastwards. The architects placed significant attention in the design of the 213 apartments, which are considered spacious for today’s mass-housing standards. They are a mix of single-level and two-floor maisonettes, with windows on the side of traffic and balconies on the courtyard side. Access is from the outer side through elevators and an exterior corridor with a width of approximately three meters (9.8 feet) that was conceived as a social space, for friendly encounters between neighbors and where children could play safely, a pedestrian “street in the sky” in Alison and Peter Smithson’s words. There are central garbage chutes that can be accessed through the “streets” and social space in the basement, with access to the subterranean garage, which provided parking for 70% of projected residents at the time of construction.2 by immigrants with different ideas for domesticity, and the rise of crime.3 Other criticism aimed directly at the design: the “streets in the sky” where discontinuous and vertical circulation through elevator4 did not encourage interaction between residents of different floors.4 Perhaps more importantly, even though the Smithsons wrote and lectured about the importance of the connection of new buildings to the existing urban fabric, Robin Hood Gardens has a monumental presence dominating its neighboring buildings. The twin slab-towers remain singular, making it a hard task to conceive of a strategy for their integration to the current surroundings, a task that the public agency charged with the re-generation of the wider area where the housing estate belongs, chose not to address: they orde5ed the demolition of the buildings, which is scheduled to take place within 2014.5

1 Alan Powers. Robin Hood Gardens: Revisions, 28.2 Alan Powers. Robin Hood Gardens: Revisions, 30.3 Alan Powers. Robin Hood Gardens: Revisions, 20-21. 4 Peter Eisenman. “From Golden Lane to Robin Hood Gardens”, in Max Risselda (ed). Alison and Peter Smithson: A Critical Anthology, 210.5 Andrea Klettner. “Demolition Starts at Robin Hood Gardens Site”. 19 April 2013. Building Desugn Online < http://www.bdonline.co.uk/demolition-starts-at-robin-hood-gardens-site/5053559.article>

ORIGINAL HOUSING SCHEME

All original drawings by Alison and Peter Smithson, Christopher Woodward and Kenny Baker from:Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 296-213.Opposite, top: view of eight level elevator loby and “street in teh sky”.Bottom: view of eastern build-ing from courtyard, Septem-ber 2013. Photo by the au-thor.

I.

The main criticism of the estate is that it never functioned as the utopian working class community that its architects championed. Early on, it acquired bad reputation, through the neglect of the State, inhabitation by immigrants with different ideas for domesticity, and the rise of crime.3 Other criticism aimed directly at the design: the “streets in the sky” where discontinuous and vertical circulation through elevators did not encourage interaction between residents of different floors.4

Perhaps more importantly, even though the Smithsons wrote and lectured about the importance of the connection of new buildings to the existing urban fabric, Robin Hood Gardens has a monumental presence dominating its neighboring buildings. The twin slab-towers remain singular, making it a hard task to conceive of a strategy for their integration to the current surroundings, a task that the public agency charged with the re-generation of the wider area where the housing estate belongs, chose not to address: they ordered the demolition of the buildings, which is scheduled to take place within 2014.5

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CONNECTIVITY, MOBILITY, GROWTH AND CHANGE

IMAGESOpposite top: Berlin Hauptstadt, sketch of a view from a piazzetta. Source: Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Urbanism, 54.Opposite, bottom: Economist plaza, Sep 2013. Photo by the author.This page, top to bottom: Golden Lane, composite plan of deck levels 1, 2 1nd 3 and axonometric drawing of construction, Golden lane diagram of the idea elaborated into a city fabric, and Robin Hood Gardens: diagram of dimensions for a group. Source: Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 88, 89, 92 & 299.

I.

If the mark of a great building, in Alison and Peter Smithson’s terms, is one that seamlessly blends with its surroundings and at the same time allows residents and visitors to interpret them in novel ways, then the three buildings around an elevated plaza that the architects designed for the Economist newspaper on St. James’s Street in central London (1959-1964), deserve their central place in their oeuvre and in the history of modern architecture. The buildings’ formal arrangement derives from a careful account of the surrounding buildings’ scale, practical considerations in the project’s brief, and a search for a new language in urban design, tectonics and materiality. The lower, bank building follows the height and set-backs of adjacent terraced houses along St James’s Street, mediating the scale disjunction from the fifteen-storey tower at the back of the typical city-bloc. A third, lower, residential tower and the preservation of the eighteenth century Boodle’s Club complete the ensemble of buildings with entrances from the plaza. This space, open to the public, is elevated from the street level, and takes the form of a low podium. A parking garage and service areas are nested underneath the plaza, with access from the side street. The pragmatics of working for a large company with a lot of constraints in the design and construction process did not allow the architects to realize some of the more experimental aspects of their original design, which included more pedestrian access and visual connections between the plaza and the surrounding streets and within and between the buildings.1 A slightly earlier urban design proposal for a new commercial and administrative center for Berlin – Hauptstadt (1957) – contains an unadulterated version of the architects’ visionary scheme for pedestrian platforms connecting downtown commercial buildings, with multiple levels, and a separation between vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The Berlin Hauptstadt project proposes a new approach to urban density through the “inverted profile”, low density at the city-center, the provision of green zones and the anticipation of growth and change.2

According to Alison and Peter Smithson: “The conglomeration of all forms [in Berlin Hauptstadt] speaks of the likelihood of change, expectant of growth and variation, although the exact nature of such change awaits hidden in the future … The greatest difficulty in working towards urban forms that can accept growth and change is that of communicating the general intention to those who will follow”.3 Robin Hood Gardens, slightly later in the architects’ oeuvre was developed with those ideas in mind, and with the earlier housing competition for Golden Lane (1952), which was un-successful, but highly influential. Golden Lane’s residential slab-buildings were conceived as vertical extensions of the street, a thickening of the narrow, horizontal strip to include the housing units. The central idea of connectivity is evident in the exposed vertical circulation in the project’s renderings and axonometric drawings, and the diagrams of the integration of the new housing scheme within the city fabric. Similar ideas were part of the original design proposal for Robin Hood Gardens, but, as in the more radical aspects of the Economist project, remained un-realized. Perhaps the only two projects that come closer to a built version of those ideas are presented in the next section.

1 Kenneth Frampton. “The Economist and the Hauptstadt” in Max Risselda (ed). Alison and Peter Smithson: A Critical Anthology, 180.2 Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void, 44.3 Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void, 56.

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LATER WORK, THE “CONGLOMERATE ORDER”:BATH UNIVERSITY, HEXENHAUS

IMAGESOpposite, top: Axonometric of the School of Archtecture and Building Engineering, University of Bath. Source: Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 518.Opposite, bottom: the corridor of Bath Architecture School, with view towards exterior elevated walkway, September 2013. Photo by the author.This page: Hexenhaus, site plan showing house addi-tions. Source: Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 584.

I.

Alison and Peter Smithson liked to organize their projects and theoretical ideas around simple and clear formulations. Even though they were talking about “conglomerate ordering” from quite early on in their career, it was not until looking back at their work at the end of his, that Peter Smithson declared in 2001: “we have only done one substantial building that follows [the ideas of conglomerate ordering] fully and only one person in twenty-five million likes it”.1 He was talking about the School of Architecture and Building Engineering at Bath University (1982-1988), a building that was conceived as the thickened end of a pedestrian corridor, which functions as one of the entries to the elevated pedestrian platform with access to most of the campus buildings. In fact, in all of the different buildings that the Smithsons designed for Bath University, they developed the idea of adding to a central, sprawling building, which they likened to a mat. The architects were responsible for finding ways to resolve areas in the mat’s fringes, where the campus’s built volume met the natural landscape. The Architecture building in Bath goes one step beyond the mat-building to showcase the architects’ ideas for creating an order from following disparate and loosely defined indicators, such as “the sense of density of [the] built fabric … the position of the sun … the way the landscape falls outside ... the position of the principal ways inside.”2 The result is a building that is complex in plan and section, but one can easily find his or her way around, with a lot of unexpected visual and physical encounters. When I visited the building during the first day of classes for the Fall 2013 semester, I could not share Peter Smithson’s pessimism. Before I had seen or read anything about it, I encountered a building full of student life, the first that I visited as I entered the campus, that despite the visible markers of a cheaply detailed contemporary British public commission, it created an unmistakable sense of place, standing quietly on the side, amidst the functionalist academic office towers and the glass other-worldliness of the new library. The buildings for Bath University were designed as additions to the original campus, and they function today as integral parts of the every-day experience of an expanding and content student body.3 Towards the end of their career, Alison and Peter Smithson designed a series of additions for Axel Bruchhäuser’s residence (Hexenhaus, 1986-1993) in Bad Karlshafen, Germany. In creating a new porch, an elevated pavilion connected to the house with a narrow wooden bridge, a new entrance gate and other small-scale projects, the architects were able to elaborate their ideas of designing with cues from the existing fabric and forged a long and sustained relationship with a single patron.4 The Smithsons, through their collaboration with this patron, materialized some of the most subtle and, at the same time, most powerful ideas in their work. In Alison Smithson’s words: “the porch can be read as an exemplar of a method by which a small physical change – a layering-over of air adhered to an existing fabric – can bring about a delicate tuning of the relationship of persons with place”.5

The project for the new Robin Hood Gardens Estate must begin from where Alison and Peter Smithson left off, by bringing together Bath University’s mature urban design considerations with Hexenhaus’s profound intimacy.

1 Catherine Spellman and Karl Unglaub (eds). Peter Smithson: Conversations with Students, 48.2 Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 518.3 University of Bath students were the most satisfied in the UK according to the results of the 2013 according to the National Student Survey (NSS), published in September 2013. Bath University Rank-ings. <http://www.bath.ac.uk/about/rankings/national-student-survey/>4 Peter Smithson and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Smithson Time, 25.5 Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 552.

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Many of the documents relevant to the regeneration of Blackwall Reach, the area in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets where Robin Hood Gardens belongs, are publicly accessible at the City Hall, just one block away from the estate. At the reception, if you express an interest in the project, a city planning intern escorts you to a near-by room, rolling a medium-sized black suitcase overflowing with documents, and holding an additional two or three dossiers of stray papers and a couple of colorful booklets printed on glossy paper. If you start going through the piles of documents, it immediately becomes apparent that the decisions about the future of the housing estate lay not in the hands of architects, but in those of government agencies and development companies that set detailed specifications, which largely dictate the conformist future of the new Blackwall Reach development. The area’s regeneration is part of the borough’s comprehensive planning approach, which through subsequent publications of the Local Plan, was clarified and codified as “reinventing the hamlets”:

Tower Hamlets will reinvent, strengthen and transform the places that make this borough unique … Set alongside the iconic River Thames and the Tower of London, and within a network of parks and

will be well designed, vibrant, and above all, a great place to live.1

A detailed layout of the specific policies and their implementation follows the general goals. The theme of sustainability explored through generic concepts of local growth, appropriate scale of development and waste management, permeates the local plan. There are specific goals that are intended to guide future development in housing, office, retail and industrial land use. Apart from sustainability, economic development is considered a top priority, as the borough was the third most deprived local authority in England in 2013.2 The large numbers of unemployed local population associated with the relocation of industry that occupied large parts of the borough’s land throughout the second half of the twentieth century, gave way to a large current population of immigrants, which is squeezed against market forces that drive property prices up, due to the borough’s proximity to central London and middle class residents moving to the area. The Local Plan acknowledges the area’s changing demographics and a lot of the provisions cater towards safeguarding social diversity. Particularly notable is the council’s tenure split of seventy percent social and affordable and thirty percent intermediate rent, as set in the Core Strategy.3

The planning approach, as it is presented in the 2013 Local Development Framework is centered in the identification of twenty-four development areas, borough-wide strategic “greenspace” and water networks and three different types of town center: major, district and neighborhood. The spatial vision for each type of town center is analyzed in the borough’s Core Strategy 2025. A neighborhood town center, which is the most common and type that is planned for the Blackwall Reach development is centered along a street that already has some commercial activity, with larger-scale buildings along both sides. The change of scale to lower buildings marks a spatial shift to residential development.

1 Tower Hamlets. Core Strategy 2025, 26.2 Tower Hamlets. Core Strategy 2025, 33.3 Tower Hamlets. Core Strategy 2025, 26.

ROBIN HOOD GARDENS / BLACKWALL REACH:LOCAL BOROUGH PLANS AND DEMOLITION

IMAGEMap showing the different types of town center and transportation network in Tower Hamlets. Source: Tower Hamlets. Core Strategy 2025.

II.

Tower Hamlets will reinvent, strengthen and transform the places that make this borough unique … Set alongside the iconic River Thames and the Tower of London, and within a network of parks and waterways, Tower Hamlets will continue to prosper as a collection of places, coming together to build One Tower Hamlets … It will prosper through sustainable regeneration which stems from the major economic hubs of Canary Warf, the City and Stratford. This will filter down to the connected network of vibrant and regenerated locally distinct places that has evolved from the borough’s rich history. From Spitafields and Poplar and from Canary Warf to Bow, each place will have distinct identity, role and function but all will be well designed, vibrant, and above all, a great place to live.1

1 Tower Hamlets Local Development Frame-work, 26.

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II.

Specifically for Blackwall Reach, the Local Plan identifies Poplar High Street, currently at the southern end of the Robin Hood Gardens Estate, as the neighborhood center. The entire area of the development is 7.2 hectares ( 17.8 acres) and bounded by East India Dock Road to the north, Aspen Way and DLR (Docklands Light Rail) station to the south, Cotton Street to the west and Blackwall Tunnel Approach to the east. The southern part, closer to the river Thames, is in flood zone one, which indicates high risk, and gradually shifts to flood zone three toward the north. The London Plan density matrix classification is “urban” for the majority of the site and “central” (denser) for the southern part between Poplar High Street and the DLR station. Current land uses on the site include housing, a primary school, community facilities, car parking and warehousing. The Local Plan calls for a mixed-use proposal “required to provide a strategic housing development, an expanded Woolmore primary school, and a district heating facility [;] the development will also include new publically accessible open space, commercial floorspace and other compatible uses.”4

The controversy with the otherwise sensible planning considerations for the future of this long-neglected area, currently inhabited predominantly by Bangladeshi and other Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants, arose with the decision to demolish Robin Hood Gardens as the buildings’ refurbishment was deemed more expensive than razing them in order to facilitate the building of a brand new mix-use development in three phases.5 This decision was criticized by many local residents and architecture critics on the grounds of destroying a sense of place that long-time residents have developed with the buildings and the surrounding community. Other factors included the architectural merit of the housing scheme, its position in twentieth century architectural history, and the wastefulness of demolition as a practice, which raised some concerns with the credibility of the Local Plan’s sustainability rhetoric. The Twentieth Century Society sought the listing of the buildings as historic landmarks and organized conferences, an exhibition and a petition for the saving of Robin Hood Gardens as the vehicle for the loud disagreement with the demolition plans, from a lot of notable British and international architects. Building Design magazine initiated a public debate for the future of the buildings in 2008, which was picked up by some of the popular press, such as the Guardian and the New York Times. The final negative decision for the heritage site listing came from Secretary of State Andy Burnham in May 2009, clearing the way for their demolition. In 2012 AEDA’s planning proposal was accepted after a short period of public discussion and consultation with residents and in 2013 work for the project’s first phase began in the northern part of the site, where residents from Robin Hood Gardens will relocate, upon completion, in order for the buildings to be demolished during phase two. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s response to the Twentieth Century Society dismissing their proposal for heritage listing stated that “Robin Hood Gardens as a whole was not successful housing and consequently not a particularly good example of housing design”.6 Robin Hood Gardens v 2.0 seeks to demonstrate the potential of the Smithsons’ architectural ideas through a design that appears different from the original, but is driven by the same considerations, which will prove that the perceived lack of the project’s succes was not due to its design per se, but is indicative of mis-management and neglect from residents and the local government.

4 Tower Hamlets. Core Strategy 2025, 136.5 “Replacing Robin Hood Gardens - the Developer’s View”. 22 March 2012. Architects Journal Online < http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/daily-news/replacing-robin-hood-gardens-the-developers-view/8628150.article> 6 John Hill. “Robin Hood Gardens not to be Listed”. Warf digital edition. 5.15.2009. < http://www.wharf.co.uk/2009/05/robin-hood-gardens-not-to-be-l.html>

IMAGESTop left: visualization of Frank Raynolds Architects’ proposal for Blackwall Reach. From construction site information board, photo by the author. Bottom left: construction site for re-development phase I. Photo by the author, September 2013.

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beauty comes with height (there is not nuch space left)

scater vs. aggregatecreate a variety of connectionsroof space is communal space

theory of the grid's relativity a building as a citylooking at the plan, imagining the section

complexity in standardizationLOOKING AT THE PLAN,IMAGINING THE SECTION

COMPLEXITY IN STANDARDIZATION




complexity in standardization

ROOF SPACE IS COMMUNAL SPACE CREATE A VARIETY OF CONNECTIONSBETWEEN AND THROUGH BUILDINGS

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III.

URBAN DESIGN PRINCIPLESThe first four diagrams explain general design conceps that describe an attitude toward addressing the contemporary urban condition in dense centers, where a complex set of relationships is present. The last four, describe specific urban design considerations with implications on the building form.1

1 Many of the concepts and the first diagram in particular were developed in a competition entry for Vertical Cities Asia 2013 in collaboration with Karen Gates and Caitlin Alev.




complexity in standardization THE GRID AS A LANDSCAPE A BUILDING AS A CITY




complexity in standardization

SCATTER VS. AGGREGATE DESIGN THE SKY BETWEEN TOWERS

LONDON NEW YORK

SHANGHAI MUMBAI

DENSITY VISUALIZATION Each bar represents population density for 1 sq km within each city boundary (2011 data).

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DESIGNING FOR DENSITY

III.

A density comparison between the densest 1 sq km of four global cities reveals New York’s Upper East Side as the appropriate model for the development of new hyper-dense areas in the wider metropolitan areas of existing cities, such as London’s East Side, where Robin Hood Gardens v. 2.0 is located. The density visualizations are published in Living in the Endless City (Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, eds. London: Phaidon, 2011), where the authors make the argument for studying existing cities through a variety of different metrics in order to understand the more successful, site specific attributes of each. For the purposes of this design thesis those metrics also reveal what aspects of urban organization within those cities is replicable.

Specifically, with regards to the figure-ground diagrams of the densest areas in each of those four cities the spatial organization that the New York grid affords on the ground is most notable. It reflects a set of criteria for access, orientation and dimensions for typical dwelling units and other programs that becomes the starting point for the organization of living units above the ground (see pp 52-53).

FIGURE-GROUND RELATIONSHIPS Building mass in the densest 1 sq km represented in black.

Notting Hill Upper East Side

Luwan Kamathipura

PEAK DENSITY17,324 pp/sq kmAVERAGE DENSITY4,497 pp/sq kmCENTRAL DENSITY8,326 pp/sq km

PEAK DENSITY58,530 pp/sq kmAVERAGE DENSITY 9,272 pp/sq kmCENTRAL DENSITY 15,353 pp/sq km

PEAK DENSITY 73,370 pp/sq kmAVERAGE DENSITY 3,136 pp/sq kmCENTRAL DENSITY 23,227 pp/sq km

PEAK DENSITY 121,312 pp/sq kmAVERAGE DENSITY 25,316 pp/sq kmCENTRAL DENSITY 45,021 pp/sq km

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TOWER OFLONDON

O2 ARENA(MILLENIUM DOME)

EAST INDIA DOCKS

OLYMPIC STADIUM - PARK

TOWARD CENTRAL LONDON

10 m 500 m 1 km

SITE PLAN N

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III.

FIGURE-GROUND DIAGRAM: BUILDING MASS, PARKS AND WATER

East London borough of Tower Hamlets and adjacent areas showing existing Robin Hood Gardens Estate in red. The site, a post-industrial area on the grounds of the former East India docks provides access to water ways and reservoirs along the river Thames and is near green areas of various scales that is characteristic of the Greater London area. The aim of this thesis is to increase the building mass area to a level comparable to New York’s Upper East Side in the previous spread.

TOWER OFLONDON

O2 ARENA(MILLENIUM DOME)

EAST INDIA DOCKS

OLYMPIC STADIUM - PARK


10 m 500 m 1 km

SITE PLAN N

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OBJECTS TO FIELD VS. FIELD TO OBJECTS

BASED ON DIAGRAMBY PETER SMITHSON03/20/1968

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III.

LOOKING AT THE SMITHSONS:ARTICULATING URBAN DESIGN DIFFERENCES

DISCONTINUOUS STREETSUNIFORM SCALE

VS. VERICAL CIRCULATIONAND SITE CONTINUITIESMULTIPLE SCALES

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910

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8

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1. ALL SAINTS DLR STATION2. ALL SAINTS CHURCH (PLACE OF HISTORICAL INTEREST)3. TERRACED HOUSES / SMALL BUSINESSES4. BALFRONT TOWER (MODERNIST RESIDENTIAL TOWER BLOC)5. PHASE I CONSTRUCTION (BUILDINGS ALREADY DEMOLISHED)6. WOOLMORE PRIMARY SCHOOL (TO BE EXPANDED)7. LARGE-SCALE OFFICE TOWERS SET AMIDST WATER CANALS (FORMER DOCKS)8. TOWER HAMLETS CITY HALL9. ROBIN HOOD HARDENS ESTATE (TO BE DEMOLISHED)10. BLACKWALL TUNNEL11. POPLAR HIGH STREET12. OFFICE TOWERS / LARGE-SCALE RESIDENTIAL13. BLACKWALL DLR STATION14. OLD ENGLISH PUB (TOBE PRESERVED)15. RIVER THAMES16. O2 ARENA (MILLENIUM DOME)

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IV.

1

2

3

4

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910

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1. ALL SAINTS DLR STATION2. ALL SAINTS CHURCH (PLACE OF HISTORICAL INTEREST)3. TERRACED HOUSES / SMALL BUSINESSES4. BALFRONT TOWER (MODERNIST RESIDENTIAL TOWER BLOC)5. PHASE I CONSTRUCTION (BUILDINGS ALREADY DEMOLISHED)6. WOOLMORE PRIMARY SCHOOL (TO BE EXPANDED)7. LARGE-SCALE OFFICE TOWERS SET AMIDST WATER CANALS (FORMER DOCKS)8. TOWER HAMLETS CITY HALL9. ROBIN HOOD HARDENS ESTATE (TO BE DEMOLISHED)10. BLACKWALL TUNNEL11. POPLAR HIGH STREET12. OFFICE TOWERS / LARGE-SCALE RESIDENTIAL13. BLACKWALL DLR STATION14. OLD ENGLISH PUB (TOBE PRESERVED)15. RIVER THAMES16. O2 ARENA (MILLENIUM DOME)

SITE PLAN SHOWING PROJECT AREA AND SURROUNDING PLACES OF INTEREST

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RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIAL

INSTITUTIONAL

PEDESTRIAN AND BIKE PATH (BASED ON LOCAL PLAN)

ACOUSTIC BARRIER

ELEVATED RAIL TRACKS

GREEN ACCESS CORRIDOR (BASED ON LOCAL PLAN)

DLR STATION

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IV.

0 45m90

EAST INDIA DOCK ROAD

COTTO

N STREET

BLACKWALL TU

NN

ER APPROACH

POPLAR HIGH STREET

ASPEN WAY

BLACKWALL DLRSTATION

SITE BOUNDARIES

NOISE SCREENING

GREEN GRID ROUTE

WALKING / CYCLING ROUTE

PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE OPEN SPACE

POPLAR HIGH STREET NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER

ROBIN HOOD GARDENS v 2.0 SITE PRIORITIES

The main urban design priority for Robin Hood Gardens v 2.0 is to bridge the scale of the more traditional terraced houses and small stores to the north with the large scale contemporary office buildings to the east and west of the site. This will be achieved through the breaking down of the site area into smaller individual lots crisscrossed by pedestrian and cycle routes and by extending the district-wide green grid route to cover a larger part of the site through the dispersal of the central green in smaller green fragments scattered throughout the site. They can be on the ground, or on publicly accessible roof terraces, especially in the commercial, southern-most part of the site. The neighborhood center, south of Poplar High Street is extended to reach the DLR station in order to create a transportation and commercial hub for the neighborhood.

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIAL

INSTITUTIONAL

PEDESTRIAN AND BIKE PATH (BASED ON LOCAL PLAN)

ACOUSTIC BARRIER

ELEVATED RAIL TRACKS

GREEN ACCESS CORRIDOR (BASED ON LOCAL PLAN)

DLR STATION

0 45m90

EAST INDIA DOCK ROAD

COTTO

N STREET

BLACKWALL TU

NN

ER APPROACH

POPLAR HIGH STREET

ASPEN WAY

BLACKWALL DLRSTATION

SITE BOUNDARIES

NOISE SCREENING

GREEN GRID ROUTE

WALKING / CYCLING ROUTE

PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE OPEN SPACE

POPLAR HIGH STREET NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER

29

URBAN DESIGN PRESEDENTS

V.

HONG KONG

“A city without ground,” Hong Kong can only be understood and explored as a three-dimensional topography.1 On Hong Kong island, the building density and variety of pedestrian and vehicular connections, as well as the cultural view of public space as an extension of the home – a living room of sorts – compliment the dramatic natural topography to create a heightened sense of inter-connectedness between buildings, as well as people. Starting as a way to facilitate the flow of people from office buildings to the shopping malls, elevated walkways and pedestrian bridges were built in the business districts incrementally. They were more the result of commercial activity than top-down city planning. The population density guaranteed that there would be enough activity to support commerce, both in the traditional streets and the elevated ways. This example was picked up in various areas of the island and in Kowloon, with private development spearheading the building of a wide typological variety of urban connections. There are walk-ways completely sheltered with building envelopes and others open to the elements (IMAGE 2). They meet buildings by attaching to exterior façades, running along the sides, or traversing them; and streets by escalators, ramps and stairs (IMAGE 1). This creates a circulation network that facilitates interaction between diverse groups of people. In Cities Without Ground: a Hong Kong Guidebook Jonathan Solomon, Clara Wong and Adam Frampton observe, with regards to this process of physical connecting:

from equal.”2

1 Jonathan Solomon, Clara Wong and Adam Frampton. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guide-book, online project introduction < http://citieswithoutground.com>2 Jonathan Solomon, Clara Wong and Adam Frampton. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guide-book, online project introduction < http://citieswithoutground.com>

“The emergence of the shopping malls as spaces of civil society rather than of global capital – as grounds of resistance – comes as a surprise ... This continuous network and the microclimates of temperature, humidity, noise and smell which differentiate it constitute an entirely new form of urban spatial hierarchy. The relation between shopping malls and air temperature, for instance, suggests architectural implications in circulation—differentiating spaces where pedestrians eagerly flow or make efforts to avoid, where people stop and linger or where smokers gather … While space in the city may be continuous, plumes of temperature differential or air particle intensity demonstrate that environments are far from equal.”3

Indeed, signs of spatial segregation and hierarchy in Hong Kong’s connected downtown buildings are embedded in the restrictions to vertical public circulation, changes in scale and materiality. Walk-ways and bridges between buildings generally occur at the podium level, the first two to five levels of the building, depending on the scale of the development, which is often the wide base where thinner towers touch the ground. If the characteristics of connectivity and lack of a traditional ground may not apply to the office towers’ highly regulated interior environment, they are all present in the interconnected podia. In a sense, the city without ground is a five-level maze of interconnected spaces of commerce, leisure and cultural activities, with additional three to five levels under what would be the traditional ground surface. A wide variety of activities occurs in the zone around the ground level reference plane, changing each time of the day and during the week. During early morning work-day hours Hong Kong’s interconnected train and subway stations, malls and office lobbies are flooded with commuters, whose fast pace and ability to navigate through stairs, walkways, escalators and elevators, aggressively cutting through the crowd on their way to work, rival lunch-time rush hour use, when

IMAGES1 [top] and 2 [bottom]: pedes-trian walk-ways in Central, Hong Kong.

NOTEAll precedent photos by the author.

31

lines in front of restaurants may sometimes obstruct pedestrian traffic. The design of elevated walk-ways around Hong Kong Station and the IFC mall in Central, with wide two-lane pedestrian traffic in the middle and slow zones along the edges (IMAGE 3), allow many lunch-time users to eat their sandwich on the elevated platforms, watching the multi-layered traffic, and in some occasions, the sea or the mountains in the distance. Evening-time users walk in a more leisurely pace: a couple may take a break on a bench in a more secluded part of a walk-way, groups of friends navigate the elevated street network to find the latest popular bar, or in their way to the cinema, and solo revelers observe the crowd and look in their smartphones for suggestions on what secrets lie around the corner of the bridge when it touches a building in the distance. Nevertheless, GPS technology is not always able to identify effectively the coordinates of typical Hong Kong addresses. The public character of the multi-level connections in Central, Admiralty and Causeway Bay are perhaps best realized every Sunday, when immigrant domestic workers convert parts along the whole length of the circulation corridors to impromptu temporary sitting areas. There are un-official territorial boundaries based on nationality, with walk-ways in Admiralty, for instance, occupied predominantly by Philippine women (IMAGE 4). Working and lodging in the apartments of the Hong Kong’s elite and upper-middle class, every Sunday these women, and some men, gather in public spaces along the length of walk-ways, or the stairs of pedestrian bridges, in covered parts of sidewalks and in the limited number of public plazas on the ground, where they spend their day off work. There is a jovial atmosphere in these areas, generally demarcated with impromptu cardboard fences. The crowded spaces, where people chat, get their hair and make-up done, play cards and eat together change the next day into pedestrian avenues taking people to and from office buildings and retail establishments. Residential developments around the island and in the rest of the Hong Kong territory display a similar interest in the permeability of the building base. Some of the more imaginative solutions to the problem of the podium as part of the public realm, as is mandated by the city in many cases, connect apartments buildings’private entrances to public passages or stairs. This is often done with a slight shift in the orientation of a stairway that is intended for residents’ use, to the more public way (IMAGE 6), or with a series of terraces, which take advantage of the island’s topography. Some terraces offer access to apartments or function as the residents’ gardens, while other are open to the public, and sometimes have benches for the use of pedestrians who may walk through the property (IMAGE 5). Other apartment buildings have integrated parking garages in a part of the podium, which sometimes obstructs public use of those areas (IMAGE 7), but integrate the buildings in the complex three-dimensional system of circulation corridors that characterizes urban design in Hong Kong. Lastly, in a “city without ground”, the simulation of ground on rooftops has sometimes a very realistic effect. The landscape of Hong Kong Station’s roof-garden has the topography of other urban plazas on the ground, with trees, greenery, street furniture, two café-restaurants with open-air seating and entrances to the International Finance Center’s office towers. Similar developments around the city bring street activity many feet above the ground. The most successful of them combine some leisure or cultural activity with restaurants and cafés (IMAGE 8).

V.

IMAGES3 [top]: Pedestrian walk-way in Central, Hong Kong4 [bottom]: section of the public corridor through the market building building at the bottom of the Central-Midlevels escalators during a Sunday meal.

32

IMAGES5 [top] and 6 [bot-tom]: 268 Queen’s Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.

33

IV.

IMAGES7 [top]: build-ings in Admiralty, Hong Kong.8 [bottom]: the roof of Hong Kong Station/IFC mall.

35

JAIPUR, INDIA

The use of roofs for domestic activities is wide-spread all around East Asia, where climatic conditions allow for a year-long use of those spaces. Even though Indians use open air and partly canopied terraces as an extension of the living units, where they socialize, cook, sleep, and celebrate important events, such as weddings, there are not many connections between buildings, even in the level of above-ground links between office and commercial buildings. Some elements of roof networks that are present in working class neighborhoods seem to be more the result of proximity between buildings of the same height and the erosion of the fences that once separated them and now mark children’s play territories, rather than a conscious attempt to connect the roofs in order to create alternative ways of navigating through dense urban areas. In the case of Jaipur, which offers some insights for Robin Hood Garden v 2.0’s urban design strategy, there are some building projects that combine the traditional use of elevated terraces with establishing larger scale urban connections. The commercial streets of the Red City, the historic center of Jaipur, inside the old city walls, are lined with long, continuous two-level buildings, constantly buzzing with activity (IMAGE 2). The stores, studio apartments, offices and temples that occupy the second level open onto a balcony of varying width, which sometimes opens up to a terrace with stair access to the street. There is an implied hierarchy in the kinds of commercial activity that takes place around these streets. The first floor arcades and street-level shops are intended to lure people into the property, while more exclusive attention and business deals that require more one-to-one conversations take place in the second-floor spaces. The roof terraces are also sometimes accessible to the curious visitor and function as additional assets to attract customers, but are primarily intended for private use. In the same area of Jaipur, the Palace of the Winds, or Hawa Mahal, represents an ideal image of the Indian city as a three-dimensional network of public and private spaces accessed through a network of roof terraces (IMAGE 1). It is a sheltered environment where in 1798 the architect Lal Chand Ustad created King Sawai Pratap Singh’s pleasure gardens as city within the city. The palace’s rooms and terraces housed the king’s extensive harem. The women were not allowed to be seen outside the harem’s walls, so they spent their days on the terraces, which had a variety of pavilions of different sizes and tent-covered as well as open air communal spaces. The original windows of the perimeter walls had holes that would allow the wind to pass through in order to cool the terraces and the women to look out into the market place below and listen to the lively street noise without being seen.

V.

IMAGES1 [top]: Hawa Mahal, view from the harem wall. jaipur, India. 2 [bottom]: Jaipur market.

37

OSAKA, JAPAN

The Japanese mega-cities, Tokyo and Osaka, are both good candidates for new guidebook volumes for Cities without Ground. Even though the scale of the buildings is considerably lower than in Hong Kong, and urban connections are still happening on the ground plane, the overall density is such that this reference plane appears sometimes as an extension of the buildings outwards in order to connect to surrounding buildings rather than the other way around. In other words, predominantly in commercial centers, the ground is only with reference to a thin layer of land that connects buildings together. Below the ground, an extensive network of subway lines, passages, and basement parking garages creates an integrated and highly functional network of connected spaces. There are a lot of examples in Japanese urban design that are potentially useful for the London project, but two projects in Osaka summarize the Japanese urban condition for the purposes of this project. The Gate Tower building (IMAGE 1), designed by Azusa Sekkei and Yamamoto-Nishihara Kenchiku Sekkei Jimusho in 1992, occupies a lot where a branch of an elevated highway turns, in order to meet another highway that traverses the city. The highway branch crosses the building through the fifth and seventh floor, while offices occupy the rest of the floors. The plan of the building is round, and it is surrounded by two other highway branches and train lines. It stands as an icon of the connectivity of Japanese cities and is an example of imaginative use of a constraint that in a less dense city would preclude the construction of a building all together. In a country with carefully curated natural space, partly stemming from a lack of open space and centuries of elaborate gardening traditions, green roofs are popular in many buildings in Osaka, Tokyo and other big cities. However, they are predominantly used as private spaces or are extensive green roofs for building energy conservation and visual pleasure. The roof of the Osaka Municipal Central Gymnasium, designed by Nikken Sekei Architects in 1996 shows the potential for integrating green roofs as public spaces within the city (IMAGE 2). The roof is conceived as a large dome that covers the entire sports complex and takes advantage of the topography to form an extension of a park on one side, with athletes’ entrances through tunnels, and a look-out above the entrance for the public on the other side. When visitors approach the stadium from the park’s side they are not certain if they are walking on a man-made structure or the park grounds. That is until the very top, where a gap between the perimeter green roof and the smaller white dome of the main sporting arena registers the height of the man-made ground in relationship to the street below.

V.

IMAGES1 [top]: Gate Tower building, Osaka, Japan.2 [bottom]: Osaka Municipal Central Gumnasium.

39

MATERA, ITALY

Matera is a town in the region of Basilicata in Southern Italy. The rock-cut dwellings along the sides of an ancient canyon have been continually inhabited for more than two millennia.1 Over the centuries, as the caves used up larger and larger parts of the hill through the installation of water tanks, municipal facility areas and churches cut inside the rock, they also grew outwards, acquiring new facades that extend beyond the rock surface. An image of Sassi di Matera, the site of the ancient rock-cut settlement, today, does not reveal much of the complexity of the spaces cut inside the hill. The buildings follow the grade of the hill, as in numerous other settlements in similar topographies, and are accessed through a system of horizontal ring roads and narrow vertical stairs and passages, similar to the organization of ancient Greek theatres. Nonetheless, the Sassi morphology is unique in its relationship to the way it was constructed. Each cave extension, now appearing as a full-fledged building, rested on the roof of the building below. Often a public street is built over the bedroom of the house below. This arrangement resulted in intricate relationships between what is considered public space and parts of a building, or complex of various structures, which is considered private (IMAGES 1&2). This building and living arrangement received a lot of negative attention during Italy’s post-war modernization effort. Images from Matera circulated in the popular press as examples of over-crowded slums that are remnants of the past and must be eliminated in the process of Italy’s industrialization.2 Most of the original residents moved out of the Sassi in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Today, the majority of the restored buildings operate as guesthouses, restaurants and tourist shops, especially since the inclusion of the area in UNESCO’s world heritage site list. Aside from a sociopolitical interest in Matera as a site of a State exercise in forced modernization, the morphological characteristics of the settlement that developed through centuries of continued inhabitation offer good examples of increasing urban density while maintaining a unique character of architecture as social armature.

1 “The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera”. UNESCO Online < http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/670>2 Anne parmly Toxey. Materan Contradictions.

V.

IMAGES1 [top]: ublic stairs and private roof terrace in Matera, Italy.2 [bottom]: roof terrace net-work with rooms below. ma-tera, Italy.

41

CAPPADOCIA, TURKEY

Similar to Matera, many of the villages in the Cappadocian plateau in central Turkey were built on sites of former rock-cut settlements. The early Christian community with churches and dwellings inside caves cut from the lava formed soft rocks near Göreme display a remarkable level of sophistication with regards to access routes and connections between spaces inside and outside the sculpted hill-side. Similar to the purely cavernous ancient villages, some of which are now abandoned, existing buildings along the hills aggregate in clusters following the natural topography. Their roofs often appear as extensions of the hill (IMAGE 1), or become access routes for other buildings and provide access to the street that may some levels above (IMAGE 2).The Cappadocian villages are considered here as examples of urban design that responds to local conditions and existing obstacles by regarding them as opportunities for more intricate urban connections. They offer insights both in relation to the design of public space and private dwellings in relation to the public and to each other.

V.

IMAGES1 [top] ad 2 [bottom]: Cappa-docian villages.

42

HONG KONG COMMERCIAL HONG KONG RESIDENTIAL

Barcelona, Eixample inner bloc

Barcelona, la Pedrera

Brussels, public elevator

Cappadocia

Fez, residences

DURBAR SHRINES, KATHMANDU

Kathmandu

Matera

UMEDA SKY BUILDING, OSAKA

Paris, Cite du Design

Porto, metro Trinidade

Santorini

Sao Paulo, Conjunto National

Seville, metropole parasol

43

TRAVEL DIAGRAMS

SECTIONS DESCRIBING GROUND-BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

The conceptual starting point for the development of the Robin Hood Gardens v. 2.0 sectional diagrams is a series of conditions that I identified during the year-long traveling fellowship. Here they are organized from urban-scale case study at top left to building-scale case study at bottom right, with the diagrams on each end as the most relevant for the current project.

V.

Barcelona, Eixample inner bloc

BANGKOK SKYSTRAIN, COMMERCIAL

THE MET, BANGKOK

Athens, rooftop cinema

Cappadocia

Istanbul, Black Sea dwelling

Jaipur, market

Lisbon, Santa Teresa elevator

Mumbai, Bandra skywalkNew York, Highline park

OSAKA GYMNASIUMParis, Cite du Design

Sao Paulo, Conjunto National

Seville, metropole parasol

SHANGHAI 1933

Turin, Lingotto factory

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SECTIONAL DIAGRAMS IN SPACE

The understanding of different types of urban and building-scale connections to the ground below informs the design of Robin Hood Gardens v. 2.0 as a system of vertical structural cores and horizontal elements that allow the program to grow vertically, through a variety of connections and access points.

V.

HONG KONG, DOWNTOWN: URBAN SCALE

JAIPUR, MARKET: BUILDING SCALE

46

COMMERCIAL

RESIDENTIAL

PRIMARY SCHOOL

COMMUNITY CENTER / MOSQUE

PRIV

ATE-

SCH

OO

L

RES

IDEN

TS

ACC

ESS

ON

LY

SOM

E C

OM

MER

CIA

L AC

TIV

ITY

PUBL

IC F

UN

CT

ION

S

PRIVATE > PUBLIC

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FINAL DESIGN

PROGRAM AND GROUND ACCESS DIAGRAM

The program diagram integrates the local borough’s development plan for a mixed-use neighborhood in a proposal that allocates fifty per cent of the site to residential, thirty per cent to commercial and the remaining twenty per cent for other uses. The existing primary school in the North-Eastern part of the site is retained and enlarged.

One of the primary concerns of this scheme is to render the ground plane porous with regards to foot traffic from the West, thus integrating the site to the larger urban context through the low-traffic Cotton Street. The lines on the ground diagram indicate general directionality and orientation of buildings. This proposal identifies the central mound as public space with access for the public at the intersection of Cotton Street with Poplar High Street, which is also an area for the development of small-scale commercial activity on the ground. Access at the remaining part of the building complex’s perimeter is monitored and reserved primarily for residents. A secondary, elevated public space consisting of ramps, walkways and small plazas is reserved primarily for the use of residents in the sector above Poplar High Street, but in the area between Poplar High Street and the DLR station in the Southern part of the site, the elevated ground and circulation is public and integrated within the large-scale commercial development. The number of permanent residents, which will result in increased population density with additional attraction of visitors at different parts of the day in the Southern part, will render this new semi-public space an integral part of the successful implementation of a new dense urban design scheme.

The proposal for residential sectors is at fifty-five meter maximum building height and for commercial sectors at eighty meters. Building heights set in place guidelines for access to light and air for residential units within the site as well, as integrate the proposal to the heights and program of surrounding buildings.

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SECTIONS 1-22: APARTMENTS AND MAISONETTESSECTIONS 23-33: APARTMENTSSECTIONS 34-42: SMALL SCALE COMMERCIALSECTIONS 43-49: APARTMENTS AND STUDIOSSECTIONS 50-54: LARGE SCALE COMMERCIAL

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DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN DESIGN SCHEME IN SECTION

Each line on the plan represents the analysis of each programmatic element in terms of adjacencies, orientation and porosity with regard to public access on the ground. The distance between two lines is eight meters, which is divided in the residential sector to form bands of four meters. These provide the groundwork for the development of the floor-plan. Conceived this way, the scheme can be constructed and developed incrementally, by section, since only each pair of two adjacent sections will share elements. Structurally, each section will perform independently of adjacent building components.

VI.

CONCEPTUAL SECTIONS THROUGH SITE

SECTIONS 1-22: APARTMENTS AND MAISONETTESSECTIONS 23-33: APARTMENTSSECTIONS 34-42: SMALL SCALE COMMERCIALSECTIONS 43-49: APARTMENTS AND STUDIOSSECTIONS 50-54: LARGE SCALE COMMERCIAL

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ZONES OF DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES IN RESIDENTIAL SECTIONSSECTIONAL DIAGRAM: ACCESS / PRIVACY

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIALGROUND

PUBLIC ACCESS

RESIDENTSONLY ACCESS

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DLR STATION

PEDESTRIAN AND BIKE PATH

GREEN ACCESS CORRIDOR(BASED ON LOCAL PLAN)

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIAL

INSTITUTIONAL

ACOUSTIC BARRIER

ELEVATED TRAIN LINE

R1

2

A2

A21-1

1-2

A1

B3

1B2B1

1-3

EXAMPLE: SECTION 1

B3

B4

NUMBERING/ LETTERING

TYPE A PIECES: ALL COLUMNS PARALLEL TO THE SECTION LINE, BEGINNING WITH THE CLOSEST TO THE SECTION LINE AND MOVING DOWN.TYPE B PIECES: ALL COLUMNS PERPENAADICULAR TO THE SECTION LINE, BEGINNING WITH THE CLOSEST TO CORNER OF THE SECTION LINE AND NUMBERTYPE R PIECES: RAMPALL ONLY NUMBERED PIECES: FLOOR PLATES BEGINNING WITH THE LOWEST AND MOVING UP

A1

1PLAN (EXAMPLE)

SITE FORCES AND CONSTRAINTS BUILDING IN SECTION

SECTIONS 1 - 22 APARTMENTS AND MAISONETTESSECTIONS 23 -33: APARTMENTSSECTIONS 34-42: SMALL SCALE COMMERCIALSECTIONS 43-49: APARTMENTS AND STUDIOSSECTIONS 50-54: LARGE SCALE COMMERCIAL

STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORKASSEMBLY GUIDELINES

PROGRAMMATIC ARRANGEMENT AND ACCESS PRIORITIES

RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIALGROUND

PUBLIC ACCESS


2100

2095

2085

2080

2090


DLR STATION



RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIAL

INSTITUTIONAL

ACOUSTIC BARRIER

ELEVATED TRAIN LINE

R1

2

A2

A21-1

1-2

A1

B3

1B2B1

1-3

EXAMPLE: SECTION 1

B3

B4



A1

1PLAN (EXAMPLE)





RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIALGROUND

PUBLIC ACCESS


2100

2095

2085

2080

2090

DLR STATION



RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIAL

INSTITUTIONAL

ACOUSTIC BARRIER

ELEVATED TRAIN LINE

R1

2

A2

A21-1

1-2

A1

B3

1B2B1

1-3

EXAMPLE: SECTION 1

B3

B4



A1

1PLAN (EXAMPLE)





RESIDENTIAL

RESIDENTIAL

COMMERCIALGROUND

PUBLIC ACCESS


2100

2095

2085

2080

2090

VI.

52

GROUND + 4

53

REACHING DENSITY GOALS

These diagrams of building mass above the ground attemt to describe the project in the terms of the New York figure-ground diagram, but in a dymanic sequence by level that offers the opportunity to re-conceptualize the traditional ground-plane condition, above the earth’s surface.

+ 8 + 15

VI.

54

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

2025

2015

2030

2020

open to belowopen to below

55

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

OPEN TO BELOW

2025

2015

2030

2020

PLAN, TYP. RESIDENTIAL LEVEL 8

4 m 8 m

open to below

open to below

VI.

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STREET IN THE SKY

GROUND ACCESS

INTERIOR CORRIDOR

PLAZA IN THE SKY

Sassi di Matera,Matera, Basilicata, Italy.

Limmatwest,Zurich, Switzerland.

Cerro Carcel,Valparaiso, Chile

57

STREET IN THE SKY

ACCESS TO APARTMENTS

GROUND ACCESS

INTERIOR CORRIDOR

PLAZA IN THE SKY

Unidad Vecinal Portales,Santiago, Chile.

Limmatwest,Zurich, Switzerland.

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59

LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH TIME

The section is intended as a mapping of the design process, as well as the conceptual framework for the project that regards historical time as a design parameter. Along the top line, a speculative narrative of historical events affects the building form. At the same time, the basic organization of space, both vertically and horizontally, allows the design intent to influence future building uses. The parts with darker figures are communal areas within the building. As time goes by, the building gradually disappears. But even one hundred years from now, there may be enough building information remaining for generations of architects in the future to project over the fragments of today’s vision their own dreams and aspirations.

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60

3 m

15 m

9 m

21 m

33 m

PRIM

ARILY

PU

BLIC

PRIM

ARILY

PU

BLIC

ZO

NE

2025

2015

2030

2020

SCOTLAND GAINS FULL INDEPENDENCE THROUGH REFERENDUM

QUEEN ELIZABET II DIESCORONATION OF KING CHARLES

ELECTION OF BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY TO POWERTHE UNITED KINGDOM IS EXPELLED FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION“RECOVER BRITAIN” CAMPAIN LAUNCHED JOINTLY BY THE GOVERNMENT AND KING CHARLESGRADUAL CLOSING OF THE BORDERS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1

61

3 m

15 m

9 m

21 m

33 m

PRIM

ARILY

PU

BLIC

PRIM

ARILY

PU

BLIC

ZO

NE

2025

2015

2030

2020

SCOTLAND GAINS FULL INDEPENDENCE THROUGH REFERENDUM

QUEEN ELIZABET II DIESCORONATION OF KING CHARLES

ELECTION OF BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY TO POWERTHE UNITED KINGDOM IS EXPELLED FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION“RECOVER BRITAIN” CAMPAIN LAUNCHED JOINTLY BY THE GOVERNMENT AND KING CHARLESGRADUAL CLOSING OF THE BORDERS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1

V.

2035

2055

2040

2045

2050

CIVIL UNREST SPARKED BY A SERIES OF BOMBS ERUPTING IN CANARY WARF AREA COORDINATED WITH EXTENSIVE CYBER-ATTACK ON INFORMATION NETWORKS

SUBURB UPRISINGELECTION OF BRITISH NATIONALIST PARTY TO POWERTHE UNITED KINGDOM IS EXPELLED FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION“RECOVER BRITAIN” CAMPAIN LAUNCHED JOINTLY BY THE GOVERNMENT AND KING CHARLESGRADUAL CLOSING OF THE BORDERS

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 261 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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62

2035

2055

2040

2045

2050



19 20 21 22 23 24 25 261 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

63

2060

2075

2065

2070

2035

2055

2040

2045

2050



19 20 21 22 23 24 25 261 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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64

2100

2095

2085

2080

2090

2060

2075

2065

2070

65

2100

2095

2085

2080

2090

VI.

66 Stairs to the roof,Lisbon, June 2013.Photo by the author.

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CONCLUSION

As the project moves forward, this Architecture graduate’s intention is to continue the discussion about the future of building design in dense urban areas as a set of parameters, infrastructural in essence and spirit, which identify, enhance and celebrate collective activity around, within and between residential and commercial units. Alison and Peter Smithson were vocal contributors in this debate until the end of the previous century, with their buildings and voluminous writings. Perhaps, they were sometimes too loud, even forgetting to listen to other voices among their contemporaries and younger peers. The aim of this thesis, however, is less to launch a critique of the Smithsons - after all, the enjoyment with engaging with such strong opinions at times added great pleasure to the development of the ideas presented here. Instead, this project attempts to set the foundations for bringing the Smithson’s ideas to the future, as a working methodology for designing dense and dynamic urban environments.

This building for the socialist dream –which is something different than simply complying with a pro-gramme written by the socialist state– was for us a Roman activity and Roman at many levels:

… in that it was built for an elaborate system of government and one with its own permanent building bureaucracy;

… in that it takes its stand alongside the heroisms of what has been made before – the port and the roads;

… in that it is as heroic as supplying a Romanised city with water : whether one seens this service as dramatic and obvious as an aqueduct or as secret and craftsmanly as the underground conduit;

… in that one has to deal with the problem of repetition;

… in that it is a bold statement working with land forms;

… in that it provides a place for the anonymous client;

… in that it wants to be universal, greater than our little State – related to a greater law.

Alison and Peter Smithson. The Charged Void: Architecture, 296.Stairs to the roof,Lisbon, June 2013.Photo by the author.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic (eds). Living in the Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. London: Phaidon, 2011.

Cookson-Smith, Peter. The Urban Design of Impermanence: Streets Places and Spaces in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2006.

----- London Bureau of Tower Hamlets’s Core Strategy 2025: Development Plan Document. London, 2010.

Hobhouse, Niall. Architecture is not Made with the Brain: the labor of Alison and Peter Smithson. London: Architectural Association Press, 2003.

Risselda, Max (ed). Alison and Peter Smithson, a Critical Anthology. Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2011.

Smithson, Alison and Peter. The Charged Void: Architecture. New York: Monacelli Press, 2001.

Smithson, Alison and Peter. The Charged Void: Urbanism. New York: Monacelli Press, 2005.

Smithson, Peter and hans Ulrich Obrist. Smithson Time: a Dialogue. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2005.

Solomon, Jonathan, Clara Wong and Adam Frampton. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook. Hong Kong: ORO Editions, 2012.

Spellman, Catherine and Karl Unglaub (eds). Peter Smithson: Conversations with Students. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

Steiner, Hadas, A. Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation. London: Routledge, 2009.

Toxey, Anne Parmly. Materan Contradiction: Architecture, Preservation and Politics. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.

Van den Heuvel, Dirk and Max Risselda. Alison and Peter Smithson – from house of the Future to a House of Today. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2004.

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efstathios gerostathopoulos_robin hood gardens v.2.0

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