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ritical Context Journal 2018.19

School of Art, Design and Architecture: U

niversity of Plymouth

I N T E R S E C T I O N SC R I T I C A L C O N T E X T J O U R N A L 2 0 1 8 . 1 9

Critical Context Journal 2018.19 > A R C H I T E C T U R E Printed and published in 2019 by Document Production Centre in conjunction with the ADA Graduate Show, University of Plymouth. Editorial DirectorDr. Nikolina Bobic Editor-at-LargeSamuel Brazier Creative Directors Mo NaitCharif and Jonathan Lettmann PR and Press Editor Max Rumble Cover ImageJonathan Lettmann

RHS Image: The neo-avant garde sculpture ‘Sfe I’ of Vjenceslav Richter in the Museum of Contemporary Art, New Belgrade.

Unless otherwise stated, all visuals are students’ own work.All rights reserved.

Critical Context Journal > 004 < Intersections 18.19

Critical thinking is central to the teaching practice at the University of Plymouth. All students are invited to engage in contextual, cultural, social, economic and political thinking. This allows the process of design within the studio environment to be situated and informed.

The extracts and writings in this journal may well be seen to operate through the ‘theoretical’ strand of modules within any given programme, as a stand-alone entity. However, the richness emerges when such bodies of research can also inform ways of thinking and therefore influence the practice and production of architecture.

Practice is now partaking in a more informed and research-led approach to the built environment, allowing for more considered responses. Here, at the University of Plymouth, students readily engage in research informed thinking. The research methods enable them to operate at multiple scales and across a whole series of issues leading to more creative, critical and educated responses to architectural concerns.

Testimony to research practice can be seen in the works of Masters students who have had papers presented at conferences, as well as accepted for a journal publication. This is very exciting; it suggests that there is an attitude within the School towards research excellence. Good practitioners of the future are going to have to be strategic thinkers, creative thinkers and critical thinkers.

This volume of INTERSECTIONS provides an insight into ways of thinking across the whole School.

Mr. Andy Humphreys > Associate Head of School – Architecture

Critical Context Journal > 007 < Intersections 18.19Critical Context Journal > 006 < Intersections 18.19

> INTRODUCTORY REMARKS <

INTERSECTIONS: Making New Worlds

Each year, Architecture students at the University of Plymouth collate their excellent critical context projects and essays in a history and theory journal. While this might appear to be an ordinary recurring process that any School would go through annually, here we approach this processual recurrence differently.

Students are constantly challenged to create connections between their past and present ways of thinking, their speculative ideas in conjunction with others, and their constant dialogues with one another. This multi-layered process of thinking and making fostered here in the School provides a place for experimentation, exploration and creativity to emerge at the levels of both theory and praxis. Intersecting as a process, along with leaving a crossing and overlapping, affords an understanding of the world that is connected and networked by which we are leaving no one behind. Far from being dualistic, Intersections traces back and forth to histories and theories for the inceptions of new ideas.

Intersections inspires a way of thinking that we foster here in the School. Students seek content at the margins and the centres of urban, rural, spatial, social, political, environmental, historical, cultural and aesthetic conditions, to then situate them at the heart of our discussions, arguments and processes of thinking. Intersections inspires not only alternative but also multiple ways of thinking and new theoretical possibilities, where students find a voice, thrive and excel. We have the privilege of watching this unfold before our eyes each year.

Dr. Sana Murrani > History, Theory + Critial Context Stream Leader / Associate Head of School – Graduate Affairs

To come to an INTERSECTION is to afford an opportunity to choose; desire to transit, alter and ultimately evolve. To come to a meeting of INTERSECTIONS is an affordance to do a section of all the colliding planes, and to choose the suggestion of the most joyful and intense frequency of life. Indeed, each sectional cut is an opportunity to step into a differently assembled plane.

This year’s Critical Context Journal (CCJ) does not simply showcase the works of our undergraduate and postgraduate students; it celebrates the ways in which our students have navigated their journey of assembling their understanding of architecture, and the ways in which they have articulated that craft through words. Each word and each visual is a landscape that invites speculation; further pondering, cultivating and cutting. The works evoke the willingness to transit, and bridge into that which previously did not exist.

Last, but not least – to my small but spectacular CCJ editorial team who have invested energy, drive and time into the making of this book; working with you has been a unique and utterly experience, and for that I thank you!

Dr. Nikolina Bobic > CCJ Editorial Director /Lecturer in Architecture BA (Arch) Head of Matketing and Admissions

Critical Context Journal > 008 < Intersections 18.19 Critical Context Journal > 009 < Intersections 18.19

> CO

NTEN

TS

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Mr. Andy Humphreys

Dr. Sana Murrani Dr. Nikolina Bobic

BA01

ARC409: Critical Context 4.1 ARC411: Critical Context 4.2

BA02

ARC501A: Critical Context 5.1 ARC504A: Critical Context 5.2

BA03

MARCH01 ARCH654A: Urban Methodologies

MARCH02

ARCH753A: Emerging Research in Architecture

Ph.D

INDEX Students

Staff

006007008009

012014026

030038064

074076

088090

100102

114

132133135


> ARC409: Critical Context 4.1 The students had to write a Design Brief, which had to articulate the relation between their design, precedent study and chosen thematic. Thus, the coursework assessment had to demonstrate an understanding of the following aspects:

> ability to ‘read’ a piece of architecture - how one building influenced their design project in respect to one chosen characteristic; - the structural story of the building - the attitude the building demonstrates towards its material detail - the public and private circulation of the building - the attitude the building demonstrates towards the façade - the relationship the building has to the context - use and inhabitation > understand how a building, and invariably their design, embody and interpret a conceptual idea/position architecturally; > ability to articulate own architectural position – theoretical and/or historical, and in relation to own design proposition. Module Leader: Dr. Nikolina BobicSupporting Tutors: Dr. Ioana Popovici and Alex Screech

BA01 Cover Image: The bird and the façade, Darmstadt.RHS Image: Alvaro Siza’s Serralves Museum in PortoNote: Image underwent manipulation.


This essay will be analysing the effect in-between spaces have on sociability within a housing complex. This will be done by comparing my design from project 01 (re-design of a social housing complex in Poole) with Claude Nicolas-Ledoux’s plans for the Ideal City of Chaux, completed in 1806. This precedent study has been chosen due to its use of porticoes throughout the complex; they act as in-between spaces to promote sociability. The noted projects and the way in which they accommodate activities will be explored using Bernard Tschumi’s three distinct conditions of reciprocity, indifference and conflict.

THE IN-BETWEEN:SPACES AND SOCIABILITY

Joel Baker-Smith

Image: Atmosphere generated by in-between spaces.

The key agenda that will be analysed throughout this paper is the use of literal transparency through physical and phenomenal means, particularly, how they are used to connect spaces and facilitate the experiential feeling that is created with movement through a building. To help aid the discussion, the focus will be on the design of Steven Holl’s St. Ignatius Chapel (Seattle,1997) in terms of the attitude the building directs towards the façade for purposes of facilitating movement through the arrangement of the skin to create a dappled perception of space internally. The design process by Steven Holl has added to the experimentation of my design of Project 01 (residential housing, located close to a woodland in Edmonton, Canada). Likewise, the thinking of Juhani Pallasmaa in terms of our sole reliance on a sense of sight having limited our understanding of the other senses; this limiting our understanding and experience of space has furthered my practice.1

LITERAL TRANSPARENCY: ST. IGNATIUS CHAPEL

Georgina Cameron

Image: Showing the plan view of the St. Ignatius Chapel, including the geometric linear aspect.


1 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (Chichester. Wiley-

Academy. 2005), 10.


MODERNISATION : CONSIDERATIONS OF SENSES WITHIN DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNS

Henrietta Cole

Image: Experiencing transparency and light


My Design Project 00 focused on modernising older buildings by incorporating more contemporary features into the building, whilst retaining the traditional features of the structure. The stated practice-based focus has been underpinned through a close study of proxemics and Body Image theory by Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore in Body, Memory and Architecture, and the precedent study of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (Plano, 1951). The use of this case study was for purposes of analysing how the skin of the structure (made of glass) makes people feel exposed to nature outside as there is no privacy, making it inconvenient and uncomfortable to live in. In other words, the Farnsworth House was used as a measure of how not to modernise my building. Similarly, Mies’ house focuses much more on aesthetics rather than function and practicality, that is, proxemics.

LE REGARDE: THE THRESHOLDS OF SOCIAL

PRESSURE AND THE PANTHEON

Tim Emery


This text addresses how spaces can be designed in a way that emulates Michel Foucalt’s idea of le regarde (the gaze), including how they can impose various behaviours on their inhabitants. The focus of this paper will be on thresholds and public circulation. In particular, how the theory of the gaze can apply social pressure to an area and create a threshold that compels the individual to ‘perform’ normatively within the social context. In my design project, situated at the centre of the North Cross in Plymouth, this idea was used as an influence for a central structure within the area that served multiple purposes. The architectural precedent was informed through an analysis of the Parthenon (Rome), particularly for its form.

Image: The gaze: performing sociality.

PARTICIPATION VIA CONSULTATION

Rhiannon Flack

IN-BETWEEN SPACES:ALDO VAN EYCK’S

NIEUWMARKT PLAYGROUND

William Martyn


This essay investigates the importance of user participation within the planning process of a project. The thematic of use and inhabitation will be used to create a link to my design and towards Lucien Kroll’s ‘La MéMé’ building in Belgium (1970). This link exemplifies the similarities in the consultation process that was used within my design for an outdoor educational/social space for nursery children (Riverside Community Primary School and Nursery, Plymouth, UK). The process involved using observation, communication and analysis on daily play, including the interactions children have with the site and their surroundings, for purposes of establishing and creating a design which is suited for the user, as well as involving them within the design process.

Image: When designing and planning for children, we can consider them in this process to gain ideas of the

needs that they may require.

This essay examines the value system of Aldo Van Eyck, that is, his position on the role of design and the significance of children to that design. For Van Eyck, the in between spaces of cities were important for accommodating playgrounds. The in-between is the threshold, which facilitated opportunities for experimentation in terms of different geometric shapes, and invariably assisted in social interaction of children. Van Eyck’s thinking is the central pillar of this design brief and my design for project 4 (outdoor educational/social space at the Riverside Community Primary School, Plymouth); the particular inspiration drawn from Van Eyck’s Nieuwmarkt playground (Amsterdam, 1968).

Image: Plan drawing of Riverside Community Primary School initial outdoor learning.



REGENERATION VIA CONSULTATION:

CREATIVITY AND SOCIAL SPACES

Eva Millward

This essay will look at how spaces affect social spaces. The stated focus will be addressed through an investigation of Aldo van Eyck’s Nieuwmarkt Playground (Amsterdam, 1968). Specifically, how the regeneration of an unused area accommodated a vibrant space for children to play in. This exploration will be theoretically supported through the thinking of Herman Hertzberger. The stated methods will provide an analysis of the shaping of my Design Project 04 at the Riverside Community Primary, Plymouth; particularly how the unused space on this allotment can be designed to amplify creativity.

Image: Site model: Riverside Community Primary.

THRESHOLDS, CIRCULATION

AND LIMINALITYEleanor Mott

The premise of clear boundaries between internal and external environments is challenged by the concept of liminality.1 This design brief examines public and private circulation in relation to a pavilion I designed for purposes of addressing how the fluctuating nature of its thresholds allows for varying spatial interactions. This project is intended to be a social space that blurs the thresholds between the privacy of the enclosed area of the pavilion, and the public nature of its surroundings. This creates a fluid space that interacts with the public. The analysis of my projects is supported through Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and Peter Zumthor’s discussion of the impact of design on movement.2 Thus, this essay explores how the experience of space is afforded through boundaries that are in flux.


Image: The in-between: threshold in flux.

1 Miskowiec, Jay. ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’. [Online] http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf. [24th December 2018]. 2Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture, Basel: Birkhauser, 58


TECHNOLOGY:PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES

Georgia Smith

The technical narrative of buildings is important when addressing matters to do with public, that is, private spaces; it depends on the structure and the materiality of the facade. The significance in understanding tectonics is also essential in play areas with fire pits as children (my Design Project 04). This is not only because the children requires play area to interact with each other, but also because they need to be observed by supervisors. Likewise, the fire pit needs to be sheltered from the wind. One section of Design Project 04 was inspired by the technical prowess of The United States Pavilion at the Montreal Expo by Richard Buckminster Fuller (1967). The materiality and structure of this structure provided the technical tools to make the studio project more public due to the transparency of it. Thus, this design brief will investigate the public, that is private, aspects of the Pavilion and Design Project 04 are due to an understanding and implementation of technology.

Image: The relationship of opaque and transparent materials.

CONTEXTUAL INTEGRATION AND PARTICIPATORY ARCHITECTURE:

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Corey Sutherland


This paper will analyse the relationship buildings have to their site and context. In particular, the way in which archi-tecture can compliment something that already exists and works well within that context. The analysis is inspired and supported by a recently completed project, London Wall Place (Make Architects, 2018). The aspect of this building that particularly intrigued me was the physical link and the seemingly seamless ability to knit together two historical structures and create new pedestrian routes. More so, the thinking of the architect Lina Bo Bardy and Rory Hyde will be utilised to bolster the belief in the necessity for architecture to become more social and participa-tory. My Design Project 01 utilised the thinking of all three noted precedents/theorists to create a building that links the community and visitors to Charles Church, one of Plymouth’s most important war memorials, a reminder of the Nazi Blitz that flattened the city centre during the WWII. The project is my take on how to integrate an existing building with the city together through the past and present artefacts and details from the site and context for pur-poses of creating a thriving city in the future where historical buildings, contemporary architecture and the community interact with each other and become active participants of that space.

Image: Exploring the relationship between building and site.


> ARC411: Critical Context 4.2 In Year 1-Sem 2 the students had to clearly articulate their own emerging attitudes, values and beliefs on architecture and the urban as a result of the architectural discourse examined in the lectures by writing their Manifesto. The Manifesto was framed through the macro thematic of Inhabitation/Domesticity, that is, the micro idea had to correspond to one of following sub-thematics: social architecture; place and landscape; proxemics, privacy and spatial organization; mobilities; settlements and territories; identity; gender; socioeconomics; power; symbols and rituals.

Module Leader: Dr. Nikolina BobicSupporting Tutors: Dr. Ioana Popovici and Alex Screech

RHS Image: Anna Longley : Collage of living space Note: Image underwent manipulation.


BE MORE PRIMITIVE Joel Baker-Smith

This essay explores how we can take inspiration from the ‘primitive hut’ to create buildings which encourage the simple and humble, decreasing our drive toward materialism and invariably enabling more egalitarian societies. The essay shows how architecture inspired by the principles of ‘primitive huts’ can aid in creating spaces suited to the individual needs. This position will be underpinned through the thinking of Robert Maguire, Pierre Bourdieu, Peter Zumthor and Le Corbusier

THE RETURN TO THE PRIMITIVE HUT India Berry

Within my manifesto, I will look at the concept of the ‘primitive hut’ and the relationship of the same in terms of place and landscape. However, my argument will be that it would not be possible to engage with the concept of ‘primitive hut’ solely through Laugier’s premise of it being a structure for survival. In the 21st Century, we need to think ‘primitive hut’ in terms of architecture building a relationship between technology, efficiency and sustainability in terms of everyday living. This argument will be supported through thinking of Brenda and Robert Vale’s “Green Architecture,” as well as analysed in terms of structures such as the Watershed House.

Image: Primitive hut: the simple to achieve the complex.

Image: Using natural materials to create structures


REDEVELOPMENT AND ITS IMPACT ON URBAN AREAS Jennifer Blake

Over half of the world’s population live in urban areas that have been built up over the course of human history. As architects, it is our role to address the implications buildings have on users, including their functional and aesthetic aspects. This position will be supported by examining the rapid decline and desertion of the 1956 housing development, Pruitt-Igoe in St Louis (USA), designed by Minoru Yamasaki; the development shows how important social context is to create a functioning housing development. Similarly to create functioning urban areas, harmony between (newly created) social context, and the existing history of place, needs to be attained. Rob Krier’s manifesto “Urban Space” will be implemented for purposes of understanding the links between traditional urban space, and formal ways of re-creating new spatial conditions..

MOBILE THRESHOLDS: MAISON À BORDEAUX AND

VILLA SAVOYE Georgina Cameron

When thinking about domesticity, images of the primitive hut start to emerge. My manifesto positions that thinking domesticity is thinking structure and inhabitation as a mobile threshold, one with an edgeless boundary. Elements that facilitate this mobility are found in materiality; materiality articulates the threshold. Likewise, the threshold is accommodated through a manipulation and assembling of repeatable systems. To help aid this position, the focus will be on the design of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (France, 1931) in respect to how staged movements have been afforded through a careful co-ordination of material assemblages. On the other hand, Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux (France, 1994-1998) will also be used as a precedent to address how a single system (floor plate that is an elevator) has been used in a mechanical way, yet remains a threshold from which one can both enter and leave the complex world that has been created for the resident. Against the architectural precedents, the thinking on ‘heterotopias’ by the cultural theorist Michel Foucault and ‘third space’ by the urban theorist Edward Soja will be deployed to aid my sensibility of mobile thresholds in domestic architecture.

Image : The intertwining of strangers, strategic use of paths to create social encounters.

Image: Villa Savoye: materiality in the entrance hallway.


DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE: POWER AND CHANGE

Anna Longley

SOCIOECONOMICS: LIVEABILITY IN COUNCIL HOUSING

Eva Millward

This manifesto focuses on domesticity and power by analysing the historical context of how power has been spatialised in a domestic home. The first chapter builds a background on power itself, to then relate it to a domestic setting by using a precedent study of Coleshill house for purposes of analysing what it would be like to live within that structure and during those times. The next chapter researches into how the domestic house has changed its layout in correlation to power-balance changes between men and women. The final chapter of the the manifesto addressed future concepts of what a domestic home would look like as the power balance between men and women further levels out, and changes the needs of the occupants. The thinking is framed through Dolores Hayden’s thinking on non-sexist housing.

This essay will address the premise behind home ownership and social housing in the UK. It will discuss the lack of personalisation within social housing, along with the stigma attached to council housing. In other words, the agenda of the essay is to look at how council housing in the UK should become adaptable to improve the liveability of the occupant, and invariably flatten the underprivileged socioeconomic tag. To address the stated framework, schemes such as the ‘Right to Buy’ will be disseminated, the architectural precedent studies of Ernő Goldfinger and Alejandro Aravena will be debated and the thinking of Hassan Fathy will be discussed.

Image: Collage of a kitchen-diner – governing gender.

Image: The towering of council housing blocks.


DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FUNCTION AND FORM

Eleanor Mott

Throughout modern architectural history, the implementation of technological advancements into the design production processes has resulted in standardised mass housing and prefabrication. Invariably, this presents the challenge of maintaining the equilibrium between function and aesthetic/form. However, as housing production favoured efficiency over form – a virtue of architecture was lost within modernist architecture – thus critiquing the form and uniform function of domestic mass housing.

Within this manifesto, I will examine the conflict between form and function in relation to domestic architecture. This discussion will highlight how functionalism can become an obstacle within mass standardised housing, revealing the power that these domestic settings have in controlling perceptions and movements in daily life. The link will be made to Sharon Steadman thinking on power in the Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space whereby there is an argument for the necessity in architecture to, exhibit the importance of sensitive design in balancing the aesthetic and the functional – an equilibrium that I believe mass housing and prefabrication do not succeed in. This examination will inform my propositions of mediation and will help to broaden my understanding of the issues surrounding this debate. The discussion will be bolstered through the thinking found in Christian Norberg-Schulz’s 1965 manifesto “Intentions in Architecture,” and Joseph Rykwert’s 1975 manifesto “Ornament is No Crime.” The precedent study I will be referencing is Gerrit Rietveld’s Schroder House (Utrecht, 1924).

PROXEMICS AND THE IDEA OF THE IDEAL Georgia Smith

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1929) and Petit Cabanon (1951) are fundamental when it comes to understanding proxemics; the evolution of his ideas throughout the years shaped architecture and the way in which we engage with architecture to this day. However, it must also be noted that other ideas have contributed towards understanding in which we engage with space, for example the thinking found in Kent Bloomer and Charles Moore’s Body, Memory and Architecture. Seemingly, the notion of ‘ideal’ is constantly redefined and has throughout history. After all, this can even be seen in the opus of Le Corbusier works; his view on proxemics altered over the course of his lifetime, especially when he conceptualised the Modulor. Therefore, this manifesto looks at the premise of ‘ideal’ in domestic architecture; what it is and whether the ideas that foreground it function successfully within buildings.

Image: The paradox of art vs. craft

Image: The tension of space in the Villa Savoye

> ARC501A: Critical Context 5.1

The overall theme for the module is the relationship between theory and practice. Thus, the task in this Module was to select the most pertinent aspect/element of the student’s design proposal (eg. site, condition, situation, space or architectural component) and critically re-appraise it. The re-appraisal was done either by using a theoretical idea / research method introduced in the Critical Context lecture series, or a practice-based method encountered in design studio; the outcome being an essay and a film. Module Leader: Dr. Nikolina BobicSupporting Tutors: Dr. Ioana Popovici and Mr Alex Screech


BA02 Cover Image: View towards the unnamed road from the Lisbon Marina. RHS Image: Towards an outside world - Vuk’s underground metro station, Belgrade.


HUMANISM AND SOCIA[ISM] IN THE URBAN CONTEXT

Samuel Brazier

In 1967, Le Corbusier set forth his idea for The Radiant City, one which aimed to reconnect inhabitants with the urban context in which they would live a more ideal lifestyle.1 The urban plan suggested large communities connecting directly with one another through intricately programmed territories and thresholds, the intent being to further societal networking. City planners combining Corbusier’s unrealised masterplan with The Garden City (1902) by Ebenezer Howard, were given the opportunity in post war Britain to take reign of this approach constructing eclectic and controlled ways of living for the citizens. The arguments questioned within this paper will address whether utopian master plans disconnect the user and context; and how an understanding of this may aid my design project to facilitate more humane and socially inclusive spaces by bringing the community back onto the drawing board of developments.

GARDEN CITYIn 1902, Howard designed the Garden City, a conceptual masterplan intended to solve the housing crisis facing the rapid urbanisation of cities of the 20th century.2 His ideals constructed an environment reliant on zoning the city from the centre outwards based on residents’ requirements for purposes of producing a conformed living standard. This separation of living, industry, entertainment and commerce provided the relaxed environmental living around the user.3 However, to me this stigmatised local town authority’s neglect over time disconnecting the social and economic classes seen with Welwyn Garden City, London. A combination of city planners and unequal housing distribution produced a middle-class commuter town with private investments overriding the cooperative community that Ebenezer fought for. Edward Bellamy, an American socialist, was who Ebenezer took inspiration from sought a philosophy of Nationalism through centralisation of the control over socialistic infrastructure; however, Ebenezer had a desire to correct misjudgement and balance individual initiative with social order instead.4 Ebenezer offered the best option for this through a standard welfare system which would provide the city inhabitants healthcare, education and national services with a local authority. Furthermore, to aid with Ebenezer’s approach governmental figures throughout the early 20th Century introduced many liberal economics including the passing of welfare reforms.

Towns such as Howard’s Welwyn Garden City had sought resolution as far as France where Otto Wagner (1893) rather than go the contemporary route aligned with Ebenezer. He too, it appears, wanted a masterplan of autonomous zones forming a centrifugal expansion. His districts highlighting a part of the urban web which would be mass constructed. However, Stephen Heathorn’s view saw these towns as repetitive, dull and ‘artificial’ questioning who would want to live in a dysfunctional low-density city.5 Thus, developing over time into a working-class town devoid of middle-class inhabitants and damaging the future developments of similar ambitious projects. The effects of which are visible in many controversial regeneration projects are forced by the local planning authorities attempting privatised gentrification, with the removal of anyone who cannot afford the new standard of living often moving low-income households into these impoverish areas such as the Aylesbury estate in Suffolk. In response, Jane Jacobs makes her point that although the city project may not have worked as Howard intended, the street that has been produced needs to be understood.6 In other words, that greater thought should be injected when it comes to how the corridors between segmented zones connect the spaces by not demanding anyone into blocks where social isolation occurs. Keeping the citizens in the city by an interest to inhabit equally, and locally, avoiding forceful daily commutes elsewhere allowing for a focus on humanist freedom within the cityscape.

RADIANT CITYThe Radiant City, from the post war era, opposes Jane Jacobs approach and which saw Le Corbusier attempting to realise the 21st Century utopian city; Condensing the city structure vertically was Le Corbusier’s idea of humanistic design, and ultimately forming the keystone idea of liberating the individual over the built form.7 Emphasising that multiple functions would be fulfilled within vertical structures, all of which formed a part of a wider masterplan community, and still catered for cross communication between city blocks.

In 1947, India - fuelled by the war - exercised their independence from the British Empire splitting the country in half. They went international with Le Corbusier as the main designer for the new city of Chandigarh. The city was designed using a cartesian grid and constructed with the idea of a living machine attempting to optimise life. The residences were stacked considering that Le Corbusier’s view was that the traditional streets which Jacobs called for did not work; an obsolete notion, streets constantly being redeveloped due to dysfunctional urbanization often required completely new builds.8 Chandigarh is constantly expanding still to this day but deals with modern problems especially limited inter block transport causing traffic jams and street fabric structure causing community neglect between the blocks.

Rob Krier questioned Le Corbusier’s approach, as Chandigarh in his view was unintentionally flawed with an idealistic disconnect seen in the urban street construct. Civic structures bound by prefabricated high-density housing and programmed contract alienated the citizens from the wider city and environment producing an epidemic of ‘Urban Blight’ in which the city falls into a state of disrepair.9 Krier suggests that a less fragmented connection is needed between the city compartments, and that an integrated system needed to be established for success.10 Thus, I understand that his work with typologies of urban space to aid in the formation and construction of the public realm with a connected city construct bringing the citizens closer just as efficiently without disrupting Jane Jacobs’ social understanding of individualistic street integrity.

RHS Image: Connections between living and commuting in an urban sprawl.


Christopher Alexander in response to Krier stated that this Urbanization was still not enough to stop building neglect, highlighting a need for a new ‘physical urban order’ to give back meaning and expression to those experiencing the city for purposes of generating a reimagined approach to city living.11 The need for such an approach possibly suggested demand for ‘looking forward to looking backward’.12 A case described by Felicity Scott in order to bring back a natural city construct methodology as it was noted by Lewis Mumford that a class-based revolution could be brought forward by the industry’s advancement and evolution.13 Meyer Schapiro, to critique Mumford, disagreed by way of arguing that capitalism, in fact, only influences a portion of the machine; With most of the Marxist thinking common with the exercise of capitalist power, it was thought that a fascist movement could form before an ideal level of political and social engagement had been reached.14 This therefore emphasised that however much capitalism was integrated into the urban city architecture, socialism would continue to influence city design.

CONCLUSIONIn the present day, where an even more polymorphous understanding of power and nationality is found, it is vital that the city is no longer separated by its segregated built fabric. Opposing the current neoliberal approaches, I find that the ideal itself offers origins with humanist welfare exhibited by Le Corbusier and Ebenezer Howard’s socialist city planning. My design studio proposal could become a vertical street such as the Radiant city, but with a woven community parallel to The Garden City; and therefore, can be planned with this regenerative method. This erected city would function specifically for the families and young professionals who would be living in it with safe connected communal space. By redefining the urban fabric of the street, I would be able to regain the human influence my project. Urban Renewal of spaces, previously regulated by city planners, looks to remove control state through an increasing amount of private-public partnerships and their questionable benefits for citizens need in social developments.

LHS Image: Conceptual reimaging of Ebenezer’s Garden City and Le Corbusier’s Radiant City.

1Jeanneret, C (Le Corbusier). The radiant city, London: Faber, 1967. 2Howard, E. Garden cities of to-morrow, Eastbourne: Attic Books 1997 (Original Edition 1902) 3Howard, E. Garden cities of to-morrow, Eastbourne: Attic Books 1997 (Original Edition 1902) 4Fishman, R. Urban utopias in the twentieth century, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2016 5Eve, B and Monika, P. Modern architecture in central Europe 1890-1937, Munich: Prestel, 1999 6Heathorn, S. Ebenezer Howard, the Town and Country Planning Association and English Ruralism, Cambridge University Press, 2000. 7Jacobs, J. The death and life of American cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1992. 8Jeanneret, C (Le Corbusier). The radiant city, London: Faber, 1967. 9Jeanneret, C (Le Corbusier). The radiant city, London: Faber, 1967. 10Krier, R. Urban space, New York: Rizzoli International, 1991. 11Krier, R. Urban space, New York: Rizzoli International, 1991. 12Alexander, C. Community and privacy (towards a new architecture of humanism), Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1965.

13Scott, F. Architecture or techno-utopia, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010 14Scott, F. Architecture or techno-utopia, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010 15Scott, F. Architecture or techno-utopia, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010


MENTAL WELL-BEING:MATERIALITY IN MICRO UNITS

Rhianna-Louise Dixon

This paper will discuss how the choice of materials in micro residential units affect the inhabitant’s mental health. This will be conducted through the analysis of ‘The Reversible Destiny Lofts’ (RDL), 1995, in Tokyo, by Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, who aimed to prolong life through artistic architecture; Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Fallingwater House’ (FWH), 1939, in Pennsylvania, which intended to form a dialogue with its natural context however implemented anti-inhabitation; thus he formed the overall the influence of biophilic architecture. Similarly, in my own studio project, I have adopted environmental aspects of my site and incorporated them within my design – poetically and literally, hoping to achieve a positive impact for the creative individuals it would house. The significance of this study is supported by the statistic that we are living in an age where we spend ‘more than 90%’ of our lives contained to the great indoors; evidently this has significant psychological effects. Thus, the material composition of a structure is integral to whether or not these impacts are positive. Especially where sustainability is becoming increasingly more consequential, the use of natural resources may also subsequently impact inhabitants’ psyche.

DEMISTYFYING DESTINYenticing and salient – opposing the material’s preconception. The apartments are small, one typology measuring only 52m2, which would be ideal for a couple or lone tenant – similarly to my own studio proposal – yet still comfortable for living. Designing residential housing with a restriction of space, especially in the current urban densification – this being a predominant requirement within Japan - it is crucial that the conditions of living are not impeded upon. Enclosed spaces can feel claustrophobic therefore, the materials and composition of a room are important as they can greatly influence the inhabitant. For instance, a traditional prison room layout – constructed of bland, raw concrete – is purposefully plain, restricted and limited to light; little floor space with all facilities visible from the entrance (whereby the seldom access is). This being strategically arranged to be ‘strictly controlling’ , thus making it comparative to ‘that of a domestic lavatory’ – this, a space in which humans are expected to live. It is only predictable these architectural methods did not aid their psychology or normalisation.

Reflecting upon the afore mentioned points, multi-tenant housing, a similar dictation of space is displayed, however feeling more liberal due to the endorsement of decoration through ownership; room dimension and composition of noted spaces. ‘The RDL’ exemplifies this – rooms are prescribed programme, whilst also linking to an internal core which, due to Arakawa’s Japanese culture, is the kitchen. Correspondingly to that of the panopticon, the entirety of the dwelling can be seen from here (Fig. 1) – an intentional design element as to connect inhabitants. In addition, there is an absence of doors thus reinforcing a lack of privacy. It forms a constant dialogue making the room appear more spacious and affiliated, meanwhile even if in another room there is no literal boundary, only liminal. This element can affect the occupant positively, via the afore mentioned, or negatively as privacy is a comforting psychological construct – ‘When individuals control space and have privacy needs met, feelings of comfort and freedom are possible.’ . However, through the use of bright colours internally it transforms the atmosphere of the spaces into something charismatic, even though they are still cold, bleak concrete shells beneath the paint.

RHS Image: Integrating the environmental aspects of the site into design.

‘The RDL’ does connect to biophilic architecture despite its primary use of concrete. The floor is a composition of mortar and other natural materials, which creates an uneven surface (Fig. 2) – much like the organic terrane of the outdoors, therefore forcing a closer relationship to nature, (Fig. 3) which is vital to Gins and Arakawa’s works; as humans we take for granted the rectilinear and flat. Consequently, this element forces the body into an unknown sensation, whereby we act instinctively due to reconfiguring ‘anxieties of disorder, error and ambivalence,,’ resulting in the body being an integral aspect of the architecture itself. This sensation of unfamiliarity was strongly believed in by Arakawa so to ‘invert[ing] the destiny called death,’ as modern housing has ‘cut us off from the outside environment,’ prioritising repetitive geometries that do not appear organically, hence his (and Gins) faith in defying death through such methods.

FALLINGDOWNAppearing weightlessly amongst its context, the FWH is unquestionably the epitome of biophilic architecture (established as organic architecture, where natural materials are used to create an intensified connection between people and the land). After all, Frank Lloyd Wright is the founding father of organic architecture where from it blossomed, although it comes at a price. Utilising natural material; rough stone and timber, the building seamlessly merges with its environment by ‘blending [...] colourings of the rocks and trees.’ In Wright’s philosophy ‘people [are] creatures of nature.’ Thus, it was crucial that this thinking was incorporated within his architecture – as he attempted to forge harmonious links between humanity and the landscape we came from. The connection is executed most notably through materiality, literal and conceptual.

Similarly, to that of Le Corbusier - who believed greatly in healthy living as he said that light, space and order are as crucial to living as bread and a place to sleep - the free plan layout, use of glass and open balconies of the FWH comforts the inhabitants by diminishing the boundary between the outdoors (Fig. 4), whilst maintaining a sense of security through internal containment (expressive of a primitive cave), reinforced by the shielding hill behind it. If applied to micro housing the translucency would eliminate the sense of claustrophobia, contriving a spacious volume and thus relieving stress and anxiety. Natural waxed stone from site is found beneath the occupants’ feet, drawing a deep connection to the context, and in turn people to the earth, rejuvenating the spirit, body and mind.

Though revolutionary in his choice of ferro-concrete for the cantilevers, the ochre painted balconies lacked necessary support; soon after pouring began to crack – inevitably ‘some [...] cantilevers had fallen more than 7 inches’ by 2001; the construction predestined to collapse. This method, despite innovative thinking would have nullifying effects on inhabitants – their bedrooms languishing; a stressful experience irrespective of the enveloping natural context.

Emerging from the landscape, though undeniably beautiful, there are impediments: being built upon the active Bear Run river, the serene sounds were a much-valued element to Wright – even assimilated as an abstract material – however, due to the proximity, the sheer volume of acoustics would cause disturbance. The intensity being incomparable to that of the tranquil and quiet structure that is closely associated with the outdoors. Rather, it was an an unavoidable annoyance that would hinder an optimistic mindset. It is too notable that ‘noise is also seen as intrusive into personal privacy,’ of which the benefits have been outlined previously.

CONCLUSIONIt is evident that materials influence an occupant’s psychology, nonetheless the positive repercussion is not exclusive to the use of those which are natural. It is palpable that the implication of the natural environment has significant and positive effects – proven through biophilic architecture. The RDL’s replication of the undulating landscape was intended to prolong a person’s lifespan, due to our unfamiliarity with the designed environment; however, its primary material is concrete, which has simply been decorated to detract from the hostile aura the material possesses. In Wright’s philosophy people and nature are intertwined, thus his imperative use of the environment as a material in his works. Comparatively as exemplified in his FWH they must also be exercised with caution not to cause discomfort to the inhabitant, just for architecture’s sake. Therefore, biophilia is indispensable to design relating to mental well-being; implied and otherwise.


LHS Image: Comparing the Reversible Destiny Lofts to the Panopticon: the only

difference being colour and implied programme

SURFACE, SOCIALISATION AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

ZAHA HADID, PHAENO SCIENCE CENTRE

Benjamin D Giles

The relationship between the manipulation of a surface and the influence it has on the activation of social motion highlights the effect that architecture has on socialisation. Within our current design project (Domestic Matters – Design Work), a critical analysis was undertaken on the Abercrombie Plan ‘A Plan for Plymouth’, which was a redevelopment plan for the City of Plymouth after the WW11 bombings. During this analysis, it was found that the Abercrombie Plan was a manipulation of the surface (in this case ground plane) as it encouraged a segregated social structure. This segregation was caused by the creation of a series of precincts that led to a fixed moulding, that is, determined social motion. Invariably, the surface also determines social structures and socialisation. With this in mind, the essay examines the relationship between the surface, socialisation and structure; the agenda will be analysed via Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno Science Centre , a structure that brought into its shaping ideas from Suprematism and Oblique Architecture.

SURFACE, SOCIALISATION AND STRUCTUREManuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist known for his research on network societies and space of flows, believes that space is a ‘material product, in relation to other material products – including people.’1 He believes that it is the dwellers that ‘engage in determined social relationships that provide the space with a form, a function and a social meaning.’ Reinterpreting this definition, it could be said that space is influenced by the manipulation of material products such as architecture, and thus affects the socialisation of its dwellers. Establishing space with its form, function and social meaning, architecture can begin to influence this space through the manipulation of the surface. The American architect, Stan Allen proposed the idea of how the ‘surface’ can influence the process of socialisation due to a ‘rheostatic apparatus’ (a resistor for regulating current) creating a ‘charge.’ The dwellers acting as ‘metal filings’ on the surface begin ‘forming patterns such as ‘flocks, swarms and neighbourhoods’ due to this charge. These patterns represent the motion of social interaction between dwellers.

During this process of socialisation and the relationship with its physical environment, Nigel Thrift, a British geographer, believes that dwellers ‘draw upon a social structure.’ With the social structure in place, default positions begin to constrain the dwellers social motion and steal their sense of agency. The architecture can begin to exercise power over its dwellers through the social structure it influences. The dweller gives agency to the architecture and allows his/her motion to be modulated by its surface, permitting the architect to design the dwellers social structure.

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RHS Image: Social structure modulated by surface manipulation.

PHAENO SCIENCE CENTREZaha Hadid’s Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany was the winning project in an international design competition was initiated by Dr Wolfgang Guthardt, the city's Director for Culture, Sports and Education in 1998. Hadid’s design intended to unify form, function and constructive structure as one; it was an integrated and modulated surface. The centre provides an exhibition space, which is taken up by a total of 250 scientific experiments. The intent of this space was to accommodate ‘the curious visitor who is happy to converse with a simple mechanism, content to provoke a phenomenon to observe. Phenomena, the language nature uses to speak to us’ . In this case language is referred to as an interaction between observer and mechanism, the way in which the observer develops an understanding of something new. Hadid manipulates the surface of the landscape and modulates the social motion that takes place within architecture. By facilitating the opportunity for science experiments, she accommodates a possibility for a social structure where there is no hierarchy. Everyone is on the same plane, exploring, learning and observing. The relationship created between the surface and its dwellers also influences the social motion within that space.

Zahid’s influence and thinking behind the surface of architecture and topography as an undulating modulation was influenced by Suprematism, an art movement that focused on basic geometric forms such as circles, squares and lines, which could be fragmented to create stimulating pieces of art. The movement was founded by Kazimir Malevich in Russia around 1913 and aimed to achieve total simplicity. The influence was firstly prominent in her early paintings, which then shaped her architecture. Detlef Mertis, in ‘The Modernity of Zaha Hadid’, indicates that the influence of Suprematism within Phaeno is ‘part curvilinear’, ‘part angular’ and ‘part distorted,’ which is a reinterpretation of Malevich’s aim for total simplicity. The exhibition space is a ‘conceptual landscape,’ with the surface built from ‘pure geometry;’ a ‘fluid and flexible’ surface. For Mertis, ‘Hadid constantly distorts, morphs, stretches and stresses the forms she employs animating them with energy and speed.’ This surface manipulation, facilitates ‘energy and speed’ which then stimulates the social motion of the dwellers, moving ‘through the space like highly charged ions, navigating a new form of internal landscape’. The dwellers’ sense of agency is affected by the architecture as they explore, learn and observe.

Hahid’s manipulation of the surface is reminiscent of the Function of the Oblique, a theoretical idea proposed by Claude Parent and Paul Virilio who formed the Architecture Principe group in 1963, which investigated the idea of discarding the horizontal planes and vertical walls ‘inaccessible by gravity,’ manipulating them into the Oblique – a habitable plane. Parent’s and Virilio’s work on the Function of Oblique introduces us to a ‘habitable circulation’ meaning that the usable space is increased. Habitable circulation is Hadid’s geometric landscape, which is a ‘free plan’ that has ‘no starts and no stops’ or ‘no set path;’ ‘everything is an invitation.’ Phaeno takes the dwellers’ sense of agency thanks to the surface providing a structure with no hierarchy.

CONCLUSIONOne can argue that the manipulation of the surface has the power to modulate socialisation and social structure in architecture; the manipulated surface is the agency. Phaeno provides an example where this manipulation of the surface, using the theories of Suprematism and the Oblique moves the dwellers into a social structure with no hierarchy and no control.


LHS Image: Mapping social interaction between dwellers.

FADING OUT BOUNDARIES:COMPOSING PHENOMENAL

TRANSPARENCY

Lingweng Kong

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The thinking to do with phenomenal transparency was first addressed by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky in 1956; the theory has long been considered to reveal the architectural thinking of Le Corbusier's work: a way to enrich building space, the fuzziness and ambiguity it produces bring about observer's in-depth interpretation. However, this theory has more meanings; it is also concerned with the experience of users inside the buildings, dealing with the relationship between people and space. This essay attempts to map the development of the thinking on phenomenal transparency and pick two important works of architecture (Le Corbusier’s 1927 Villa Gachet in Vaucresson and SANNAA’s 2003 House in a Plum Grove in Tokyo) to analyse how transparency is present in these works. This may help us understand the principle of transparency and help generate the methodology on how to use transparency to compose space.

Unlike physical transparency, phenomenal transparency was first addressed in Cubism. In 1941, Sigfried Gideon first started comparing paintings with architecture and define the interpenetrative aspects between surfaces in terms of transparency. Then in 1944, Gyorgy Kepes describes why when two or more graphic images share the same base, these graphics are endowed with a transparent feature using Gestalt psychology. He explained when people see several figures overlap with each other, they may envisage a new visual situation.Transparency is the simultaneous perception of different spatial locations. With each figure moving in our eyes, the position of transparent graphics is ambiguous. Phenomenal transparency affects perception of space and objects.

In one still life painting named ‘Nature morte à la pile d'assiettes et au livr’ by Le Corbusier in 1920, there is a presence of phenomenal transparency. The main objects in the front of the painting are painted using parallel perspective. The objects seem to be intertwined, and according to Laszlo Moholy Nagy, intend Le Corbusier created a shallow space by compressing the deep space, making the deep space more interpenetrated. In paintings, three-dimensional space can only be expressed two-dimensionally. However, in buildings, space is real. If we use the parallel perspective to achieve shallow space, it is very easy to break it when people observe that space from a different angle. Le Corbusier addressed this in his Villa Gachet. He built a pathway straight towards the garden façade of the villa. Although the building was built on an open space, the pathway accommodates the significance of this façade; the people would always see the facade of the building upon arrival

RHS Image: Assembling and disassembling phenomenal transparency.


Structurally, the building is completely supported by pillars, which are arranged in equal distance, meaning that none of the internal walls are load-bearing. This meant that a sense of flexibility was given to the way in which the space was internally separated and connected. The connection was extended with the used of ribbon windows on the façade. The ribbon windows make use of the glass to show the scenery inside and outside the building. When people see through the long horizontal strip windows from the front of Villa Gachet, they can envisage a narrow parallel space behind the glass. As people enter the building, they would find that the interior space and the façade are completely in opposition to the initial envisioning. The actual internal space partition negates this assumption and provides a major space vertical to the façade not parallel with it as our assumption. Moreover, whether it is the main space or the auxiliary space, its direction is obviously dominant and strengthened through a series of side walls. The overlap, linkage and contradiction of these space constitute a variety of interpretations for people and create transparency.

To understand phenomenal transparency in terms of three-dimensional space, we should look back on the original definition of it when it comes to two-dimensional space: interpenetration between surfaces. We can deduct that, in three-dimensional space, phenomenal transparency means interpenetration between spaces. When several spaces penetrate each other without destroying each other, phenomenal transparency appears. To achieve this, space boundaries should be faded-out but remain so that the original space will not be destroyed but interpenetrated with the nearby spaces. Space boundaries in buildings are walls. It is important for us to discover a way to make walls fade-out depending on the function, and features of the space itself.

The architecture studio SANAA from Japan has integrated phenomenal transparency to create abstract spaces in which people could not understand how the space combine by simple observe. People should ‘feel’ the space instead of just observe it. They create abstract spaces and liberate people from tedious experience and perspective of architectural space. SANNAA’s House in a Plum Grove (Tokyo, 2003) approximates a cube. The plan is divided by one vertical and one horizontal wall into four sections, in order to form the internal space. The analysis of private and public space shows that most private spaces are compressed and separated on the edge of the house, while public space are much bigger and more gathered in the center. If using traditional solid walls, the private space could be narrow and cramped. To deal with this problem, SANAA firstly reduced wall thickness for purposes of affording a bigger internal space. Then, they cut openings on the interior walls. These openings don not have any glass cover, so the sound and smell freely penetrates through, as does light. These openings are set between the boy's bedroom and the entrance hall, between the grandmother's bedroom and the living room, between the girl's bedroom and the study room and the library. 10 These openings are all interconnected, some of the interior openings are linked with external windows. People can see through the private space and investigate the public space in the center, but the private space is not disturbed. The interior window system closely links space, sight, sound, behavior and emotion together, forming a new relationship between space and function. Arguably, one may deduct that the composition of all these spaces affords phenomenal transparency.

The earlier thinking on phenomenal transparency focuses on the relationships of two-dimensional space. It enriches the façade of buildings by letting people see through façade and imagine the interior space. It is a useful technique when we design the surface of buildings. Likewise, when we design the interior space as it allows to fade-out borders. Thus, the users of these spaces are connected through sight, sound and emotion. The quality of integrating phenomenal transparency in design is that space can become both pluralistic and ambiguous.

1 Colin Rowe, Robert Slatsky . Transparency . (China Construction Industry Press, 2008), p 37-41 2 Kazuyo sejima, Ryue Nishizawa. EL croquis: SANAA : Continuity Systems . (Spain EL croquis editorial, 2015) 3 Siegfried Gideon, Space, Time and Architecture: Growth of a New Tradition . (Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, 2014), p 306-310. 4 Gorger Capes, Visual Language,(1944), p 775 Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Vision in Motion, (Paul Theobald & Co, First Edition, 1947), p 210 6 Le Corbusier, Complete Works, Volume 1, (1910-1929 ,China) (Architecture& Building Press, 2005), p 1287 Le Corbusier, vers une architecture , (Flammarion, 1995) 8 Colin Rowe, Robert Slatsky. Transparency . (China ,Construction Industry Press, 2008), p 369 Yi gang Peng, Architectural space combination theory , ( China Building Industry Press, 2004), p 1210 Kazuyo sejima, Ryue Nishizawa. EL croquis: SANAA : Continuity Systems . (Spain EL croquis editorial, 2015)

RHS Image: Transparency in two- and three- dimensional form.

HETEROTOPIA AND MILLBAY:RETHINKING A SOCIO-SPATIAL DISCONNECTION

Mo NaitCharif


INTRODUCTION Millbay is an area that has undergone a significant urban and social decline over the last half century. The dual circumstances of the loss of its industrial nature, and Abercrombie’s segregated zoning of the city following the Second World War, have led to an impermeable threshold (disconnected urban fabric) with the extended city. In attempting to address this condition, our masterplan proposal introduces a programmatic framework that promotes a level of sociality and inclusivity. The principles of Heterotopia (coined by Michel Foucault) will be used as a methodology for purposes of generating a level of interconnectivity within our site. With this in mind, this essay investigates the extent to which such a heterogeneous spatial ordering can address this disconnected urban fabric, and develop a more interconnected relationship between Millbay and the city.

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF FUNCTION AND PLACEMillbay’s past was defined through its pragmatic character, to which our design proposal responded by injecting a new program: domesticity, and two main contrasting urban typologies were determined as function and living. Such a program provided a polyvalent field (existing condition and two new urban typologies); variables upon which the site was spatially organised. These variables are comparable to Foucault’s analogy of children’s imagination games in real-world spaces, a heterogeneous space allows for the coexistence of presumably mutually exclusive settings – that a singular place may provide for a multitude of experiences. A child may create a world of caves and tunnels in what adults perceive as a simple living room. Using this analogy as an example indicates that a disconnected urban condition of Millbay and the city can become more socially interconnected. In other words, by emulating this heterogeneous principle wherein by blurring the linear correspondence between programme and space, we could allow for a positive positive fusion of function and living, and the development of a ‘new urbanism.’ The ‘new urbanism’ is a more diverse social field of coexistence and equity.

Within the design proposal, each subplot is structured so that it contains one of two elements; spaces of function (workshops, lecture halls and art studios) in parallel with spaces of living (communal kitchens, recreational greenhouses and meditation halls). Each plot limits one or the other, ensuring inhabitants are prompted to move between subplots and partake in an interconnected lifestyle. In doing so, what is created is a more integrated level of social inclusivity that over time could ignite the development of a new socio-construct that is addressing and accentuating its urban context. Such socio-spatial ordering of space prompted by the liminal archetype may contribute to Millbay becoming a more desirable destination and therefore active with the wider city.. This is significant since, one may argue, a space fundamentally relies on people’s interactions, which in turn facilitate a level of inclusivity. Despite Kelvin Knight stating that the principles of a heterotopia were never intended to be used in the configuration of actual space, it is undeniable that a space designed with a multitude of parallel programmes provides the platform for an increased scope of human interaction.


TURNING THE TRANSITORY INTO PRODUCTIVEConsidering that Millbay, in its current condition, exists neither in the metropolitan present, nor in the industrial nature of its past, one may argue that Millbay already adheres to the notion of heterotopia by existing as a space of otherness. However, due to its undefined identity and inability to integrate with the framework of the city, Millbay could also be denoted as a ‘non-place.’ Non-place and a heterotopia differ in the pragmatics of space. Whereas a heterotopia has an identifiable definition, non-place is void of any significant archetype. With this understanding, Millbay in itself presupposes a juxtaposition of non-place and heterotopia as it embodies both a loss of identity, as well as a pragmatic nature.

Addressing Millbay’s urban disconnection then becomes a matter of removing non-place connotations through the development of an identity whilst simultaneously accentuating the heterogenic transitory agenda. Advocating this, the design project proposes a modular market place. By a literal understanding, it is a way of generating an influx of people from a multitude of places to our site (local, national and international – the site is close to the Port of Plymouth). On a contextual level, the changing frequency of the market place intends to revitalize a sense of identity, giving people on and off site the initiative to interact with one another. Overtime, this may lead to an improved urban dialogue between Millbay and the city, and the establishment of a porously diverse threshold.

THE NEXUS OF OPENING AND CLOSINGA heterotopia is as much amplified through the relationship between function and space as it is through its simultaneous representation of isolation and accessibility. Within his zonal mapping of the city, Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie denoted the entirety of Millbay as a zone of industry,, and in effect set the foundations on which the ostracization of the present day condition developed. With such a strict dictation of programme, Millbay has grown independently from the rest of the city. Arguably, our site somewhat contains the heterogeneous principle of ‘opening and closing’ through its disconnection with the extended city. However, this spatial identity alone is not heterogeneous, but homogenous; it perpetuates the sites status as a ‘dead zone.’ In theory, the segregated socio-construct that defines present day Millbay can be utilised and directed towards the development of a heterotopia. Attempting to realise this, the design proposal has undertaken the process of spatial planning of the site through the mapping of in-between spaces at a higher relevance than those with more defined programs. These public spaces (by a literal understanding, designed for circulation) exist in tandem with the more private zones. Similar to the South American houses referenced by Foucault, these spaces entertain the heterogeneous quality of ‘transit,’ where people coming into our site enter it in a state of assumed inclusivity. Effectively, by adapting disconnection, the series of public spaces are fundamentally an amalgamation of thresholds, working in parallel towards the developing a ‘new public culture.’

Perpetuating this heterogeneous paradigm of opening and closing, however, could lead to some issues on a communal scale. This breaks down the pre-supposed mental borders assigned to a physical space. While this could be a step towards an inclusive urban framework, it goes against a common need in modern city inhabitants for ordered space, and well-determined borders. However, through this urban disorder, it is possible that a level of interdependency between spaces can develop leading to a place defined by its dependency on the threshold. In attempting to address socio-spatial disconnection, Millbay may manifest itself as the connector, rather than a place being connected.

CONCLUSIONThe pressing question is the extent to which a heterogeneous spatial ordering can address the disconnected urban fabric between Millbay and the City. As the urban condition of the city changed after the Second World War, Millbay’s singular programme ensured a level of urban ostracisation developed, through its inability to connect with the wider city. Analysis of the site through a more heterogeneous lens allows us to create a series of spatial ordering principles that attempt to reinstate the site as a productive element of the city. When Foucault’s thinking on a heterotopia as a coexistence of a multitude of events, and the opening and closing nature of such a space, is integrated into design it allows a level of social identity to return to the site through the adaptation of the site’s transitory state. Effectively, this transforms the urban typology to adapt from a non-place, to one where a liminal domesticity has the possibility to evolve. While the effect of such an ordering fundamentally relies on the participatory nature of people, it is undeniable that it provides the foundations for an interconnected urbanism whilst also simultaneously accentuating the site’s transitory agenda.

1Jeremy, G. ‘Plymouth Planned, The Architecture Of The Plan For Plymouth 1943 - 1962, (Devon, 2000).2 Foucault, M., trans by Miskowiee, J. ‘Of Other Spaces’ > https://www.jstor.org/stable/464648?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents <3Katz, P. ‘The New Urbanism Towards an Architecture of Community’, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1994)4Knight, K, ‘Real places and impossible spaces:Foucault’s Heterotopia in the fiction of James Joyce’, Vladimir Nabokov, and W.G. Sebald’ > https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/50585/ < 5 Foucault, M. p. 266Augé, M. ‘Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of SuperModernity’, 2nd Edn, (London:Verso,1995) 7Stravrides, S. ‘Towards the City of Thresholds ‘ (Professional Dreamers, 2010) 8Foucault, M. pg. 269Heterotopia and the City Public Space in a Postcivil Society, (NewYork, Routledge 2008)10Foucault, M. pg. 26. 11Stravrides, S. (2010), pg 18. 12Frank, Karen A., Stevens, Q. (eds), ‘Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life’, (NewYork, Routledge 2007) 13Stravrides, S. (2010), pg 20.

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COMMUNITY WITHIN THE CITYLucas Payne

The purpose of this essay is to research into, and examine how, the UK’s attitudes towards community affect and form the way we dwell, why we preferentially live in private housing and avoid cohousing communes. In 1887, Ferdinand Tönnies put forward the idea of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft – the concept of dichotomising society into two categories: Community and Society. The former, which holds emphasis on personal interactions regarding values, beliefs and roles dichotomises; the latter, civil society, encompasses indirect, social interactions and the impersonal values, beliefs, and attitudes within such.

In 1921, Max Weber responded to Tönnies’ proposal in his book Economy and Society (published posthumously), further evolving the dichotomy; he observed the shift within society from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft – arguing that social order is the result of rational agreement by mutual consent, meaning that we, as members of the society, agree to certain rules and norms as we believe they are beneficial to us as individuals. He argues that this transgression on the views of community dissolving into society may be due to a shift in our ways of living as we encroach into the city and migrate away from rural ways of dwelling. The Canadian urbanist and writer Charles Montgomery also discusses the need for the society to subsume private goals for the well-being of the community, namely this call to action may be due to the shift in society that Weber analyses, wherein our approach to gemeinschaft has become lethargic as we become a private society.

On a macro scale, we may argue that a mostly capitalist society avoids cooperative living, in order to pursue an individually owned asset; to have material wealth to our name. We want to live together as a society – or gemeinschaft – yet hesitate in living within the conformity of the community. This may occur because of our ingrained perception of gemeinschaft is that we should defer our mutual bonds within the topic of dwelling for family bonds alone. Weber addresses this in his essay Classes, Stände, Parties (within his masterwork Economy and Society) where he discusses how our feeling of ‘community’ changes within what class the individual belongs to. He argues that we subconsciously identify someone’s class through the ownership of their individual residential assets, which determines, through monetary value, the class in which someone may belong to. To Weber, this form of social order we see today is a rational agreement by mutual consent, meaning that we – as members of society – hold belief to certain rules, as holding residential assets pushes up the undisclosed class ranking.

Furthermore, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs makes clear that within cities, we have an agenda of that neighbourhoods are to be self-contained and introverted units, which have no form of innate community. Christopher Alexander in his work A City is not a Tree, argues that the lack of communication between neighbourhoods is due to urban strategy impose the structure of a tree into the city, rather than allowing a complex network – or a semilattice – to evolve organically over time. The presence of a community being fragmented is also seen in Peter Block’s Community: the Structure of Belonging, wherein within neighbourhoods, each organisation, such as a school, operates within its own world. Therefore, such planning may suggest there is no sense of community, due to each organisation running parallel to one another, having no communication, thus no gesellschaft. In relation to Jacobs, they further suggest that no amount of central urban planning could form a community within a city neighbourhood, and if it did, as the city would be destroyed and broken down into many parcel towns – which have no connection to each other, even if they are in close proximity to another parcel town.

Top Image: If they were to be fragmented as Jane Jacobs suggests, the individual neighbourhoods would have community connections within themselves, but little or no reason to connect with other communities or neighbourhoods. Bottom Image: Private housing defines the boundaries to force people to live separately, whereas cohousing forces a group within one boundary they collective own and share.


When relating her work back to the idea of gemeinschaft and how it varies with the urbanization of cities, Jacobs argues that small towns or villages are able to generate a cohesive community through the physical cross-connections of paths amongst its inhabitants and using each other’s resources out of necessity. Additionally, the urban planner Scholar Reginald Isaacs points out that the purpose of city life is to give the inhabitant wide choice and rich opportunity by rendering the physical cross-connection paths we see in smaller rural paths unnecessary, as community evolves through common interests within the city, rather than proximity. This is due to city communities having a wide array of options when the inhabitants form community, for example, a city dweller will have a community at their place of work, even though members of that community may commute from further afield. This may be why there are few cohousing projects within the cities of UK. Where they do exist (such as New Ground Cohousing in North London, or Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing in Seattle, USA) they are a statement and exist sparingly – comparatively, people choose the city to have choice of how they live, be that collectively or privately, showing that there may be a suggestion in changing attitudes to private dwelling.

To examine gemeinschaft in the micro sense, London Architecture firm Studio Weave – in partnership with the RIBA – researched and published their findings on the qualitative outcomes of living together through cohousing. One of the precedents analysed is London’s first all-female senior cohousing complex, situated in North Barnet. It houses 26 women all of whom share the same ethos that living within a community allows for a successful and rich support system. One of the residents (Charlotte), puts down the community’s success to the shared ideas and collective values that the residents hold; these being that giving to the community holds higher significance than receiving from the community. All of the residents have some form of disability or restricted physical capability and come from different financial circumstances, which is why eight of the flats within the complex are social housing, allowing the community to be diverse, yet still remain cohesive due to their shared values on the ethos behind what cohousing should be to them. The research article suggests that the alternative living choice puts a substantial proportion of the inhabitants’ success in wellbeing due to the subtle social support system in place that is a clear trend throughout their research of multiple cohousing schemes in London.

Although Jacobs explains how the notion of community within the city cannot exist without the city becoming compartmentalised neighbourhoods that have little to no interaction with each other, the use of cohousing to create a microcosm of a neighbourhood within a single building or complex – like in North Barnet’s Older Women’s Co-Housing Group – may suggest evidence that these developments hold a strong community relationship amongst the residents. However, Jacobs writes about cities existing in the United States in mid-20th century, not cities existing in the UK of 2018. However, Maria Brenton’s paper (Senior Cohousing Communities – an Alternative Approach for the UK?) collates research from national Cohousing events and seminars where she suggests that institutional paternalism – of the treatment of the nation’s elderly – barricades the progress of senior cohousing. Brenton may be suggesting from this that to form community with cohousing, a shift towards increasing inhabitant participation throughout user control upon the construction or initiation process of cohousing, which would potentially change the lethargy we see in society’s current perception of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft.

To conclude, as we advance into city dwelling from the rural, the shift in society Weber notes demonstrates an evolution of gemeinschaft gesellschaft, and how this influences the way we live in cities today, be it communally or separately. Considering that Jacobs criticises the structure of the city, including how it influences the community by hindering the development of successful and flowing neighbourhoods we see that comparing the rural and the city is not necessarily beneficial, for they do not correlate in the way in which the community networks grow. For example, as urban planner Isaacs discussed, the community within a city has few physical boundaries and restrictions; the choice of how the inhabitant chooses to forge relationships, and therefore community, is by common interests, circumstance, and individual needs. It is this comparison that Weber writes of may further change as we collectively further transgress into what our agenda of gesellschaft becomes in the future, as urban sprawl exponentially increases.

1Jeremy, G. Plymouth Planned The Archiecture Of The Plan For Plymouth 1943 - 1962 (Devon 2000)2 Foucault, M., trans by Miskowiee, J. ‘Of Other Spaces’ [Online]https://www.jstor.org/stable/464648?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents, [6 January 2019]3Katz, P. The New Urbanism Towards an Architecture of Community, (NewYork, McGraw-Hill, 1994)4Knight, K, ‘Real places and impossible spaces:Foucault’s Heterotopia in the fiction of James Joyce’, Vladimir Nabokov, and W.G. Sebald’ [Online] https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/50585/,[28 December 2018]5 Foucault, M. [Online] pg. 266Augé, M. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of SuperModernity, trans. by John Howe, 2nd Edn, (London:Verso,1995) 7Stravrides, S. Towards the City of Thresholds (Professional Dreamers, 2010) 8Foucault, M. [Online] pg. 26 Dehaene, M., De Cauter, L. (eds) 9Heterotopia and the City Public Space in a Postcivil Society, (NewYork, Routledge 2008)10Foucault, M. [Online] pg. 26. 11Stravrides, S. 2010, pg 18. 12Frank, Karen A., Stevens, Q. (eds) Loose Space: Possibilityand Diversity in Urban Life (NewYork, Routledge 2007) 13Stravrides, S. 2010, pg 20.

Above Image: As people migrate from rural to urban places, the way in which community develops evolves from physical connection to circumstantial connection.

> ARC504A: Critical Context 5.2

CC5.2 develops upon the ideas introduced in Semester 1 by critically exploring the key concepts in contemporary architectural history/theory and practice. However, the exploration is even more specific in that it is largely based around a guest lecture series in which active members of research staff give a lecture about their own specialist field of research. The students responded to one of the research themes posed by member of staff:

> Dr. Simos Vamvakidis : A theory of everything: from digital design to dating apps> Dr. Mathew Emmet : Performing Architecture: immersive events and para-space> Dr. Alejandro Veliz Reyes : PAPERLESS: emergent architectural representations> Dr. Katharine Willis : Smart Urban Futures> Mr Mike Westley : Architecture for Wellbeing - Future-place 2030?> Dr. Sana Murrani : Let them eat spatial heritage> Mr Andy Humphreys : Site and Setting> Dr. Nikolina Bobic : Spatial Politics - Histories of Hope, Histories of Change Module Leader: Dr. Nikolina BobicSupporting Tutors: Dr. Ioana Popovici and Mr Alex Screech

RHS Image: Digital design thinking.Note: Image underwent manipulation.


Critical Context Journal > 066 < Intersections 18.19Critical Context Journal > 067 < Intersections 18.19

HABITUS & POWER: THE EDGELESS AGENCY

Ryan Barriball

This essay is addressing and largely building upon thoughts surrounding the idea that home is an edgeless notion of continuous occupation. This idea has particularly been analysed in terms of the sociological potential and processes required for one to have agency by occupying this edgeless spatiality via the conception of power. The sociological thinking on habitus by Pierre Bourdieu has been used to aid in addressing the social processes behind power and agency. Disseminating power has also been facilitated through the critical thinking of Michel Foucault and Paul Hirst. The theoretical framework has been contextualised by exploring the spatialization of early settlements and our understanding of shelter, that is, how this led to our evolution of the raw ingredients of making ‘home.’

SMART CITIES:ADAPTION THROUGH INTEGRATED SOCIAL

NETWORKS Sam Brazier

This text seeks to understand what intelligent systems are currently integrated into city networks, and the effects they have on social networks within the urban environment. The implementation of which is addressed in terms of how the built fabric can be created to enable live, adaptable spaces that make place in the city. However, the implementation of these intelligent systems and the virtual information of data raises the question of privacy; if citizens are monitored 24/7 to what degree does privacy still exist. This discussion will be addressed through careful readings of theorists such as William Mitchell, Michael Curry and Manuel Castells. This work will seek resolution by reflecting upon my design studio approach, which attempts to integrate live data streams into the envelope of the building; From this perspective, the structure is part of the cityscape network both physically and digitally.

Above Image: Home as an edgeless and continuous occupation.

Above Image: Control state networks in China: surveillance to regulate the everyday life of citizens.


ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! THE SOCIO-POLITICAL STRUGGLES OF URBANISATION

Sam Cooke

This essay addresses the notion of ‘urbanisation’ over the past 70 years to understand the connections between urban population increase, dispossession and scarcity. This is done through a three-part approach. The first theoretical method follows a Marxist line of thinking whereby urbanisation is connected to capitalism, and as such has enabled a plethora of social and political struggles. The second approach taps into understanding the urban in terms of ‘creative destruction and reconstruction’ of the market economy. The culmination of these two lenses leads me to address the necessity to think architecture and the urban through a social and participatory agenda; here, I particularly analyse the work of ELEMENTAL and Alejandro Aravena.

INHUMANE URBANISATION: TOWARDS SOCIALLY COHESIVE URBANISM

Jonathan Lettmann

The current trends in urbanisation are increasingly turning the world into a global network of urban agglomerations. This process is based on market-driven developments in which the profitability of the built environment has become a primary and driving factor. The argument is that the effects of such long-standing trends have led to the loss of the individual, that is, the current structures have eliminated the possibility for citizens to have an access to equitable access to space and resources.

This position will be disseminated through Lefebrve’s thinking on ‘the right to the city,’ both as a critique on the current urban climate and as a way of activating the need for citizens and social movements to seek public agency over cities. Likewise, the work of Alejandro Aravena is used to demonstrate the way in which the relationship between city and citizens can be re-balanced. The conclusion is that thinking inclusivity, social cohesion and participation needs to be approached with long-term multidisciplinary strategies rather than a ‘one-off’ revolutionary move.

Above Image: The structure and effects of capitalism.

Above Image: Mapping urban connections: rural exodus and extension of the urban fabric and complete subordination of agrarian to urban (influenced by Henri Lefebvre’s planetary urbanisation axis).


CONSUMER TERRITORIES: CHAOS AND THE TEMPORAL CITY

Mo NaitCharif

Territory is a disputed notion. It upholds different definitions depending on the context in which it is being used. In this essay, territory has a temporal characteristic and is used as a way to explore a changing consumer culture in the city. Throughout the essay, the High Street in Plymouth is discussed in conjunction to and with the city; the argument is that any territorial changes that occur within High Street will be reciprocated unto the city. With this framework in mind, understanding and engaging with the very conception of territory is to simultaneously engage with territory as spatiality in flux. Territory as a mobile space will be theorised through the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and Stuart Elden.


DISPLACEMENT: THE DESTRUCTION OF DWELLING

Joseph White

Conflict in the Middle East has had a profound impact on the number of refugees fleeing their homeland. This essay will address the relation between destruction of home and the implicit trauma that this destruction affords. The analysis will be supported through the thinking of Vilem Flusser in Freedom of the Migrant alongside Martin Heidegger’s concept of ‘dwelling’ in his “Building Dwelling Thinking.” The purpose of engaging with these two strands of thinking is to identify what it means to dwell alongside one’s attachments with dwelling, and the feeling of losing it. This position will be contextualised by examining the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, the second biggest refugee camp in the world. The infrastructure needed to house 78,597 refugees has over time allowed the camp to become a personal settlement, and a place of ‘dwelling.’

DIGITAL DESIGN THINKING

Kamil Perzanowski

This essay addresses the confusion around Digital Design Thinking, comprising of two strands of thinking as defined by Achim Menges and Sean Ahlquist,. Whilst exploring the denotations of the two counterparts, I pitch the concept against Patrick Schumacher’s Parametricism, finding that through architecturalisation, described by Neil Leach, the discourse has led to the benefits of computational school of thought being attributed to the far lesser, computerized style; highly resembling Parametricism. Whilst exploring the inheritance of Digital Design Thinking, I identify the contrast in Aristotle’s ‘Holism’, and René Descrate’s ‘Methodological Reductionism’, further expanding the perpetrating factors that lead to the dilution of Digital. However, with this contrast comes an opportunity; it is that of Creative Evolutionary Systems – theorised by Peter J Bentley and Dawid W Corne – whereby the logical and metaphysical have the potential to come together and produce a digital method of thought unlike anything we have seen before which in turn redefines the role of the architect in the design process. Above Image: Aristotle, holism and dynamic method

of design.

Above Image: Displacement raises questions to do with having a home and the ability to dwell.


> ARC604A: Critical Context 6.2 This year CC6 focused on skilling students with urban theories and methodologies related to their Design Studio as well as other research skills and training sessions dedicated for writing design agendas and manifestos. We engaged the students in dialogues and discussions on current issues of global challenges and how these relate to Architecture or the spaces it occupies. Module Leader: Dr. Sana MurraniSupporting Tutors: Dr. Ioana Popovici and Alex ScreechBA03 Cover Image: The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon by Amanda Levete Architects. RHS Image: Towards and beyond the platform canopy of Santiago Calatrava’s Gare do Oriente, Lisbon. Note: Image underwent manipulation.


USER AGENCY IN PARTICIPATIVE ARCHITECTURE

Emma Ansell

User agency in participative architecture is defined as the user’s ability to act independently on what they value, and the consequences of those actions.1 The intent of this manifesto is to address the necessity for a boost in user agency in participative architecture. Otherwise, architecture runs the risk of being built with no connection to its users. The proposed, and an immediate, solution is ‘transformative participation’ where individual life experiences can give everyone a voice through storytelling. Stories can open up the imagination to allow architects to become the mediator between user and the design. One way to introduce this solution is to implement it into the RIBA Plan of Work as a new task or stage in participation. A long-term solution is to change how architecture is taught, and to use live projects to implement this.

THE COG IN THE MACHINE: ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES

EMPOWERING QUEER THEORIES Leon Bell

This manifesto will look at a socio-political group, the LGBTQ, that I am for better or worse personally familiar with. I hope to address areas of weakness, where boundaries of the heteronormalised world can and have been sufficiently broken down by the architectural institution. I will articulate this position through a theoretical investigation of femininity, queer theory and space within the emasculated paradigms of modern society. This manifesto looks away from heteronormativity, and towards normalising difference through the places, spaces, and architecture of protectionism. It tackles notions of privacy from prying eyes, yet also studies examples of architecture that provide notions of pride and intense publicity to its queer users. By opening the realms of public identity, to investigate the purposeful allocation of gender to spaces, I will begin to highlight particular instances of queer empowerment.

Above Image: User agency and participation – the ability to act independently as well as address the consequences.

RHS Image: The warmth of human interaction within pockets of public realm.


BUILD THE WALL! UNDERSTANDING THE WALL AS AN INSTRUMENT

OF POLITICAL POWER Rob Forsey

From the West Bank to the US-Mexico border, walls stand as a political utensil to spatially implement power through division. Despite the emergence of an ever-globalised and connected world; the resurgence of the wall as a means to establish sovereignty continues to grow in popularity, even forming the slogan to the infamous 2016 Trump Presidency campaign. As such, this manifesto explores the wall as a political entity, analysing its innate power as a manifestation of dividing practice. The stated agenda will first be achieved by theoretically dissecting the wall as an isolated component of architecture, and second explored in terms of the vast array of contexts which establish the political need for the use of a wall as a tool of division. Enlisting the thinking of Derek Gregory, Eyal Weizman and Michel Foucault, the impact of the wall can be understood as a spatial means of control.

WHY HOSPITAL DESIGN SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL

DIMENSION OF RECOVERYTaylor Gittens

The built environment of medicine is a model solely focused on the investigation of illness and symptom categorisation; the hospital is a governing machine. According to Anthony Vidler, “[a]rchitecture incorporating reference to the human body was abandoned with the collapse of the classical tradition and the birth of a technologically dependent architecture.”1 The manifesto argues that a shift is needed; by moving the focus from diagnosis to one of healing—the enactment of patient care that goes beyond current standard clinical environments. That is, if we are to move away from the dehumanizing aspects of modern medicine, the current medical system - that is – the design of hospitals needs to be built upon the development of non-institutional and non-biomedical themes.2

Image: The wall, and the historical imprint of violence.

Image: The body is lost in the constraints of the machine in modern medicine.

References: 1Anthony Vidler, The Building In Pain: The body and architecture in Post-Modern culture, AA Files, (Architectural Association School of Architecture, 1990), p.8


SENSUALISING CITIES

Georgia Hendy

Everyday life is shaped by an unpredictable number of determinants, which vary from individual to individual, enable the affordance of a liminal space of personal perception that in turn allows for an implicit sensory depth to occur with architecture, space and place. The interaction of the subconscious with sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing creates the urban fabric in which the body becomes the centre of architectural experience. The importance of sensory depth and the role of the architect within the facilitation of the same, is to enable an inclusively constructed city scape. Focusing on evolving the everyday to better suit those of sensory deprivation, stimulate a haptic experience for children and enable a connection between the public and their cities at a much more interactive level. Through the exploration of architectural theorists such as Juhani Pallasmaa, Steen Eiler Rasmussen and Jan Gehl as well as a critical look at, in my opinion, successful cityscape and art based interventions, I will be highlighting the apparent singular dimensionality of our everyday architectural existence, noting the architects’ bias towards vision and the suppression of other senses.

EXTENDING THE LIVES OF BUILDINGS: ADAPTIVE RE-USE,

SUSTAINABILITY AND HERITAGE

Freya Kay

This essay looks at how we can combat the fast turnover of structures, which in turn undermine the value of heritage, by using culturally sustainable options such as that of adaptive re-use. Understanding the importance of heritage and honesty of structures through the simple layering of time and the impact that it, or the lack of, can have on our society. Arguing that architectural heritage can act as a timeline of our history as a society, family or individual, and ageing with time in a way that carries on contributing to society in one way or another. Adaptive use is a method that should not only be taken into consideration during conservation measures but also in the design of new structures.

Image: Breaking rigid visual perceptions through sensory exploration.

Image: Bringing together sustainability and culture for purposes of adaptive re-use in heritage. (Image credit: Freya’s James)


REOPENING JAPAN IN 1853: BENEFIT OF CONFLICT FOR A

COUNTRY’S URBAN REGENERATION

Hollie Lake

The objective of this manifesto is to summarize how conflict can be viewed as an economically beneficial act upon a nation. Specifically, within urban regeneration, I will be looking at the reopening of Japan in 1853, when the country was forced to open its borders by a fleet of US Naval ships. This moment in history led to the country’s pre-conflict traditions to be altered due to effect of post-conflict regeneration on the socio-economic structure of the nation. To further analyse this development, I will be focusing on Arnold van Gennep’s discourse on liminality, where he discussed ‘rites of passage’ as separation, transition and reintegration. This was an appropriate methodology for this research as it spatializes conflict as a process that can illustrate the regeneration from one entity to another. Thinking conflict as ‘rite of passage’ can be labelled as an exposure to growth rather than a traumatic action; that is, if growth is seen as stages of displacement, emergence and healing. This manifesto is not affiliated with the promotion of war or destruction, rather, it is an alternative insight into the act of conflict as an opportunity to resolve global issues.

HERE AND THERE

Ruben Le Sueur

Various theorists such as Steven Vertovec and Luis Guarzino have characterised the process of transnationalism as a series of connections and exchanges linking individuals or organisations from one nation state to another1. Recent conflicts and migrational trends, have led to a fluctuating identity in regards to loyalty to a home state, consequentially leading to the benefits of migration to come under question. Therefore, the purpose of this research question is to analyse my belief that transnationalism should be encouraged for economically disadvantaged nations on an economic and political basis. In order to answer this question, I have used a theoretical and philosophical analysis alongside quantative data from Her Majesty’s Stationary Office and economic migration reviews to critically analyse the statement. The research indicated that whilst some theorists question the effect of the brain drain (the movement of highly educated individuals from one state to another) the altered identity of transnationals, trans-territorialisation is nevertheless highly beneficial for the socio-economic development of both the home and receiving nations, here and there. Thus, inspiring a new-found sense of patriotism for their home nation abroad as well as creating new political freedoms in their host nation. Transnationalism should be encouraged based upon an economic and political basis.

Image: Growth and power

Image: Political parties and mass media portray transnationals as threat to the UK.


PLYMOUTH: MAPPING URBAN VALUES

Thabiso Nyezi

The following text is a manifesto that aims to investigate the effects of top-down shaping of urban identity, and its clash with the variegated reality of urban life. The context for the stated position will be the city of Plymouth, whereby particular areas will be analysed through the exercise of mapping to uncover the city’s values. The graphical illustrations will aid in identifying what the city chooses to invest in, and what it chooses to neglect. The argument will be furthered by considering critical perspectives regarding the relationship between socioeconomcally thriving and concentrated parts of a city, and the socially neglected and fragmented communities through an examination of studied theorists (such as the insights of theorists Max Weber and Karl Marx then led to the Marxist urban political economy theory, which viewed the city as the core producer of capitalism and class imbalance). The analysis shows that there are observed tensions between Plymouth’s temporary (student) and permanent (local) residents regarding ownership of space and who the city is subservient to. The bottom line of this study is underscored by the following question: What does the relationship between the socio-economically thriving concentrated parts of a city, and socially neglected communities illustrate about a cities value system?

THE 1947 PARTITION OF INDIA: NEGOTIATING TRAUMA IN POST-

COLONIAL URBAN DEVELOPMENT Ritika Saykar

This manifesto sets out a framework whereby urban planning and architecture need to enable the creation of spaces of recovery in regions that have experienced long-term violence and trauma. The following work is contextualised in the partition event of British-India in 1947. It elaborates on aspects to do with trauma, memory and remembrance, and the reflection of these on the urban landscape of postcolonial cities.

If the authenticity of cites can be judged against how well architecture is able to form a relationship with users and how they experience it, then for cities that are still emerging from colonialism it is crucial to first understand the relationship people have with this past. Within this framework, users can associate with their urban context more effectively when the trauma is confronted, and thus recovery is reflected. In other words, the key agenda of this manifesto is that urban planning needs to enable the analysis of people’s relationship with their history first, and how they identify with it before any further development is carried out. This is particularly important since cities in India are one of the more rapidly developing spaces, yet they still carry a very strong (and unresolved) presence of its colonial past.

Image: The spatial disparities and tensions in the urban context of Plymouth.

Image: How to empower that which has only known the stronghold of the Colonial rule?

MARCH01MARCH01

> ARCH654A: Urban Methodologies

The physical structure of the city; buildings, parks and streets combine together to create urban form. Yet the city is also a way of life; inhabited and experienced as a social space comprising neighbourhoods and districts; places to live and work. The Module offers a broad introductory overview of the theories and methodologies related to the issues related to the understanding and the design of urban space. In order to address these conditions the Module studies the changing nature of urban space and its use from both a theoretical and methodological background. Students are expected to develop their own research within this critical framework by understanding the appropriateness and value of different methods for particular areas of study and work with them by using a case study approach. The case study provides an opportunity to apply the theoretical framework within a real world empirical setting. In other words, the way in which different qualities of the urban space affect how it is experienced and inhabited, using a range of methodological approaches (qualitative, social methods ranging from observation and interviews through to mapping and data analysis).

Module Leader: Dr. Katharine Willis


MARCH 01 Cover Image: The geometry of Ivan Picelj’s ‘Candidus’ sculpture in the Museum of Contemporary Art in New Belgrade. RHS Image: At the threshold of the window sill of the Museum of Contemporary Art in New Belgrade.


UNPICKING DEVELOPMENT:CONTROVERSIES ON UNION STREET

Liam Chamings, Dale Cummings, Elliot McCall + Ben Phillips

This paper aims to discuss the assumptions and disputes surrounding the term development, through the context of two prominent development approaches on Union Street and therefore two contrasting developer models. The first community led, as a result of the documented increase in local social enterprise; the other through that of a conventional developer, categorized by the traditional shareholder structure and economic surplus.

The stated agenda will be analysed in three different ways. The first will be by unpicking the notion of development through the thinking of Doreen Massey on spatial ideologies. The thinking that arises from this will examine whether global actors, such as development documented with single ownerships or shareholders with the sole interest in economic investment and return, are privileging global interests, over the local ones. These include the acts of inscribing a globalized identity and the devaluation of local values, rather than encouraging community participation and engaging with existing cultures. Secondly, the analysis will be mapped using Albena Yaneva’s Mapping Controversies theory to allow for both sets of actors (local and global) to be captured; the mappings thus facilitating the exposure of the controversies played within the context of the development on Union Street. These controversies will reveal the role of both sets of actors (local and global) in either the enabling or halting of development. Lastly, Spatial Agency’s crowd sourcing principles will provide a mechanism to cross-examine the varying approaches undertaken in the noted development for purposes of development.

RHS Image: Sense of place.


This research project addresses a problem identified around Union Street, that being that motorised traffic has a higher priority over pedestrians, which makes it harder for the pedestrian to move around freely within their daily lives. In order to address this concern, the research has taken an in-depth case study analysis of Union Street; this has been done both through existing literature and a close study of three specific areas within the site. The sites are located within and around Union Street. The first study was at the crossings around the Crescent Roundabout, the second study took place at the crossing in Union street by the Housing Blocks in front of Lidl. And the last study was of the shared surface at Manor Street.

The three-area study will facilitate a comparative analysis in terms of spatial layout, location, and flows of both traffic and people. By doing this, the study aims to identify and examine the everyday practices that people do across the site, and examine how and when this may change the hierarchical issues we are looking to address in order for people (rather than motorized traffic) being the agents of streetscape.

PEOPLE GAINING AGENCY IN STREETSCAPE:UNION STREET

Manni Kalsi, ELyse Kassis, Elena Liskova, Dina Venuti + Harry Whitfield

Above Image: Shared Surface AgencyRHS Top Image: Pedestrian Activities Map

RHS Bottom Image: How People gain [Agency] in Streetspace.


The Stonehouse area has been subjected to considerable change in the last 10 years, with the closure of many established pubs and dance clubs. Arguably, a particular sense of identity and belonging to that space has been lost. that ownership and identity have been lost. Regeneration of the Millbay area to the South of Union Street, and similarly within the naval hospital to the north (a gated community that is housed behind tall stonewalls). These areas have contributed to the feeling of segregation within the Stonehouse community. This essay discusses the findings from six interviews, with a variety of views from a wide cross section of different people who work or live in or around the Stonehouse area. The findings have highlighted a sense of loss and attachment in the noted areas. The surrounding regeneration has given a perception of segregation and gentrification, and this has contributed to a feeling of a lack of ownership of that space, and invariably place.

IDENTITY, BELONGING AND OWNERSHIP:THE STONEHOUSE

Rebekah Brown, Matt Charles, James Dart + Jack Thomson

RHS Top Image: Land Usage around Union StreetRHS Bottom Image: Identifying Vacancy


After investigation of a variety of aspects of Union Street, this project uses the case study of Union Street to analyse the shops situated along this street as one combined network or a living organism. The analysis is driven by the desire to improve the interconnectedness of the business network of the site.

STREET AS A LIVING ORGANISM

Martin Kiedrowksi, Ambra Natale + Antonio Torlontano

Above Image: Network of the Global Connections.RHS Image: Network of all the connections around

the area.

MARCH02

> ARCH753A: Emerging Research in Architecture

This module offers an opportunity for students to undertake an in depth study on an issue related to architecture and urbanism in the fields of research active members of staff. Students undertake a programme of Master’s-level research to advance their knowledge, skills and understanding of research methodology, analysis and critical reflection. Students work within an elective structure, supported by research-active staff around a specific research topic and approach. This year, the staff included: Professor Bob Brown, Dr. Matthew Emmett, Dr. Sana Murrani, Dr. Alejandro Veliz Reyes, Professor Pieter de Wilde (supported by Dr. Satish B-K) and Dr. Katharine Willis.

Module Leader: Dr. Katharine Willis


MARCH 02 Cover Image: The façade of RCR’s Library and Senior Citizens’ Centre in Barcelona. RHS Image: Mapping human movements by Chanida Barrett


This research project has developed from an interest in understanding how people use space and the body-spatial relationship. It is guided by the question whether site-specific dance can be used to further our understanding of the relationship between body and space, and thus be used as an architectural design tool. Background reading on this topic indicated that it is widely explored, however, the research is incomplete as it tends to use a limited range of research methodologies. Therefore, the aim of this research project is to develop a new method for spatial analysis by combining site-specific dance and architectural theories from experts such as Simon Unwin, Jan Gehl and Henri Lefebvre. The combination of the two art forms of dance and architecture will help to reveal new thinking when it comes to the body-spatial relationship, which may otherwise remain hidden if addressed only from an architectural perspective as “each art form can offer something that you don’t get in other forms of art.” 1

Studying the work of practitioner-researcher and Senior Lecturer in Dance Dr. Victoria Hunter, Associate Professor in Architecture Dr. Rachel Sara and the award winning Dance Director, Choreographer and Producer Stephan Koplowitz facilitates the foundation upon which the methodology of this project is analysed. The methodology included recording multiple dancers responding to a variety of physical sites. The recordings have been carefully analysed by extracting still images with indicative gestures superimposed on top of the dancer. This process of interrogation helped to develop multiple observations when it comes to the dancers’ relationship to the surrounding space; the process was guided by the thinking of the mentioned individuals. This research project may be said to have a performative role by acting as a catalyst into a new cross-curricular field of study which is hoped to assist in expanding the architects’ understanding of the body-spatial relationship.

DYNAMIC SPATIAL ANALYSIS Kayleigh Avey

References:1 Troy S cited in Budds, D. How Architecture is Invigorating Ballet. 2016 > https://www.fastcompany.com/3065466/how-architecture-is-invigorating- ballet?fbclid=IwAR3BHERLzSlndYwg82UmwkQwgncEjTw- EcEyYpvbH6U0dHitrKe58K-moKw <

RHS Image: Extract from Workshop 01 ‘Centrifugal Points’ analysis shows an example of how the recorded exercises have been presented and analysed to help develop body-spatial relationship theories.Bottom Images: Multiple Planes - This exercise intends to explore a three-way relationship between the vertical plane (wall), horizontal plane (floor) and the body.


COOLING OF THE UHI IN GORDON SQUARE PARK

Theresa Badero

The phenomenon that many researchers ( Luke Howard, Timothy R Oke, Mills Gerald ) have identified as the urban heat Island (UHI) effect is one of the many global climate effects caused by the growth of dense urban cities. The effect of which is known to demonstrate an artificial rise in temperature that tends to be higher within the cities in comparison to the surrounding rural areas. In London, the impact of the UHI effect can be intense during the summer, which in the past has resulted to heat waves. Meanwhile in winter, it can be seen to have a positive impact by maintaining a warmer temperature condition. However, many studies have shown that the integration of urban green infrastructure to an extent can mitigate the urban warming effect formed by the UHI, through the process of evapotranspiration.1 Seemingly, it is essential to understand and identify the compatibility between the arrangement of green space and the two variables; land surface temperature and air temperature to determine the effectiveness of vegetation for mitigating the impact of the urbanization causing the UHI. Thus, this essay is set out to study how well green park spaces in urban cities cater to the urban dwellers with the intent of maintaining a comfortable external thermal temperature despite the effect of the heat island.

The case study is focused on a small to medium sized park within London called Gordon square park. The study consists of an observation of the characteristics of the park in relation to the measurements taken from the air and surface temperature. The area mapped for this study was taken from northwest through to the southeast, which is the longest length of the park; the path choice was made with the consideration of the areas of the park that the most vegetation. Results were obtained at two different times of the day; one at daytime and the other after sunset. The results showed that the intensity of the UHI was mostly present during the daytime rather than at nightime where the maximum air temperature found was 13.3 °C. At both times of the day, regardless of the drop-in temperature at night, people were still using the park. More so, studies identify that there is a relevance for certain types of vegetation such as trees that can shade and at the same time cool the environment, when compared to exposed areas of the park. Stemming from the results from the case study, and considering that most of the population around the world is drawn to living in urban areas, the changing climate should be a concern in the areas of urban design. Thus, integrating green spaces to assist the urban microclimate would be a very effective solution.

RHS Image: Table of results from park study: Daytime investigation at 12:24pm.

References:1 Feyisa , G. L., Dons, K. & Meilby, H., Efficiency of parks in mitigating urban heat island effect: An example from Addis Ababa. ( 2014 )


EXPERIENCING PLACEChanida Barrett

This paper intends to explore the relationship between human beings and the quality of architectural design. In other words, the aim is to identify the factors that play a contributing role in creating a sense of place and encourage the connectivity between users and space, including how personal memory can have an impact on this connectivity. This will be done through an observational social mapping combined with an analysis of existing theories on hapticity (Montagu and Pallasmaa) in conjunction with the thinking to do with architectural qualities of experience (Rasmussen and Zumthor).1 The outcomes of this research help to clarify why some designs are more successful than others, and particularly why some designs have a more significant contribution to the increase in our realisation of ‘present’, which is often associated with personal memories.

References:1 Montagu, A. The mind of the Skin, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin (London: Harper and Row, 1978) ; Pallasmaa, J. The Eyes of the Skin, Architecture and the Senses. Edited by Steven Holl (West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005) ; Rasmussen, S. E. Experiencing Architecture (United States of America: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1959) ; Zumthor, P. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects (Berlin: Birkhäuser, Publishers for Architecture Basel, 2006).

RHS Image: The photograph captured the human movements within one of the residential blocks in Macau, showing the atmospheric relationship between humans and their surroundings.LHS bottom Image: Drawing demonstrates the textural effect of each material.


The inclusion of those with physical disabilities is commonly on the agenda for spatial designers.1 However, people with less visible disabilities such as Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD, Autism) are largely unaccounted for, sometimes feeling forced to withdraw from public spaces and communities. 2 Unfamiliar or busy environments such as art galleries can be particularly problematic.3 This paper presents a study on the potential of using quantitative emotional data to further understand the spatial experience of people with ASD. Data collected using a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) measuring device has been mapped against internal location within the first five to ten minutes of a visit to the Tate St Ives, an art gallery in Cornwall.

Results reveal that participants with ASD experienced a greater increase in stress level compared to the neurotypical control participants. Areas where noticeable ‘peaks’ of stress were recorded usually had a restricted view or required human interaction. Comparison of GSR data with questionnaire information gathered before and after visiting the gallery also suggests that the participants with ASD were less able to articulate their emotional response to spaces. Thus, there seems to be a pressing need to utilise the GSR data for purposes of providing knowledge that would help designers create more inclusive public spaces, including those with less visible disabilities such as ASD.

GALVANIC SKIN RESPONSE TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC SPACE INCLUSIVITY:

UNDERSTANDING THE SPATIAL EXPERIENCE OF PEOPLE WITH ASD

Elizabeth Cross

References:1 Imrie, R. & Hall, P. Inclusive Design: Designing and developing accessible environments (London: Spoon Press, 2001) 2 Gaines, K., Pearson, M., Bourne, A. & Kleibrink, M. Designing for Autism Spectrum Disorders (Oxford: Routledge, 2016). ; Reissman, H. & Maha, J, 2018. > https://ideas.ted.com/arenas-and-zoos-can-be-overwhelming-for-children-with-autism-heres-how-one-kids-parents-are-trying-to-help/ < 3 Amaze. Amaze Position Statement: Accessible environments for people with Autism, ( Victoria, Australia: Amaze, 2018 )

RHS Image: GSR data graphs for participants with ASD showing relationship to spatial location at each stress peak.


STRAW BALES: A MODEL OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Elizabeth Hard

Despite straw bale houses proving popular in the USA, parts of Europe and Australia, they have struggled to gain traction across the UK.1 Straw is an organic waste byproduct of an existing industry and is a simple and efficient construction material. Not only can straw bales be sourced locally and sustainably, they also sequester CO2, making them carbon negative and thus have a much lower embodied energy than common alternative insulation materials, which add to the construction industry’s CO2 emissions. Carbon-negative alternatives such as straw bales should be taken seriously and applied to the construction industry in order to adhere to environmental targets such as those set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.2 This essay investigates, through interviews, the reasons why straw bale building remains uncommon in the UK despite large quantities of information available in books, articles and online. By interviewing Dr. Jim Carfrae and Phil Christopher, specialists in straw bale construction in the UK, it is possible to identify more clearly the obstacles that people who wish to build a straw bale house may encounter, as well as their experiences in navigating these projects. The overall aim of this essay is to establish key issues and emerging possibilities that may increase the uptake of straw bales in construction in the United Kingdom. Such awareness may increase the number of new homes built using straw bale in future.

References: 1 Christopher, P. Straw Bale Buildings - Huff and Puff Construction, > http://www.huffpuff.me < 2 United Nations Paris Agreement. 2015 > https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english_paris_agreement.pdf < .

RHS Image: Perception of Straw Bales in ConstructionBottom Images: Photographs from a straw bale building course

PhD

PhD Cover Image: The ruins of the Gothic Carmo Church in Lisbon.


This research is a qualitative inquiry into the extent and means to which the built fabric of residential care environments supports and inhibits the quality of life and well being of people living with dementia. It will unpack the priorities for home to the displaced demographic and explore the role of contemporary development culture in support of residents’ home priorities in residential nursing home design.

Dementia diagnosis is increasingly prevalent in the United Kingdom, with expectations for the population living with diagnoses to more than double in real and proportional terms in the next 30 or so years. Intensified by a projected ageing population and fewer working age carers to support people living at home, the United Kingdom is faced with the imminent accommodation and care of a vast number of cognitively debilitated adults, the majority of whom will end up living in a residential care setting, as national policy aims to build ‘specialist’ living facilities for exclusive accommodation and care of those living with a dementia diagnosis.

Recent research supports the concept of the lived environment as a non-pharmacological therapeutic treatment for people with dementia and shows a link between quality-of-life and the design of the environment. Notwithstanding these concepts, and the scale of the impending construction challenge, the construction industry lacks suitable operationalisable guidance for the design of living environments supportive of resident wellbeing. Rather the residential environment can be read as construction of spaces for the efficient management of the medical-mechanical limitations associated with living with a dementia diagnosis, and as models for viable investment returns for private development vehicles.

Further, residential care environments are generally marketed to residents’ families with idealised visions of home that speak both to romantic views of an ‘ideal home’ aesthetic, and suggestions of ‘proper’ and appropriate, comfortable ways of middle class living (to paraphrase Lundgren (2000)); pacific, pacifying and convenient, though impersonal and seemingly impermanent. The commonly resultant hotel-cum-hospital environments reflect a tension between the priorities of residents and those charged with delivery of specialist residential care accommodation.

VICARIOUS DESIGN FOR DEMENTIA:BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF THE RESIDENTIAL CARE

HOME FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH DEMENTIA

Ricky Burke


Herein, the resident is caught between the veridictions of professionals in the construction and delivery of residences, and the appeal to the conscience of their loved ones, who seek a convenient and comfortable space, where “I am comfortable leaving mum” (Gawande (2015)). Contemporary development operates in cultures where common ‘truth’ conditions must be constructed between, legislators, the development team and residents’ families, in order to define and limit the design and role of the home. These are cultures in which the views and needs of the resident are largely absent, and in which design professionals rely on a universal (parametric) model of a resident living with symptoms of dementia and on value judgements based on ideal models for and appropriate models of good living conditions.

In this parametric approach to occupation of the residential environment, an analogy can be drawn to perspectives of person-centred therapy, which focus on alleviating worries about past and future events and concentrate on a fulfilling and in-touch present. Nursing home design tends to focus on losses (incapacities inherent to ageing and dementia) – the past – and worries (anticipation of harm or danger) – the future – more than the individual and present person. This tendency is reflected in guidance for the design of residential care homes for people with dementia, which generally focusses on how the built environment can assist with common impairments (what the residents cannot do) rather than providing a fulfilling existence with what remains intact of residents’ personalities (how they feel). This is the nature of clarifying a housing typology defined by common impairments. However, behind the losses are people with the personal and social needs beyond basic accommodation of their physical and cognitive limits.

This research project is a Constructivist Grounded Theory inquiry using anthropological methods to generate theories about the role the home plays in the wellbeing of residents. Open-ended phenomenological discussions and participant observation were used to develop ethnographies of the possible – residents’ idealised visions of home and home life – and of the existing – examinations of the supportive and restrictive influences their existing residence has on their wellbeing. Theory generation and information gathering occurred simultaneously until ethnographies of the possible and lived environments converged to form a spectrum of understanding, illustrating priorities across lived and idealised forms of home.

Examples of emergent theories of the role of the home in relation to resident wellbeing and quality of life include ways in which the building is restrictive and/ or supportive of resident autonomy and continuation of personal interests. In these examples lie specific references to the planned organisation and construction of the physical environment, suggesting the environment can have a liberating or controlling influence on residents.

Emergent theories are reflective of the contemporary industrial logics of the building industry, in which financial and systems thinking logics for efficient delivery and management of the product (building) and those who engage with it (residents) are prevalent over resident home priorities in the planning and construction of the home. This is evidenced in the derivation of standardised solutions in design guidance based on abstractions of resident requirements to interrelated numeric conditions. These parametric design models serve the efficiency of the supply of residential space while neglecting much of the expressed need.Emergent substantive theories will be translated into building design concepts; spatial representations of the theoretical link between resident wellbeing and built fabric. Resident proxies – experienced care providers and resident family members – will partake in 1:1 scale immersive experiments in which the implications and application of spatial wellbeing concepts will be discussed and evaluated. This engagement will develop substantive theories into formal theory about the role the physical environment plays in the wellbeing of residents living with dementia diagnoses in residential care homes.

This research aims to improve the understanding of the link between the supportive and controlling influences of the physical environment and resident wellbeing in residential care settings. Further the methodology sets precedent for inclusion of marginalised occupants in building design consultation. Outputs from this research are expected to impact on building design cultures; suggest reform of dementia development design guidance and contribute to discourse on resident well-being and quality of life in relation to environmental design. Implications from this research will reach beyond the scope of people with dementia, as the outputs ought to be applicable to design for other user groups and other building typologies.

Images on : Veridiction Process - The process of veridiction in care home design, in which the resident is represented as a set of symptoms and physical requirements and not a person. Images Below: Bedroom - A typical personal room in a contemporary care home, demonstrating the veiling of a default development fabric with the aesthetics of a home-like setting.Hallway - The promoted goals of home-like environments are ill-defined and largely absent in the commonplace default model of institutional hallways and battery-like personal cells, reflective of the systematic handling of residents.


VICARIOUS DESIGN FOR DEMENTIA:BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF THE RESIDENTIAL CARE

HOME FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH DEMENTIA

Michael W A Cassidy

Architecture carries a banner for the values of its custodians and finds itself out of touch when those values change. With some ingenuity the inherited estate may be turned to good use to serve the incoming requirements and the changing values they represent. Yet a strategic choice remains: is it better that new buildings should be designed and built for their initial purpose only, to be killed off, demolished, abandoned as soon as that purpose has run its course, or should they be designed to last and to be used productively well beyond the first use so that architecture may serve more readily the changing needs of society over a longer period of time

Management of buildings in use must embrace both structural degeneration and functional obsolescence. Diagrams 2 and 3 below are suggestive of these processes at work.

This research considers the advantages for environmental sustainability that would arise from making all buildings last longer in the context of fundamental changes of use. Extending the life and the usefulness of buildings requires a new approach to architectural design and construction in which a new building would be required not only to respond to changes within its initial use, but also to respond to future uses, some known and some unforeseen. Research will investigate whether this can be achieved by the application of “double-design”, based upon anticipated compatibility between the space being provided and space that may be needed in the future. The impact of such new space upon the stock of available space would, over time, improve the match between the changing spatial needs of society and the available space, thus reducing the reliance on ingenuity to achieve changes of use as well as conserving resources and reducing waste. This research is concerned with how to extend the life of buildings by designing, from the start, for unknown future uses. This approach is referred to as “double-design” and is intended to ensure that the spatial aspects of the built environment contribute to a comprehensively sustainable future. The way in which building management decisions have been made, recorded and implemented in the past provides a valuable context within which to assess the potential political and professional feasibility and value of “double-design”. The need for double-design is supported by the recognition of the scope of uncertainty to which the custodians and users of buildings must respond. The mechanics of double-design will be explored through the development of a matrix of compatibility.

The research addresses the following questions: > To what extent is it possible to design buildings in anticipation of unforeseen changes of use in the future? > Could a requirement that all design should allow for unforeseen changes of use be in the public interest? The impact upon the building stock of the application of double-design needs to be established from the point of view of resource utilization and waste reduction: an assessment will be based upon available data and best available forecasting advice. The impact of the application of double-design upon the quantity and quality of future space will take into account the extent to which future spatial requirements may be more readily met.


> How feasible would “double-design” be professionally, politically and economically? The feasibility of double- design and its implementation will be considered within the framework of innovation diffusion > Are there suitable tests and measures for spatial robustness that can be incorporated into the design process?

The case study illustrates the range of uncertainties to which custodians and users of buildings need to respond. These include changes generated by human activity (often supported by equipment) and changes arising from the nature of building fabric (held in check to some degree by maintenance). While architects have usually been trained to find out exactly what their clients (custodians) needed, it seems necessary now that they must avoid designing too tightly around those requirements. At the same time, the building must work for the initial custodian and user. The provision of initially redundant space may contribute to the long-term value for the custodian. It may also facilitate greater flexibility and adaptability for the initial and later users.

Systems theory firmly establishes the important connections between the purposes, stages and processes of human systems . Commissioning, designing and building are certainly components of a complex human system . Human sciences are not susceptible to the same kind of rules as the physical sciences and this makes it difficult to make confident predictions about the interaction of people with the spaces they use . This, in turn, ensures that uncertainty is and always must be a central feature of the context for design. “Double-design” is envisaged as an important tool in helping to accommodate uncertainty. In the analogous fields of engineering design, where identifiable risks may be catastrophic, the provision of redundancy is an important component in the management of risk and uncertainty. Indeed, as Emery remarks “redundancy is essential for adaptiveness”

In seeking to develop a social theory of architecture, McGuire and Schiffer suggest that …“architectural design is a process whereby social groups make choices concerning several recurrent sets of activities” . This anthropological perspective highlights the differentiation of users from custodians and suggests that the symbolic attributes required of architecture, over and above the functional, increase with social differentiation. The analysis by Gero and Kannengiesser of the inner workings of the design process confirms the dynamism required to move from a static “situated” starting realm towards a preferred state. The information upon which the designer depends to help on this journey may be part of the situation, given by the constraints within the context, or taken by proactive importation. In order for “double-design” to be adopted within a design process it must either be part of the context, imposed by regulation like health and safety requirements, or imported by the custodian and the design team. To the extent that “double-design” may not be in the short term interests of the custodian, it may need to be imposed as representing the public interest .

Images on : The overall structure of the thesis.Top image below: Hypothetical curves for structural degeneration.

Bottom image below: Hypothetical curves for functional obsolescence.


CONSTRUCTING NATURAL BEAUTY:FUTURE STORIES OF UK RIVER RESTORATION

Adam Guy

Keywords: environmental policy, river restoration, natural beauty, sense of place, post-structural discourse analysis, critical narrative research

Historically notions of perennial landscape quality and idealised ethical social relations have permeated UK conservation policy and legislation (Matless). Around 25% of English landscape is designated for protection on the basis of its ‘Natural Beauty’, a term that has never been formally defined (Selman and Swanwick) but that was originally invoked in opposition to perceptions of creeping degradation by mid-20th Century ‘urban sprawl’, and its social connotations (Williams-Ellis). Guidelines for designating and managing these protected landscapes in the UK still rest upon notions of the aesthetic, reinforced through affective encounter. Following environmental activism in the late 20th Century incorporations of landscape justice and environmental ethics skewed landscape management decisions toward a balancing of natural as well as human values.

And nothing could be more natural than a river? Studies of landscape perception repeatedly place rivers or coastlines as central to public notions of beneficial appreciation of the natural environment (Appleton). Natural Beauty cannot exist without entanglement with water. Though usually conceived of as natural objects, rivers are simultaneously laden with subjective identity. This naturalisation of hybrid signification as both conduits of environment and as a locations of heritage value, whilst seemingly rendering watercourses symbolically inviolate, occludes the fact that over 90% of UK rivers have had their natural flows and ecologies ‘simplified’ to maximise agricultural productivity, minimise flooding, or rationalise infrastructure. What we identify with as the essential English Countryside, could be considered an ex-urban extension of the built-environment. Environmental management increasingly stresses restoration2; no less utilitarian, in treating rivers as broken mechanisms in need of urgent repair.

The Promethean (Kaika) approach to relations with the natural environment invokes the operational belief that intervention can mitigate for harm, that damage can be slowed, or ideally reversed, and that through knowledge, technology, and action sustainable development is possible. Environmental enhancement is increasingly deemed essential given that decades of protectionist legislation and practices have measurably failed to halt declines in biodiversity and habitat extent (IPBES). Environmental restoration is the extreme example of enhancement; implying that humans can aesthetically and functionally recreate degraded natural landscapes, even in some cases in a pre-human ‘(re)wilded’ state, for example the expansive 56 km2 Dutch Oostvaardersplassen, or the more humble West Sussex Knepp Castle Estate. River restoration, as an essential component of landscape-scale restoration, is an increasingly professionalising practice.

Globally there are clusters of active river restoration in the USA and Japan, with increasing incidence in the EU particularly along the flood-prone great rivers of the Netherlands and Germany. In the UK restoration has largely been limited to short demonstration reaches, comparatively invisible upstream flood risk management schemes, or larger scale coastal managed realignment.


Images on: Restored as a cultural amenity rather than for habitat or biodiversity, the Megurogawa in Tokyo has become one of Japan’s most popular cherry blossom viewing spots.

Top Image: The River Itchen in Hampshire, an archetypally natural lowland stream with clear water and an abundance of plants and wildlife; one of the most endangered waterway types in the UK; and one of the most modified of watercourse types.

Bottom Image: Steart Marshes realignment in the Parrett Estuary, Somerset. New habitat is the leaf like structure in foreground.


Normative environmental policy is dominated by three intertwined discourses:

A) The ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability invokes ‘Our Common Future’ (United Nations), in calling for immediate action to halt a legacy of degradation in the cumulative intrinsic value of nature, and our consequent anthropocentric well-being. B) This loss in ‘value’ is to be reversed (restored) through environmental management with cost-benefit decisions based on environmental economics (Norgaard) that essentialise natural complexity as monetisable assets, for example through utilitarian valuations of Natural Capital. C) Delivery of effective environmental enhancement4 is predicated on the participation of stakeholders who will take increasing responsibility not only for the valuation and management of their local assets, but also for funding restorative interventions. Exhortations to participate are underlain by an all-pervasive programme of Education for Sustainable Development (EfSD).

But another discourse pervades all policy. Neoliberal economic transformation, a globalised set of loosely associated trends, drives reduction in protective legislation and its replacement with non-binding guidance, an insistence on market mechanisms as environmental solutions, and increased reliance on smaller scale governance. In post-structuralist discourse analytical terms environmental critique has been ‘excluded’ by neoliberal discourse (Laclau and Mouffe). Alternative strategies are framed as not only unfeasible but unthinkable, and anthropocentric treatment of the natural environment as resource for human well-being is normalised (Tulloch and Neilson). River and wetland restorations, though generally framed as environmentally driven projects, could be interpreted critically as primarily motivated by neoliberal built-environment drivers such as:

A) Economic efficiency – e.g. restoration of the Seoul Cheonggyecheon stream mitigated against rising maintenance costs of the formerly canalised and flood-prone waterway, with the corollary of an enhanced urban image – Water as central to place-making (Cho).

B) Product development – US Environmental Banks undertake pre-emptive stream ‘restorations’, often speculatively financed, and then sell mitigation credits to developers ‘permitting’ collateral degradation - Restored and mitigated streams may be separated by many thousands of kilometres (Lave). C) Political expediency – Japanese rivers are extensively dammed or canalised and over half the coastline is armoured in concrete; a process driven by the patronage of financially autonomous industrial conglomerates (keiretsu) (Kerr).

Profitability – Managed realignment involves massive construction projects, with profits over-riding questionable long-term environmental outcomes (Esteves). Surprising then is that emerging English environmental policy (HM Government) stresses the protection and enhancement of Natural Beauty. Such foregrounding of intrinsic notions of value returns policy to the affective foundational precepts of UK landscape designation and echoes research that considers all human values, be they intrinsic, instrumental, or relational, as fundamentally ‘felt’ (Schroeder).

A curious UK coda is the intervention of post-normal politics. In paragraph two of the executive summary of the UK 25 Year Environment Plan, the Secretary of State for Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Michael Gove “looks forward to delivering a Green Brexit – seizing this once-in-a-lifetime chance […]”; Natural Beauty perhaps metaphorically substituting for an ‘Englishness’ in need of enhancement?

For rivers, can ‘enhancement’ mean more than physical environmental restoration? More importantly what does enhancement mean for the identities of those who manage or live with rivers?

Through asking respondents to imagine their own future stories of enhanced Natural Beauty this PhD project centres on an empirical investigation of the roles that values and meaning-making play in translating policy into action in partnership-based restoration.



CONTEXTThe understanding and interrogation of place encompasses some of the most powerful intentions and values one can have as an architect. A place is a space where life occurs, where people can orientate themselves and subsequently identify themselves within an environment. Place is what architecture should strive to be – a process building off of shared understandings, conceptions and connections to place.

BACKGROUNDTraditionally architecture reflected the place and the people in which it was situated – architecture and landscapes were cultural creations, depictions of experience and everyday life. This form of architecture evolved from a specific place and time. These factors informed a regional architecture, an expression that was ‘place-specific’, creating a distinct sense of place.

Industrialization, sprawling transportation and the early modern movement severed deep-rooted, regional connections to landscape by removing ties to historical and geographic contexts. Concomitantly, notions of placelessness were reinforced by an uncritical acceptance of mass values and ways of building. The impact of such processes is the decline of places for individuals and cultures, and the replacement of diverse and significant places of the world with anonymous spaces and interchangeable environments. Today, within the built environment the concept of place is typically reduced to a series of techniques for ‘placemaking’, a term that is generally undefined but appears to refer to the creation of pleasant public spaces. The rich complexity of human relations with territory and the creation/ conception of place is not part of the discussion in existing practices of placemaking.

AIMSThis research aims to extend the definition of place; understanding place through both a wider, shared conception as cultural landscape and as a more intimate personal interaction grounded in ritualised behaviour. Cultural landscapes are generated and conceptualised through layers of humanistic processes and interrogating these landscapes can reveal hidden meanings cultivated within them through ritual. Every person inhabits cultural landscapes, not only throughout their lifetime, but simultaneously at any given moment – people engage with many environments (physical or cognitive) and with other people through multifarious, ritualized activities.

One way to interrogate, and better understand these complex relationships between people and place is through the study of ritual. Studying ritual allows us to delve into the existential roots and the structures of our being-in-the-world that are cultivated through the re-enactment of rituals that help orientate us through our everyday embodied practices of interaction. Ritual is a “tool” by which people make and remake their worlds; studying said rituals can give insights into different cultures.

CASTING A LINE TO PLACE:EMBODIED RITUALS, CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

AND THEIR POTENTIAL TO (RE)CONNECT

Zoe Latham


Top Image : The East Dart Bottom Image: Tying Flies


This research arises through the interconnected study of place across the subjects of architecture and fly-fishing; both practices striving for meaningful engagement with the landscape. Landscape, in this body of thought, is more than visual and symbolic, both as a physical construct and as a concept it is malleable - landscape is the world in which we stand, a place we can develop ideas about it and ourselves – a place of mutual interactions. By exploring how the researcher and other fly-anglers engage with the landscape through the singular stimuli of fly-fishing, the researcher aims to unpick the complex and multivalent ways in which one group inhabits the landscape and gains a meaningfulness from this practice.

The experience of fly-fishing can be powerful; inhabiting the landscape gives both the angler and the landscape an identity – cultivating who one another are. Fly-fishing requires every part of ones being in a place – each thought and action requiring contemplation of time and nature. Understanding the world as such makes the places we inhabit intimate and abstract. The researcher aims to unfold the process of fly-fishing that has enabled a deep connection to place – a landscape experienced throughout her lifetime, but only through this ritualized act of fly-fishing has meaning been forged. The rituals of fly-fishing have created a new lens through which to see, feel, interpret and act within the palimpsest that is the landscape around a river. Expanding upon these early notions of place relations is central to the early stages of this research.

The researcher is not alone in these reflections - fly-anglers frequently share their experience with others, exemplified by the thousands of fly-fishing articles, books and films that aim to capture the spirit that continually draws those to the river. Fly-fishing acts as a framing device to interrogate the conditions of place, landscape embodiment, ritualised action and the formation of cultural landscapes.

To study landscape from this phenomenological perspective involves foregrounding lived experience, embodied experience and perception. The nature of this body of research requires continual shifts amongst disciplines, stepping outside of positivist architectural discourse into environmental building studies, cultural/human geography and anthropology. Phenomenological studies accept the complexities of the lived experience, but aim to clarify these experiences rigorously through observation and description.

METHODOLOGYThis project employs an ethnographic form of data collection, where the researcher immerses herself directly in the context, alongside other participants; to better understand how subjects think and act the way they do. A set of multifactorial data collection techniques will be used in order to generate a phenomenological understanding of how subjects act, and why. The methods being implemented are auto-ethnographic research and literature review, mental mapping, narrative inquiry and participant observation through film. These methods, when employed simultaneously, will generate a holistic picture of subject’s engagement with an activity. This multi-dimensional approach is key to studying human action – to making sense of cultural landscapes and ritualised actions linking them to feelings, ideas and ideologies.


IMPACTThrough the study of one subculture’s meaningful connection to place, this research aims to gather and refocus architects’ ambition to that of place-sensitive design – reemphasising and bringing to life the significance of connections people can forge with landscapes. Expanding discourse around place, ritual and cultural landscape will impact the researcher’s own architectural practice, it is hoped this research will prompt the development of tools to explore these multi-layered relationships, and to subsequently design places of meaning that orientate and connect people to their identity – past, present and future.

Image below: Landscape Embodiment

> STUDENTS

> INDEX <


AAnsell, Emma BA03 078Avey, Kayleigh MARCH02 104

BBadero, Theresa MARCH02 106Baker – Smith, Joel BA01 016, 028Barrett, Chanida MARCH02 108Barriball, Ryan BA02 066Bell, Leon BA03 079Berry, India BA01 029Blake, Jennifer BA01 030Brazier, Samuel BA02 040, 067Brown, Rebekah MARCH01 096Burke, Ricky PHD 116 CCameron, Georgina BA01 017, 031 Cassidy, Michael W A PHD 120Chamings, Liam MARCH01 092Charles, Matt MARCH01 096Cole, Henrietta BA01 018Cooke, Sam BA02 068Cross, Elizabeth MARCH02 110Cummings, Dale MARCH01 092

DDart, James MARCH01 094Dixon, Rhianna-Louise BA02 044 EEmery, Tim BA01 019

FFlack, Rhiannon BA01 020Forsey, Rob BA03 080GGiles, Benjamin D BA02 048Gittens, Taylor BA03 081Guy, Adam PHD 124

HHard, Elizabeth MARCH02 112Hendy, Georgia BA03 082

IJ


> STAFF

> Head of School - Art, Design and ArchitectureProfessor Chris Bennewith > Associate Head of School – ArchitectureMr. Andy Humphreys > Associate Dean for Research and InternationalisationProfessor Alex Aurigi

Associate Head of School - Teaching and LearningDr. Satish BK > Associate Head of School – Graduate AffairsCritical Context Stream Leader Dr. Sana Murrani

> Master of Architecture Programme LeaderProfessor Bob Brown

> Master of Architecture Year 1 LeaderDr. Mathew Emmett > BA (Hons) Architecture Programme leaderDr. Alejandro Veliz Reyes

> BA (Hons) Architecture Year 2 LeaderDr. Simos Vamvakidis > BA (Hons) Architecture Year 1 LeaderMs Toshiko Terazono

SCHOOL MEMBERSDr. Nikolina BobicMr Michael WestleyAssociate Professor Katharine Willis SUPPORTING STAFFMs Hayley Anderson, Mr Stephen Blakemen, Mr Ricky Burke, Mr Graham Devine, Ms Nicky Fox, Mr Rob Freer, Mr Jason Geen, Mr Rob Hill, Ms Zoe Latham, Mr Roy McCarty, Mr Andrew Morris, Dr. Ioana Popovici, Mr Nick Gilbert Scott, Mr Alex Screech, Mr Tim Snell, Ms Lynne Sullivan OBE, Ms Claire Williams, Ms Catherine Woods.

KKassis, Elyse MARCH01 094Kalsi, Manni MARCH01 094Kay, Freya BA03 083Kiedrowksi, Martin MARCH01 098Kong, Lingwen BA02 052

LLake, Hollie BA03 084Latham, Zoe PHD 128Le Sueur, Ruben BA03 085Lettmann, Jonathan BA02 069Liskova, Elena MARCH01 094Longley, Anna BA01 032

MMartyn, William BA01 021McCall, Elliot MARCH01 092Millward, Eva BA01 022, 033Mott, Eleanor BA01 023, 034

NNaitCharif, Mo BA02 056, 070 Natale, Ambra MARCH01 098Nyezi, Thabi BA03 086

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PPayne, Lucas BA02 060 Perzanowski, Kamil BA02 072Phillips, Ben MARCH01 092

QR

SSaykar, Ritika BA03 087Smith, Georgia BA01 024, 035Sutherland, Corey BA01 025

TThomson, Jack MARCH01 096Torlontano, Antonio MARCH01 098

U

VVenuti, Dina MARCH01 094

WWhite, Joseph BA02 073Whitfield, Harry MARCH01 094

XYZ

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