MArch Thesis Projectas part of the infrastructural urbanism studio co-ordinated by Peter Salter

awarded ‘commendation’ for design.

RE-INTERPRETING F O R D I S MTOWARDS A NEW I N D U S T R I A L T Y P O L O G Y

RE-INTERPRETING FORDISM:TOWARDS A NEW INDUSTRIAL TYPOLOGY

Following the demise of the coal industry, the South Wales Valleys have failed to attract or sustain vital revenue streams. With up to 40% of the population on unemployment and incapacity benefits, the need to provide secure jobs is paramount. Under guidance of Peter Salter’s ‘Infrastructural Urbanism’ Studio, the thesis project intended to tackle this fundamental issue through the installation of a new industrial typology

The proposal establishes a new industrial ‘city’ bringing together low skilled assembly work of Fordism, and the creative research and entrepreneurship of Post Fordism. Whilst working at both building and urban scale, the project takes precedent from the social networking and ‘economic resilience’ of Silicon Valley, encouring moments of entrepreneurship and employee ’spin-off’ through the medium of architecture.

To some extent the scheme is not directed towards a goal that is known in advance. Instead it follows the imminent tendencies of the ‘city’ and its population, guiding them but also giving them space to evolve. Architecture becomes the medium of enaction and its processes, offering flexibility to respond to evolving needs, encouraging the overlap of different sub communities and recognizing the city as a repository of architectural knowledge and potential

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Infrastructure as a Form of Development

A New Motorway Link

The premise for the design works off the reformulation of infrastruc-ture funding in the UK, with private investment being made in the ‘Heads of the Valleys’ (A465) road upgrade, an arterial link connectingSwansea and Birmingham. Strongly opposed to recent public funding initiatives (PFI), the project seeks to solely utilize private funds through the economic processes of ‘Anchor Tenancy’ 1.

It’s assumed the A465 road upgrade will kick-start the projects progress, upgrading the status of adjacent land plots prime for future investment and establishment of industrial ‘spin-offs’.

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Toyota, Deeside

Vauxhall, Ellesmere Port

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SERC, University of GlamorganPontypridd

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H2 Wales Rewable CenterUniversity of Glamorgan

Tata Steel Works

A 465

Tarfarnaubach

M40

L o n d o n - B i r m i n g h a m

BMW MINI, Hams Hall Plant

BMW MINI, Oxford Plant

BMW MINI, Swindon Plant

Mini Production Triangle(See Appendix)

Front End Local Supplier

Rybrook Stratford

Seats + CockpitLocal Supplier

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Toyota, Burnaston

Jaguar, Birmingham (TATA Motors)

Jaguar, Coventry (TATA Motors)

Honda, Swindon

Rolls Royce, Crewe

Vauxhall, Ellesmere Port, Luton

Landrover Solihull

A 465

M4

Architecture as a Social Medium

_The project enhances a 'networked territory' strongly synchronized and responsive to the latest trends whereby employee revolutions are catalyzed through spaces of 'common and generic attributes of learning’. The scheme takes a socio-political

stance whereby ‘spin-offs’ and employee insubordination challenge the status quo of capitalism. Capitalism gets turned on its head and “becomes subordinate to working-class struggles; it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which

political mechanisms of capital's own reproduction must be tuned"3.

In order to achieve such a political mechanism, the working class are granted a flexible environment, liberated from 'functionalist or programmatic duty' and

articulated by the evolution of knowledge. Architecturally these exist essentially as containers for free knowledge transfer, an ‘open living room’ articulated by the

sharing of knowledge within a fixed set of parameters.

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L O W S K I L L E D I N D U S T R I A L

F O R D I S T U S E R P O S T - F O R D I S M U S E R

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N O M A D I C E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P

^ D i a g r a m s s h o w i n g t h e o v e r l a p p i n g o f u s e r g r o u p w o r k p a t t e r n s

^ G r o u n d F l o o r P l a n , T h e E d u - F a c t o r y

Main Street

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C D

Courtyard

Main Street

Communities

A B c

< E x p l o r a t o r y s k e t c h e s ^ D e t a i l e d s e c t i o n t h r o u g h ‘ H o t S p a c e ’

1 Thesis on Failure

“We learn most about something at its point of collapse.”

2Reality + Endurance

“an object is only as strong as the network in which it is installed.”

3Blind Spots

“the political dimension of any system is its blind spot”

^ L o n g S e c t i o n a c r o s s s i t e - F r o m E d u - F a c t o r y t o I n d u s t r i a l E n s e m b l e

3Blind Spots

“the political dimension of any system is its blind spot”

^ M a s t e r p l a n D e v e l o p m e n t > O v e r a l l c o n d i t i o n

< ^ T y p i c a l S l a b C o m p o s i t i o n

O. RHYS NICHOLAST: +44 (0) 7549 528 595E: orhysnicholas@gmail.com