UG Architecture Studio 04

UG Architecture Studio 04: rework, reuse, redefine

Studio brief

"Never demolish, never remove, never replace but always add, transform, and use."
Lacaton and Vassal

Studio 04 will consider the architecture of city-making at the scale of the building. We will explore how urban areas have been left vacant during the pandemic, as people work from home. The Royal Albert Dock development in east London, where five buildings have been constructed to provide lettable workspace, now stands quiet. Currently unoccupied, we will ask how this development can be transformed to propose new architectural typologies of work, leisure and living with the intention to activate the city.

Project 1 – Building intervention as urban tool

In the first project, students will make a small programmatic and formal addition to the existing buildings or the street to begin to introduce other uses to the site. These will be informed by a detailed precedent study of a building which has added public programme to an existing structure and urban context.

Project 2 – Radical transformation of buildings

Project 2 will propose an alternative re-use of the existing buildings. Each student will work to define their own brief which radically transforms the existing building and urban locality. Students may remove up to half of the existing structure, and increase the buildings’ floor area by the same amount. The process of adding, extending, stitching, linking and carving the existing built structures will be explored through massing models and will be resolved in response to the neighbouring buildings. Each student will bring their proposals together on an iterative, collective site plan, to appraise the impact of their designs against one another. The aim is to make proposals which consider and diversify the buildings’ use, proximity, identity, construction and orientation to transform the urban life of the area. The idea of transformation is explored in a way that radically alters and adds to the building – not only for its new use but to allow it to develop as a piece of city.

Details

Course	Architecture BA (Hons)
Tutors	Jennifer Gutteridge Katherine Nolan Alex Butterworth
Where	Goulston Street
When	Tuesday and Friday

Architecture studios

1/2

Ben Brooksbank / Redevelopment in Barbican at London Wall/Wood Street/Monkwell Street, by Church of St Giles, Cripplegate / CC BY-SA 2.0

UG Architecture Studio 01: The City: After the Office

Jillian Jones, Andrew Budd, Kieran Wardle

Studio 01 will be exploring a new future for the City of London no longer dominated by the office. Developing new housing models and public buildings that provide the social infrastructure for new residents of the City.

UG Architecture Studio 02: Back to Front

Charlotte Harris and Colin O’Sullivan

As the need for alternatives to building anew with unsustainable material becomes increasingly urgent, Studio 02 will continue to explore the themes of tolerance and compromise, through appropriation of existing structures and vacant sites, from innovative imaginative insertions to ambitious adaptations, that offer something other to the city.

Between Beach and Highway: Split screen image of the extreme ends of the London site, Royal Docks (Photograph by Jane McAlister)

UG Architecture Studio 03: How will we live in urban cities and rural areas post-Covid?

Sandra Denicke-Polcher, Jane McAllister and Rita Elvira Adamo (Academic Facilitator for Calabria Project)

Lockdown! "It’s reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic horror film, 28 Days Later. For many cafes, pubs, shops and restaurants, the pandemic could be terminal... Others cite London as a social, cultural and economic drain on the life of our country. They believe that declining big cities give us an opportunity to revive towns, to end the suburban commuter crawl, restore lost industries, embrace home-working and cut carbon emissions." (BBC4, 29 July 2020)