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UG Architecture Studio 03: Parallel Farming – In an Age of Alternative Industries

Studio brief

"Never demolish. Transformation is the opportunity of doing more and better with what is already existing. The demolishing is a decision of easiness and short term. It is a waste of many things – a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history…"
(Lacaton and Vassal, winners of Pritzker Prize, 2021)

In response to the ongoing Covid pandemic and environmental crisis, Studio 3 will explore the future of living on two contrasting sites, one in urban London and one in rural Calabria. These are continuing live projects, building up on previous work done by students of Studio 3 and postgraduate Unit 6. We will be working with a network of allies, Kentish Town City Farm and Camden Council in London; Le Seppie and the municipality of Belmonte Calabro in Italy, as well as local community groups on both sites. Focusing on one of the two sites, you will be designing Parallel Farms for Kentish Town’s City Farm in London or for the medieval hill-top village Belmonte Calabro in Italy. In an Age of Alternative Industries, you will develop new concepts of how to (re-)build local communities through hybrid industries of making, agriculture and shared living, introducing the use of new sustainable building materials.

The task of this project will be to create reasons for a new local generation – which might include you – to build a sustainable community through new activities. You will analyse, understand and develop your proposal by joining a discussion with your peers about both sites: are there better ways of organising the way we will live in cities and villages in a new post-Covid and sustainable world?

The year, however, will start by investigating and designing a small piece of social infrastructure on left-over sites along the north London Overground line between Camden Town and Gospel Oak. You will test your ideas as part of the Kentish Town Planning Framework by presenting to Camden Council.

There will be an opportunity for Studio 3 students to travel to Italy for a 1:1 construction week in Belmonte together with Unit 6 postgraduate students. Working with the Italian Collective Orizzontale you will continue the work of previous students and help building a new community in the village.

Image credit: Communal living and working in the Casa, Italy. Documentation by Ian Apolis Bugarin and Joe Douglas, 2021

Colourful line drawing depicting everyday activities as they happened in the Casa, Italy

Details

Course
Tutors Sandra Denicke-Polcher
Jane McAllister
Academic Facilitator for Calabria Project Rita Elvira Adamo
Where Goulston Street
When Tuesday and Friday

 

Architecture studios

 
1/2
A gentleman sips a cup of tea on his way to work. Canary Wharf towers over a rural scene.

UG Architecture Studio 01: Leaving the City

Jillian Jones and Kieran Wardle

This year we will consider the complex, shifting patterns of rural and urban life post-pandemic. We will be exploring the architectural possibilities to redefine and reactivate the towns on the edge of London as distinct places with their own sub-urban identity.
A trio of images of past student work. From left to right; sketch, building model, site model.

UG Architecture Studio 02: City | Building | Detail

Charlotte Harris and Colin O’Sullivan

Studio 2’s final year of three working in East London. Tower Hamlets local authority is about to release its second round of sites that it has ear-marked for self-build groups to construct their own homes. We will seek to propose schemes that focus on ‘not just’ housing. You will design homes for a range of generations and family types and propose additional uses that can enhance the places in which they are sited. We will take great care to focus on scales of city, building and detail.

Colourful line drawing depicting everyday activities as they happened in the Casa, experienced by two students of Studio South who lived in Belmonte Calabro in 2020/21

UG Architecture Studio 03: Parallel Farming – In an Age of Alternative Industries

Sandra Denicke-Polcher and Jane McAllister. Academic Facilitator for Calabria: Rita Elvira Adamo

Never demolish. Transformation is the opportunity of doing more and better with what is already existing. The demolishing is a decision of easiness and short term. It is a waste of many things — a waste of energy, a waste of material, and a waste of history… (Lacaton and Vassal, winners of Pritzker Prize, 2021)
A black and white photo of Hackney Central

UG Architecture Studio 04: Here tomorrow

Katherine Nolan, Alex Butterworth, Liam Ashmore

Architecture is always situated in a specific context. Increasingly, in the current climate crisis, that context includes an existing building that will need to be reimagined, remodelled and reused, rather than demolished. As architects, we will need to study not only the built fabric and social infrastructure of a particular place, but we must also critically evaluate the building itself, including its past and present as well as its potential and constraints.
A map of the National Forest

UG Architecture Studio: Design Technology – Live Build Project

Robert Barnes and Siân Moxon

A Design and Build Live project for a Climate Change Exhibition Pavilion in the National Forest, created in partnership between SAAD, South Derbyshire District Council, the Burton and South Derbyshire College (Construction) and the National Forest in the East Midlands, England. To be constructed using 100 Ash Tree Thinnings harvested locally and replanted in the local High Street to promote discussion and debate around issues, highlighted during the COP26 conference in Glasgow 2021.