Suggestions in Courses

See all course results

Suggestions in News

  • No suggestions found.

Suggestions in Events

See all events results
My Prospectus (0) Staff Students
UG Architecture Studio 03: Weaving the Factory Village

Studio brief

‘The two sister arts of Agriculture and Industry were not always so estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and that time is not far off, when both were thoroughly combined: the villages were then the seats of a variety of industries, and the artisans in the cities did not abandon agriculture; many towns were nothing else but industrial villages.’

(Kropotkin Petr Alekseevič. The Industrial Village of the Future.)

Idea: to re-imagine Belmonte as a factory village. Program: to weave a factory amongst the uninhabited 40% of the village. Process: to invent and recycle new indigenous fabrics – tectonically and materially. Architecture: to weave tectonic and material fabric – building and textiles, setting and society.

Context:

During the last decade, Belmonte has increased in social confidence and media visibility through engagement with Studio 3 and Le Seppie. We now ask, what should happen to its future? How will the village sustain a kind of living which acknowledges the land, its people and novel ecological industrial production? Can its scale, local knowledge, and involvement manage its enterprises to outperform purely corporate growth? And can the ‘Factory Village’ reform depopulation, to a new form of living?

This year we will explore the life of textiles, their process, production, and by-products; how they make the ‘Factory Village’ and associated cottage industries. We will deploy ‘weave’ as metaphor to explore the school’s workshops playing with their representational and tectonic forms – veils and tensile structures.

Partnerships & Residency:

This continues a live project, building up on previous work developed by students of Studio 3 and postgraduate Unit 6 since 2016. The ambition of this project is to speculate and build a sustainable community. You will collaborate with our Italian partner university, the Politecnico di Torino, as part of the School of Common Project, and work with the Italian Collective Orizzontale . This will continue the work of previous students and help develop the community hub in the village. As part of this, Studio 3 will offer an opportunity for 3rd year students to join a 10-week partly funded residency in Belmonte during Autumn Semester to deepen their onsite research.

References:

http://www.designandarchitecture.net

Tables in factory space, steam, lit from above. People in yellow uniforms.

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
line drawing of an internal elevation of a debating chamber, with an architectural construction set within the space

UG Architecture Studio 01: Building for Goldilocks: The Hot, the Cool, and the Just Right

Owain Williams, Holly Crosbie and Kieran Wardle

Studio One will work with old and new buildings to propose a thoughtful, adaptive architecture to serve an uncertain future.

Collage exploring relationship between street and home entrances

UG Architecture Studio 02: After City 3 - Reversals

Charlotte Harris and Colin O’Sullivan

Studio 2 returns to Portugal to examine the changes associated with our post-pandemic world. The pull of the city to the detriment of rural life has been a long-established reality here but now that many have accepted a more fluid relationship with work, study and home life, has the seemingly inexorable pull of the city been slowed or even reversed? What can our cities learn from the past three years and how must our buildings respond to the change?
Tables in factory space, steam, lit from above. People in yellow uniforms

UG Architecture Studio 03: Weaving the Factory Village

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

This project imagines a textile factory set within the fabric of Belmonte, a partially uninhabited hill village in Calabria, Southern Italy. It is intended to entangle small, medium, and large scales of tectonic, social and cultural processes. It is in favour of architecture as a social ecology as opposed to picturesque conservation.
illustration of cluster of green trees with white screens and seats in between

UG Architecture Studio 04: City as a School

Fran Balaam, Ingrid Petit

The studio will be proposing new types of school buildings for London. Working in the context of an uncertain future, we will design at a range of scales to explore the potential of school architecture to inspire and engage children and be resilient to changing needs and climate. Robustness and longevity will underpin the studio’s work with each proposal developing a close understanding of materials, tectonics and construction methods.
10 metre diameter ovoid section of the facade of a disused building cut free allowing it to rotate

UG Architecture Studio 05: Existing/Proposed: Making the most of what is there already

Theo Thysiades

In the context of the current energy, climate, and cost of living crises, we will explore the possibilities of the conversion and creative reuse of existing buildings in North East London.