Diploma 11.
Extended brief 2012/13
Unearthing the Micro City
Diploma 11 has been collecting leftover matter, unplanned
spaces, incomplete objects and accidental architecture
throughout London. These are the life expressions of time
and places that inspire us to imagine micro-cities, leading
to alternative architectural strategies that assemble
fragments and celebrate a city that is beautifully incomplete.
Our approach is empirical. Interpreting the city
through direct contact, we sample textural details by
reading their histories and stories. We will start by briefly
revisiting the sites our unit has explored over the years
and conclude our journey on the theme of micro-city.
We will focus on an inner area of London: the redevelopment
of Euston Station, which is estimated to open up
approximately 2.5 million ft2 of mixed-use development
possibly increasing the number of platforms for a new
High Speed 2 railway that will connect the city to the
Midlands and the North. The rebuild will have a direct
impact on certain landmarks in the surrounding area
including Euston Square; a church burial ground; hundreds
of council homes including Somers Town; a Victorian
office block may be demolished; Royal Mail could be
forced to close a crucial distribution centre; and The
National Temperance Hospital, which has been empty for
years, is set to be sold off to the highest bidder despite
calls for it to be used as social housing.
Our research will cross-examine these masterplans
with its surroundings: the environment, social sustainability
and details of its architecture. We will speculate on a
micro-urban unit that will be investigated in parallel to the
existing plans and see how the proposals may compensate
for the lack of health care and learning facilities
throughout the city.
Responding to a series of ‘what ifs’ we will articulate
the simplest forms to condense and clarify the essential
matters that we unearth and discover. Our challenge is to
attempt to define what makes up London today, as an
antithesis to the Starbucks and Holiday Inn homogenisation
that has engulfed the city, and what are the layers
and levels of complexity that form this urban definition
Our technical studies continue to explore composite structures and material organizations responsive to the dual aspect of permanency and temporality within the current city topology.
Borrowing the notion of reversal urban engineering we will un-make the city. Material studies will be made in non-scale, 1:5 and 1:10 detail components, developing vocabularies of structures and textural expressions inherent within chosen materials.
Term 1
Objective of the initial phase is to analyze and represent the area around Euston today as well as future implications of the existing master plans.
We use composite scale sampling methods and time base analysis in order to identify the complexity of existing service infrastructures and the importance of informal events and facilities that have been left out from the master plans.
Our intention is to interpret the hidden landscape of Euston by uncovering its textural details and unresolved urban knuckles by re-reading and mis-reading them by making collage of small urban components and scenarios for changes. While the field study focuses on urban inner peripheries seen from 3 different scales, object study will look at 3 types of appliances seen from 3 different scales, house, furniture, and service facility network. The later part of Micro City project intends to experiment by translating these studies into various forms of models in four scales (1:1000, 1:10, 1:1 and Non-scale).
Seminars:
Seminar 1 (series week 2 to week 4); Revisiting Micro Cities a series of seminars introduced by a group of ex-dip11 students, each session will discuss the previously visited site of London namely Battersea, Elephant & Castle, Kings X, Whitechapel, Dalston/Hackney and Silvertown.
Seminar 2 (week 5); London topology and Euston by Hugo Hinsley.
Seminar 3 (week 6); From Collage City to Shrinking City by Prof. Grahame Shane.
Workshops:
Workshop 1. Drawing workshop on composite details and configurations (week 4): time sequences and patterns: architectural scale, city scale and non-scale models followed by Collage Workshop weekend in Hooke Park (week 5).
Workshop 2. City as Taxonomy (week 6): Euston Resource Catalogue with sampling details in three different criterions built forms, social networks and service infrastructures. Urban Resource Catalogues of Euston.
Workshop 3. Weekend Fabrication workshop at the Hooke Park (week 7):
Making and un-making the city.Non-scale architectural models.
Exemplary buildings visits include a short visit to S. A. E. M. Provincia Lombardo-Veneta Dell'Ordine Ospedaliero San Giovanni. (Date TBA).
Unit Field Trip during the winter break (date will be informed).
Urban Sampling Workshops in the central Tokyo or Nanjing China (to be confirmed).
Void Metabolism with Yoshiharu Tsumakoto (Tokyo Institute of Technology).Recycling Concrete Buildings with Professor Shigeru Aoki.
Term 2
The first half of the term 2 will focus on design research by making including material experiments at the Hooke Park and the AA workshop.
The project at this stage, require individual agenda for conducting research and analysis, experiments working with chosen materials and fabrication principles informed by the model proposals for detail components,
Project should propose to modulate operational and spatial variations; analysis and experiments will require documentations not only of its fabrication procedures but also wider technical context in response to the reality of the urban dynamics in the wider notion of the sustainability as means to maintain cultural tolerance.
Technical design thesis session (week 1).
Hooke Park Model Building Session 1 ( 18th-28th Jan.).
Hooke Park Model Building Session 2 (8th-18th Feb.).
Revisiting Euston Station with Matthew Murphy from Design For London (week 5).
Revisiting Euston Station with Archigram, David Greene and Dennis Crompton (week 7)
Term 3
Whole of term 3 should be dedicated to the completion of individual project further articulation of design thesis through the completion of portfolio as a representation of city, it should demonstrate creative solutions to the complex forces predominant on the working landscape of Euston and speculate architectural artefacts responsive to the transitional aspect of post-infrastructural urban spaces for London.