Y3 Project 2 Parasitic Library

The brief for this project was to create a richer boundary situation within Bromley-By-Bow. I took this brief and located a boundary situation within a prominent block of flats in Stroudley Walk [the main high street in Bromley-By-Bow]. In usual social situations within flats the integration of people is very low. People on the bottom floor do not walk up the flats to talk to someone they do not know. So to enrich this situation within this block of flats i pitched the idea of a shared library/community media library where people can leave a book for people to read anonymously so they dont have to interact with people if they don't want to [so no change there, still a boundary] but that boundary is now a play for people to share media like books, DVDs etc.



In order to make this intervention solely for the residents of the flat, it needed to be attached to the flat itself and not the floor. After a time of experimenting with form and space, and still causing the living quarters of several flats to be damaged or reduced in quality it became apparent that this will not be a 'polite' construction and so i took out 2 flats to put this installation in. 




Experimenting with space was the name of the game for this project. After researching Smooth vs Striated and learning about specific and ambiguous spaces i went about this by creating in-between spaces in which you could store books and media, or sit down etc. You can see this in a development model in the next post. You can see in the sections that the centre part of the long walkways are of differing heights to create these spaces between. The raised situations are also places to sit, or lie down or meet people and discuss books if you wanted to. Basically by having a specific circulation space which runs throughout and then the middle space which is more ambiguous it creates opportunities for people to use it however they want to.



The plans and sections were an exercise in using Photoshop to create shadows and textures to create the atmosphere i am looking for in this project. 

Y3 Project 1 Boundaries

We began this year with an exercise on abstracting a word with spatial qualities from a short bit of research we did on Bromley-By-Bow at the very beginning.  TRANSITION was the word i chose, and so the process was to draw the quality of the word on a page using only 90 and 45 degree lines inc shading and the thoughts behind it were very simple. Going from density to sparsity across the page [1] following some rules i generated quickly before i set off. It was then translated into a 3D model [2] being only cut along drawn lines. This was then assembled with everyone else's in any way i chose, then drawn over to again represent the same word [3]. It was a very interesting exercise, and got me thinking about representation of an idea in various ways right from the start. In this case the representation was of a spatial quality in a non-spatial way.



In order to get to know and understand the site of Bromley-By-Bow, i undertook a cartography exercise [the first of the year, more to come] and this time it was a hard-systems mapping so i decided to walk 50 paces, draw a section, walk 50 more draw another and do that for a route through Bromley-By-Bow. After the site visit the data had to be cut in half to make the drawing readable, but ti just shows the verticality of the location. With a high population density the people have to go somewhere and it was up. The area is mostly residential buildings, a small amount of commercial and industrial buildings as well.



One of the key words for this unit was 'Boundaries' and so the final exercise for Project 1 dealt with boundaries. The brief was to create an architectural intervention which crossed a boundary or broke a boundary down. So i attempted to break down a specific boundary within Bromley-By-Bow which also deals with social difference and gentrification. The intervention takes the user on a journey from walking along an open pavement with a busy road to your side and new builds across from old social housing. You walk into this cramped dark space intended to cleanse the surroundings from your memories and to shield you from the sound of the outside, then you walk up a ladder to the bridge which emerges you into this situation again which a fresh view. The intervention stretches out halfway into the road so it doesn't cross deliberately because it is a place to view both sides of the road as equals, and to notice the divide that is being created between the older residents and the newer residents in the new builds. 


I am highlighting the boundary situation between these groups of people, by giving them a viewing platform across the physical boundary [the road, which only exacerbates the situation] so they can see it for themselves and then this gaining of perspective intends to break down the barriers between these two groups of people.

Y3 Smooth vs Striated

Third year of architecture has begun with a choice of studio units. With a wealth of different ways to approach the subject on offer the one which i found the most interesting when it was pitched was Unit 1A, Smooth vs Striated. It was a systems based unit with an interest in teaching a broad range of contemporary skills to equip each of us with. A focus on CAD software was interesting since i hadn't used much more than basic Sketchup at this point with any success, so the prospect of using programs like Microstation, Rhino, Maya etc was enticing. 

Y2 Project 4 Shifting Tectonics (2)

The proposal for this project was a centre to re-build the defences using the material that has broken away from the cliffs of Happisburgh. It would not provide a perfect set up to protect the village but would at least provide a short to long term solution to shield the village from the worst of the erosion. 

The principle is that it would be sited 'down stream' from the longshore drift which plagues the coastline with a huge mechanical sieve stretching out into the sea to catch the sediment eroded away from the cliff faces. This material would be taken back to land with a series of lifts and conveyor belts and then processed on the shore into bricks. These bricks would then be used to patch up or create sea defences along the coastline and buy Happisburgh more time to move. 

The architecture was to reflect it's purpose and also it's meaning. It is to be a defence, and a strong beacon within Happisburgh. And although the model is not as refined as it ought to have been, it shows the intention of the architecture. Built into the cliffs at Happisburgh it becomes a place of creation and in that creation a place of hope. Hope that a villagers house won't tumble into the sea during the night as has been known to happen in violent weather.

Each of the 3 modules is where the brick manufacturing happens, with the sediment entering through the front. In between the modules the distribution occurs and also the control centre to monitor the situation in the sea and when to drag in the material based on what is currently happening and what has happened before.