Unit 5 Diana Cochrane Kevin Haley Approach Above: Soleri, - - PDF document

Unit 5 Diana Cochrane Kevin Haley

Civic Wondrous Unit 5 is interested in architecture’s ability to be complex and ambiguous, to be strange and to tell stories. We think that architecture is fjrst and foremost a cultural practice, capable of representing more than itself, and it can be a repository for fragile stores that would otherwise be lost. We’ll look into history as well as everyday life, back to front as it may currently be on the Old Kent Road, to reveal and unveil ‘truths’ and ‘fjctions’ that can point us towards complex and rich architectural proposals. The focus for unit 5 will be exploring London’s designated ‘Opportunity and Intensifjcation Areas’. These are places

• f fjnancial growth and of numerous development opportunities, but also of huge displacement and infrastructural
• pressure. In these areas of the capital, the built and proposed plans for the environment are having a very real impact
• n their existing inhabitants’ lives. Together we will explore what architects can bring to the complex and collaborative

art of telling stories and making places. We will use historical precedent, learn from the (failed) experiments of others and stitch together London-based narratives whilst also visiting Bilbao because it seems to offer many parallels with the Old Kent Road. Despite a rich history and late C19th expansion, 1980s post-industrial Bilbao had huge problems with its economy and unemployment, infrastructure, commerce and identity, all underpinned by the city turning its back on the central artery, the river estuary. In Bilbao we will complete group research and study the particular vision and methodology for transforming the City, as well as encouraging you to be critical of your own understanding of what you see and how it was made. Unit methods In term 1 you will work incrementally; building up your portfolio through a series of short ‘making’ projects with tangible, precise and designed outcomes that will develop your knowledge about a large and complex place, giving you the confjdence to develop your own personal thesis, to develop a personal design language and to creatively explore all aspects of the tools and resources that are available at KSA. You will use these to contribute to group research and a masterplan and to begin to design a part (building & landscape) within it. In terms 2 & 3 you will develop this proposal (building) and its wider context utilizing your own tools and experiments. You will develop a narrative for the future of the place and tell the story of what might happen next.

“Between the slum clearances of the early twentieth century and debates about the post-Olympic city, the drive to ‘regenerate’ London has intensifjed. Yet today, with a focus on increasing land values, regeneration schemes purporting to foster diverse and creative new neighborhoods typically displace precisely the qualities, activities and communities they claim to support.” ― Remaking London, Ben Campkin

Approach

Above: Soleri, Arcosanti

Rossi Above: Soleri, Arcosanti Below: Zumpthor, Museo Kolumba en Colonia

Precedents

Soleri and Zumpthor

Lina Bo Bardi

Lina Bo Bardi

Billboard

Right: The World Upside Down pub circa 1910, Old Kent Road Left: Carp caught in Burgess Park 2015

The Old Kent Road The Old Kent Road was the cheapest location on the Monopoly board and possibly better known for its C20th Friday night brawls and absurdly named pubs — most now gone, including The World Turned Upside Down and the Frog & Nightgown — than as a place to live. Among the oldest routes in England it was created by the Romans and famously travelled by Chaucer’s pilgrims who found many friendly coaching inns and alehouses along the Old Kent Road. In Victorian times it was quite a handsome thoroughfare — a sprinkling of listed period buildings survive amid the large dull retail sheds — and today it forms the boundary between Elephant @ Castle, Walworth, Peckham, Bermondsey and Lewisham, all up-and-coming Zone 2

• districts. The Old Kent Road is now tipped for greater things. London Mayor Boris Johnson has promised an Opportunity

Area, more than 11,000 new homes, better public transport, better shops and better neighborhood amenities. The outline for the new Opportunity Area has just been drawn, so you will be tackling the issues in parallel with what’s actually being done - buy a train ticket and chose to dip your toes into the ‘live’ project and Community Forum if you

• wish. The Opportunity Area covers the road itself and the “corridor” of land either side. This corridor is occupied by a

hotchpotch of modest Victorian terraces, dreary post-war council estates, warehouses, light industrial buildings and the splendid green expanse of upgraded Burgess Park. The park, a 140-acre tract bounded on one side by fjne Regency detached houses, is a welcome lung of greenery among the relentless unforgiving urban sprawl. Up until now the road to Kent has always been known as a route and never a destination, even the Bricklayer’s Arms Terminus failed because of the passenger preference for using London Bridge station. The buildings along the route play their part as backdrops to the main event, whether ‘hangings’ at the City boundary, or simply viewed while stationery at the traffjc lights. This lack of attractiveness means that there has always been space for the entrepreneur, whether that is the man who named his chain of shoe shops after Monet the painter, 1980s artists setting up workshops in the abandoned Fire station, or the local working class boxing gym above the pub frequented by south London gangsters and stars alike. Programmes that accommodate travellers and strangers have always played an important part in the make up of the Old Kent Road. Situated at cross roads, these vied for the passing trade. C20th attempts to stamp civility and amenity on the Road in the form of churches, libraries, public baths and Civic centres are now mainly closed or permanently scared by WW2 bombing or post-war development. The Old Kent Road cannot simply be stitched back together, some major (group masterplan) surgery and skilled speculation is needed…. A series of big ideas to test out a number possible futures that coincide and collide. What works and what doesn’t? What structures, volumes or spaces can we insert that disrupt or transform urban mediocrity? But ‘playing’ at an urban scale doesn’t mean we can’t also look at the detail and what is here now - observing closely and mapping the offjcial and marginal life of the city, its sub-cultures, institutions and physical infrastructure, searching out the gaps, anomalies and loopholes in its fabric to identify the pieces that create the potential for change. By looking very closely at local vernacular, ‘chat rooms’ and detail - using the principle that “reality is always stranger than fjction” we can think about how new expressions of relationships could intensify the exquisite moments within our city. The challenge will be to transform Old Kent Road (Number 24 on the O&IA list) into a public city space with new town centres of very specifjc character that people remember and wish to return to.

Old Kent Road

You will be asked to identify and enhance Old Kent Road through the introduction of a number of architectural elements. These will most likely involve adjustments to what already exists in combination with the introduction of infrastructural devices, surfaces and buildings of different scales, taking care to make ‘good’ conversations between new and old. The ambition is to give this moment in the city an appropriate civility and the ability to accommodate everyday uses with special occasions, as well as producing memorable and unique forms of architecture that signal its new identity and civility at all scales. In order to do this we will incorporate some of the following: City Planning & Power and Authority: Never be completely seduced, always have one eye on who commissioned and fjnanced the architecture and why. Representation: We will examine how under modernism and now with overly prescriptive design codes, everything has the potential to look the same. We will consider how architecture might be able to carry narrative and, like monasteries and libraries, museums of the past, hold memory. Decoration + Craft: We will examine what potential new technology and concern for interaction at a human scale has to reintegrate them into a new architectural language. The diffjculty of the Architectural Figure in the City: Up close, all buildings disappear. In crowded streets a building is

• nly ever a series of cropped and partial views. The complete architectural fjgure only exists in the architects mind and
• drawings. In the city it dematerializes into a fuzzy area, mediating between the room and the city.

Historical experiment/ precedent: We will consider the ambition and appropriateness of some large projects elsewhere including Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa D’Este and the work of Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil and Paolo Soleri in Arizona.

Old Kent Road

Old Kent Road

C18th 1950s 2015 1910s

Old Kent Road

English Heritage / Assessing historical value 2009

Old Kent Road

OKR Community Consultation / Mind Maps 2015

Maxxi, Rome by Zaha

Old Kent Road

OKR Community Consultation / Mind Maps 2015

Old Kent Road

OKR Fragments

Project 2: Bilbao in parallel We will visit Bilbao because it offers many parallels with the Old Kent Road. Despite a rich history and late C19th expansion, 1980s post industrial Bilbao had huge problems with its economy and unemployment, infrastructure, commerce and identity, all underpinned by the city turning its back on the central artery, the river estuary. Industrial zones associated within the inland port of Bilbao were located in the city centre therefore hindering the development of any new or useful connections across it. 2 Culture and change Notwithstanding the distinctive Basque culture, architecture has become a daily topic of conversation because Bilbao has transformed itself from a dark and unfriendly city into a much more admired place..... Bilbao is a city that parties all night for seven consecutive nights during its annual fjesta and in the morning takes the tube to the beach ... for the last stop on the “Fosterito” is always the beach. Beginning in the mid 90s, although at planning stages for 10 years before that, Bilbao is undergoing 25+ years of signifjcant urban renewal. The leading role of certain landmarks such as the Guggenheim, although instrumental, has

• vershadowed the entire process, preventing other elements from being clearly seen. It is these that we will investigate,

works completed and still in progress (eg Zorrozaurre By Zaha Hadid): the complex and rich mix of urban, infrastructural, architectural and landscape aspects that makes up this revitalized European City. In Bilbao we will complete group research and study the particular vision and methodology for transforming the City, as well as encouraging you to be critical of your own understanding of what you see and how it was made in terms of how the new architecture really ‘represents’ this City. Bibliography Atelier Bow Wow, Pet Architecture. J G Ballard Concrete Island & The Terminal Beach. Venturi, Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas. Naomi Klein, No Logo. N Coates, Estacity, A Smithson, AS in DS. See main bibliography at the end.

“I wonder if the Bilbao Guggenheim is a work of architecture at all? It would have been a powerful tonic for post-2000 London if something as original and disorienting as the Bilbao Guggenheim occupied the site of the old power station. But would we have had the nerve to gamble on Gehry’s visionary dream? Could we justify to our rather conventional and timid selves a work of architecture so original and so cut off from

• ur beloved past of pitched roofs and Tudor beams?

Are we ever really happy with an architecture that unsettles and provokes?”

• The larval stage of a new kind of architecture.

JG Ballard writing in the Guardian

Bilbao in Parallel

Part One: Adopt a Civic language - Looking closely to understand the language of the landscape The city is fjlled with interesting things. Some of them can be inspiration for something new in a different place. You are going to go on a journey to discover what is Civic and what is Wondrous. We will visit a series of buildings across London and Bilbao (at a later date) to discover and examine a variety of architectural forms, characters, styles, materials, details, past, present and future uses. Your aim is to build up your own design language, identifying what are the architectural elements that could make up a work of civic quality for the Old Kent Road. All of your knowledge, skills and spatial experiences will be brought together and represented as a 3d spatial lexicon, which will be a visual guide to the themes, people, buildings, spaces and narratives that you inspire you the most along your journey. Select a route from the given list. This means that you will visit a national ‘monument’, an intimate city space and one that is extraordinary/ unexpected. You need to collect, examine and share your research and understanding of these spaces at all scales. You will need to visit the sites more than once. Part Two: Comparing The Terrains – OKR vs Bilbao A research project will be set in Bilbao, developed by each individual in response to Part One. Requirements

• 1. 3D Visual Lexicon Model - London
• 2. Research & Process Booklet 01 (portfolio layout)
• 3. 3D Visual Lexicon Model - Bilbao

Timetable Wk 1: London site visit WK 2: Bring your UG portfolio and pin up the fjrst iteration of your ‘fjnished’ work Wk 3: OKR site visit (& tutorials) WK 4: Tutorials (unit trip preparation & Bilbao Project introduction) WK 5: Bilbao research project WK 6: Crit ( across units) tbc

Civic language

Civic language

Part 1&2: Adopt a Civic language - Looking closely to understand the language of the landscape

Civic language

Part 1&2: Adopt a Civic language - Looking closely to understand the language of the landscape

Sketch by South London Architect Benny O’Lonney Pascal Bonner & Tom Hillier: fmea folly architects Smout & Allen: unit work

Civic language

Part 1&2: Adopt a Civic language - Looking closely to understand the language of the landscape

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Civic language

Part 1&2: Adopt a Civic language - Looking closely to understand the language of the landscape