MArch Urban Design (UD) 2016

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MArch Urban Design

The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL




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Contents

6 Introduction FrĂŠdĂŠric Migayrou, Bob Sheil 10 MArch Urban Design (UD) Mark Smout 12 Research Cluster 11 (IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Sabine Storp, Patrick Weber

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

28 Research Cluster 12 Architectures of Participation Adam Greenfield, Usman Haque 44 Research Cluster 14 Big Data Architecture: Materialising the Virtual Roberto Bottazzi, Kostas Grigoriadis 60 62 78

Urban Morphogenesis Lab Research Cluster 16 Bio-Urban Design Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plemenitas Research Cluster 18 Bridging Across Mass Customisation Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres

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UD Staff Biographies Bartlett Staff, Visitors & Consultants Bartlett Lectures Sir Banister Fletcher Visitor Professorship 22 Gordon Street Here East New Programmes

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Image: B-Pro Show 2015



Introduction

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Professor Frédéric Migayrou Chair, Bartlett Professor of Architecture Director of B-Pro At The Bartlett School of Architecture, B-Pro offers two advanced postgraduate courses: the MArch Architectural Design (AD) led by Alisa Andrasek, which offers the most advanced experimental research in computational design and fabrication; and the MArch Urban Design (UD), led by Mark Smout, which offers critical approaches towards creative urban and landscape design, and defining creative strategies for global cities and communities. The 12-month B-Pro courses welcome a diverse international student cohort, offering highly structured access to the realisation and application of research, and to the production of new schemes of conception and construction in architecture and urbanism. Throughout the year, B-Pro develops numerous seminars, workshops, lectures and public events, such as Plexus, to underpin these ideas and promote collaboration, discussion and inspiration. The 2015-16 AD course was organised around research clusters driven by their respective tutors and grouped into labs (Wonderlab; BiotA Lab; Interactive Architecture Lab) to target both specific speculative and prospective fields and domains of application. The latest technologies – robotics and AI, CNC fabrication, 3D printing, supercomputing, simulation, generative design, interactivity, advanced algorithms, extensive material prototyping, biotechnologies, and links to material science – and their many applications are researched in great depth. The exploration of supercomputing and software packages such as Maya, Grasshopper, Arduino, Processing, Houdini, and other generative platforms, also forms a core part of B-Pro’s innovative approach to conception and fabrication, enabled by our top-of-the-range digital production facilities. In 2015-16, UD was framed around two streams that looked at creative approaches 6

towards environments and cities at all scales, especially innovative design. Along with the Urban Morphogenesis Lab, the clusters developed alternative proposals and models, based on new morphological concepts and protocols, which reflected how cities are complex, dynamic living systems. Critical environmental and ecological questions are also viewed through an interdisciplinary lens, embracing fields such as archaeology, anthropology, design theory, ecological history, advanced computing, government, law, media, philosophy, planning and political theory; thereby acknowledging the dispersed and often paradoxical nature of contemporary urbanism. Through contextual case studies and interventions, we address the challenges involved in resolving complex issues facing populations, public space, building typologies and land use. The Bartlett International Lecture Series – with numerous speakers, architects, historians and theoreticians, sponsored by Fletcher Priest Architects – presented the opportunity for students to encounter fresh takes on emerging research, alongside lectures and workshops organised by Joseph Grima and Dan Hill, the School of Architecture’s Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professors for 2015-16. The installation of The Bartlett School of Architecture in a temporary building at Hampstead Road offered the opportunity to extend and reconfigure the school production facilities and the B-made workshop, and to anticipate the completion of our new building at 22 Gordon Street, in the heart of Bloomsbury. Our exciting temporary home at Hampstead Road offered a new space for the B-Pro Show – which presented the work of all clusters, including drawings, models, animations, installations and constructions, demonstrating the intense activity undertaken throughout the year. Through a shared vision of creative architecture, B-Pro is an opportunity for students both to participate in a new community and to


Introduction

Professor Bob Sheil Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture In the final furlong of a 12-month journey of experimentation, learning, testing, representation, invention and reinvention, production of these show catalogues began about three weeks before the B-Pro show opened. Catalogues are but a snapshot of a vast mountain of work, and both collating them and editing them is a tricky business. The first few pages begin to emerge just a few days before students submit portfolios for internal examination. The final few pages fall into place just a few days before preparation for the external exams and show intensify. The privilege to be a witness to this performance, and watching page upon page flesh out with an abundance of ideas, bravery, optimism and critique, has been inspiring. Our 12-month B-Pro programmes are immensely important to the school, and this importance is growing. They are important because they are melting pots, where embryonic experimentation meets rigorous research and theoretical contextualisation. This buoyancy has allowed us to launch two new 15-month MArch programmes for 2017-18, one in Design for Performance and Interaction, and another in Design for Manufacture, with more to come in 2018-19, and beyond, in Landscape, Bio-enabled Design, and Film. This is a pivotal time for The Bartlett School of Architecture, and the excellent work contained in these books hints very loudly at a new and exciting era that lies just a few months away.

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The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

affirm the singularity of their individual talents. These programmes are not only an open door to an advanced architectural practice but also form the base from which each student can define their particular approach and architectural philosophy, in order to seek a position in the professional world. 2015-16 saw the delivery of a new MRes in Architecture and Digital Theory, dedicated to the theory, history and criticism of digital design and digital fabrication, with open seminars that explored the historical and critical frameworks for digital innovation. In 2017-18, The Bartlett is launching four new programmes that explore environmental and structural design, fabrication, performance architecture and conceptual spatial theories: MArch Design for Manufacture, MArch Design for Performance and Interaction, MEng Engineering and Architectural Design and MA Situated Practice. B-Pro, entirely devoted to creative design, will become even more of a nexus of stimulating exchanges between history and theory, design and technology. With 2016 being the 175th anniversary of architectural education at UCL, this year’s B-Pro exhibition and accompanying catalogues are testament to the depth, quality and intensity of The Bartlett’s current creative vision and those who guide it. As ever, they also showcase the commitment, passion and ingenuity of our dedicated students.


Image: Students on the Research Cluster 12 field trip to India



MArch Urban Design Programme Director: Professor Mark Smout

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Urban design is the study of cities, their form and nature and the complex challenges and opportunities of global urbanisation. Enduring themes, such as environmentalism, land use, population growth and culture inform and guide future development through innovative and creative design strategies. The MArch Urban Design (UD) is a 12-month studio-based programme that continues to develop and adapt to emerging urban contexts. We have made many changes this year with two distinct ambitions, the first being to broaden the design themes and creativity that the course offers. We now have clusters specialising in social engagement, big data, housing, peri-urban landscapes and urban morphogenesis. Secondly, we aim to create a more convivial, cohesive atmosphere of collaborative research and creative study. To this end, the Bartlett’s Banister Fletcher Visiting Lecturers, Dan Hill and Joseph Grima hosted a week-long workshop, titled ‘Incomplete City’, assisted by Marco Ferrari, Sandra Youkhana and UD staff. The workshop engaged UD students from across all the clusters into intense collaboration and production. They were asked to create a city for a population of 12,000 as an evolving assemblage of small-scale ideas, neighborhoods and infrastructural insertions. Incomplete City was manifested in a collage of mammoth proportions organised into an astonishing ‘city’ of interconnected hand-drawings exemplifying networked urbanism, participative design, local urban cultures, and alternative models of urban development. As Dan Hill says ‘The city that emerged on the wall was a true spectacle: a vast, pasted-up, hand-drawn, densely-packed town of 12,000 people, which you could stand back and admire, or get so close to that you could count each person, read each street sign.’ Students on the UD programme can choose to work within one of a broad variety of design clusters that each specialise in different areas of research under the aegis of Urban 10

Design. Each cluster (whose achievements are illustrated here), follows a unique approach with regular intellectual debate, creative exchange and vibrant discussion. The MArch UD programme sits alongside the Architectural Design (AD) programme within the overarching structure of B-Pro, led by Professor Frédéric Migayrou, Chair of the School of Architecture. In addition to dedicated teaching and support, both programmes are supported by complementary resources such as open lectures, subject classes, project reviews and publications.

Image: Urban Design students take part in the Incomplete City workshop



RC11

(IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Sabine Storp, Patrick Weber

Students Zhiyin (Teddy) Ai, Fahad Al Saud, Ranim Alwair, Hukun (Dean) Dong, Daniela Gonzalez Badillo, Chu Zhen (Stephanie) He, Asbjørn Jessen, Ipsita Mondal, Selvia Novita, Binxin (Delphine) Peng, Lei Song, Yang Song, Xiao Wang, Xinyi Wang, Ben Webb

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Thanks to our consultants and critics Samson Adjei, Laura Allen, Shumi Bose, Roberto Bottazzi, Margret Bursa, Marco Ferrari, Joseph Grima, Jamie Hignett, Dan Hill, Holly Lewis, Andrew Porter, David Roberts, Mark Smout, Paolo Zaide

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Over the course of the past year, RC11 has explored, speculated on and invented new concepts for a Garden City Habitat for tomorrow as part of the Bartlett Living Laboratory. Our activities are focused on resilient urban growth in new city habitats for Greater London. A Habitat is an (independent) ecological system that has the right (dependent) conditions for an organism to flourish. It is a place where you can find shelter and the right conditions to find (or grow your) food. It can be created by setting up the right kind of social or environmental conditions to allow the inhabitants to be – or to become – independent. But a habitat can’t exist in isolation. All habitats exist within a complex network of factors that all play together to form a living organism. In 1933, the Czech industrialist Tomáš Baťa set up the Baťa Shoe Factory in the Essex town of East Tilbury. The development wasn’t just a factory; it was a town with all the amenities and facilities a new settlement needs. Baťaville had everything a normal town needs to function: houses and housing, a hotel, a cinema, a restaurant, sports facilities, a garage, a farm, a grocers, a butcher and a post office – except that everything was owned and run by the Baťa company. Strongly influenced by the English ‘Garden Cities’ movement, it created a closed habitat, a complete manufactured landscape. Baťaville was the first such modernist development in the UK. RC11 started with a critical discussion of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City vision and how it was variously implemented. The traditional ideas have to be challenged, a new principle of how the new Garden City will respond to both the cultural and environmental settings. The visions should be radical and push the boundaries of design and urban planning, speculating on a new urban fabric. The idea of habitat/housing is a strategic vehicle to investigate the evolution of approaches in the process of making a city. Through identification of appropriate tools and instruments the spatial design articulated a new urban settings, linking domesticity and urbanism, creating a new Manufactured Island, a Garden City Habitat in the Essex marshes. Students worked towards their individual research agenda, which resulted in individual design proposals. A trip to India looking at Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, the holy city of Pushkar, the floating palaces in Udaipur, the manufacturing centres around Jaipur and finally the capital of Gujarat – Ahmedabad helped to define the concepts, ideas and the context for the projects.


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(IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

11.2 Fig. 11.1 Field trip to Chandigarh. Visit to the Tower of Shadows designed by Le Corbusier (1950-1965) during our trip to the Capitol Complex area of Chandigarh, India. Fig. 11.2 Fahad Al Saud ‘Exodus’. Exodus begins with a biblical preface to set the poetic and narrative-based language of the project; viewing London as the ‘promised land’. It is an enterprise that hosts transient communities such as Syrian refugees, migrant workers and the residentially displaced. The project hypothesises asks: how can migrants claim a territory post the anthropocene? The project is divided into three major themes and acts. Themes include: Essex ‘post’ the anthropocene, the ruin as a failed utopia and death of the estate. Act I (The Graveyard) is an inhabitable shipping graveyard, where it predicts the arrival of those in pilgrimage 14

to the promised land in a post-anthropogenic landscape in East Tilbury. Topographic changes, erosion and flooding all result in firstly, the creation, then the emergency inhabitation of the shipping graveyard. Act II (The Ruin) proposes the expansion of the neighbouring Bata town, a former Garden City and a failed utopia. The language of this act represents theoretical concepts such as heterotopia and the rhizome theory to form a monumental, utopian and egalitarian space. The Ruin acts as an already-failed, existing infrastructure of which those in transience would inhabit following the inhabitation of The Graveyard. Act III (The City) is a response to the recent Housing Bill. The goverment plan to demolish the so-called ‘sink’ estates. This act is a critique of the neoliberal consolidation of territory as pure property. It proposes, not only a hosting


(IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

strategy for tenants suffering from the recent housing legislation, but the preservation of the council estates that are being demolished or regenerated, by dismantling elements of the affected council estates, and reassembling them in collaged-form in East Tilbury. The final act is a combination of all the previous acts; where all three stages coexist and formulate a collaged, autonomous and self-built migratory city. Exodus is a rhetorical threshold, a ‘gateway’ for the refugees and ‘getaway’ for the residentially displaced, a heterotopic city in a state of suspension, and an elevated city between home and away, that hosts those in search of a home.

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11.3 Fig. 11.3 Fahad Al Saud ‘Exodus - The Void of Potentials’. The lightwell is used as a ‘negative’ space to allow social interaction between the inhabitants. The typology and the architectural strategy of the towers are derived from self-built, self-managed and informal settlements, such as Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, slums in Cairo and Mumbai and the favelas in Rio De Janeiro. The architectural strategy aims to create a space of affinities and empathy for the residents by collaging different, already-existing components to formulate something ‘familiar’ in the autonomous towers. The void does not romanticise slums or spontaneous settlements, but rather learns from their approach in the hope for a better tomorrow. 16


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11.4 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

11.5 Fig. 11.4 Zhiyin (Teddy) Ai ‘Urban Living Room’. The project aims to transform the existing desolation of Bata town in Tilbury, Essex, and to introduce new life and vigour into the exisiting fabric of the old town. A forming and a programming tool is used to propose and to organise the new improved dynamic masterplan. Seven fragments are designed and tested against the site allowing a new narrative of negotiation to begin. 11.5 Hukun (Dean) Dong ‘Verge City’. The pattern of a verge city, proposed for the conditions on city peripheries, is an approach to highlight the local intrinsic landscape edges in order to create a parallel linear factious city. In the project, the site in East Tilbury is converted into two departed canvases: one is the ‘islands’ and the other is the verges that define the ‘islands’. The site verges provide the foundations to

reshape the site in this project. The intrinsic site verges can be selected with clear shapes and trends that can be utilised to determine the curvilinear paths of the entire Verge City. Following the verges the transport is supported by the light railtrack on top and the canal on the bottom. In between these two traffic lines, a series of the residences and other fabricated cells can be installed, providing accomodation and palces for work.

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Fig. 11.6 Song Yang ‘Coⁿ-city’. Co-living + Co-working + Co-farming + Co-shopping+ Co-sport = Connectionⁿ = Coⁿ-city’. Co-co-city is a new city that provides residents more co-operation to foster social interactions. It combines co-living, co-working, co-farming, co-sport, etc, and it gives residents a shared public space to perform various cooperations. Fig. 11.7 Ipsita Mondal ‘Water Cities’ 2200’. The project looks at the possibility of setting up a new city in the water. The aim of the design is not to just mimic the patterning, but to overlay the principles of self-organisation (as seen in bubbles) in our complex urban system and instigate an urban metabolism. Fig. 11.8 Selvia Novita ‘The (dis) appearing City’. Set in the near future, the project proposes to inhabit London’s protected metropolitan greenbelt. The intent

of the project is to create an architecture that will always be 100% green, 100% recyclable and most of all 100% inhabitable. Fig. 11.9 Ben Webb ‘DIY Garden City’. The issue of housing is more than a question of bricks and mortar; it’s a question of how we choose to organise ourselves as a society. With the state in retreat, and volume housebuilders generating a failed form of urbanism, compounding housing inequality, a third sector must emerge in response. We must do it ourselves. The DIY Garden City seeks through strategic design to construct a richer performance of inhabitation and activecitizenship to reinvigorate the built environment, recasting the designer as enabler, collaborator, and advocate towards realising the full potential of citizen agency in the production of the city.

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11.10 Fig. 11.10 Asbjørn Jessen ‘East Tilbury Silt Habitats’. The project investigates the making of a new Garden City habitat in the Thames Estuary that seeks to establish a clear and legible relationship between human inhabitants and the landscape they inhabit. The catalyst for the project was a site visit resulting in a preliminary project concerning the decay and deterioration of a man-made object inserted into the tidal environment of the River Thames. This interest in the human-landscape relationship was taken further into the main design project where silt sediment found in abundance at the Thames river bank site is extruded into the adjacent low lying inland landscape by tidal driven arms, creating new landforms to be inhabited using locally extracted and produced materials. The river and the tide is allowed to flow freely within the site, 20

situating humans in a context where they are forced to witness the connectedness and interdependence between site and surroundings, in contrast to the existing defensive set of relations on site. The aim is a habitat rooted in the materiality of the site, which embraces and reflects the constant flux caused by the exchange between human and non-human forces in the landscape. The project seeks to mobilise a political awareness by deconstructing infrastructures and systems into more tangible and understandable elements, giving the inhabitants an insight into how they in fact are part of a much bigger working system, of both human and non-human actors. Dissolving the human-nature dichotomy, and traditional post-enlightenment division between subject and object, human and nature is a central aim of the project


(IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

which seeks to introduce a new concept of ecology and an idea of natures in plural. Doing so could lead to humans developing a functioning ecological approach to tackle the issues both human and non-human beings face in relation to planetary urbanisation. The project developed through a series of physical experiments of making with self-made tools resulting in plaster models of the proposed habitats whose tactility directly informed the final design proposals.

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Figs. 11.11 – 11.12 Xiao Wang ‘The Interactive Neighbourhood City’. The project aims to create a city out of small interactive neighbourhoods. A playful artefact explores the interactive changing nature of the community. Each player can control up to eight factors and more than one factor can be pulled at the same time. The overlapping pattern is changing dynamically all the time. The changing boundaries are an incentive for communicating. The final project aims to use movable buildings or structures and shifting strategies to create and connect space. This will help to regenerate the existing Bata town in East Tilbury, Essex. Fig. 11.13 Lei Song ‘Overlapping Habitats’. High rents and limited space force occupants in cities to use most spaces in their flats for multiple activities. Some of these activities overlap in space and time, making it essential

to negotiate the space with others. The project explores this concept in the context of the urban space of Bata town in East Tilbury, Essex. Fig. 11.14 Xinyi Wang ‘Soundscape City’. The project aims to reinvigorate Bata Town in East Tilbury. Sounds collected from nature can make people feel more tranquil. In the new habitat the sounds of the wind, water and birds are collected, magnified and introduced into the private and public spaces through an urban device, allowing the community to reconnect with the landscape surrounding the site.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

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11.15 Fig. 11.15 Ranim Alwair ‘Resilient Habitats in East Tilbury’. East Tilbury is situated in the flood plain of the River Thames. The design aims to avoid building more flood defences by integrating more open spaces to let flood water into the site. These spaces will be used as extended attractive green spaces for inhabitants, as well as enhanced urban farming to grow food locally. Very similar to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept, this resilient habitat aims to be self-sufficient and self-contained. The main feature of the design are the resilient, vertical farming towers, which will provide food, energy and all services needed for inhabitants living within walking distance.

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The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

11.18 Figs. 11.16 – 11.19 Daniela Gonzalez Badillo ‘Garden City V2.0’. Sharing is Caring: is it possible to redeem the misunderstood principles of the Garden City, from a purely town planning model to a social and economic mechanism; creating a more egalitarian and equitable urbanism? How can co-operatives, sharing economies, self-builds and land trusts be used as a critical device to tackle today’s global housing struggles? Garden City V2.0 is looking into finding an alignment from the modest social and economic principles of Ebenezer Howard and the technological shift we are living in; in order to create a new prototype of a city that challenges the deep-rooted sequels that post-industrial capitalism has deposited upon our cities. Garden City V2.0 speculates the possibility of a future scenario whereby the people are empowered with the tools to 24

create their own self-sustainable and democratic settlements. The design is presented as an open source platform where a new ‘anarchist’ and independent type of community can be created. A global community based on the social and economic principles of Ebenezer Howard but technologically enabled to be an entirely self-built programmless and non-deterministic city. Garden City V2.0 is not a city, it is a guideline suggesting a system that can also be flexible enough to adapt to the imminent changes and challenges in present-day global housing.


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11.20 Binxin (Delphine) Peng ‘The Elastic City’. The project is based in the former Bata town in East Tilbury, Essex. Since the decline of the shoe manufacturing the community is fragmented, the project aims to introduce a series of elastic spaces into the exisiting fabric of the site. These allow spaces to be used flexibly and allow the inhabitants/users to interact with the site. When some areas are not used they can be reallocated to a different function or they can be returned to be part of the Greater London Greenbelt. Fig. 11.21 Stephanie Chu Zhen He, Daniela Gonzalez Badillo ‘In&Out Taxinomy’. The project is based on the history of a set of infrastructures (from war infrastructures to landfills, or ports) placed on a strategic zone on the green belt, connecting London with the rest of the world. The trend of London to grow to the east has placed

special attention on this area, which serves as means of logistics and service for the city. During the history, these spots have worked as an in/out dynamic, by transforming, manufacturing or exchanging goods and people. The model accepts the condition of being in constant movement as a primary state of existence.

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(IN)HABIT(AT) Manufactured Islands Research Cluster 11 The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

11.22 Fig. 11.22 Chu Zhen (Stephanie) He ‘Silver Linings’. Set in the near future, the project proposes a new type of approach to living as a pensioner through envisioning the retiring place, person and lifestyle as an urban catalyst for the regeneration of post-industrial areas. In regards to the global increase of ageing populations, the project envisages habitation for this new generation of active elderly in a radical way by reinventing the traditional retirement home as a knowledge-based community that encourages age integration through inter-generation skill transfer and apprenticeship. A design formula is devised as a generalised strategy that could be arbitrarily applied to any derelict oil refineries by seeding in self-sufficient energy cores from which structures for housing and community activities unfold and grow incrementally with

the decay or preservation of the existing industrial structures. In a way, the design seeks to reinvigorate the retirement lifestyle as well as the derelict industrial areas and make both the habitat and the inhabitants productive again.

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RC12

Architectures of Participation Adam Greenfield, Usman Haque

Students Wen Cui, Yiying Hao, Baonan Jiao, Yuan-Tse Kao, Moritz Karl, Tianyue Li, Huan Liu, Qingrui Meng, Masayuki Sado, Jiaying Yang, Meiying Yu, Xin Yu, Yu Zhang, Jianing Zheng

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Project teams Group 1 Wen Cui, Yuan-Tse Kao, Tianyue Li, Qingrui Meng Group 2 Huan Liu, Meiying Yu, Xin Yu Group 3 Yiying Hao, Baonan Jiao, Jianing Zheng Group 4 Moritz Maria Karl, Masayuki Sado, Jiaying Yang Group 5 Yu Zhang Thanks to our critics and consultants Saul Albert, Rob Annable, Christopher Burman, Andrew Chetty, Mo-Ling Chui, Stephen Gage, Gyorgyi Galik, Debbi Lander, Elliot Payne, Alison Powell, Ling Tan

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The work of the students in this cluster, as presented in these drawings and diagrams, barely portrays the work that they’ve actually been doing: getting out into the streets, meeting strangers, forming friendships, and working with communities in London neighbourhoods in ways that are unlike anything you might normally expect from an academic Urban Design course. We prioritised engagement over making drawings, so consider these images mere evidence of something that actually occurred somewhere in the city this year. The brief we set for the cluster concerns one of the deepest challenges of living together in cities: How are we supposed to get along with one another? How do we negotiate, how do we deliberate, how do we express ourselves and claim a place amid the scrum? What does it mean to have a voice? And what is the role of a designer in this context? In 1969, at the tail end of a turbulent era, an American social worker named Sherry Arnstein offered her reflections on public power, in the form of something called ‘the ladder of citizen participation.’ This started with frank manipulation, continued through therapy, informing and consultation, and burst through placation into a stratum where ordinary people actually had some ability to shape the conditions of their own existence. She called these situations partnership, delegated power and, at the very apex, citizen control. You don’t have to be a cynic to note that for all the talk of a Big Society, contemporary life in the United Kingdom appears to be stalled at the consultation stage, or maybe even just short of it – between consultation fatigue, incomplete or misleading information, and simple exhaustion, a great many people have clearly checked out. In some way, the entire purpose of this cluster has been to find methods of checking them back in. We asked our students, all of whom came to the UK from other cultures, to work in and with some of the city’s most deprived communities. We charged them to listen, observe, learn, and propose ways in which those communities might take back control over their everyday environment. If those ways involved the latest technology, that was especially interesting – but not necessary. What we were most interested in was whether they could help people unlock their own latent power. And at the same time, whether they could discover within themselves the engaged urban subject that had been there all along.


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Fig. 12.1 ‘The cutting edge of public participation: agitating for housing justice.’ Photograph by Group 2. Figs. 12.2 – 12.5 Group 1: Wen Cui, Yuan-Tse Kao, Tianyue Li, Qingrui Meng ‘Power of Peckham’. Collage to explore main characteristic elements from observation and research in Peckham, the ‘messy’ information. Fig. 12.2 During the observation process, we investigated nail salons and barber shops as Peckham’s information hubs, where people gather and exchange information. We designed a nail pattern named ‘Power of Peckham’ as a way of expressing community identity. Fig. 12.3 We held an avent to get people involved in mapping and designing Peckham with large cardboard boxes. It was covered by the local newspaper. Fig. 12.4 Inspired by Mechanical Turk, a kind of fake Artificial intelligence machine,

where someone sits inside a machine, we designed a postbox for people to write and posts letters about local planning issues, especially the nearby Morrisons. During the test, most participants were curious about whether there was someone inside the postbox.

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12.8 Figs. 12.6 – 12.9 Group 2: Huan Liu, Meiying Yu, Xin Yu ‘Self Build in Newham’. We assumed that self-build is an alternative solution to London’s housing crisis, standing at the higher levels of Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation. So how to make it possible? We think simplifying this enormously complicated system to untrained members of the public is essential. Fig 12.6 Smartphone-based virtual reality system to assess parcels of land for self-build suitability. Fig. 12.7 Smartphone-based virtual reality system. Fig 12.8 We developed a tool to help self-builders simulate how to design their room layout. Participants could choose the size and function of each room and experiment with different layouts. Fig. 12.9 Self-build offers opportunities for grassroots people to get access to the housing system, learning, designing and 32

making decisions at every step. As the complexity of the whole self-build system can easily be daunting, we designed this flow chart to simplify the process of land acquisition, financing, design and construction.


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12.11 Figs. 12.10 – 12.13 Group 3: Yiying Hao, Baonan Jiao, Jianing Zheng ‘Name Your House in Peckham’. Fig. 12.10 ‘Walkshop’ exploring the visible and invisible infrastructure of the networked city. Fig. 12.11 Observations of social proximity and small-group dynamics in a variety of public spaces in London. Fig. 12.12 Exchange board, Choumert Road. An attempt to collect local sentiment relating to the proposed redevelopment plans. The community responded in unanticipated ways. Fig. 12.13 Enhancing the local sense of place by allowing residents to name their houses and make street-facing sign boards.

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12.16 Figs. 12.14 – 12.17 Group 4: Moritz Karl, Masayuki Sado, Jiaying Yang ‘Newham On Air’. Fig. 12.14 Communication infrastructure embedded in a public transportation service. This urban-scale participatory system for open communication is proposed for ordinary people to engage in and co-create an urban experience.Fig. 12.15 Radio station round tour. By confronting ordinary people with various political topics, this round tour in Stratford stimulates public concerns and engagement and occupies the city via radio coverage. Figs. 12.16 – 12.17 Pop-up Radio show. By joining in our DIY rickshaw, people broadcast their voices via a radio network, responded to other opinions and networked with strangers.

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12.20 Figs. 12.18 – 12.21 Group 5: Yu Zhang ‘Third Space Peckham’. Fig. 12.18 Sense Charity Shop. Expanding local community involvement by redesigning and expanding a popular charity shop. The drawing shows the expected life scene. Fig. 12.19 Peckham Palais Renaissance. Restoration of this former department store, transforming it into a gateway to the revitalised precinct. Fig. 12.20 Experiments with intrusion and psychological endurance. A study of reactions when observed by a stranger in public space. This woman lost her temper when observed obtrusively. Fig. 12.21 This experiment used various tactics to determine whether they would increase the likelihood of pedestrians obeying traffic signals.

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Fig. 12.22 Group 5: Yu Zhang ‘Third Space Peckham’. Public opinion collection. In order to raise local awareness of the Council’s plan, and acquire public ideas, a consultation noticeboard was placed in the bus station. Fig. 12.23 Group 1: Wen Cui, Yuan-Tse Kao, Tianyue Li, Qingrui Meng ‘Power of Peckham’. Post Box Human Printer. Inspired by the original Mechanical Turk, we designed a postbox where the people of Peckham could get a letter about local planning issues by pushing a button. Most participants were attracted by curiosity as to whether there was someone inside the box. Figs. 12.24 – 12.25 Group 2: Huan Liu, Meiying Yu, Xin Yu ‘Self Build Newham’. Fig. 12.24 We worked with the Focus E15 Mothers, an activist group who had been ejected from council housing in Newham, to explore the relevance of self-build to

real people under real pressure. Fig. 12.25 Using a modular design process in the self-build framework. Fig. 12.26 Group 4: Moritz Maria Karl, Masayuki Sado, Jiaying Yang ‘Newham on Air’. An urban communication infrastructure generating open-source tools and platforms for ordinary people to participate.

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RC14

Big Data Architecture: Materialising the Virtual Roberto Bottazzi, Kostas Grigoriadis

Students Xiangjun Jiang, Chuanren Lin, Xi Meng, Horeb Moses, Constantinos Nicolaides, Jaewon Shin, Jacky Thiodore, Jing Wang, Lei Wang, Jiajuan Yan, Pengchen Yao, Haihua Zhu, Qiuyang Zhang, Jiaxin Zhao, Leijie Zhong

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Project teams Recycled Island Xiangjun Jiang, Jiajuan Yan, Haihua Zhu, Leijie Zhong Community of Wind Chuanren Lin, Xi Meng, Lei Wang, Qiuyang Zhang Dustopia Horeb Moses, Constantinos Nicolaides, Jaewon Shin, Jacky Thiodore City Tuner Jing Wang, Pengchen Yao, Jiaxin Zhao Thanks to our critics Laura Allen, Stefania Boccaletti, Peter Bishop, Lindsay Bremner, Marjan Colletti, Richard Difford, Jeg Dudley, Stephen Gage, Chris Green, Lorenzo Greco, Manuel Jiménez García, Laura Kurgan, Frédéric Migayrou, Andrew Porter, Gilles Retsin, Mark Smout, Sabine Storp, Edoardo Tibuzzi, Patrick Weber, Paolo Zaide

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Research Cluster 14 (RC14) explores the role of Big Data in urban design. Big Data – commonly defined as the possibility to aggregate and mine large datasets by employing computers – is often understood as a series of abstract techniques without spatial or visual qualities. RC14 challenges this perception by developing an applied research agenda in which the capabilities provided by ever-more powerful computation to mine data is utilised to question the role of urban design in the light of the ever-thinning distinction between man-made structures and natural environments. We live in the age of the Anthropocene, the recently discovered geological stratum resulting from the overwhelming influence of human actions on the earth and its biosphere. In this scenario, environmental phenomena such as global warming can no longer be seen as simply ‘natural’ but rather produced by human actions that temper climatic factors. Formerly stable, ‘reductionist’ binaries such as natural/artificial or subject/object melt away and, similarly, linear causality gives way to a more complex, fluid, open, incomplete, embracing way to account for the transformations of the urban environment. The consequences of these observations for urban design can be profound: received notions of type, programme, site, representation and finally human inhabitation will have on such urban environments all need questioning. Within the cluster, students were asked to map existing conditions as dynamic, volumetric flows in constant transformation operating at varying scales: by computing large amounts of data they not only produce maps to ‘see’ the site of intervention differently, but also to co-design it in conjunction with natural, complex forces whose complexity far exceeds the power designers have to control them. In its first instalment, RC14 concentrated on East London. The area surrounding City Airport – crossed by both natural flows spanning from the bottom of the Thames to the sky over the airport – has been the centre of series of proposed developments that may profoundly alter its future image. The four urban projects developed within the cluster chose an environmental material to co-design with: water, pollution, sound and plastic became four entry points into the area. Each group developed a range of urban interventions spanning from strategic moves, to infrastructural works, to public spaces and material details. These interventions not only interact with their environment to adapt to shifting conditions but also, crucially, to instigate change.


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Figs. 14.1 – 14.5 Recycled Island The project speculates on the use of plastic found in the river Thames as construction material for new public spaces for people and local fauna. Without a clear distinction between natural and artificial phenomena, a series of plastic islands slowly form by collecting debris, which is then deposited along the edges of the river acting as both flood defence barriers and local parks. Fig. 14.1 Digital simulation showing the relationship between water flow and the morphology of the proposed landscape. Figs. 14.2 – 14.3 The physical site model shows the Thames as a volumetric, dynamic system with which the proposal co-evolves. There is no longer a distinction between land, water and architecture. The proposal stretched inland to connect to existing roads and housing developments.

Fig. 14.4 The group developed a computational model relating to three different aspects of the proposed landscape: birds habitats, plastic collection and morphology. By disposing plastic over a long period of time, the proposal can be seen as an artificial geology, which is co-produced by both robots depositing plastic and the tidal movement of the Thames. Fig. 14.5 The project presented here should be understood as a snapshot through a very long and continuous process: like forests and glaciers, the plastic landscape will grow, feeding off the very materials polluting the river. The integration of computational tools has been central in exploring what aesthetic and programmatic qualities such process could have.

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14.7 Figs. 14.6 – 14.9 Recycled Island Fig. 14.6 Four different types of patterns are layered upon each other: the bottom layers collect the plastic in the Thames, whereas the two top layers provide inhabitable spaces for humans and birds. These four layers structure the plan containing ecological conservation parks, public green spaces, tidal flats, ponds, and planting areas. Fig. 14.7 Overall plan of the landscape showing the relationship between exisiting and proposed spaces, as well as the different habitats for birds. Figs. 14.8 – 14.9 Study of the four types of nesting habitats. The growth of the structure is controlled to provide different, heights, densities, and angles of the entry for both birds and humans. A digital model controls the distribution of plastic over time, structuring the form and use of the spaces designed. 48

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Figs. 14.10 – 14.13 City Tuner The project aims to redefine the relationship between urban spaces and sound. The Royal Albert Dock – where the proposal is located – is a complex site from the point of view of sound as it directly faces the runway of City Airport. City Tuner consists of a series of large voxels each shaped to either muffle, reflect, or diffuse sound. These blocks can be stacked to form sound barriers, but also enclosures. The group carefully studied the materiality of these forms to create a rigorous relationship between pattern, form, and performance. Figs. 14.10 – 14.12 Renderings of the interior and exterior views of the space proposed. Fig. 14.13 Sound datasets are not only difficult to compute but also present an interesting problem of scale as they are microscopic phenomena which can have a large scale-effect. The project

heavily relied on digital simulations to control the desired acoustic effects. The fragment presented here acts as a barrier between City Airport and the University of East London, whilst providing break out spaces for students and local residents. The simulation displayed here shows the relationship of sound waves – propagating from the airport and nearby train tracks – and the distribution of the different voxel blocks.

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14.16 Figs. 14.14 – 14.16 City Tuner Fig. 14.14 Physical model showing the overall massing of the project. The overall mass and position of the proposal changes to shield existing space from the noise coming from the airport, this provides extra collective spaces for student housing accommodation, and animate the public ground with cafes and spaces for students. Figs. 14.15 – 14.16 The research constantly moved between digital and physical simulations to expand the range of scales and material through which to address the relationship between sound and urban experience. The initial basic geometries were deformed, carved out, and bent to achieve the desired acoustic effects. The range of materials tested allowed us to create patterns which performed acoustically and gave the project its unique aesthetic. 52

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14.20 Figs. 14.17 – 14.20 Fluff in Flurry The project imagines a whole urban development around the idea of wind, studying its implication for energy generation as well as spatial organisation. Both the ground and the towers are partially covered with ‘piezoelectric fur’, this virtually transforms the towers into wind farms. It shows how environmental technologies can play a role in urban design beyond their functional qualities. Fig. 14.17 Ground level view. Fig. 14.18 As the capacity of harvesting wind energy depends on the total wind pressures on buildings’ surfaces, digital simulations were utilised to quantify wind pressures and sculpt the overall massing. These simulations resulted in three different types of towers that were strategically placed on the site to provide a mix of housing units and maximise energy gains.

Figs. 14.19 – 14.20 The design process started with a data-based analysis of wind which were fed into a fluidsimulation software. The computational model includes variables about wind conditions, including humidity, air density, air velocity, turbulence and wind shear at ground level. All of which helped to determe the height (ranging from 58 to 104 metres), shape, and porosity of the proposed buildings. The forms extracted were rationialised by determining the position and density of the piezoelectric panels. Figs. 14.21 Birds eye view renderings of the whole development.

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14.24 Figs. 14.22 – 14.25 Dustopia This group studied the issue of air pollution around City Airport to propose a series of dynamic prototypes that could take advantage of the electrostatic properties of copper and aluminium to collect dust particles. Modular conical forms intricately woven with either copper or aluminium cluster together form a canopy in which clean air can be breathed. The overall spatial effect is transparent, varying in density and material to accommodate the action of ionisation, dust collection, light penetration and wind flow. The landscape lying under the structure follows the circular cone pattern, achieving a spatial homogeneity to provide space for activities. Figs. 14.22 – 14.23 Plan view of the canopy structure showing the distribution of hard and soft landscaping. Fig. 14.24 Section showing the electrostatic 56

aspects of the project combining copper and aluminium elements. By attracting dust, the ground level is made avaialble for locals to re-engage. Fig. 14.25 Aerial view of the canopy. The distribution of the materials and prototypes is based on digital simulations of dust distribution.


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Figs. 14.26 – 14.28 Dustopia The project began by researching pollution data.The data was mapped and simulated as a volumetric, dynamic urban phenomenon. Students made their own physical instruments to measure particle distribution, which were integrated with desktop research. The testing area is reconfigured to provide a series of public spaces and circulation which can automatically be ‘turned on’ to shield outdoor spaces from pollutants. The strategy consists of 20 prototypes, each dealing with the problem of air pollution and inhabitation. A computational model manages the behaviour of the prototypes which can automatically be activated in response to pollution levels. A continuous canopy weaves the key public areas, to not only facilitate residents’ circulation, but also to provide public

outdoor programmes, which are currently lacking. Fig. 4.28 By bringing local residents close to the very pollutants they are meant to be protected from, Dustopia aims at raising public awareness not only towards health-related issues in cities, but also towards the fading difference between the man-made and natural phenomena characterising the Anthropocene. Pollution has become an inseparable part of our life which we can no longer extricate ourselves from; it has its own history that urban design needs to engage with.

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Urban Morphogenesis Lab Re-Metabolising London Lab Director: Claudia Pasquero

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The Urban Morphogenesis Lab focuses on the processes of unconventional computation, looking at how they can have a radical effect on re-conceptualising contemporary cities. From a methodological point of view we look at the biosciences, as well as the material sciences, to investigate how we can go beyond digital and descriptive simulation in order to define a new way of interfacing and interacting with the urban environment. We believe there is an interest in augmenting material through sensors and microprocessors so that we can start harvesting the computational power present in bacteria, sand, fungi, and so on. We speculate on an era when descriptive computation will be overcome and digital computing will be superseded by our capacity to simulate and compute directly through the world that surrounds us. We look at the ability of pre-industrial societies to establish complex relationships with natural systems, their skills to communicate with the world surrounding them, and their power to harvest processes in order to recuperate them with a different consciousness. In a pre-industrial community, the population was able to predict events such as weather, insect arrivals, etc. by reading signs in their surrounding environment. We have lost this capacity and have become mere consumers of the facticity of the world. We are trapped in the modes of production of the post-industrial world. We argue that a transition should be made from consuming data to reclaiming a material understanding of the world, though this time with a renewed form of consciousness that enables us to read patterns, forecast and create via intuition, poetry and art. The capacity of the individual in the city to read matter and processes around him/her differently would completely alter his/her perspective from one of consumer to one of creator; and as a creator, he or she becomes concerned for what matters. This could trigger 60

a series of processes of self-organisation that would enable cities to grow as a result of interaction rather than as a result of planning and engineering. This would enable us to completely re-describe the relationship between the Urbansphere and the Biosphere. The Urbansphere is, for us, the global apparatus of contemporary urbanity, a dense network of informational, material and energetic infrastructures that sustain our increasingly demanding metabolism while offsetting the fluctuations and deficiencies of the natural biosphere by providing the required levels of resources in the right place at the right time. Research Cluster 16 and Research Cluster 18, the two clusters in the Urban Morphogenesis Lab, have been developing models and design methods to articulate the behavior of the Urbansphere and propose new protocols for its sustainable evolution by taking into account the Biosphere as a revisionary force. These models and methods respond to the principles of autonomic self-organisation, and operate by embedding computational processes into spatial and morphogenetic substrata. Research Cluster 16 Bio-Urban Design Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plemenitas Research Cluster 18 Bridging Across Mass Customisation Enriqueta Llabres, Zachary Fluker

Image: MArch UD, Urban Morphogenesis Lab RC16. Microbial Cellulose. Research directed by: Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plemenitas. Students: Wenjuan Huang, Lipeng Li, Peng Li, Xue Xiao



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Urban Morphogenesis Lab Bio-Urban Design

Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plemenitas

Students Sravani Andhavarapu, Yuyang Cheng, Wenjuan Huang, Lipeng Li, Peng Li, Chunxue Lou, Haoming Wang, Xue Xiao, Shan Yao, Liang Yuan, Yue Zhang, Ailin Zhang, Pei Zhang

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Project teams Eros/Ion Sravani Andhavarapu, Chunxue Lou, Haoming Wang, Yue Zhang Microbial Cellulose Wenjuan Huang, Lipeng Li, Peng Li, Xue Xiao Mycelium Liang Yuan, Shan Yao, Ailin Zhang, Pei Zhang LondON Yuyang Cheng Thank you to our consultants Rachael Armstrong, Heather Barnet, Peter Bishop, Tommaso Casucci, Nuria Conde, FrĂŠdĂŠric Migayrou, Annarita Papeschi, Andrew Porter, Marco Poletto, Mark Smout, Melissa Sterry Thank you to our partners ESA (European Space Agency)

The research cluster on Bio-Urban Design pursues a non-anthropocentric understanding of the urban landscape, intended as a territory of selforganisation and co-evolution of multiple dynamic systems, including social groups, infrastructures, ecological, technological and political systems. On the one hand, the research has been looking at the biomimetic application of biological models of collective intelligence to urban design, aiming to develop more resilient and adaptive protocols of self-organisation. On the other, we have been investigating innovative methods of building with nature; harvesting the morphogenetic potential of natural systems to construct inhabitable urban landscapes. Issues of constructability, embodied energy and ecological footprints are all re-described in systemic terms as part of novel bio-urban terrains. Moving away from the depiction of urban nature as a mere ornamental device, our design proposals articulate new bio-technological morphologies and cutting-edge construction technologies capable of enhanced spatial and performative interaction with the landscape and its renewable resources. Students structure their projects through three main lenses: Simulated morphologies Students have investigated computational processes and mastered the use of digital simulation as an analytical and synthetic design tool, exploring in depth the relationship between the physical and the digital. Studies are informed by contexts of specific data, internal and external conditions, and limitations and potentials for design intervention. The main focus has been on processes as well as on intermediate and finite states of morphogenetic design studies. Biological models Analogue modelling has been used extensively in this cluster. Students have developed wet models and living test-beds where digital morphologies are inoculated with living organisms. These biotechnological hybrids allow us to test the local metabolic manipulation of flows of renewable energy, information and matter, as well as the emergence of urban networks of collective exchange. These experiments make use of physical computing as well as remote sensate data to create a live communication stream between wet models, the living organism and the digital urban simulation codes. Urban protocols Feedback has been captured as a new urban protocol. Students have been experimenting in communicating these protocols via a set of visual outputs, such as video, time-lapse photography and parametric drawings. Each project team are publishing their research in a codebook where a design report describes the key findings.

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16.4 Figs. 16.1 – 16.4 Eros/Ion Re-metabolising urban water waste. This project addresses different urban strata in order to overcome the coastal erosion through a material precipitation from industrial waste, which creates an interaction between the urban and the marine habitats. Fig. 16.1 Urban landscape bio-rock prototype, precipitated by remetabolising the urban waste water. Fig. 16.2 The alloy of iron as an anode creates a strong ionic reaction between the iron ions of anode and cathode, this results in colours that resembles material similar to corals and reefs. Fig. 16.3 Flood risk areas on the Thames Estuary, which would be affected due to severe floods of the North Sea. Fig. 16.4 Water flow diagram of Canvey Island depicts the concentration towards the centre of the island as it lies at a low-level in relation to the mean sea level. 65


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16.5 Figs. 16.5 – 16.7 Eros/Ion Fig 16.5 Precipitation growth is influenced by the position of the anode with respect to the cathode. These are different outputs based on the position of the anode Fig. 16.6 Combination units based on a parametric algorithm. The urban lanscape evolves based on the collective intelligence of influencing factors. Fig. 16.7 Bio-rock landscapes that create the interaction between the urban grid and the marine habitat.

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16.10 Figs. 16.8 – 16.10 Microbial Cellulose The project explores the urban design of a part of London from a material perspective. We aim to propose a long-term urban metabolic waste-to-production strategy with a clear and positive impact on urban form. In this sense, the urban landscape as a dynamic network, is reorganised. Our work flow sets up a feedback between the micro to macroscale, looking at how microorganisms Acetobacter Xylinum affect built structures and vice versa. Fig. 16.8 This map indicates the quantity of organic waste in different boroughs of London. Figs. 16.9 – 16.10 Microbial cellulose synthesis model. Different ways of dehydration and sewing are used to create one component of cellulose, with wrinkled and flat patterns. 69


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16.12 Figs. 16.11 – 16.15 Microbial Cellulose Figs. 16.11 – 16.12 Synthetic fibre experiment. This bacteria weaves cellulose together with cotton. Fig. 16.13 Urban digestive apparatus to create an urban pavilion using microbial cellulose. It not only provides a new spatial experience, but also re-metabolises urban food waste. Fig. 16.14 Development series of the morpholgy growth. Fig. 16.15 The urban apparatus is a dynamic network. This can constantly produce microbial cellulose. This acts as a material production for the city to convert the organic waste into construction material.

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16.17 Figs. 16.16 – 16.17 Bio-Fabric The project suggests a bio-material interface at the urban scale that mediates and averts soil and ground water contamination, while generating new urban forms. The project deals with London’s landfills located east of the city, near the Thames Estuary. A possible waste leak would severely affect the quality of soil and ground water. The project mobilises bio-materials and speculates about urban scenarios where a material infrastructure will be able to deal with urban waste in an innovative way. As a result the project’s material research is focused on the capacities of fungi, a natural organism, to digest organic waste, such as food, paper and other agricultural residues. Research has proved that mycelium is a natural fibre and can be part of a structural composite if combined with hemp. The structural

capacities of the new composite are explored through a modular system of bricks where a new type of urban fabric is generated. Fig. 16.16 Brick unit developed by the process of weaving using a UR_Robot. Fig. 16.17 Bio-fabric pattern prototype created to filter the landfill using the urban waste.

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16.20 Figs. 16.18 – 16.20 Bio-Fabric Fig. 16.18 Modular system of bio-fabric on the landfill site, creating new spaces for human activites. Fig. 16.19 Growth process. Cultivation of bio-fabric on the hemp fibre maintaining the humidity level. Fig. 16.20 Result of the mycellium growth on the hemp fibre.

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16.22 Figs. 16.21 – 16.23 LondON In the hypothetical scenario of a major power outage, the survival of urban centres will depend on alternative modes of illumination. The project explores the capacities of bio-light to provide illumination where required by changing the energy module of the city. Bio-luminescing bacteria becomes the prime material for creating an alternative urban scenario. Fig. 16.21 Prototype simulation to understand the behavior of the bio-luminescent algae. Fig. 16.22 Bio-light urban apparatus based on illumination and energy that transfers energy from a human to an urban scale. Fig. 16.23 Customised 3D printed equipment to provide an environment for bio-light. Technological intelligence enables infrastructures to adapt to the human body and enhance its experience in the urban realm. 76


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Urban Morphogenesis Lab Bridging Across Mass Customisation Zachary Fluker, Enriqueta Llabres

Students Fei Deng, Ana Acurio Estrella, Lai Jiang, Efthymia Kasimati, Xinlei Li, Yan Meng, Diego Melchor Ruiz, Xuezhu Zhai, Ningjing Yang, Yang Yang, Jinglin Zhang, Shiqi Zhang

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Project teams Future High Streets Fei Deng, Lai Jiang, Diego Melchor Ruiz Gardening Pollution Ana Acurio Estrella, Yan Meng, Xuezhu Zhai Urban Climatopoeia Ningjing Yang, Yang Yang Affordable Housing Xinlei Li, Jinglin Zhang, Shiqi Zhang Hacking the City Efthymia Kasimati Thanks to our consultants Peter Bishop, B-made, Ciriaco Castro, Giulio Dini, Sara Franceschelli, Immanuel Koh, Stuart Maggs, Frédéric Migayrou, Claudia Pasquero, Maj Plemenitas, Andrew Porter, Eduardo Rico, Mark Smout, Camila Sotomayor, Emmanouil Zaroukas

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Humanity is exhausting environmental systems and as a consequence there is an increasing reliance on technology as an environmental substitute. One could argue that city design is currently cornered in a paradox: despite the fact that technology is essential and tends to be the most visible component of the project, city design cannot be entirely solved by technical solutions. The value component of the urban project has its grounds in Hardin’s seminal article ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968) where he described how individuals are currently trapped in a conflict between the those who are over-exhausting the common pool of resources and those who aren’t benefiting from it at all. Within this paradox, technology needs to incorporate the specific capabilities of interaction so it can deliver their utilities including the logics of users and the logics of the city; which can diverge significantly from the engineer’s logic. Saskia Sassen proposes the idea of cities and users as hackers of technology; where hacking is the introduction of a temporary and clever solution to a difficult problem, a solution not designed to prevail over time but left open for others to add the necessary corrective feedbacks to it. One could argue that the current scenario described by Mario Carpo (2011), where the divide between the author and the audience is fading, opens up a realm for urban hacking. Moreover, social media provides structures where in every node of the network you can find the conceptualiser, the maker or the user; these structures have underpinned a trend in industrial design for extreme customisation of personal goods. Research Cluster 18 sees this as an opportunity to open up the discussion about where the discipline of urban design can go when the communication between the user, the conceptualiser and the maker is framed within a social design platform. Which new spatial regimes emerge when the designer is engaged in the design of this platform? What new systems of notation could be more suitable for this methodology? Have social design platforms the capacity to bridge between users? Can they unlock development opportunities across the city? The cluster will engage with these questions, departing from the current trend of extreme customisation of consumer goods, and instead explore whether this can be retooled to bridge individual understandings of identity across the city; with the end result of creating new scenarios within the discipline and practice of urban design.


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18.4 Figs. 18.1 – 18.5 Future High Streets ‘Re-imagining UK High Streets: Sharing Economy Model and Open Source Data for Mass Customisation of Event Spaces’. Fig. 18.1 Digital capture using Kinect. The spatialised movement and motion are extracted from the users to create possibilities in which the space could interact with them to explore how this could be customised. Figs. 18.2 – 18.4 From spatialisation to materialisation. Fig. 18.5 Flow chart outlining the structure of the digital interface connecting shopkeepers and artists.

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18.7 Figs. 18.6 – 18.9 Future High Streets ‘Re-imagining UK High Streets: Sharing Economy Model and Open Source Data for Mass Customisation of Event Spaces’. Figs. 18.6 – 18.7 ‘Composite Material: Principle’. The material system is informed by data captured using Kinect, which sets the physical conditions for the material to change its morphology according to the activity the user requires. Figs. 18.8 – 18.9 Material composite of wood and rubber bending actuators.

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18.12 Figs. 18.10 – 18.13 Gardening Pollution Figs. 18.10 – 18.12 The project proposes a material system that metabolises pollutants through the implementation of a photocatalyst composite material that enables the transformation of Nitrogen Dioxide (N02) into fertiliser. Fig. 18.13 Through the Gardening Pollution interface citizens can perceive and interact with the environment, share the unused land and gain the spatial, experiential and economic benefits of the pollution.

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18.15 Figs.18.14 – 18.15 Urban Climatopoeia The project proposes a material system to ameliorate the negative externalities caused by high-rise buildings in the city. Figs.18.16 – 18.17 Affordable Housing ‘Mass Customised Housing: Towards an Incremental Form of Mixed-Use’. The project proposes a model that by using 3D printed concrete enables users to print structural elements on site, assemble them and relocate the existing warehouses incrementally.

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18.20 Figs. 18.18 – 18.23 Hacking the City ‘Reclaiming Subterranean London’. The project aims to enhance our vertical thinking of contemporary cities, opening out vertical urban imaginations and exploring the potential of hidden and long forgotten urban spaces. Figs. 18.19 – 18.23 Vision for alternative ways of human and machine interaction in the era of artificial intelligence and automation, rethinking new forms of open access and control. This kind of understanding of the relationship between the city and technology suggests new modes of design and challenges new ways of space appropriation that involve both human and non-human actors.

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The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

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Urban Morphogenesis Lab Research Cluster 18

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

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Image: UD students take part in the Incomplete City workshop



UD Staff Biographies

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Professor Frédéric Migayrou B-Pro Director Frédéric Migayrou is Chair, Bartlett Professor of Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture and Deputy Director of the MNAM-CCI (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre de Création Industrielle) at the Centre Pompidou Paris. He was founder of the FRAC Center Collection and of ArchiLab, the international festival of Prospective Architecture in Orléans. Apart from recent publications and exhibitions (De Stijl, Centre Pompidou, 2011; La Tendenza, Centre Pompidou 2012; Bernard Tschumi, Centre Pompidou 2013; Frank Gehry, Centre Pompidou 2014; Le Corbusier, Centre Pompidou 2015), he was curator of Non Standard Architectures at the Centre Pompidou in 2003, the first exposition devoted to architecture, computation and fabrication. More recently, he co-organised the exhibition Naturalising Architecture (ArchiLab, Orléans 2013), presenting prototypes and commissions by 40 teams of architects working with new generative computational tools, defining new interrelations between materiality, biotechnology and fabrication. In 2012 he founded B-Pro, The Bartlett’s umbrella structure for post-professional architecture programmes.

Andrew Porter B-Pro Deputy Director Andrew Porter studied at The Bartlett School of Architecture, winning the Banister Fletcher Medal and the RIBA Silver Medal for his graduation project. He has collaborated on projects with Sir Peter Cook and Christine Hawley CBE, and was the project architect for the Gifu Housing project in Japan. He practices with Abigail Ashton as Ashton Porter Architects and has completed a number of award-winning commissions in the UK as well as prizewinning competitions in the UK and abroad. Andrew is co-tutor of The Bartlett’s MArch Architecture Unit 21, has been a visiting Professor at the Staedel Academy, Frankfurt and guest critic at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles and Parsons New School, New York. Professor Mark Smout MArch Urban Design Director Mark Smout is Professor of Architecture and Landscape Futures at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where, in addition to directing MArch Urban Design he also runs MArch Architecture Unit 11 with Laura Allen. His design research practice, Smout Allen, focuses on the dynamic relationship between the natural and the man-made and how this can be revealed to enhance the experience of the architectural landscape. Smout Allen have produced award-winning designs, and they have won the prestigious Royal Academy Award for Architecture and represented the UK at the Venice Biennale in 2012 and 2015, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015. Mark has held notable Professorships in Denmark and California and regularly lectures throughout the world. Sabine Storp RC11 Tutor Sabine Storp is an architect, design tutor and short course coordinator at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL, educated in Italy and Germany. Founder of award-winning

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Staff Biographies

architectural practice storpweber architecture in 2000, she has been working in education and practice since 1997. In 2013 Sabine Storp and Patrick Weber set up Living Laboratory [www. bartlett-living-laboratory.tumblr.com] focusing on projects relating to living and habitat.

Adam Greenfield RC12 Tutor Adam Greenfield is a London-based writer and urbanist. His latest book, Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, is forthcoming from Verso in 2017. Usman Haque RC12 Tutor Usman Haque is founding partner of Umbrellium and Thingful.net, a search engine for the Internet of Things. Earlier, he launched the IoT data community platform Pachube.com. Trained as an architect, he has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and dozens of massparticipation initiatives throughout the world. Roberto Bottazzi RC14 Tutor Roberto Bottazzi is an architect, researcher, and educator. His research on computation and architecture has been exhibited both internationally and in the UK. He is Senior Lecturer

Kostas Grigoriadis RC14 Tutor Kostas Grigoriadis studied Architecture at The Bartlett, followed by a Masters in Architecture and Urbanism at the Architectural Association’s Design Research Laboratory. He has been a Diploma Unit Master at the AA since 2011, a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art from 2012 to 2015, and an External Examiner in Architecture at the University of East London since August 2015. He has edited the book Mixed Matters: A Multi-Material Design Compendium, published in June 2016 by Jovis Verlag. Claudia Pasquero Urban Morphogenesis Lab Director Claudia Pasquero, co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London, is an architect, author and educator. Her work is focused on the relationship between ecology and the city. She has been a Unit Master at the AA in London, Senior Tutor at the IAAC in Barcelona, and a visiting critic at Cornell University. Her projects have been published and exhibited throughout the world, at various Biennales such as Venice, Seville, Prague, London and Istanbul, at EXPO Milano 2015, at the FRAC in Orleans, at the ZKM in Karlsruhe. She is co-author of Systemic Architecture: Operating Manual for the Self-Organizing City, published by Routledge. Maj Plemenitas Urban Morphogenesis Lab RC16 Tutor Maj Plemenitas is an experimental architectural and cross-scale design practitioner, researcher and educator, and founder and director of award-winning design practice, LINKSCALE. His work has been exhibited globally in venues including the Royal Academy of Arts and the Venice Biennale. His work is continuously presented at peer reviewed conferences and 97

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Patrick Weber RC11 Tutor Patrick Weber is an architect, design tutor and researcher at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL. He was educated in Germany and the UK where he set up practice with Sabine Storp in 2000. He has been working at the Bartlett since 1997, directing the first year for 12 years and teaching BSc and Masters programmes. In 2013 Sabine Storp and Patrick Weber set-up Living Laboratory [www.bartlett-living-laboratory.tumblr.com] focusing on projects relating to living and habitat.

at the University of Westminster and completing a book on the history of computation due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2017.


publications and is part of collections in Europe, US and Japan. Maj is also the Co-Founder and Director of the design research practice Amphibious Lab.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Enriqueta Llabres Urban Morphogenesis Lab RC18 Tutor Enriqueta Llabres is an architect who graduated in Barcelona (2002) and gained a Masters in Science in Local Economic Development from The London School of Economics (2011). Between 2003 and 2007 she worked for the ETH Professor Josep Lluis Mateo, contributing to emblematic projects of the firm such as the Catalonian Film Theatre. In 2007 she moved to London to found Relational Urbanism. She is currently a Design Critic in Landscape Architecture in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and has directed, with Eduardo Rico, the Relational Urbanism Design Studio at the Berlage Institute between 2011 and 2013. She has collaborated with a wide number of institutions worldwide as design critic, lecturer and visiting lecturer. Zachary Fluker Urban Morphogenesis Lab RC18 Tutor Zachary Fluker is an architectural designer with a background in industrial design and cabinet making. He is a graduate of both Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the Architectural Association. His research into interfacing digital with physical environments and computational fabrication has led him to collaborate with several practices in the UK and Canada, including Philip Beesley Architects. Godofredo Pereira History & Theory Tutor & Coordinator Godofredo Pereira is an architect and researcher based in London. He holds an MArch from The Bartlett School of Architecture and a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University. His research ‘The Underground Frontier’ investigates political and territorial conflicts within 98

the planetary race for underground resources. He edited the book Savage Objects in 2012. Dr Sara Franceschelli History & Theory Tutor Dr Sara Franceschelli is Maître de conférences (associate professor) in Epistemology and History of Science at the ENS de Lyon. Her research interests include deterministic chaos, complex systems, interfaces physics-biology, morphology, morphogenesis, and their relationships with design. Recent publications include: Franceschelli S., Gribaudi M., Le Bras H. (eds.) (2016). Morphogenèse et dynamiques urbaines. Platon Issaias History & Theory Tutor Platon Issaias is an architect, researcher and teacher. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, Greece (AUTh) and holds an MSc from Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft. He is currently a Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art and has been teaching on the MArch UD at The Bartlett since 2012. Camila Sotomayor History & Theory Tutor Camila Sotomayor explores ruins as contemporary zones of architectural reanimation. Her PhD in Architectural Design at The Bartlett is investigating time-based design through material decay at the microscopic scale. She is the founder and director of Department of Decay and has been a Unit tutor for the MArch UD programme since 2010. Emmanouil Zaroukas History & Theory Tutor Emmanouil Zaroukas holds a diploma in Architecture from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is an architect, researcher and educator. He is completing his PhD at University of East London, where he explores the creative capacities of artificial neural networks and machine learning in architectural and urban design.


Image: B-Pro Show 2015


Bartlett Staff, Visitors & Consultants

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

A Wes Aelbrecht Ala Alfakara Visiting Prof Robert Aish Dr Kinda Al Sayed Abeer Al Said Laura Allen Kit Allsopp Gregoria Astengo Sebastian Andia Alisa Andrasek Sabina Andron Edwina Attlee Bartek Arendt Abigail Ashton B Julia Backhaus Mark Ballard Stefan Bassing Scott Batty Paul Bavister Richard Beckett Johan Berglund Dr Doreen Bernath Prof Peter Bishop Izzy Blackburn Isaïe Bloch William Bondin Prof Iain Borden Shumi Bose Roberto Bottazzi Andy Bow Matthew Bowles Eva Branscome Thea Brezank Pascal Bronner Giulio Brugnaro Mark Burgess Bim Burton Matthew Butcher

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C Dr Graham Cairns Dağhan Cam Blanche Cameron Ben Campkin Tina Di Carlo William Camilleri Prof Mario Carpo Dr Brent Carnell Martyn Carter Eray Cayli Martyn Carter Megha Chand Prof Nat Chard Laura Cherry Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno Dr Evengelia Chrysikou Mollie Claypool Dr Marjan Colletti Emeritus Prof Peter Cook RA Roger Courtney Paul Crudge Prof Marcos Cruz D Dr Edward Denison Bernadette Devilat Dr Ashley Dhanani Paul Dobraszczyk Inigo Dodd Oliver Domeisen Elizabeth Dow E Dr Eve Eylers F Ava Fatah gen Schieck Bernd Felsinger Peter Ferguson Pedro Font Alba Zachary Fluker

Emma Flynn Prof Adrian Forty Colin Fournier Sara Franceschelli John Fraser Prof Murray Fraser Daisy Froud G Prof Stephen Gage Jean Garrett Stelios Giamarelos Visiting Prof Nicholas Grimshaw Visiting Prof Joseph Grima Emer Girling Ruairi Glynn Dr Jon Goodbun Kevin Green Adam Greenfield Dr Sam Griffiths Kostas Grigoriadis Peter Guillery H Michael Hadi Soomeen Hahm James Hampton Dr Sean Hanna Tamsin Hanke Usman Haque Dr Penelope Haralambidou Prof Christine Hawley Colin Herperger Prof Jonathan Hill Visiting Prof Dan Hill Prof Bill Hillier Thomas Hillier Bill Hodgson Tom Holberton Stephen Howson Beth Hughes

Dr Anne Hultzsch Francesca Hughes Vincent Hughe Maxwell Hutchinson I Damjan Iliev Jessica In Platon Issaias J Michal Jablonksi Nannette Jackowski Carlos Jiménez Cenamor Manuel Jimenez Garcia Steve Johnson Helen Jones Mikella Johnson K Dr Kayvan Karimi Mara-Sophia Kanthak Jonathan Kendall Simon Kennedy Anne Kershen Xavier de Kestelier David Kirsch Fani Kostourou Gergely Kovács Sofia Krimizi Dirk Krolikowski L Chee-Kit Lai Felipe Lanuza Justin Lau Eli Lee Dr Guan Lee Stefan Lengen Lucy Leonard Dr Christopher Leung Ifigeneia Liangi


Staff, Visitors & Consultants

Prof CJ Lim Olga Linardou Enriqueta Llabres Andy Lomas Alvaro Lopez Tim Lucas Michelle Lukins Segerström

N Jack Newton O Jamie O’Brien Brian O’Reilly James O’Leary Bernie Ococ Luke Olsen Ricardo de Ostos Jakub Owczarek P Dr Garyfalia Palaiologou

R Robert Randall Eva Ravnborg Dr Peg Rawes Luis Rego Dr Aileen Reid Sophie Read Prof Jane Rendell Gilles Retsin Harriet Richardson Eduardo Rico Ian Ridley Aleksandrina Rizova Gavin Robotham Indigo Rohrer Dr Jonathan Rokem Javier Ruiz Stefan Rutzinger S Dr Kerstin Sailer Dr Sahed Saleem Prof Andrew Saint Kristina Schinegger Carina Schneider

Peter Scully Dr Tania Sengupta Dr Miguel Serra Sara Shafiei Prof Bob Sheil Naz Siddique Colin Skeete Paul Smoothy Mark Smout Vicente Soler Camila Sotomayor Brian Stater Emmanouil Stavrakakis Dr Kimberley Steed German John Steadman Dimitri Stefanescu Tijana Stevanovic Rachel Stevenson Catrina Stewart Chris Stutz Sabine Storp Michiko Sumi T Martin Tang Dr Lusine Tarkhanyan Huda Tayob Philip Temple Colin Thom Michael Tite Victor Torrance Freddy Tuppen Tomas Tvarijonas

W Susan Ware Barry Wark Bill Watts Peter Webb Patrick Weber Nick Westby Mark Whitby Andrew Whiting Daniel Widrig Finn Williams Graeme Williamson Meredith Wilson Dr Robin Wilson Oliver Wilton Katy Wood Y Umat Yamac Michelle Young Z Paolo Zaide Emmanouil Zaroukas Stamtios Zografos

V Dr Angie Vanhoozer Dr Tasos Varoudis Melis Van Den Berg Viktoria Viktorija Nina Vollenbröker Prof Laura Vaughan

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The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

M Visiting Prof John Macarthur Dr Abel Maciel Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou Jonathan Martin Maximo Martinez Adriana Massidda Emma-Kate Matthews Prof Níall McLaughlin Jeremy Melvin Josep Miàs Stoll Michael Bartlett Prof Frédéric Migayrou Jeffrey Miller Tom Mole Ana Monrabal-Cook

Igor Pantic Jacob Paskins Claudia Pasquero Thomas Pearce Luke Pearson Prof Alan Penn Dr Barbara Penner Godofredo Pereira Victoria Perry Frederik Petersen Mads Petersen Simon Pilling Frosso Pimenides Maj Plemenitas Kim van Poeteren Andrew Porter Arthur Prior Sophia Psarra


Bartlett Lectures

The Donaldson Lecture The Donaldson Lecture is a major new annual lecture that aims to draw links between the built environment and the wider world. The lecture is named after Thomas Leverton Donaldson, who in 1841 became UCL’s first Chair in Architecture, one of the first in the UK, founding what later became The Bartlett School of Architecture.

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

The inaugural Donaldson Lecture was delivered by award-winning artist Grayson Perry CBE in January 2016 at Conway Hall. The Bartlett International Lecture Series The Bartlett International Lecture Series features speakers from across the world. Lectures in the series are open to the public and free to attend. This year’s speakers included: Fabrizio Barozzi + Alberta Veiga Caroline Bos Mario Carpo James Corner Sou Fujimoto Adam Greenfield Charles Jencks Mitchell Joachim Asif Khan Amanda Levete María Langarita + Víctor Navarro Níall McLaughlin Sheila O’Donnell + John Toumey Dave Pigram Peg Rawes Jenny Sabin Michael Silver Endo Shuhei Richard Wilson Pier Vittorio Aureli The Bartlett International Lecture Series is generously supported by the Fletcher Priest Trust

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A range of smaller lecture series attracted a wide range of speakers, including: Bartlett Plexus Isaïe Bloch, Shajay Bhooshan, Carlos Conceição, Alessio Erioli, Ruairi Glynn, Evan Greenberg, Hyunchul Kwon, Daniel Köhler, Alicia Nahmad, Filippo Nassetti, Raffael Petrovic, Sille Pihlak + Siim Tuksam, Davide Quayola, Gilles Retsin, Aleksandrina Rizova, Kristina Schinegger, David Sheldon-Hicks, Kibwe Tavares, Thomas Tvarijonas, Adam Vukmanov, Anouk Wipprecht Situating Architecture Adrian Forty, Hélène Frichot, Michelle Provoost, Peter Guillery, Colin Thom, Rodrigo Firmino, Daniel M Abramson


Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professorship

Joseph Grima is an architect, writer and researcher based between New York and Genoa. He is a partner at Space Caviar, an architecture and research studio based in Genoa, Italy, operating at the intersection of design, technology, politics and the public realm, and director of the Ideas City program at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. He was previously the editor-in-chief of Domus magazine and director of Storefront for Art and Architecture. In 2014 he was appointed co-curator of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial, the largest exhibition of contemporary architecture in the history of North America. He has taught and lectured widely at universities in Europe, Asia and America, including Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow under the direction of Rem Koolhaas. He is currently a Unit Master at the Architectural Association. As part of their Visiting Professorship at The Bartlett School of Architecture Joseph Grima and Dan Hill will give two Sir Banister Fletcher Lectures and run two week-long studios with MArch Urban Design students, around the theme of ‘The Incomplete City’ with Marco Ferrari, exploring adaptive, iterative approaches to urban design, planning and development.

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The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Sir Banister ‘Flight’ Fletcher (1866–1953) was an English architect and architectural historian. He trained at King’s College London and University College London, and joined his father’s practice (also Sir Banister Fletcher) in 1884, also studying at the Royal Academy Schools, the Architectural Association, and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Father and son co-authored the seminal textbook A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. In his will, he left a bequest to The Bartlett School of Architecture inaugurating an annual student prize, the Sir Banister Fletcher Prize Medal, in memory of his father, brother and himself, and a bequest to provide funds for an academic chair, now inaugurated as a Visiting Professorship. This year’s Sir Banister Fletcher Visiting Professors are Joseph Grima and Dan Hill. Dan Hill is an Associate Director at Arup, where he is Head of Arup Digital Studio. A designer and urbanist, Hill has previously held leadership positions at Fabrica in Italy, SITRA in Finland, Arup in Australia, and Future Cities Catapult, Monocle and the BBC in the UK. Dan is also an adjunct professor in Design and Communication at RMIT University (Melbourne) and in Architecture at UTS (Sydney), and has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London, Politecnico di Milano, University of Sydney, Aalto University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and many others. Published writing includes Dark Matter & Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary (Strelka Press, 2012), as well as numerous pieces for books, journals, magazines and websites, including Architectural Design journal, Volume, Domus, A+U and Dezeen. He has produced the groundbreaking and highly influential blog City of Sound since 2001.


22 Gordon Street

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

This year, The Bartlett School of Architecture will return to 22 Gordon Street (formerly Wates House) on UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus. The £30 million refurbishment and extension, carried out as part of UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus Refurbishments project, will provide additional space and a completely new environment and home for the School. The new building will have additional floors, an expansion to the south side of the building, brand new studios, new social and cafe areas, a contemporary exhibition space and expanded workshops. Architect: Hawkins\Brown Contractor: Gilbert Ash

Image: 22 Gordon Street. Photo by Paul Smoothy 104

An official Opening Party is planned for December 2016 as part of the School’s Bartlett 175 celebrations. For more information about the 22 Gordon Street refurbishment, visit the Bartlett Space website. bit.ly/bartlettspace #Bartlettspace


Here East

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

At 1.2 million square foot in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Here East is one of London’s most exciting new developments. A home for individuals and companies that range from start-ups to some of the most well-known organisations both in the UK and globally, Here East offers unparalleled new infrastructure for both innovation and excellence. In 2016, UCL took over 4,000 square metres of studio space at Here East, which will be used to undertake groundbreaking research in areas including architecture, infrastructure, transport, robotics, healthcare, manufacturing and environmental measurement. The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment, and UCL Engineering will be expanding into these premises in mid-2017.

Here East will be the base for four exciting new programmes: MArch Design for Manufacture MArch Design for Performance & Interaction MA Situated Practice MEng Engineering & Architectural Design The scale of The Bartlett at Here East will enable UCL to strengthen its interdisciplinary research and teaching, as well as promote greater engagement with the local community, in advance of the opening of UCL East at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in 2019.

Image: Here East at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. CGI by Hawkins\Brown 105


New Programme

MEng Engineering & Architectural Design

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Affiliated practices and institutes AKT II, Arup, Buro Happold, CIBSE (Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers), EI (Energy Institute), Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Foster + Partners, Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers, ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers), IStructE (Institution of Structural Engineers), Laing O’Rourke, Price & Myers, the RIBA

Image: 3D Model Making in the B-made workshop. Photo by Stonehouse Photographic 106

This new four-year integrated Masters in Engineering & Architectural Design aims to challenge students to develop a critical, independent, experimental and technically rigorous approach to architectural, environmental and structural design and engineering in buildings. The programme is delivered by experts drawn from The Bartlett School of Architecture, the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering and UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. Placing creativity and design at the centre of engineering education, the programme challenges conventional models, providing students with the opportunity to understand and develop advanced design methodologies whilst acquiring expertise on how they are augmented and resolved through engineering knowledge. Students will learn how to imagine, design and deliver resilient buildings that incorporate lifelong environmental and social responsibility. Graduates will be armed with the knowledge and expertise to undertake a project from inception to brief development through to design, and to advocate for their designs whilst engaging in robust, informed interdisciplinary discussion. Our MEng Engineering & Architectural Design graduates will be the future leaders of a collaborative and organisationally complex industry.


MA Situated Practice

New Programme

Affiliated practices and institutes The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL Urban Laboratory

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

This new 15-month Masters provides knowledge and training in the principles and skills of situated practice in relation to conceptual spatial theories in art, architecture, performativity, urbanism and writing. On this programme, students will develop a strong understanding of appropriate research methodologies in art and design practice-led research, specifically relating to approaches to criticality, performativity and textuality. They will also make ‘situated practice’ projects that are site-related, from physical installations to digital interventions to site writings. This pioneering course examines the fertile territories where the discipline of architecture cross-pollinates with the other creative arts. Students will make work that is situated physically and engages with contemporary social, cultural and political conditions. Outcomes will combine media – comprising site-specific and performative installations, interventions, designs and events – that engage with their contexts and particular publics. Graduates from the MA Situated Practice will be highly equipped to pioneer new forms of hybrid practice between art and architecture in the domains of urban design, spatial design, event design, critical and theoretical writing, performance and craft.

Image: Polly Gould, ‘Berg off Cape Evans’. 2013 (hand-blown coloured and mirrored glass, watercolour on sand-blasted glass, 40 x 40 x D.18 cm) 107


New Programme

MArch Design for Performance & Interaction

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Affiliated practices and institutes Arup, Bompas & Parr, Ciminod Studio, Jason Bruges Studio, Intel, Marshmallow Laser Feast, onedotzero, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, ScanLAB Projects, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Stufish, Troika, Twitter, Soundform, Umbrellium

Image: William Victor Camilleri and Danilo Sampaio, ‘Hortum Machina B’, Interactive Architecture Lab 108

This new 15-month Masters teaches design in four dimensions. Students will design the performance and interaction of objects, environments and people using the latest fabrication, sensing, computation, networked and responsive technologies. Emphasis is placed on prototyping, from interactive objects and installations to staged events and performance architecture. The MArch Design for Performance & Interaction is a new programme which attracts students from a wide range of artistic and technical backgrounds. There are very few UK institutions that offer anything similar, and none have the access to cross-disciplinary expertise provided by both The Bartlett and UCL. The core of the programme is the belief that the creation of spaces for performance, and the creation of performances within them, are symbiotic activities. Design using interactive technologies enables us to consider objects, space, people and systems as potential performers. Design for performance and interaction has relevance across spatial and urban design, interface and systems design, auditoria and scenographic design, lighting and sound installation, physical and virtual environments and performance and event design. At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we believe this provides an unprecedented opportunity for informed, skilled and multi-disciplinary designers to define – and also deliver – spaces and systems for performance and interaction in the 21st century. Our new studio facilities at Here East offer unprecedented opportunities and resources for groundbreaking design work.


MArch Design for Manufacture

New Programme

Affiliated practices and institutes Arup, BuroHappold, Foster + Partners, Laing O’Rourke, Price & Myers, ScanLAB Projects, UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE), UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE)

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2016

Starting in September 2017, this new 15-month Masters will teach students how to place their design skills in the context of pioneering developments in construction, fabrication, assembly, and automation, including robotics. There is an abundance of advanced design and engineering tools in the UK that an elite workforce develop and deploy to export their expertise worldwide. Yet there is a shortage of skilled workers at the point of production, tasked with delivering increasingly sophisticated and challenging projects by clients in line with rising expectations on quality and regulation. The Design for Manufacture Masters course aims to prepare a new professional workforce of highly skilled, creative and adaptable experts, with knowledge in design, engineering, material behaviour, analogue and digital craft, and advanced systems operations. This course will expose students to new forms of advanced design and engineering methodologies – such as robotics and 3D scanning – that are currently reinventing core approaches to shaping, making and refitting the built and manufactured environment.

Image: Tim Lucas, Price & Myers and Bartlett School of Architecture Lecturer in Structural Design. Photo by Maarten Kleinhout. 109


Image: Students from the Urban Morphogenesis Lab’s Research Cluster 16 in the design studio



bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture

Publisher The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Editors Eli Lee, Michelle Lukins Segerström Graphic Design Patrick Morrissey, Unlimited weareunlimited.co.uk Executive Editors Frédéric Migayrou, Andrew Porter Photography Stonehouse Photographic Copyright 2016 The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 978-0-9954819-2-3

For more information on all the programmes and modules at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, UCL, visit bartlett.ucl.ac.uk The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL 140 Hampstead Road London NW1 2BX +44 (0)20 3108 9646 architecture@ucl.ac.uk Twitter: @BartlettArchUCL Facebook: facebook.com/BartlettArchitectureUCL Instagram: bartlettarchucl Vimeo: vimeo.com/bartlettarchucl



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