Unit 5 Diana Cochrane Kevin Haley
Approach Above: Soleri, Arcosanti “Between the slum clearances of the early twentieth century and debates about the post-Olympic city, the drive to ‘regenerate’ London has intensifjed. Yet today, with a focus on increasing land values, regeneration schemes purporting to foster diverse and creative new neighborhoods typically displace precisely the qualities, activities and communities they claim to support.” ― Remaking London, Ben Campkin Civic Wondrous Unit 5 is interested in architecture’s ability to be complex and ambiguous, to be strange and to tell stories. We think that architecture is fjrst and foremost a cultural practice, capable of representing more than itself, and it can be a repository for fragile stores that would otherwise be lost. We’ll look into history as well as everyday life, back to front as it may currently be on the Old Kent Road, to reveal and unveil ‘truths’ and ‘fjctions’ that can point us towards complex and rich architectural proposals. The focus for unit 5 will be exploring London’s designated ‘Opportunity and Intensifjcation Areas’. These are places of fjnancial growth and of numerous development opportunities, but also of huge displacement and infrastructural pressure. In these areas of the capital, the built and proposed plans for the environment are having a very real impact on their existing inhabitants’ lives. Together we will explore what architects can bring to the complex and collaborative art of telling stories and making places. We will use historical precedent, learn from the (failed) experiments of others and stitch together London-based narratives whilst also visiting Bilbao because it seems to offer many parallels with the Old Kent Road. Despite a rich history and late C19th expansion, 1980s post-industrial Bilbao had huge problems with its economy and unemployment, infrastructure, commerce and identity, all underpinned by the city turning its back on the central artery, the river estuary. In Bilbao we will complete group research and study the particular vision and methodology for transforming the City, as well as encouraging you to be critical of your own understanding of what you see and how it was made. Unit methods In term 1 you will work incrementally; building up your portfolio through a series of short ‘making’ projects with tangible, precise and designed outcomes that will develop your knowledge about a large and complex place, giving you the confjdence to develop your own personal thesis, to develop a personal design language and to creatively explore all aspects of the tools and resources that are available at KSA. You will use these to contribute to group research and a masterplan and to begin to design a part (building & landscape) within it. In terms 2 & 3 you will develop this proposal (building) and its wider context utilizing your own tools and experiments. You will develop a narrative for the future of the place and tell the story of what might happen next.
Precedents Rossi Above: Soleri, Arcosanti Below: Zumpthor, Museo Kolumba en Colonia Soleri and Zumpthor
Billboard Lina Bo Bardi Lina Bo Bardi
Old Kent Road Right: The World Upside Down pub circa 1910, Old Kent Road Left: Carp caught in Burgess Park 2015 The Old Kent Road The Old Kent Road was the cheapest location on the Monopoly board and possibly better known for its C20th Friday night brawls and absurdly named pubs — most now gone, including The World Turned Upside Down and the Frog & Nightgown — than as a place to live. Among the oldest routes in England it was created by the Romans and famously travelled by Chaucer’s pilgrims who found many friendly coaching inns and alehouses along the Old Kent Road. In Victorian times it was quite a handsome thoroughfare — a sprinkling of listed period buildings survive amid the large dull retail sheds — and today it forms the boundary between Elephant @ Castle, Walworth, Peckham, Bermondsey and Lewisham, all up-and-coming Zone 2 districts. The Old Kent Road is now tipped for greater things. London Mayor Boris Johnson has promised an Opportunity Area, more than 11,000 new homes, better public transport, better shops and better neighborhood amenities. The outline for the new Opportunity Area has just been drawn, so you will be tackling the issues in parallel with what’s actually being done - buy a train ticket and chose to dip your toes into the ‘live’ project and Community Forum if you wish. The Opportunity Area covers the road itself and the “corridor” of land either side. This corridor is occupied by a hotchpotch of modest Victorian terraces, dreary post-war council estates, warehouses, light industrial buildings and the splendid green expanse of upgraded Burgess Park. The park, a 140-acre tract bounded on one side by fjne Regency detached houses, is a welcome lung of greenery among the relentless unforgiving urban sprawl. Up until now the road to Kent has always been known as a route and never a destination, even the Bricklayer’s Arms Terminus failed because of the passenger preference for using London Bridge station. The buildings along the route play their part as backdrops to the main event, whether ‘hangings’ at the City boundary, or simply viewed while stationery at the traffjc lights. This lack of attractiveness means that there has always been space for the entrepreneur, whether that is the man who named his chain of shoe shops after Monet the painter, 1980s artists setting up workshops in the abandoned Fire station, or the local working class boxing gym above the pub frequented by south London gangsters and stars alike. Programmes that accommodate travellers and strangers have always played an important part in the make up of the Old Kent Road. Situated at cross roads, these vied for the passing trade. C20th attempts to stamp civility and amenity on the Road in the form of churches, libraries, public baths and Civic centres are now mainly closed or permanently scared by WW2 bombing or post-war development. The Old Kent Road cannot simply be stitched back together, some major (group masterplan) surgery and skilled speculation is needed…. A series of big ideas to test out a number possible futures that coincide and collide. What works and what doesn’t? What structures, volumes or spaces can we insert that disrupt or transform urban mediocrity? But ‘playing’ at an urban scale doesn’t mean we can’t also look at the detail and what is here now - observing closely and mapping the offjcial and marginal life of the city, its sub-cultures, institutions and physical infrastructure, searching out the gaps, anomalies and loopholes in its fabric to identify the pieces that create the potential for change. By looking very closely at local vernacular, ‘chat rooms’ and detail - using the principle that “reality is always stranger than fjction” we can think about how new expressions of relationships could intensify the exquisite moments within our city. The challenge will be to transform Old Kent Road (Number 24 on the O&IA list) into a public city space with new town centres of very specifjc character that people remember and wish to return to.
Old Kent Road You will be asked to identify and enhance Old Kent Road through the introduction of a number of architectural elements. These will most likely involve adjustments to what already exists in combination with the introduction of infrastructural devices, surfaces and buildings of different scales, taking care to make ‘good’ conversations between new and old. The ambition is to give this moment in the city an appropriate civility and the ability to accommodate everyday uses with special occasions, as well as producing memorable and unique forms of architecture that signal its new identity and civility at all scales. In order to do this we will incorporate some of the following: City Planning & Power and Authority: Never be completely seduced, always have one eye on who commissioned and fjnanced the architecture and why. Representation: We will examine how under modernism and now with overly prescriptive design codes, everything has the potential to look the same. We will consider how architecture might be able to carry narrative and, like monasteries and libraries, museums of the past, hold memory. Decoration + Craft: We will examine what potential new technology and concern for interaction at a human scale has to reintegrate them into a new architectural language. The diffjculty of the Architectural Figure in the City: Up close, all buildings disappear. In crowded streets a building is only ever a series of cropped and partial views. The complete architectural fjgure only exists in the architects mind and drawings. In the city it dematerializes into a fuzzy area, mediating between the room and the city. Historical experiment/ precedent: We will consider the ambition and appropriateness of some large projects elsewhere including Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa D’Este and the work of Lina Bo Bardi in Brazil and Paolo Soleri in Arizona.
Old Kent Road C18th 1910s 1950s 2015
Old Kent Road English Heritage / Assessing historical value 2009
Old Kent Road OKR Community Consultation / Mind Maps 2015
Old Kent Road Maxxi, Rome by Zaha • • OKR Community Consultation / Mind Maps 2015
Old Kent Road OKR Fragments
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