Unit 11: March Architecture (Arb/Riba Part 2) Compiled From Bartlett Books 2004-2019

PG Unit 11
MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Compiled from Bartlett Books 2004–2019
Our Design DNA
At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing
annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based
programmes for more than a decade. These catalogues,
amounting to thousands of pages, illustrate the best of our
students’ extraordinary work. Our Design Anthology series
brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our
renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how
their practice and research has evolved.
Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have
remained constant, others have changed. Students have also
progressed from one programme to another. Nevertheless,
the way in which design is taught and explored at The Bartlett
School of Architecture is in our DNA. Now with almost 50 units,
clusters and labs in the school across our programmes,
the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress
and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year.
Professor Frédéric Migayrou
Chair of The Bartlett School of Architecture
Professor Bob Sheil
Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture
2019 Terra Incognita
Laura Allen, Mark Smout
2018 National Reserve
2017 Back to the Future
2016 Incubator
2015 Home Ground
Laura Allen, Kyle Buchanan, Mark Smout
2014 Ground Control
2013 Proving Ground
2012 Super-Urban-Mega-Listic
2011 Arcadia vs. Utopia
2010 Neo-Nature
2009 Field Operations
Laura Allen, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Mark Smout
2008 Second Nature
2007 Surface Tension
2005 Architecture and Emotional Aspiration
Malca Mizrahi, Yael Reisner
2004 Brazilian Tropicalia
Terra Incognita
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Terra Incognita PG11
The Latin phrase terra incognita, meaning ‘unknown land’, was used by Year 4
cartographers in the Age of Exploration (early 15th to early 17th century) Siqi (Scott) Chen, Sacha
Hickinbotham, Theo
to denote those territories of the globe that were unknown, unexplored Jones, Karolina Kielb,
or undocumented. Geographical terra incognita is now practically Liam Merrigan, Rachel
inconceivable, as the prospect of discovering uncharted land has all Swetnam, Maxime Willing
but disappeared. Myth and imagination are replaced by indisputable Year 5

physical reality, as most of the Earth’s surface has been digitally George Bradford-Smith,
surveyed, if not charted, in minute detail. Yet, for reasons such as the Andrew Chard, Wei-Kai
Chu, Oliver Colman,
shifting topographies of climate change, renegotiated political borders Stefan (Dan) Florescu,
and evolving infrastructures, a map is outdated as soon as it is made. Paul Humphries, Douglas
Flaws caused by digital glitches and the inaccuracies of new scanning Miller, Naomi Rubbra,
Nicholas Salthouse
technologies add yet another layer of redundancy and ambiguity. Our
unremitting drive for ‘progress’ and search for knowledge has produced Many thanks to Design
many Ages of Exploration, including missions to chart the ocean Realisation tutor Rhys
Cannon, and Stephen
depths and voyages extending beyond our galaxy. ‘Terra incognita’ Foster for Structural
is now more likely to be used metaphorically, to signify uncharted consultancy
territories in other areas of exploration, such as fields of scientific
research. This year, we asked: ‘What is the current focus of global
exploration?’ and ‘What is the role of architecture in future thinking?’
It is not down in any map; true places never are.1
Far from being ‘lost in space’, the unknown is, fundamentally, the
territory of speculation and discovery. The unit focused on the
moving target of the future at its most enigmatic, uncovering or
proposing ideals and didactic models for living, evoking real or
imagined scenarios and reviving forgotten innovations.
All who claim to foretell or forecast the future are inevitably liars,
for the future is not written anywhere – it is still to be built.2
Following in the footsteps of the founders of the Alpine Club French

architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) and English
art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), we endeavoured to develop a
‘better knowledge of mountains through literature, science and art’ 3
on a grand tour of the sublime Swiss Alps. The pristine wilderness is
remarkably geotechnically manipulated and undergoes dramatic 1. Melville, H., Moby-Dick;
or, The Whale (London:
seasonal transformations, seen not only in the couture of the ski Constable & Co., 1922)
slopes but also in the ancient agricultural practice of ‘transhumance’: 2. Godet, M. and Roubelat,
the moving of livestock from lowlands to upland grazing meadows. F.,’Creating the future:
The use and misuse of
The awesome dominance of its sublime and elemental mountains scenarios’, in Long Range
– bucolic alpine panoramas with chocolate box views of bell-jangling Planning, Volume 29, Issue
cows grazing on wildflower meadows – belies a culture of modernity 2, April 1996, pp164-171
3. Alpine Club Rules,
and scientific innovation. The majority of projects are sited amongst alpine-club.org.uk/ac2/
the visual abundance and landscape utility of this living laboratory. about-the-ac/mission-2
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11.1 Oliver Colman, Y5 ‘Alposanti’. In homage to the Alps 11.10–11.11 Siqi (Scott) Chen, Y4 ‘Nomadic Farm’.
as a source of Swiss national identity, ‘Alposanti’ takes Suffering from a dairy crisis, Switzerland is looking for a
compositional cues from the form of a mountain, to create solution to save its traditional family farms. This project
a touristic, closed, world of the future. The project responds explores the relationship between nature, urbanity and
to declining tourism figures in Switzerland, partly due to industrialisation behind the Alpine dairy industry. Situated
diminishing snowfall due to climate change, and draws in Gruyères, the farm is made from timber, straw and hay,
on the principles of hyperreality in duplicating and with an edible façade for cows.
exaggerating culture to create an extensive architectural 11.12 George Bradford-Smith, Y5 ‘Manipulating Mont
world of warped ‘Swissness’ within one mega-building. Blanc: Preparing for Martian Frontiers’. Located on the
11.2 Andrew Chard, Y5 ‘Reconfiguring the Rhône’. With summit of Mont Blanc, this astronaut training facility
retreating glaciers affecting river regimes throughout passively simulates the Martian environment of the
Switzerland, the creation of new water buffering dams Alps, using on accessible extreme environment to
is needed. Carved into the emerging granite landscape recreate another.
left behind by the fading glacier, these dams are sustained 11.13 Sacha Hickinbotham, Y4 ‘Immaterial Landscapes’.
through the implementation of alpine farming communities, This installation explores the material and immaterial
expanding from the growing water network deployed phenomenological qualities of scaled Swiss-landscape
throughout the Rhône Valley over the next century. infrastructures. A series of suspended cast vessels
11.3 Karolina Kielb, Y4 ‘Re(g)Rhône Glacier’. This project produce a slow drip of water to replicate Swiss
reinstates a Victorian research station on the Rhône hydroelectric dam infrastructures. Subsequent models
Glacier in the Swiss Alps. The building is inspired by the of light, sound and heat are activated through the
Ice Stupa – a form of glacial grating that creates artificial impacting force of falling water.
glaciers – and uses meltwater from the glacier to 11.14 Theo Jones, Y4 ‘Unfolding a home of diplomatic
artificially restore a fragment of the lost landscape. containment’. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lived
11.4 Wei-Kai Chu, Y5 ‘Alpine City’. This project reflects inside the Ecuadorian embassy for six years. Leaked
on the environmental crisis, caused by rising temperatures, documents suggest that Ecuador considered transporting
facing mountain ecology among alpine valleys. Initially, Assange out of the embassy in a diplomatic bag. In this
a thematic board game was created as a precursor for project, the embassy is folded down inside the diplomat’s
the scheme to speculate the potential and question the jacket, secretly moving Assange and the territory of
emergent botanic township. Ecuador that protected him.
11.5 Naomi Rubbra, Y5 ‘Who is London For?’. A masterplan 11.15 Maxime Willing, Y4 ‘Woven Futures’. This project
is typically decided and drawn from the top-down. proposes a holistic environment designed to provide
Here, instead, it becomes an activity by ‘walking alongside’ the people of Geneva with a building that changes in
residents through the site. This site model is a manifestation appearance with time and use. The architecture takes
of the findings; the bright ornaments and their associated on the blue from the dyeing of textiles in the same manner
timber swatch mimic design responses to issues of that an artisan’s hands change with work. Ornamentation
surveillance, safety, companionship and nature. developed from the Swiss vernacular process of ‘sgraffito’
11.6 Nicholas Salthouse, Y5 ‘The Liquidity of Glacial is used as the vehicle for this layering of colour.
Recession’. As Switzerland approaches ‘peak water’ taken 11.16 Rachel Swetnam, Y4 ‘Glasmuseum’. A process
from its glacial reserves, this project considers the relative collage following a series of light studies testing the qualities
social construct of ‘water scarcity’. Since many struggling of coloured light for a glassblowing museum and studio in
alpine towns depend on seasonal meltwater, a series Lucerne, Switzerland.
of key infrastructural interventions form a resilient rind 11.17 Liam Merrigan, Y4 ‘Neulandsgemeindeplatz’.
to protect the town, enabling further reconstruction For centuries, the Appenzeller community in northern
of themselves by serving as 1:1 fabrication templates. Switzerland has resisted influence from beyond their
This landscape of architectural jigs and civic prosthetics territory, fostering a unique identity rooted in political
reconfigures the town, allowing rituals of harvest to come debate, religion and their connection to the landscape.
to the fore, thus catalysing their regeneration from within. This project examines the past and future of this isolated
11.7 Stefan (Dan) Florescu, Y5 ‘Augmenting the Vernacular’. culture, drawing on traditional costume and craft to
A new architectural ensemble in Albinen in Switzerland convey architectural ideas. The scheme is a monument
uses AR technology in order to make a step-by-step of statues, guesthouses, relics and festival spaces built
transition from the urban to the rural landscape, allowing around a new parliament square.
newcomers to discover and understand vernacular
architecture of alpine chalets. Initially encountered as
a fully immersive AR experience, the virtual elements will
gradually fade over time to reveal the physical reality.
11.8 Douglas Miller, Y5 ‘The Harderkulm Transect’.
A restored hiking route runs from town square to
mountain top in the city of Interlaken, Switzerland.
Forming an alternative route to the recently installed
funicular, a new transect is formed that crosses various
mountainous biomes along which an array of buildings
augment and protect the mountainside, whilst providing
facilities for the local hikers.
11.9 Paul Humphries, Y5 ‘The End of Technology’. In this
project, the city of Zurich in Switzerland is reimagined 50
years from now as Europe’s first ‘smart city’ – but not as we
imagine it to be today. This project explores our relationship
with data as a series of architectural responses via a new,
non-physical boundary – reinstating Zurich’s 16th-century
fortification as a data network.
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National Reserve
Unit 11 National Reserve
Year 4 The ‘National Reserve’ brief interprets the landscape of margins and
George Bradford-Smith, architectures ‘on the edge’, to expose overlooked stories of life and data.
Andrew Chard, Wei-Kai Chu,
Oliver Colman, Stefan Spatial opportunities within the often-misunderstood interlacing of
Florescu, Paul Humphries, unplanned and planned, designated and uncontrolled urban and rural
Douglas Miller, Naomi Rubbra landscapes are exposed through interrelated landscape scenarios.
Nicholas Salthouse
The green belt – which provides a curated buffer zone, an idealistic
Year 5 hinterland between city, suburb and ‘satellite’ village – is a perpetually
Bethany Bird, Laurence threatened (spatial) concept and (legislative) landscape. The public
Blackwell-Thale, Tom Budd,
Emma Colthurst, Patrick perception of the green belt as countryside is at odds with the reality of
Horne, Alexander Liew, Joe this landscape. Much of it is classed as ‘neglected’, with derelict buildings,
Roberts, Eleanor Sampson rubbish, electricity pylons and other blots on the landscape. Less than half
is green and much of that is monoculture farmland, spending whole
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2018
Many thanks to our Design

Realisation tutor Rhys seasons beige or brown.
Cannon, and to Stephen
Foster, for their support
Open in perpetuity
Thank you to our critics: The original and enduring role of the green belt is to prevent urban sprawl
Roberto Botazzi, Kyle by keeping land permanently ‘open’. However, in the UK, no aims are set for
Buchanan, Margaret Bursa,
Edward Denison, Holly Lewis, acceptable land uses and no indication is given as to their preferred form
Aisling O’Carroll, Luke Pearson, beyond a general concern that green belts should retain their ‘openness’.
Emanuela Tiley, Tim Waterman This vaguely defined requirement is inevitably renewed and transformed
as our territorial requirements change to keep up with the demands and
desires of the 21st century – be they local, national, technical, cultural or
social – and by consequence, provides an essential landscape for defining
the transforming prospect of Britishness itself.
Occupying the ‘Terrain Vague’

Green belts were never explicitly provided for nature conservation or to
preserve the appearance of the UK’s rural idyll, but rather to produce a
peri-urban edge to the city in the form of a national reserve: land squirreled
away, not left to squirrels.
‘Open’ also doesn’t necessarily mean natural, accessible or absent
from development. In fact, much of its area could be described as Terrain
Vague, a term coined by Ignasi de Sola-Morales to suggest a spatial
phenomenon that, contrary to the legislative designations that surround it,
defies categorisation – an in-between ‘ambiguous space’. Its unexpected
lack of definition, and appearance of being left to its own devices, permits
a kind of freedom from the palimpsest of previous lives and the promise
of future ones. This is the territory where our architectural imaginations
can thrive.
Alongside our interest in the UK’s legislative landscapes, we also delved
into international territories (Palm Springs and Los Angeles) where parallel
stories of urban speculation offered alternative narratives on architecture’s
capricious relationship with landscape.
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Fig. 11.1 Eleanor Sampson Y5, ‘The Fourth Estate’. Sited within Than a Town’. Chobford-Barrow challenges the notion of creating
the once idealised suburban state of ‘Metro-Land’, North-West new garden village communities from scratch. By using the
London, this project is a testbed for a new template of British motorway as the economic starting point for a settlement,
housing. The multi-layered landscape seeks to emulate the a new ‘service station village’ typology is proposed. Here the
convenience and contradictions of the suburbs whilst updating collision of multiple scales of pace are mediated through the
the semi-detached housing typology to the needs of today. fusion of the village green, high street and motorway service
The urban-to-rural gradient influences both the cultivation of station. Fig. 11.4 Patrick Horne Y5, ‘How Do You Feel?’. This
the landscape and the uses of the buildings rooted within it. project explores virtual environments as a platform to test the
Fig. 11.2 Joe Roberts Y5, ‘The Post-Growth Community’. psychological effects of architecture. Through five experimental
What would it mean for the city to be accountable for all the buildings, it examines which forms of useful data we can extract
elements that sustain it, not as an abstraction, but as a fully from participants in virtual environments and speculates on how
bounded system obliged to take care of itself? The Post-Growth this data might knowingly inform architectural design. Each
Community’s ecological footprint is correlative with its political building is shown before and after revision, highlighting the
boundary. Fig. 11.3 Tom Budd Y5, ‘Bigger Than a Hamlet, Smaller changes enacted through each consultation process.
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Fig. 11.5 Bethany Bird Y5, ‘Ojai Wildfire Response Centre, interventions. Fig. 11.8 Andrew Chard Y4, ‘Filtered Oasis’.
California’. Purpose-made materials such as Nomex and California’s accidental Salton Sea once provided tourism and
Kevlar are developed to aid firemen and women to tackle fires. wealth to this desert region. Now receding, the shores flood
The project applies these modern firefighting technologies in the surrounding communities in toxic dust. This elementary
tandem with dressmaking techniques, to explore fire safety school provides a filtered safe haven to the community’s most
within architecture. Fig.11.6 Wei-Kai Chu Y4, ‘Future P[Reserve] vulnerable inhabitants. Fig. 11.9 Douglas Miller Y4, ‘Mapped’.
Archive’. The governmental act of releasing green belt land for Exploring the divide between the map and the world it depicts,
housing development inspires the process of digitally recording this project investigates the manipulations and absurdities
London’s green belt landscapes. Fig. 11.7 Oliver Colman Y4, that are thrown up by comparing the bleeding-edge technology
‘Occupying the Green Belt’. A series of dynamic mechanical of mapping and navigation to its two-dimensional predecessor.
models flip the National Planning Policy Framework to question Using modern mapping technologies such as LIDAR in
the occupation of green belt land. Each model explores the conjunction with drawing, a new graphical language is built.
protected land around Epping, Essex through augmented
landscapes, faux historical façades and illusionary
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Fig. 11.10 Paul Humphries Y4, ‘The Letchworth Achievement’. belt. The building uses its geometry and materiality to shield
This new town hall celebrates the garden city in the hope of it its occupants from electromagnetic radiation. Fig. 11.13
thriving as the blueprint for new town development in response George Bradford-Smith Y4, ‘Dirty Greenbelt’. Heathrow
to the current housing crisis. Fig. 11.11 Nicholas Salthouse Y4, Airport has the highest levels of pollution within the green
‘An Architecture of Uncertainty’. In politically uncertain times belt, exceeding EU limits. This project captures, diffuses and
the building offers extraterritorial amnesty from Theresa May’s reconfigures air pollutants and aircraft noise, transforming
‘Hostile Environment’. The architecture reconfigures itself with these into structural movements. Hotel guests’ negative
the tides, metaphorically representative of this political ebb perceptions of pollution are subverted through the hotel
and flow, allowing variable programmatic flexibility within an experience. Fig. 11.14 Alexander Liew Y5, ‘The British Overseas
otherwise open-plan space; its configuration at any one time Territories Exposition’. The exposition is designed to bring the
graphically embossed in the façade. Fig. 11.12 Stefan Florescu global patchwork of 14 intriguing communities and territories
Y4, ‘Under the Grid’. An Apiculture Centre, where bees live and together into one site, in order to highlight the diverse range
produce honey all year long, provides a new building typology of attributes in their landscapes and communities, whilst
for the hazardous open land under power lines in the green re-linking them to Britain.
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Fig. 11.15 Naomi Rubbra Y4, ‘New Citizens’ House’. This project uniting the pub (A) with Havering Political Surgery and the
looks at providing a space for communal gathering, whilst butcher’s shop (C) with Adult Welfare. The residents and local
supplying much-needed services to the boating community council collectively embark on this circumambulation to
along the Lee Navigation. The work evolved from a 1:1 further discover and celebrate the community of Cranham.
installation on Tottenham Marshes exploring structural Fig. 11.17 Laurence Blackwell-Thale Y5, ‘Sublime Landscape
mobility, into an architectural response to the temporality Generator’. Foothills, fingers of lakes, shoulders of mountains:
of boating lifestyle, water reuse and habitat restoration. the body-landscape metaphor is the basis for a trans-scalar
Fig. 11.16 Emma Colthurst Y5, ‘The Circumambulation production of new landscape iterations. The Sublime
of Cranham’ explores the richer narratives between the Landscape Generator uses aerial photography techniques to
community of Cranham and their collective landscape: a produce stereoscopic visions of cartographically quantified,
suburbanised village on the outskirts of London. The future sublime experiences.
civic functions of the village relocate along the ancient parish
boundary on 26 alphabetised boundary markers. Each civic
function harbours a secondary political function, for example
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Back to the Future
Unit 11 Back to the Future
Year 4 This year, we dreamt of future pasts. The natural tensions and antithetical
Bethany Bird, Laurence relationships characterised by the struggle between preservation and
Blackwell-Thale, Emma
Colthurst, Patrick Horne, progress provide lessons, opportunities and limits for the continuum of
Lex Liew, Joe Roberts, Ellie landscape and urban histories and, more importantly, determine their
Sampson emerging futures.

Year 5 The zenith of preservation is the UNESCO World Heritage List for
Alexander Chapman, Chris natural, built and cultural landscapes, cities and monuments. It seeks to
Delahunt, Johanna Just, record and preserve cities and landscapes, making them, to an extent,
Anthony Ko, Ness Lafoy,
Milo de Luca, Agostino Nickl 'future-proof' – and at the same time inadvertently fossilised in their current
states. The UNESCO list is diverse and wide-ranging, and includes Easter
Thanks to our Design Island, 17 works by Le Corbusier, the Statue of Liberty and the industrial
Realisation tutor Rhys Cannon
ruins of an Argentinian Fray Bentos Factory. Listing provides protection
Thank you to: through international law, however, it has also been described as a lethal
Steven Foster Engineers, Ali weapon deployed in the act of preservation’s crimes against cities.
Shaw at Max Fordham and to
our critics Brendan Cormier, The Venetian Lagoon (the journey’s end of our European trip this year)
Edward Denison, Stephen is striving to maintain its inclusion on the World Heritage List, despite a
Gage, Dan Hill, Joseph Grima, developing battle between tourism and culture. The city hosts over 600
Rory Hyde, Zoe Laughlin, Holly
Lewis, Peter Liversidge, Luke cruise ships and 20 million visitors per year, which, as well as pumping
Pearson, Tania Sengupta, tourist money into the city, also endangers its physical fabric and cultural
Tomas Stokke, Gwen Webber, integrity under the terms of its UNESCO listing.
Patrick Weber, Elly Ward
Morris Could the construction of replica cities and pseudo-landscapes,
relocated across the world, be an alternative to the museumification of
listed cities such as Venice? These embodiments of Umberto Eco’s concept
of ‘Uffiziland’, such as the unfeasibly blue and chlorinated Grand Canal
at the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas, are designed to improve on the
touristic rather than the authentic ‘experience’.
The opportunity for the retelling and recasting of histories through
copies, and their significance in preservation, is given credence via museum
collections such as the Cast Courts at the V&A, which contain collections of
historic plaster and wax replicas of monumental sculptural and architectural
fragments collected in the 19th century. Their collection also reveals the
contemporary role of copies in the preservation of cultural artifacts and
global heritage threatened by war, climate change and societal pressures.
The emergence of new technologies such as 3D scanning and digital
printing mean that copies can now be ‘dematerialised’ to the hard-drive
rather than to the museum gallery. One can imagine a future reprinting,
like a Jurassic Park style recreation of cultural artifacts, cut off from their
context and meaning, reanimated nowhere and everywhere, even at an
urban or landscape scale.
In attempt to recast ‘Wonderland’ and to create instant histories,
inspiration for our year’s work included UNESCO’s list of intangible Cultural
and World Heritage, model villages, alternative preservation manifestos,
fakery, architectural graveyards, demonstration landscapes, cultural
migration, monuments and their doppelgängers.
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Fig. 11.1 Agostino Nickl Y5, ‘Low-res City’. Using Extension’. Positioned as a critique of a flawed UNESCO listing,
photogrammetric data, Hamburg is compressed into 80 the 1:87 model museum’s sets, including a 35m-tall Mount
specimens mined from across the city. These low-res samples Everest, have internal environments that mimic real climates
become true representatives of the urban fabric containing with scale adjusted. Fig. 11.4 Ness Lafoy Y5, ‘A New Alpine
extracts of fields, the Autobahn, a brutalist warehouse, Convention’. The project imagines an alternative future for
a church and an airplane, amongst others. They serve as French ski resorts which combines luxury tourism with the
testbeds for newly developed and existing fabrication Alpine Convention’s mission to protect the natural heritage
techniques. Fig. 11.2 Ellie Sampson Y4, ‘The Torcello Typology of the region. Pine forest test-beds, curated to ‘romantic
Repository’. Composite drawing. An elevated island in the alpine landscape’ principles, are cultivated and configured as
marshy landscape towards the north of the lagoon, the a temporary backdrop for the resort. They are subsequently
repository uses channelled water, limestone-lined vessels distributed to sites across the region and permanently
and purposefully eroding walls to recreate and intensify grafted into the landscape, in order to help reconnect
the processes attacking Venice’s unique infrastructure. fragmented habitats.
Fig. 11.3 Laurence Blackwell-Thale Y4, ‘Miniatur Wunderland
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Fig. 11.5 Lex Lieu Y4, ‘Auctioning Venice’. As the sea-level products, glimmers in the day and lights up at night as a
rises, the physical sovereignty of Venice is drowned, but a lantern, showcasing the possible applications of plastic waste.
sense of cultural preservation can be retained through the Fig. 11.8 Johanna Just Y5, ‘Palazzo Pubblico – Disrupting the
distribution of Venice’s architectural relics. The auction house Lagoon Loop’. Palazzo Pubblico aims to disrupt the Venetian
commemorates the fragile city and prepares it for a future ‘set’ to help the city break free from the self-referential loop
elsewhere. Fig. 11.6 Emma Colthurst Y4, ‘The Sant'Alvise it is stuck in. The building offers infrastructure for cultural
Children’s Hospital’. This healthcare extension reimagines the exchange and serves as a test-piece for a new, association-
Italian Renaissance garden as a series of joyful community based design method, challenging existing preservation
spaces. Allegorical creatures emerge through the scheme to concepts that let the city become a static museum.
delight and lead visitors through the centre, which aims to
reconnect the youngest generations of Venice back to its
community, history and urban fabric. Fig. 11.7 Bethany Bird
Y4, ‘Studio Plastica’. A recycling centre, located in the Venetian
Lagoon, for waste plastic and a workshop for crafted plastic
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Fig. 11.9 Alexander Chapman Y5, ‘Macau’s Euraserie’.
This project creates an exportable series of architectural
extensions to the UNESCO monuments in Macau’s historic
centre, a contemporary reversal of Chinoiserie. On the
one hand it deals with the damage caused by an overzealous,
cultural tourism and on the other, it creates a platform for
Macau’s heritage to rival the casino skyline. Fig. 11.10 Chris
Delahunt Y5, ‘Google Venice’. The Google-sponsored internet
physicalisation factory creates physical back-ups of digital
cultural heritage in tapestry format. Sited on the origin of a
re-emerging global trade route coined ‘The Silicon Road’, data
becomes the main traded commodity of a Venetian Internet
Port.
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Fig. 11.11 Milo de Luca Y5, ‘New Venice: Fragments of through Virtual Reality technologies. Fig. 11.13 Anthony Ko Y5,
an Ideal City for Residents’. New Venice is a response to ‘An Activist Artifact’. The Sino-British declaration of 1997 aimed
Venice’s increasing physical and social decay. Saturating to ensure fifty years of stability for Hong Kong. However, the
the stratifications of the decaying urban landscape via its Chinese communists didn’t keep their promises and have long
insertion within the existing city’s rooftops, bridges and been initiating changes to Hong Kong’s freedoms. Hong Kong’s
canals, the architectural ‘fragments’ provide residential and historic defensive environments, such as the Frontier
social improvement, implementing an ideal vision of a city with Controlled Area and Macintosh Forts, are reimagined together
the housing, community spaces and amenities required for the with Hong Kong’s artwork, photographs and totems, to
Venetians who serve the existing city. Fig. 11.12 Patrick Horne formulate a collage city of activistic architecture. An art
Y4, ‘Travels in Cyber Reality’ speculates upon the role of the auction house and artist settlement rebel against China and
architect in our increasing inhabitation of digital space. The defend its heterotopic identities from eradication through the
project culminates in an exploration of the panorama as a trade of politically charged Hong Kong art.
new form of experiential drawing technique, whereby two-
dimensional illustrations are spatially translated and tested
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Incubator
Unit 11 Incubator
Year 4 Unit 11 is established as a laboratory for research, invention and spatial

Alexander Chapman, imagination, pursued through an iterative, inquisitive and imaginative
Christopher Delahunt,
Johanna Just, Anthony Ko, process where modeling is key. We aim to challenge normative architectural
Milo de Luca, Vanessa Lafoy, conditions through modeling by methods such as replicas, prototypes,
Agostino Nickl, Grace Quah, science frameworks, operating protocols, and specimens.
Ho (Howell) Tsang
We are interested in developing individual approaches to design,
Year 5 posing real and hypothetical problems that are design-led and fed by
Felicity Barbur, Robin Farmer, research, curiosity and innovation, whereby design is guided by its own
Emma Kitley, Fergus Knox,
Adam Lampon, Mohamed (Ali) productive processes, which are intriguingly varied and dynamic and
Qureshi, Fergus Seccombe informed as much by questions as by answers.
Recently, we have looked at new forms of habitation which draw
Partners: Luke Pearson and
on the contemporary condition, borrowing and adapting technologies,
Sandra Youkhana
materials, typologies and conventions from the culture and processes
Thanks to Rhys Cannon of of the city and those of the natural environment. Last year we looked
Gruff Limited for Design
Realisation teaching and at technological strategies, geographical environments, science facts,
Stephen Webster for science fictions and myths, in conjunction with the extraordinary emerging
Structural Consultancy realties that surround the life of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Critics include: Shumi Bose, This year we revisited these interests in Chicago, where we
Kyle Buchanan, Margaret considered the city in its role as a historical and future incubator of
Bursa, Mel Dodd, Joseph speculative architectural and cultural scenarios. We scrutinized the built,
Grima, Dan Hill, Johan
Hybschmann, Holly Lewis, the unbuildable and inbuilt environments of the city. The mechanisms of the
Vicky Richardson, Tomas inaugural Chicago Biennial and its typical tropes of public art, interaction,
Stokke, Sabine Storp, Finn installation and pavilion design were contrasted with Chicago’s heroic city
Williams
planning and gargantuan infrastructural schemes.
Significant sites such as the city’s second shoreline, the much-abused
Chicago River; the Loop and the ‘Forever Open Clear and Free’ Lake
Michigan shore, were seen in parallel to the speculative physical and
cultural constructions of the Expo or Biennal which use architecture as
an agent and indicator of political, social and cultural trends and desires.
We researched how these contrasting modes of progress incubate new
ideas for urban life.
In Unit 11, students are encouraged to develop their own robust
research themes and architectural language, with the ambition that
speculative design ideas, informed by research and developed through
an iterative design process, seamlessly progress into tantalizing, exquisite
and cognizant architectural projects on a multitude of scales.
Briefs are real (see ‘Honey Run’ by Felicity Barber, or Emma Kitley’s
Primary School ‘Design/Play’ Workshops), hypothetically real (see Fergus
Knox’s self-propagating timber skyscrapers for Chicago), or exist in a
parallel imagined simulacra of the city (see ‘Data Scape’ by Johanna
Just, ‘Sim City Sprawl’ by Agostino Nickl and ‘Chicago Hyperlink’ by
Chris Delahunt).
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11.1
11.2
Fig. 11.1 Felicity Barber Y5, ‘Building Image: Mount Chicago’. cast into the walls and debris is placed into gabion baskets
Building Image is an ethnographical perspective on the to form a public landscape – the new cast spaces like
architecture of city life, exploring how one simplifies and headstones and the rubble, like ashes. As buildings in the city
maps Chicago’s urbanism through spatially engaging events. are demolished, more spaces are cast and the HQ grows taller,
The implementation of a cultural river festival acts to further a constant record of Chicago’s lost buildings.
stimulate city life periodically and in the long-term supports
the evolving generational growth of surrounding urban spaces.
Fig. 11.2 Christopher Delahunt Y4, ‘The Chicago Hyperlink’,
planometric perspective. A citywide masterplan for a visible
fibre optic network which aims to assert digital infrastructure
into the heart of Chicago. The cables become the central
nervous system for the next digital revolution: The Internet of
Things. Fig. 11.3 Vanessa Lafoy Y4, ‘Preservation Chicago HQ’.
Salvaged fragments from Chicago’s demolished buildings are
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11.4 11.5
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11.6 11.7
Fig. 11.4 Robin Farmer Y5, ‘An Urban Patchwork’. Proposing an sheltering, the virtual layer is reclaiming its space in the
alternative redevelopment surrounding Wrigley Field Stadium, analogue urban realm. Fig. 11.7 Alexander Chapman Y4,
the scheme looks to give permanency to an unstable site ‘Cowspiracy’, The Cowspiracy ranch seeks to question the
through a layered topography of health. Fig. 11.5 Milo De Luca limits of urban farming in the contexts of Chicago Stockyards,
Y4, ‘Time, Motion and Layers’. The ephemerality of the model’s once the meat capital of the world. The scheme addresses
form describes the flexible sequencing and orchestration of both local and citywide emissions of the bovine variety, along
space that comprise the project’s strategy. The slippage of with architectural herding mechanisms to retain productivity
multiple layers over the course of time articulate new forms and herd mentality.
and spaces that address the changing conditions within the
environment. Fig. 11.6 Johanna Just Y4, ‘Data Scape’. As WiFi
territory increasingly overlays public spaces in the cities, it
should be considered as new, virtual urban space, influencing
the physical. By materialising the data use in WiFi Hotspots,
a new spatial situation emerges: obstructing, bridging and
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11.8
S
Fig. 11.8 Agostino Nickl Y4, ‘Sprawl 2.0’. Playing against the GSEducationalVersion
Fig. 11.10 Adam Lampon Y5, ‘NoS Flow City’. Chicago is founded
rules of The Sims, the algorithm of the game is turned into a upon heavily contaminated swampland. Climate change and
suburban incubator capable of evaluating lived alternatives. By urbanisation place extreme stress on the city sewage system
S
reimplementing the winning strategies, a DIY manual allows the and local environment. My sustainable ‘no flow’ water
suburbanites to oversprawl their blank environment with a new management infrastructure integrates within the existing
S S
suburban layer: one celebrating the common, the shared and urban grid. Micro-watersheds separate storm water from
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the self-built. Fig. 11.9 Anthony Ko Y4, ‘An Architectural effluent to enhance the local hydrology and mitigate long-term
Paradox: Glitched Island’. Paradoxes are encoded within environmental damage.
collages as different ‘characters’; architectures are extruded
from these encoded collages. These are essential historic
fragments of Chicago that fall into oblivion during the city's S
development. Through creating glitches in objects and
architectural gestures, paradoxical histories are delineated
to resist eradication of evidence and memories of places.
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11.9
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11.10
11.11 11.12
11.13 11.14
Figs. 11.11 – 11.13 Emma Kitley Y5, ‘Playscapes for Chicago’. with legacy as the priority; providing remediation to the social
Playscapes for Chicago proposes an extended safe passage and environmental problems of Chicago’s post-industrial
to school that encourages independent neighbourhood play. sites. Legacy components are then temporarily misused
The design incorporates a variety of levels and textures, and altered to form stadiums and accommodation for the
overlooked spaces, water, height, permeable boundaries Games. Fig. 11.15 Fergus Knox Y5, ‘A Tall Timber Future’.
and an architecture aimed to facilitate the construction, An investigation into prefabricated timber skyscrapers
reconstruction and adaptation of their space. The design ‘galleons’ to be rolled out to the west of Chicago. Prefabricated
developed through a series of workshops with a group of galleons will challenge existing preconceptions about building
Primary School children – using the Flatpack Playscape Kit with wood. Manufactured within a giant assembly building,
to design their ideal playspaces. The proposal became a its unique branching structure supports modulated
collaborative process using the childrens’ ideas and priorities, accommodation.
play theory and material testing. Fig. 11.14 Fergus Seccombe
Y5, ‘Pilsen Olympics’. Learning from the mistakes of Chicago’s
failed bid for Summer 2016, the Pilsen Olympics are designed
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11.15
Home Ground
Unit 11 Home Ground
Year 4 San Francisco Bay is neither a wilderness nor a wasteland. The place
Felicity Barbur, Robin Farmer, between land and sea is impure and fertile, productive and profoundly
Emma Kitley, Fergus Knox,
Adam Lampon, Ali Qureshi, transformed. It is both the West’s most ecologically important estuary and
Fergus Seccombe its densest city.1
Year 5
Andrew Barrington, Nicholas The 21st century idea of home exists between the private space of the
Blomstrand, Harry Grocott, house and the public space of the city. The contained experience of private
Wei Zang (Lucas) Ler, Gareth space is projected onto the megascale of social, technological, economic,
Marriott, Ka Yee (Tracey)
Shum, Michael Slade, Marcus and environmental infrastructures. In San Francisco and the Bay Area,
Stockton a complex social and physical landscape – the city’s urban ecosystem –
is seen as a site for new typologies of inhabitation and challenges to the
Thanks to our hosts at
operations of public and private space.
Berkeley University, Nicholas

De Monchaux, Mark Anderson
and Laci Vidimsky, and to The Bay Area ‘Megalopolis’
Geoff Manaugh for joining us
on our San Fran trip. Thank The Bay Area can be imagined as a megacity, punctured, or maybe bound
you to our critics: Mark together, by a watery gap in the centre. Its binding edge is a hybrid
Anderson, Shumi Bose, Mags landscape where ‘lines on the land set apart wildlife preserves and paved
Bursa, Nat Chard, Peter Cook,
Nicholas De Monchaux, Johan urbanity and lines on the map segregating private and public property’.2
Hybschmann, Emma Flynn, The coastline, in an extraordinary act of terrestrial engineering, has been
Will Jeffries, Holly Lewis, repeatedly made and remade, to contain many of the land uses that cities
Geoff Manaugh, Ana Monrabal,
Luke Pearson, Narinder Sagoo, traditionally push to the edges – industrial and military sites such as oil
Bob Sheil, Jill Stonor, Laci refineries, chemical plants, waste dumps, airports, logistics hubs, quarries
Vidimsky, Tim Waterman, and explosive factories, in various stages of growth or decay, rub shoulders
Sandra Youkhana
with residential and civilian sites on the reclaimed topographies of polluted
mud flat and estuarine marsh. This exploited landscape is a reading of
history and economy of the city and society that formed on its shores.3
Make, Work, Home and Garden

This year’s programmes take on the demand for densified urban living that
embrace the city’s extraordinary dynamism and counter-cultures such as its
existing communities of microcities, ‘Google ghettos’, suburban hybrids and
self-sufficient communities to name a few.
With a spirit of optimistic invention we began with an introduction of
short micro-projects, making prototypical incisions and insertions into the
public body of San Francisco. These developed into new forms of habitation
which draw on the contemporary condition. They borrow technology,
materials, typologies and conventions from the industries, cultures and
processes of the city, to write another layer of history on the city.
1 Matthew Morse Booker, Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History Between the Tides.
(2013), University of California Press
2 Booker (2013), ibid
3 Lay of the Land, Center for Land Use Interpretation (2001)
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11.1
11.2 11.3
11.4 11.5
Fig. 11.1 Harry Grocott Y5, ‘The Mission Bay Hydro-Halls’. housing that harnesses the unique qualities of San Francisco’s
Rising out of an excavated stretch of artificial shoreline, fog. Houses occupy the air space above existing residential
the Hydro-Halls seek to challenge how we confront the effects neighbourhoods. Water is collected by membranes encasing
of rising sea levels. The scheme celebrates the influx of Bay each house to power an internal fuel cell.
water as both an environmental and recreational resource,
helping to embed the proposal within its Californian context.
Figs. 11.2 – 11.5 Gareth Marriott Y5, ‘Your Local Californian
SUPERSTORE’. The project reimagines the banal energy and
data storage of today’s internet giants as a dynamic terrain
in Silicon Valley. Exploring the energy potential of kinetic
architecture, within a mechanically saturated microclimate,
as the hypothetical context within which to propose a
prototype suburb: a massive inhabitable battery. Fig. 11.6
Fergus Knox Y4, ’Alta Vista, Densifying the Sunset’. Off-grid
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11.6
11.7 11.8
11.9 11.10
Fig. 11.7 Emma Kitley Y4, ‘1:1 Concrete Knot Prototype’. interaction between the topographical roof and the fog
Concrete is celebrated through various fabric formed creates ephemeral weather experiences. The fog serves
construction methods. Concrete knots form permeable walls as passive heating and cooling strategies, moderating the
between public space and private workshops where concrete building’s internal climate. Fig. 11.10 Robin Farmer Y4, ‘Beyond
canvas emergency housing units are fabricated. Fig. 11.8 the Closet’. An in-fill housing scheme rooted in the heart of the
Mike Slade Y5, ‘Recology Homes, Plastics Workshop Collage’. Castro that encourages the spirit of community to start at
Sorting hoppers, scanners and shredders process plastic home, creating a hidden community within the existing urban
waste delivered to the Brisbane Landfill site. Recycled block, nestling into the existing Victorian vernacular. Fig. 11.11
materials are channelled through a series of extrusion and Marcus Stockton Y5, ‘SPACE-CRAFT TI’. Explores the potential
injection moulding machines to form plastic building of video games to define and create spaces. Addressing the
components. This kit of parts is assembled into housing units derelict site of Treasure Island the project seeks to play out its
along the workshop’s production line. Fig. 11.9 Lucas Ler Y5, possible future. Approaching design through gamic planning
‘Fog Envelope’. The pleated envelope is designed to capture, and world design the site is treated as ‘game-space’ in which
store and harvest moisture from the San Francisco fog. The users can create alternate futures for this icon of the Bay.
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11.11
11.12
11.13 11.14
Fig. 11.12 Adam Lampon Y4, ‘Resistant Housing’. The project the drought in Napa Valley, this device allows the Vintner to
seeks to develop guest houses onto an existing playground taste the air and identify the ‘aerroir’, an airborne equivalent to
within the city of San Francisco. The architecture aims to terroir. The dust can then be captured in the vineyard and used
both increase low rise building density and improve a public to grow vines. Fig. 11.14 Ali Qureshi Y4, ‘The Alpine Sanctuary’.
recreational fitness playground by creating relationships Taking inspiration from the theological fables of the Swiss
between the private space of the house and the public space Alpine landscape the Alpine sanctuary is a spiritual retreat
of the city. The guest homes will form a new building typology consisting of a rock climbing programme and accommodation
and alternative method of living by combining fitness and for climbing enthusiasts. The relationship between these two
resistance into everyday life using various systems and programmes dictate sensorial moments within the building but
technologies. Low-tech and high-tech physical resistance also how the materiality and the image of the mountain can be
methods will work alongside human interaction to power these represented architecturally.
systems. The project aims to create a more sustainable self
powered mode of living. Fig. 11.13 Fergus Seccombe Y4,
‘The Vintner’s Mask’. As the amount of dust increases during
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11.15
Fig. 11.15 Ka Yee (Tracey) Shum Y5, ‘The Celebration of
Fleur de Sel’. The project observes the ecological aesthetics
of the post-industrial landscape of saltwork in the south Bay
Area, exploring how it can generate architecture that captures
the material colour and spatial quality simulated by the
crystallisation of salt. Fleur de sel (flower of salt) describes
this coral-like crystal salt with a high mineral complexity that
generates these multi-coloured mineral clouds. The natural
sequence of its production inspires the key spatial
organisation of the architecture.
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11.16
11.17 11.18
Fig. 11.16 Felicity Barbur Y4, ‘Pier 39, Home of the Tourist’. created by food production – much like the rural farming
A design scaled at ‘one to pier’. Iconographic landmarks a landscapes of America. The long ‘fingers’ make lorry loading/
tourist identifies with the image of the city of San Francisco unloading easier and also create pathways from the nearby
are distributed along an ascending roof-scape promenade. houses into the avocado farm. Along these paths are
Each icon hosts an attraction amenity space, such as a toilet community allotments which are used for growing and learning.
offering a vista with pier perspective. Figs. 11.17 – 11.18 Produce is then sold in the community cafe situated above the
Andrew Barrington Y5, ‘The New Visitacion Valley – an bridge in a new roadside diner.
Oasis for the Food Desert of San Francisco’. The scheme is
multi-layered with a food distribution and storage centre built
underneath an avocado farm. The farm acts as a public park
as well as a much needed source of fresh produce for the food
desert residents. This roof surface spreads out into the nearby
residential areas creating green spaces and walking routes
from each side of the site. The result is an artificial landscape
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11.19
Fig. 11.19 Nicholas Blomstrand Y5, ‘The Hollister Experiment’.
The faults across California are overdue a massive earthquake,
but the ability to predict precisely when the ‘big one’ will strike
still evades us. Scores of geologists, seismologists and
pseudo-scientists descend on the small town of Hollister,
waiting for an earthquake to study and experience it
first-hand. Faculty buildings, dormitories and seismic
interventions are arranged along a linear campus landscape
which cuts through the existing urban fabric and follows the
path of the ‘creeping’ Calaveras Fault.
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Ground Control
Unit 11 Ground Control
Year 4 “La suisse n’existe pas” (Switzerland does not exist) – in this one key sentence
Andrew Barrington, Nicholas Switzerland introduced itself at the World Exposition in Seville in 1992. This was
James Blomstrand, Katie
Browne, Harry Grocott, Wei because it is not uniformity, but variety in a small space that defines Switzerland. 1
Zeng (Lucas) Ler, Gareth
Marriott, Ka Yee (Tracey) Unit 11 pursues an interest in the intersection between architecture, landscape,
Shum, Marcus Stockton
science and technology, the natural and the synthetic – a form of environmental
Year 5 architecture where the landscape is both the site and the source of inspiration
William Armstrong, Jennifer and invention. This year Unit 11 travelled to Switzerland where the fusion of
Dyne, Daniel Felgendreher,
Mara-Sophia Kanthak, territorial, technical, political and social forces combine to produce a distinct
Rachel King, Daniel Lane, cultural and physical landscape that has provided the touchstone for our work.
David McGowan, Joseph
Paxton, Sandra Youkhana
Landlocked Islands
Thank you to our Switzerland has been described as a landlocked island, a result of physical
consultants: Dan Cash, isolation imposed by geological circumstance. In a country with four national
Stephen Foster, John Lyall
languages and 26 semi-autonomous self-governed Cantons, it is perhaps
Thanks also to our critics: no surprise that Switzerland does not consider itself to exist in the terms of
Shumi Bose, Margaret Bursa, monolithic statehood understood by its European neighbours.
Pedro Font Alba, Bill
Hodgson, Will Hunter, Johan Swiss isolationism is perhaps most dramatically expressed in the Swiss
Hybschmann, Alan Penn, National Redoubt, a defensive plan developed in the 1880s and only recently
Zofia Trafas, Patrick Weber, downscaled, which augments the natural alpine fortress with an extensive safety
Finn Williams, Oliver Wilton
net of manmade booby traps laced into key infrastructure, combined with
carefully located and disguised trompe l’oeil fortifications. Today this Swiss
national ‘resistance’ is increasingly at odds with the ongoing urbanisation and
internationalism of the region. Cultural and physical flexibility challenges the old
topographic order and rustic sentimentality with which the Swiss conceal their
modernity.
Historically the landscape has attracted enthusiasts, artists, architects and
engineers alike, however the awesome dominance of its sublime and elemental
mountains belies a culture of modernity and innovation. The mountains provide
an environment for scientific research in the form of instrumented field sites
(which investigate environmental events such as avalanche control and
ecosystem monitoring), and the mammoth technical landscape of the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN housed in a 27-kilometer tunnel 100m underground.
Lie of the Land

Our work this year has focused on technological strategies, geographical
environments, science facts, science fictions, cultural myths and emerging
realties. Real and hypothetical problems have been posed and scrutinised
in our studio-cum-laboratory environment. We have explored the conditions,
incentives and results of cultural resistance and change, and interrogated the
paradoxes, dualities and antithetical relationships inherent in the Swiss
landscape and culture.
1. Ben Vautier
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11.1
11.2 11.3
11.4 11.5
Fig. 11.1 Daniel Lane Y5, ‘The Old Bern Snow Mountain maintain a connection to the heavens through large glazed
Paradise’, site plan. Draped over the rooftops of Bern, areas of the roof and lead out onto balconies overlooking the
the Snow Mountain compounds the urban and alpine centre of the Swiss capital. Fig. 11.4 – 11.5 William Armstrong
landscapes, redefining the ski empire of Switzerland in a Y5. Using the compositional principles of the picturesque
warmer future where snow is scarce. Fig. 11.2 Lucas Ler Y4, movement the Gletscherschlucht Seasonal Hotel, Switzerland,
‘Projecting Light onto Cloudscapes’. The atmospheric quality shifts seasonally, creating a composite landscape where the
created by the microclimate in the room can be further instability of the alpine geology and the stability of the
enhanced by projecting light on to the cloudscape. Inspired picturesque ideal are jointly visible, shifted and celebrated.
by Anthony McCall’s works, an ephemeral enclosure can be Fig. 11.6 Marcus Stockton Y4, ‘SÄNTIS:MET/GEOstn’. A user
created by just using light and moisture in the air. Fig. 11.3 deployed off-grid habitation scheme designed to overcome
Nicholas Blomstrand Y4, ‘Syrian Refuge in Bern’. Residential the issues posed by inhabiting remote locations. The core
courtyards borrow heavily from the traditional Syrian vernacular building elements (sledges) are designed to enable users
and are, in essence, the refugees’ front rooms – spaces for to transport supplies over difficult terrain and to make sure
meeting and socialising. These intensely decorated spaces everything taken to site has a purpose.
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11.6
11.7 11.8
11.9 11.10
Fig. 11.7 Andrew Barrington Y4, using ice to create a ‘negative’ open up with the references marked on them emphasising
of an existing building in the centre of Berne, Switzerland. a sense of progression. Fig. 11.9 Daniel Felgendreher Y5,
Voids become solids and solids become voids. The new terrain ‘Terminal Lead Repository’, Thun. Speculating on a post-
creates a unique surface on which to move over, but one that military time, the obsolete garrison is redeveloped into a
still responds to the original formwork underneath. The recycling site for the contaminated soil of 6000 abandoned
building can now be read through the eyes of a climber as Swiss shooting ranges. The project deals with both the
roof ledges become cornices and arcades become ice caves. sociocultural legacy of Swiss shooting traditions and its toxic
Fig. 11.8 Tracey Shum Y4, ‘Mapping the Swiss Crevasse’. The materialisation by proposing a soil phytoremediation process
body of the model describes the dense, dynamic environment on Indian mustard fields. Fig. 11.10 Rachel King Y5, the ‘New
of a crevasse with wire articulations portraying the different Lausanne Transhumance Valley’ recontextualises essential
heights and curvatures of the space. They are connected in elements of rural Swiss farm life into the urbanscape. This
a way that accentuates the fluidity of the environment. The works as a radical means to reconnect local residents with a
vertical brass poles are turned and controlled by muscle wire diminished traditional dairy landscape, injecting a direct visual
devices, creating environments that gradually enclose and abundance of cows, pastures and farmers back into the heart
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11.11
11.12
of the city. Fig. 11.11 Harry Grocott Y4, ‘Bern White Water
Centre’, sectional model (pontoon). Milled high-density
composite, acid-etched steel and 3D printed components.
The pontoon is designed to rise and fall with fluctuations in
the level of the glacially sourced river Aare, while the conditions
required to enable white water kayaking, surfing and bathing
are generated and balanced by the systems of the building
itself. Fig. 11.12 David McGowan Y5, ‘Little Switzerland’ explores
how the re-appropriation of the sense of place can be asserted
onto the site of Matlock Bath, which is commonly known as
the ‘Switzerland of Britain’ through a series of prescribed
vantage points and experiences that aim to enhance this
existing relationship.
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11.13
11.14
Fig. 11.13 Jennifer Dyne Y5, ‘Strangelet Defenchalets’. Passers-by behave as the ‘Alps’ as they block the sounds
Could a strangelet from the Large Hadron Collider threaten between. Fig. 11.15 Joe Paxton Y5, ‘Field Research
the landscape of Switzerland’s defence strategy? The Community’. Taking advantage of Switzerland’s vast water
Defenscape, a zone in the heart of the Alps, protects the resource, new lakes and ice reserves augment the Alpine
country’s population from perceived attack. Luxurious holiday landscape providing a more resilient store of water and energy
lodges transform into dense survival mode, creating a Swisslet for the future of Switzerland and its European neighbours.
community complete with mini Matterhorn and numerous Synthesising these two new elements of the landscape, the
Swiss imitations, concealments and dualities – the Swiss Army Field Research Community takes on a new role of monitoring
Knife of bunkers. Fig. 11.14 Gareth Marriot Y4, ‘Trans-Alpine and preserving ice in its many states, whilst simultaneously
Network Instrument’. A series of responsive terrain instruments benefiting from this new resource. Regulated melt water feeds
that interact with their surroundings and with each other. The into the wider Super-River network across Switzerland which
‘terrain’ has been refined into slip cast reverberation chambers; aids flood mitigation, water buffering, energy buffering, and
tones are then amplified through ‘alphorn’ structures: with freshwater storage.
echoes performed based on the level of the initial interaction.
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11.15
11.16 11.17
11.18 11.19
Fig. 11.16 – 11.17 Sandra Youkhana Y5, ‘Media Planning’. between consented structures and the physical landscape,
An architecture clobbered by actions of engagement with they are read as a low-resolution form of visual verification.
the media of planning, speculating on new morphologies Fig. 11.18 – 11.19 Sandra Youkhana Y5, ‘Andermatt, Swiss Alps’.
that not only apply, but emphasise the latent possibilities Combined with the application of reinterprative planning
offered by regulation. Andermatt’s Building Code states, strategies that reveal the design potential held by Andermatt’s
‘Angled and detached buildings are vertically projected onto Zoning Plan and Building Code, the proposal seeks to gain
the lengthening of the corresponding façade’. This projection an understanding of the commune and its role in the
of angles onto corresponding façades continues the language development of Switzerland, re-emphasising the country’s
of existing buildings onto those yet to be designed. The growth unique relationship to its landscape through a reshaping of
of one approved angle to a body of another carves out parts the Alpine vernacular. In contrast to existing structures in
of the building that respond to neighbouring roof pitches. the area, it is an example of a new typology offered through
Baugespann poles applied to Swiss landscape indicate the coercion. The scheme examines the Swiss tendency to inhabit
volume of a forthcoming building or structure at 1:1. Standing indeterminate types of terrain, communicating an inversion of
as a planning medium that facilitates for the relationship the valley within the flatness of the commune.
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11.20
Fig. 11.20 Mara-Sophia Kanthak Y5, Si le Soleil ne Revenait pas framing the village church that employs fibreoptic cables to
– after C.F. Ramuz’s novel from 1937 – recounts the story of redirect the sunlight gathered by the tower into the building.
Grengiols’ inhabitants and their fear that the sun won’t return As such, the church interior turns into a permanent celebration
after one long winter in which the village, located in the Rhône of light.
valley and overshadowed by the highest Swiss mountains,
does not receive direct sunlight – a condition the villagers call
‘schattenhalb’. The dystopian scenario of the disappearing sun
incites the villagers to devise architectures and infrastructures
of preparation in different scales that stage and cherish
shadow, darkness and the diminished light: a 350 metre high
tower, reaching over the shadow into the sunlight; light saunas;
dark zones for eye adaptation; mirrored light sharing tunnels
between the neighbour’s and the own house to utilise the
artificial interior illumination most efficiently; and an installation
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Proving Ground
Unit 11
Proving Ground
Laura Allen, Mark Smout, Kyle Buchanan
‘A critical understanding of our own inability to 4,500 islands which ring its extensive coastal
control the world, it turns out, is essential to edge. The Florida Everglades, a National Park
shaping it.’ Elizabeth Diller in Space Suit: and UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a vast near
Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas De Monchaux flat semi-tropical wetland of shallow water and
soaked plains that flow slowly south to Florida Bay.
Unit 11 continues to explore land use and the In a remarkably rapid period of human intervention,
corresponding architectures, technologies, a succession of unfortunate meteorological events,
infrastructures and ecologies inherent in the short-sighted political whims and unabashed hubris,
anthropogenic landscape. Last year we sought the hydrological balance and lush ecologies of the
out the indivisibility of architecture and the Everglades and surrounding wetland wilderness
infrastructural, social and natural landscapes of New were transformed from a ‘River of Grass’ to
York. This year we turned our focus to technological a fabricated, computer-controlled pumping
innovations, space spin-offs, adapted technologies ground supplying fresh water for the industrial,
and hybrid processes that result in the production agricultural and domestic demands of the growing
of landscapes that can subsequently be defined as urban area sprawl.
techno-nature. To do this, we explored the liminal
and engineered landscapes of southern Florida as Techno-Nature
well as the systematic landscape of Cape Canaveral Settlements, property lines and suburban sprawl
and its hinterlands of military and space industries. are terraformed from dynamic tidal and ‘liquid’ land.
This has been facilitated by large-scale canalisation
In Florida, collisions between humanity, the natural and drainage projects intended to create a dry
environment and technology can be brutal. The landscape, engineered for utility to protect
cataclysmic hurricanes and fiercely powerful electric inhabitants from the intolerable consequences
storms; attempts to shift the entire watershed of of the natural cycles of changeable weather. The
the peninsula; and the screaming acidic emissions wetland topography has succumbed to technology
of Saturn V’s 34 Mega-Newton rockets are all and artifice, concealed in the flows of nature.
examples of the capricious and diverse nature
of its environments. The Floridian environment clearly demonstrate how
actions, reactions, consequences, catastrophes,
Surface to Air coincidences, policies, and whims, can alter the
In 1961 the first manned sub-orbital flight rose from environment from wilderness, to cultivated
the slowly shifting sands of the barrier islands that landscape via a kind of fabricated and systematic
hug Florida’s Atlantic coast. The liminal site, which ecology, in an inextricably linked but unstable
started life as a node in the Atlantic Coast Defense equilibrium.
System, was chosen for missile testing and manned
flight due to a coincidence of geographical, climatic The Unit 11 studio is established as a laboratory
and geophysical factors. Its isolated location for research, invention and spatial imagination,
provided a huge over-water flight area removed pursued through an iterative, inquisitive and
from populated landmasses and shipping lanes. imaginative process where modelling is key.
We aim to challenge normative architectural
Liquid Land conditions through modelling by methods such
Florida’s landscape is defined by water. The state as replicas, prototypes, science frameworks,
can boast 700 artesian springs, 30,000 lakes, ponds operating protocols, and specimens. We examine
and sinks, 1,200 rivers, streams and creeks and technological strategies, geographical environments
166
and science facts as well as science fictions,
via a series of workshops and quick projects.
Our Florida workshop and site visits where in

collaboration with Columbia University’s Studio-X
Co-directors, Geoff Manaugh author of BLDGBLOG,
Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography and Professor
Nat Chard author of Drawing Uncertainty.
Many thanks to our Unit 11 practice consultants,

John Lyall at Lyall Bills & Young, Stephen Foster at

Milk Structural Engineering and Dan Cash at Max
Fordham and to our critics this year: Aaron Betsky,
David Bickle, Daisy Ginsburg, Chris Hatherhill, Will
Hunter, Johan Hybschmann, Sarah Ichioka, Alex
Kaiser, Holly Lewis, Olly Wainwright, Peg Rawes,
Vicky Richardson, Ben Ridley, Ingrid Schroder and
Tim Waterman.
Year 4
William Armstrong, Jennifer Dyne, Daniel
Felgendreher, Mara-Sophia Kanthak, Rachel King,
Danny Lane, David McGowan, Sandra Youkhana
Year 5
Farah Badaruddin, Alexandra Banksie Critchley,
Alisan Dockerty, Rebecca Fode, Sonila Kadillari,
Yee Yan (Adrienne) Lau, Tom Partridge, Harriet
Redman, Luke Royffe
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11.2
11.1 11.3
11.8
Fig. 11.1 Alisan Dockerty, Y5, The Riparian Resort. The mini golf hole. Utilising vapour from a local source, the
ecologically engineered resort aims to reintroduce the diversity intervention acts as a green buffer to heal the urban hardscape
of the historic Kissimmee River whilst providing a community of Miami. Fig. 11.4 Luke Royffe, Y5, Balancing Catastrophe -
for ‘snowbirds’, a migratory population of retirees. The resort East Coast Arks. The future Floridian landscape will be
enables the coexistence of these parallel phenomena in order transformed by the increasing frequency of catastrophic
to relinquish the over consuming nature of tourism, reinventing events. This will expose the inadequacy of Florida’s closed
the Florida dream and developing a new type of river forms of defensive infrastructure and defective housing
restoration. Fig. 11.2 William Armstrong, Y4, The Citrus Battery. typologies. The project, Catastrophology, proposes to densify
The project explores the artificial nature of the citrus industry Miami’s housing typologies and reconfigure existing protective
that actively advertises itself as producing a natural product by infrastructures. A new East Coast Reactive Levee will create
transforming oranges into simple biochemical batteries that a permeable threshold between Miami and the Everglades
produce long lasting low voltage power. Fig. 11.3 Rachel King, National Park. Integrated into the reactive levee, self sustaining
Y4, The Mini Golf Speciator. The project establishes a Arks form a network of inhabited biomes that embrace the
climatically adjusted local environment masquerading as a natural event of catastrophe.
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11.4
11.5 11.6
11.7 11.8
Fig. 11.5 Tom Partridge, Y5, Weirding Miami Beach. The the altered, unstable ground conditions left behind by the
Realigned Management plan speculates on the future of mining system. Fig. 11.7 Danny Lane, Y4, South Beach Bakery,
Miami Beach in a ‘weirding’ world, where rising sea levels Miami. The damp cardboard jacket behaves as an inhabitable
and extreme weather require the reintegration of the coastal building fabric which generates the climatic conditions
landscape into the urban street grid. The whole island acts demanded by the processes of the bakery. This project
to attenuate storms, from a new artificial beach where sand celebrates Florida’s love of air-conditioning but challenges
is treated as a valuable commodity to the Surgulator: an the routine method of how it is achieved. Fig. 11.8 Mara-Sophia
emergency energy storage device to reboot the city after Kanthak, Y4, The Everglades Replenishment Project. A water
a storm. Fig. 11.6 Daniel Felgendreher, Y4, The de-watering refilling station for Recreational Vehicles on one of the tree
blanket explores different strategies to enhance the islands in the subtropical wetlands. The water purification
consolidation of industrial waste clay present in post- process is exhibited on an elevated coaster structure,
phosphate mining landscapes in central Florida. The tested combining Floridian fun park culture with a contribution
de-watering mechanisms were envisioned to become part of to the endangered Everglades ecosystem.
a building’s structure proposing an architecture that adapts to
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11.9
11.10
Fig. 11.9 Sonila Kadillari, Y5, Pre-Ecopoiesis Mars Yard (PEMY). independent long-term use for the mined site. The resulting
PEMY explores the topography and light simulations of Mars landscape typology is a hybrid of technological systems and
within the terrestrial setting of Florida. It functions as the main a familiar natural environment.
site for autonomous Mars Rover test drives, temperature
resistance and colour calibration as well as providing public
exposure to scientific testing. Fig. 11.10 Rebecca Fode, Y5,
The Everglades Artifice, Plan of the Pig Frog Conservation
Pond. The Everglades Artifice proposes the transformation
of a currently destructive limestone mining industry
within Miami-Dade‘s Lake Belt into a productive process.
It investigates how existing mining processes and
infrastructures can be harnessed in order to construct
a secondary artificial wetland landscape, preserving the
Everglades ecosystem as a tourist attraction, ensuring an
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11.11
11.12
Fig. 11.11 Alexandra Banksie Critchley, Y5, Living on Unstable growing environments, to protect a sole surviving tree. Trees
Ground, Florida’s Sinking City, Crushed Long Section. The within one citrus species are genetically identical, by saving a
unstable geology of West-Central Florida frequently gives rise single tree it is possible to regenerate a lost landscape: the
to a phenomenon known as sinkholes. Entire buildings can be citrus grove.
swallowed by the ground, putting lives at risk. The proposed
domestic architecture has been designed to survive their
occurrence by means of a frictional dissipative steel structure,
a sacrificial crumple zone and a tuned liquid damper. Fig. 11.12
Harriet Redman, Y5, Citrus Survival Centre, Plan of the
Pathogen Testing Lab. Florida’s citrus industry is in a state of
emergency, Citrus Canker and Greening diseases were first
found in 1995 and have since spread statewide. Eradication is
no longer possible. The Citrus Survival Centre employs varying
levels of quarantine to create intentionally infected and sterile
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11.13
11.14
Fig. 11.13 Yee Yan (Adrienne) Lau, Y5, Reshaping Suburbia.

Taking advantage of the fact that many foreclosed homes
are sold at prices below their construction costs, their materials
are recycled and re-configured into new model homes that
co-house both locals and temporary residents. Subversive
marketing is the key to popularise this new type of domestic
architecture, which introduces healthy density and communal
living into the traditionally conservative and isolated suburbia.
Fig. 11.14 Jennifer Dyne, Y4, Symbiotic Inhalation Lichen
Laboratory: Could Cryptothecia Striata, an elusive lichen found
deep in the Floridian landscape, solve NASA’s radiation crisis?
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11.15
174
11.16
Fig. 11.15 Farah Badaruddin, Y5, From Cloud to Ground: relationships to each resident. A new terrain is created through
Harnessing Lightning at Cape Canaveral. This project the manipulation of site spoil with mounds acting as anchor
investigates the grave repercussions of NASA space points for temporary extensions of the island positioned
exploration program, where it contributed to a significant along the outer edge, extending public use of the waterfront.
amount of pollution to the surrounding Florida’s landscape.
The project theorised on the notion of harnessing lightning
for soil remediation purposes and the fabrication of fulgurites
as byproducts of lightning. This adaptive reuse is hoped to
rejuvenate the surrounding landscape of Cape Canaveral and
Merritt Island into a space tourism hub and Space Lightning
Thrills Park. Fig. 11.16 Sandra Youkhana, Y4, Imagineering
Miami: Star Island Peak Points. Situated in the mouth of the
Biscayne Bay, the island stands as a biproduct of dredging
processes in Miami Beach. Plots are distinguished by their
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Super-Urban-Mega-Listic
Unit 11
SUPER-URBAN-MEGA-LISTIC
Laura Allen, Mark Smout, Kyle Buchanan
“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could

be given only by travelling; namely, the strange.”
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
MArch Arch Un i t 11
In recent years Unit 11 has looked at the responsiveness of architecture to

natural landscape and how contrasting attitudes of nostalgia and tradition,
policy and progress can be the stimulus for progressive architecture. This year
we asked students to explore and exhibit the indivisibility of architecture
and the infrastructural, social and natural landscapes of the urban world.
We invited a miscellany of ‘urban speciation’ which synthesizes myth, mystery
and the profound peculiarity of reality into intriguing and richly visualized
Infrastructural Architectures and Mega-Urban Ecologies.
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Forty years ago the Italian avant-garde architectural collective, Superstudio,
16 4
created the Continuous Monument, a radical and dystopian proposition in which
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a global extrusion of the city, fashioned as a single piece of architecture, is
laid over the metropolis and beyond. In the New York Extrusion project we see ‘New
B A RT LET T 2012
New York’ containing the built up form of Manhattan arranged into a ‘great plain
of ice, clouds or sky reflecting its surrounding and revealing little of itself’
whilst forming ‘a world rendered uniform by technology, culture and all the
other inevitable forms of imperialism’. Many of the last century’s speculative
fantasies, visionary fictions and retroactive manifestos such as Buckminster
Fuller’s Manhattan Dome (1950), Ron Herron’s Walking City (1964), the Lower
Manhattan Express Way by Paul Rudolph (1967) and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York
(1978) were sited in Manhattan. Then as now the city stood as a symbol of what is
good and simultaneously what is bad about American urban culture, making the city
apposite for utopian and dystopian megaschemes and super-structural projects as a
response to the cultural pressures and architectural politics of the day.
The megascheme positions architecture at the convergence of urbanism, engineering

and infrastructure. These conceptual speculations as well as New York’s
megastructural remnants such as the Washington Bridge Extension Complex and
idealist visions such as the United Nations Headquarters and Rockefeller Centre,
exploit the vertical and horizontal – three-dimensional – infrastructure of
Manhattan’s built and natural environments which overlap and entwine to form a
nexus of the technological, cultural and natural world.
Manhattan’s infrastructural systems of road, rail, power, water, communications,

sanitation, commodity and waste are cited as the most complex and extensive of
any developed city and exist in parallel with one another stretching across
Manhattan to the commercial, industrial and residential boroughs that surround
it. They are fused into the everyday life of the city and its inhabitants to
the extent that delivering fresh coffee, activating road crossings, monitoring
drinking water and cleaning the streets form part of an invisible yet intrinsic
system of provision, support and control.
The Past, Present and Future of Big Ideas
We began by looking at New York from afar. Following film screenings and readings,
students examined the curious realities of the city’s support structures,
political manifestos, and avant-garde attitudes. They developed propositions
that speculated about the actual and potential architectural impact of the
systems that drive the everyday operation and formation of the urban reality. We
sought to operate at the interface between architecture and the city’s cultural,
environmental and build infrastructures. The studio examined systems ranging
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from the New York steam network, brownouts, food distribution, water and waste
page
management, to the potential for mineral extraction from the bedrock of Manhattan.
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We then advanced initial investigations into definitive proposals: Year 5 developing
thesis design projects; Year 4 design realization buildings on site in New York.
B A RT LET T 2012
Projects explored physical and systematic propositions at the scale of the city,
whilst investigating the tectonic, lyrical, and architectural impact of these.
Following the success of last years ‘Los Angeles Super-Workshop’ we again

collaborated with writer and blogger Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG). Our New York trip
was hosted by the GSAPP Columbia University’s Manhattan based Studio-X venue,
of which Manaugh is a Director. Guided by local experts we explored and visited
ventilation systems, steam plants, and transport networks, many of which are
rarely open or even known to the general public. The knowledge and experience of
the characters who operate and manage these systems day to day was invaluable in
animating the potential of infrastructure to impact on our experience of the city.
Thanks to our external consultants: Sarah Bell, Dan Cash, Stephen Foster, Murray
Fraser, Daisy Froud, Ben Godber, Eva Macnamara, Barbara Penner, Jason Slocombe,
and Oliver Wilton. Special thanks to John Lyall and Geoff Manaugh.
Year 4: Farah Badaruddin, Banksie Critchley, Alisan Dockerty, Rebecca Fode,

Imogen Holden, Sonila Kadillari, Yee Yan (Adrienne) Lau, Tom Partridge,
Biten Patel, Harriet Redman, Luke Royffe
Year 5: Janinder Bhatti, Emma Flynn, Theo Games Petrohilos, Victor Hadjikyriacou,
Amy Hiley, Jonathan Kaminsky, Daniel Marmot, Marcus Todd
Fig. 11.1 Theo Games Petrohilos. The Air Futures Building,
Wall Street, stands as the headquarters of the alchemic
financial system that trades the air above Manhattan.
Air bankers and their architecture of mania manipulate
investments, investors and air flows to their own ends
in this speculative future of the city’s existing TDR
(Transferable Development Rights) market. Regulation
nodes and air column model. Fig. 11.2 Yee Yan Adrienne
Yau. The Inverted Street Market exploits Manhattan’s strict
street vendors regulations. Fig. 11.3 Victor Hadjikyriacou.
The Golden Core. A project investigating the expansion of
the United Nations as a global economic organisation.
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11.1 11.2
11.3
Fig. 11.4 Jon Kaminsky. Powered Parkland: The Museum of Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan. Limited availability of
Steam. The parkland exposes the hidden infrastructure of fresh fruit and veg is a consistent issue in NYC, which has
NYC’s district steam system providing an alternative to the a inadequate network of supermarkets and food retailers.
city’s extreme seasonality via tempered microclimates that The project proposes a food distribution network that uses
smooth the winter climate at varying speeds. Warm areas canals to reconnect Manhattan with its rural hinterland in
are incorporated for the growth of tropical and unseasonal New York State. Model showing a ‘market-hub’ where canal
plants and crops, as well as warm lawns, heated bathing boats moor-up as market stalls.
pools and walkways. Fig. 11.5 Sonila Kadillari. Studies for
a Blackout City. This model explores how darkness can
be used to reveal and how light can hide. Studies for
Madison Observatory celestial viewing corridors. Fig. 11.6
Tom Partridge. The Manhattan Air Spa. Test model for an
activated air-landscape, driven by the thermal vortices
that form around tall buildings showing the flotation
of elements. Fig. 11.7 Harriet Redman. The Lock Inn,
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11.4 11.5
11.6 11.7
Fig. 11.8 Alisan Doherty. Watershed Public Toilet, J.P Licensing, Farringdon, London. A building for the storage
Morgan Chase Bank Plaza, Manhattan. This project of copyrights, licenses, and secret recipes. Axonometric
develops a new take on the traditional NYC public of the main core. Fig. 11.12 Luke Royffe. Macy’s Balloon
plaza. Super-scale water harvesters collect and treat Factory, Pier 75 NYC. A sectional model showing the
storm water and reuse it as a public spectacle and assembly of ‘Kermit’ the largest inflatable character
public toilet. Fig. 11.9 Banksie Critchley. Landscape of in the Macy’s parade. The building is constructed from
Sleepless Light, Sara D Rooselvelt Park, Manhattan. layered membranes hung on a lightweight frame, and
Colour spectrum modelling exposing concealed routes can be expanded in response to the inflation (during the
over a subterranean landscape. Fig. 11.10 Marcus Todd. fabrication process) of the dirigibles within, transcribing
Proximity without Presence. An exploration of New the preparations for the parade into the consciousness
York as the original cinematic city, through readings of of the city.
Alfred Hitchcock’s New York-based films. Arced models
investigate the conceptual and physical gap between
interior and exterior in the construction of filmic space.
Fig. 11.11 Farah Badaruddin. Scriptorium Institute of
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Fig. 11.13 — 11.14 Emma Flynn. Trash Can Utopias: a wasteful dystopia to its promised utopia. It explores the
Transforming the Waste Landscape of Long Island taboo and unpopular issue of garbage, challenging the
Suburbia, Hicksville, Long Island, NY. Since suburbia’s invisibility and unsustainability of the current garbage
proliferation in the U.S. more Americans now live in the infrastructure, it proposes that waste management
suburbs than either the city or the country. Designed for should be brought closer to our everyday environments,
a post war era and the collective American dream of the increase energy efficiency and off-grid communities,
1940s, the suburban typology is out of touch with the whilst retaining the utopian image of suburbia to which
issues of today. Inherently wasteful and unsustainable, many still aspire.
in terms of both space and resource consumption, the
current suburban model needs to be readdressed in the
face of increasing energy and environmental concerns.
‘Trash Can Utopias’ explores waste’s historic role and
future potential in the vision and creation of utopias, and
how, in the specific case of Long Island suburbia, waste,
and waste technologies, can transform the suburbs from
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11.14
Fig. 11.15 Rebbeca Fode. L.E.S Quarry Tenement Museum. create an ecological, recreational and social catalyst.
This project speculates that the Lower East Side’s Fig. 11.18 Janinder Bhatti. Sacrificial Flooding: The
Inwood Marble geology is more valuable than real estate Manhattan Island Bluebelt. Rock and Ramble detail. The
prices and proposes the excavation and subsequent scheme proposes the ‘Sacrificial Flooding’ of Central Park
redevelopment of cliff sites and memorialised spaces. in order to deal with the problem of flooding in New York
Fig. 11.16 — 11.17 Amy Hiley. Green Living City Wall, which results from the increasing climate extremes and
Hudson County, New Jersey. The ‘City Wall’ is an imagined the city’s outdated water infrastructure. Central Park is
super-dense vegetative structure; large greenhouses for redesigned as an inhabitable water infrastructure which
food growth, interconnected with walkways and cycle collects, cleans and subsequently recycles and exploits
paths, sky forest towers, recreational gardens, and farm storm water to produce microclimates, energy, food and
market towers, fed through a circular metabolic method drinking water for the inhabitants of the city.
of managing and storing local water cycles. The wall
wraps itself along the periphery of urban environments
reflecting a sense of continuity, and synthesizing
landscape, green infrastructure and architecture to
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11.16 11.17
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11.18
Arcadia vs. Utopia
ARCADIA VS.
a found natural paradise — and the other
M A rc h A rch U n i t 11
of an invented Utopia — an empty space
UTOPIA
inviting development’.
The bucolic valley that first invited
modern settlement and formed a footing
W.J.T. Mitchell’s Landscape and Power for the agricultural and industrial
examines landscape as an instrument of infrastructure that followed, provided
cultural force. On the opening page, the a formidable challenge to the city’s
author makes contrasting readings about development. The region is prone to
the ambiguity and status of landscape, forest fires, drought, flash floods,
stating, ‘Landscape is a natural scene noxious fog, landslides, debris flows,
mediated by culture. It is both a climatic extremes, seismic activity,
represented and presented space, both surface oil seepage and methane clouds.
a signifier and a signified, both a This tacit connection with nature, even
frame and what a frame contains, both in the most apparently manufactured
a real place and its simulacrum, both landscapes, together with our human
a package and the commodity inside the urge to manipulate and control our
package.’ These polarities go a long way environment, formed the focus of our
towards defining the complexity of our studies this year.
relationship with landscape. The unit was energised by the
Unit 11 continues to enquire into Landscape Futures Super-Workshop
architecture that synthesises landscape organised in collaboration with writer
and its relationship with culture and and blogger Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) and
environment. This year we focused on Los hosted by Los Angeles’ Centre of Land
Angeles, a megalopolis where the urban Use Interpretation, where we explored
panorama is composed of an unremitting the San Gabriel Mountain remediation
parade of anonymous mid-rise buildings structures, debris basins and domestic
scattered amid a fabric of low-density storm modifications, urban oil fields, tar
neighbourhoods and a miscellany of pop- pits and camouflaged rigs, diverted water
up ephemera and drive-in diner kitsch. courses, dry lakes and dust storms, urban
LA’s rapid development seems the agriculture and disaster preparedness.
ongoing consequence of a melange
of unconscious acts, serendipitous Many thanks to Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
discoveries and short-sighted civic and Nicola Twilley, Matt Coolidge (CLUI)
strategies — ‘with each development and John Lyall our practice tutor.
boom, massive industry transformation
and gentrification of its urban Year 4: Janinder Bhatti, Marcel Croxson,
landscape, LA has reinvented itself and Emma Flynn, Theodore Games Petrohilos,
willed itself into a city unburdened Victor Hadjikyriacou, Amy Hiley, Jon
by history’. Its expansion has been Kaminsky, Daniel Marmot, Marcus Todd
described as the result of ‘two Year 5: Ioana Barbantan, Sigrid
competing mythologies of place and Bylander, Rina Kukaj, Adam Lansdown-
space, one of an acquired Arcadia — Bridge, Justin Randle, Spencer Treacy
Laura Allen & Mark Smout
p. 92
M A rc h A rc h U ni t 1 1
11.1
Fig. 11.1 Justin Randle. The California Co-op. Based on

open admission, democratic decision making, barter and
exchange, the free flow of information and employing the
skills and technologies of recently redundant industries,
the Co-op provides work, shelter and the necessities of life
to all amongst the wreckage of Haynes Generating Station,
Los Angeles.
p. 93
11.2 11.3
11.4
Fig. 11.2 Janinder Bhatti. Los Angeles Children’s Asthma placement sites in the form of mountainous pastoral
Clinic: Cultivating Air Fig. 11.3 Marcus Todd. Medical landscapes in the urban sprawl. Fig. 11.6 Spencer Treacy.
Marijuana Farm and Treatment Centre, Eaton Wash Shangri-la in Shittesville, Compton, Los Angeles, aims to
Reservoir, Pasadena, CA. A hybridised productive amalgamate the residential with industrial, olfactory with
landscape forms a new ground above the flood line. visual, philosophical with financial and the urban with
A treatment centre and dispensary hovers over a gridshell agricultural. Located on the site of a decommissioned brick
pleasure garden. Greenhouses with respite care cabins quarry. The ‘Olfactory Factory’ combines the process of
are held on solid rafts between thin trays of hydroponic waste water treatment works with an urban residential
trenches. Fig. 11.4 Adam Lansdown-Bridge. Pattern scheme. Fig. 11.7 Theodore Games Petrohilos. The Petrol
Book Los Angeles explores the new architectural Powered Music Exploring Machine ‘Barry’ explores the
language emergent in the prototypal landscape of LA. streets of Los Angeles powered by the engines that pollute
Fig. 11.5 Amy Hiley. Each year LA’s Department of Public the city. It attempts to overcome the lack of tactility that
Works relocates approximately 300,000 cubic yards of comes with an automobile-obsessed city and thrives off
sediment and debris which collects in the debris basins the touch of Los Angelenos. Fig. 11.8 Victor Hadjikyriacou.
at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. The scheme ‘Anemos’ Wind Scanning Device, Owens Lake, CA. An
proposes an alternative to trucking ‘waste’ to sediment unmanned device harnesses the wind energy from the
p. 9 4
M A rc h A rc h U ni t 1 1
11.5 11.6
11.7 11.8
11.9 11.10
noxious Keeler Fog with the aim of revitalising the polluted

desert landscape of Owens Lake. Fig. 11.9 Emma Flynn.
The Carbon Hoarding Bank is a rogue financial centre,
capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere in
response to the increasing market demand for carbon
credits and trading schemes and turning an environmental
imperative into a lucrative commercial opportunity, Puente
Hills Landfill site, Los Angeles. Fig. 11.10 Dan Marmot. The
Animal Emporium, Culver City, Los Angeles, embraces the
fiction of LA, as monkeys swing from a pet hire tower, a
landscape of mausolea for a pet crematorium hovers above
a dog hotel, and a church-like aviary wraps around an
existing building, creating a piece of urban theatre.
p. 95
11.11
11.12 11.13
11.14
Fig. 11.11 Sigrid Bylander. Liminal Wonderland, Fantasy remediation structures acts as a distributed atmospheric
Island, Loz Feliz Reservoir, Los Angeles. Fig. 11.12 Jon filter for the city of smog.
Kaminsky. ‘Land Rig’, Seal Beach, Los Angeles. The
benevolent scheme houses Texaco Chevron’s retired oil
workers and provides work and profits to afford them
better health care and living conditions. Fig. 11.13 Ioana
Barbantan. The Next 50 Years at Dodgers. A community-
led proposal for a series of public spaces in the form of
microclimatic pavilions on the extensive concrete skirt
of the Dodgers car park informs, inspires and warns
users of LA’s environmental present and possible future.
Fig. 11.14 Theo Games Petrohilos. The SIG Building,
Santa Monica, State Route 1, is activated by the cars
that choke LA and acts as a modern-day victory
arch of commerce and roadside communication.
Fig. 11.15 Rina Kukaj. A ‘purification blanket’ of air
11.15 >
p. 9 6
Neo-Nature
Dip/MArch Unit 11
Yr 4: Ioana Barbantan, Adam Holland,

Rina Kukaj, Adam Lansdown-Bridge, James
Palmer, Justin Randle, Eleanor Stevenson,
Catrina Stewart
Yr 5: Erin Byrne, Will Jefferies, Emily Keyte,
Rae Whittow-Williams, Chris Wilkinson
Neo-Nature
‘Land is the oldest of all archives… It is
the most widely shared aide-memoire
of a culture’s understanding of its past
and future and is the “memory bank”
of society.’ Jenny Iles.
Nostalgia and wonder permeate our
collective perception of the urban and
rural landscape that surrounds us. They
trigger an emotive rather than analytic
response and profound reverence for the
complexity of nature.
In Unit 11 we have followed inquiries into
architecture that synthesize landscape
and its relationship with culture and
environment. Recently our focus has
widened to scrutinize organisations,
regulatory bodies and institutions that
have influenced the contemporary
context of landscape and controlled its
development, designated its use and
consequently altered our perception of
the natural and the manmade. Last year,
politics, scientific data, NGO designations
and environmental engineering further
informed our studies.
This year we took the term ‘Neo-Nature’
as a starting point, which at once
suggests an evolutionary development
as well as a synthesis of the natural
and the technological. It suggests an
artificial scene which, in fact, or at least
in our perception develops from the
capriciousness of man, nature and culture.
We proposed pseudo landscapes – ersatz
topographies, artificial terrains and quasi
architectures – superficially prophetic
or partly parody. We investigated
the friction between progress and
conservation via political, technological
and artistic disciplines thinking about
what architecture can do with them and
for them.
Laura Allen & Mark Smout Top: Adam Landsowne Bridge, Pastures New. Bottom: James Palmer, Thames Gateway Delivery Vehicle.
Clockwise from top: Chris Wilkinson, Rehydrated Landscape with Speciation Devices, Monte Corona, Lanzarote; Justin Randle, Lanzarote Arboretum; Elle
Stevenson, The Art of Imposing Charm, Lordship Lane; Catrina Stewart, Pasa de Alimentos Secos, Lanzarote; Ioana Barbantan, TetraPak Park, Wandle Valley;
Erin Byrne, ‘Playworks’, Building PLAY Workshop, ICA, London; Adam Holland, Festival of Sardines, Lanzarote.
Will Jeffries, Escape Preston: Bus Station Landscapes.
Top: Emily Keyte, Dark Green Conference Centre, Lanzarote. Bottom: Rae Whittow Williams, The Science of Vulgar Knowledge: Psuedo-scientific Diaoramas
Explore Climate Change Predictions, Environmental Myth and Old Wifes Tales.
Erin Byrne, The Play Book: Transposing Fantasy. Opposite page: Chris Wilkinson, Teesport Phytoplankton Farm: Future Ecologies From 20th Century Industry.
Field Operations
Laura Allen, Ana Monrabal-Cook, Mark Smout
Dip/MArch Unit 11
Yr 4:Erin Byrne, Will Jeffries, Emily Keyte,
Rae Whittow-Williams, Chris Wilkinson,
Nicholas Wood. Yr 5: Margaret Bursa,
James Davies, Tom Finch, Joel Geoghegan,
Johan Hybschmann, Alex Kirkwood, Holly
Lewis, Elin Lund, Itai Palti, Luke Pearson
Field Operations
Field operations, guidelines for actions,
definitions of measures, are laid down
by countless authorities endeavoring to
control the effects of ensuing events.
Neither the rural nor urban landscape is
immune to the advance of these nervous
reactions as we aim to fix on the moving
target of an uncertain future. Our culture
is voracious in its consumption and
production of data. Typically, questions
and answers are provided by its statistical
manipulation.
Unit 11 is a laboratory for counter-
programmes that will look at the
hypothetical or physical notion of
‘modeling’ as a representation tool, as a
systematic example to follow or simply as
a description to assist predictions. For us,
modeling in all its definitions, provides
a framework where lines of enquiry are
pursued through an iterative, inquisitive
and imaginative process.
Thanks to Sam Jacob, John Lyall and
Richard Stonehouse
Laura Allen, Ana Monrabal-Cook and Mark Smout

This page: Itai Palti, The Case for Curiosity, Film Studios Tel Aviv. Facing Page: Clockwise from Top, Luke Pearson, Thawing a Frozen Bureaucracy
at UN Headquarters, New York; Alex Kirwood, Simulations of (a) Manhattan from Google Earth; Joel Geoghagen, Subterranean Hydro-
Assemblage, Construction and Destruction on the US/Mexico border.
Clockwise from top: Tom Finch, Exceptional White Architecture: A New American Embassy; James Davies, The Pioneer State, Remediation for Gov-
enor’s Island, New York; Holly Lewis, Coney Island Refurbishment Village.
Clockwise from top: Chris Wilkinson, A Sound Connection; Rae Whittow-Williams, Hallucinatory Architecture: The House of an Opium Eater; Erin
Byrne, Thamesmeadian Simulacra: The Antiphonic Methodology; Nick Wood, 747 LDN/NYC; Will Jeffries, The Survey of London.
Margaret Bursa, Escaping Landscape. Top: Sokolovna Landscape of Movement, Pier 54-56, New York. Bottom: The Green House, a manifestation of a
the ‘New Local’ design principle for Zlin, Czech Republic.
Johan Hybschmann, Top: Recreating The Hermitage as a processional journey.
Bottom: Replicating a Replica, Redesigning the Federal Hall, New York.
Second Nature
Dip Unit 11
Yr 4: William Aitken, Margaret
Bursa, James Davies, Tom Finch, Joel
Geoghegan, Johan Hybschmann,
Alexander Kirkwood, Holly Lewis, Elin
Lund, Itai Palti, Luke Pearson, Alan Worn.
Yr 5: Tarik Al-Zaharna, Melissa Appleton,
Kyle Buchanan, Mark Ishikawa, Benjamin
Ridley.
Second Nature
Unit 11 continues to explore themes of
architecture and the landscape. It’s a
relationship that can be uncomfortable.
The insertion of architecture into an
environment that is perceived as ‘natural’,
to some, seems to be incongruous or
worse, destructive. However, the notion
of wilderness - of uncultivated ground - is
rarely found in the UK. The myth of arcadia
has for centuries been manipulated and
maintained for agricultural, cultural,
social, political and economic ends.
Our landscape is ordered by numerous
organisations and regulators and their
‘designations’ seek to categorise and
control its use. Unit 11 continues to work as
a laboratory for the invention of counter-
programmes. Alternative designations
are synthesized where new architectures
and landscapes emerge. We visited two
contrasting sites defined as De-natured
and Frontier Landscapes and tackled a
number of short projects on the way to
generating lyrical and critical designs.
Thanks to John Lyall and John Lyall
Architects.
Laura Allen and Mark Smout This page clockwise from top: Mags Bursa and Itai Palti, Memorial Tearooms Tottenham
Court Road; Luke Pearson and Tom Finch, Bank of England Counter-Fraud Institute; Alan
Worn, Teesmouth Tower. Facing page: Kyle Buchanan, Super-sextant.
Show Cat 08.indd 86 12/6/08 17:23:31

Show Cat 08.indd 87 12/6/08 17:23:40
This page: Ben Ridley, Thingvellir Architecture of Myth, generating an emotional attachment to landscape and architecture. Facing page: Melissa
Appleton, Tuneable City, landscape elements set in flux by saturated radio environment.
Show Cat 08.indd 88 12/6/08 17:24:01

Show Cat 08.indd 89 12/6/08 17:24:16
Clockwise form top: Marc Ishikawa, Migrating Hermit Space; Elin Lund, Performing the Greengrocer, transit space; Joel Geoghegan, Olympic
Dust Park; Alex Kirkwood, Hvitarsida Beacon, Iceland; Johan Hypersmann, Reflection Instrument.
Show Cat 08.indd 90 12/6/08 17:24:26

Clockwise from top: James Davies, Mesopic mapping; Tom Finch, Foreign Details; Holly Lewis, Dalston Common Ground; James Davies and
William Aitken, Submerged Gardens of Syon; Tarik Al-Zaharna, Billingsgate Field Landscape.
Show Cat 08.indd 91 12/6/08 17:24:46

Surface Tension
Dip Unit 11
Yr 4: Tarik Al-Zaharna, Melissa Appleton,
Thomas Buchanan, Benjamin Lee, Jonas
Major, Ben Ridley. Yr 5: Aaron Brookes,
Louise Charlton, Timothy Fieldhouse,
Catriona Forbes, Poppy Kirkwood, Ruth
Oldham, Richard Sharam, Nicholas
Stearns, Cheng-E Tham.
Surface Tension
The romanticism of the ruin that stands

in defiance of Time evokes memories
of forgotten histories, so tantalising
to visitors of Rome. Monumental city
planning, avenues and vistas manifest
politics, power and patronage.
Iconography and statuary that symbolise
the mythology and ceremony once so
important to everyday life is lost on the
visitor and now redundant.
The Colosseum, heroically derelict,

was found in the 1850’s to provide a
microclimate suitable for the growth
of 420 species of plants thought to
have been brought there as seeds on
the bodies of wild and exotic animals
from the far reaches of the empire and
dropped into the deep sands of the
Colosseum’s pits and corridors. These
plants, keenly sought and catalogued by
botanists and Grand Tourists, were rapidly
removed by archaeologists and have since
become another episode in the long and
peripatetic occupation of the city.
The unit proposes architecture that

responds to Rome’s cultural identity and
which acknowledges the souvenirs and
artefacts of the city. However, it is our role
to ‘pioneer’ its place within this landscape
of history and symbolism. For us there
can be no sentimentality bestowed by the
authentication of Time.
Thanks to Andy Whiting and Scott Batty at

Hut Architecture
Mark Smout and Laura Allen Top: Louise Charlton, Sculpting Light, Dell ‘Orso Artisans Collective. Bottom: Aaron Brookes,
Mimetic Drawings, domestic assemblage.
Top: Cheng-E Tham, Institute of Building Mycology. Bottom: Ruth Oldham, A Multifarious Mountain, Testaccio, Roma.
Clockwise from top left: Richard Sharam, Urban Quarry, Roma; Tim Fieldhouse, Reflecting the city; Nicholas Stearns, Casa Bartletti; Kyle
Buchanan and Ben Lee, Camley Street (h)Edge.
Clockwise from top left: Melissa Appleton and Tarik Al-Zahana, The Centre for Londoness; Catriona Forbes, The Paper State; Poppy Kirkwood,
Borghese Theatre, an Animated Landscape.
This page: Catriona Forbes, The Paper State, Roma. Facing page: Jonas Major and Ben Ridley, Re-invigorating the Ecclesiastical Spectacle.
Architecture and Emotional Aspiration
Dip Unit 11
Yr 4: Wen Hui Foo, Jin Mi Lee, Cynthia
Leung, Thomas Smith, Machiko Wilson.
Yr 5: Nisrine Ahmad, Dana Al Sharif,
Moyez Alwani, Mala Balani, Candas
Jennings, Jessica Lawrence, Areti
Theofanopoulou, Sophia Thomson, Alison
Victor. MArch (Architecture): Pablo Gil
Martinez.
Architecture & Emotional

Aspiration
In the last few years, the notion of
architecture as an emotional environment
has become a major track of exploration
in Unit 11, concerning the moulding of
physical space, whilst at the same time
exploring ways to influence its
psychological qualities. We see the poetic
image as a prelude to architecture. We
are occupied with exploring how
architectural images and fragments
become an architecture that can depict
and arouse emotions. Our projects this
year took a special interest in connecting
a relationship between nature and urban
context. The wonder and beauty that we
find in nature, the feelings and memories
with which it rewards us, are a constant
reminder of wonderful possibilities.
Harnessing such qualities and bringing an
emotional power of nature into
architecture can enrich our environment.
Our work with the students is focused on
the development of their individual
authorial voice and a wish to identify
personal characteristics.
‘The poet does not confer the past of his
image upon me, and yet his image
immediately takes root in me’. Gaston
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
Yael Reisner and Malca Mizrahi

Clockwise from top left: Pablo Gil Martinez, Nisrine Ahmad, Nisrine Ahmad, Dana Al-Sharfi (left), Sophia Thomson (right), Moyez Alwani,
Cynthia Leung, Candas Jennings. Overleaf: Jessica Lawrence.
Brazilian Tropicalia
Dip Unit 11
Yr 4: Nisrine Ahmad, Dana Al Sharif,
Moyez Alwani, Charlie Hearn, Peter
Moerland, Ka Chun Pun, Stefanie Surjo,
Areti Theofanopoulou, Sophia Thomson,
Chi Man Charis Tsang, Alison Victor,
Stefan Rutzinger. Yr 5: Yvonne Gibbs,
Wynford Rhys Gilley, Pablo Gil Martinez,
David Head, Ewan Stone.
Brazilian Tropicalia
This year’s field trip focused on two
amazing cities, Rio de Janeiro and
Brasilia. Brazil’s culture and races are
mixed, coalescing to form that which is
ultimately and authentically Brazilian, as
reflected in the music, dance and visual
cultures – a rich, exotic and colourful mix-
ture that is infused with optimism – a
Brazilian 'tropicalia'.
In shedding the twentieth century myth-
ical role of objectivity in architecture, we
take interest in the liberation of our pro-
fession from years of having a conscience
concerning aesthetics. Surely aesthetics
can go well with ethics, contrary to mod-
ernist propaganda?
Unit 11 is interested in a contemporary
architecture that is exuberant and intense.
We are interested in depicting and
arousing emotion, in hyper-visual imagery,
in a multi-layered depth of soft edges.
Yael Reisner and Malca Mizrahi

Clockwise from top left: Pablo Gil Martinez, Pablo Gil Martinez, Ewan Stone, Yvonne Gibbs, Wynford Rhys Gilley, David Head.
ucl.ac.uk/architecture

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How has the teaching of design evolved at The Bartlett School of Architecture over time?

How has the teaching of design evolved at The Bartlett School of Architecture over time?

What are some of the themes and agendas explored by the different units, clusters and labs over the years?

What are some of the themes and agendas explored by the different units, clusters and labs over the years?

PG Unit 11

MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

but disappeared. Myth and imagination are replaced by indisputable Year 5

It is not down in any map; true places never are.1

Following in the footsteps of the founders of the Alpine Club French

Many thanks to our Design

Occupying the ‘Terrain Vague’

Year 4 Unit 11 is established as a laboratory for research, invention and spatial

to resist eradication of evidence and memories of places.

Berkeley University, Nicholas

Make, Work, Home and Garden

Lie of the Land

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2014

Our Florida workshop and site visits where in

Many thanks to our Unit 11 practice consultants,

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013

Fig. 11.13 Yee Yan (Adrienne) Lau, Y5, Reshaping Suburbia.

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could

In recent years Unit 11 has looked at the responsiveness of architecture to

The megascheme positions architecture at the convergence of urbanism, engineering

Manhattan’s infrastructural systems of road, rail, power, water, communications,

Following the success of last years ‘Los Angeles Super-Workshop’ we again

Year 4: Farah Badaruddin, Banksie Critchley, Alisan Dockerty, Rebecca Fode,

MArch Arch Un i t 11 B A RT LET T 2012

MArch Arch Un i t 11 B A RT LET T 2012

of an invented Utopia — an empty space

Fig. 11.1 Justin Randle. The California Co-op. Based on

noxious Keeler Fog with the aim of revitalising the polluted

Yr 4: Ioana Barbantan, Adam Holland,

Laura Allen, Ana Monrabal-Cook and Mark Smout

Show Cat 08.indd 86 12/6/08 17:23:31

Show Cat 08.indd 88 12/6/08 17:24:01

Show Cat 08.indd 90 12/6/08 17:24:26

Show Cat 08.indd 91 12/6/08 17:24:46

The romanticism of the ruin that stands

The Colosseum, heroically derelict,

The unit proposes architecture that

Thanks to Andy Whiting and Scott Batty at

Architecture & Emotional

Yael Reisner and Malca Mizrahi

Yael Reisner and Malca Mizrahi

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