architecture as city

Over the past few years when the bizarre in architecture is beginning to show signs of exhaustion, the Architecture Research Unit and Diploma Unit 1 have maintained a passion for architecture as city. This idea carries the potential for generosity of architecture. We feel relaxed with this as a starting point for design. We are interested in even the smallest urbanism, such as the bottles and tea caddies on the table forming the horizon in a painting by Giorgio Morandi. We think of furniture as city. Our projects are rarely stand-alone objects. There are often at least two buildings in a project. We like the expression 'ensemble' and we ask the question,

'What can the ensemble of buildings do for the city?' Can the ensemble be a gift to the city? Can it reveal special qualities of the city or the landscape? We attempt to design buildings that make a strong contribution to the quality of the public realm of the city. These buildings have a sense of civility. This is a gentle civility that can be adapted to embrace the everyday and the special occasion of a particular context.

The 2009/10 project of Dip unit 1 will build on this continuing interest and passion for the city.

The project last year, 'Designing a City Quarter', the year before 'Landscape as City', and the previous year 'Urban figures' were all studies about the design of the space of the city. This interest in the city is inspired by ARU's current and recent Design as Research projects: to reconnect the ensemble of gardens and buildings within the 18th century country estate of Hadspen, Somerset; an ensemble of publishing houses in Paju Book City near Seoul, Korea; and the Island City land reclamation project in Saemangeum, Korea. The projects all have different scales. The space of the city in each of these projects is intended to be architectural and rich in spatial relationships. These relationships are about in-betweeness, generosity and an awareness of time. In this work, continuity of architectonic language is pursued by making contemporary translations of architectures of the past with a sense of unexpectedness and awkwardness. This is design as research. This is what we offer students of Diploma Unit 1 to engage with.

We are looking for traces of the origins of the city from various times. These researches about origins initially might reveal an open ground such as a public common that later becomes more urbanised. Central park in New York was conceived by its designer Frederick Law Olmstead as a memory to the ancient landscape of that place. The urban landscape of Clerkenwell Green, London is still characterised by its natural slope towards the Fleet River. These time travels into city origins equip us with a sensitive design instrumentarium to make interventions that make sense of a particular place in the city.

The final design project, however, will not be a large scale urban or landscape design task. It will focus on he architectural design of a city building or an ensemble of city buildings with decorum and civility. This will involve careful researches about compositional relationships of buildings, for example stacking buildings on top of each other. Some students might choose to revisit the idea of the vertical city with an expression of mixed social and cultural programmes.

project 1

As an initial sketch design project we will design a city origin as: a walled garden; or a tent encampment for an event such as a public feast; a furniture urbanism in an existing interior; or an intensification of a farm settlement at a rural road junction.

project 2

As in previous years, the unit will make a book of precedent studies to be used as a design resource. This year we will study civility in architecture.

project 3

The unit study trip this year will be a visit to a very special and beautiful historic town in France that has a very strong and clear city structure and a distinct relationship between the city and the open agricultural spaces of the region.

project 4

The site of the final design project will be identified within this town, or within the region of this town. Students will design an ensemble of buildings including vital public spaces. We will identify some economical development potentials in the region, for example in the sector of food production. Any architectural and urban intervention must improve and heighten the civility of the region. A significant historical site in Central London will also be on offer as another option.

It would be intriguing to see designs that have the quality of awkwardness, or what sometimes has been referred to as Sa-lo-kwai-chi, meaning, "the quality of being impressive or surprising through careless or unorderly grace".[1]

1.   See: Y.Z Chang, 'A Note on Sharawadji', Modern Language Notes, 1930, p.221. See also: The Architectural Review, issue no.95, (1944).