L O C A L    W A R M I N G   /  G L O B A L   C O M M U N I T Y

Our preoccupation is with the city and it's inhabitants.

Growth and development is linked to the environment and the structure we create within.

These environments should promote freedom and encourage creative interaction.

To facilitate a dialogue, design must include...

Our cities are built on memory and experience, the layers hold value and support an understanding which preserves our identity.

Cities must maintain and re imagine their identity in order to present their future. They must become visual beacons connecting generations through memory, contextualising lives and supporting a sense of belonging.

The erosion and eradication of a city negates the very thing that designers and architects claim to embrace.

The shock of the new can be a lonely place.

P L A C E

Our site is the Roman Road, a long road bringing wealthy Shoreditch, Brick Lane, and Bethnal Green together. Then connecting further East through poor residential areas and finally the mega wealthy Olympic site.

The Road derives from an ancient pre Roman track, which was upgraded by the Romans and was one of the first paved roads in Britain. It was initially used as a trade route connecting London Bridge to the then Roman capitol of Colchester.

The road today is still a route-way, therein lays the problem. The road is a conduit. Everyday people pass along the conduit, barely stopping to consider their surroundings not recognizing where they are, just thinking where they are going.

Roman Road is the heart of a community. It requires resuscitation. The heart is willing the body unable!

T H I N K

We want to create a network of communication to involve our wider community, to open up a dialogue in a straight forward way.

To find a way that the communities can meet and speak and share and develop. To find ways of making people pause along the conduit and take in their surrounding.

The Roman Road is a time machine and a microcosm of London. A multicultural cross section, which is sandwiched between the wealthy city of London and the shinny spires of London 2012.

 D O

Project 1:

“Negative space - find the space free of architecture, something ‘In between’”

We will research the place & make some assumptions. What makes a community, why do villages work, how can this translate into a 21st century city?

Record and document the street.
Find sites that inspire.
Look at textures, materials and the layers of the city.
Design a place or machine, which stops the movement along the road and creates a place to be…
Draw and construct.

Outcome. Exhibition quality physical model at 1:20 of proposal with associated drawings and research.

Project 2:

We will base the project of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets
‘Roman Road Town Centre Public Realm Strategy’. This is currently being constructed.
We will present our ideas to the Local Authority, and we will compare our work with the constructed works.