Unit 6: Civic Edgelands Architecture Exchange

Unit brief

Civic Edgelands and Architecture Exchange

Unit 6 will investigate territories in Brixton (London) where the march of the city has left cracks, crevices and blighted places, and Kathmandu (Nepal) where the dynamic city is enveloping marginal land, brickfields, horticultural terraces and hill villages, post-earthquake. Our task this year will be to plant these territories with green and civic shoots in order to provide an infrastructure for shared place, neighbourhood and city making.

Students will share a preliminary Making Places project for the first 5 weeks of the year engaging residents in fitting out a redundant undercroft in Angell Town estate exploring its contemporary potential. For their major project for the rest of the academic year students will choose to locate their investigation in either Brixton or Kathmandu. Investigatory work on both sites will be intensive during the trip weeks of the first term.

Civic Estate will explore opportunities for creating civic places on London estates provided by the phenomenon of redundant 1970’s constructed undercrofts. Kathmandu Edgelands will extend last year’s investigation from the centre to the southern edge of the Kathmandu Valley where extraordinary changes are taking place following the massive earthquake in April 2015.

In amongst the problems of scarcity and fragility experienced by residents are embedded examples of inventive city making which offer a rich and fertile ground for the study of how the resources embedded within the landscape are being transformed, by the residents, to fit the dynamic city setting. It is incumbent on architects in these circumstances to support the growth new nesting-places for sharing and to promote generosity in the act of making, involving craftspeople and residents in the use of materials, spatial resources and infrastructure to engage with and contribute to the culture and freedoms available to them in the city.

Bungamati brick and horticulture fields on the southern periphery of the city of Patan, Kathmandu Va

Details

Course Professional Diploma in Architecture
Tutor Maurice Mitchell
Francesca Pont
Dr Bo Tang
Where Central House, 4th Floor Studios
When Monday and Thursday

Professional Diploma in Architecture (RIBA part II)

 
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