Studio 09: Public Rooms, Convergent Spaces

Studio brief

Public Rooms, Convergent Spaces

The London Legacy Development Corporation are in the process of delivering the capitals largest cultural building project since Albertopolis, the complex of public Victorian buildings, which transformed South Kensington in the mid-19th Century. One of the aims is Convergence; the process of closing the gap in performance and prospects between London’s wealthiest and poorest communities through contact with established civic institutions, the V&A, Sadler’s Wells, the Smithsonian and the London College of Fashion.

We would like to critique the effectiveness of this replication and look to how new spaces for cultural and community provision in London’s East End can be more locally generated. Our sites will be in the Lea Valley, on the edge of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and over the year we will work to develop typologies of equitable public rooms, educational buildings and art spaces that enable and support existing and emerging communities. We will look to art practice, photography and performance to inform critique and proposition.

We will undertake studies of existing public rooms, cultural spaces and associated public realm and examine the nature of threshold, enclosure in informing successful precedents. We will travel to Flanders, Belgium and look to examples in Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges.

We will explore architecture beyond mere programme, engaging with the typological idea of public building and the ways they can positively affect the context around them. We are interested in the act of making, encouraging students, through the exploration of a range of techniques, to develop a deep understanding of the critical relationship between strategy and detail from the room to the city.

People in an exhibition space with revolutionary banners hanging from the ceiling

Details

Course Architecture BA (Hons)
Tutors Jillian Jones
Ewan Stone
David Howarth
Where

Goulston Street
Room GS2-24

When Tuesday and Friday

Architecture Studios

 
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