Estate Studies
Initial research into social housing blocks across London, from a personal visit to Robin Hood Gardens (pre-demolition) in 2017 to the Aylesbury Estate and Dawson's Heights.
Digital Publication
Archival Studies into Dawson's Heights
A series of historical studies into the original Southwark Planning Department Drawings for Kate Macintosh's Dawson's Heights and an analytical mapping of social services and amenities in the area.
Digital Publication
A Study Into the Plan Tectonics of Dawson's Heights
A Study into the Interlocking Maisonette Arrangements of Dawson's Heights
A Study into Variations Within the Interlocking Units at Dawson's Heights
Dawson's Heights, An Interlocking Jigsaw of Inhabitation
Photographic studies from a visit to Dawson's Heights in South-East London.
Photographs in Digital Publication
Photographic Study : View from Bredinghurst to Ladlands
Photographic Study : External Circulation Corridors at Dawson's Heights
Completing The Estate - 01 Creative Destruction
Having assessed the surrounding environment, the socio-material make-up and facilities available to the residents, a response to the lack of immediate access to child care, collective spaces, food provision and inter-generational activity spaces for the 400 residents of the estate prompted four interventions to the building to 'complete' the the estate for a local utopia. With the kitchen cores to the flats stacked vertically in the existing building, could a new courtyard space provide increased quality of life to the residents and access to greenery normally unseen in housing estates? Could the kitchen become an act of shared eating?
Digital Drawings and Render
Completing The Estate - 02 Flat Out Opportunity
The stepped, flat roofs across the higher and lower-rise wings of the estate created the perfect opportunity to create temporary and light-weight structures to generate new spaces for the production of food and communal coming-togethers at Dawson's Heights. Simultaneously addressing the high levels of youth unemployment in the area, these could provide new opportunities on site to cater for the local wellbeing of its residents.
Digital Drawings and Render
Completing The Estate - 03 Punch Through and Insert
By introducing a new communal connection and heart from the ground floor / open public space through to the first of the three access walkways to the dwellings, a new zone for communal habits is produced, which provides a new entrance portal to the lightweight additions to the roof.
Digital Drawings and Render
Completing The Estate - 04 Interlock and Re-Purpose
Responding to the high levels of youth homelessness in the borough and ever expanding waitlist to access council housing, a series of interlocking, temporary accommodation modules are proposed as light-weight elements within the new grid at existing roof level. These expand from being 3-4 person dormitories to 1 bed units.
Digital Drawings and Render
A Device for The (In) Completion of Dawson's Heights
Having arrived at an architectural 'solution' / proposition for the scheme, we return to Theodor Adorno, who suggests that "Even if one cannot draw a blueprint for utopia, awareness of the inadequacy of incompletness of existing reality depends utterly on belief in the possibility of an alternative" (Adorno, 33).
How can the possibilities of alternatives be reckoned with and developed with (and through) discussions with residents of the scheme?
Photograph of Viewing Device with Anaglyph of the Proposed Scheme
Testing the Multiplicities of Dawson's Heights
Modelling the Future Utopia of Dawson's Heights
An Anaglyph Viewing Device for Visualising the Proposals
A Device for The (In) Completion of Dawson's Heights
Constructed as a series of anaglyphic images (forced 3D) frames that can be brought to site to visualise the proposals in collaboration with it's residents, the four interventions are used as kit of conversation starters
Anaglyphic drawings of the device and manipulations of the interventions on site
*To be viewed with Anaglyph 3D Glasses
Collaborative Reconfigurations of Site
These drawings document a series of site movements and reconfigurations of the existing and proposed by residents/
Anaglyphic drawings of the device on site and alternative configurations
*To be viewed with Anaglyph 3D Glasses
Towards an (In) Completion of Dawson's Heights
Anaglyphic drawings mapping the proposed interventions onto Ladlands,. Dawson's Heights
*To be viewed with Anaglyph 3D Glasses
THE (IN) COMPLETION OF DAWSON'S HEIGHTS
Having undergone decades of free-market capitalism, the notion of “home” continues to play by the neo-liberal rulebook of ownership and speculation, where an increasingly ‘un-housed’ precariat population is on the rise, fueling further disparities within the social fabric of our cities. It is clear that a radical new solution is needed, or the empowering of individuals and communities to do so is crucial. Drawing from Adorno’s provocations on the nature of utopia being the “ability to see the possibility of an alternative” (Negative Dialectics), the first project investigates methodologies for participatory co-design through the development of a deployable device which enables residents and local actors to envision the possibilities of future “utopias”.
The project began by investigating the concept of “Completing the Estate”, where a high-level analysis across various estates in and near London revealed the lack of communal and social facilities that they were initially design with, prompting a personal response to facilitating the inward-looking home with shared communal and well-being facilities. Concurrently, studies into Kate Macintosh’s Dawson’s Heights in East Dulwich provided an opportunity to propose a new social backbone of social facilities and agro-production to address the lack of amenities in the dense, residential neighborhood. Through a 4-stage strategy that weaves communal amenities with the intricately interlocked arrangement of units in the development, an architect-led Completion of Dawson’s Height’s materialised.
Quickly realising that this proposition is one of many imagined “utopias” that could arise on site, the project shifted it’s focus into how the local residents and actors can be engaged and guided to inform, express and feedback their lived experience of site, to then address the multiplicities and incompleteness of “the utopia” through documenting their envisioned futures.
Awards/
Distinction in Design
Project / MArch (Year 5) Architectural Design , Bartlett Unit 13
Design Tutors / Sabine Storp + Patrick Weber
Year / 2020