Speculations on the Shifting Thames Estuary
Mappings on the Impacts of Rising Temperatures and Tidal Levels from Tilbury to Canvey Island
Digital Collage
An Agro-Estuarial Triptych
A triptych exploring the relationship between the nomadic, estuarial settlements in relation to the Bata Estate, the River's edge and the opposite estuarial bank.
Digital Collage
A Pilot Settlement
Since the restoration of the salt-marsh landscape and the introduction of a mechanical mangrove edge, the comm(o)nity of the new settlement has been arranged in part by the ebbs and flows of the expanded riverbank and the activities of its residents
Render and Digital Collage
Models of Collective Living from Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities and the Bata Company
Co-Producing the Commons : A Timeline for the planting, growth and expansion of the scheme
Living With (Not Against) The Tide
Having afforestated the estuarial edge, the initial series of landscape interventions such as the expanded flood plains, canals, basins, polders and saltmarsh-ways all create the ecological fabric that serves as a biome for agri(cultures) of restoration, consumption and human existence. Reconfigurable floating architectures become a reactionary piece of inhabitation that changes with the seasonality and tidal flows on site, where its residents serve as nomadic stewards of the restored landscape.
Render and Digital Collage
Activating the Commons : Freshwater Infrastructures for Enabling the New Agricultural Commons
Living With the Land/Water : Assisted self-build, split level dwellings that can be reconfigured to house hostel spaces, through to a 4-bed family unit
Flooding as a Democratic Principle for 'Master'planning
The stroke of the architect and urban planner in delivering the modernist new towns and company towns of Essex were heralded as successes of the time. From Chandigarh to the innovations of Karl Marx-Hof in Red Vienna, improvements to the domestic and social quality of life, along with the introduction of fitted sanitary ware, internal washrooms and compact kitchens within dwellings all contributed to a paradigm shift in domesticity.
Coming up to nearly a century since these innovations have been made, the act of 'building' and the built environment remains a heavily top down process. Since the beginning of the Anthropocene, little progress has been made to rectify our critical impact on the natural environment.
What if living with the natural rhythm of our global biome became a new collective attitude to inhabitation, and flooding became the only 'masterstroke' for reconfiguring our settlements? From protecting the ground against the flood, what if the tide became an instrument for agricultural and foodscape re-distribution?
Render and Digital Collage
Living With The Water: An Assisted Self-Build Pontooned Architecture
Expanding the Commons - A Reconfigurable Kit of Spaces
Building as Local Pedagogy : A Masterclass in Comm(o)nal Stewardship
Developed from principles of co-design, community 'building' and a negotiated decision making process (through the public common partnership), the act of construction, expansion, refitting and living becomes a spectacle of the social , a haptic narrative of building and informs stewardship of the wider Estover ecology. Sustainable and local stewardship of the forestry creates an embodied memory within the commons, acknowledging the natural rhythms that enable timber construction.
The act of 'building' sits purely within the limitations, lifecycles and requirements of the ecosystem; the forest etiquette of timber growth.
Digital CAD / Linework Drawing
In The Spirit of Resourceful 'Building'
Learning from the democratic unit of the prefabricated building components of the Bata Factory, the new common building system serves both as a tool for ensuring sustainable construction, as well as creating a unified framework in which creativity, programme and use can proliferate as a new socio-structural scaffold for enabling this new comm(o)nity.
Hybridised Drawing
The Expanding Doggerland
10 years since the separation of the UK with the European Union, the Port of Tilbury has become an indispensable node in the distribution of trade from the mainland. With an increased reliance on the production of agriculture and food from within the country, the initial afforestation of the East Tilbury marshes has enabled a future where the Thames becomes a new food production corridor and ecological reserve for the South of England. From de-centralised, nomadic com-munities, the stewardship of the waterscape to ensure a systemic balance between consumption and conservation is reached.
Perhaps this new relationship between man, land and water is a step towards a Symbiocene.
Digital Render
Fresh Water Infrastructure : Catalysing a Sweet-Salt Relationship to Water
Mangrove Nurseries : Towards Sustaining a Soft, Mechanical Edge
Floating Timber Nurseries as Common 'Ground'
Living In The Commons
The adaptability of the split-level structures allow for living to expand from hostel-dormitories., accommodating for visiting stewards through to 4-bed maisonette for families that have long settled into this symbiocene.
Digital Render
Type 2B-1 : Master Bedroom to Small Family Dwelling
Type 2B-1 : Framing The Relationship to the Water
Type 2B-1 : Half Level leading to Living Room
Plur-ticipating (in) East Tilbury : Towards a Collective Negotiation of the Estuary
Drawing from the thesis and plur-ticipatory engagement in East Tilbury, speculating on the multiplicity of Utopias that could arise along the vulnerable estuarial edge in response to common agonisms over the themes of Community, Liveability and The Environment.
Hybridised Digital Drawing and Collage
NEW DOGGERLANDS : A Dynamic Masterplan for Enabling the East Tilbury Commons
Acknowledging the socio-ecological crises that are resultant of our extreme consumption and resource extraction, a dynamic, reactionary and arguably incomplete “master” plan is proposed… Instead of working against the forces of nature, the comm(o)nity of East Tilbury has long sought to return to a nomadic way of life, forgoing the rampant pressures and excess of the neoliberal city for something more attuned; living with (and not against) the land.
Re-turning to principles of the historic commons, their settlement has been designed with the foresight of adapting to change in both land and waterscapes, where the dynamic (master)plan is built across time, seasons and tides to speculate with new forms of living. The riverbank has receded, but unlike predictions in the early 21st Century, the Thames has been deliberately widened as a catalyst. Developing from an initial afforestation of the marshland ecology, a soft system for the production of the commons began, fifty years ago, as a series of ponds, forests, polders and waterways to seed the New Doggerland of today. Driven by the historical principles in Commoning – Of Piscary, Of Estovers and In The Soil, living with the community involves a new relationship to the water/land through seasonal consumption of agriculture and stewardship of the river and forestery – as examples.
Learning from Bata’s preconstructed components, the New Doggerland is expanded through a “Common Language”, where moulds and materials are re-used to expand, or decrease spaces according to the population, needs, tidal ecology and environment. Simultaneously safeguarding the historic Bata Estate further inland, the common contemplates on an approach to architecture that is post-compositional, reactionary and embedded within our larger ecological systems, contributing beyond the wellbeing of its inhabitants, but the habitat(s) of the Estuary. Instead of building from (and against) the water, flooding becomes an opportunity - to re-arrange and expand commons living across the Thames to Coastal England.
See Commoning East Tilbury for Participatory Fieldwork / Thesis underpinnings for this project.
Awards /
RIBA Silver Medal Commendation, 2020
The Bartlett School of Architecture Medal, 2020
Distinction in Design
Project / MArch (Year 5) Architectural Design, Bartlett Unit 13
Design Tutors / Sabine Storp + Patrick Weber
Year / 2020