UEL Architecture Showcase 2014

Thanks to our guests and all the people that have helped us over the year with advice, reactions, stories, access to buildings, secrets of Soho, and many other ways. The end of year exhibition opens next Thursday at 5pm with a lecture by Mike Davies followed by the opening night party. We hope to see you there!

building stories for Berwick Street

Soho Society exhibition hall and ballroom by Sara Erfantalab-Evini

SkyLand: connecting the post-production industry by Arash Farhadi

A New Society Club by Nicole Landazuri

Musem of Soho by Dina Khaki

A New Society Club by Jessica Franco Bohmer

Institute of Textile Artisans, studios and social club, by Mehdi Ahmed

The Soho Society Theatre by Quadri Uthman

sites and clients

from top: Berwick Street elevations and material details by Liang Liang He,
Life of Berwick Street by Arash Farhadi
Kemp House day and night by Syed Mehdi Ahmed

The Society Club by Marjorie Romano Modesto,
Museum of Soho artefacts at St Anne's Church by Liang Liang He

building studies and evolved devices

Royal College of Physicians: Study of central stair unwrapping through space, by Arash Farhadi
pinhole image of Palais de Tokyo in device derived from spatial volume of light in the side stair at RCP, by Mohammad Reza Hosseini Bagha

axonometric and model studying physical and visual accessibility in the Oasis Leisure Centre,
image of Paris projected onto ground at location of view, by Sara Erfantalab-Evini.

The Photographers' Gallery as a persicope, device as a lantern,
photo of Berwick Street taken through device colliding multiple views, by Liang Liang He

collected rules

Ten rules for Building Blocks, Building Stories

1   Find the particular.

2   Know the neighbourhood to the limit of 1 block, 1 street.

3   Programmes must include mixed uses: interlock activities.

4   Develop the design within a restrained volumetric limit.

5   Form internal spatial relationships.

6   Make a relationship with the street.

7   Work with cinematic methods.

8   Make cinematic spaces.

9   Design volumetrically.

10  Design for inhabitation and at least one non-human species.

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Some of the other rules and advice we have mentioned during the year:

The Manifesto by Roger Zogolovitch and Peter Wylie from the exhibition ‘Making it different’


1   Occupy spaces in the city

2   Enjoy views over rooftops

3   Play within the party wall

4   Make section our frame

5   Inhabit those spaces

6   Challenge the city form

7   Ban monotony

8   Express individualism

9   Make three dimensional forms

10  Experiment with building





Practical exercises from Species of Spaces by Georges Perec 

 
Observe the street, from time to time, with some concern for system perhaps.
Apply yourself. Take your time.
Note down the place: the terrace of a café near the junction of the Rue de Bac and the Boulevard Saint-Germain
     the time: seven o'clock in the evening
     the date: 15 May 1973
     the weather: set fair
Note down what you can see. Anything worthy of note going on. Do you know how to see what's worthy of note? Is there anything that strikes you?
Nothing strikes you. You don't know how to see.

You must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless.

The street: try to describe the street, what it's made of, what it's used for. The people in the street. The cars. What sort of cars? The buildings: note that they're on the comfortable, well-heeled side.
Distinguish residential from official buildings.
The shops. What do they sell in the shops? There are no food shops.
Oh yes, there's a baker's. Ask yourself where the locals do their shopping.
The cafés. How many cafés are there? One, two, three, four. Why did you choose this one? Because you know it, because it's in the sun, because it sells cigarettes. The other shops: antique shops, clothes, hi-fi, etc. Don't say, don't write 'etc'. Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven't looked at anything, you've merely picked out what you've long ago picked out.

Force yourself to see more flatly.


Some Rules and Hints for Students and Teachers or Anybody Else by John Cage  

open jury

thanks to our guests at the Open Jury: Robin Cross (Article 25), Simon Tucker (Cottrell & Vermeulen Architecture), Mike Levey (Newlon Housing Trust), Nick Willson (Nick Willson Architects) and Sandra Denicke-Polcher (The Cass, LMU).

some quotes from the day:

Make physical models.

Learn from Berwick Street.

How does a building affect its context and how does the context affect the building?

A proposal is imagining and proposing the future.

Design for the future of Soho.

Take a leap. Don't be afraid of getting it wrong (because you always start by getting it wrong).

A drawing is never neutral.

Encode your agenda in each drawing.

Interesting things in Soho happen above (or below) the ground level.

The projects need more friction. Give them more to work against.

Is it (the friction) programmatic? Or to do with day/night shifts? Find it. 

Draw sections - show layered richness and richness of activity.

building blocks, building stories

Soho. Heart of London. Behind the tacky touristic sheen, layers of history and activity, the mundane and the notorious combine. Silk shops, second-hand record shops, sex shops, bookshops, schools, council housing, chandelier makers, solicitors, coffee houses, public houses, post-production studios, bike shops, bespoke suit makers, religious study centres, and street markets exist cheek by jowl on a single ordinary and remarkable street. We have chosen Berwick Street as our site for the year.

This year Unit G explore architectures that can provide the frame and stage for the everyday theatre, craft, care and survival of individuals who live and work close by one another.

We will study the richness of the block, where particular replaces generic, and the potential for relationships within and without. Taking the idea of the urban hybrid block, we re-cast it at the human scale of Soho and challenge the prevailing redevelopment model that obliterates centuries-old plotlines with high-rent open-plan floorplates, instead seeking to retain traces in material and meaningful ways as well as support the delicate and constantly shifting balance of players, agents and residents of the area. We will make propositions that provide spaces for inhabitation and opportunities for interaction and reciprocity between activities and occupiers, street and interior, public and private. We are interested in an architecture of narrative and inhabitation. 

(images from top: Peter Street corners, HFL; Ronald Sitch in his workshop, Soho Clarion issue 141; Berwick Street market 1933)