Unit 3
BSc design unit at the Bartlett School of Architecture with Liam Young [2009/10] and David Garcia [2010/11/12/13/14]
As global warming transforms our planet extreme living environments are becoming the norm for a vast proportion of the world’s population. Inhabiting this environment brings about very specific challenges. Where to grow food? How to obtain drinking water? What energy to use? Transporting bare essentials across long distances creates undesirable dependencies. Relying on imported supplies at a time of dwindling resources is at best a risky, at worst a life threatening commitment.
For four years the studio has explored extreme environmental conditions. We have waded through the agua alta in the Veneto, travelled to the peaks of the Pyrennes and barran Icelandic lava fields, have floated across icelakes, climbed on glaciers, sampled geothermal energy, shared lunch with shepherds on bare mountain sides, driven across dry lakebeds and trecked through the encrusted saltscapes of the Mojave desert.
The aim of our mission? A personal engagement with a not-too-distant-future and an architectural brief that is no longer about evading the irreversible, but instead generates design solutions that are specific, responsive and adaptable. A type of radical sustainability that is deeply embedded in its context, celebrating quirks, ideosyncracies and a distinct local identity.
Teamwork is an essential pre-requisite for the success of our work, not merely to assure personal safety in remote landscapes, but rather to stimulate an academic discussion and to formulate an opinion on how environmental changes impact on the work of architects. Architectural education is often focussed on individual excellence. Our studio embraces the opportunities that emerge from collaborative work. Exchanging knowledge and skills, critical evaluation and opinionated declamation are part of our day to day studio culture.
briefs: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009
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