Gentrification panel 04

Past 4 decades of liberalisation has led us to where we are, privatised water supply sector that is dumping sewage in waterways, privatised energy providers profiteering from energy crisis, a liberalised housing market that has amplified the housing affordability and access crisis, a privatised railway network that prioritises dividends over investments, an NHS that is slowly being privatised through underfunding of the public component, a private postal service, a privatised educational sector that further increases disparity and polarisation. 

Is this conversation within the scope of an architect / planners / sustainability expert? We write long reports on textures, colours, placemaking..."happiness" even and yet we skirt the very foundations that exert direct influence on our lives.

An article on Canary Wharf and the tax break it received from the state.

Gentrification Cover Page

Reinier de Graaf - The Century that Never Happened

https://vimeo.com/211269857

Disjunction

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”, is a quote by Winston Churchill. In 1943 after the destruction of the Commons Chamber during the Blitz, the Commons debated the question of rebuilding the chamber. Churchill insisted on the rectangular shape of the older layout was responsible for the two-party system vs the semi-circular amphitheatre shapes being adopted elsewhere. This design to this day forms a key element of British parliamentary democracy. 
It is this chicken or egg relationship between the built and us (culture / policy-regulations / politics) that over the recent years has broken down. Architects and Urban Designers are no longer cultural markers with capacity to imagine new lifestyles, new urban environments or new narratives, instead they have been reduced to service providers to speculators. In such a scenario we increasingly see urban environments transform from diverse morphology to a uniform image of banal, increasingly sterile, strongly surveillanced environments. We no longer have capacity to create multi-layered, diverse cities with complex environments, we can emulate it at the best like cheap Disney versions that amplify this impotency of the profession.
The locus has shifted from Design to Bureaucracy of Design.  But it is exactly this disjunction where planners attempt policy framework and hope to create good design without having the ability/patience to test it. Also policy frameworks through personal experience have been amazingly easy to be hijacked. A look at how “Cluster approach” to redevelopment has been interpreted in Mumbai can alone work as an effective cenotaph to that argument. Financial feasibility experts work as mere extensions of the current market and banking structure. I bet Grenfell Tower victims may have a different take on this.
Not to say I do not believe in multidisciplinary approach, where an Engineer works with a Doctor to make Frankenstein…the possibilities are endless. But I do strongly feel a multidisciplinary approach with current trend of specialisation only works towards amplifying this disjunction in the profession. A planner by the end of his / her course has become so specialised that he or she has no ability to develop form / space. Also, this structure of specialisation tends to work along some kind of Fordian system of producing design. This in turn results in creation of hierarchy based on which part of the machine is most useful, a motor or the windshield(?) This hierarchy where the designer is only incidental and often dispensable cog in the wider mechanism, a naïve fellow who does not understand issues that will have far greater influence on design, like policy framework, financial feasibility, blowjobs etc, shifts the centre of gravity away from design and towards management of design. This shift comes at the cost of the urban environments we inhabit, which in turn has a subtle retarding influence on our existence with every passing day.
So while everyone plays the multi-pronged Jane Jacobs, the Designer is the only one who is able to put pen to paper and provide something that is a committed representation. It is not abstract like set of words strung together which may convey multiple meanings, it isn’t a framework in the form of constitution and design guidelines that may or may not capture something meaningful, it isn't poetry, it is a solid form, something that will cast a shadow and when built will displace the very air. It is something that all the multidisciplinary idiots who have spent time ruminating can now come and critique, hopefully giving their sense of existence in the project and the world some reason to be. It has drawings that one can discuss around and draw over.
On another note, I watched four films over the last week,
1) Tuscanyness
2) Nostalgia for the Future
3) The Great Estate - The Rise and Fall of the Council House
4) What have you done today Mervyn Day?
Each of these films is beautiful and captures the loss of hope in Architecture / Design through a sense of Nostalgia…those were the days…or maybe I am just growing old.

Clapham Pub

A new site under construction and soon to open.
More details to follow in the new year

Europan 14_Sluisbuurt: Landscape of Making

Some additional material from Europan 14 
Site: Sluisbuurt, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Design brief: Productive City
Design title: Landscape of Making
Project work done in collaboration with Chris Cornelissen

Europan 14

As is the bi-annual tradition we burn the night oil and lose only to try again harder! 
Europan 14 done with a close friend and fellow urban designer Chris Cornelissen.
Project involved designing two blocks of a wider masterplan (of Sluisbuurt Development, Amsterdam, Netherlands) as a representative sample. The design brief required the design to satisfy the high residential demand, create a new identity for this area, look at this as part of "the productive city" initiative and explore ideas that could create interesting live and work conditions.
Below is our own brief + design work.
"Landscape of Making

Introduction:

Through the last 3 decades Europe has undergone a shift from industrial to service economy. This shift has resulted in disjunctions between people, work and environment. Cities with industrial legacy are left with urban voids often transforming towards a consumer based landscape (Industry to shopping mall, docklands to business parks etc). Workers and their families not having had time and opportunity to adapt to the transforming economies form the urban poor. This has resulted in erosion of connection between environment, people and the culture of work.

The project interprets the brief as an initiative to re-establish a close connection between people, their work and the environment in which they live and work. The Craftsman by Richard Sennett forms the theoretical basis for our project.

“Most of us have to work. But is work just means to an end? In trying to make a living have we lost touch with the idea of making things well?

Can the desire to do a job well for its own sake -  as a template for living, work as an idea?” –The Craftsman, Richard Sennett.

Context:

The design acknowledges the following:

1) Netherlands is at the forefront of developing unique social infrastructure and housing type and delivery models that can enable finding solutions to various challenges posed by a constantly changing world.

2) The site sits within a wider context of Amsterdam and the city council’s initiative to string different hubs along the A10.

3) The work patterns will be built for the strengths and potential of existing economy, tied to various initiatives at national and citywide levels. Eg. Startup Amsterdam, Startup City Alliance Europe.

4) Potential to live and work in such close proximity allows higher density without putting pressure on transport infrastructure.

5) There is an appetite and need to invest in small scale local crafts and industry that may not be profitable immediately but allows conserving an important aspect of Dutch culture eg. Beer making, Flower production, Carpentry etc.

Vision:

The design envisages the following:

1) The ground floor is completely mixed use, with Northern edge dedicated to Selling (Retail shops) and Southern edge of the site dedicated towards Innovation and Making (workshops, studio spaces, Incubation hubs, startup spaces). This proximity allows an imagined symbiosis between Making activity getting an immediate venue to Sell or Exhibit its “goods and services”.

The ground floor is also carved with edges setting back or intruding, based on key angle of views and accents that form a part of the “MAKE” landscape.

2) The overall massing is result of location of towers based on surrounding context of the masterplan, desire to create a series of 4 yards each with its own unique function and identity, a lower height along the South to allow sunlight into the yards and finally a vision to mix live and work in various degrees to form different types that can be independently delivered and phased on a block by block basis as per requirements.

3) This being the centre of the development and having higher percentage of mixed use development, the plot is kept extremely permeable with a pedestrian gateway created along the canal enabling not only North South but also East West connectivity through the plots.

4) The massing face along the North is designed as Commercial development and the South facing massing is secured for good quality residential development.

5) The massing also attempts to balance between the high density desired on the plots and quality of urban environment through setbacks on the ground and upper level in order to maintain a healthy height along the street frontages.

Design:

The design is made up of 5 key elements:

1) Ground and Basement

2) 3 towers

3) 4 Yards

4) 9 Types

5) Hydroponic terraces

These elements together form the “Landscape of Making”

Conclusion:

The design is ambitious in its attempt to create a truly mixed use, live and work environment but has been designed to allow flexibility and change resilience in accordance with various constraints. The design also suggests architectural character in some instances but recognises that the working on types, massing strategy and overall design guidelines are the key deliverables that can effectively absorb a range of architectural styles depending on various collaborations."

Genzo Greek

If you are around East Finchley and in mood for good Greek food, do visit Genzo, our fifth restaurant design in London. Some photos of the place through construction and final opening.

  

Baw - pre-design : process : soft opening

This is my third restaurant project designed in London. It is a small 35 cover, Thai / Pan Asian cuisine, by the name Baw and located on Mill Hill high street.
It had a soft opening couple of weeks back.
All the photos of the finished interiors courtesy of photographer Vanessa Polignano.
More photos and updates to follow.

Isle of Wight