ZONE 5
Caretakers: Toby Shew, Owen Hughes Pearce, Maria Farone, Christian Knight
Students: Xuan Yi Liew, Aamir Salimbhai Kundanpurwala, Adrian Mpanga-Sempa, Ben Westmore, Cyril Lai, Eloise Collier, Hin Fai Kung, Justin Collins, Kimberley Wong, Maeson Chong, Olli Taylor, Samuel Effiong, Shazia Dhalla
This year's experimental design studio, Zone 5, is not for those seeking safety and prescription. Instead, the studio challenges traditional design studio structures by providing an alternative - an experimental zone. Here, students are encouraged to explore a series of starting premises and agendas, using them to become autonomous and collaborative in their approach.
The zone is focused on exploring a range of interests, including VR/AR, Generation Z/M, low culture, deployable architecture, event space, fabrication as process/exploration, hyper-tech materials, technology exploration, new building types, new architectural agendas, and the connected city. Video as the sketch is also explored as a means of generating form and program-finding methods.
Through research and exploration of these interests, students are able to develop their own positions on architecture, and generate innovative ideas for form and program. If you are looking to push the boundaries of traditional design studio structures and explore new avenues in architecture, Zone 5 is the studio for you.
Eloise Collier - Captured and Consumed: S-CAM Station – Studio Rail - A polemic production that criticises society through architectural systems. Exploring over-consumption, social media, influencers and extreme capitalism. The developing city forces everyday essential services to be commodities, and inhabitants must pay for services that should be a human right. The train station becomes the context to illustrate an extreme potential reality, one step away from our own. The retail invasion on the stations captured audience over commercialises commuters to a hostile extent. Our consumer driven existence pushes the tropes of social media – surveillance, the illusion of wealth, waste, and planned obsolescence. What is considered frivolous must be taken seriously.
Eloise Collier
Eloise Collier
Eloise Collier
Fred Kung Hin Fai - H/Al.Cu.Au Center - H = Hydrogen / AI = Aluminium . Cu = Copper . Au = Gold. The “H/Al.Cu.Au Center” examines the intricate subject of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management in the UK, and investigates urban mining in the local community. It is inspired by the consequences of living in a digital world and aims to showcase how the value of electronic products can be transformed into secondary materials like copper and gold in our daily lives.
Fred Kung Hin Fai
Fred Kung Hin Fai
Justin Collins - Life after Death - This project aims to restore the balance in our life cycle by addressing the sustainability of our burial traditions. Currently, we tend to burn or bury our problems, perpetuating an unsustainable trend deeply ingrained in our society. However, there lies an opportunity to utilise our remains in a way that benefits nature, even in our final stage of life: Death. By transforming our bodies into nutrient-dense soil, we can become a catalyst for new life. This project focuses on providing a respectful solution that encompasses the creation of new rituals and ceremonies, allowing loved ones to find closure during this transitional period. By directing the enriched soil towards forestry conservation, we can not only sequester carbon but also begin to repair the nature we have long taken for granted.
Justin Collins
Justin Collins
Justin Collins
Aamir Kundanpurwala | 19156977 - THE REVOLUTION MACHINE - The Revolution Machine will ignite change in people’s participation in the governing of the Nation and this framework could be put in place in various countries around the globe. Theatre of the Oppressed sits on top of the House of Lords and does this in 4 stages Stage 1: Knowing one’s body Stage 2: Expressing through their body Stage 3: Theatre as a Language Stage 4: Theatre of Discourse Through a 500-meter march from bottom to top, the Museum of Protest inspires and documents protest. The ramp showcases various forms of protest, including social media, posters, paintings, sculptures, and vandalized items.
Aamir Kundanpurwala
Aamir Kundanpurwala
Adrian Sempa - Political Deception and Truth, through the Arch - Have you ever been deceived by the government? Political deception occurs regularly. Politicians saying they would do something in the elections, but they do not. The aim of this project is to reveal political truth and manifest this deception and truth in architecture, within the city hall for the people. This city hall will be for voters, political members and other visitors in watchet. Starting off as a trial run in watchet and then it will manifest in other cities around the UK. Allowing them to experience all the lies we go through in the elections and talking it through with the politicians.
Adrian Sempa
Adrian Sempa
Ben Westmore - Reclaiming st giles - a human centric approach to public space - With the ever growing cost of living and cost of space in our cities, the space given over to pedestrians comes in to question. The wave of consumer capitalist society wants to keep you at home on the sofa. Outside is where things occur. Outside is where you can break the mold. Outside is where you can find a new utopian way of living. The project is a simple solution of urban greening of a major street that explores the concepts of invasive and parasitic occupation of public and previously private space to take back the street soley for the human.
Ben Westmore
Ben Westmore
CYRIL LAI - Art, Cultural, and Communal Hub as a Resistant to Hyperrealit - The project explores the postmodern philosophical phenomenon of hyperreality where the concept of reality is replaced by simulation satured with representations. The site located at Totternam Court Road station in central London near high street exemplifies simulcra in the built environment with the new entertainment district of Outernet London. The proposal provides an alternative approach as a way of resisting hyperreality with sets of conceptual frameworks and strategies including design disjunction and urban room, which prioritize on social and cultural interests over dominant economic system. The design uses symoblic representation of graphs as a design apporach which juxtapose with progrmamatic approach of urban room as a way to foster social interaction and unexpected encounter, these stratgies, by creating conflicts and tension, present new opportunities and innovative approach for exploring architecture as a way to deal with the phenomanon of hyperreality.
CYRIL LAI
CYRIL LAI
Liew Xuan Yi
Liew Xuan Yi
Liew Xuan Yi
Liew Xuan Yi
Mason Chong Wai Xuan - Fabric of Lives – Fashion industry; pre-dominantly the fast fashion line, is responsible for up to 1.2 billion tonnes of Greenhouse gas /year. It contributes to more than 10% carbon footprint globally, and is the 2nd highest industry in pollution. 87% of textile waste ends up in landfill or open burning to discard. As they gradually decompose, they release greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals. The industry’s global emission will increase in 50% by 2030. 20% of global water pollution is also accorded from textile waste. Countries are getting rid of textile waste by forcing them into under developed Global South countries that neither have the funding nor infrastructure to address the pollutants, while many textile fibres can be recycled or re-purposed with appropriate processes. Fabric of Lives in an Urban Intervention to cultivate a community driven circular economy in textile through the indication of moments with Architecture; as a platform or expression, in regard to impacts of textile waste whilst re-involving the local community in Oxford Circus, the central of London.
Maeson Chong Wai Xuan
Maeson Chong Wai Xuan
Maeson Chong Wai Xuan
Oliver Taylor - Westhill Farm Forest School - The built environment being a huge contributor the climate crisis we find ourselves in how can we as architects begin to counter act this? With the reduction of farmland in the UK and across Europe due to the aging workforce is there a way that we can repurpose this abandoned farmland in a way that will benefit us? This project explores the uses of taking abandoned farmland and converting it into biomaterial farming as well as a forest school to offer education and experience in sustainable building methods.
Oliver Taylor
Oliver Taylor
Oliver Taylor
Samuel Effiong - Creative Cloud - Creative Cloud is a workspace environment that aims to break the social, economic, and organizational inequality of a typical workspace environment by utilizing the cultural environment as the primary driver in workspace architecture. The project aims to use the Existing Museum of London and Bastion Tower at London Wall West as a cultural catalyst, bringing together individuals of varying socioeconomic statuses, genders, and ethnicities and inspiring a prolonged stay. The Project will therefore highlight the fusion of 3 museum powered workspace themes to achieve its objective Museum of Things - Museum of Work - Museum of Place
Samuel Effiong
Samuel Effiong
Shazia Dhalla - Through the city, In my Feels - The project is about creating a library to connect the community within Cowley to the city centre and reduce economic deprivation. One indice of deprivation is education which can also cause isolation. In an age where data can be found online and libraries not serving the same purpose, this positive change to shape libraries to meet the needs of the community today will help revive them and create more free places for people to visit and find a wealth of knowledge in. This library is connected to pop ups dotted around the city, the resources it has range from podcast and film archives to music archives, arts journals and books. With an exhibition space and multi use room it can be used to host events too.
Shazia Dhalla
Shazia Dhalla