PG Unit 26

MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2)

Compiled from Bartlett Books 2017–2019
Our Design DNA
At The Bartlett School of Architecture, we have been publishing
annual exhibition catalogues for each of our design-based
programmes for more than a decade. These catalogues,
amounting to thousands of pages, illustrate the best of our
students’ extraordinary work. Our Design Anthology series
brings together the annual catalogue pages for each of our
renowned units, clusters, and labs, to give an overview of how
their practice and research has evolved.
Throughout this time some teaching partnerships have
remained constant, others have changed. Students have also
progressed from one programme to another. Nevertheless,
the way in which design is taught and explored at The Bartlett
School of Architecture is in our DNA. Now with almost 50 units,
clusters and labs in the school across our programmes,
the Design Anthology series shows how we define, progress
and reinvent our agendas and themes from year to year.
Professor Frédéric Migayrou
Chair of The Bartlett School of Architecture
Professor Bob Sheil
Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture
2019 Description, Invention, Reality
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
2018 Strategies Against Architecture
David Di Duca, Simon Kennedy
2017 Hyper-Architectures of Play
Simon Kennedy, Gabby Shawcross
Description, Invention, Reality
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata
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Description, Invention, PG26
Reality
David Di Duca, Tetsuro Nagata

Art and design have historically challenged and explored our society. Year 4
Our unit continues this by observing and forming critical positions on Alexander Borrell, Darren
Buttar, Andrei-Ciprian
what we see around us. We are interested in how architecture is able Cojocaru, Ross Gribben,
to evoke emotion and prompt conversation. We consider our role as Sze (Viola) Poon, Ryan Tung
active observers and participants, and are interested in testing out
Year 5
theories by making films and 1:1 installations. There is a common Pitchaya Chayavoraprapa,
misconception that architects design experiences, but in PG26 Jolene Hor, Klaudia
we would rather suggest that architects design places and objects Kepinska, Kin (Glynnis) Lui,
David Majoe, David Park,
to be experienced. This position leads to a design process with a Baifan Tao, Artur Zakrzewski
focus on how people perceive, interact with and remember space,
and the connection between body, imagination and memory. Thank you to: Barbara-Ann
Campbell-Lange, Stephen
The world around us is changing fast and, with it, the ubiquitous Gage, Alexis Germanos,
and continuous exposure to technology is making audiences to digital Stefana Gradinariu, Mike
arts less responsive, as new possibilities arrive faster than they can be Hutchison, Simon Kennedy,
Ted Krueger, Henry Pelly,
explored. Personal data, connected technologies, and interactive and Henrik Pihlveus, Grace
predictive products are all current topics of debate. Cynicism towards Quah, Daniel Sonabend
technological progress is not new but we are experiencing a rapid rise
Sponsor: BAT Studio
in anxiety about automation and surveillance, which is leading to a
growth in neo-luddite, off-grid lifestyles. Architecture is integral to
this, as cities and buildings can increasingly be seen as systems to
utilise technology to control the currents of weather, nature, power,
heat, water and data. In PG26 this year, we looked at how we can
embrace, ignore and disrupt these ‘controlled’ systems and, as a
result, the architectures that the unit designed were both reactive
to, and interactive with, the uncontrollable.
We began the year by creating small-scale installations in a
brewery in Walthamstow that explored how buildings can react to
the actions of people and the environment around them. Embracing
the performative aspects that this brought, we moved towards larger-
scale architectural proposals in London and beyond. We actively
encouraged our students to work with varied approaches: to utilise
the workshop to fabricate haptic devices, develop code and
electronics to test interactivity, and create physical and virtual spaces
to evoke emotional responses and challenge ideas. We produced films
incorporating four-dimensional drawings and viewer-driven non-linear
narratives. Above all, our work was iterative and reflective, and we
learned to criticise and question our own processes.

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26.1, 26.5 Pitchaya Chayavoraprapa, Y5 ‘Mundane to
Mad’. The process of imagining spaces and places for
others’ needs is based on assumptions about shared
experiences and our ability to empathise with others.
Assumption is a device rather than a fact; we all
experience the world uniquely depending on our past
experiences and physiology. This project explores how the
imagination is as potent in our experiences as the physical
things around us. The work culminates in a non-linear
interactive film, which viewers engage with by moving
in space, relative to the screen and a tracking camera.
26.2–26.4 David Park, Y5 ‘Insta[nt] Virality’. Instagram is
directly influencing our engagement with the public realm.
If a place sees a spike of interest on Instagram, it leads to
a corresponding popularity in real-world visitors. These
visitors post images of the places and the cycle becomes
self-fulfilling. This gives Instagram’s algorithms increasing
influence on our urban behaviour, especially relating to
tourism. This project explores what this means and
imagines a figurative architecture designed for this
emerging scenario in which the social media
representation of a place is as important as the physical.
26.6 Darren Buttar, Y4 ‘Digital Theatre’. Site-specific
theatre and arts have become increasingly popular and
technology has resulted in the prevalence of installation
work. However the majority of this work either relies on
found spaces or adapting work into traditional theatres
and galleries. This project imagines a new typology
of theatre and arts building to facilitate new types
of performance.  perceive the building as expressing emotions.
26.7 Andrei-Ciprian Cojocaru, Y4 ‘Date Hub’. Responding
to the brief for a public house, a place for socialising
beyond one’s domestic environment, this project evolved
from an interest in how people form new personal
relationships. The proposed building, an architectural
representation of a dating algorithm, is a reaction to
relationships mediated through smartphones.  sited in the remains of Brighton Pier, a building famous for
26.8 Sze (Viola) Poon, Y4 ‘Made in Camden’. The site
currently occupied by a large supermarket in Camden
is due to be transformed into a residential development,
creating a new community for thousands of people.
This project proposes a garden and craft centre which
would form an ambitious community asset and social
hub for this new development.  or interests. The project was researched and developed
26.9 Alexander Borrell, Y4 ‘Cloud Courts’. This project
proposes a parliament building for the age of digital
communication and data-based capitalism. The design
strategy employs the metaphor of ‘echo chambers’
surrounding a debating hall through which disputes in
the digital world are resolved. These disputes might range
from the petty to the extremely important; either way, the
outcomes are cast in iron and placed into a public garden
for all to see.  that may transcend the possibilities of the conventional
26.10 Ryan Tung, Y4 ‘Amphibious Living for Later Life’.
This building is designed for a specific community group;
people who live on canal boats in London. As people grow
older and their mobility decreases, living on a barge
becomes increasingly difficult. This project imagines a
retirement home for a boating community in Camden,
enabling people to live on their boats for as long as
possible. Ideas related to the slow way of life, travelling
by canal are used as a design metaphor throughout
the building.
26.11 Ross Gribben, Y4 ‘Post-Primark’. This project
facilitates slow conversations between strangers, and
explores the changing social activities surrounding retail.
It proposes a future building on Oxford Street based
around ethical clothing production, recycling and
mass-customisation.
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26.12–26.13 Klaudia Kepinska, Y5 ‘Digital Memories’. This
project imagines a landscape museum and archive based
on the life of a Finnish architect who is largely forgotten.
The project explores the boundaries between
documentation, facsimile and imagination. It directly
acknowledges the role of the designer’s own imagination
as a source of inaccuracy but also creativity in the
process of representing a history that cannot be
recreated. The project is portrayed using experimental
film and drawing techniques.
26.14–26.15 Jolene Hor, Y5 ‘Unprivate Mansion’.
Our society is heavily influenced by aspirational lifestyles
portrayed through various forms of media. This project
began with an examination of architectures created for
reality television. This led to a test installation which
explored the ideas, and a parallel thesis focused on
domesticity and privacy. The project culminates in a film
which extrapolates observable behaviours in our current
society, portraying a unique and potentially disturbing
building in a near-future Camden.
26.16 Artur Zakrzewski, Y5 ‘ Ministry of Wellbeing’. GDP
and continuous growth as a measure of development are
a capitalist constructs which are no longer compatible
with the challenges of climate change and social inequality
we face. Progressive societies are starting to value measures
of happiness and wellbeing. This project imagines a new
‘Ministry of Wellbeing’ for London. The proposed building,
in the most prominent of locations, the Serpentine lake,
features a skin which is animated so that people may
26.17 Kin (Glynnis) Lui, Y5 ‘West Pier Life Garden’.
The project’s key themes are transition, in-between states
and rituals associated with loss, mourning and reinvention.
The project developed through an experimental installation
which combined animation and tactile objects to depict
the serendipity of transitional states. The major project is
being lost multiple times and existing in states of transition
for long periods. It draws on ideas from winter festivals,
seasonal cycles and rebirth. 
26.18 Baifan Tao, Y5 ‘Metropolitan Yu’. This project
imagines a near future in which the urban realm can be
augmented and themed depending on a persons mood
through a series of augmented reality apps, and culminated
in a composited film shot on location in Chongqing,
depticting a journey inspired by a famous Chinese myth.
26.19–26.22 David Majoe, Y5 ‘Haptic Virtuality’.
This experimental project comprised practical research
and a thesis-led investigation into how perceptive traits
can be explored and exploited in virtual reality. The
project aspires to create new forms of architecture
palette. In the near future, the plausibility of things we
encounter and the mixed sensory inputs we receive
from both the physical and virtual components of our
environment, will become part of the architect’s armoury
of design tools.
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Strategies Against Architecture
David Di Duca, Simon Kennedy
 Unit 26
Year 4
Pitchaya Chayavoraprapa,
Jolene Hor, Klaudia Kepinska,
Kin Lui, David Majoe, David
Park, Baifan Tao
Year 5
Juan Escudero Pablos, Ezer
Han, Cheung Hong Ivan Hung,
Yan Yi Lee, Yiran Ma, Miten
Mistry, Carl Pihlveus, Hannah
Lucinda Sargeant, Carina
Tran, Songyang Zhou
Thank you to our consultants
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2018
and critics: Alexis Germanos
and 3x Architecture; Mike
Hutchison and Momentum
Engineers; Helen Di Duca and
Jason Bruges Studio; Anam
Afroze Hasan, Hal Currey,
Andy Downey, Stephen Gage,
Pedro Gil, Timo Haedrich,
Stephen Harty, Christine
Hawley, Shaun Murray,
Grace Quah, Fiona Zisch
We are grateful to our
sponsors, BAT Studio
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Strategies Against
Architecture
David Di Duca, Simon Kennedy
Unit 26 chooses to define architecture as ‘the underlying structure of
anything and everything’. Architecture is everywhere and this year Unit 26
was against it. Taking inspiration from the transitional and tumultuous
times we inhabit, we interrogated the idea of exiting structures, hierarchies
and systems.
We freely exchange our personal data for services and access to
emerging means of communication. All the while, we are bombarded by
subversive and sophisticated modes of advertising and manipulation.
Energy companies are valued in the trillions, but to mobilise more than
a fraction of their resources would make life on our planet impossible.
An elusive cartel of internet companies hoards assets of fabulous value:
data, information and intellectual property, alongside cash reserves too
large to spend. Value and power have evolved. However, outside the cartel,
the information age has disrupted the traditional monopolies of power:
information is free, the truth is uncertain, the transfer of knowledge and
opinion has been open-sourced and democratised. Traditional power
structures struggle to maintain control and new economies based on
barter and exchange are beginning to thrive. Is this how architecture
of the next age will be procured?
This year, the unit has produced work which is both propositional
and critical. We have imagined new futures and alternatives to the present,
satirised established social norms and questioned our control over our
own environments.
Strategies Against Architectural Representation
The structures that surround us embody ideas translated from social
and historical contexts. But nothing is static, everything is volatile and
dynamic. Time-based media offer us revolutionary tools both to develop
and to communicate ideas. Unit 26’s ideas are developed and portrayed
through film and filmic techniques. We seek to expand the modes of
the cinematic medium, incorporating non-linearity and interactivity
into designed spatial experiences.
Los Angeles
The unit visited Los Angeles, exploring sites including the LA River and
Universal Studios, Sony Pictures and Venice Beach, and sought out
hyper-real architectural manifestations in Hollywood and Las Vegas.
New Forms of Practice
We have created filmic architectures and architectural films that explore
animated and augmented relationships between people and place. Our
techniques included scriptwriting, hand-drawing, storyboards, stop-
motion, four-dimensional drawing, hyperlapse, motion-matching, models
and interactive mock-ups.
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Fig. 26.1 Juan Escudero Pablos Y5, ‘The Church of Science’. the poor has led to the creation of megastructures to purify the
The project depicts a future in which The Church of Science air. The structures create seasons on demand while the city
has emerged to control knowledge, therefore deriving from around them becomes habitable only by machines and humans
it political and economic power. Located in Death Valley, the with breathing apparatus.
new order is structured as a religion, obscured by smoke and
mirrors and shaped as a useless machine. This mystification is
understood through the ontology of the cyborg, a new almighty
messiah. Figs. 26.2 – 26.3 Yiran Ma Y5, ‘The Cloud Project’.
Chinese culture divides the year into 24 phases or seasons;
this intimate, detailed connection to nature is an integral
part of Chinese culture. The infamous pollution of Beijing
has a hidden consequence: it is slowly depriving the city’s
inhabitants of this connection. This project imagines a future
where the vast and increasing gap between the wealthy and

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Figs. 26.4– 26.5 Ezer Han Y5, ‘The Korean Reunification – they are assumed to be ‘scientific’ and ‘fair’, they actually
The Architecture of Nostalgia, Transition and Unity’. The centre conceal embedded racial and locational biases, encouraging
represents the first of many steps towards a unified Korea, self-fulfilling downward spirals within vulnerable communities.
the possibility of which draws nearer due to unprecendented South LA’s kaleidoscope of cultures and history of racial tension
recent movements by the two governments. The building uses is the testing ground for confronting these tools. The centre
shared, traditional architectural tropes to spatially facilitate will create and disperse mischievous deployable structures
reconnection and familiarisation of the two nations. The around the city, challenging the validity of surveillance
programmes within the centre enable a gradual intermingling technologies and usurping the power of the algorithms.
of the now disparate cultures, building compassion and
understanding in anticipation of a unified future. Figs. 26.6
– 26.7 Miten Mistry Y5, ‘D.R.E.A.M. Centre For Hackstivism’.
Cutting-edge technology, driven by algorithms and powered by
big-data is being sold to police forces to aid in the prediction
of future crimes. These algorithms are inscrutable, and while

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Fig. 26.8 Hannah Lucinda Sargeant Y5, ‘Lutando Contra Fogo
Com Fogo’. Set in the large, derelict agricultural estate of Rio
Frio, the project explores the current struggles surrounding the
management of forest fires in Portugal. The project proposes
a three-pronged attack: fire fighting and detection devices,
refuges for people trapped by a forest fire and a radical
approach to provide a sustainable, long-term solution –
deforestation. Figs. 26.9 – 26.10 Cheung Hong Ivan Hung
Y5, ‘The School of the Enigmatic’. This proposal for the LA
river contains two schools, one teaching film and the other
architecture. The two programmes wind around and through
each other, splicing views and connections for ideas and
people. Designed through intimate analysis of the films of
Wong Kar Wai, the project is holistically developed through
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filmic techniques and modes of representation. The spaces
are designed from key views, composing textures, colours
and depth of field in response to the luscious and enigmatic
scenes constructed by Wong Kar Wai in In The Mood For Love.
Fig. 26.11 Carina Tran Y5, ‘The Allure Of Nostalgia’. The
American Dream has been a staple of cultural representation
for the last century; a hard to define aesthetic of nostalgia
and compliance, control and aspiration, frequantly applied to
both utopian and dystopian visions. This thought provoking
sci-fi film satires the imagery and tropes we are so often
encouraged to digest. The project proposes an academy for
would be American dreamers, with a floating dream home as
the prize for qualification.
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Figs. 26.12 & 26.15 – 26.19 Carl Pihlveus Y5, ‘Luliwa’. architecture have appeared. Human value has been lowered
Science-fiction has predominantly been written by Western to fulfilling mundane tasks in order to fine tune artificial
cultures. Middle Eastern cities, which have developed via rapid intelligence algorithms. Tangible currency no longer exists.
economic growth, appear on the surface inspired by Western This ironic future scenario shows the dark side of life and
visions of the future. Cultural and religious reasons have technology; it speculates how value is changed when the
meant there are few Middle Eastern science-fiction idioms – behaviours of individuals are recorded and backed up by a
the project therefore responds with strategic architectural cloud system.
devices, designed and reinterpreted from traditional,
vernacular and symbolic architectural typologies. The project
is manifested in a cinematic film which reimagines some of the
most famous examples of Western science fiction. Figs. 26.13
– 26.14 Yan Yi Lee Y5, ‘The Quest for a New Utopia in Digital
Society’. The project is a critique of the hedonistic digital
world, where new forms of work, economic systems and

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Figs. 26.20 – 26.22 Songyang Zhou Y5, ‘The Ad-Runner’.
Virtual Reality is an emerging habitable medium with different
limitations and new possibilities to those of the world we
normally inhabit. It is both a means of representing and a
space to be experienced in its own right. This project explores
how architecture can be created and experienced in virtual
reality. Emerging from this research the virtual construct
follows an imagined character, Ad-Runner, living in a future
world where the virtual and real have merged.

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Hyper-Architectures of Play
Simon Kennedy, Gabby Shawcross
 Unit 26
Year 4
Juan Escudero Pablos, Ezer
Han, Ivan Hung, Clara Lee,
Yiran Ma, Miten Mistry,
Henrik Pihlveus, Hannah
Sargeant, Carina Tran,
Songyang Zhou
Year 5
Cui (Bob) Chang, Qidan Chen,
Grace Quah, Dionysis
Toumazis
Thank you to our collaborators
Jason Bruges and Adam
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2017
Heslop of Jason Bruges
Studio, film composer Kevin
Pollard, screenwriter Andrew
Gow of Raindog Films,
designer and filmmaker Keiichi
Matsuda, Kevin Haley of
Aberrant Architecture
Thank you to Tim Sloan of
Levitate Architects for Design
Realisation support, and to
Aran Chadwick of Atelier One
for structural engineering
consultations.
Thank you to:
Pau Bajet, Jason Bruges
(Jason Bruges Studio),
Aran Chadwick (Atelier One),
Hal Currey (HAL Architects),
William Firebrace, Professor
Stephen Gage, Alexis
Germanos (3X Architects),
Andrew Gow (Raindog Films),
Kevin Haley (Aberrant
Architects), Stephen Harty
(Harty and Harty), Adam
Heslop (Jason Bruges
Studio), Ifigeneia Liangi,
J-J Lorraine (Morrow Lorraine
Architects), Keiichi Matsuda,
Ana Monrabal-Cook (Roz Barr
Architects), Kevin Pollard, Tim
Sloan (Levitate Architects),
Graeme Williamson (NORD)
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Hyper-Architectures
of Play
Simon Kennedy, Gabby Shawcross
Play
This year the unit investigated play: the interplay between architecture and
occupant, play in architecture and architecture in play.
We looked to play and games as culturally significant activities
– spatial, relational human practices that can inform the design and
production of architecture. We probed logic, interface, interaction, tactics
and strategies to discover architectural potential in the ambiguity, modality,
atmosphere and delight of games and play. Light and sound, colour, texture
and temperature were brought into play. Dynamic structures reconfigured
while digital surfaces observed and responded to our every move. The unit
played their designs and designed ludic structures for their players.
Hyper-Architectures
We proposed ‘Hyper-Architectures’: those that were intensified, and those
that responded to and created a reality above and beyond the present.
Hybrid, combining the real and projected, they were time-based, energising
the transitory, ephemeral and the emergent, actuating the dynamic,
volatile and the variable. Interactive virtual technologies represent an as-yet
ill-defined new cultural layer, which architects must use to their advantage.
Intensification could occur in both physical and virtual planes, separately
and/or simultaneously. Synthetic spaces are the present! (and the future!).
New Forms of Practice
Unit 26 is a film unit. Our aim is to explore the potential of the moving image
to develop new forms of architectural practice. We create filmic architectures
and architectural films that explore animated and augmented relationships
between people and place. Predicated on the belief that architecture is
experiential and time-based, we use cinematic techniques to investigate,
simulate and speculate.
Our techniques include storyboards, stop-motion, hand-drawing,
four-dimensional drawing, hyper-lapse, motion-matching, models and
interactive mock-ups.
Workshops, Talks and Visits
Unit 26 benefits from a broad network of associated professionals,
whose contributions serve as a counterpoint to the conceptual and
theoretical discourse within the unit, as well as providing inspiration
and practical guidance.
This year, workshops introduced students to filmmaking principles and
innovative techniques. Studio visits connected students to inspiring
practitioners in the worlds of interactive art, architecture, film and gaming.
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Fig. 26.1 Juan Escudero Pablos Y4, ‘Cockaigne Island ’.
Recognising that shopping is (almost) all that is left of
public space in the 21st century, Cockaigne Island is a new,
aspirational super-mall. Offering an extreme vision of
consumerism where everything that can be experienced is for
sale, visitors are invited not only to spend, spend, spend but
also to change their appearance, even their bodies. Retail units
manifest as ever-changing exhibits that are constantly rebuilt
and replaced in a theatrical spectacle of continuous profit.
Figs. 26.2 – 26.3 Dionysis Toumazis Y5, ‘Interreality’. Set in a
transitional period between contemporary work culture and a
post-work, post-scarcity near-future, the project proposes a
new typology for housing virtual reality activities. Faced with
vocational obsolescence, visitors to the building seek meaning
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and change in their lives by digitally sampling other realities.
The ‘Interreality’ experience places users in an interactive
feedback loop between virtual and physical worlds,
transforming their attitudes and behavioural patterns for
the better. Figs. 26.4 – 26.5 Yiran Ma Y4, ‘The Museum Of
Disappearing Landscapes’. The museum stores and curates
digital data collected from endangered and rapidly changing
sites around the globe. Using water spray projection, arrays
of lasers and other holographic techniques, the museum
translates the data into sophisticated new spatial journeys.
Situated opposite the Royal Victoria Dock, the museum uses
water from the Thames to create mist projections at a vast
urban scale.
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Fig. 26.6 Ivan Hung Y4, ‘Publicised Peace’. The project
proposes the relocation of the UN Security Council to a busy
site in Silvertown. Containing housing for the representatives,
a Council chamber and library/archive, the scheme consists
of a vividly transparent building. The structure publicises the
internal activities on a vast, exterior digital display, presenting
an iconic view to aircraft passing overhead, and allowing the
public to move freely through the lower levels without
compromising the security of its occupants. Fig. 26.7 Clara
Lee Y4, ‘Brexit Negotiation Chamber’. The project proposes a
floating structure, constructed at minimum cost and at furious
pace, to house the ongoing Brexit negotiations. Featuring a
debating chamber with public viewing platforms and broadcast
facilities, maze-like forests secrete tiny, darkened meeting
rooms where the real negotiations take place. Constructed
and initially located in Silvertown, the building can be towed
anywhere in the world. Figs. 26.8 – 26.9 Songyang Zhou Y4,
‘Mirror’. Floating in the water next to the Excel Centre, the
project recognises the power and increasing ubiquity of virtual
reality devices, and proposes a new type of conference centre
capable of bringing together occupants from all over the world.
Remote users manifest as ‘avatars’ – floating drones that
display facial characteristics of the remote user in real-time.
The building creates new types of space that accommodate
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Fig. 26.10 Carina Tran Y4, ‘Escape From London’. A yoga
retreat situated in the water near the Thames Barrier, the
project contains a series of carefully sequenced spaces
and walkways. Progression from one part of the structure to
another takes time, hopefully engendering a sense of calm in
the user. The building has an intimate relationship with the site
and its tidal variations, sometimes allowing the water to flood
the structure, causing parts to be submerged entirely, and
cutting users off from the bank and the rest of the building.
Fig. 26.11 Henrick Pihlveus Y4, ‘Made In Silvertown’.
Responding to the history of the site and seeking to
reinvigorate a declining industry, the project proposes a boat
building factory where professionals and unskilled members of
the public can collaborate in the production of sophisticated
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industrial objects. Film is specifically used as a tool to test
the project, supported by time-based drawings. Fig. 26.12
Cui (Bob) Chang Y5, ‘CESDS’. The physical world is on the brink
of a major technological breakthrough that will revolutionise
the way architects conceive of space, closing the gap
between the digital and the physical. The project imagines
a near-future spatial design school merging the disciplines
of architecture, game design and film effects, using the
immersive technologies of augmented reality, virtual reality
and holographic projection. These technologies are not only
employed to develop and test designs, but are also used to
display the designs to the general public, via an urban scale
mixed-reality park and huge installation towers.
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Figs. 26.13 – 26.15 Qidan Chen Y5, ‘Wonderland’. Inspired by
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and its various interpretations
in films and theme parks, the project proposes an inhabited
bridge structure that spans the Royal Victoria Dock. Providing
space for players of multiple game types, from croquet and
tabletop games to video games and underwater chess, the
building itself is experienced as a type of game, with access
to lower, more complex levels only granted when players
are successful in upper arenas. Fig. 26.16 Grace Quah Y5,
‘Silvertown Plug-In’. The project investigates the gendered
division of domestic labour by exploring the spatial possibilities
of automation. The design addresses the site of Silvertown as
a remnant of industrialisation, examining the impact of labour
on urban forms and the amount of work still undertaken in the
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home. Capitalising on the untapped £1.1 trillion value of
domestic labour to the UK economy, the project is a communal
housing scheme that performs all necessary housework.
Housing modules ‘plug in’ to an infrastructure of automated
dishwashing, cooking and cleaning facilities as a critique of the
role of technology in the design of the modern home. Through
film, the building embodies mechanical as well as human-like
qualities. As the traditional gendered sphere of ‘invisible’ work
becomes visible, domestic chores become an urban, spatial
performance.

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ucl.ac.uk/architecture