Streets, Halls, Corridors, and a Foyer
2003 ASD Diploma Unit 3 East

From his helicopter high above Thames Gateway, John Prescott looks at the nation’s housing to formulate his grand plan for sustainable communities. Soon after he has landed at a disused chalk quarry, a consortium of housebuilders will be unveiling their development scheme for the vast tract of land on the bonnet of a Landrover. Housing Ltd.

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With the withdrawal of the state from the housing sector, the frenzied demand for more new homes is now almost completely in the safe hands of the expanding Housebuilder industry, which ‘gets things done’. Blueprints for development are value-engineered to sustain optimised profit margins and preconceived market conformity. The economic pressure leaves even fewer opportunities for the architectural profession as we know it. Therefore we will be looked at ways of making contributions in areas which are less rigidly defined, often neglected but not omitable. The unit explored shared spaces and ways of living together.

Corridor
Within the tough and regulated world of housing, the unit worked with and around the idea of the corridor as a metaphor for the spaces the main purpose of which is to connect. Less functionally determined, rather empty and ambiguous in the way they represent privacy and publicness, these spaces can be found at any scale, from a hall of a flat-share to the tentacle-like cul de sac road patterns that organise today’s pret-a-porter garden cities. We will studied exemplary projects by means of diagrams, drawings and large idea models. In November, we stayed in Le Corbusier’s Unités in Firminy and in Marseille, and with the domenicans of La Tourette.

Foyer
The main part of this year were dedicated to the formulation of a detailed architectonic proposition for a Foyer in Woolwich, South-east London. Originated in post-war France, the Foyer movement today is well established in the UK and growing, with a new foyer opening every month.