5 ARTICLES FROM OUR WRITERS

• Royal College of Art Show 2010
• To create...
• Growing Opportunities: Urban Agriculture as ‘Grassroots’ Development, a Critical Analysis
  

Royal College of Art Show 2010

I’m sure the thronging crowds at this year’s Royal College of Art show were in attendance for the work on display, and not just for the many complementary beverages on hand. But then again a closed-door policy wouldn’t have injected such a carousel of excitement that makes graduate shows in London such an event.

Compared to other schools the RCA is a unique case for all the departments within the college are showcased alongside architecture as one whole collective. This cross-discipline approach is not just reserved for the final show, but is a directive from the tutors within the college to allow all students to engage with other faculties across the board.

‘We celebrate architecture as a distinct discipline. We also invite influence from product design, graphics and fashion, and in fact from any theme that might arise from any corner of the College’. This was evident in all of the Architectural Design Studios (ADS), where the fallout of politics and its subversive nature within architecture had been adopted from the RCA’s own rebellious tendencies down the years.

I could then better appreciate why there was a larger array of masterplan schemes compared to smaller standalone structures. There seemed a perfect union between each student’s heavily politicised-thesis studies and their final physical embodiment. This wasn’t just limited to ADS2: ‘New Politics, New Urbanism’, but the other three design studios all of whom had based their projects within London.

It was intriguing to see students’ differing attitudes towards the role of politics within architecture. In the case of Oliver Wainwright’s ‘Exploring Immunity: Mayfair’s Diplomatic Zone’ (ADS3: Horror), he turned the traditional embassy on its head, ‘…exploiting immunity to transform the embassy into a vehicle (…) hosting institutions that function beyond the realms of UK Law’, delivered with a hint of revelry.

At the other end of the tipping scale, Lucy Wood’s ‘Foyerism’ (ADS2) revisited the conventional zoned masterplan, to create an urban playground for residents adjacent to Kings Cross, ‘an enticing four-dimensional, urban topography governed by chance, juxtaposition and surprise’, delivering a statement that all regeneration schemes within UK need not be an exercise in conformity. It was then pity that the department was confined to such a small space, when the scale of projects on show could have benefited with a bit more elbow room.

When reflecting upon the architecture department’s statement, I felt obliged to rummage through the dozens of other graduates’ work on view. I had a natural inclination towards the Design Products department, where the fabrication process is seen just as crucial as the product itself, as exemplified by Julian Bond’s ‘Pixel Casting Machine’. It’s an intuitive creation that utilises the common slip casting technique for pottery manufacturing, but introduces customisation into the mould. The bizarre-looking contraption is composed of 1300 individual plaster sticks, doing away with commonly fixed moulds, which can be re-configured with, “…the ability to create one-off designs within the slip casting technique. This is a rapid manufacturing tool, not rapid prototyping”, insisted its designer.

The emergence of rapid prototyping, especially with 3D-print modelling, is changing the way design is approached within architectural education. However, a rapid manufacturing tool still allows the product to inform the fabrication process, and not limit your design to the size of a particular 3D-printer. The designer’s investigations all seemed relevant to the practise of architecture, a conscious link between fabrication and product, and one that felt very similar to an R+D project. “I’ve always been fascinated equally by the end product and the means of getting there, and especially where a system like the Pixel Casting Machine allows a level of individuality to take place during the production process.” I look forward to seeing how this tool develops.

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To create...

As architects, we have the ability to create, in a process that allows someone to feel something and provide a setting for moments to happen. We present people with a pallet for life to happen on, a space to share or even be away from others, a place for emotions to be performed and at a basic level provide shelter.

Its all well and good saying this, but without fulfilling the motions of going about designing this pallet, actually understanding what it is you are trying to create is something that I only recently got to fully understand.

Studio in the Woods, a four day outdoor workshop, gives the chance to get a ‘hands on’ approach to design, allowing the design and construction of a 1:1 scale structure. It allows someone to embark on a process of thinking, design and eventually creation. This year’s studio took place on the Isle of Wight on the estate of New Barn Farm.

The creation process in practice takes a long time to lovingly mature, with preparation, regulation and specification stages to perform before anything materialises. For students the painstaking hours of reaching a final crit never realises the paper-based concept, a design that may only ever exist as 2D or computer based matter. So the thought of designing something and then building it is exciting.

Having never embarked on something like this before I had no preconceptions. Having met most of the people that day, we then had to choose a group. After the ‘dismembering’ of fighting for the right group we eventually split off to start to understand what it was we were to create.

There were many groups with different ideologies in mind, from creating somewhere for people to meet (a tepee), to build a tree house, use of sunlight, exploration of rolling down hills. The particular group I was involved with focused on the process of creation. We coined the group ‘not knowing’ as we had no idea what we were to create.

We were asked to go on an adventure, to assess the area we had been given as a potential nesting ground for a site, which covered a wide area. We wondered into the unknown, at first as a group slowly dissipating in our own directions, making our own journey through the countryside.

Having made our discoveries it was time to explain to the group about one particular site or point on our journey that gave something to us. The group then spent the rest of the day visiting each other’s places listening to why it caught their eye or how it made them feel. There was a various collection of spaces from enclosed spots to open areas, natural elements to manmade features, but each having an important feeling of isolation, a space where a person could just stop and think about what’s around them.

The group deliberated over the important points and feelings of the journey we had taken individually. Discussions on what places reflected the strongest feelings was made by the group, as well as sharing design ideas. We worked together, through discussion and reflection on what site should be used and the key features the group wanted to be present in the design.

A lot of discussion took place, which did take some time but allowed for elements to be discussed and continually develop. The Studio used a simple building material selection, that of timber, which came in the form of ten 3.8m long tree trunks, someone to cut the timber and a selection of fixings and tools to put it all together. An idea of how it can be constructed and what to construct was all we needed.

Solitude as a key point, as well as being able to swing your legs (a regression to childhood) and a pier construction that allowed you to hover over the ground and view the surrounding countryside had been reached. Each person’s experience on their journeys and their chosen sites gave them a sense of solitude, a place to stop. The site we chose to build this structure on reflected this feeling, as we sat as a group in the grass, aware of only the close vegetation and the sky above. There was a strange sense of each person being alone, aware of the others but witnessing their own piece and sense of space.

So we had the framework in place for the idea to develop from, we had the site, materials and eager to get something done. As a team we worked together, in half a day to create the structure that reflected the feelings and ideas we had collated, with construction methods and structural solutions also being learnt.

Solitude was reached by the fact only one person can walk to the end; they reach the last A frame and step out on to a cantilever, unnerving at first but a great sensation, they sit on the last rung, suspended above the grassland around, able to swing their legs and admire the surrounding hills, unaware of the structure that they sit on almost floating. This sensation was unique in the way it allowed for someone to appreciate the location while suspended above nature and observing it from a new and different view.

Nature happens out of necessity: a plant will grow a certain way to appeal to insects and create energy; a spider makes a web to catch pray. Humans need a space to give them necessities, create somewhere to meet, to relay emotions, to think. Every detail is important in creating space and architecture has a function that needs to reflect or appeal to a diverse range of people. The process that was embarked on brought a collection of ideas together, a common trait needed to be reflected.

Nature has many aspects to overcome to fight for survival, and no matter how hard we try to control it, it has a being all of its own. It’s our job to allow people to do the same, give them something to test them, give them somewhere to enjoy, to share, to reflect. It’s important to get a feel for what it is you want to convey, getting involved with your hands like a cake mix giving a sense of control, a sense of creation.

Studio in the Woods gave me an understanding of what is needed from architecture. The process gave me the ability to appreciate what it was we were after, how we would go about showing that aspect and then to actually create it. It’s important to understand all the parts of the creation process, a structure has to be focused, detailed to reflect the ideologies and practical to envisage them.

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Growing Opportunities: Urban Agriculture as ‘Grassroots’ Development, a Critical Analysis

Katherine Ashley
Part 2 University of Westminster 2010

 

I received the RIBA Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects Travel Award in 2009 towards my research for my Part 2 dissertation, Growing Opportunities: Urban Agriculture as ‘Grassroots’ Development, a Critical Analysis. This enabled me to carry out my travel programme over the summer, and provided me with an invaluable first hand insight that developed my study.

The dissertation itself was the result of an interest that I have developed over previous experience. Through further research I came across a project that had used urban agriculture as a means of generating housing and lifestyle improvements in Colombo. I decided to use the travel award to go back to Sri Lanka so that I could explore some of the housing issues I had come across earlier, and their contexts, in more depth.

Further travel throughout Sri Lanka contributed to my overall understanding of the country and its urban situation. This allowed me to learn more about, and engage with, the history of the area, its housing patterns, and the local culture and lifestyle.

I used the agricultural practices and structures that were created through them as a medium that I could map the route through the housing system with, and to understand the relationships that operate behind these projects. During my return trip to Sri Lanka with the RIBA WCCA Travel Award I visited two specific projects as well as a number of other related sites and their locales, and the various people who were involved in the implementation of these schemes. I also visited other people and sites that were involved in this field but not directly with the projects themselves to get an overview of the situation and a range of perspectives.

The effort made by various programmes integrating urban agriculture as a participatory ‘grassroots’ development method seems problematic. Many of these programmes attempt to establish secure land tenure, and other formal urban characteristics, through integration with the formal system. This is seen as being achieved through the resident carrying out urban agriculture as part of a participatory process. This ‘empowers’ the resident and their community, encouraging them to take on the added responsibilities to acquire these formal characteristics.

However, the effort to ‘empower’ communities through urban agriculture as a ‘grassroots’ activity appears to encounter a number of obstacles. This includes the difficulty in maintaining long-term interest and involvement of community development councils, as they run into social conflict, divisions and power struggles.

“[M]omentum and efficiency depend on the communities’ leadership and the sincerity and involvement of the authorities, resulting in mutually cultivated rewarding relationships between them… communities may react either negatively or positively depending on the circumstances.”1 Many of these projects stress the need to develop a ‘model’ approach, and its ability to be replicated elsewhere. The project then seems to function as a research and development exercise, drawing priorities away from the community itself in terms of its individual characteristic and requirement. This can result in the project’s goal falling short of the community’s expectation.

1 - Ranjith Dayaratne and Raja Samarawickrama, Empowering communities in the peri-urban areas of Colombo, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 15, no. 2 (Oct 2003) pp. 110.

Katherine Ashley’s dissertation Growing Opportunities: Urban Agriculture as ‘Grassroots’ Development, a Critical Analysis is available for consultation in the RIBA Library.

 

Any views or opinions expressed here are solely those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the RIBA.