Diploma in Architecture students focus on Antwerp in their Stage 5 Design theses
The Diploma School at the Mackintosh School of Architecture (Stage 5) has, for many years, been intimately concerned with the reciprocal relationships between architecture and the city. This year the selected setting for the Stage 5 Design Theses is the Antwerp with the theme of Myths, Modernity & Metamorphosis. The theses have been unveiled on GSA Graduate Showcase 2020.
In her thesis Dana Cherepkova seeks to bring the diversity of urban life to Antwerp’s peripheral modernist social housing estates by improving the quality and equality of everyday spaces. Normally demolished as part of comprehensive redevelopment plans the four slab blocks in her proposition are retained respecting the unique character of the modernist housing and allowing the existing residents to continue to occupy their flats during construction.
In a joint thesis James Faulds and Tom Stark continue a collaboration which has been ongoing since 2016. An Architecture of Emotion acts as a critical reappraisal of the value and necessity of collective and solitary emotional space, proposing a revised typology that considers the future of emotion, contemplation and memory within the contemporary city. Seven chapels form a constellation at the heart of the block, fed into by four gardens, screened from the street by a series of modest gatehouses that address their immediate context. Each chapel serves to offer space in which one may seek comfort, solace or celebration: spaces that aim in atmosphere, scale and material expression to elicit and sustain an emotional and spiritual need.
Andrew Zi Hang Law presents “The Ark of Antwerp”, a provocation against the apocalypse in a foreseen-able future, as the city is in a flooded state. Hia thesis addresses the preservation, conservation of the tangibles and intangibles of the soon-to-be vanished city, Antwerp. From a sole-flood barrier to a memory preserver.
In Carve, Craft, Create – an exposition of masonry Jackson McKibbin seeks to provide an episodal journey of masonry. His project hypothesied that a change has been seen in the use/method of craft and masonry in architecture. At one stage masonry was at the heart of a city and craft was at the forefront of architecture. He asks can certain aspects of craft, craftsmanship, knowledge and skill of building masonry be re-introduced and explored within the city centre, aided by architectural heritage and a place to learn about architectural masonry?
The Brexit referendum and the election of President Trump have shown the divisive power of populist rhetoric and how quickly it can divide a nation. This good/evil Manichean theory presents the notion that society is divided into two antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ and the ‘corrupt elite’. The populist leader claims to represent the voice of the ‘silent majority’, as though they are a homogenous entity with singular common interest. In The Agonistic AssemblyJoshua Page explores how architecture can influence the present and future political discourse. Through the confluence of opposing programmes, objects, and materials, a pluralistic architectural language is developed that rejects the proliferation of the populist political rhetoric, in pursuit of new forms of productive conflictual encounter.
In House of Memories Guillermo Sidrach explores the role of Architecture as a socio-ecological device expressive of its time. He has focussed on a block, located in the medieval and historical centre of the city. It was originally occupied by one of the most relevant medieval monasteries – one that resulted in the construction of Sint-Pauluskerk, perhaps the most significant Baroque Churches in Antwerp situated in the Sailor Quarter. Over time and history, the city has grown around the monastery leaving behind a series of hidden buildings, ruins, and fragments, most of them appear to be abandoned, redundant, or poorly transformed.
In her thesis Agnes Taye celebrates an intangible presence of the past within new landscapes for recreation and reflection, an escape from the bustling city, and a bath house at its heart. Antwerp’s ring road corresponds to the line of the 19th century Brialmont wall fortification and today only a few remaining traces from the wall are visible. The ring road is a vast space dominated by road and rail infrastructure, disconnecting the inner and outer city. However, the City of Antwerp recognises the potential of this becoming a strategic area in the future city structure by turning the ring road into the ‘Green Ring’. Agnes’ thesis seeks a potential language for the landscape of the strategic area and proposes one of the locations along the Green Ring to explore how a bridging landscape might reconnect to the wider city.
As a response to the expanding city and the large amounts of abandoned industrial warehouse areas, Guro Vold’sthesis explores the possibilities of deconstructing abandoned industrial 20th Century buildings for the potential of reusing all their materials and elements to create new buildings for different functions. Elements and materials from 20th Century warehouses that are considered to be of a low architectural value are taken in use for testing their ability and future as a base for new public buildings. A catalogue of elements can be used to promote the modern production of reuse and remaking, seen as an important and publicly accessible activity. He has tested the idea in the district of Den Dam (in the north east of the city centre), where he identified 33 warehouses that are abandoned or that lack potential for adaptation for new use.
See full details of off all these theses and more on the Graduate Showcase 2020 digital platform.
The graduating students will be able to develop their profiles on the platform for the next twelve months adding further work as it is produced.
Ends
For further information contact:
Lesley Booth
07799414474
@GSofAMedia