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About the Unit

Re_Make

We are principally concerned with the ownership of space, its perception, demarcation and [mis]use in the contemporary city. We have entered a post-digital age in which how we design has become as significant as what we design. We embrace new mapping methodologies to make the complex accessible and the latent visible. Urban and cartographic space may be historically bound, but emergent networks are formed from information space, physical space or social space; often a hybrid of these types, whether organising patterns of data, navigating the city or representing hierarchical relationships within and between socio-political structures. The question of what constitutes territorial, community, networked and residual space is paramount to our research. This depends on a reading of near-futures underpinned by an understanding of global economics and the reality of a limitless information space and datascape. The devices of appropriation, enclosure, severance, fragmentation, and cultural identification of space are examined as, simultaneously, forces and reactions in physical space and within the datascape. It is with these enquiries that we construct an ideological position. We re_make the urban field in response to the confluence of revealed data, systems, flows and processes.

Re_Model

We mobilise the unit as a platform for design and theory teaching, testing and research in relation to architecture within an expanded and continuous field. We then operate with this data to develop strategies for change, urban renewal and landscape processing. We believe the studio to be a research laboratory for analysis, evaluation, prototyping and dissemination. Strategic proposals are formulated across a range of scales from master-planning through to 1:1 detail production. We synthesise legible solutions as a response to the systems and processes we engage with and explore and define new methods of visualisation. We re_model the urban landscape.

Projects during 2011/12

In 2011/12 we are conducting research into the relationships between infrastructure, urbanism and interstice in the contexts of Stoke-on-Trent and Croydon. Through research, experimentation and discourse concerning the dialogue between infrastructure and urbanism, alongside its resultant residual spaces, projects will be developed that address the nature of urban space. We will be developing our investigations on infrastructure and networks (physical and digital) to develop strategic trajectories across a range of scales; from micro-programming of niche urban situations to proposing extensive and phased macro-urban scenarios. We undertook field operations in London and Paris to further our understanding of infrastructural urbanism, collaborating with external partners including: Hawkins\Brown, AOC, Arup, and Croydon Council. We have since bifurcated the studio unit with year groups moving along different research-by-design trajectories. The 5th years are consequently responding to research on the impact of complex, phased, regulated development and exploiting precipitant fissures in the urban fabric through speculative interventions that seek to converse with the politics of such spaces in an adaptive manner. The 6th years by contrast are defining thesis design projects that encompass extensive re_programming of the urban landscape leading to re_definition, re_generation and re_use.

Projects during 2010/11

In 2010/11 we completed research that sought to address the context of Huddersfield and the wider environs of Kirklees borough. We expanded our investigations on infrastructure and networks (physical and digital) to develop strategic trajectories for urban/rural landscapes. We developed new mapping methodologies and interfaces to engage with datasets and assist the communication of our research. A key characteristic of this research was the exploration of datascapes and processing of information to inform master-planning and decision making. We collaborated with TU Braunschweig for an international workshop that explored the notion of 'Spatial Justice' in Essen, Germany, and furthered our understanding of industrial landscapes, heritage and monument through various field operations including the Zollverein mining complex. The 5th years engaged with 1:1 prototyping, manufacture and assembly through parametric modelling, CAD/CAM processes and other forms of visualization and modelling. The 6th years devised and refined sophisticated responses to the physical, economic, social and cultural conditions of their chosen sites of inquiry.