Dover
In 2006 51% studios received a special commendation for this entry to the Kent County Council urban competition imagining a new future for the city of Dover.
Many roads to cross but I can’t seem to find my way over / Wandering I am lost as I travel along the white cliffs of Dover [from ‘Too many rivers to cross’, the Harder they Come, with apologies to Jimmy Cliff]
Portus Dubris is a town denied its sea frontage, its beach and cliffs and ports — a town thrilling to arrive at by sea, car or truck, but miserable to be in on foot. Yet Dover is also uniquely situated to once again blossom into a first class town — it has history, character, identity and natural endowment in spoonfuls.
This ‘master diagram’ seeks to reconnect the town and its sea frontage by bringing the countryside into the heart of the town and suppressing the relentless traffic thundering along the A20 by burying it between Snargate Street and Marine Parade. The space above the road will be a new car free landscaped public space.
Along with the proposed quayside quarters this represents an opportunity to create a sustainable city to rival anywhere in the world, so that over time our perception of Dover will be first of green and then of white.
Baumhaus
Working with Dewhurst Macfarlane, David Bennett and Peter Deer Associates, we recently developed a GGBS concrete structure with a self finished interior to create thermal flywheel. Adjustable vertical louvres protect the exposed west façade from over heating, water is harvested for use in the garden and an airsource heat pump works with southfacing solar panels on the roof to lessen reliance on the grid.
A slim pool in the basement is planned in a later phase.
The project due on site later this year. The 51pct Project team is Cathi, Hazel, Anderson, Jack, George and Peter. The Quantity Surveor is Jackson Coles
The Green House
This was one of our first projects and still one of our favourites.
12 years ago we fell in love with this Georgian railway workers’ cottage with eccentric works, even though (or maybe because) all the best bits had been ripped out in the 60’s and it was terribly rundown … but it had a garden that had once been loved and three doors onto Little Green Street and one onto College Lane. We added a timber lined interior and started gardening even before we started the construction.
Bridging the Playground
How do you get a gang of nine-year-olds interested in the challenges of structural design, architecture and engineering?
Easy: Just add water and then challenge students to create bridges over it to take the weight of their whole class [weighing in at around a ton] using nothing more than recycled or ephemeral materials such as card, PET water bottles or paper …
The floating bridge was assembled and tested for the first time in Farmiloes’ courtyard as part of the celebrations for the first London Architectural Biennale, which was set in historic Clerkenwell, where we had studios for many years.
Water has been a centrally important part of Clerkenwell’s history, from its springs, wells and spas to the later breweries and distilleries. Clerkenwell was also the site of London’s first reservoir. Now we have little direct knowledge of where our water comes from and often no longer even consume it from the tap. Water now costs more than soda, milk and gas in the US. The fetishizing of water and its packaging is probably the single greatest threat to human and animal survival across the globe.
The design brief was for a floating structure to support the 20 strong class. We posed questions around the themes of water, volume and objects that sink, float or submerge. Experiments were carried out at home and in the classroom and recorded. From this the class’s weight was established and therefore the amount of buoyancy needed to resist that weight in water and the displacement it could cause. A calculation based on a 1.5L Evian bottle, ascertained the number of bottles needed. We began testing methods of jointing and packing. A visit was also made to Future Systems’ Pedestrian Bridge at West India Quay.
“While the project is just a teaching aid for now, its commonplace building blocks make it cheap to build. If a small-scale model can divert hundreds of plastic bottles away from a landfill, there’s no reason a bigger project couldn’t use up even more in the real world, while creating easily assembled emergency bridges, rafts or a makeshift rescue craft.”
Lot of bottle, Spark issue 3, guardian.co.uk
Social Cinema
Frieze Magazine asked critics and curators from around the world to choose what, and who, they felt to be the most significant shows and artists of 2006: Alex Farquharson wrote: “‘Social Cinema’ was as memorable as it was fugitive. Over three evenings they created outdoor cinemas that made for delicious juxtapositions between London landmarks – Berthold Lubetkin’s Finsbury Health Centre and Norman Foster’s Millennium Bridge – and films related to Modernist thinking on architecture, urbanism and social progress in postwar Britain.”
In 2006, as part of the London Architecture Biennale, we collaborated with artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska on Social Cinema: a project consisting of a series of temporary cinemas, each installed for one night only into the existing urban fabric of the Biennale designated route between Exmouth Market and the Millennium Bridge.
Films about, set in, or commenting on London and its architecture were stunningly projected upon the city itself. At each location, buildings became screens, steps seating, and owners of nearby buildings generously gave power, or loaned their houses as projection booths. The architectural fabric of the temporary cinemas was improvisory, playful and subtle; pallets ‘borrowed’ from a Smithfield Market made temporary bleachers, plastic crates from local pubs and restaurants became seating, neighbours joined the audience, and volunteers with torches acted as ushers.
Social Cinema turned un-built spaces into auditoria and spectacularly intervened in neglected places around landmark buildings. The film programme of the Social Cinema traced an evolution in the representation of everyday life. Each program began by introducing ideas and observations on London and its buildings with excerpts from lectures in the Architectural Association Film Archive, including contributions from the architects Cedric Price, Denys Lasdun, Reyner Banham, and Ron Herron; and then looped back to the 1960’s showing some magnificent films from the Free Cinema movement, of everyday working class experience. Free Cinema was followed by a selection of extraordinary amateur films from Straight 8 and these segued into short films previously uploaded onto internet sites where skateboarders, shoppers, and tourists record their interactions with the architecture of the city.
For a detailed film listings please go to the artists’ website: Chanceprojects / the Photographers’ Gallery
None of this possible without Sam Collins or James Lingwood. Thanks also to Malcolm at XL video and Simon Fryer at Cover-it-up.
