Constructing agency 2018-2020

stitch

Studio Shajay Bhooshan / Alicia Nahmad Vasquez

Team Edward Meyers (Australia), Andrew Friedenberg (USA), Aldo Sicilia (Colombia), Alfredo Chavez Romero (Spain)

Stitch proposes a new housing system to redefine modern living within dense urban environments. Hybridising a socially aware architecture with rapidly deployable, high-volume and adaptive fabrication systems was the priority of our teams’ research. Modular fabrication techniques and affordable solutions were designed prototypically, in order to adapt to new territorial opportunities existing in numerous locations throughout the Greater London railway network. This is what we are calling the ‘re-railroadification’ of London.

The teams’ research comprehended modern co-living as both an economic and social contributor focused on enriching people’s day-to-day experiences in dense environments. Negotiating the complexities of diverse communities required the use of a social configurator and game theory to construct social relations with site-specific relations. This workflow of gamifying community-forming creates a streamlined process for residents from unit selection to robotic fabrication and unit delivery. This design approach is not exclusively internalised within a community but is aimed at binding a relationship between new housing developments, site complexities and the greater urban environment.

To achieve this, alternate modes of mass fabrication and on-site deployment were researched to understand speed and affordability. The utilisation of rail as a fabrication deployment line has the capability of connecting numerous sites across London to several locally situated supply sources. Stitch repurposes these infrastructural scars and supports a new social model of urban densification and social interaction, empowering residents, architects, developers, and contractors. This effort must be multi-disciplinary and collaborative.