Constructing agency 2018-2020

ottavia

Studio Shajay Bhooshan / Alicia Nahmad Vasquez

Team Abhinav Bellam (India), Genhui Yu (China), Foyuan Li (China), Leah Zhao (China), Xiangyu Liu (China)

The research aims at devising housing conditions for communities living on the roundabouts of central London. It considers that the relocation of housing in the vicinity of workplace could improve living conditions by, first, reducing any transit time and, second, by encouraging encounters that happen by choice – and not by change – since this relocation would bring together a community of workers of related professions.

The research focuses on the centralised location of roundabouts to activate the surrounding urban environment by introducing local programmes on elevated platforms that associate the former with the surrounding commercial activities. This way, these sites evolve into enhanced transit hubs while they contribute to a programmatic urban densification.

The spatial organisations are defined by user preferences and social interests based on both shared and privatised spaces, which vary among the clusters. On the level of the cluster and the whole, the various compositions of user profiles and their strategies to manipulate unit customisation generates a variety of social and spatial outcomes. These are studied and evaluated via simulation through a turn-based game where users in a community participate in the negotiations that shape future outcomes. These matrices of decisions informed a prototypical model for vertically growing clusters that consist of a central core, community space and a series of units. This model is adaptive to both site conditions and user preferences. The units are modular, prefabricated and lightweight, while their growth patters are based on compact packing strategies (such as hanging) that allow in-situ aggregation at any specific cluster location and at comply with demands of rapid deployment.