Phoenix

Studio Shajay Bhooshan

Tutors Ariadna Lopez, Leo Bieling

Team Yi Li, Zhu Yasheng, Devansh Goshar, Gim Kwok, Yuhan Li

London rises from its ashes. The project explores the potential in the process of “Building tomorrow, using buildings of yesterday”. The project incentivises users to consider material conservation by changing the current wasteful and polluting demolition into a strategic deconstruction process by creating a market for used material. High-density mixed-use developments offer the potential for higher resource efficiency of scarce material while allowing for rich experiential environments for social interactions. Densifying London through structured demolition and reuse allows such developments to have efficient resource allocation in an ecologically responsible manner. Research suggests that the prevalent process of premature demolition of buildings in London offers an opportunity to extract material having longer life expectancy through strategic deconstruction.  

More specifically, the project proposes structured demolition using London’s decrepit buildings as local material banks. The architectural proposal relies on cutting existing concrete structural elements into quads to create component-based spatial modules using Curved Crease Folding (CCF) frameworks. A unique property of CCF allows us to create 3-D geometries using 2-D shapes of reused concrete quads allowing for ease in assembly and possible future disassembly. Research suggests that grounding concrete into recycled aggregates can save abiotic raw materials like gravel and sand but increases energy consumption and greenhouse emissions. However, the reuse of concrete on site through the further cutting of the pieces allows to reduce the energy intensive industrial process of downcycling/recycling, carbon emissions from forming and transporting new concrete, the embodied energy and dependency on virgin material, and reduce waste, air and noise pollution created by demolition while allows the project to truly embrace principles of circular economy.  

However, such demolition processes might seem problematic because of the conflict of interest among stakeholders. A DAO-empowered participatory platform is created that allows for bottom-up development of high-density and democratic architectural scenarios. DAO democratises building demolition, design & construction processes by giving agency to the various user groups. The game acts as medium for educating and empowering non-expert users, allows for various negotiations, sharing rights between stakeholders, providing users customised options in a more intuitive spatialized setting and fosters communication. Further, the platform simplifies the demolition and reuse process through building assessments, allocating material banks, persuading existing users with various options and coordinating demolition and new construction. “Just like a phoenix, London will evolve on its own ashes.”