SeamCity

Studio Shajay Bhooshan

Tutors Ariadna Lopez, Leo Bieling

Team Sihui Li, Liuchen Fan, Peiwen Wu, Yangfan Li, Di Ma

At present, London operates largely based on its public transportation system, with 334 overground train stations and 270 underground stations located in Greater London. Over 800 million travellers use this system annually, which continues to grow yearly. Our proposal focuses on high-density Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) which includes mixed-use development adjacent and oriented to mass-transit facilities.  

As a metropolis, London’s urban sprawl is organized around the expansion of its transportation system. Until now, the city has benefitted from its polycentric development and well-organized transportation system. However, studies have shown that currently there’s a large portion of exposed railway land areas that could be potentially built over. We believe in this opportunity as a construction and design method. In this way, we can tackle the shortage of land, especially acute in central London. The existing discontinuities in city are solved by connecting the urban interfaces at different heights through building high-above railway tracks and on the adjacent pedestrian land. 

Our project SeamCity aims to develop a TOD network for London. We focused on Vauxhall station as a prototypical site for our proposal. In this case, a transferable technology that helps the users to self-govern their local environments was necessary. Through governance technologies similar to those in a gamification platform, community users, municipalities and private developers, may negotiate the outcomes of the developing project. During the real-time interface, users are supplied with a pre-set condition, spatial modules, and financial system, which would help non-expert players participate in building their own community. Through the use of spatial technologies and digital mass timber fabrication methods, SeamCity presents a set of architectural modules which provide highly customizable spaces containing co-living, co-working, and other public ancillaries, resulting in mixed-use architectural proposal which is more adept to users’ needs and demands.  

SeamCity helps densify London’s transport stations neighbourhoods, designed with the participation of local users through both virtual and physical computer-aided-design technologies.