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Battle of Grosvenor Dock

Part 2 Project 2003
Rupert Willard
 London South Bank University | UK
A dialogue of wit, politics, and narrative coexist with a rigorous and pragmatic approach to architecture which investigates current and future conditions of the city. 'Battle of Grosvenor Dock', a bioterrorism rapid response unit, was initiated through a series of electro-mechanical sentinels which intuited motion and atmospheric environment, recoding inputs into a poetic as well as statistical manifestation. Urban paranoia reacting to the threat of bioterrorism has generated the need for an institution to facilitate a response to an attack on London. The proposal combines contemporary sensing and surveillance technologies with historic geometries to maintain sight lines through a multi-faceted architecture with appropriate defensive mass.


The notion of the garrison as part of European urban fabric seemed quaint, archaic even, pre-911. However, with the realities of full scale 'terror alerts' now routinely enacted in London, this project takes on a new, topical resonance. Landmark buildings are being unsubtly modified to meet new, unprecedented demands. Yet the elegance of the footprint of this project, the satisfying resolution and beefy solidity of the perimeter and personnel block walls, and the dialogue the buildings establish with both interior and exterior landscapes speak of an assured and highly individual architecture away from the pragamatic agenda of defensive military construction. It is a 21st century castle for sure, but one with the (spectacular)homeliness and humanity of Lutyens' Castle Drogo, rather than an excluding coldness. The project is in our view exceptionally well considered, engaging with the city in a unique and beautifully composed way, and sufficiently optimistic in its conception to envisage a time when the soldiers leave and the architecture is host to more benign uses.
2003
An essay on the changing nature of democratic architecture in the 21st century; how does the city deal with the potential threat of bioterrorism? A city-wide electrochemical network informs a responsive military architecture and brief strategy.
The city is codified through graphical signs, which determine behavior and response; the sentinels generate graphical representations through the irrational animations of objects i.e. non-linear responses to urban-field conditions.
The sentinels employ sensors to intuit motion and atmospheric environment. These phenomena once harnessed generate a graphical response, and act as a decoder / recoder where the output is both poetic manifestation and statistical data.
The sentinels are used as a metaphor for an architecture which reinvestigates the role of responsive devices in the urban domain; how can a relationship between a sensor and a building affect the built environment?
Grosvenor Dock is bounded by road, rail, and river, acting as a transport hub for movements across, through, and under the city's complex matrix of infrastructure routes. This network informs a brief of city-scale and global importance.
The boundaries and site characteristics determine zones for built elements, entry points, and pedestrian through routes. The military style site plan informs public and private areas and defines the sometimes blurred boundaries between them.
An overlay of pollution measuring stations and military establishments in London identifies the network of sensors which could be deployed to defend the city against biological terrorist attack; there is however a lack of active military presence.
A CCTV site survey demonstrates the modern city's obsession with surveillance, relating this both to contemporary military sensing technologies and the musket firing lines which generated the geometry of 17th century fortresses.
The city-wide network of environmental particle sensors can instantly detect the presence of a pathogen; an immediate response is deployed and co-ordinated with medical and law enforcement agencies from the Grosvenor Dock site.
The site's proximity to Victoria station enables a mirage of media to shroud the military presence; this graphical diaphragm willcontain sensing technologies to defend the buildings from direct attack.
Ground floor plan (nts); the proposal references the 'ideal' fortress designs by Sebastian de Vauban. Here musket firing lines are reinterpreted as surveillance sight lines, enforcing a geometry devised from intersecting pentagons.
2nd floor plan (nts); defensive mass defines the threshold between the proposal and the city. Buildings are clustered around the parade ground and open themselves up to it; the command centre is embraced by the monumentality of the structure.
Basement plan (nts); the chthonic lower level stores in large chambers the equipment needed to facilitate an immediate response to an attack on London, enabling air-tight movement between zones and access to cells, armoury, and 'deep-down'.
Long section (nts) shows the relationship between the proposal and the dock (used as a defensive element), and the buildings’ focus onto the activities of the parade ground. Internal gardens provide secure external enclosures.
Short section (nts); variations in the constructional vocabulary are displayed in the difference between defensive perimeter wall and internal walls. Elements of the chthonic basement level hang immediately beneath the surface of the parade ground.
The massing model illustrates the clustering of the buildings around the dock, the defensive nature of the perimeter facades, and the relationship of the proposal to transport infrastructure.
Pentagonal geometries inspired and reinterpreted from 17th century fortress design are intersected with Cartesian garden elements; the model demonstrates these relationships and the passive solar benefits of the orientation.
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