Next Project

Vehicle For Housing, Lea Valley

Part 2 Project 2004
Tom Wells
Stephanie Southward
University of Westminster | UK
'Vehicle For Housing' exploits the dual brief of providing athletes' housing for the London 2012 Olympics and public housing for the Legacy Phase. The work is developed from drawings of a car dismantlers. The final design combines standard materials, using conventional and novel construction methods, with the addition of high-spec elements which 'soup-up' its design. Traditional window boxes are superceded by fiberglass 'bumpers' accommodating aeroponic planting technology, and are linked by raised walkways enveloping and dissecting each façade. The landscape with 'souped-up' form and materiality is overlooked by flying gantry gardens providing private greens and substituting for lost vegetation.


At the master-plan, building, and detail scale Stephanie and Tom’s work shows the talent of two students who combine strict technical and programmatic issues with an unusual design generator to create some remarkable speculative images. They have dissected the Allies and Morrison proposal for the 2012 Olympic Village and legacy housing project by following a drawing process that overlays the narratives of individual lives with the movement patterns of industrial vehicles using methods of re-scaling, re-reading, and mis-reading. The resulting work is inventive, acutely attuned to contemporary urban issues, and poses key questions of how design is approached.

2004
• Page Hits: 4137         • Entry Date: 25 June 2004         • Last Update: 25 June 2004