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Block For Life: Deptford Trade Centre

Part 1 Project 2004
Jen Kui Choi
 Kingston University Kingston | UK
The third year project is a block development programme, inserting a range of activities into a brownfield site, reviving it from its lowly degenerative state. The site is located in Deptford, sitting adjacent to the axis of St Paul’s Church and where the Laban Centre protrudes its colourful polycarbonate façade. Brick and concrete ruins and refuse currently occupy the site, overshadowed by five storey residential blocks and wrapped closely by low-rise residential units.
Aware of these local conditions, activity happening from the local train station and the bustling market place close to the train station is borrowed and stretched towards the vicinity of the site. The link project (artist accommodation/sculpture park) is that anchor that narrates and disperses the activity to the edges of the site. The auction house is about sensitively stitching the link to the site whilst moulding into the dialogue of the existing block fabric. The auction house takes the new ground protecting only an existing edge that is prominent to a narrow but experiential walkway (Bronze Street) from the main road to the Laban Centre. The passageway recedes into a public, raised garden that captures southern daylight. This new raised garden gives back to the local area a new playground for the children and a place for reflection. The new domestic blocks of the living unit project protects this element and also gives character to Brethen Street and the tension established by the Laban and St Paul’s Church. The Trade Centre project caps the end of the block development programme, attaching a fragment of its body to one of the new housing blocks with its concrete clad façade protruding through to anchor the character of the regenerating open green space. The Trade Centre is about synthesising excess matter – promoting construction methods erected from recycled elements. The current conditions of the site in part inspired the design approach to the building. The building introduces a training


An high density urban block was proposed which interrupts anonymous urban flows in order to establish spaces of political alegiance between citizens and connections between fragmented urban programmes.

The strength of this work lies in its ability to work at both the scale of a building and the scale of the city. The scheme also used high density as the basis of a critique of the current infatuation with infrastructure and urban process.

The proposal represents an unusually subtle approach to the notion of urban growth; each architectural component designed had the potential to engage in a dialogue with other urban elements and the surrounding topography. The control of the site from this point of view was exceptional as was its range of themes and ideas. The work demonstrates commitment to poetically-prosaic architectural ideas
2004
Introductory Page. The massing of the block (Auction House)
1:500 Site Model, Deptford. Collective massing of the four projects.
Summary of the block developments. Link Project, an intervention initiating the first moves on the chosen site.
Summary of the block developments. Auction House addressing the Link and defining the territory on the site.
Summary of the block developments. Mixed Use Dwelling units cumilating together to form a block. Three are set on site, and extuding an existing banking to form a new raised garden.
Exploded model fragment of a typical work/live unit. Living above, working spaces below extending o the corridor area.
Site Plan. Introducing the Trade Building Project. Synthesising Excess Matter
Long Section Part1. Hierarchy - From making object to display and living in them. Journey through the building enlightening the client.
Long Section Part 2 - Exposing the public portion of the Trade Building to the open green space undergoing regeneration. Establishing character to the site.
Cross Section through the lower south facing courtyard and lower ground. Illustrating the status of these spaces
Cross Section through the end portion of the building facing towards the Laban. Exposing the public components of the TC to the newly rejuvenated green space.
Axonometric Drawing. Re conecting the Domestic components of the TC to the mixed use block dwellings.
Detailed section revealing the gabion wall structure under a frosted glass walkway.
Sketch Perspective. Entrance lobby, looking towards the exit/entrance. Gabion wall splaying SW light through the interior space.
1:20 Model Fragment of Lobby displaying the gabion behind a frosted glass wall.
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