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Commendation

newton's third

Part 1 Project 2008
Vladimir Berezovskiy
University of Greenwich | UK
Newton's 3rd: For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction

A collection of projects, which react to their inhabitants and their context. The context is seen as physical, social, cultural, environmental and ecological. The first project is a socially responsive exhibition space which moves in response to its occupants desires. The second project tampers with visible, tactile, and hidden boundaries between residents. It is a constant model for living. The model possesses kinetic furniture units & sliding partitions which encourage social events & scenarios when desired. Social isolation is avoided, while privacy can be maintained. The main project is a building which connects 40 of the 'model for living' units as well as harbouring a 'tidal library'. The building is responsive to tidal change, deploying new spatial configurations according to changes in the water level. The occupants are thus connected to their environment and its picturesque landscape in a 'tableaux vivant' of changing clouds, tides, light and surface: humanity and nature responding to one anothers moods.



The project first explores the notion of a responsive environment by making an interactive exhibition space. The construction can sense users and interact accordingly by moving walls, projecting pictures or movies. The notion of action and reaction was persued further in a project for multi-use student accommodation, on a thin and narrow site on the banks of a tidal river.

Parts of the building are moved by tidal change, allowing the façade and the ground floor to close or open and create larger public spaces. The upper spaces in the project can be rearranged accordingly to the frequency and duration of occupation, thus allowing the building to respond both to its programmatic and environmental situation.
The ground floor library can open out onto the beaches at low tide: a flexible institution responding to the desires of its occupants.

We enjoyed the proposition that support could be physical, structural, social, environmental and kinetic: a delicate balance. It is a careful consideration of social space and its architectural infrastructures. It is also a delightful study of neighbourliness in the 21st century high rise.

2008
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