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The Pleasure Palace

Part 1 Project 2008
Jack Wates
 University of Brighton | UK
The aim of the project was to select and develop a number of pleasure programmes on the Aylesbury Estate in South London, as an alternative form of regeneration to the NDC proposal to tear it down.

I introduced an OAP home, a chicken farm and a public garden, attempting to develop a number of symbiotic relationships between them. The intersection of these programmes with a Continuous Productive Urban Landscape and the cross-river tramline gives the project identity at agricultural and urban scales.

The project is designed to encourage urban dwellers to ‘observe activities and processes traditionally associated with the countryside, thereby re-establishing a relationship between life and the processes required to support it.’ The reoccurring connections with the natural landscape and its phenomena strengthen these associations with the countryside, and can be seen as an expression of pleasure.


Working on the site of Blair’s inaugural speech as Prime Minister, the much-maligned Aylesbury Estate offered rich roots for Jack’s ‘Pleasure Palace’ cum integrated productive landscape. Chicken run travelators, an OAP hospice and an elevated permaculture landscape leading over Albany Road to Burgess Park are interwoven to provide acute programmatic intervention married with a formal sense of neo-gothic urban bravado connecting the estate and the park.

Thoroughly researched, formally audacious and sumptuously drawn, the real strength of Jack’s proposal however lies in the collision of its immediate social poignancy (given the NDC’s decision to demolish the estate) and as a prototype for the integration of urban agriculture embedded in one of London’s most needy so-called ‘sink’ estates.

Nick Hayhurst
Tamsie Thomson
Suzi Winstanley

2008
I am employing a Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) as an instrument to deal with the issues of regeneration on the Aylesbury Estate. My selected programmes (an OAP home, chicken farm and ‘work-for-food’ garden) are located on the CPUL and desig
An exploded diagram of permacultural systems in the context of selected programmes, with respect to the physical nature of the site. The key to the systems success lies in the flexibility of resource allocation.
The programmes are weaved together on the basis of site context and interprogrammatic relationships stemming from the permacultural and social strategies.
The forms of the elevated landscapes respond to existing tree heights on the site and are articulated to merge into the relief of Burgess Park.
Access points have been placed at 100 metre intervals to create fluid relationships with the ground, and are positioned to engage with existing and proposed connection points (such as roads and the CPUL).
The Wendover Block acts as an interface between the OAP home and the chaotic nature of the tram, roads and agricultural systems on Thurlow Street.
The living units are designed to promote flexible relationships between carer and inhabitant through public/private, internal/external streets. The units can be serviced regularly with little inconvenience to the inhabitant.
Research of chicken behaviour informs the design. The chicken boxes are designed to move alongside the allotments in cycles, fertilizing the soil as they go.
The chicken coop is designed to facilitate egg and manure collection.
The structure was influenced by the image of the tree, and thus the columns are angled towards the sun, an emotional suggestion that they are living elements. The structure then begins to signify the programme that it houses (growth).
The dripping water and double height of the middle space, establishes an interaction with the phenomenon of rain. It defines time and verticality and indicates which allotments are in use.
By experimenting with cotton, a material that we associate with our own clothes I am trying to bring a human dimension to the allotments. The fabric will respond to environmental factors such as wind and pools of water weighing different parts down, as we
A section of the allotments illustrating the organisation of root barrier, insulation (that allows water to pass through with minimal heat loss) and steel reinforced cotton.
A section illustrating the spatial relationships between the OAP home, garden, chicken runs, and Wendover Block.
A view towards the OAP home, beneath the chicken allotments, from the gardens/CPUL.
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