Bank of Collaboration Part 1 Project 2019 Da Gyung Lee Architectural Association London | UK The Bank of Collaboration infiltrates and dissolves the solidified walls of power, occupying them with a new co-living / learning ‘academy’ in the heart of the City of London.The project is a self-build system that metabolises Sir John Soane’s original Bank of England curtain walls to create stone-dust hardened fabric that the resident students use to construct the academy. This series of structural and soft curtain enclosures creates translucent living/learning zones that penetrate the bank as accessible courtyards, referencing Soane’s original design.The fabric structures diffuse the traditional visual and acoustic boundaries of public / private and living / learning spaces. The interlocked poche zones of program create an intimacy of domesticity and education. Spatial and political hierarchies can no longer exist here.While the Bank tries to continue ‘business as usual’ the trading telephone call is disrupted by the student’s lecture on the Medici Palace. A visit to the gold vaults is disturbed by the smell of fermenting kimchi, and manifesto chanting. Slowly the segregation that is created and represented by the fortress of the Bank of England starts to disintegrate, leaving a ruin of our current patriarchal society, and hope for a more collaborative future. Tutor(s) Alexandra Butterworth Lily Jencks Jessica Reynolds