Laying the Groundworks: Constructing Ongoingness Part 1 Project 2023 Kate Taylor Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) | UK Laying the Groundworks is a design research project that interrogates and reimagines the practice of architecture by critically engaging with questions of ground, temporality, and co-construction. The project arises from the premise that no work of art is immune to the effects of time. In popular understandings, physical objects are thought to be closest to perfection at the moment of their creation. In this scheme, the moment of full realisation is permanently deferred and future possibilities are continuously invited.The project is a community workshop and a series of preliminary structures at Rainham Marshes, a nature reserve on the edge of London. It seeks to think with the groundworks of this site, a term that encompasses both the physical and theoretical anchors of a structure. The work takes its approach by combining printmaking and CNC technology, experimenting with a variety of toolpaths and sampling techniques. The project works cumulatively and recursively to imagine a series of structures and create the conditions for an array of eventual buildings on the site. This methodology is analogous to architectural inquiry itself, placing the researcher in a phenomenological relationship with the matter and site being studied while continuously coming to the place and materials afresh. Tutor(s) Stefan Lengen Ben Spong