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Medway MIlitary Archive

Part 2 Project 2008
Emma Perry
 University for the Creative Arts | UK
The thesis investigates the ideas of war; as a highly ordered system which continuously transforms to counteract applied variables. The development of a MILITARY ARCHIVE with veteran welfare facilities for the medway district, responds to the contextual need to consolidate current ephemera and records that are dispersed throughout the region and the lack of veteran support facilities that are currently available in the locale. The manifesting programme responds to the need to commemorate warfare, whereby the museum and memorial are architectural typologies that respond as such. The thesis considers document taxonomy, sorting, storing and how we perpetuate the ephemeral event through recording and archiving. From the initial ideas of ‘systematic war’ and the process of reaction of applied variables, the thesis has utilised parametric morphology and testing to develop the design from a conceptual origin, to a scheme that challenges traditional ideas of museology to generate spaces that are far more about heightened engagement, rather than passive reflection.

Emma Perry


Metaphors can kill. The contemporary discourse over war has long been a panorama of metaphor. Many have commented on its use in the gulf war: in propaganda it has always been widespread. While we routinely use an extensive system of metaphor to understand complexities and abstractions, it is important to distinguish what is metaphorical from what is not. A project informed by the mechanisms of conflict and its human consequences must judge its approach with great care. In order to address adequately the difficulties posed by the metaphoric in a complex and potentially sentimental proposal, Emma has developed an architecture of critical spaces, that is to say an architecture in which philosophical speculation is primarily spatialised rather than suborned to written texts, in order to be able to usefully reflect upon present conditions and through which to develop morphologies from within the discourse and practice of architecture. This approach contains within it a potential to allow us to exploit what Foucault called the ‘excess’ which is always present in the object whenever and whatever meanings are invested in it.
Arising out of several strands of research, Emma’s design unfolds itself across a site which prompts responses to diverse adjacencies: incorporating landscape urbanism as a significant component of the overall assemblage, the urban context is such that the proposal sits between medway vernacular and an identikit slab block; it accommodates dual aspects and routes to and from the street and the river. Programmatic context demands a well–judged response to the demands of public, therapeutic, curatorial and archival agendas. This is an architecture which resonates with its generative conditions, but resists facile memorialisation. It brings together a locally perceived need for the consolidation of extant resources with a desire to posit an appropriate contemporary response to issues surrounding veteran welfare and the commemoration of regional military activity.

John Bell
Tutor(s)
Mr John Bell
2008
THE SITE ANALYSIS INVESTIGATIONS DEMONSTRATED THE HISTORICAL MILITARY CONTEXT PRESENT IN THE MEDWAY AREA. THE ANALYSIS STRENGTHENED THE PROGRAMMATIC RELEVANCE AND NEED FOR A MILITARY ARCHIVE IN THIS LOCALE.
THE IMAGE SHOWS DATASCAPE EXPLORATION OF CONTEMPORARY WARFARE ISSUES IN IRAQ AND THE HISTORICAL IMPACT OF WAR IN THE MEDWAY AREA. THE PROCESS OF QUANTIFYING WAR THROUGH DATA EXPLORATION WAS A MOVE TO DISENGAGE WITH THE EMOTIVE NUANCES ASSOCIATED WITH WAR.
MODEL SHOWS EMERGENT FORM MANIFESTED FROM A SET OF PREDETERMINED CONDITIONS. PARALLELS BETWEEN THE ORDERED NATURE OF WARFARE AND PARAMETRIC MANIFESTATION WERE OBSERVED. BOTH WAR AND PARAMETRICS ARE HIGHLY ORDERED SYSTEMS THAT RESPOND TO APPLIED VARIABLES.
THE EMERGENT FORM WAS EXPLORED THROUGH SECTION. THE FORM REQUIRED MANIPULATION IF IT WERE TO BE FEASIBLE FOR REALISATION INTO A LITERAL BUILDING FORM. CONSIDERATION WAS GIVEN TO HOW TO CONTROL THE MEASURED DISTORTION AND BY WHAT VARIABLES.
A COMPUTER MODEL WAS VIRTUALLY TESTED IN A QUANTIFIABLE MANNER, THROUGH A ‘FORCE FIELD DEFORMER,’ CONSTRUCTED USING THE SITE VARIABLES GATHERED DURING ANALYSIS STAGES. THE FORM MORPHOLOGY WAS RECORDED AND CONSIDERED FOR BUILDING FORM MANIFESTATION.
THE IDEA OF EMERGENT FORM AS A LITERAL BUILDING MODEL WAS AN UNCOMFORTABLE ONE. I UNFOLDED THE FORMS AND GENERATED A MAT THAT COVERED THE SITE, ALLOWING THE DEFORMERS TO GENERATE AN UNDULATING SHEET LANDSCAPE, INTO WHICH THE BUILDING WOULD PENETRATE.
THE PENETRATED LANDSCAPE GENERATED THE FLOOR PLATE AND CEILING FOR ELEMENTS OF THE BUILDING, WHICH ECHOED THE EXTERNAL AUGMENTATION. THE CHAOTIC NATURE OF THE HORIZONTAL PLANES CONTRASTED GREATLY TO THE ORDERED NATURE OF THE ARCHIVE THAT PRESIDED WITHIN.
THE PARAMETRICS INFLUENCED THE STRUCTURAL RESPONSE TO THE DESIGN. SPACE FRAMES WERE USED TO GENERATE AUGMENTED FORMS. PRISMATIC COLUMNS PROVIDED OPPORTUNITIES TO CREATE OPENINGS ANGULAR IN APPEARANCE. THIS ALLOWED CONTINUITY FROM CONCEPT TO DETAILING.
THE SITE PLAN SHOWS THE POSITIONING OF THE MAIN BUILDING FORM IN THE LANDSCAPE. THE LANDSCAPE FALLS INTO THE WATER, ALLOWING THE GROUND TO RETAIN POCKETS OF WATER AS THE TIDE MOVES IN AND OUT, CONSISTENT WITH IDEAS OF INFORMATION RETENTION.
PLAN OF UNDERGROUND ARCHIVE WITH SCHEDULE OF ACCOMMODATION. THE PLACEMENT OF THE ARCHIVE ALLOWS FOR THE COMPLEX LANDSCAPE TO FORM THE CEILING FOR THE FORMAL ARCHIVE THAT SITS BENEATH, AS THE LANDSCAPE PENETRATES THROUGH THE BUILDING.
THE GROUND FLOOR PLAN DEMONSTRATES HOW USERS WOULD ENTER THE BUILDING AND NEED TO NEGOTIATE THE LANDSCAPE FROM THE REINSTATED RIVER WALK ACCESS. THE BUILDING READDRESSED AND ALLOWED ACCESS FROM THE NEGLECTED HIGH STREET.
THE FIRST FLOOR PLAN SHOWS HOW THE LANDSCAPE BEGINS TO FOLD UP OVER ELEMENTS OF THE BUILDING. THE MAIN BUILDING FORM IS BASED AROUND THE SIMPLISTIC, ORIGINAL PARAMETRIC TRIANGULATION, CONTRASTING AGAINST THE COMPLEXITY OF THE LANDSCAPE BELOW.
THE HIGH STREET ELEVATION OF THE SITE AND BUILDING. IT SHOWS THE LANDSCAPE PULLED UP OVER ELEMENTS OF THE BUILDING, ANCHORING PARTS OF THE ACCOMMODATION UNDERGROUND.
EXTERNAL PERSPECTIVE FROM THE RIVER WALK.
EXTERNAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE BUILDING AND SITE FROM THE WATERS EDGE.
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