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Learning to Live with Elephants

Part 2 Project 2019
Sam Clayton
 Central Saint Martins, UAL | UK
This project attempts to challenge the process and practice of regeneration in the wake of high-speed rail by carving out opportunities for new places and uses in a station setting.

Left to its own devices, the market will not deliver complex and hybridised built form – it prefers to create monocultures. This independent project emerged following a placement with the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) to develop a series of briefs for what activities could happen here, designed to challenge and assist their ‘Early Activation’ Programme.

The ongoing proposal anticipates the role Willesden Junction Station will have in stitching together a rapidly regenerating portion of the city with the characterful but fragile neighbourhood in Harlesden.

A series of briefs emerged from site walks. The walks test alternative engagement methods designed to generate conversation with those who use Harlesden everyday as well as those planning its long-term future.

These site walks matched potential programmes with potential sites at critical locations for Willesden Junction. Transport infrastructure operates with a narrow managerial lens. By fixating on delivering its primary function of moving people and materials, there are missed opportunities to enable an adjacent cultural infrastructure in the rough edges they produce.

Tutor(s)
2019
This project attempts to challenge the process and practice of regeneration in the wake of high-speed rail by carving out opportunities for new places and uses in a station setting. This independent project has been written following a placement with the
For redevelopment, the ‘infrastructure fix’ is the first step that makes development possible. But the irony of creating greater, faster and further transport connections is that where infrastructure touches the ground often leads to physical severances t
Willesden Junction Station sits at the northern fringe of Old Oak North, where the bulk of the largest regeneration area in the country is set to begin with the arrival of HS2 and its interchange with Crossrail at Old Oak Common. OPDC’s current approach
Many are sceptical about the outcome of the development at Old Oak. The challenge of building dense and building quickly was tested with peers and invited members of OPDC during a ‘Tick Box Exercise’. The exercise demonstrated: The difficulty of steering
175 years of railway development at Willesden Junction has led to a complex topography of tracks, tunnels, embankments and bridges that has earned it the nickname ‘wilderness station’. This spatial complexity, coupled with its intersection of four adminis
I dressed in bright orange overalls referencing the ‘men in orange’ who regularly undergo maintenance work on the railways, yet with embroidered sequin strips in the place of reflective fabric. I hoped to demonstrate that these spaces could be places to l
A landscape of brambles scramble beside the tracks at Willesden Junction Station, which occupies the northern fringe of HS2’s largest opportunity area at Old Oak and Park Royal. Could a seed of culture spring from the rupture of rails?
As the heritage substation is gradually refurbished the steel frames support a temporary roof which would allow the building to dry out. The scaffolding module is to be retained and re-clad with a polycarbonate screen. This screen is translucent and would
These site walks have matched potential programmes with potential sites at critical locations for Willesden Junction Station. This project critiques the production of transport infrastructure as occupying a narrow managerial lens. By only fixating on deli
These building tread lightly through the brambles and establish the activity necessary to meet Harlesden’s needs in anticipation of Old Oak’s arrival. I think the OPDC has a unique opportunity to achieve best practice in the collaboration between state
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