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Vehicle For Housing, Lea Valley

Part 2 Project 2004
Tom Wells
Stephanie Southward
Marie Price
 University of Westminster | UK
'Vehicle For Housing' exploits the dual brief of providing athletes' housing for the London 2012 Olympics and public housing for the Legacy Phase. The work is developed from drawings of a car dismantlers. The final design combines standard materials, using conventional and novel construction methods, with the addition of high-spec elements which 'soup-up' its design. Traditional window boxes are superceded by fiberglass 'bumpers' accommodating aeroponic planting technology, and are linked by raised walkways enveloping and dissecting each façade. The landscape with 'souped-up' form and materiality is overlooked by flying gantry gardens providing private greens and substituting for lost vegetation.


At the master-plan, building, and detail scale Stephanie and Tom’s work shows the talent of two students who combine strict technical and programmatic issues with an unusual design generator to create some remarkable speculative images. They have dissected the Allies and Morrison proposal for the 2012 Olympic Village and legacy housing project by following a drawing process that overlays the narratives of individual lives with the movement patterns of industrial vehicles using methods of re-scaling, re-reading, and mis-reading. The resulting work is inventive, acutely attuned to contemporary urban issues, and poses key questions of how design is approached.
Tutor(s)
2004
The lasting legacy of the 2012 Olympics. Housing as Commodity
Siting the housing within a landscaped park promotes the Lea Valley’s regeneration after the 2012 Olympics.
Puncturing the green corridor allows light into the sunken car park. Flying gardens compensate for lost vegetation.
The project’s permeability promotes and maintains existing routes through it
London 2012 Bid: The Olympic Village using Redcorn Car Dismantlers as a masterplanning device
‘Sky Track’: Linking gardens and ‘Wings’ A continuous loop that envelops and dissects each building serving as a training circuit and tool for social integration
Drawing Process: Overlaying Redcorn at the scale of the site and individual block
Block Scale: Olympic requirements
Two schemes with the same programmatic requirements: A massing comparison between the Allies and Morrison proposal and Vehicle for Housing
Challenging traditional notions of urban regeneration: The site is the junction between parkland and the existing urban fabric, the disintegration and accumulation of the two
Creating Elevations: Conventional materials and forms ‘souped-up’ using the Redcorn drawing process
‘Wing’ Scale: Resolving the structural system. Façades are a combination of standard materials using new and conventional construction methods and specialist pieces
Aeroponic Greenhouses Fibreglass ‘bumpers’ ‘soup-up’ the traditional window box
Detail and Materiality ‘Souping-up’ traditional landscape elements using the car analogy
Vehicle for Housing by Night. Aeroponic lighting creates a glowing façade
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