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The Paradox of Architectural Value

Part 2 Project 2023
Wiktoria Sara Piotrowska
Birmingham City University | UK
This thesis is a critique of the way Britain is so thrall to the wrecking ball when approaching modernist social housing estates. Based at the Central Hill Estate, the project is an archival tower that acts as a mediator between the Lambeth Homes and Central Hill residents. It explores the way the planning and listing laws work in the UK and the imbalanced priorities of social housing associations in London.

It functions by simulating all processes involved within the estate, combining them, and using an algorithm that generates an outcome to the inquiry. Anyone involved in the fate of the estate can put an inquiry through. Based on the information provided, a change occurs within the estate. The scales of it vary, from a small intervention that closes off a street to reduce traffic to the demolition of an entire building. An architectural fragment is then absorbed and placed within the tower as a physical record of the disturbance to London’s modernist architecture. The fragments vary depending on the action, sometimes a replica of a building fragment is created if the action was minor, in other cases an entire fragment of a building is taken and attached onto the tower.


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2023
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