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Strata - Institute of Fine Arts

Part 2 Project 2010
Thomas Phillips
 University of East London London | UK
Strata is the new Greenwich University Institute of Fine Art, located on Greenwich peninsula in London. The project is concerned with the overlapping and collision of strips of programme, creating new types of social interaction, and blurring the boundaries between exhibition and studio.

The organisation of the building is based upon the classification of various programmatic components into separate strips: exhibition, learning, accommodation, and service.

The architectural mechanism of the wall is used to separate programme and users, physically lift the accommodation away from the ground, provide privacy to teaching spaces, welcome the public by projecting into external routes, create thresholds, inhabit for services and administration, and for appropriation as blank urban canvases. They also control the creation of various spatial qualities: wide to narrow, high to low, and dark to light. These juxtapositions form an important part of the experiential routes throughout the building.

At the centre of the building plan is the focal point of the building, which is used organisationally to create the intersection of these strips, and the dissolution of physical barriers. It is at this point where visitor and artist meet, as studio space becomes part of the exhibition space, and the boundaries are blurred.


Thomas’ project, Strata, promotes the production of new urban communities that challenge the conventions of private versus public urban space and contest ground versus building dichotomy.

Located next to the Millennium Dome, the Greenwich Peninsula is a highly constrained site of development bearing the scars of a diverse industrial history. The project and surrounding campus proposal seek to address this condition, which restricts pedestrian access across the Peninsula from East to West. Strata is based upon the continuation of routes that connect both edges of the site, facilitated by the use of strips, which become regulated through the architectural mechanism of the wall.

The project also addresses the conglomeration of media industry headquarters and media education, by seeking to create greater interaction between visitors and artists, by overlapping programmatic components where studios, often the spaces reserved for the creating process, becomes part of the exhibition.

Off Site Construction served as the basis for the project’s material, structural, and spatial investigations and developments.
Tutor(s)
Mr Robert Thum
Mr Jeffrey Turko
2010
1:200 model of Strata showing the building focal point in the centre and the location of the accommodation strip. In the top left corner is the external landscape which relates to the internal rake of the lecture theatre, sharing storage for performances
1:1000 site plan of the Greenwich Peninsula, illustrating the proposed campus to the east and creating new connections between the opposing edges of the peninsula
Exploded axonometric illustrating structural, servicing, and material strategy, including the relation between Strata and the surrounding context
Ground floor plan illustrating the separation of programmatic strips to the eastern edge and the resulting programmatic collision and location of the studios/exhibition to the western edge. The plan illustrates the relation of the strips and landscape
Upper floor plans of the student accommodation, illustrating where this strip gradually overlaps the functions on the ground floor, such as the exhibition and the studio. The spaces relate through voids connecting users and also creating spatial condition
Long section through the student route to the studios illustrating the dichotomy of contrasting spatial conditions
Long section through the public route to the studios illustrating the dichotomy of contrasting spatial conditions and the student accommodation path above
1:25 detailed section taken through the two juxtaposing studio spaces and the relation of the raised accommodation strip above
External view from the student approach to Strata
1:200 model of Strata illustrating surrounding context
Internal perspective from above the public entrance from the student accommodation, observing the flow of visitors through the rooflight and the location of the O2 centre in the distance
Internal perspective from the building focal point/ external courtyard- where the paths of public and artist overlap. The image also illustrates the entrance to the accommodation street and programmatic functions such as the cafe and informal presentation
Internal perspective from the student design hub looking into the 'American' studio spaces below. The non-structural rammed earth wall to the left performs environmental and spatial functions- by assisting in dehumidification and thermal heating
Internal perspective from within the public exhibition where the student accommodation strip overlaps creating lower and darker spatial conditions as part of the experiential journey of the visitor
1:200 model of Strata showing the building focal point in the centre and the location of the accommodation strip. In the top left corner is the external landscape which relates to the internal rake of the lecture theatre, sharing storage for performances
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