Borrowed Landscape

The project is for a medium density housing block, inserted within and reimagining the existing structure of a post-war building. The site is an existing hotel on the northern side of Lambeth Road, opposite Lambeth Towers and the Imperial War Museum Gardens. Using a collection of lightweight additional elements extending the existing building, a tension between old and new is explored and the potential of the borrowed landscape is unlocked. The design challenges notions of a clear delineation between internal and external spaces. It explores the transitions between private and shared spaces towards one of greater ambiguity. Using ideas of translucency and the layering of light, the boundary between monolithic and light spaces is extended softening the inherent juxtaposition. Within this layering creates subtle thresholds and winter gardens, improving the traditional amenity requirements for housing and creating a wider variety of environments to enjoy within the home. Due to the variety of complex urban environments adjacent to the site, a site analysis of urban forms was undertaken to gain a better sense of the local character, and to devise a typological language derived from the contextual setting. A series of 5 primary conditions were identified and mapped. ​ Each of the 5 primary urban conditions contain a series of typologies that explore the relationship between an architectural mass and its urban setting. This series of extracted urban fragments were applied and tested on the site to see how each might be able to affect the greater plan. This began to suggest potential new forms that could address the issues of the existing building’s relationship to the corner, to the rear and to its own open space. The proposal extends and layers over the existing building to re-address its relationship to the corner whilst enveloping it with a lightweight translucent veil, revealing this process of layering, adding a visual complexity and variety. The renewed presence of the architecture on this site provides a new enclosed public space that reopens the connection to the back. This inhabited façade creates a new urban language, unifying the whole scheme, whilst providing renewed high standards of living through maisonettes within the borrowed landscape. Internally, the experimentation was inspired by Shokin-Tei Tea Pavillion in Kyoto, staggering spaces and allowing borrowed light to penetrate deep into the plan to rooms within rooms. The spaces of the interior penetrate through to give curated views through the spaces. ​ Between the day and the night, this new veil over the existing structure changes. During the day it conceals the complexity within, glowing as a minimal series of translucent additions juxtaposing the monolithic existing. At night it glows revealing the life and layers within. The design explores the tension between the various structural and spatial relationships at every level of the project.