Hwei Fan Liang, Christian Groothuizen
Unit trip: Paris, France. Project site: Soho, London.
Soho. Heart of London. Behind the tacky touristic sheen, layers of history and activity, the mundane and the notorious combine. Silk shops, second-hand record shops, sex shops, bookshops, schools, council housing, chandelier makers, solicitors, coffee houses, public houses, post-production studios, bike shops, bespoke suit makers, religious study centres, and street markets exist cheek by jowl on a single ordinary and remarkable street. What architecture provides the frame and stage for the everyday theatre, craft, care and survival of individuals who live and work close by one another?
We will study the richness of the block, where particular replaces generic, and the potential for relationships within and without. Taking the idea of the urban hybrid block, we re-cast it at the human scale of Soho and challenge the prevailing redevelopment model that obliterates centuries-old plotlines with high-rent open-plan floorplates, instead seeking to retain traces in material and meaningful ways as well as support the delicate and constantly shifting balance of players, agents and residents of the area. We will make propositions that provide spaces for inhabitation and opportunities for interaction and reciprocity between activities and occupiers, street and interior, public and private. We are interested in an architecture of narrative and inhabitation.
