Team: Natalie Barton, Janita Han, David Hills and Isabel Moreira.
Area: 100sqm
Construction Cost: £1.3m
Completion: October 2016
Photography: Luca Miserocchi, Dennis Gilbert
This project involved the demolition of an unlisted, 3-storey terraced building (built between the1930s and 1970s) and the erection of a 4-storey jewellery studio on a busy road in the burgeoning area of Bermondsey, London. The proposal complements two other jewellery studios in the local area for the successful jeweller Alex Monroe.
The building is made up of a workshop, machine room, meeting/administration spaces, a kitchen, ancillary spaces and an external roof terrace. A folded metal stair connects each floor. Tectonically, the new building consists of a steel frame structure, which sits on concrete piles, and is between two party walls. These party walls are extended upwards within the site boundary and clad in brick slips, which turn the corner to form the rear façade. The roof is flat. The front façade and a small portion of the rear façade are clad in horizontal sections of folded COR-TEN (weathered steel); this is a nod to the industrial heritage of the area and the intricate jewellery that will be housed within the new studio.
Team: David Hills, Isabel Moreira, Jonathan French, Natalie Barton, Michael Breen and Samuel Myatt
Area: 7500sqm
Procurement route: Design and Build
Construction Cost: Undisclosed
Completion: 2018
Photography: CGI by Sanders Shiers
2 Whitechapel Road involves the redevelopment of 3 plots within a city block in the Whitechapel High Street Conservation Area. An existing building, Cityside House, currently sits on the corner of the city block and is connected to 2 proposed plots by a courtyard. The existing building is an amalgamation of several historic industrial buildings that were refurbished in the 1970’s and converted in to office space.
The proposal will provide a high quality environment for the building’s users, visitors, neighbouring residents and passersby through sensitive, contemporary architectural design. The scheme will renovate Cityside House and create 3 additional levels to offer contemporary office spaces. The new proposal makes sensitive reference to the proportions and compositional features of the neighbouring buildings and articulation of the existing streetscape. The materiality of the proposal references the site's industrial history, in particular the nearby Bell Foundry. Internally, the original cast iron riveted columns will be exposed and the irregularity of the existing concrete beams celebrated. In essence, the redevelopment reflects the character and qualities of the burgeoning neighbourhood, while acknowledging and respecting its heritage.
Team: Natalie Barton, Jonathan French, Tom Greenall, David Hills, Iain Jamieson, Sean Moyo, Deborah Saunt and Sofia Villanueva.
This competition is to extend the Tampere Contemporary Art Museum, currently located within a modest Granary building; redevelop the adjacent Pyynikintori Square; and locate opportunities for new housing to fund the expansion of the museum.
The entry builds on the Art Museum as part of a wider network of cultural institutions throughout the city and, as a result, the proposed extension is designed as a flexible framework allowing adaptation alongside the evolution of contemporary art in the future. The proposed extension to the Art Museum is imagined as a part of a family of buildings on the site, each with its own scale of space to facilitate the various requirements of the museum.
The extension is of finely crafted red brickwork and is cast as a scale representation of the Granary building. Additionally, the proposed extension mirrors the Granary building’s structural approach, with a loadbearing brick façade and an internal timber frame.
All the public functions of the museum are located on the ground floor with a courtyard garden at the centre of the museum. The public route through the museum engages exhibition and non-exhibition functions, blurring the boundaries between staff and visitor, between public display and private research. While, the captured garden spaces resonate with the natural context of Finland and its people.
Beyond the extension, a strong axial relationship is choreographed between the museum and Pyynikintori Square through a large new crossing and opening up views on its eastern side towards the museum. Furthermore, two potential sites for housing and workspaces can be identified on the skyline to visitors using the square, marking the western limit of a new cultural quarter.
This parable uses the role of the contemporary architect to explore the theme of compromise and teaches us to be careful of what we are complicit in. It tells the story of a female architect whose ambiguity and identity struggle parallel the crisis within today’s architectural profession.
A young architect learns that in order to do anything worthwhile in her industry, she must engage with the new wealth that is constructing our world. Exploring her familial heritage, she travels to Nigeria and China, returning as Mrs Wealthy Chinese Businessman, the better half of a powerful developer. Her marriage is consummated through the conception of two projects in her hometown of Peckham. These two urban interventions work in tandem: one taking away and the other adding. The former a labour of love, the latter conceived out of financial ‘necessity’.
As these schemes develop, an activist group - to which she had former ties - obstruct her work. Our Protagonist is presented with a dichotomy: the resolution of these two projects will result in a kind of death, either of her former self or of her current self.
The tragedy of our heroine reflects the tragedy of contemporary architecture; in which the ambitions of the architect become mixed up with the forces of the system that, on the one hand, enables their existence and, on the other hand, engenders an architectural impotence.
“Mini-thesis” project as part of the Department of Ontological Theatre (DOT) 2013-2014, a studio run by Dr Jon Goodbun and Dr Victoria Watson at the Royal College of Art (RCA). The studio themes for this year were: Alienation, Acceleration and Empathy.
DOT workshops led to an interest in Bertolt Brecht’s alienation and the actor/spectator relationship through his desire to use theatre to encourage people to adopt a critical perspective. By exposing the artificiality of his plays Brecht urged the audience to go forth and change their worlds. Additionally, a DOT study trip to Havana, Cuba uncovered the dilapidated curved concrete structures of José Martí’s Parque Deportivo while a longstanding passion for feminism furthered the project to explore the competitor/spectator relationship of women and sport.
Jane Rendell’s Gender Space Architecture offered a brief herstory of feminism and the built environment, in particular Beatriz Colomina’s essay The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism laid a foundation for how to think about the spatial relationships architecture produces in relation to gender stereotypes.
In order to address the imbalance of participation in sport across the genders, the project seeks to use spatial relationships and architectural typologies to create different viewer/viewed relationships such as the panoptican, voyeur/exhibitionist, framed view, and veiling etc. to structure the nature of walking, swimming, and cycling experiences, in which activities Sport England states there is a latent demand for women.
The brief is to design a place of walking, swimming and cycling not exclusively for women but intended for them, the programme includes vulnerable women’s services such as Refuge, counselling services and a work hub with associated crèche. Additionally, the project seeks to speak to the socio-economic and racial disparities in sport involvement by locating itself on Cossall Park in Peckham, London. The participation of sport in the borough of Southwark varies from a high uptake in affluent white areas such as Dulwich, to a low uptake in Peckham, which has a much higher black population in comparison to the rest of the borough.
The main spatial arrangement is a tiered ‘stadium’ of sorts in which the tiers house programme and swimming pools, walkways, and cycle routes. The focal point of the stadium is a free form lake / swimming pool with diving board creating a panoptican/exhibitionist relationship. The tiering is elevated and supported by curved concrete arches while the entire building is almost entirely enclosed on the sides by a landscape that is a continuation of the surrounding park, forming a hill with a view at the top and reclaiming the stereotypic ‘female’ landscape and curvaceous concrete.
Team: Natalie Barton, Matteo Mastrandrea, and Nada Tayeb.
Photography: posters by Konstantinos Trichas
The idea of organising a student-led lecture series was born out of the belief that the Royal College of Art (RCA) architecture school should be a revolving door of engaging and knowledgeable people. Coupled with the desire to cultivate a studio culture where the student body doesn't simply consume a lecture and leave, PUR-Kuh-LEYT valued and enjoyed the process of sourcing, talking and exchanging thoughts with visiting guests in a more social environment. Held weekly in the RCAfé at the Kensington campus of the RCA, this student-led lecture series had the pleasure of hosting a variety of creative thinkers from Jane Rendell, Jack Halberstam, Forensic Architecture, Jeremy Till, Peg Rawes and much more.
Team: Natalie Barton, David Hills and Edward Simpson
Area: 570sqm
Procurement route: Traditional
Construction Cost: Undisclosed
Completion: 2013
Photography: Hélène Binet, Edward Simpson
This project is the conversion and refurbishment of an existing ammunitions warehouse into studio and gallery for prominent artist and author, Edmund de Waal.
The site, in south London, is an industrial building with full height brick elevations in which a lower, single-storey is beneath a steel trussed roof, covered in corrugated asbestos sheeting and incorporates glazed light panels. The proposal divides this larger, space into gallery, work and production areas. These spaces are connected to an adjacent 2-storey part of the building by 2 double height voids, which are carved out of the existing concrete slab and linked to a library.
The proposal offers a combination of clean white spaces in gallery conditions to test art pieces and host exhibitions, and functional spaces for ceramics production and studio administration, while also maintaining a sense of heritage through the use of new and retained brickwork in tandem with the exposed steel truss.
Team: Natalie Barton, David Hills and Isabel Moreira.
Area: 1250sqm
Procurement route: Traditional
Construction Cost: £4million
Completion: 2015
Photography: Dennis Gilbert
The Governors of Davenies Day Preparatory School, appointed DSDHA to demolish 2 existing buildings and design a new purpose built Pre-preparatory and Junior School accommodation as part of the final stage of a whole campus development.
The site is adjacent to a collection of mature trees and an outdoor classroom and play area known as “the dell”. The subtle design sits almost anonymously within the trees and, as such, increases the connection between inside and outside.
The proposal builds on the farming heritage of the site and is sensitive to a main Grade II listed building which inspires the roofscape and external envelope of waney-edged timber. The new buildings lightly touch the listed building through a new tempered connection known as the link. This link also connects to two main wings: one offering a smaller scale environment for younger children and the other larger, accommodating a new school hall at the level of the “dell”.
In addition to the visual connection to trees, the two wings are constructed of cross-laminated timber, which is exposed internally. Passive design measures and the use of timber construction allowed the school to exceed energy performance requirements and create a pleasant learning environment for the pupils.
A selection of work from the master of exchange Erasmus programme as part of the Sustainable Studio at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) Arkitektur in Stockholm, Sweden (2008-2009) and work as a part 1 architectural assistant at Building Design Practice (BDP) (2009) and Petersen-Jones Architects Ltd (PJA) (2011-2012).
Selected projects include: low carbon, modular self-build housing (KTH); the redevelopment of an abandoned oat mill on Kvarnholmen in the Stockholm archipelago (KTH); a striking and experimental energy lighthouse in the Baltic Sea (KTH); early concept design images for new Eco-town in Stroud, UK (PJA); re-modelling of regency terrace house in Cheltenham, UK (PJA); new educational campus on the regeneration of the former Ebbw Vale steelworks in Blaenau Gwent, south Wales into large mixed use development (BDP).
From 2006-2010, the University of Bath architecture school promoted an honest approach to construction, encouraged collaboration with the department of engineering and championed the use of site analysis and diagrams to drive design. The page is a collection of projects during the this time period.
Golden City
This project proposes living and support accommodation for students with mental health issues. The site is located within a city block to the west of Queen’s Square planned as part of Bath’s Georgian master plan. A new alleyway provides access to the accommodation, while also easing pedestrian movement towards the northern parts of the city. The pedestrian way is lined by 4 blocks of living accommodation, which sit on top of a sprawling ground floor organised around courtyards. At ground level more public and group-based activities take place such as music and dance therapy, while more private and individual activities are in more secluded locations.
Tectonically speaking, the proposal mirrors the nature of Bath’s speculative heritage in which grander palatial façades concealed smaller and irregular plots. An insitu-cast concrete wall, with a Bath stone aggregate, provides frontage and stability for cross-laminated timber modules. These repetitive modules form student bedrooms and are inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite D’habitation, in which a mezzanine level offers a generous use of volume and an added layer of privacy.
Urbain
The Basil Spence competition is a group project in the final year of Bath’s course. The brief in 2010 was to create a leisure facility within the redevelopment of King’s Cross, on a site adjacent to the historic shed of King’s Cross railway station.
The proposal is a long and rectilinear COR-TEN structure, forming a bridge over the Regent’s canal and providing a pedestrian connection across the wider site. The form is reminiscent of a pier or shored ship, and its volume is inspired by the experience of being under deep water: the feeling of being something small within a large expanse.
The proposal forms a division between the public route and a large swimming pool overlooking the railway tracks of King’s Cross railway station. Pedestrians travel along a dedicated route adjacent to the building and users cross a threshold into the leisure facility. Inside the proposal, the COR-TEN structure running parallel to the route, acts as a functional aspect of the building with changing rooms, eating areas and a spa all stacked vertically within a steel frame. In between the framed COR-TEN and the station, the pool hall interior is of a different quality to the rectangular exterior and materiality of the COR-TEN. Its roof is a series of oversized concrete U-beams that funnel natural light, offer large spans and provide services. Continuing on along the route towards the station entrance, there sits an outdoor lido against the backdrop of the stations historic brick wall. The lido completes the collection of different natured and scaled leisure experiences, providing sanctuary in a busy part of the city.
