Basic Information

Participant：Eight undergraduate and graduate students of architecture
Location: London, UK
Period: September 10-16, 2017

Achievements

This project aimed to explore how to document architecture and an urban space as practical and educational research through international collaboration. A participation research was conducted in collaboration with local professors of practice and guest professors from the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA school) and Central Saint Martins (CSM), during which the urban space of the King’s Cross redevelopment site were examined with the key words of “fantasy urbanism” and “reality”.

At the site in central London that has been under redevelopment since 2005, eight students documented proposals, under the theme of the “fictionality” of the site, on the scales of city, architecture, and the human body, using the architectural expressions of flat, elevation, and section plans as well as perspectives. The proposals also covered the behavioral aspects of site users.
Specifically, the students collected samples that were exhibiting fictional natures derived from their own physical structures in addition to those that were presenting reality. The social structure as the background of the fictional natures was then described, which also included the activities by people visiting the site. Lastly, proposals by drawings were made to recontextualize the relationship between the fictional natures and the periphery of the site.

The students prepared their proposals under the supervision of Mel Dodd and Alex Warknock at the architectural department of CSM, which is located in the center of the target site. On the last day of the project, they made the final presentations at the office of Public Works, an art and architectural practice co-founded by CSM’s Andreas Lang, during which Carlos Viallnueva Brandt from the AA school also provided comments. Their respective project outcomes received high acclaim by the local professors.