A Social Crack
an approach of an intervention to address the representation
of social class between two architectural facades in north Kensington
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Bartlett School of Architecture
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Design Research for Historic Urban Environments, 2018
Academic Project | Group Work
Location: London, United Kingdom
Supervisors: Hannah Corlett, Sabine Storp
with Fritz Strempel & Rui Huang
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Responding to a social crack
On the search for representations of cracks in the city, our interest was in social cracks running through neighbourhoods and their representation in architecture. Data mapping analysis of both historic and contemporary social and architectural data suggested the most dramatic and historic crack across central London -a collide of the most deprived and most privileged residents- could be found between two dales in North Kensington, next to the Grenfell Tower site.
TO CHANGE THE PERSPECTIVE ONTO SOMETHING WILL CHANGE HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT!
What social data suggested was supported by a stark contrast in architectural styles: (former) social housing estates faced historic Victorian terraces. In the presented site, social data corresponded with architectural styles. Upon interviewing residents, an alienation of social classes was attributed to the building styles.
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Identifying the needs
1) An intervention that spatially interweaves the two sides by inviting to transcend the crack and overco- me the separating nature and social representation of the facade.
2) A space that invites the residents to playfully discover their neighbourhood from new and changing perspectives by disrupting the seeing habits.
3) An intervention that deals with the problems of lack of public space, empty dwellings, and conflicts about how to commemorate Grenfell.
Response
Make unoccupied space
public and become greenspace.
Interweave the two sides
Planting an eternal green scarf.
Fragmenting the view
This architectural intervention aims to address this felt alienation by breaking the seeing habits onto the neighbourhood and deconstructing the reductionist symbols of the facades by inserting a public space that physically interweaves both sides and o ers, through playful reflection, an optical play that blends the two sides and their facades. The new public space reacts to two major local issues. 1. unoccupied dwellings: by weaving access routes to empty houses and flats and by occupying the lower rise flat roof in the centre of the site, the unused commodity private space is turned into public space adding much-needed green space and rooms to the local community. 2. Grenfell commemoration: by planting the threads of the weave, we turn the local practice of commemoration with green scarves into an eternal gesture by planting screen scarves that bind the neighbourhood together.
Conceptual illustration
