This year Unit G will continue an exploration of the qualities of place that make East London. We will be working in the Barking Riverside development area in the heart of the Thames Gateway; projecting from its present, a fragmented industrial landscape, to its future as the site of 10,000 new homes.
We ask how architecture can become part of a specific ecology: to accommodate biodiversity, to benefit from natural processes and to take a role in a localised network of relationships.
Making Ground refers in a literal sense to the man-made geology of the area, created through a historical accumulation of waste and other materials, and to the artificial raising and lowering of levels in order to manage flood risk and rainwater. It also describes the need to draw out a sense of place beyond the bright proclamations of site hoarding slogans and CGI visuals, and the way in which the establishment of infrastructure sets out a territory for the future development to inhabit. We will be working with programmes centred on transport connections: rail and river nodes.
We are interested in an architecture of transition: from industrial to residential, from fragmentation to connectivity, from the movement of transport to grounded-ness of place. Time is a key part of our understanding – from daily activity to seasonal cycles to long-term adaptation and change. Each proposal will encompass a range of scales from strategic understanding to detailed material resolution.
