Site & Context

We are starting in the middle – of Woolwich Town Center in South East London as we find it in 2020. This bit of city has been slowly changing, developing and growing in a continuous process of cause and effect. The collage of building materials, the mismatch of architectural styles and the strange programmatic junctions are all part of what makes London and it’s many town centers special.

As most of central London has gentrified and become unattainably expensive, the developers target sites for regeneration that are deemed ‘problematic’ and increasingly located on the peripheries of the city. The current model of collaboration between local councils and large developers suffers from an uneven power balance. Before the dust of construction has settled, the political and monetary forces at play, almost always leave behind a generic city fabric that is void of affordable housing and social activities for the existing local communities such as public libraries, youth clubs, markets and pubs.

The above is evident in the redevelopment of the old Woolwich Arsenal, which gained pace in the late 2000’s, when the Crossrail station was announced. There are now two ‘Woolwiches’ - divided by a physical, social and metaphorical wall, behind which one finds the privately policed, new residential towers and old Arsenal Buildings redeveloped into shiny, but tiny flats.

Studio & Thesis Project

The studio operates in the field of experimental preservation, building up a catalogue of alternative strategies to combat the urban erasure described above and provide a continuation, not only of the buildings themselves by bringing them to a contemporary standard, but also of the communities that have formed, occupied and flourished over decades. The graduating projects will tackle a variety of political, cultural and heritage issues, including but not limited to; the loss of activities for youth, demolition of social housing, minimal space standards in light of the Corona Virus and the provision of affordable housing for key workers (nurses, policemen, firemen, etc.) that are being pushed out of the inner city as it becomes gentrified and unaffordable.