DS03 — The Oxford School of Architecture 2023-2024

DESIGN STUDIO 03

MARKETS, THE MARKET, THE MERCHANT, THE MIGRANT

Tutors: Charlotte Grace and Maria Alexandrescu in collaboration with Ciaran Malick (AA), David Unterhofer (HASA Architects)

Guests: Barbara Prezlj, Laura Linsi

Students: James Mear, Hajara Iyal, Yuen Tung Liu, Fahima Akhter, Ngo Ling Lam, Xue Kai Teh, Eric Lai , Pui San Lee, Shi-Ko Foo, Farah Farhanah binti Kassim Kushairi , Elliott Dennis

As architects, we design the spaces where goods and bodies, buyers and sellers meet and exchange their value, at scales from the individual to the extrastate. In an age where anything can be bought, how do we design and build in a way that confronts today’s era of the transaction, marketisation, commodification, acceleration, financialisation, and reification of value? DS3 looks at the crucial socio-spatial conditions - of our time through the lens of logistics and the market. The market bridges the global scale of logistics with the domestic scale of daily and life. As the space of encounter between goods and bodies, where resources become commodities and value is sold and bought, the space of the market is reflective and/or indicative of the current conditions of change and exchange. Taking London as its site, DS3 asks students to confront the market and logistical logic inherent in contemporary life. Through fieldwork grounded in theoretical and architectural research, the studio will explore and uncover the workings of markets at multiple scales in order to reveal the processes, geographies, sites and encounters involved, as well as the social, economic, (geo) political and cultural contexts they affect and are affected by.

City as Museums - Decentralising markets through framings

Abby Liu

The project aims to tackle social inequality of Smithfield Market by integrating the relocation plan of the Museum of London, showcasing the historic values of the building and hidden truth behind food logistics, where museum spaces are weaved between the buildings to create a journey.

The Journey of Smithfield Market - City as Museums - Abby Liu

CrossRail as Catalyst

Elliott Dennis

The project seeks to propose a new CrossRail strategy which focuses its accompanying developments to aims of empowering local businesses and local identity, by proposing clusters of varied economic, social, and cultural activity around its stations. It will also aim to leverage future infrastructure projects to these ends, by its flexible approach to expansion.

London Showmen Hub

Eric Lai

London Showmen Hub explores the notion of pleasurescape as an architectural typology in the context of London. The project challenges the relationship between pleasurescape, labour and land ownership by subtly building a Showmen Museum and Depot under a constrained railway arches site in South Bermondsey.

Behind all the Fun Fair - London Showmen Hub - Eric Lai

Behind the Fun - London Showmen Hub - Eric Lai

The Urban Forestry - An ideal socialist city

Erica Lam

An idealistic socialist vision of equality land project reorganizes the spatial disruption of existing urban fabric by replacing the infill lands with sustainable landscape and logging woods in order to redefine the function meaning of vacancy in the city.

The City is Ours: Blurring Boundaries – Regents Park Art Centre

Fahima Akhter

This project aims to address the spatial exclusion of the art market by blurring its architecture in spatial, temporal and programmatic ways. Located in Regent’s Park, the project implements strategies to blur the boundaries within the art market by questioning the existing picturesque and logistical relations.

Perspective View - The City is Ours: Blurring Boundaries - Fahima Akhter

Beyond the Curtains - Legality of London’s Sex Market, Reinterpreted.

Farah Kassim

A reorganization of the architecture of legality in London’s sex industry. To challenge and redefine through the blurring of social, spatial and legal thresholds, to visibilize and empower the sex worker within.

Domesticity of the Brothel - Beyond the Curtains - Legality of London’s Sex Market, Reinterpreted - Farah Kassim

Manufacture Leisure: Embrace Leisure and Learning as part of the Working Culture

Shiko Foo

Uncovering labour’s market in London’s working class, the project aims to bridge the gap between Canary Wharf and Poplar’s disparities through creating a balanced entity in addressing leisure above the rise of capitalism production. The design idea proposes a vision of a city which constantly grows and regenerates itself to permeate, adapt and to animate places in order to dissolve and assemblage the layered communities.

Copper Recycling Center

Teh Kai

The aim is to create an internal, sustainable supply of copper within the UK, by increasing and encouraging the recycling of copper. The project will serve as a starting point of a movement to create an archipelago of recycling centers in the future by connecting local scrap dealers and scrap yards in order to formalize the secondary copper market. The project will in a way, act as a cleansing agent in the copper market, by encrypting material passports in the process of recycling the copper scrap.

Mooring Pier hierarchy - Copper Recycling Center - Teh Kai

A New Typology of Municipal Swimming Centre & the integration of Secondary School

Vikkie Lee

The project aims to disrupt the ‘conventional’ ideal of a sport centre in which it demands to include and redeem the right of socially vulnerable groups to access these properties through architectural means within the potentially selected site of South Bermondsey to further integrate in its future redevelopment.