6 teams / 6 masterplans for Stratford Island: End of term review at Cambridge with Antony Rifkin from Allies and Morrison / Urban Practitioners and Anita Bakshi.
More images of the review in the Studio Blog
Cambridge Studio 1/ Year 3 is now live: http://year3studio1.tumblr.com/
STRATFORD: NOTIONS OF PLACE
With the Olympic and Paralympic games over, East London is now left with the huge task of turning all the ambitious plans for the integration of the facilities and infrastructure created for the events into a reality. Last year we learned about the plans for the Olympic Park itself and the neighbouring areas commonly referred to as the ‘fringes’.
But it is simplistic to think about these places as peripheral since they have characteristics that are as equally if not more complex than some of the new districts being planned within the boundaries of the new Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The Studio will be concentrating on the area known as Stratford Old Town/Stratford Island to develop urban strategies and architectural proposals to make the area more connected to its surroundings.
The second year studios at Cambridge including ours are taking part in an exhibition at the Sugarhouse Studios in Stratford.
Along the edge of the main Olympic site in the east end, a zone of transformation can be found between the A12 and the Lea River, taking in Hackney Wick, the Lee Navigation and Old Ford Lock. Over the past year the area has been a place of significant academic enquiry by students in London and further afield. The exposition showcases the coincidental diversity of thought and endeavor by the next generation of architects, designers and writers in time for the London Architecture Festival 2012.
Participants include: Architectural Association, Bartlett School of Architecture, Cambridge School of Architecture, Canterbury School of Architecture, Chelsea College of Art and Design, Greenwich University, Kingston University, Oxford Brookes University, Royal College of Art, South Bank University, Sheffield University, University of East London and the University of Westminster.
Cambridge / Studio 2 - Olympic Fringes
This year we will continue the process of understanding the current discourses and attitudes towards the gradual transformation of London’s disused Victorian infrastructure into public spaces. In the last two years we have looked at how railway buildings have been demolished giving way to new development and transport infrastructure around the Brick Lane area, which subsequently informed the decision to study London’s canal network and the shift it has seen from backyard infrastructure to a space for leisure.
This year we will be focusing on Hackney Wick and Fish Island, an area that sits adjacent to the Olympic Park and therefore at the midst of a significant urban transformation, which will be directly influenced by the wider scale redevelopment planned for East London.
