'Summit Powder Mountain Competition' Finalist (2016)

Summit Powder Mountain Competition

As a community with a philosophy of innovation, cultural enrichment and environmental conservation, and a core ethic of personal growth and influencing positive change in the world, the project aims to challenge the elitist notion that the proposed cabins on Powder Mountain should all be permanent residencies for only a select few people.

 Instead, each ‘Nest’ belongs to the mountain and the wider community, as places for all to be able to experience and learn from.  With only 500 allowable ‘homesites’, the nests are used as temporal places of physical, mental and spiritual growth. Maintaining a sense of perpetual motion keeps Powder Mountain from ever becoming owned and privatised. Remaining a place of personal exploration, learning and growth, for everyone to use, the Summit group are able to give back to the local community and encourage their ethics to be disseminated back into the wider population with each person’s life they change. 

Trees have long been sacred amongst human civilization, not just for their use as firewood and construction, but as a deeper, more symbolical entity. The act of planting and nurturing a tree becomes a powerful grounding tool, creating one small solution to the ever growing environmental crisis. There is a beauty in how plants and animals work symbiotically together, with the trees using our waste CO2 within their photosynthesis process, in turn releasing vital oxygen for us to breathe. A very delicate balance is struck in a mutually dependant relationship, where one cannot live without the other. 

 Each nest harnesses this dependency, creating a space where one can come, plant their ‘Autumn Blaze’ Maple seed and live amongst nature, the seasons and the elements for a whole year. Acting as ‘back to basics’ retreat, which is inhabited by a different person every year, each nest gives the occupant a chance to reconnect with the earth, and to discover a more sustainable and connected lifestyle. Observing the Wheel of year is an ancient practice used to mark the seasonal shifts, and to help understand and predict the world around us. Each season gives way to different challenges, requiring the occupant to continuously adapt to their surroundings. 

 Once the year turns to an end, the inhabitant replants their 3-5ft Maple tree in the surrounding natural forests of Power Mountain, creating a forest of memories and leaving a constant connection between the departed occupants and the trees they helped nurture into maturity. Creating a village of miniature greenhouses, scattered across the mountain, the Nests account for a slow, but sure progression towards reforestation.

 The design concept takes the concept of off-grid living back to its essence. Instead of using high-tech sustainable solutions, each nest uses a very low tech, passive approach, relying upon a human touch. The occupant has to work both physically and mentally to survive, making fire to keep warm, pumping fresh water to wash and drink, and closing and opening their nest to protect from the elements.

 These nests are not just retreats to escape from the stresses of modern day life, they also take away all luxuries, niceties and unnecessary items, teaching an appreciation for what is important and what is needed to live a more primitive existence, in tune with nature.

'Project Intentions' Masters Year 2 (2015)

The project explores the untapped potential of higher education facilities and its responsibility to the city and its students. Can a university department building not only invest in its infrastructure, but additionally invest in its student’s future, the local community and the city as a whole? How can a building become a shared resource that for example marginalised people can plug into?

A growing trend within modern architecture, not just specific to Poland, is the use of defensive architecture. Homelessness could happen to anyone at any time – and certain events such as the death in a family, the breakdown of a marriage, job loss or drug and alcohol abuse can trigger a spiral of events that lead to someone living on the streets. In fact increased consumerism and an encouragement to spend on credit results in a society is potentially only a couple of pay packets away from living on the streets. Poverty is a separate parallel that can quite easily become someone’s reality; yet defensive architecture hides this fact.

Defensive architecture within urban environments is a cruel reminder of the society we live in. An obsession with private property is starting to control the cities that we live in. "As each and every leftover space becomes more and more designed so too does the control and circulation of the city" (Anna Minton) 

Conventional day centres and soup runs provide an essential resource to socially marginalised people. But despite being inclusive in many ways, they are often exclusive to parts of the marginalised community due to levels of fear and potentially violating users self-identify.

The question has to be asked is there is another way of addressing this increasing important problem? Could an urban university protect users identity’s freeing them from the stigma through spatial association, and provide resources free of fear for both the user and the provider?

This is the challenge that the project is trying to answer. Essentially can the boundaries be blurred between different user groups, such as students and the marginalised by participating in similar activities that are beneficial to both? Can the resources already embedded within a university ‘Social Science Department Building’ be utilised and tapped into?

'Final Presentation Boards' Masters Year 2 (2015)

'Project Design Devlopment' Masters Year 2 (2015)

'Tall Buildings Competition' Finalist

'Final Urban Strategy' Masters Year 2 (2015)

'Project Intentions' Masters Year One (2014)

We are facing an incredible moment of crisis to do with where and how people live.

There are two main issues, one is about population growth and the other is that we are just about to reach a peak oil moment and everything about the form of cities will have to change. To spread out into the city is going to be less and less possible, and we are going to have to learn new ways of living densely. This project isn’t saying that density is good, but that there's going to be no choice about it.

An exaggerated emphasis on prosperity and home ownership and an emphasis on private family life has resulted in the breakdown of communities and low density suburbs that have increased a highly privatised social culture.

After interviewing the residents of Millbay 73% revealed they wouldn’t consider communal living. Despite this statistic communal living and sharing of resources is fundamental for the future of the city. This projects aims to break down the barriers and stigma associated with sustainable communities by ‘planting the seed’ and gradually shifting people towards the idea until it becomes a normal way of life.

To achieve this goal residents are incentivised, and provided with extra space within their home each time they ‘choose’ to be more communal.

Stage 1

In the initial phase each unit is provided with a standard kitchen and laundry facilities that provides all their basic needs for cooking, washing and drying clothes. The kitchen is designed as a four piece unit that contains a sink, oven, hob and mini fridge and includes storage and fold out work tops. These units have been designed to be adaptable to meet different functions when cooking and eating. They are also movable so they can be arranged in multiple ways and can also be physically moved out the house. The kitchen units play a fundamental role in the aim of the project.

House type A is the only completely communal unit within the first stage. The reason house type A is designed not to include a kitchen is to ensure there are some willing members using the communal blocks at the start of the project.

 Stage 2

 A common area within the home that people are most likely to want extra room is the kitchen and dining space’s, this is due to it being one of the most social areas within the home. Residents are rewarded with extra space within the kitchen if they choose to move their laundry equipment (washing machine & tumble dryer) out of the kitchen area and choose to use the onsite laundry facilities. This is the first step for residents to see the benefits of communal living. This allows the kitchen units to be rearranged along the wall in place of the units that have been removed resulting in a larger better functioning kitchen. During this stage residents are also encouraged to lower their garden fences. This is to encourage social interaction between neighbours and break down the barriers of the current highly privatised social culture.

 Stage 3

After stage 2 has been completed increased interaction between neighbours in gardens and laundry facilities should help encourage residents to take the final plunge and make their houses fully communal. To achieve this residents are given the option to physically move their kitchen out of their home and into the communal block situated either to the left or right of their house. If this decision is chosen their living space is almost doubled within the house. This provides opportunities to use it for other purposes such as extra playing space for the kids/ a bigger lounge/ extra study space/ space to keep fit etc. It will allow substantial space to cook, eat and socialise when friends and family visit. Over time as the communal block is regularly used it is hoped that different families and people will learn to prepare, cook eat and share food within the communal block and become self-sufficient by using food from the allotments. Stage 3 also aims to completely remove the fences between gardens to signify the strength of the community.