North African Transgression | Children's Refuge (Thesis Review)

  

North African Transgression | Children's Refuge (Studio Review)

My thesis project is a refuge for the street children of Marrakech in the Atlas Mountains. The architecture facilitates children to dwell poetically, encompassing opportunities to eat, bathe, sleep, and of course, play.

Three primary coloured courtyards - the altar, the vessel and the womb dedicated solely to the acts of eating, bathing and sleeping - terrace up the mountainside, containing gardens, fire and water.

The courtyards are connected by a central hearth where the adult carers dwell; the secondary coloured blocks metaphorically protecting and providing for the children whilst giving them enough independence to explore and rediscover their lost childhoods.

North African Transgression | Children's Cachette (with Nezha Alaoui, Natasha Butler and Rachel O'Neill)

A short project designed in situ for a place to play for the street children or Marrakech. The tower is placed in the Jamaa el Fna - the heart of the medina - so as to provide much-needed respite for the children who are otherwise confined to selling tissues and biscuits on the street.

I worked with Nezha Alaoui, Natasha Butler and Rachel O’Neill to create a series of spaces at the scale of the child, based upon our own memories of childhood; climbing, digging, gathering and hiding.

The levels are arranged in a hierarchy based upon height, starting with a door handle designed only for a child’s hand. These layers provide protection a give a sense of secrecy to the children; a chance for them to find their lost childhood.

Follow Natasha's blog at emergentstudionb.blogspot.com

Follow Rachel's blog at emergentstudioro.blogspot.com

Thesis | Showcase

Can Heideggar's 'being-in-the-world' emerge from an Architecture of Essentiality?

Presentation of my thesis question to Roger Tyrrell and the rest of the Emergent Studio, with invited guests Adrian Carter of the University of Aalborg and Nick Timms of the University of Portsmouth's Landscape Studio. My question was expressed through the creation of an artefact - a stripped out dolls house with a cave space carved from one of its rooms, with a candle in the centre representing the hearth - to demonstrate that the essence of a house is a cave. I pose the question can design based upon first principles (rather than an established historical typology), create a truthful architecture that gives its inhabitants a greater awareness of their own existence; this will be explored in full for my next project, a Spiritual Retreat in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

Domestic Transgressions | New Havant Linear Marketcross (with Paul Cashin)

Predicated upon a apocalyptic scenario in which Christianity has imploded and sea levels have risen by ten metres; a levee has been erected through the centre of Havant - and the extant St. Faith’s church - dividing land and sea dwellers.

I worked with Paul Cashin to design a place for these two distinct civilizations to dwell and trade in the post-apocalyptic era, which surmounts the levee and is accessed through the bell tower.

The hearth is used as an anchoring device, both for individual families and the new commune as a whole.

Follow Paul's blog at emergentstudiopcc.blogspot.com

Nordic Transgressions | Orestad Church Competition (with Paul Cashin)

I worked with Paul Cashin to design a non-denominational church for a new community in a Copenhagen suburb. The congregation would first find a site in the scrubland outside the town, then build a fire which they would use to fire bricks made from clay on the site, which would then be used to build the church.

The central hearth is accessed from a tunnel starting beneath the bell tower in the town square, from which horizon and sky chapels radiate.

I also designed a clay votive candle to light an otherwise dark world.

Follow Paul's blog at emergentstudiopcc.blogspot.com