London.Stations.

Waterloo to Southbank vs Charring Cross to Trafalgar Square

In this first exercise, students focused their research on two vibrant areas in London by looking at the paths that connect two main transport nodes to two cultural hubs: Waterloo to Southbank, Charring Cross to Trafalgar Square. Both areas are located opposite side of Thames River providing complementary cultural offer nevertheless arranged by different relationship to the river edge and the city´s urbanity. Students explored connections across to discover the complexity that weaves the two destinations and the people and user that create these spaces.  

The students have drawn these areas, including buildings and public realm, through their physical and material qualities as well as their intangible and performative qualities. The aim was to discover how the buildings and urban designs react to similar challenges, of instance of circulation, scale and materiality, and examine how they relate differently to their specific urban settings.

To do this, the studio divided itself into three groups so that each member of the team can explore one specific topic. The elements to be explored dealt with tangible and intangible attributes in order to reveal the unseen essence. The topics explored were the following:

1- Infrastructure and Network
2- Circulation and Flow
3- Activity and Time
4- Edge and Boundary
5- Pattern and Rhythm
6- Horizontality and Verticality
7-  Light and heavy

The challenge is to abstract the real building to show only the qualities of the topic the student has chosen to investigate.