Design Studio (Three) Four BA Architecture
Paolo Zaide & Tom Budd
Paolo Zaide is an architect, academic and curator, and Course Leader for BA Architecture at the University of Westminster.
Tom Budd is an architect and visualiser based in London, specialising in the production of visualisations that look beyond the ‘photo real’ and strive to capture the feelings and atmospheric qualities an unbuilt space could embody.
DS(3)4: Speed
Students: Sevval Acar, Avrora Afanaseva, Farzana Aktaer, Ranim Alnouri, Gemma Daniel, Alicia de Oliveira Nazareth, Emilia Falkiewicz, Thomas Gilsenan-Best, Judy Kader, Nicola Kociuba, Vanessa Kwan, Bamdad Saghafi, Umi Sakai-Stoute, Saif Dino Sanoufe, Jens Joachim Storm-Gran, Viktorija Voitechovic, Alicja Zdanowicz
In 2009, plans were put in place to construct the High Speed 2 railway project. onnecting London with Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and York, the project boasted a grand vision to drive growth in the Midlands and the North and rebalance the country’s economy. As the first intercity railway to be built north of London in over a century, this long-term, large-scale infrastructure project sought to create over 350 active sites, support thousands of jobs and lay the foundations for new connections into the next decade and beyond.
However, since its original inception, the project has been started, stopped, reworked and contracted, radically shortening the route and replacing the physical tracks between Birmingham and Manchester with a digital alternative. The end of the line may now only reach as far as London’s western suburb Old Oak Common and not make it to the ‘gold-plated’ redesign of Euston Station. This pause has left a strange tapestry of excavated edges, material heaps and hazy promises littered across the British landscape, which now face a different type of uncertain future.
This year Design Studio (3)4 has explored new ways of designing alternative futures: we questioned the notion of grand visionary projects using time, speed and digital technologies to reimagine our peripheral communities and landscape. Beginning where HS2 has ended, we questioned the importance of speed in relation to notions of distance, proximity and time. We asked whether the new London-Birmingham route is truly radical and, if so, desirable? What could an alternative radical look like? One where speeds might be slowed down and distances reimagined? How could proximity and time form a different starting point, creating places that are not sped up and not distant, but perhaps stretched, blurred or hazy, creating an architecture constructed by omitted natures and digital clouds?
Guest Critics: Anthony Boulanger, Chia-Yi Chou, Hannah Corlett, Tom Cubitt, Egmontas Geras, Jan Macbean, Kai McLaughlin, Doug Miller, Ellie Sampson, Era Savvides, Henning Stummel, Harry Tindale, Ron Tse
Special thanks: DS(3)4 would like to thank Rocio Santo-Tomás Muro from the University San Pablo-CEU for the wonderful walking tour along the Madrid-River project. Thank you also to the students from The Bartlett’s MLA Studio 8 and UG12 for hosting our studio exchange sessions this year. Finally, a big thank you to Chia-Yi Chou, Anthony Tai, Ron Tse and Eric Turner for presenting your work to the Studio.
Archive of DS3.4’s work from previous years:
