Design Studio 15 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)

TUTORS: Sean Griffiths & Matteo Sarno

Eco-Communist Factory

DS15 explores patterns, chance operations, social infrastructure and human connection as motivation to challenge the capitalist landscape of western society.

DS15 has two intertwined strands. One is the use of experimental techniques, including chance operations, making (initially) purposeless objects and inventing ways to represent them in order to develop distinctive architectural components. The other is to attempt to design the Eco-Communist City and its attendant architecture. Our premise is that the continuation of capitalism is untenable if we are to address the gross iniquities of the present which include vast accumulation and extraction, violent exploitation of the Global South and expropriation of its resources, homelessness, poverty, inequality, cultural degeneracy and, not least, the destruction of the planet. The studio, therefore, rejects capitalist modes of operation within architectural production, including the domination of the individualist cult of the ‘creative genius’ architect that remains the cornerstone of design education. Instead, we embrace joint authorship, shared work and collaboration.

This year’s brief was to collectively design an Eco-Communist factory town in London’s Royal Docks, a site whose very existence stems from the colonial foundations of capitalism, and which has been witness to significant battles in the class war. Students were asked to collectively imagine an urban framework arising out of worker ownership and direct democracy where use values supersede exchange values as the drivers of society. The students designed a collective master plan to house, educate, sustain, heal and entertain members of this new community, exploring the urban and architectural possibilities of new relationships between work, leisure and participatory democracy.