Design Studio (Three) Seven Architecture BA (Hons)

TUTORS: John Zhang & Balveer Mankia

What Memories Do Spaces Hold?

DS[3]7 is motivated by the complexity of a dwelling. More than physical shelter, it is an architecture of memories, habits and rituals.

At a time when culture and identity are increasingly co-opted by divisive politics, our studio asked if memory, rooted in lived experience, can generate a new architecture of dwelling and belonging? Drawing on each student’s unique background, we set out to uncover the spatial poetics of personal memory: documenting, adapting and re-imagining them as prototypes for new communities and new affinities. With the ambition to transform personal memory into a shared spatial language, we sought to weave together the intimate, the urban, the forgotten and the imagined.

Starting with ‘memory prototypes’, students analysed how their own identities are tied to sensory experiences of specific spaces, exploring the mutation and hybridisation of memory fragments to produce an experimental prototype for living.

Semester Two scaled these personal memories into bold urban visions of living at Cringle Dock, Nine Elms. Students developed comprehensive housing projects that fearlessly addressed the complexity of the city, negotiating the river’s edge, integrating a live waste facility, and stitching together a fragmented urban fabric.