Design Studio (Two) Two Architecture BA (Hons)

Tutors: Natalie Newey & Bo Muchemwa

New Ground

Our studio fosters partnerships with communities and live clients to reimagine the overlooked and under-utilised spaces of our city.

This year, our studio turned its gaze to London’s rooftops as a form of New Ground. Predominantly occupied by mechanical infrastructure and typically forgotten, these remain largely unplanned and under-utilised spaces in a city. Yet they possess a distinct spatial and symbolic quality – associated with escape, autonomy and imaginative potential – suggesting opportunities for reactivation and densification of the urban landscape.

Our site was the rooftop of The Cumberland Hotel, a 1930s block at the western end of Oxford Street. The site offers panoramic views of Hyde Park, the City and the Thames, and is strategically positioned adjacent to the future pedestrianised Oxford Street Quarter and the proposed Marble Arch public square.

Students were tasked with exploring how rooftop interventions might extend the public realm vertically to contribute to new forms of civic life. The resulting proposals engaged with themes of cultural identity, places of learning, biodiversity, sustainable technologies and regenerative material practices, demonstrating the potential of rooftops to enrich the social and spatial fabric of the city.

Archive of DS2.2’s work from previous years: