BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Year 3 BSc Architecture
Stefania Boccaletti, Roberto Bottazzi & John Zhang
Stefania Boccaletti studied, practised and has taught Architecture in Italy, Canada and England. Throughout her carrier as a practitioner and academic, she has developed an interest in the impact of digital tools on the design and fabrication process in the field of architecture.
Roberto Bottazzi’s research analyses the impact of digital technologies on architecture and urbanism. He is the author of Digital Architecture beyond Computers: Fragments of a cultural history of computational design.
John Zhang is an architect and director of Studio JZ. He has a particular research interest in museums as spaces for climate action.
YEAR 3: Reimagining East India Basin
Students: Hana Amin, Marwah Arshad, Aliyah Aslam, Anna Breda, Kasra Dadbakhsh, Brandon De Abreu Gouveia, Bilal Farooqui, Rea Fernandes, Valentin Gegaj, John Herrera, Askar Kudaibergenov, Michelle Lai, Shivaan Naicker, Naqib Naser, Tiphaine Pottier, Dharishna Reddy, Parisay Safdar, Nour Said, Tugce Simsek, Gaia Spinoso, Sara Stabiglieri, Eddie White, Nikola Zakrzewska
What is the architecture of an urban ecology in the age of the Climate Crisis? This is the central question the final thesis design studio sought to answer this year, through reimagining the East India Dock Basin Ecological Park in East London.
More than 50 years ago, the report ‘Limits to Growth’ predicted dire consequences for the world if a more ecologically and economically sustainable balance could not be found. Today, despite the clear and present dangers posed by the climate crisis, unabated growth – particularly in the built environment – is still the norm. This business-as-usual model of growth carries an environmental and ecological cost, where human communities can mobilise in resistance to such a future, nature and wildlife are forced to live with the consequences of human actions.
The studio’s goal this year was to develop novel means to understand the rich environmental data in complex urban ecologies, and to develop an innovative prototype for an urban ecological park of the future. We have sought to follow an evidence-informed process of research and design, based in the data and reality of the site. Critical to the success of the students’ proposals is an evidence-informed and iterative methodology to develop research from ‘data’, be it environmental, ecological, typological, morphological, socio-economic, or historical.
The design process has been rooted in the use of computational and digital tools to develop a syntactical element from precedents. his provides an architectural language to form an environmental response. Students were encouraged to push boundaries and consider how the environment can be better communicated through systems of architectural representation.
Over the course of the year, successful proposals have emerged, which offer original approaches in re-thinking urban ecologies: from non-human-centric mappings to how humans and non-humans form a complex stakeholder group; from sustainable methods of construction to innovative building skin performance.
Guest Critics: Richard Difford, Rosa Schiano-Phan, Lourenco Viveiros
Special thanks: Lourenco Viveiros
Archive of BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Year 3’s work from previous years:
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Y3 2019-2020
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Y3 2020-2021
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Y3 2021-2022
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Y3 2022-2023
BSc Architecture and Environmental Design Y3 2023-2024
