Design Studio 11 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)

Dusan Decermic & Clare Carter

Dusan Decermic is an experienced practitioner and academic, with multiple leading roles in curriculum delivery and design studio teaching at MA level of study.

Clare Carter ran her own practice for over ten years, specialising in one-off private residential designs, after previous experience in large practices designing housing and healthcare. Clare has taught architectural design for many years, while her first degree in social anthropology continues to influence her approach.

DS11: Antwerp-Babylon

Yr1: Isabelle Achou, Siu Lam Cheung, Irina-Teodora Costache, Naomi Graham, Eshe Morgan, Amy Morrill, Tetiana Samchenko

Yr2: Noa Bashan, Juliette Domage, Jane Ezechi, Max Higgs, Georgiana Ilie, Oscar Lavington, Steven Op, Oliver James Henry Rash, Kaspar Rechardt, Ranukshi Nishita Seneviratne

DS11 has a long track record in European City research as evidenced In Studio as Book Intrinsic/Extrinsic City recently published by Architecture + Cities, University of Westminster. Continuing our research post-publication, we examine the southern and northern extremities of the European continent, in alternate years.

Antwerp-Babylon. One dead, one alive. Both cities emerged as meccas of free trade: Babylon an ancient cosmopolitan city, forever associated with its mythical ‘Hanging Gardens’; Antwerp, its contemporary incarnation, home to liberal attitudes where mercantilism was its new religion. As such, it is perhaps a precursor to what has metastasised into the damaging global, neo-liberal theatre of economics. Those ancient doppelgangers and contemporary echoes have drawn us to re-examine Antwerp’s murky colonial past and current, uncertain, present; each providing a rather exciting urban territory appropriate for some urgent questions to be asked of it. We examined the ethics of profit-driven commercial exchanges, dirty industries and looted art, all offering some possible future alternatives.

Having researched and seen the city during our school-supported field trip, our students responded with a range of socially- and economically-engaged projects, in many cases requiring an accompanying mini urban masterplan due to the sheer scale of terrain. We proposed a range of socially engaged projects such as City Workshop and Ecological RE-Expo – a vast recycling eco-exchange site replacing a large part of Europe’s biggest petrochemical installation. Looking at the Antwerp’s past activities, politics and crafts, students imagined new futures for the city through different lenses including: decolonialising and repatriating art and animals which required careful examination and sensitive design responses; the ecology of the Sheld river; and developing sustainable pottery studios and production.

We thank all our students, external critics and academics for their generous support throughout the year.

Guest Critics: Tomasz Danzell Fiszer, Maja Jovic

Special thanks: François Girardin