Design Studio 15 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)
Sean Griffiths & Matteo Sarno
Sean Griffiths practices as an architect, artist and academic. He was a founder member of the art architecture practice, FAT, and now practices as Modern Architect.
Matteo Sarno is a practicing architect with Boito Sarno and a member of the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN).
Eco-socialist Commune in Catford
Year 1: Saya Agha, Rima Almesri, Nishanth Anandan, Manjiri Bhagwatkar, Dominic Crump, William Davies, Taravat Eshghabadi, Anna Essouissi-Coulton, Natalie Khanso-Gardner, Oscar Lavington, Ghalia Lazrak, Jay Patel, Sumayya Pathan, Mrigesh Rane, Yueyue Su (Sarah)
Year 2: Tasha Greenfield, Hugo Hale, Maja Kurantowicz, Josh Mooney
Our project this year is an Eco Socialist Commune in Catford, South London. Our brief is motivated by the growing realisation that climate catastrophe cannot be averted without overcoming the existing economic system. Capitalism relies on perpetual economic growth, resulting in continual increases in carbon emissions, resource extraction, exploitation of labour and inequality. So, what might an alternative look like?
We undertook a wide variety of research including looking at adaptive reuse, the concepts of de-growth and ‘half earth socialism’, thinking about spaces required for direct democracy and the other very different programmes that we would need in a new society with a different ethos to the one in which we presently live. To help develop the proposal, we undertook innovative formal development of architectural components through making, painting and drawing in an attempt to create new architectural aesthetics that might express the idea of Eco Socialism.
Our work is speculative but realistic. In the spirit of creating a circular economy, we have worked where possible with the existing buildings, devising new uses, additions and other alterations, alongside, where appropriate, new sustainable buildings, to shape a new urban realm reflecting a new fully democratic and sustainable society.
Working in teams, students produced urban proposals for the centre of Catford, which considered housing, transport, education, governmental institutions, food production, workplaces and the public realm and leisure, before going on to develop individual projects, responding to the group vision in more detail. In developing our brief, we worked alongside the local housing activist groups who oppose the present attempts by the local council to gentrify the area through a neoliberal ‘regeneration’ scheme. The students presented their initial proposals to this group, testing their ideas with real people in the real world of politics and urbanism.
Guest Critics: Tom Cohen, Gizem Bulbu, Alex Ely (Mae), Edwin Heathcote, Helena Jordan (5th Studio), Lou Kelemen (Populus), Rowan Moore, Kester Rattenbury, Saima Rouf, Amin Taha (Groupwork)
Archive of DS15’s work from previous years:
