Oxford Brookes University

Unit A

Co-habited Infrastructures

Historically the River Thames has always provided a life-line for London. Locally separating, connecting globally and forming the city’s largest open space, the river has contributed hugely to its identity. In his project for Hungerford Bridge, Cedric Price proposed a large platform spanning the river and transforming it into a fully accessible public realm. In this spirit, Unit A looked at the trajectories and spaces along the river’s embankment to find out if this approach could be applied at a micro-context with potential for anticipating the future and a range of socio-economic uncertainties.

Public space is generally interpreted as a shared platform for the interaction of a wide range of user groups, inhabitants and visitors that each must negotiate issues of access, control, dispute and programmes of activity. Those relationships manifest specific contextual qualities, which may be referred to as “urban infrastructural life-forms’ with their own set of rules and behavioral norms. The projects here are rooted within ‘everyday’ conditions of the present and those of a possible future. Special focus has been given to social issues arising from the site and the work shares a strong impulse to interact with the public spaces and existing structures they are based around. These approaches are meant as ‘seeds’ for the future with roots in the present, actively engaging users to resolve and adapt to the unpredictable conditions of tomorrow.

Who will inhabit this area? How will they live? How will they play? What issues will determine their choices? Will they get on? Can they co-habit limited space and adapt it to suit their requirements?

Conditions of the subtle, the neighbourhood, the daily grind, etiquette, manners and other practicalities have been a starting point alongside the functional themes of Public Security, Service, Transport, Health, Entertainment, Environment and Sub-cultures. The student’s work demonstrates an understanding of the sources of possible conflict, but more importantly their position to this and proposals for how it could be manifested or resolved. The interventions surprise through the broad and inventive range of solutions engaging with the margins of public space dispute and propagating hybrid typologies.