Atelier 6 2007/08:
Tutors: Jon Goodbun, Filip Visnjic, Cordula Weisser

This year the WAG studio has continued the work of previous cohorts, exploring the intersection of demographic, technological and environmental change. We consciously attempted to envisage new sustainable social forms by exploring the possibilities opened up by rethinking, from the bottom up and top down, architectural design method in the light of planetary limits.

We started the year looking at a single dwelling unit, and finished with a series of master-planning exercises for Hackney Central, which explored food production, energy management, cohousing and urban transport. In both cases we developed with the students a new kind of drawing – The Ecology Diagram – which aims to capture the material and energy forces and flows acting upon the site – whether environmental, economic, social, or technological. By working with Ecology Diagrams students were able to design processes as much as products, and imagine new social scenarios as solutions to new problems. WAG will be presenting the research of Atelier 6, as part of a wider study, to Hackney Council and local community groups over the summer.

You can see more examples of students’ work here.

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The design is aimed at meeting a growing niche demand in the housing market. The proposal is an opt-in community for individuals and families who want to take the next step in sustainable modern living. The Social Ecology is organised through the collective ownership and management of a community freehold, with private leaseholds for dwellings. There are shared car pools, rather than private car ownership, and instead of roads, a network of cycle routes and footpaths cross the site. There is an ecology of green spaces – from public to private. There are a range of dwelling types, clustered into groups of twenty units, organised around a linear public park, a permaculture based community school, a market hall and democratic billboard mediaspace. Each co-housing cluster overlooks shared garden, organic food growing and playground spaces. The individual dwelling units are organised around private courtyard gardens, which are treated as an external living rooms.

More information:

Press: For more information and press release material please contact info[at]wag-architecture.co.uk

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Jury’s report:
The project explored social structures and an approach to tenure rather than architecture or built form. Housing is grouped in small courts with shared community gardens and clustered communal resources. The jury welcomed this holistic consideration and positive vision for medium density housing in the 21st century.

The Milton Keynes Social Ecology by WAG is an urban cohousing permaculture project, aimed at meeting a growing niche demand in the housing market. The proposal is an opt-in community for individuals and families who want to take the next step in sustainable modern living. The Social Ecology is organised through the collective ownership and management of a community freehold, with private leaseholds for dwellings. There are shared car pools, rather than private car ownership, and instead of roads, a network of cycle routes and footpaths cross the site. There is an ecology of green spaces – from public to private. The dwellings are clustered into groups of twenty units, organised around a linear public park, permaculture based community school, market hall and democratic billboard mediaspace. Each co-housing cluster overlooks shared garden, organic food growing and playground spaces. The individual dwelling units are organised around private courtyard gardens, which are treated as an external living rooms.

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About Europan:
Europan is a biennial competition for young architects and urban design professionals, under 40 years of age, to design innovative housing schemes for sites across Europe.

About Sailmaker’s Building:
“the listed building at 11 West India Dock Road only retains its original front and east wall. A rare former sail makers warehouse which was subsequently used for making specialised equipment for steamship merits serious consideration for statutory protection.” GLIAS: GREATER LONDON INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY SOCIETY Notes and news — August 2000 “Threatened historic buildings in Limehouse Conservation Area” Tom Ridge

We have been working on a number of architecture projects in and around East London’s up and coming Homerton area. These include a new build eco house on Fenn St, which will be going on site later this year, an eco bar in Bohemia Place, currently in planning, and the remodelling of a house on Kenworthy Road. One other project, which has thrown up lots of interesting local London history, is a feasibility study for a housing developer, for the former Convent of the Sacred Heart, on the corner of Kenworthy Road and Hassett Road.

This triangular site contains two main building blocks, with gardens and a courtyard. The square shaped building near the centre of the site, which is Grade II listed, was built around 1800 by Leny Smith, a local silk manufacturer, as Sidney House and Estate. The house was bought by the Catholic Church at the end of the nineteenth century, to be used as a convent. The original house was extended with a new wing to the north west, and a new block was added to the east at this time. The complex has remained intact and in excellent condition since then, with the exception of a lift block added to the south façade of the original building during the nineteen eighties. Particularly notable, are the main staircase, and some hallway plaster moldings.

The main entrance to the original Sidney House was from the north, accessed by a driveway from Sidney Road, as Kenworthy Road was called until 1939. Sidney Road was itself previously the northern section of Wick Lane, an ancient Hackney route leading from the mills of the Knights Templar’s estate to the north east (on the site still known as Temple Mills), down south along Kenworthy Road, crossing the Hackney Brook (which presumably now runs culverted below Wick Road), across what is now the eastern edge of Victoria Park, before finishing along the only stretch of road that is still called Wick Lane, in Old Ford.
The gardens of the Sidney House extended west of Sidney Road for almost a mile, and were one of many luxury estates that existed in Homerton from the Tudor period, formed out of the extensive lands of the Knights Templar in this area. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the village was the home of Homerton College, which still exists within the University of Cambridge, if not any longer in Homerton itself. Eton College too, had a presence here. The construction of the North London railway in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the now long demolished Victoria Park station near the southern end of Kenworthy Road, turned the area into something of a leisure destination among the north London middle classes for a while. However, the spread of Victorian developer housing, and the construction of two workhouses, which would later became Homerton and Hackney hospitals during the various fevers that hit London in the mid nineteenth century, meant that the middle and upper classes largely left the area. However, in recent years the gentrification of the areas around Victoria Park, have lead huge increase in local property values, and the Olympic Village site, less than half a mile to the east, promises a major revival in the areas fortunes.

In our approach to developing the site , we sought to reestablish the importance of Sidney House within the site, by clearing away minor ancillary Victorian buildings in front of the old house. We proposed that the eastern Victorian block be developed as 4-6 affordable housing flats, whilst the Sidney House building, together with its west wing extension, contained 11 luxury flats. These have been organised so that the most important architectural spaces and moldings stay coherent and intact. All flats would have a garden or balcony space, and the roofs had courtyard gardens incorporated into them. It is possible to have a site wide environmental strategy. Solar Heating panels could be sited at roof level, as might a wind turbine. There is space at ground level to store the plant required for energy distribution, rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling.