#238 PLUG-IN COLLECTIVE CITY
This design project aims to balance the financial stability of the area by re-directing wealth to stay within the local economy, and reducing profiteering from banks and developers. This will be through the production of an urban framework which adapts according to the needs requested by Our Tottenham at the Collective City Design Hub producing unique and customised typologies.
The wealth generated by the project via rent, for example, would feed back into further development and to the shareholders (pension payers) of the urban development. The shareholders and community feedback presents greater community empowerment.
The Collective City strategy involves a building system maintained via the first phase infrastructure which is the urban block façade service core indicating the grid layout for each property to plug-in to.
The steel frame service core façade is enveloped with brick to provide permanence and rigidity to the frame reflecting less of an industrial essence but more sensitivity to the local traditional Tottenham Hale architectural materials.
The site chosen to initiate the first phase urban block high street is a derelict site in the middle of a dense residential district in Tottenham Hale. The reasoning for choosing such a location is to bring the qualities of the Tottenham Hale High Road’s densely diverse and vibrant typologies into the proposed district. This will aim to increase activities, economic growth and reduce crime due to greater eyes on the street, as discovered by Jan Gehl in the 'Life Between Buildings'.
The high street infrastructure is an additional feature which will be incorporated into the proposed façade framework in order to reduce the clutter than is often accumulated on the street and weave the benches, post boxes, phone boxes and bins into the fabric of the brick façade.
I worked on this architectural design project on my own.
Firstly I worked as a group to analyse the city context of Tottenham Hale with Alex Wightman and then autonomously proposed the plug-in Collective City building system.
