DS 2.1

The studio builds on Bruno Latour’s (1993) statement, ‘Urban river systems are tangible sites for hybridity between nature and society’. To expand this thinking the two design projects examined how the River Lea and urban water ways are part of a crucial ecology which is interconnected, with land, society culture and ecology. In order to understand the ongoing reimagining of the River Lea and its complexities, the studio addressed the site as a series of interconnected agents, beyond the singular building. We applied this approach to the first semester’s brief, a Field Station for an Urban Ecologist in the Walthamstow Wetlands, which sees the coexistence of an operating collection of reservoirs, with a nature reserve and wetlands. Through a series of lectures by external practices including the Canal + Rivers Trust (CRT) we began to understand how the river and its history has developed as a set of engineered navigational channels with a diversity of edge conditions, varying soil conditions, basins of water, man-made manipulation and recent intensification of building, leading to pollution and pressure on natural ecologies. For the second semester, our client the Canal + Rivers Trust encouraged thinking and brief making to respond to the question, How do we think imaginatively and ecologically about how we live together with urban waterways? Responses ranged from an ethanol harvesting factory to produce fuel for the local house boat dwellers, a boat repair hub and governance