DS 3.6

Radical Re-Use DS 0306 combines speculative, strategic projects with acts of imagination, where architecture is produced by experimentation, improvisation and (partly) by chance - just like life. Like all the studios we invited students to challenge the government’s slogan: Build Back Better through alternative site strategies for Camden’s backlands. Working in groups, students invented strategic proposals for West Kentish Town, an area of social housing communities and green spaces that have been the centre of grassroots community action and innovative architectural ideas since the 1950s, and the remaining industrial pockets of Camley Street. We asked students to explore, test and challenge Camden Council’s Community Investment plan, and look for more effective and generous ways to proceed, working with what is found on site. We challenged students to apply radical re-use of materials and ideas, recycling of buildings, sites and strategies in order to face the unexpected present. We asked them to do a lot more with a lot less. To learn as they went along, from mistakes and unexpected successes and from each other. Through trial and error. Brief 1 Dramascape Students were asked to design a provocation, installation or adaptation combining things made in the studio with the conditions found in Camden’s backlands. The collaboration to create alternative neighbourhood strategies developed and continued. Brief 2 Radical Adaptation Students were asked to propose some radi