DS 3.3

The contributions of the creative user to design discussions and the idea of a ‘questioning and incomplete’ approach is fundamental to the process driven methodology of this studio. Architecture is made by use and design and hence the creativity of the user ‘either produces a new space or gives an existing one meanings and uses contrary to established behaviour’. (J. Hill) Studio teaching encourages the student to assume authorship and shape the reading and outcome of the design brief. This year, the projects involve a new blueprint for a city that is continuously in process and requires the formulation of innovative design strategies that amplify these qualities. This city is dependant on the users’ experiences and will be explored through design experiments leading to a Gatehouse and new definitions of ‘Institute’. The Gatehouse to a City in Process The exploration starts with site studies and the surroundings of the listed Great Portland Street Station that will be examined on two scales. The first approaches the built environment of the masterplan as a series of ecological systems, each with their own material qualities and metabolic schedules. The latter, discusses issues of site through participatory processes and individual experiences where notions of psychogeography and situationist constructs result in new urban navigational strategies. These transient, process driven and shifting ideas of use and site generate alternative approaches to document overlooked a