Personal Position

Most of design projects I have developed throughout my architectural education have been located on empty or otherwise underused sites. This has resulted in myself proposing ambitious designs aiming at responding and interacting with their urban context, however still remaining independent and stand alone structures. Towards the end of my undergraduate and during my Masters degree I began to critically reflect on that assumed interaction by developing projects which cornerstone was an existing structure that served as a foundation for the proposed scheme and became celebrated by it rather than devalued.

Pursuing this theme, I have encountered the notion of tabula rasa or ‘starting from scratch’ which, in architectural context, refers to the position when an architect confronted with a site, once host to another structure that has been taken down, perceives that site as an opportunity to start over with a ‘better’ design.

My interest in the value of existing built environment was first manifested through my third year undergraduate dissertation in which I have proposed a sketch master-planning scheme for a heavily industrialised area of Sheffield, Attercliffe. Based on a comparative research between Landscape Park Duisburg and Attercliffe, the scheme proposed to retrofit the existing structures, remnants of once lively steel works, as well as surrounding environment, to create a vibrant landscape park celebrating its industrial heritage.

Since then I have continued to deepen my knowledge and understanding of working with the existing built environment exploring different scales and typologies. My masters dissertation addressed the notion of tabula-rasa yet again, exploring the journey of a modernist tower block throughout time offering an anthropological point of view to architecture in a form of a semi-fictional story. The final chapter of my written thesis explored possible alternatives to demolition of modernist council housing estates by finding new ways of returning back the value to the original structures. Since then I have been compelled to explore further possibilities via a design thesis project.

I believe that utilising the existing built environment within new architectural projects would allow to propose designs rooted into their cultural as well as historical context at the same time decreasing the environmental burden associated with demolition processes. My final year thesis project attempts to translate my theoretical position as an aspiring architect into a physical design that is strongly linked with its urban context.