Florian Beigel: Architecture as city
Tuesday 20 April 2010, 6:30pm, Forum
Florian Beigel will discuss 4 recent projects: *a city cluster of publishing houses in Paju Book City, Korea* including the recently completed Youl Hwa Dang Book Hall Building; a design proposal for *a new cluster of houses and yards at the edge of Lambourn, a village in the chalk downs of West Berkshire*; a proposal for *the public realm of Mile End Waste in East London*; and the latest developments of *an architectural ensemble linking yards and walled gardens in Hadspen, Somerset*, recently granted full planning permission.
In one way or the other, at various scales, each of these designs are architecture as city – with a sense of a city archaeology, a city origin or a city fragment. The Architecture Research Unit has a longstanding passion for the city. City is the place of cultural coexistence: ensembles of buildings; vitality; a rubbing up of different inspirations and aspirations. ARU designs buildings that make a strong contribution to the quality of the public realm. These buildings enhance the civility of the place. This is a gentle civility that can be adapted to embrace the everyday and the special occasion of a particular context.
The space of the city in these projects is architectural and rich in spatial relationships. These relationships are about in-betweeness, generosity and an awareness of time. In this work, continuity of architectonic language is pursued by making contemporary translations of architectures of the past with a sense of unexpectedness and awkwardness. Time travels into city origins equip an architect with a sensitive design instrumentarium to make interventions that make sense of a particular place in the city. This is design as research.
