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Commendation

The Workers’ Enclave

Part 1 Project 2021
Conor Lawless
London Metropolitan University | UK
Behind the classical grandeur of Ludgate Hill is a fragmented urban grain, where buildings step down towards the river. It is a place of contradiction: solid yet porous, opaque yet transparent, active yet static. The informality and layering of these spaces transform the place into stage sets, enlivened by the idle wanderer. The building, like the city, is incomplete. It is forever in flux as it reacts to change around it.

Here sits the Workers’ Enclave, composed of two new buildings: the City House (a group of apartments arranged as a timber palazzo) and the Workers’ Club (a public headquarters for a radical trade union). The project proposes to emulate virtues of civic-mindedness and community development, in an effort to create a solidarity of purpose amongst the proletariat in the face of twenty-first century neoliberal capitalism and widespread exploitation.

It is a place for debate, learning, teaching and relaxation, an evolution of the dramatic architecture of the original Soviet clubs. Responding to the building demographics around the site, the proposal offers a collective space in the city to workers in positions of insecure employment, particularly delivery drivers and those in the retail and hospitality sectors.

Conor Lawless

Tutor(s)
Andrew Budd
Jillian Jones
Kieran Wardle
2021
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