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Architecture for Change: Tactical Trajectories

Part 1 Project 2009
Isaac Eluwole
University of Plymouth | UK
Tactical Trajectories:

In the unstoppable urbanisation of the city, architecture and public space are now in focus of linking space to the behavioral aspects of the individual, encouraging him/her to forget their effect on the surroundings, reducing its subjective, representational qualities to an objective image. It is required of the city to create an apparent unification between diverse masses and the individual is expected to play out a passive role, a passivity that is conditioned and recapitulated by other aspects of urban life. As a consequence, there is a loss of the lived experience; the essence of time itself is regulated, with schedules, deadlines and the a-temporalization of space, where its language is that of a ‘fixed’ and ‘finished’ nature.
The project, Tactical Trajectories, is the creative aim beyond an immediate action: it aims to, rather than produce space, evolve space, introducing the aspect of the social in a creation of their surroundings. It is less about regenerating the site by gentrified production and more of a laying-down of frameworks and functions for the users to evolve and hence design the space tactically and creatively, as their own circumstances change.
Public space transforms and develops with the social situation, there is a process or palimpsest that spans over a certain period of time and it follows that if individuals hold more of an effect on the surroundings they inhabit they are more engendered to the space and its other denizens, creating a community and transforming space into place.
The project achieves this by allowing the option for individuals to latch a ‘parasite module’ to a current residence or create and/or expand an independent business. Residents can extend outwards onto the site, the parasites modules acting as modifiers, evolving the space and creating a process or a trajectory, which authenticates the space and enhances the already present qualities of the place. A deteriorating Art Deco building on the site (the ‘White Building’) facilitates this process by becoming a modular prefabrication factory as well as community centre, therefore embodying the community of the site.

Isaac Eluwole

Isaac Eluwole


Isaac’s project ‘Tactical Trajectories’ pursues a challenging design solution to a community centre intrinsically linked to the City of Plymouth. The project establishes a core sequence of strategic design processes to inform a critical response to a social problem - with a particular emphasis being placed on the production of a community empowered through architecture of temporal conditions. Isaac employs an urban strategy framed within the three functions of ‘augmentation’, ‘excision’ & ‘parasitic’, generating a dynamic proposal contextualised through critical awareness of the social, cultural, and economic issues of deprivation, unemployment & dereliction. Isaac seeks to originate new models of regeneration, distinguished by inventiveness, creativity, practicality, & theoretical rigour.

Mat Emmett

Tutor(s)


2009
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