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The Politics of Space

Part 2 Project 2015
Emily Walkden
Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool | UK
The city of Marseille has a socio-spatial divide. Centre and periphery originally symbiotic, became fragmented through de-industrialisation and centralisation. The leftover territory of the North displayed the archipelago, disparate islands through infrastructural divides. The polis model was used to promote insular urbanisation, densifying the modernist landscape and offering ancillary functions to in-still autonomy to the city.

The Town Hall lies as an edge intervention to the Archipelago, becoming a gateway into the island and a civic monument for its residents. It is a political space holding room for public debates and political discussion as well as a spiritual sanctuary for its residents.

The Town Hall has formed through a series of design generators that together create a comprehensive design. Hierarchy, a form of structure found within governance being one of these. The more important the function, the higher this space, creating a series of interlinked and juxtaposed blocks within a clustered organisation.

The building focuses on a grand ceremonial route through its centre controlled by viewpoints and a series of compressed/expansive spaces that lead to the central, unifying chamber. Outside a defined urban square can be found looking onto the brutality of the Town Hall.

Emily Walkden

Tutor(s)

2015
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