unit-code
As spatial practitioners, we are intrinsically shaped by our situated experiences, knowledges, values and beliefs when called upon to design. The way we see, think and act in our built environments are fundamentally formed by the various reciprocal 1:1 exchanges that make up our contemporary built environment systems: our cities.
These moments of exchange range from the items we buy at the nearby hardware store for home repair to the recommended content on social media platforms and the kind of dwellings we dream of occupying in the cities we aspire to inhabit. Such intimate, multi-scalar moments within the built environment reveal the ever-emerging dynamics of me:us, and offer the opportunity to inform a more grounded and critically contextually responsive approach to architectural design.
Urban crises of varying degrees are affecting many large cities worldwide. London now faces multiple socio-spatial challenges that are only worsening access to affordable living and housing. Despite the UK’s rich history of self-made actions, the potential of self-build practices to address the problem remains largely unexplored. As a unit, we are deeply interested in exploring the untapped opportunities that lie within the socio-technical dimensions of such systems. We believe in the power of grassroots processes that tread responsible lines between the individually made and mass-produced, the virtual and the physical, the small scale and large scale. Through these investigations, we seek to understand the role that contemporary designers can play in unlocking these large-scale, human-centred, community-based systems through very real exchanges of what the unit refers to as hand-made data and other contextually valuable resources.
During the first iteration of 1:1 Systems of Exchange, our focus was directed toward exploring methods that could leverage self-build practices as a means of furthering existing potential within communities of East London. At the same time we took into account the unique socio-spatial factors at play, including the positionality of the researcher/designer in framing these strategies. By concentrating on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, our approach involved developing our own documentation techniques to understand better the nature of the conflicts between urban systems of exchange in both physical and virtual realms. We questioned the concept of DIY culture and assessed the potential of self-build practices in empowering individuals to shape our cities.