MArch_DS21

DS 21/ Big Civic DS21 is concerned with people, places and politics. This year we studio focused on Ebbsfleet Garden City, a 19th century invention superimposed on a 21st century post-industrial landscape. Initial mark-making experiments in the confines of the home expanded into landmark designs for Ebbsfleet that celebrated and defined the collective character of the new garden city. We collectively explored the continuum of city making defined by the High Speed 1 ‘Javelin’ trains - Kings Cross, Stratford, Ashford, Canterbury and Paris. Precise mapping of the existing allowed bold proposals, sampling cities to create new forms of 30 minute walkable cities centered on Ebbsfleet Inter-national Station. Collective proposals for new Ebbsfleet Garden City – physical, social and cultural – created a context for individual designs in a place with a collage of intense inhabitation and unoccupied quarries. Each student identified local, regional and national organisations to collocate in the new city. Contemporary challenges and political events informed their reimagining of the brief for a large scale civic infrastruc- ture. Designs bounced between XL and XS, testing ideas at the scale of the city and body. The evolution of the studio’s conversations from making simple marks in the soil through to city-scale propositions and user-focused design created a diversity of individual architectures, that collectively define a new joyful, civic vision for Ebbsfleet.