A complex urban environment may be viewed as analogous to the organization of living tissue, that has a hierarchical organization that integrates multiple levels from cell to ecological system – cell, tissue, organ, systems of organs, organism, populations, and so on up to the full complex ecosystem. Hierarchies refer to a system of organization in which at one level components are assembled together into a whole, and that assembly in turn becomes a component of the next level. Furthermore, each assembly or level of organisation may exhibit different temporal and spatial scales, which produce unique structures and functions. In addition, these levels interact.
In Core Studio 2 each team will define and examine an urban tissue with specific microclimatic, typological, and social organizations, and the interactions between them across the hierarchical levels analogous to cell, tissue and organ. A generative set of rules is to at the scale of the neighborhood. The site for this multicellular hierarchical exploration is the area around London Broadway Market next to the Canal and to London Fields.
The studio will conclude with design of a new urban tissue and its systems, and the detailed design of one ‘cell’ within it, with fully fabricated and digitally modeled details that exhibit advanced and integrated material, structural and environmental properties. The fabrication and assembly logics should also be defined. Physical tests of the material behaviour should be part of your investigation, and the results incorporated into your design.