Simon Knight

I joined the design team for this project near the end of RIBA Stage D, with Southwark Council having just granted planning permission in August 2008. I then worked on Great Suffolk Street full time and was fully involved with the project; working on detailed design, attending the majority of design team meetings, being responsible for work packages, dealing with RFI and visiting the site regularly. I saw the project through to a few months before practical completion.

The ambition of our scheme was to provide a strong urban block that is sensitive to its context in its massing, materials and fenestration. We wanted to provide a piece of architecture that has a civic presence and is timeless, not fashionable or obnoxious. We wanted to give Fargo a quality public realm and a grand civic space that the people of the city could be proud of, and that could be used for a variety of events and purposes.

Our approach to the brief was to analyse different urban block typologies that would be suitable for the site and the existing context and quickly decided upon the cloister typology. By using a cloistered arrangement, we were able to create a new generous civic space for Fargo, with two more intimate smaller spaces also serving the development. It also meant that the buildings addressed the existing context, creating vibrant and double aspect streets.

The plan of the proposed extension provides better light to the existing breakfast room, now sitting room, via a small courtyard to the rear. This lets light in to both the old house and the new extension and gives a physical break from the rear elevation, allowing more freedom with the roof lines. The connecting circulation space incorporates a large double height book shelf, accessible from a sliding ladder. Off the circulation space is the kitchen, which is much bigger and has more daylight and views out. The end room is an informal dining space and gives views out to the garden, as well as the pond immediately adjacent to it.

Our chosen site was the former City Road Tube Station, unoccupied since 1922 having only been opened in 1901. During World War II the station was used as an air raid shelter and the building remained until 1960 when the majority of it was demolished. All that remains today is the ventilation tower and brief glimpses of the old platform from the train. The driving idea behind this building was to reinstate a public building that serves the local community and creates a hub of activity in an area that lacks vitality. City Road Tube Station was for a short while a transitory meeting place open to all members of society and the "City Road Hall" offers something similar. Taking the typology of the village hall, we have designed an equivalent building for the city on a site that functioned as a bomb shelter during WWII.

The main objectives of our thesis were to challenge our architectural abilities by designing a large building and to investigate the issues that large buildings pose; such as monumentality, the fragmentation or objectification of the building, integration into the existing urban fabric, and the clarity of the building and its function. The Brief we found requested the design of a courthouse for the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) which would serve as the main court for the city of Paris. The buildings purpose is to hear civil and criminal matters arising in the Paris area and the accommodation requirements are considerable, as it needs 100,000 square metres of floor space and sees 6000 people through its doors everyday.

Along with issues such as the appropriate architectural language for a building dealing with justice, the handling of an existing structure on a tight site and the usual constraints of any brief, the main topic that jumped out was the requirement for a 24hr building coupled with a highly complex program of accommodation. This led to the analogy of a micro-city, containing many different buildings and varied public and private spaces. This analogy enabled us to deal with the amount of accommodation in a manageable and rational way. It also gave us a concept that would inform how the building would address its urban context but also its internal configuration.

Orhan Pamuk defines Hüzün as a melancholy or a deep spiritual loss that exists in the air of Istanbul. It describes a city that went into mourning at the fall of the Ottoman Empire and never recovered. A city that will never achieve the same greatness that it once knew. However, Sufi followers hold Hüzün in high esteem. For them, Hüzün is the spirtual anguish you feel because you can not get close enough to Allah. It is not the prescence of Hüzün that causes this anguish but the absence of it. It is the failure to feel Hüzün that leads to this distress. Hüzün is something that hangs over Istanbul like a black cloud, a cloud that needs to be lifted or taken away. It is also highly regarded by certain people and is something to be treasured and remembered.

Having designed a masterplan for part of Bradford City centre, the next project was to design one of the urban blocks in the masterplan to a detailed design stage. The images and drawings show the end result, a mixed use perimeter block with retail on ground floor and residential and offices above. The offices are confined to the section of the block fronting the main road, creating a band of commercial accommodation at the front of the block (expressed in dark grey concrete) and a band of residential units at the rear (made with a beige concrete).

This project brief was to design a masterplan for Bradford City centre. The approach taken here was a build up of layers. Starting with the existing context to be retained, then superimposing an urban grid (informed by the context, green spaces, surroundings and routes) and finally imposing the perimeter block type on the grid. Within this block type there are three sub-types: the block as a building, the block as a collection of buildings and the block incorporating an existing building.

As part of an urban study project in Liverpool, we were asked to design a primary school and a housing scheme on the same site. We were to investigate the similarities and differences in locating two very different building types on the same urban site. With the primary school we split the two key stages up, creating two separate playgrounds with relevant classrooms off them. The admin and public face of the school was kept to the front, next to the main road. The housing included 3 and 2 bedroom villas and an apartment block, creating a new pedestrianised street and communal green space.

The brief was primarily to design a permanent, purpose built building for the Mendip Archaeological Society, while also providing a start and/or finish point for walkers in the area. The building had to sit modestly next to lead mining ruins and reflect its industrial past. The structure had to touch the ground lightly due to archaeological work still in progress around the site. However, I also wanted it to add to the history of man-made insertions on the landscape and in some way be a monument to the past. Therefore the archive is made of black 'lead slag' concrete and is a marked addition to the site.

This project was entitled Skin, meaning in this case the visible interior and exterior surfaces of a building. We were asked to choose one surface material and investigate it in various ways. I chose gabions and went about constructing various maquettes filled with various stones and also bath glass - a blue glass that I sourced from the local glass workshop in the city. This then lead to a sculptural installation showcasing the gabion's various qualities.