Intermediate 13 has continued its research into the potency of the void. The unit agenda is centred on the idea that emptiness can be employed to release the civic qualities of the contemporary city, challenge power structures and stimulate new forms of inhabitation. This year we have adopted elements of the scientific method of hypothesis generation and developed the notion of the urban laboratory. All experiments have been located in the Isle of Dogs, which, with its mix of investment-banking towers and low-grade social housing, is now probably the most highly charged site in London. Here, students investigated the use of the void in art and architecture and developed projects that explore the uses of emptiness not just as a compositional and spatial device but also as a means of generating political, social and psychological effects.

Phenomena such as darkness, the abyss and air are tested for new social spaces in Frederique’s apartment towers clustered around darkness, Marianna’s proposition for buildings as archipelagos in future flooded London, and Naz’s investigation of architecture as air and breathing. The relationship between void, movement, afterimage and transcendence is tested with Mahsa’s elevated city common land consisting of meadows and allotments, Nabila’s green screen film city and Elisia’s Thames pier and tower. Alternative communities are explored through foundations of time, erasure and materiality in Richard’s Slow City encircling and challenging fast-paced Canary Wharf, while Felix envisions the inhabitation of partially demolished commercial towers and Masaki refills Millwall dock with soil to create an earth civic centre for Isle of Dogs. Current office typologies are challenged by new paradigms of commerce and work in Nicole’s civic super-shed constructed from repeated generic elements and Lorenz’s Core City that takes to the extreme the unexplored potential of the voids within standard office space.

Staff

Miraj Ahmed 

Martin Jameson

Guests 

Assemble

Jeroen van Ameijde

Fabrizio Ballabio

Nuria Alvarez Lombardero

Pierre d'Avoine

Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange

Kevin Cash

Javier Castañón

Charlie Corry-Wright

Georgie Corry-Wright

Brian Hwui Zhi Cheng

Kelly Chorpening

Neha Choksi

Ryan Dillon

Smadar Dreyfus

Sarah Entwistle

Francisco Gonzalez de Canales

Chris Green

Teresa Hoskyns

Max Kahlen

Conrad Koslowsky

Marina Lathouri

Dirk Lellau

Kut Nadiadi

Dingle Price

Patrick Usborne

Greg Ross

Colette Sheddick

Takero Shimazaki

Terry Smith

Brett Steele

Jorgen Tandborg

Juan José Sarralde Tassara

Manijeh Verghese

Paul Warner

Thomas Weaver

Simon Whittle

Valli Van Zijl