SITES OF HYBRIDITY
Academic Project Integrated Design Studio
Project topic Sites of Hybridity
Location Coventry, UK
Our third and largest studio reject in year 3 focused on designing a proposal for a hybrid housing project in Coventry.
On the border of an infamous ring road and historic city, our site offered opportunity for development for the city centre alongside nearby developments planned for the future.
Choosing a bicycle workshop as my hybrid function, I first had to propose a masterplan for the unloved site that connect all modes of transport from outside of the ring road and into the city.
Once improving the sites condition, I then went on to propose a hybrid housing project that encourages bicycle ownership and transport as well as a new, dynamic and refreshing way to live in the city with a bicycle and accommodate for those spaces in individual dwellings.
S T A G E . O N E
Masterplanning
S T A G E . T W O .
Design
My masterplan and housing proposal focuses on journey’s into the city centre. As visitors to Coventry filter through the network of interlacing ring roads that cut the city centre and the suburbs, they experience compression.
This compression experienced at junctions in an experience I have extended into my site. Compression of ‘the people’s ring road’ and the housing proposal will alter transitions and speeds experienced when travelling through the workshop, housing and into the city. Moving forward, the site of the hybrid housing will be better connected, ironically, with one of the oldest forms of transportation, cycling, which was founded in Coventry, by James Starley. Cyclist will be able to be better connected to the city as well as have a social meeting point at the workshop.
My hybrid housing proposal creates a landmark with the design of the covered street linking the people’s ring road with the proposed bicycle workshop space.
This proposal aims to link the shared space of the new people’s ring road to the new hybrid housing development.
The visuals express the increased activity and life my proposal encourages to the otherwise dull site, creating a dynamic atmosphere which sits parallel to the dynamic form.
Upon approach to the hybrid housing, the workshop reveals itself subtly and draws the public into the internal spaces with structural fins that allow the shared space and building to be in harmony with each other.
