Thesis Project | Parametric Urbanism | Housing Towers | Thames Gateway | London

Red. pdf (rena fountoulaki_eleni pavlidou_dominiki dadatsi) proposes a housing project for the urban nomad of London as an example of adaptive architectural environment. The project is strategically located between London City Airport, the Thames Gateway river, the Docklands and the Millennium Dome and negotiates the different terroitorial bounaries and transportation networks by interweaving all synergic sources of the site. Based on ecology systems, the team investigates how an urban development can be explored as a simulation model of natural growth, negotiating and adapting to the existing urban fabric. Borrowing rules and fuctions of the natural world, such as growth, tropism and phyllotaxis, the project is investigated as a proposal of parametric phasing development according to different urban needs.
There are integrated relationships between the unit dispersal, the structuring and the circulation system. The parametric distribution of housing units that is used is a simulation of the phyllotaxis natural model that refers to the distribution of seeds on the surface of plants. By corresponding the seed-sphere with one housing unit the system is tested for different urban scenarios. By using formal mathematic algorithms for the parameters of the phyllotaxis model, different number of units is applied and different relations of spaces and habitations are created (5 types of housing units).
Three species (towers, horizontal branches as public spaces and units on the ground) organize the infrastructure of the urban proposal. The housing units are aggregated on this infrastructure in multiple ways creating different relations between people and space.