The MASP Urban Room 2023
In the six weeks that we spent working with Hackney Wick and Fish Island, we observed, interacted, leaned in, withdrew, learnt, unlearnt and speculated. We looked at local initiatives such as Community Development Trust (CDT), Growing Communities, Wick Curiosity Shop and Library of Things to understand what the community stood for and continues to stand for. We spoke to people we crossed paths with to listen to their stories. We studied the built fabric to understand what was, what is and what could have been.
Our personal and collective observations have left us with a key lesson to take away:
The Hackney Wick and Fish Island area already functions as an ‘Urban Room’ – as a fertile site for creative expression and experimentation, as a space for community action; as a space for dialogue and negotiation; as a space for thinking, experimenting, making; as a space that speaks to everyone who finds themselves in it. And if the urban room that we have set out to create already exists,
**by means of 19 different interventions, each (intervening) carefully (and) participating in conversations with the community across various sites and situations.
Meet at Site 1 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vyqQiEYMVcQxgR75A
*Some sonic works may require earphones. Please bring your earphones with you!
Working with practitioners and researchers from The Bartlett School of Architecture in University College London, alongside affiliated centres and institutions, MA Situated Practice empowers students to pioneer new forms of hybrid practice between art and architecture, exploring the fertile territories where the discipline of architecture cross-pollinates with the other creative arts, addressing key emerging issues in contemporary culture and exploring the sites where these issues are made manifest.
The Open Work Module is designed to facilitate students to pose a self-directed body of work in order to gain knowledge related to the development of their wider project. Students are encouraged to examine a broad range of interdisciplinary practices and skills to inform the developing research domain specific to each student, and to select a programme of work that best suits their developing research.
Claire McAndrew, Fernando Gutiérrez, Merijn Royaards
Li Jiaqi, Xie Shuning, Julia Moreno Villaca, Hu Wenyu, Chen Si-Pin, Ji Xieen, Liu Jingyi, Huang Xiting, Sasiwimon Paosanmuang, Li Zichen, Nour Mujahed, Zeinab Tannir, Tejesvini Saranga Ravi, Tabiah Qazi