Brief / Home Futures

This year’s brief asks you to directly address the future of the home. For most of us the idea of home is something that we hold within us as a metaphor for safety and security – a private and familiar space that we inhabit both physically and emotionally. Home is not a static space, rather a nomadic concept – for those of you recently / or yet to arrive in London, home is probably the place that you have left / will leave behind and the space that contains your family and possessions. Most recently for many of us, home has primarily become our place of work, and for those with school age children, a place of learning. But although working from home is not a new concept, and the home-schooling of children fairly commonplace, the familiar boundaries between home and work have become blurred, and in some cases have entirely disintegrated. 

Home is most usually conflated with housing – a typology of space that is at the forefront of political debate. The cost of housing in London has reached extraordinary levels, with the majority of the city’s large population struggling to cover the cost of their mortgage or rent. Affordable housing is a key concern for local authorities, housing charities and political organisations – what is clear to all is that London’s existing housing stock is unable to adequately accommodate its citizens, not because there isn’t sufficient property, but because that property is not equally distributed. Whilst enormous mansions sit empty in Kensington, families without an income able to meet the increasing cost of a London residence, are displaced to cheaper areas often far away from ‘home’. Further those Londoners who provide key services such as nursing and teaching are being priced out of the market – as the city becomes increasingly gentrified the cost of housing surges in response. How can we as designers respond to this situation, and in what ways can we effect change? 

Responding to current discourse surrounding equality, diversity and sustainability, you will begin by working within your research strands to collectively develop a proposal for the soon to be empty East Smithfield site, articulating the inevitable shift in use and inhabitation that will occur as the micro economy established through the market’s existence ceases to function, and we alter our living and working practices. What will become of the vast empty structures that dominate this area of the city? How might the absence created by the relocation of the market be offset by the introduction of new spatial typologies hosted within its shed-like enclosures? The impact of Covid-19 in this strange liminal zone where different modalities of everyday life co-exist, are visible in the empty office buildings that sit on its fringes, and many of the cafes and pubs that would normally service the daytime activities of Smithfield remain closed or with heavily reduced opening hours. As more and more people are working from home it is becoming clear that many workers no longer need to live in London, let alone commute to work in its centre. With this shift in how the inner spaces of the city are occupied however, new opportunities are created for housing in particular – for how else to reinvigorate an area but through the introduction of a more permanent community of residents?

Much research into the future of our cities identifies the importance of the proximity of amenities to the home. The new museum will offer an exciting cultural focus, and the ongoing renovation and expansion of St Barts provides a constant flow of activity – even as private sector workers disappear, the hospital continues to ensure a steady influx of people into the area. But what other spaces and activities are needed for the successful functioning of this new residential quarter? Contemplating how aspects of the home itself might be distributed across the entire locality of Smithfield, this term we will make proposals that consider how we might enrich our understanding of what home is, and offer solutions to the problem as to how we can continue to live together, whilst remaining physically apart.