JASON COE

Amin Taha Architects Masters graduate of Unit 12 at the Bartlett School of Architecture

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RIBA Shanghai Windows 2015 AMIN TAHA ARCHITECTS with Rubis SPA

Rubis Spa are a Swiss and China based institute offering whole body water immersive, massage and facial treatments using Swiss spring water and products developed at their Zurich headquarters. The spa within Shanghai’s Xintiandi Development is located on the first floor podium of a self-contained office complex. Already expressed as a travertine clad vessel, Amin Taha Architects have flooded the podium lobby to chest height, capturing the blue mountain lakes of Switzerland where Rubis SPA was born. Pathways echoing the journey of Yu Garden’s zig zag bridge break and lengthen the journey through while maintaining the visual mass of the water body.

Opening April 2015.

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House I - Taka Architects

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Folded perforated metal stair by Small Projects

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Concrete stair by Small Projects

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Tony Cragg Evocative material distortions of the human figure 

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Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom Amin Taha Architects Ltd

MEMORY + FACADE Memory is the overall binding concept, in that by retaining the existing neoclassical street facade as architectural archaeology we extrapolate its origins into a fictional historic narrative. This leads us to imagine and rebuild the missing pieces of a Belle Époque mansion house originally built for Lillie Langtry by her then lover the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Its forgotten rooms leave an internal palimpsest reflected externally as a ghost façade.  The scale, quality of detail and form of the retained building are used as a 1:1 imprint. New floor plates sit behind and detached from it at levels not aligned with the ‘original’ window positions, with wide and light weight balcony structures spanning from floor structure to façade. As with mashrabiya the bronze perforated skin acts as a sun shade and privacy screen. When opened for clear views the ‘façade shutters’ are positioned in line with new floor plates and therefore cut across the cornice lines, pilaster and window details of the extended facade. In this way expressing the separation and activating an overall building form into open-able sun shades during the height of summer from a monolithic monument to the past.

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The New Bedford Agora

  5th Year Masters Project, 2014

Bartlett School of Architecture

  Tutors: Matthew Butcher, Elizabeth Dow, Jonathan Hill

  Sited in Stewartby on the lower Oxford Clay belt, the Bedford Cooperative Brickworks proposes the democratic model city of New Bedford. The city implements a participatory form of governance and a cooperative form of living where citizens are unified to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs through the jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise of the brickworks.

  The New Bedford Agora is a local parliament for a participatory democracy, proposing a new democratic architecture that encourages public participation within democratic activities whilst questioning existing spatial practices of government. The project proposes a smaller democratic unit of local government where its 12,000 citizens are able to gather and participate in the annual public forum which replaces local government elections and provides an opportunity for citizens to physically participate in decision making processes.

  The building adopts the collective spatial condition of the field; creating new participatory spaces that are open to appropriation and adaptation by their inhabitants. Democratic, civic and domestic activities are played out within the heterogeneous space, open to exposure and encounter by inhabitants while reducing formal barriers between its members and citizens. Specific democratic activities such as council meetings and committee meetings are reconfigured through the collective spatial condition, with particular moments physically manifest through articulations of the brickwork.

  The ruinous and seemingly incomplete quality of the architecture allows the mind greater opportunities for speculation. Forms are not necessarily prescribed; rather occupants bring a use to the space. When not in use, objects such as the speaker’s chairs and ceremonial routes lay as dormant ruins, suggestive of their potential for occupation.

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The New Bedford Agora Amphitheatre Section

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The New Bedford Agora Council Chamber Complex

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SPEAKERS CHAIR The New Bedford Agora Local Parliament for a Participatory Democracy

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A MODEL DEMOCRATIC UNIT - BUILDING FOR 12,000 New Bedford explores the ideal democratic unit of 12,000 people, developing Leon Kriers concept for communities within cities. As a political entity, the New Bedford Agora is designed to accommodate all of its citizens within the public forum. Citizenship of the local authority is limited to 12,000.

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The New Bedford Agora Parish Boundary Marker Detail Drawing

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Brickwork through the New Bedford Agora is addressed in different ways, with the type of mortar joint changing to reflect the occupation of the space. To the trained eye, a journey through the building will reveal variations in construction to communicate the underlying habitation and construction of the building.

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New Bedford (London) Brick The use of clay deposits and additives in the clay mix helps fuel the firing process whilst creating a grey toned brick. The New Bedford Brick creates a new identity for products of the Bedford Cooperative Brickworks whilst creating an architecture which marks the cultural and social shift.

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The New Bedford Agora Council Chamber Complex

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The New Bedford Agora Council Chamber Complex