BREATHING SPACE
Architecture MA Project - Royal College of Art 2013
Following recent extreme weather events in the UK attributed to global warming, Breathing Space questions the psychological impact that abrupt climatic changes will have on future generations. Solastalgia, a form of psychoterratic distress produced by environmental change to the domestic, is intended to develop into a diffuse condition.
By adapting to climate change and managing solastalgia, Breathing Space accepts these changes as inevitable and integrates them in the architecture by creating seamless dialogue between internal and external spaces. The proposal is a parasitic piece of infrastructure - tested across the River Thames - in which proximate urban microclimates are operated upon.
As a result, the building becomes an urban lung, regulating climate both internally and contextually while connecting its residents through public and semi-public areas. A sense of community emerges and acts as a form of reassurance, while extreme weather events are valorised by contributing to the creation of desired living conditions. A system of branching patterns structures a series of comforting spaces (semi-exposed to impermeable), aiming to assist psychological adaptation to unfamiliar and inconsistent seasonal patterns. Architectural space naturally becomes organised according to the movement and humidity of air, in an arrangement where function follows environment.
