Aleksandra Dineva

About

As a Bulgarian born in `96 - just a few years after a drastic regime change in eastern Europe, Aleksandra revolves her spatial practice around social, political and wealth-inequality issues, both in her home country and in the west.

During her first year at the RCA, her project Digital Platform for Activists with ADS 8, envisioned a digital space for Bulgarian activists, which acts as a repository for political events, set in a reconstructed digital twin of the physical location of these events.

In her last year at the RCA, Alex's project Liminal Property and Communitas: New Squat Complex focuses on the themes of political occupation, co-inhabitation and resource revivification.


Alex's research throughout the last two years culminated into two texts :

A Dichotomy Between Tech Critics and Civic Technologists: Critical perspectives of the civic tech sector and a study of vTaiwan, aiming to start a conversation about the future development of the sector

and

WHF: New objectives for the design of domesticity and work

Contact

Degree Details

Statement

Looking at social cultural history from a global perspective, across different political regimes, and exploring further than what the regime is trying to achieve and portray, this project identifies the outlier by-products of these structures. These, in the shape of various alternative modes of coliving, are not considered as problematic, but instead accepted as the organic evolution of lifestyle and social structure beyond the regime’s prescribed limitations. 

In other worlds, this project is a speculative celebration of heterogeneous society, where social norms are pushed beyond boundaries, gentrification and housing poverty, as results of capitalism, are critiqued, and space making is initiated and commissioned by communities themselves as opposed to by middlemen. 

The proposed architecture is playful and exaggerated and sometimes in direct response to first hand journals of people from the communities explored. The communities include soviet working class families, to squatters in 60s London, to contemporary "digital nomads".

The project is a story and the design of the life of outliers from different centuries and geographies which come together to overtake a London liminal site.

The Occupation

What started as an ordinary april sunday on the almost vacant parking lot on Clere street, ended with several bulldozers coming in and demolishing the two ramps connecting the lower level site to the street level. Gabion cages were constructed from rebar salvaged from the construction site nearby and they were filled with the rubble from the demolished ramps, forming large planters-the new home of a protected plant - the bluebell.
To further mark the occupation of the site, a rebar tower was constructed, to serve as a beacon for the upcoming launching party, which gathered the community and let everyone else know there is something happening.

Material Revivification

The complex acted as a research center for developing new uses for the salvaged construction materials, and once completed it turned into a prototype of how these materials can be used for future projects.
The construction of the hosting space commenced. It was important to have it as the first sheltered space, as cooking and eating takes central part in taking care of a community.
One of the first gatherings when the space was completed was Spanish themed, to pay tribute to the community which inspired it - the gastronomical societies of Pamplona
The hosting space of the complex has surfaces for both eating and cooking overlapping seamlessly as the two actions often overlap themselves and are just as important as the other in communal life. A veggie and herbs garden wraps around the hosting space with ducts connecting the two, allowing people to drop freshly cut herbs directly onto the kitchen counters.

Co-inhabitation

Lightwells puncture the parkscape bringing down sunlight to the residences during the day and emitting light back up to the street during the night, creating a safer outdoor space.
The dormitories is one of the spaces which highlights the heterogenous spirit of the complex. Pushing what pre-prescribed housing would entail, the space embraces what is unconventional for some.
Outlier communities and alternative lifestyles are not seen as problematic but as the organic evolution beyond a political or social regime’s prescribed limitations.
Inspired by the London Cornwall terrace squat, its original name is the tripping room. Breaking down what the space meant for occupiers, it ended up shaped as a safe space, for people to escape the busy and sometimes hostile world. Filled with soft geometry and materials, no edges and greens and blues, inducing a non-hostile creative, insightful state for the brain.

Tripping room

Apparatus for co-inhabitation