Zhenyu Fu graduated from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China in 2019 with First Class Honours and his final year project “The Idols’ Camp “won RIBA President’s Medals 2019, Bronze Medal Nomination Award. He was in ADS 1 in the first year and proposed a medical consulting centre in response to the post-covid era. This year in ADS 10, using Luigi Moretti's Casa delle Armi as precedent, his research began with ‘still life’ archetypes and collective rituals about building demolition. His final year project is a building demolition centre for each borough, trying to build a visualised theatre for building deconstruction and using the stripped materials to reconstruct in various aspects.
Zhenyu Fu
Building demolition is not all about physical deconstruction, its social significance and community identity are stripped at the same time. The project is called: in stripping: construction in reverse. It regards the building demolition as an urban collective ritual and cares about deconstruction, material reuse, experimental preservation, and inhabitants’ welfare. The project provides open platforms for debating and discussion among different social groups, gathering collective knowledge to reread buildings, and intervening in social conflict. Based on the stripped elements, the project will be reconstructed from four perspectives: the commercial reuse of material, the engagement of the community, the archiving of regeneration cases and the platform for experimental preservation. The project is interested in critical discussion about whether to demolish or not as well as the specific method and wants to enlarge its public education and social awareness. Treating building demolition as a performance, the project itself is a container that provides collective shows everywhere, in the urban perspective, the building is an audience, witnessing the regeneration of the city.
Building demolition requires complex methods, including structural demolition, soft strip works, hazard material removal, and waste management. Adaptable reuse and construction and demolition waste (CDW) are already efficient and mature industrial chains. Regeneration of council estates was chosen as an entry point as they take up a large percentage of the demolition cases and are always a controversial topic relating to gentrification. In terms of building materials, companies like Rotor sort and process the waste building elements and sell them to new customers. Beyond these, they care about the material environment and participate in design consultation, research, education, and publication.
Used material is not only valued in the commercial and environmental aspects but also in the historical and memorial aspects, which added an experimental layer to its preservation and reuse. Furthermore, material reuse is related to different social groups with diverse motivations; three cases of council estates provided a critical view on art washing.
Based on research, the program of the project includes material processing, material storage, archive, community consultation, design department and research department.
The site is in poplar, east London, which is a district in rapid urban regeneration. From the southwest side, it's not far from Balfron Tower and Robin Hood Garden and there are other two other estates that will be regenerated. On the northeast side, across the river, is a plot with logistic facilities and includes several warehouses for building material storage and a waste material sorting company, which my project could cooperate with.
Luigi Moretti defined four specific parameters for the empty space to evaluate and compare the architectural work. Each element is legible and sincere, dictating by necessity and representing its function. By putting the items together with certain constraints and pragmatic reasons, the symbolic meaning is attached to the architecture. The design was generated from one composition of simple volumes and the model shows the composition of void spaces The building could be deconstructed into four major elements: the administration, the communal hall, logistic area and material processing workshop and they are placed in a basement, which functions as the warehouse of stripped materials.
There are two main entrances acting as liminal spaces that dominate the circulation. One is for community consultation the other is for the open-air exhibition, while the two met in the main celebration corridor.
If you are the inhabitants, enter the building from the short side with a staircase, the first floor includes the community consultation hall, the seminar room and a voting area. The spatial layout reveals the reconstruction of community engagement. If you go downstairs, the warehouse is combined with storage and display and divided into three parts: accessory storage, furniture and raw material. This part shows the commercial reuse of building materials.
If you are a general visitor, you can enter from the width of the building, enjoying the public lecture and the busy operation of the warehouse. The pitched roof volume included material workshops and the ground area is semi-open. The gallery is on the top, providing a viewpoint to the east side (warehouse) and west side( urban), it provides a threshold space to tell where materials come and go (urban regeneration, building demolition), and how to process material(warehouse, workshop, exhibition). Walking directly into the open-air workshop under the canopy, it is a place where storage, logistics, exhibition, and experimental workshops happen at the same time. This part shows the platform for experimental preservation.
If you are an officer of the demolition department, or other third-party associations or housing associations, you will mainly use the third floor and fourth floor. Standing at the designing studio, the view could go through the archive to the meeting room. This part shows the archiving of regeneration cases.
The entrance
The materials warehouse
The open-air workshop
The archive