From 2021 Cathy has taught with Tom Coward in the MArch school at Kingston University. The unit is concerned with care, repair, re-use, adjustment, and transformation; with the life of objects, buildings, and cities over time. Techniques around approaches to the retention and reinvention of found fabric at multiple scales. We work first with the presence of the past; at 1:1, with broken and discarded objects we can hold and work with directly. Students make variously pragmatic, refurbished, enigmatic objects to prompt scalable strategies. Valuing personal, emotional, surreal and playful responses to found material, we talk about ethics, use and waste and explore ideas around bricolage, Adhocism, histories of repair, craft and mass production.
At the scale of the city, through direct survey and encounter with the found, the broken, the archived, an equal value is placed upon understanding historic brick bonds and the structural truss, the flora and fauna of a brownfield site and design qualities and spatial heritage. We host conversations to excavate shared and partial lived experiences, seeking to understand architectural, social and political histories of complex sites.
With a forensic approach to ad hoc ensembles at multiple scales we speculate that our small-scale alterations can inform large scale testing and change. These tests are intended to move beyond precedent and question assumptions about value and use. Students to take a personal position in relation to reuse, the circular economy, environmental and sustainable practice, to propose radical reinvention as well as delicate adjustment. The studio uses drawing, artefact, model, photograph and written narrative as sites for change.
