Amsterdam
Cathy Hawley and Hugh Strange
The unit considered how children live in the city and how they play. Precedent studies were chosen to draw upon ideas about play, eductaion and relationships between children and wider society and included a visit to the Van Eyck archive to exanmine the architects original drawings. Studies included Van Eyck's playgrounds, Mothers House and Orphanage as well as Duikers Open-air School, Hertzbergers Apollo Schools and work by Jos Bedaux. Other early studies explored the dutch interior through the transforation into three dimensions of a dutch domestic painting
The site is the UNESCO world heritage site of the 17th Century canal ring area of Amsterdam. Travelling from the medieval centre, through the Canal Rings, the Jordaan, and the 19th Century city to contemporaneous projects, Amsterdam is revealed in concentric rings of historic development, each with a distinctive scale and infrastructure. Sites were chosen at transistions from one area of urban development to another and the joints and disjoints between these spaces become relevant to thinking through a position in relation to the UNESCO project. Thesis briefs include schools, creches, playgrounds, children's theatres and family housing alongside the shared public space of the city, examining the physical and social structure of Amsterdam and everyday life as lived within.
Student Work: Nicholas Hui, Aline Knowles, Christopher Octive, Michael Ha, Claire Bennet, Bushra Mohamed, Weng Liu, Eleni Koundouraki, Christopher Kempster
