'Summit Powder Mountain Competition' Finalist (2016)

Summit Powder Mountain Competition

As a community with a philosophy of innovation, cultural enrichment and environmental conservation, and a core ethic of personal growth and influencing positive change in the world, the project aims to challenge the elitist notion that the proposed cabins on Powder Mountain should all be permanent residencies for only a select few people.

 Instead, each ‘Nest’ belongs to the mountain and the wider community, as places for all to be able to experience and learn from.  With only 500 allowable ‘homesites’, the nests are used as temporal places of physical, mental and spiritual growth. Maintaining a sense of perpetual motion keeps Powder Mountain from ever becoming owned and privatised. Remaining a place of personal exploration, learning and growth, for everyone to use, the Summit group are able to give back to the local community and encourage their ethics to be disseminated back into the wider population with each person’s life they change. 

Trees have long been sacred amongst human civilization, not just for their use as firewood and construction, but as a deeper, more symbolical entity. The act of planting and nurturing a tree becomes a powerful grounding tool, creating one small solution to the ever growing environmental crisis. There is a beauty in how plants and animals work symbiotically together, with the trees using our waste CO2 within their photosynthesis process, in turn releasing vital oxygen for us to breathe. A very delicate balance is struck in a mutually dependant relationship, where one cannot live without the other. 

 Each nest harnesses this dependency, creating a space where one can come, plant their ‘Autumn Blaze’ Maple seed and live amongst nature, the seasons and the elements for a whole year. Acting as ‘back to basics’ retreat, which is inhabited by a different person every year, each nest gives the occupant a chance to reconnect with the earth, and to discover a more sustainable and connected lifestyle. Observing the Wheel of year is an ancient practice used to mark the seasonal shifts, and to help understand and predict the world around us. Each season gives way to different challenges, requiring the occupant to continuously adapt to their surroundings. 

 Once the year turns to an end, the inhabitant replants their 3-5ft Maple tree in the surrounding natural forests of Power Mountain, creating a forest of memories and leaving a constant connection between the departed occupants and the trees they helped nurture into maturity. Creating a village of miniature greenhouses, scattered across the mountain, the Nests account for a slow, but sure progression towards reforestation.

 The design concept takes the concept of off-grid living back to its essence. Instead of using high-tech sustainable solutions, each nest uses a very low tech, passive approach, relying upon a human touch. The occupant has to work both physically and mentally to survive, making fire to keep warm, pumping fresh water to wash and drink, and closing and opening their nest to protect from the elements.

 These nests are not just retreats to escape from the stresses of modern day life, they also take away all luxuries, niceties and unnecessary items, teaching an appreciation for what is important and what is needed to live a more primitive existence, in tune with nature.

'Project Intentions' Masters Year 2 (2015)

The project explores the untapped potential of higher education facilities and its responsibility to the city and its students. Can a university department building not only invest in its infrastructure, but additionally invest in its student’s future, the local community and the city as a whole? How can a building become a shared resource that for example marginalised people can plug into?

A growing trend within modern architecture, not just specific to Poland, is the use of defensive architecture. Homelessness could happen to anyone at any time – and certain events such as the death in a family, the breakdown of a marriage, job loss or drug and alcohol abuse can trigger a spiral of events that lead to someone living on the streets. In fact increased consumerism and an encouragement to spend on credit results in a society is potentially only a couple of pay packets away from living on the streets. Poverty is a separate parallel that can quite easily become someone’s reality; yet defensive architecture hides this fact.

Defensive architecture within urban environments is a cruel reminder of the society we live in. An obsession with private property is starting to control the cities that we live in. "As each and every leftover space becomes more and more designed so too does the control and circulation of the city" (Anna Minton) 

Conventional day centres and soup runs provide an essential resource to socially marginalised people. But despite being inclusive in many ways, they are often exclusive to parts of the marginalised community due to levels of fear and potentially violating users self-identify.

The question has to be asked is there is another way of addressing this increasing important problem? Could an urban university protect users identity’s freeing them from the stigma through spatial association, and provide resources free of fear for both the user and the provider?

This is the challenge that the project is trying to answer. Essentially can the boundaries be blurred between different user groups, such as students and the marginalised by participating in similar activities that are beneficial to both? Can the resources already embedded within a university ‘Social Science Department Building’ be utilised and tapped into?

'Final Presentation Boards' Masters Year 2 (2015)

'Project Design Devlopment' Masters Year 2 (2015)

'Tall Buildings Competition' Finalist

'Final Urban Strategy' Masters Year 2 (2015)