Common Grounds: High tech gothic with low tech materials Part 2 Project 2025 Anastasia Dombrovskaia Kingston University Kingston | UK This project reimagines High Tech architecture through the lens of low-tech, sustainable construction. Historically, High Tech design celebrated the close collaboration between architect and engineer, expressing structure and function as one. Today, we face urgent challenges of embodied carbon, climate responsibility, and the need for social engagement in architecture. My proposal responds to this shift by merging innovation with restraint. It explores how lightweight, expressive structures can be built using simple, low-impact materials, while retaining the ambition and dynamism of High Tech aesthetics. The result is a hybrid architecture, part gothic, part contemporary, that challenges conventions of materiality, form, and construction logic. Guided by Peter Rice’s belief in the clarity of structural connections, the building elevates and celebrates its construction. It also upholds Le Corbusier’s idea of raising buildings on columns to liberate the ground plane. Public space is prioritised, with an open and inviting ground floor that engages the street and honours the civic role of architecture. As Alison Brooks states, “the façade belongs to the people” and this project embodies that principle.It is a manifesto for a new kind of High Tech: one that is elegant, efficient, and rooted in community values. Tutor(s)