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Organic Living

Part 2 Project 2008
Mbachi Kaluba
 University of the West of England | UK
Organic Living is an approach to housing that evolves an ecologically
grounded typology within the existing neighbourhood of Swanscombe to maximize sustainable energy sources, enhance the environment and to promote a healthy-living
lifestyle, including local food production - for the benefit of the entire settlement.

As a mechanism that is part of a new wider social and environmental strategy, the buildings are assembled from a mixture of natural and sustainable manmade materials in a range of new-build, retrofit and landscape configurations that acknowledge changing demographics and the need for localized living, working, food economy and agricultural education.




Unit 1 studied the Swanscombe peninsula as a complex system, balanced between human action and natural reaction and driven by a process of extreme financial exploitation. This has marked the landscape with successive industrial acts of quarrying, refinery, tipping and abandonment, leaving a legacy of spent human activity – including derelict industrial relics and a man-made cliff formation, 80-feet high. Exploratory work in the Studio looked to capture the relentless action of these forces and aimed to understand how these actions might be inflected towards an ethically designed intention. Parallel studies looked at contemporary housing conditions as constructed at the ‘award-winning’ new housing at Ingress Park and as proposed in the master plan for 8000 new inhabitants in the quarry basin to the north of the existing Swanscombe settlement. The Unit developed critiques of these suburban mono-cultures, designing initiatives for small public space-making interventions within existing housing developments and by applying principles of sustainable neighbourhood planning - as these have been developed by the University of the West of England’s Healthy Communities Research Forum.

Mbachi Kaluba’s proposals are fully engaged with the subtle and complex agendas set by the Unit. His response to site (particularly his choice of site) offers a very close reading and clever response to the urban situation created by the new quarry development’s ignorance and rejection of the existing Swanscombe development. Mbachi developed this intimate understanding of the site by foot, walking the possibilities of public connection between peninsula and town into existence. This experiential approach then developed into a strategic design that proposes a liminal zone of productive housing landscapes that links farm, town, new town and nature reserve in a thoroughly persuasive manner. The project is driven by an agenda that places Mbachi’s conception of housing within a more essential context of food production and self-sustainability; and to this end, his housing architecture is rooted within this healthy and enabling aesthetic. Throughout, the project designs are explored in beautifully made models and diagrams which capture a poetics of construction that, while modest, is rich in sensation and the possibilities of life.

Tutor(s)
Mr Harry Charrington
2008
Scarred landscapes maquet demonstrating the negative effects man has on nature. The challenge is to change the majority of people’s attitudes to how we treat the environment.
The analysis is represented through a sculptural model called ‘Fragments’. This is a metaphorical materialization of Swanscombe represented through driftwood, veneer + steel.
Fragments.
The concept of an isolated eco-village is not enough - could planting a seed into the existing fragmented landscape be the answer?
In search of the right place to plant the seed: Encouraging + stimulating the growth of social clusters + new/old activities. Acknowledging the ever changing annual programmes of Swanscombe.
1:500 Existing Site Plan. The neglected local landscapes that have the potential of feeding family, neighbourhood + school.
1:500 Proposed Site Plan. Teaching the value of self-sufficiency through food economy + agricultural education, thus passing local knowledge from generation to generation.
1:200 Plan + Section. Making places + healthy living.
Montage of 1:100 physical model. The assimilation of building into the landscape.
Montage of 1:100 physical model. Late Autumn.
Montage of 1:100 physical model. Summer.
Variation of building design achieved through personalisation + changing demographics.
Environmental Strategy.
Building Technology.
1:20 Spatial montage.
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