‘The town is not really like a natural phenomenon. It is an artefact - an artefact of a curious kind, compounded of willed and random elements, imperfectly controlled, if it is related to physiology at all, it is more like a dream than anything else.’
Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town
Golgonooza, William Blake’s ‘other’ London, describes the city as an ‘ever building, ever falling’ process that perpetually tends towards the ideal but is accepting of flaws and imperfection. This vision became the framework for reviewing Thamesmead, the postwar suburban new town based on functionalist, modernist principles - perhaps the last visionary period of London’s development.
Functionalist planning policies are questioned in Lise’s exploration of Golgonooza, as it envisions an eternal cycle of destruction and construction, as well as Helene’s reimagining of the London Design Guide with the incorporation of literary and poetic standards as the basis for housing. The mythology of the Thamesmead landscape is intensified through Yasser’s ‘Tump City’ urban archipelagos and Ada’s inhabited hanging Gardens of Cyrus based on the ancient five-point Quincunx. Together Andrew’s People’s Island and Nuria’s cultural pier imagine a mighty, sacred Thames that is reconnected to the city. The Golgonoozan concepts of art and manufacture are explored in Madiha’s ceramic self-build arts-and-crafts college, while Asad proposes a factory for exploiting the ancient medicinal properties of local flora. The renegotiation of viewpoint and experience of topography is central to Kirk’s project, which sees the city as a mosaic of tiles (as opposed to blocks), and to Maria’s which mediates between real and filmic space. The alchemical transformation of urban base matter into precious civic space is explored in Fatemeh’s local stadium as it emerges from the grim undercrofts of concrete flyovers as well as Regina’s celebration and transmutation of the sewage works into the civic ‘city crown’ - the marriage of heaven and hell.
Adriana Diaz-Enciso & Tim Heath, Blake Society
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Clare Bennie, Dan Hill, Paul XX, Ken Baiki, Peabody Estates
Pierre d’Avoine
Sam Jacob
Conrad Koslowsky
Barbara-Ann Campbell Lange
Jon Lopez
Jane Mcalister
Hikaru Nissanke
Cecilie Ohlsen
Elena Palacios
Gregory Ross
Davide Saccioni
Francisco Sanin
Colette Sheddick
Takero Shimazaki
Brett Steele
Patrick Usborne
Manijeh Verghese
Paul Warner
Miraj Ahmed is a painter and architect who has taught at the AA since 2000. He is also an Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Art and was a Design Fellow at Cambridge University (2006-14).
Martin Jameson is an architect and partner at Serie Architects. He received his diploma with honours from the AA. He has a BA from Oxford University where he studied Kantian philosophy and political theory, and an MBA from IMD, Switzerland.
