David McEwen from Unit38 invited me to help Westminster University’s 2nd year architecture students develop their ideas. All of the projects were based around the markets in Islington, London. Following my brief presentation, we started to discuss the individual projects, as the students began to make their physical representations.
The projects offered an incredible variety. Some were artistic, expressive and provocative, others pragmatic, tangible and . The proposals engaged with the use of mirrors, market smells/noises, fashion displays and theatrical elements used to enhance public spaces. The group sensitively picked up on the traders’ geographical hinterlands, sustainable opportunities and all of the authenticity and excitement, increasingly under threat in a more and more homogenised and gentrified London.
As with my other workshops in Hong Kong and Ecuador, the day was about letting the materials and objects drive forward the imagination. Many found or ingeniously created objects were used. Towards the end of the workshop, we assembled and discussed what was discovered from the exercise. Students learnt from the process of making, from their objects/models, from the model photographs and from sketches over these images. Some work is shown in the slide show below:
no.balsa 
This is a very useful help to future architechtors! It would be interesting to see then how today’s ideas and models realize in factual objects! Good of you, Mark, to help students practualy to create new image of the city!
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