Week Three

This week I continued my research, I started looking at various different underground inhitents. The most exciting home I found underground was designed by Laura Clark who renovated an underground public toilet in Crystal Palace onto a one bedroom home. I also found out about several people who have redeveloped cargo containers into home then burried them underground with a sky light at the top to let in natural light, there are many advantages of putting them underground mainly to do with insullation and heating. This lead me to look at people living underground, I discovered a man living underground in New York as he believed Jesus will save him, I also started looking at the high levels of homeless people living in underground tunnels in Las Vegas.

This also lead me to think about animal burrows underground, as they create these spaces for themselves to live in. Also animal burrows seem to be very purposeful and to the point.

I started to try and set spaces I could use as my location. I looked at a disused station in Shoreditch ( East London Line) this space is interesting as it is below ground level but as it is a train line it is not fully enclosed underground. This is would be helpful as then there is still the access to get natural light in. The only problem with this space is that ex train line would have to be covered up. Another interesting space I have found is a disused tram way station in Holborn. This space is really interesting and would be easy to use as it is a simple shape as it is long and square. The only problem with this space is that the only entrance of natural light is at either end of the tunnel, however the roof of the tunnel could be cut to potentially bring in more natural light. I also looked at Aldwych tube station which is a disused tube station between Holborn and London Bridge. This station had two lines there for there are two different tunnels to use as well as entrance and exit space. This space would be exciting to use however there is not way to get inside the tunnel therefore it would be challenging to judge the space.

I also asked a small group of people a few questions about living and socialising underground, that I discovered is that 75% of people said they would live underground if the could still have some form of natural light, where as when I asked about living without natural light only 5% said they would live there. I was surprised that 95% of the people I asked said they would use an underground space for some form of social activity. I also asked about working underground and 55% of people said they would.

Week two

This week  I strongly focused on  generating new ideas from doing random drawings then looking at the previous research to then try and tune this in to some structure. I decide to focus on boxes. From my drawing this is what I created, I thought I could have these boxes in the interior space as the space is already formed I would have to work out a way to create rooms in the space. This is why I thought of hanging the boxes then shinning down different lights to create the different room, this could be used for various different things. From this I started looking at different tube interiors and noticed that all tube lines are on different levels, this would make it more challenging to use this space as interior for living and socialising. Looking at the blue prints of the tube tunnels I started to think of the underground hive in Resident Evil .This gave me the idea to link try and link up my boxes. I then thought of using them as rooms and having them on some form of rotational system to give each room an amount of sun light as this is the main disadvantage of living or socialising underground.


Another interesting thing I explored this week was mixing with the fashion group to try and create something together. My group and I decided to try and create some form of Tudor collar out of all the random objects we had brought in. This exercise helped me to think about the materials I used and how different materials are useful for different things.

I went on to look at Tudor architecture and noticed how they create boxes with their strong black and white lines. This lead me to look at Victoria architecture as often they use arches, this interested me as if I chose to use a tunnel, it is going to be arched and this is something that is going to be challenging therefore I want to take inspiration from their work. Both Tudors and Victorians architecture both use light in very different ways as I am working underground light is going to be very important.

Over all from this week I feel I have understood more of the challenges of working underground to develop this space and form as well as the challenges of light. Between doing experimental work a long side research I think I have come across some ways to over come these challenges at some level.