mOOO2 POPS LONDON Public Vote

[mOOO team admin]

Public Vote Instructions

We have migrated our usual public vote contest from Facebook to avoid spamming and voting bots. Two free copies of #mOOO2 publication will be gifted to the two teams with the most votes. To encourage meaningful discussions, we are also giving out one free copy to the best comment out there.

– Cast 1 Like (bottom left of each design entry) = 1 Vote to the submission entry

– Click Reply, comment on what you like about the designs and share your thoughts on Privately Owned Public Spaces [POPS]

– Maximum 1 Vote per entry but voting on different entries are allowed

– Spamming behaviours and Likes from duplicate accounts of the same person will be discarded (IP and Cache filtered)

Deadline: 11 NOV 2020 – 11:59 PM [UTC 00]

[mOOO team admin]

m1082
Curating London. London is home to numerous museum, galleries and other institutions, attracting hundreds of people every day. Some of these establishments rely on visitors as a partial source of income, through the fees and merchandise. The recent global pandemic affected almost all countries in the world. Countries with high number of positive COVID-19 had to go through a lockdown and social distancing order, which led to a situation where museums and galleries had no visitors and had trouble staying afloat. This issues led to the idea of utilising POPS to reintroduce the people of the importance of museum for a cultured society. The Coal Drop Yard (CDY) is the main POPS for the event. The idea is to create a Pop-up Pavilion, which acts as an iconic advertisement “object” for the museums. The Industrial Revolution 1.0, a historic era in the development of London, inspires the design of the pavilion. The materials used in that era explored. The roof is covered by LED strips light, creating a visual effect promoting the museums and galleries while internally, the Pavilion provides seating and multiple touch screens, engaging the visitors with virtual interactive information and games. It is hoped that the Pavilion will attract the people to the CDY and create awareness about the importance of public institutions.

[Eray Bejo]

Visionaries yet simplify ideas! Great 👍👍👍

[Eray Bejo]

Visionaries yet simplify ideas! Great 👍👍👍

[Eray Bejo]

Visionaries yet simplify ideas! Great 👍👍👍

[Eray Bejo]

Visionaries yet simplify ideas! Great 👍👍👍

[Eray Bejo]

Visionaries yet simplify ideas! Great work👍👍👍

[Fazral Fuad]

Great work!

[mOOO team admin]

m1432

PROJECT TITLE: RIBS STRUCTURE I GARDEN WALK
KEYWORDS: Ribs Structure & Garden Walk

Festival:
A beautiful and peaceful environment can always appease people’s soul. Garden Walk is an event that allows the general public to walk into a green zone covered by a big piece of landscape art painting, the visitors will experience plenty of species of landscape elements surrounding them, like a forest in a city. By bringing the green elements into an urban plaza area, the Rib Plaza can instantly become an interesting and exciting area for all of the people living there or even foreigners to visit and have a walk.

Design Intention & Expectation:
The balance between ‘Temporary & Sustainable ‘and ‘Human & Nature’ is the question that appears in the initial and final stages of the design work. The main object for this project is about bringing the ‘green zone’ closer to people’s daily life also hope the visitors can let go of the fatigue of life and take a deep breath inside the Plaza.

Indoor Walkway
By following the pattern of the arches next to the site, creating a sort of ribs structure that having a different height, can form a wave shape and allow to put different kinds of landscape elements inside the plaza. There is two sides walkway that connects to the north and south entrance and guiding people to follow, moreover, there are some intersection points within their journey.

Outdoor Platform
It is a relatively smaller green area but the objective to create a small platform is to provide a gathering area instead of a walkway. The ribs are the entrances to get into the platform, and there are some of the wood deck is replaced to lawn. Also, in the middle of the platform, there will be a featured landscape exhibition to draw people’s attention.

[Hui Ka Ki]

👏👏Good intent

[De Kevin]

Great work 💡💡

[De Kevin]

Great work 💡💡

[Candice Lam]

great work!:)

[Joel Lee]

Lovely design

[Joel Lee]

Lovely design 😍😍

[Candice Lam]

Amazing!:)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by  Candice Lam.

[mOOO team admin]

m1562

Street Space

Streets are places to assemble, interact, gather and protest. They are the distilled and crystallized embodiment of publicness. They are the stage for improvisation and the fundamental forum for exchange. As the warp and weft of the city, they mask, they reveal, they exhibit, and they frame the life around them and in them. As spaces of transient occupation, they democratize, equalize, and potentiate the disenfranchised. The street is where categorical thinking ends. The essence of the street is exteriority. Utilitarian, unmarked, unmasked, the street’s ubiquity is what hides it from our perception, but also what allows it to hold center stage for the construction of urban life.

With this project, we introduce the pure, democratic street into privately-owned public spaces to question this harsh demarcation. It borrows the symbolism of the basic threshold between the London row house façade and sidewalk to give the experience of ‘stepping out’ new dimensions and meaning. Rather, we propose a ‘stepping in’ to the street. This project situates itself on the boundary between the house and the street. It blurs the boundary between what is inside and what is outside, what is street and what is space. The streets are ours.

[mOOO team admin]

m1572

Title : CPR_CDY POPS represents.

POPS is a space created by providing private space to some public. To be a good POPS, should be win-win for both two different spaces public and privates. The private sphere is no longer an exclusive category that opposites with the public sphere. Good POPS is the possibility for a new public space occurred in broken boundaries between private and public spaces. For example, gathering space between a subway station and shopping mall is such a POPS. The place where the public can use in various ways (passing, waiting, or resting), while the people naturally flow into the mall. The POPS benefits both private stores and the public.

How do we create a POPS in CDY?

The Regent’s Canal was a passage of trade in London in the past. Lost of its function as a commercial traffic, it becomes a comfortable public space for people to freely enjoy leisure amenities today. The design brings water (public character) from canal to CDY. Waterfall shaped as a column from wide to narrow, connect spaces horizontally and vertically. As More Users aimlessly look at an intuitive falling water columns and approach it, The POPS would be called by their own name. falling water columns connects and maximizes people access and give them free movements. In these multi-functional space, various needs of different user would have real broken the boundaries of the two spaces down and allows them to get better value from each other.

[mOOO team admin]

m1892

Bagley’s 24h – Transformation of Nightclub

Keywords: Nightclub, Transformation

Description: At its purest form, public space should be a destination for people to gather, relax, and play. Sadly, in reality, the POPs are often left empty or underdeveloped due to management and property issues, which is not just the case in London. Therefore, we proposed event space as an attractor in POPs, where people are self-initiated and adopt the place during a different time of the day. Having been a cradle for the club culture in London, the history of Bagley’s, the once renowned nightclub in the Coal Drops Yard should be respected. Considering the limited usage of the open plaza in Coal Drops Yard on weekends, the notion of nightclub is translated into a box which closes at daytime and opens in night time, in order to create a place populated with vibrancy for anytime. In daytime, the surfaces of the closed installation are utilised as a playground, the club for children, with its surface playful furniture. The box opens at night and it becomes a free dancefloor opening and welcoming for public participation. It becomes a venue where people celebrate and meet under a vibrant atmosphere. Considering a larger scale, the installations are located at any of the POPs to revive and celebrate the nightclub culture, as well as a promotion of the Coal Drops Yard to attract people flow.

[mOOO team admin]

m1992

Project Title: TOP OF THE POPS!

Keywords: ‘Gamification’, ‘publicness’

TOP OF THE POPS!

As the number of Privately owned Public spaces (POPS) increasingly dominate the Capital, a solution which brings ‘publicness’ back into the forefront of placemaking is vital to reduce the spread of overcontrolled and saturated spaces. By using the same methodology as everyone’s favourite capitalist game, Monopoly, the ‘TOP OF THE POPS’ scheme links all major POP sites across London through a unique ‘gamification’ solution. The proposal seeks to dive into the controversies over POPs and celebrate them with a twist.

Each site within central London is linked with a theme that challenges the foundations of POPs, varying between ownership, management, accessibility and inclusiveness. By introducing the game into the city, we developed activities which respond to the needs of enhancing publicness in each space such as freedom of speech, taking photos, demonstrating and busking.

The Coal Drops Yard site has been injected with a narrative focused mainly on freedom of speech. Tubular sound tunnels race around creating spaces that cater to activities like sitting, socialising, and playing. All tubes are connected to the speech tower, built up of a conglomerate of sound tubes giving the demonstration a fixed centre point and a hierarchy. This allows players to speak their mind freely, without being on the site, abiding by the site’s rules. As with most games, there is an element of risk where the player can choose to speak their mind on site, but do so with great caution or a trip to security jail could be on the cards.

[mOOO team admin]

m2252

Happy POPS

The project draws from the issue of the privately owned public spaces, pondering and recognizing its vast potential through the (in)materialization of an utopical proposal.

Developing a de-programmed, replicable, and modificable infraestructural system capable of hosting diverse programmatic, spatial and relational experiences. Flexibility, connectivity and multiplicity are taken as the main goal of the intervention.

Flexibility is understood as a state of consciousness about a system open to possible imprevisible changes. Connectivity is about the possibility of the infrastructure of being replicated and settled down in other urban spaces, making them take part in an urban network of interventions, but also about the capability of the boxes of being disposed in a way they connect to their surroundings, like the Coal Drops Yard.

Multiplicity refers to simultaneity of likely events, either intra-POPS or inter-POPS, making the intervention the stage of diverse activities.

The concept proposed is a critical and ironical way of representing which is seen as the best possible solution against public spaces problems. A diverse, completely free full of possibilities, where everything can happen in any kind of place.

However, this is not the full story. Because of its own nature, POPS control the public access and the activities that take place in them creating a fake feeling of diversity, liberty and publicity.

If privately owned public spaces continue growing. Will public-public spaces continue existing?

[Oploblongo Oploblongo]

Love how you manage the mood and the ambiance!

[Vale Munist]

Se ve muy interesante, fresco y divertido! Me encantaría que estuviese realmente construido para poder habitar y descubrir los distintos espacios que se proponen, felicitaciones!

[Cra. FIORELLA RISSO]

💪

[mOOO team admin]

m2572

The project title: 《Rolling mist》

Project description:

As the storage center of Coal in Britain’s industrial era, Coal Drop Yard witnessed the birth and disappearance of London fog. When something goes away, it also becomes a thing to be remembered. The London fog, though harmful, still represents the romanticism of industrialization and is a powerful symbol of the worship of countries at that time.

The project proposes a new festival, including lights, fog and interactive performances, to be held in rainy weather from September to November every year for a period of 3 months. The project is mainly composed of three elements: rolling element in movement, flowing fog under the touch and interactive projection in vision. Rolling is the core of the design of this project. 15 water crystals are installed with circular rollers at the bottom of the entrance to the site to promote people to enter the fog at different speeds. People’s contact with the fog and their walking track affect the flow velocity of the fog and form a variety of turbulence models. The architectural surface is supported by vivid projection technology. From the perspective of science, politics, literature and art in the Victorian era, computer technology is integrated with animation design, and the coal Drops Yard contour curve is combined to create a gorgeous interactive light and shadow performance.

With the help of different forms of fog, the project turns the site into an outdoor art work at night, and at the same time brings a new opportunity to the development of urban economy, allowing all people to rediscover the vitality and charm of London fog in the streets of this historic capital.

[mOOO team admin]

m2932

Socializing under a pandemic

Inspired by the outbreak of COVID-19, this project aims to explore the potential interpersonal relationships and social dynamics of privately-owned public spaces (POPS). Our project is intended to be a series of temporary structures that can maximize unique qualities of POPS to facilitate human contact while maintaining safety and hygiene during pandemics.

Our project focuses on how socialization and human interactions can resume under a pandemic to preserve the unique qualities and aspects of social cultures in major urban areas, such as London. However, under COVID-19 LondonÕs famous social life has been put to a grinding halt. Our group designed a blueprint to reintroduce social interactions throughout London by conglomerating our modules in key areas throughout the city. These clusters mimic the unique social dynamics and spatial qualities of a London pub as they offer Londoners the opportunity to reinitiate their social life without compromising their own safety. Our incorporation of local restaurants and catering services will also help reignite the local economy that had been heavily damaged by the pandemic.

Our design relies heavily on the unique qualities and advantages of POPS as the private shopping complexes provide the amenities and services required for socializing. Our modules create a space that performs both the function of a public gathering venue as well as a space designed to complement the amenities of the private property surrounding it.

[mOOO team admin]

m2982

London Jungle Series

Keywords: Adaptability, Inclusivity

The act of privatisation of public spaces devalues the social and cultural aspect of the public realm for the general population and only accommodates to a narrower private sector audience. Thus, there is a need for a more inclusive approach that allows POPS to become an integral part of the city and achieve a holistic public space.

The London Jungle Series are temporary installations scattered across London. It reconceptualises the role of POPS through vertically adjustable circular platforms that can accommodate for different purposes. The design is intrinsically democratic in its use. Through a simple lifting column system, a person can adjust to suit their activity, such as: a podium, shelter from sun and rain, seats and table, a stall or a playground. The Jungle Series also aims to diversify the typology of privately-owned public spaces through its bright colours and the different elevations that can be achieved, encouraging public character to the space.

Coal Drops Yard courtyard is currently perceived only as a passage from shop A to shop B. The jungle of opaque and transparent yellow discs adds visual rhythm to the heavily industrial site and provide an element of spontaneity to the once desolate pseudo-public space.

The vibrant discs also allow to visually manifest the importance of social distancing by embracing it as part of daily life and encourage it through public architecture. Its added flexibility allows to accommodate unforeseen circumstances. Through the London Jungle Series, POPS can become a cherished urban component of the city.

[mOOO team admin]

m3062

The tendency of programs to express themselves through isolated architectures urges us to consider innovation in programmatic versatility. Single solutions to a systemic problem are simply not enough. Distributed Dendrite Interface (DDI) is a radical urban intervention proposal that transforms the way we think about public spaces and its contexts.

The debate of public spaces in London is rather bi-polar. The critique is that privately owned spaces tend to have various rules and limitation of access, resulting in a declination of total space, while the government-owned spaces tend to be left empty. DDI is a system that offers simple and repeatable reactions to this complex problem. For public spaces being developed by private entities, the government owns and maintains the “Links”, opening them to the public for free. The developers can attach their own “Nodes” to the Link, collecting the revenue generated from hosting them. In addition, they manage and accumulate revenue through third party Nodes providers who rent docking for events such as sports, clubbing, live performances and virtual experiences.

The Links are structures that dock and connect Nodes and people. They are designed for individual sites and their specific contexts; in this case, the Link is the white spiral structure that serves as an observatory and an interactive sculpture. Sitting in the historic Coal Drops Yard, its form resembles the flame of coal-burning. Its material and spatial relationship reacts to the “Gasholder” building that sits immediately beside it.

The Nodes, in this case the sphere-shaped spaces, are a series of “places” that can be plugged in and docked to the Link. The inspiration of this solution draws from Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and his idea of “plug-in programming.” The idea is that program is not limited to a stationary, permanent position, but can be plugged and unplugged, moved, altered and replaced as needed. No longer do “monuments” and “event spaces” have to exist as separate mono-functional pieces of the urban landscape, but now their relationship and connection to other functions can be defined by need. Public spaces can be more than one thing and serve more than one function. Our solution aims to rectify the incompatibility of architecture with our need to be flexible; finding a way to accommodate the built environment yet remain organically human. Loosening the strict unity between structure and use, city and population, community and individual, is a conversation initiated by creating the first DDI. The detail view shown in the triptych depicts an event-hosting Node offering people a virtual experience in a place of euphoria.

The relationship of the Link and Nodes also draws inspiration from Rem Koolhaas’ critique on “globe and tower”, which was an unrealized inspiration to the typology of “Skyscrapers”. Distributed Dendrite Interface aims to suggest a new prototype that brings the “all-in-one” ambition to public spaces, making the forms of public spaces need-based, and growing them with the vision of the city.
Distributed Dendrite Interface

KEY REFERENCES

FUN PALACE, Cedric Price, 1964
GLOBE TOWER, Samuel Friede, 1906
PARC DE LA VILLETTE, Bernard Tschumi, 1982
DELIRIOUS NEW YORK: A RETROACTIVE MANIFESTO, Rem Koolhaas, 1978

[mOOO team admin]

m3412

Title: Work from Crane – a Homeless Metaphor of Work from Home

Keywords: Crane, Homeless

This project, Work from Crane, is a homeless metaphor of work from home.

After the pandemic, London’s economy recovers steadily under a novel fashion – work from home, which has penetrated all industries. The concept of home is no longer only a residence, but also a necessity for employment. But for those who were rendered jobless or homeless during the pandemic, an unprecedented challenge had to be overcome: how could a homeless person work from home? This might form an epoch when job and home were once again symbiotic and bonded since centuries. Then we understood how startling if one loses either of them— could be a permanent depression.

“Work from Crane” provides the jobless and homeless some vital equipment and a virtual stay so that these unfortunate workers could enjoy the fair right of reemployment and rehabilitation. These structures, if proven successful, were only meant to be transient. Therefore, components were temporarily borrowed from sea transportation industry during its halt, including cranes, cargo slots, containers and steel frames.

As the capsule ascends high above the ground, one can overlook the whole of London and detach from the bustling streets, or sit at the edge of a moving crane and build up their emotions accumulated after the year of hard times. However, all capsules should descend back to the ground by sunset. Because after all, what “Work from Crane” could provide is only half a home – a daytime, instead of a nighttime residence. “Work from Crane” would forever be a metaphor of the other half, and the other half should always be explored with their own efforts.

[Sze Man Ho]

Pretty cool! Support you guys!

[Sze Man Ho]

Support you guys!

[mOOO team admin]

m3452

TETRIS OF WORKSPACE

‘Flexibility and adaptability of modern workspace’

There has been a rise in self-employment in the UK even before the pandemic. Statistic states that by the fourth quarter (Oct to Dec) of 2019, there were more than 5 million self-employed people in the UK, up from 3.2 million in 2000. Self-employment has contributed strongly to employment growth in the labour market, with self-employed people representing 15.3% of employment, up from 12% in 2000.

POPS could be associated as a mobile work place.

One of the problems faced by POPS is that it lacks crowd. However, an opportunity has arise since the pandemic many have been working from home. It has a negative impact on mental health, as not being able to have a active social life as well as a productive home environment for work. Furthermore there is the anxiety in losing jobs that further encourage self-employment. This proposal could work as POPS is already well distributed in London, it will be easily accessible for many. Hence by providing a safe working space would encourage visits to these POPS site on a daily basis therefore a chance to revitalize the space. This will also relieve the negative impact on mental health for many, reassuring them they are socializing in a safe environment.

Since there is a shift between traditional and modern workspace culture. It should be an opportunity to encourage the development of typology that adapts to the contemporary context.

The design of these work spaces are based on three key ideas, mobility, flexibility in arrangement and user group orientated design. These are designed in modules for easy transportation and convenience in dismantling. Due to the consideration of covid-19, each of these modules are equipped with their own path way. Lastly aligning these modules in grid allow easy orientation for the user as well.

[mOOO team admin]

m3652

THE LION HEAD

The design is a historical rendering of the British colony under the wings of the Great British Empire. The lion head symbolises a kingdom of great power, The Great Britain. It reflects upon a vast empire that had impacted the world by its countless innovations in technology, agriculture, industry and infrastructure, education, administration and judiciary. The countries that were touched by this great empire have shown a remarkable progress in their development pursuits. In the quest to develop and conquer, what is left behind is a painting of a diverse pictures and colours expressing between power and greed, nobility and obscurity. The lion head portrays the various impacts of colonisation that it had on different nations, represented by the areas of POPS. The areas and issues covered are as follows. Firstly, The Coal Drop Yard is a showcase of a multicultural society which is portrayed in a diversity of colour and setting. Secondly, The Gasholder Park exhibits the British influence in government and administration. Thirdly, The Lewis Cubitt Park highlights the establishment of new market and the exploitation of natural resources of developing and third world nations. Finally, The Granary Square suggests how museums in Britain that keep artefacts from their original countries could give inaccurate history. The lion head is also an ambiguous satire that can be perceived as saviour or oppressor. In whichever image one sees it, it nonetheless is an amusing piece of sculpture in the environment.