Curtis English

Urban Voidance: Reassembling the Unseen City

Architecture - MArch

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

curtis.english2910@gmail.com

Urban Fragmentation.pdf (1.51 MB)

Urban Voidance

Reassembling the Unseen City

The problems of urban design are primarily, as Trancik describes, a result of buildings becoming isolated objects situated within the landscape that surrounds them, serving no purpose to the larger cityscape infrastructure of streets, squares and open space. Without a real understanding of human behaviour and their relationships within the city, what begins to emerge is unshaped antispace, the void.

The void, in this sense, reveals itself trapped by opposing architectural and contextual constraints that cannot identify or respond to the conflicts of surrounding edge conditions that it is situated within as it is has become isolated from its surroundings.

Urban Voidance aims to reclaim lost spaces that have emerged within Derry into opportunities for development within the historic fabric of the city as a way to invite the public back into these spaces.

Reassembling the Unseen City

Proposed Urban Void Site

Lost Market Communities

Derry Cattle Market (1903)

Foyle Street Markets (1970)

City Reassembled

Proposed Market Hall

Thetic Aspirations

Situated adjacent to the historic city walls and the current Visit Derry Museum along William Street, a void space within the city centre of Derry has emerged amidst demolition and is quickly becoming an eyesore for the local community.

Historically, the site was once a commercial and civic area populated with the former Corn Market, Ulster bank and Spinning Mill. However, the destruction of these structures and their associated programmes during ‘The Troubles’ has manifested in a series of under-utilised void spaces within and around the old city walls and surrounding townscape. ‘Urban Voidance’ uses Trancik’s theory of lost space to develop a spatial language that highlights these forgotten and undesirable urban spaces that make little or no positive contribution to their immediate surroundings.

Connecting these sites of abandonment across the city, through a re-invention of the urban fabric, the unseen city of Derry becomes re-assembled, inviting communities back into these urban areas through the developing architectural language of lost space. The proposed market hall celebrates the rich history of this commercial and social, urban typology throughout Derry’s history and acts as a gathering space that re-invites the market community back into the heart of the city through the reclamation of the void. The architecture also aims to bring movement and energy back onto the historic city wall and to provide sustainable solutions for reconnecting these sites of abandonment, offering space for people and communities to gather, socialise and enjoy the city anew.

Sustainability in the City

The proposed market hall aims to help reduce food waste through the implementation of biodigesters within the city, which helps to turn food waste into wastewater that gets safely disposed of. The food network will also begin to utilise excess food wate for composting which will begin a larger scale strategy for reducing Derry’s carbon footprint.

Working alongside the Derry City and Strabane District Council, the market hall will help push to help create a zero waste circular economy strategy. The council is working towards an economy where resources are used for as long as possible, have maximum value extracted from them and are recovered and regenerated at the end of their service life.

Understanding that food management is a key to creating a circular economy. Derry and Strabane views sustainable food production as a key priority to achieve a city that feeds itself. The market hall aims to bring back local market communities that will help promote sustainable food and drink practises.

Sustainable Strategies

Architectures of Lost Space

Defining tectonic principles, in relation to the developing spatial language of lost space, the proposal aims to combine both the modular aesthetic of the existing frame that stands vacant on the current site with the developed spatial forms of the edge structure. Utilising the existing foundations, the new structure will derive from the grid that was set up previously and will begin to introduce new spatial elements that break out from this modular structural core through the introduction of timber frames.