03

Essay

Citizen – a new digital journal for the emerging era

As Citizen launches online with a double issue, Citizen #03 and #04, Editor-in-Chief Peter Buchanan outlines his vision for the magazine and its mission alongside the London School of Architecture

Interview

Radical educators

In each issue of Citizen we interview a host of game-changers: those who are a catalyst for progressive change in their field, those who are redefining industries and those who are bringing others into it who didn’t even know it existed. Given this issue’s topic of education, we have profiled movers and shakers (see below) who are disrupting the pedagogic profession and acting as a definitive force for good.

Essay

Making room for nature

Roddy Langmuir reflects on Cullinan Studio’s approach for incorporating nature into its projects

Folio

Connecting Communities

The future of dwelling and social infrastructure realised through stitching together a disconnected neighbourhood. Leaders: Angie Jim Osman, Nick Keen, Karman Wan (Allies & Morrison) Thomas Bryans (IF_DO). Students: Jack Morgan, Jevgenija Tocilina, Georgie Herety, Sam Brooke, Adara Wicaksono, Chris Jones, Sian Wells. Mentor: Louie Austen. Hackney Council: Anna Guezlow, Sara Kulay and Matthieu Rogers

Folio

Urban Agriculture

Creating a fully self-sustaining community in the Lea Valley. Leaders: Christophe Egret, Josh Thomas (Studio Egret West) Maria-Chiara Piccinelli (PiM Studio). Students: Alexandra Totoianu, Margaret Ibeawuchi, Judit Korpai, James Gordon, Amir Noori, Joshua Sturgess, Sabrina Leung. Mentor: Alec Crisp

Essay

Architecture as an agent of evolution

Modern architecture’s attempt to revivify our built environment through a reduction to such basics as function and unadorned construction resulted in an alienating human habitat that is unsustainable in multiple ways. That is because it did not go far enough back and deep enough to reach genuinely regenerative roots. Instead, we need to adopt a Big Picture perspective to seek the profound human impulses behind the creation of the planetary transforming phenomenon of architecture. And this must lead us to questioning why evolution brought forth humanity in the first place. Pondering such questions should be at the core of an architectural education whose broad-ranging explorations would be adequate to the creation of a genuinely sustainable and humanly satisfying culture. The following essay is an initial plunge into such issues, which will be progressively elaborated in future issues of Citizen

Essay

Implications for architectural education

Thoughts sparked by the competition entry for an extension to the architectural school at Liverpool University by Grafton Architects

Interview

All students are artists

‘At the age of 14, all students are still artists, but then the system kicks in to dissuade a significant number from following a creative route in life’ argues design teacher and Deputy Head of Coombe Wood School, Duncan Holding

Folio

On the built environment’s ecology

Folio

Alec Crisp: The future of food

A new campus that brings together diverse food processes to feed our cities

Folio

Nancy Jackson: The conscious homes of East Haringey

Consciousness: the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings

Folio

Alexander Pringle: The viable foundry

The re-imagination of Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a 21st Century working environment, intensifying the site’s cultural significance

Folio

Daniel Barrett: Urban Ecology

A new typology of residential architecture that facilitates ecological living

Folio

Katja Hasenauer: London City Park

Estuary in an airport