Conor Vale

Towards a New Modernism: The House of the City

Studio 4 derives meaningful urban interventions, through forensic investigation of the city’s composition of urban artefacts and persistence's

This thesis postulates the significance of Modernist space conception and its continued applicability. The purpose of the design thesis is thus to harness and advance the underlying performative content of Modernism, discovered via Le Corbusier’s ‘Dom-Ino’ and ‘5 Points of a New Architecture’. In this regard, the design seeks to distance itself from the pastiche of yesteryear’s ‘machine aesthetic’ and derive an architecture from the agency of type and typological revision.  

A new civic assembly in the heart of Leicester is proposed, accompanied by a sequence of morphological interventions in reactivation of a civic square. Derived from a revisioned Dom-Ino, a spatial paradigm, the tectonic exploits the refinement of offsite manufacture in aspiration of ‘design for disassembly’ as a long term sustainability driver. Through utilisation of phenomenal transparency, spatial layering and the inherent flexibility of the free plan, the design thesis advocates and demonstrates the synthesis of cogent urbanistic thinking, civic participation and a typological approach to architecture in response to the city condition. From the Modern house to the contemporary city; Towards a New Modernism.