RADICAL COMPANIONSHIP – AN ARCHITECTURE OF WARMTH AND BELONGING
In a world grappling with escalating social inequalities and the effects of climate change, architects have a responsibility to promote and adopt care-ful approaches to design—to cultivate an awareness of the complex and entangled ecologies upon which design decisions produce effects. Careful architecture is both about companionship, and the noticing and nurturing of neglected energies to bring about transformation.
Building upon Donna Haraway’s notion of ‘situated knowledges*,’ the thesis embraces an architectural practice that is attentive to local contexts and ecologies. The approach fosters co-habitation and co-production, recognising the partial and evolving knowledge of the architect as they engage with and respond to emerging needs. This situated approach employs drawing and re-presentation to notice, reclaim, and revalue that which is neglected, and to exercise care.
Radical Companionship—An Architecture of Warmth and Belonging, proposes an architecture of companionship and care by choreographing spaces of socio-physical warmth through the architectural arrangement of earth, fire and water. The thesis explores this proposition in two threads: a) in situ – in the material explorations of earth construction, resolved through a live-build project for the Granton Community Gardeners and Bakery; b) speculatively – in the design of a Bottega Bakery, then up-scaled as a methodology to divert and reclaim industrial heat flows, leading to the proposal for a Bathhouse in Leith.
* Donna Haraway, “Siuated Knowledges” 1988
THE COBB – FOR GRANTON COMMUNITY GARDEN AND BAKERY
Jess Gardner, Nat Mikulska and Eleanor Hyde
The Granton Community Gardeners and Granton Garden Bakery are transformative co-operatives and charities facilitating community gardening initiatives to improve access to locally grown produce for those in need. Parallel to gardening, the bakery is working towards a net-zero, pay-what-you-can loaf from wheat grown in disused street corners and neighbourhood gardens. As part of this strategy, a new opportunity to open and occupy a fully operational bakery unit on the Granton shore endeavours to expand the community’s presence in the area. The Cobb situates itself as the Gardeners’ first presence on the site, and attempts to begin cultivating the sense of community that characterises their original plot.
The project offers a place to sit, cook and commune as gardeners, with the table acting as a key anchor to garden activities. In the design and construction protocols we set for the project, earth construction and surface treatments aim to parallel the cycles and processes of baking: mixing, kneading, forming, resting, and eating. Indeed, the term ‘cobb’ refers both to a construction technology and to a loaf of bread.
The Cobb aims to transplant the complex identities and programmatic typologies of the garden to repair and reactivate a vacant industrial plot on the shore. As it begins to welcome locals to eat, drink and cook together, we hope that the warmth and softness offered by the installation will encourage and catalyse the reanimation of the site, offering an invitation to bakers and passers-by to enjoy the net-zero ‘cobb.’
