Brixton sometime In The future?

Throughout the year i Will be exploring ideas about the relationship between class and race with identity. I will use Brixton, (or an augmented Brixon) as the stage for my exploration and will be representing my thoughts, ideas and development through prose, drawings, film, animation and the moving image.

What Brixton could be?

These are a collection of images of what Brixton could be like if it were to develop as a disregarded area inhabited by London's new robot workforce. Built and design to do all the task humans no longer want to do. The population of brixton has rocketed and unplanned cheap quick additions have been made to the skyline.


Brixton High Street


Southwyck house


Brixton Village


Throughout the course of the year I will be negatively criticising how society treats race, class and identity and how this has changed throughout my life time. Using Henry Lefebvre ideas of perceived and conceived space as a starting point, I will develop complex spatial narratives to explore the idea of ‘Spatial Justice’. I will be representing my thoughts, ideas and development through prose, drawings, film, animation and the moving image. I want my design work to be closely link to my Thesis.

Methodology & Proposal
To explore my ideas I shall split the project into two parts, One will be a critique on racial and class divides during the 1980’s and the second a comparison to today’s society.

The project has to be propositional in order to do this it will be an abstraction or an adaptation of reality. Films, particularly science fiction films often use this type of abstraction to make clear direct critiques on society. I as a designer will be in control of the adaptation as i will design the environments, the characters. I will set my design work in the future. I do not wish to do this with the thesis but I believe that many of the topics I cover and will be directly relevant as i will use much of my thesis research to determine my design work.
I wish to split my design work an thesis to two parts.
i. A critique on multiculturalism, race and class in the 1980’s
ii. How multiculturalism has changed? what does it mean now? How is race link with class and how all of theis relates to architecture and my wn experiences as an architect.

Part I
The first part will be a commentary on the cyclical nature of the working class in the UK. The idea that the working class are seemingly replaced by other working classes from different country’s. i.e Irish ‘replacing’ British workers, who were then ‘replaced’ by Afro-Caribbeans replacing, then to be replaced by working class eastern Europeans... I intend to explore the idea of the ‘forgotten’ working classes and there interaction with the replacing classes and how the race factors into this and whether race is important?
I will look at tensions caused by poor/lack of housing and high unemployment.

Part II
Starting in the second semester, this will be the focus of my thesis and final film. Putting race and class aside it seems clear to me that the theoretical backbone of the thesis will be based around perception of space, and how that varies from person to person. For me a big part in what determines our own perception is our upbringing in which race and class play a huge role.

What are my values? who has influenced my perception of space? How important is race to me? Is class more important that race in the UK? Is race more important for me being an ethnic Minority? What does multicultural Mean? Is Britain as multicultural as it claims to be? Is the way architectural education/profession treats race and class akin to the rest UK? Why do a keep banging on about it??