studio KA

University of Cambridge, 2023 - 2024

The Fitzwilliam Museum is currently looking to extend its buildings: the Museum has grown with a series of extensions since it was founded in 1816, but now requires new programmes on its restricted site. Our research considers how reorganising and extending the Fitzwilliam Museum can be an opportunity to address the legacies of the colonial past embedded in its architecture and collections, while retaining the neoclassical building. Alteration and extension are physical acts but they are also existential: how does a museum evolve?

We are in dialogue with the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, discussing how the museum could be both extended and redefined. The research proposals with the University of Cambridge demonstrate that extending museums spatially is an opportunity to address the history of the museum, and re-contextualize their public engagement and significance in the city today. The research proposals will be put on display at the museum at an event this summer. Workshops and collaborators Habda Rashid, Senior Curator Contemporary & Modern Art at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Kettle’s Yard Donal Cooper, Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of Cambridge Harriet Loffler, Curator, The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards Raffi Chipperfield, film maker

University of Cambridge, 2022 - 2023

Constructing new buildings often begins with demolition. The first works on site include flattening, stripping, and knocking down of existing structures, and contractors are incentivised to carry out this demolition as quickly as possible. For speed, a building is usually reduced to a pile of unsorted rubble. In an age targeting the reduction of waste, demolition could instead be an artistic practice of careful unbuilding, and as a starting point to make new architecture.

The studio investigated the design of demolition (unbuilding) as well as the design of new architecture (building). The projects worked from the starting point that a building contains ideas and intent, which can be identified, salvaged and reimagined. In doing so, the architect acts as a curator, working with the architecture that is already there, and shaping, adjusting, adding and subtracting to make and remake the city.

Studio KA works closely with contractors in order to engage directly with standard construction and demolition processes, with the aim to develop credible alternatives to the common cycles of building waste. We research the potential of material circularity of existing building components and their reuse in other settings. These proposals are tested in conversations with industry specialists. Collaborators Elliott Wood Structural Engineers Lee Hallman of Tesselate AKT II

University of Cambridge, 2021 - 2022

Buildings are frameworks for use and reuse. Whereas the reuse of a historic building is guided by principles of preservation, contemporary open-plan structures without any specific use are often left vacant for demolition.

The studio considered the existing John Lewis Department Store building in Sheffield as a source of resources and propositions. The repurposing of the building was examined for its architectural and social potential.

Our design approach to the project was in three timescales: short, medium and long term. The research projects explored a staged methodology for the reuse of the vacant building (occupying, overlaying, and intervening in the existing architecture). We began with an exhibition outside the building to speak directly with the public. The studio proposals were shared with Urban Splash, who are appointed to retrofit the building, and we were invited to present the University of Cambridge students’ work at a design summit held by the Sheffield Society of Architects and Sheffield Civic Trust. The work of the studio was also published in the Architects Journal. Collaborators Sheffield Society of Architects Sheffield Civic Trust AHMM Urban Splash

Competition for an ‘eco-home pavilion’, 2022 We believe that the greenest building is the one that already exists. As the oldest housing stock in Europe, to reach net zero in the UK, we need to see existing housing as a bank of materials to repair and enhance. The solutions for the house of the future therefore lie in the houses we already have.

The proposal questions the idea and purpose of a one-off, one-of-a-kind pavilion. Instead, the temporary structure takes the familiar image of an existing house and offers a series of alterations which compound to make significant changes to how to operate in our homes. Collaborators Livia Wang, Van Gogh House, London Boito Sarno