The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the School of Engineering and the Built Environment
Location Chelmsford • Courses BA (Hons) Architecture • Head of school Syed Hasan • Full-time tutors 4 • Part-time tutors 8 • Students 72 • Staff to student ratio 1:13
Undergraduate
James Taylor
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief Post Pandemic City
Project title The Horticulturist Playground
Project description This is a self-sustaining urban scheme that establishes a community of horticulturalists at the Royal Docks in east London, where they live amid nature and water and thrive with the help of the scheme’s biophilic design. The community has an ‘horticulturist playground’, with facilities and technologies to facilitate experimentation with the cultivation of fruit, vegetables, herbs, flowers and ornamental planting, with a strong emphasis on teaching the importance of plants for the survival of mankind. The overall scheme encourages its inhabitants to grow their own food and to set up microbusinesses to sell and trade produce grown within the development.
Tutor citation Inspired by Beth Chatto’s planting philosophies and John Little’s extraordinary garden designs, James has developed a proposal for an urban infrastructure which would encourage natural habitats to flourish amid a dense human settlement. Howard Gilby and Alistair Barr
