#FLITCHED Up-Cycling Competition proposal ‘The Amphitheatre Workshop Garden’ submitted!

Me and Jonas Prismontas have taken part in a challenging #FLITCHED Up-Cycling Competition. The brief was to design a poetic and useful structure for the Caravanserai community site in Canning Town, East London by using only a limited number of materials from an inventory of construction waste.

Our aim was to create a place that would inspire its users and would try to engage with the community.

Our proposal called ‘The Amphitheatre Workshop Garden’ enables people to work in an inspiring theatrical environment, which is set below ground level in a green setting. The proposal blends two main activities together – artistic and horticultural. The green spaces wrap around the eminent open workshop, which benefits from a conveniently located vast material store and a sheltered working and making studio. The flexible workbench space can accommodate 16 people and is sheltered from wind, as it is set one meter below ground level and is also surrounded by creeper plants setting down from the upper level. The upper level deck introduces a ‘Protected Horticultural Area’ surrounding a ‘Social Space’, where plants rising high provide shading from direct sunlight and shelter from the wind. The roof above the ‘Meeting Space’ also collects rainwater, which can be used for making and growing activities. The proposal becomes even more exciting with ladders that can be used as shortcuts to get to various levels of the workshop!

We believe the qualities of the workshop garden would suggest inspiration and creativity, pleasure and social engagement for people of the Caravanserai Community.

 Please see a full photo gallery below.

Myself and Jonas registered for the #FLITCHED competition! We already have met some great people behind this competition and others interested at the #FLITCHED networking event hosted by BURO FOUR on Monday 10th December…

The site is at the Caravanserai Community in Canning Town, East London. It is a great location for both of us, as we had spent many years studying and living around there. Knowledge of the location gives us some sort of a boost to do our best in this competition. We ha

ve also met Ibrahim, a Caravanserai Community site manager, who has done his diploma at UEL at the time when myself and Jonas were going for a part 1 there. The very first project on the Caravanserai Site was also executed by students from UEL in 2011. The project is called ‘The Cube‘ and I remember someone sending me photographs of the palette structure while the construction progressed. Everything about this competition made good sense for us to register!

We have already had a some designing sessions with Jonas and wasted a lot of tracing paper..!

P.S.: Mine and my brother’s Tom’s favourite burger place is at Canning Town as well! At Trinity Buoy Wharf to be exact. It is called a Fatboy’s Diner… the place looks so great that even Vogue had gone there to do a photoshoot. A proper American Style 40s Diner – seriously worth a visit.