Space for the boundary - boundary as place : architectural boundary as a relational concept in urban mass housing

Abstract

This theory-based research challenges a perceived paradox between the propositions of self-sufficiency and of self-containment in mass housing in London. It focuses on institutional and physical boundaries between private and public space that posit each as separate from the other, in statutory and legal frameworks specific to the UK, and in architectural formulas for high density housing. It challenges conceptions about public/private relationships that support hermeticity: protection of privacy and of propriety, from neighbours, from damage and from climate change. In the construction industries, sustainability is also increasingly assigned to the building's 'performance' rather than to its users' concomitant participation in that performance during the building's lifetime. Through primary source material evidence found in the urban fabric, the research explores privacy/publicity dynamics in architecture and asks whether a reassertion of residential boundaries could provide future paradigms for the collective project of urban sustainability. These possibilities are scrutinised through the lens of architectural boundaries in selected case studies of high density housing in London, to identify contradictions certain designs generate with regards to sustainability, and to initiate a debate about their implications and relevance to long-term evolution towards a more ecologically resilient urban future.