Project Description: 

“Play: It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility.” ~ Johan Huizinga 1938  (,Homo Ludens)

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With the hypothesis that the rise of automation will increase the redundancy of office spaces, this project seeks to explore a possible intervention for Canary Wharf transforming office infrastructure into a possible live-work community. The “Transient City” explores the relationship between permanent existing structures and integrated-temporary elements within the Canary Wharf. Could this hybrid, flexible infrastructure become a solution to an automated environment in 2050?

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Homo Faber (Latin for “Man the Maker”) is the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools. Whereas Homo Ludens (Man Playing) is importance of the play element in culture and society. This project seeks to employ ideas from John Huizinga’s study of Homo ludens and the relationship between ‘man the maker’ and ‘man the player’ exploring the threshold between this ‘work’ and ‘play’ in an architectural intervention. Ideologies of evolving environments have been envisaged prior with utopian ideas of Constant new Babylon and Ville Spatiale. Both concepts see visions of ever-changing cities, buildings beyond barriers with temporal paths and connections with the public realm. Within this project an exploration of this concept has been converted into physical thresholds between live, work and play. The building was conceptualized around a set of architectural rules , similarly to those in a game, a state of play.

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