The Theatre of Metropolitan Life

Idea projektu

The project reflects on and explores metropolitan life through a kaleidoscope of forces within the city, rethinking the current condition of London’s metropolis through experimental approaches. The Metropolitan Theatre challenges the conventional urban lifestyle, manifesting the totality of historical and societal life through urban spaces.

Through the lens of fashion institutions across London—often hidden from public view—the project brings together these fragmented entities and celebrates them in expansive public spaces at the base of the proposal. These include the proposal for university spaces that includes a lecture hall and studio space on top of the existing UAL LCC building. With all other public programs on the other half of the curve: production areas, runway stages, studio ateliers, and extending to the most private forms of urban life: the dwelling units.

The design captures the convergence of London’s flows into a physical form, the hyperdization of programs, connecting ground-level public activity through a horizontal plinth that links the underground tube with the overhead train station. By engaging with the full scope of the city’s infrastructure, the proposal punctures the otherwise anonymous urban fabric—up and down, in and out—porous, rhythmic, alive.

To be truly metropolitan is to carry the spirit of the Flâneur within—to observe, to wander, and to recognize the fragmented whole. In embracing this duality, we uncover ourselves through a deep craving to understand who we are in all our intricacy.

A stage upon which the meaning of our shared existence is endlessly performed.

Popis projektu

The project closely considers the existing public infrastructure—specifically the main roundabout, the underground tube, and the overhead train station—by aligning the building’s datum with the surrounding context.

How do we make a tower that is both tall and stable?
The solution lies in the introduction of curved elements that help the building resist lateral wind forces. The slenderness of the tower allows for dual-aspect flats and public corridors with open, voided ventilation, featuring shared laundry areas and communal spaces for residents.

All structural components are unified through a monocoque system supported by a 5x5-meter core and deep beams integrated into the residential walls. This curvature extends into the internal spaces of the flats, softening the architectural language from outside to within.

The structure of the main plinth is also designed to maximize permeability on the ground floor. A "penguin pool" staircase leads to the first-floor plinth, with a runway and auditorium on either side. This configuration allows passersby, arriving directly from the train platform, to be immediately immersed in the world of fashion—its production, performance, and activities that are typically scattered and hidden beneath separate roofs.

The project reflects on piecemeal urban development and questions authoritarian approaches to public space. Rather than pursuing a top-down vision of neatness and formal order, often designed to please the aerial gaze of planners, developers, or even airplane passengers, it embraces the vibrant, layered disorder of metropolitan life on the ground. As famously critiqued by the Duke of Wellington, those whose sensibilities are offended by what they see from airplane windows are free to close the shades, rather than disrupt the lives of millions on the ground.

This project resists that aerial, detached view. Instead, it proposes an alternative method of producing collective space that is messy, porous, and dynamic. One that mirrors the real, lived complexity of the city. Through curved forms that resist wind and symbolic flattening, and a ground plinth that spills public life into and through the structure, the architecture becomes not a monument to order, but a theatre of participation and coexistence.

Technické informace

The use of shifting beams in the top-floor apartments results in a five-floor repeating modular unit, allowing each apartment to coexist seamlessly with the structural system. The beams become part of the interior, visible from the main section, and integrated into the spatial experience of the unit.The tower itself is supported by a compact 5x5-meter core, with structural spans not exceeding 35 meters.

In contrast, the lower plinth levels are designed for maximum permeability. Large trusses support the structure while freeing up open space on the ground floor without visual interference.