“Towards a transgender Architecture” – Proposal

In the context of our thesis city this year, Marseille, I theorise that transgender way of being sits in opposition to the principles of modernist planning, that have left scars across the city. Le Corbusier’s legacy built super-efficient architecture and infrastructure, designed to be used strictly in singular ways out of concrete and other immovable materials. This project uses my 4 transgender Architectural techtonics to re-imagine the spaces around the A7 motorway, attempting to patch the scars left by the binary infrastructure, replacing it with a multi-storey layering of spaces, activities and places, giving space and agency to the surrounding marginalised communities.

To enable the building to be in a state of constant transformation I have divided it into components. A core skeleton enables the blood (people and materials) to move through the Body (building) to reach the shifting layers of tissue. The building would ebb and flow with the changing needs and identities of its inhabitants.

Infrastructure Map of Northern Marseille

3rd Arrondissement Motorway Figure ground

Long Section through motorway

Section through Le Corbusier's Unite D'habitation

Section through A7 Motorway

"non-binary" staircase in central Marseille, connecting two completely different neighbourhoods

Layerd infrastructure Binaries, project weaved between them

Site Axonometric

Components

Components

Technical Section

Growing building diagram

Into the workshop

Through the core

Up the stairs

Over the motorway

Sectional model - transforming programme

1:50 technical Model

Perspective Section

Cross sections