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ADS3: Metabolising the Built Environment

Rachel Housley

Rachel is a London-based designer and researcher, whose work engages in spatial experience, self-sustainability, light and materiality and spans across multiple disciplines from architecture to performance and curation. This year her work has centred around health, body, architecture and landscape, research she aims to continue as these challenges become more urgent than ever.

She completed her Architecture BA at the Canterbury School of Architecture where she was awarded the Purcell Prize for her final project. During her two years as an architectural assistant, she gained experience in residential, interior and commercial projects. Within these workplaces she also partook in a drawing competition that she won, and was a member of the team that won LFA’s competition for the first architecture float at London Pride, which was developed from concept through to construction.

Since joining the RCA, Rachel exhibited her work as part of the Translations exhibition held at Arts Catalyst, which she helped to curate. This summer she will be working in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries’ Back to Earth initiative and the General Ecology project, organising, curating and designing the exhibition alongside a collective of cross-disciplinary architectural researchers from the RCA. 

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Instagram: @rachelhousley_

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Degree Details

School of Architecture

ADS3: Metabolising the Built Environment

2020 has shed a light on the way that environments restructure under unforeseen circumstances and how designs and modes of living must adapt to accommodate this. Developing my thesis during the pandemic highlighted the urgency of my research and I hope to utilise the skills I have acquired over the year to contribute to the current climate. Whilst my project focuses specifically on the challenges faced by this new era of calcium deficiency, my research spans further than this, questioning how we can learn to live with disease and how our bodies, our landscape and cities shift as substances metabolise in our built environment. 

As a result of the pandemic, my original plans to work with a choreographer and performer and film within the quarry were halted. I hope to continue this side of the project at a later date, to develop the notation system further and delve into the possibilities of recording other architectural spaces.

Presentation overview

Osteoconstruction: Remodelling the Post-industrial Body and Landscape

The rate of rickets has been reported to be the highest in 50 years. Our bones, our bodies and our landscape are losing calcium.

The project looks at calcium, a substance essential for the functioning of all living organisms. Through using a multitude of scales as mapping tools, the project aims to uncover the timeline of calcium metabolism, drawing parallels between calcium formations in the architecture of the cell and the architecture of our built environment. With particular focus on the Victorian era, mid-1900s and current era, the project examines how our relationship with calcium shapes not only the structure of our bodies and bones but our homes, cities and landscape.

Performance is used as a critical tool to rethink architecture and help uncover new strategies for addressing the challenges faced by calcium deficiency. The movements of the cell, the bone and the quarry is directly affected by our relationship with the substance, and performance opens up opportunities to new ways of designing, where environment and movement are symbiotic.

Using this tool as a basis, two notation systems were designed, one for the body and one for the landscape to record the performance of the existing site and opportunities for a new landscape strategy based on calcium rehabilitation. The geological notation refers to elements on the site that contributes to it’s calcium deficiency such as shadow and water, whilst the notation for the body references bones and joints. The visual language represents the spatial and temporal qualities of the site, a written form of architectural space, transcribing the interactions between space, movement and calcium.

Located in Middle Peak Quarry, an abandoned limestone quarry in Derbyshire, three interventions are designed: the Pumping Walkway and Petrifying Well, Rock Prosthesis and Calcite-Sun Bridge. The aim of the interventions is centred around the rehabilitation of the quarry and of the body through the implementation of support structures. These structures are prosthesis of the landscape or body, responding to their condition to support the production of calcium.

Calcium metabolism, health and the urban environment are inextricably linked, and as our relationship with substances such as calcium changes, our environment alters also. A new support system is therefore required for this metabolic era; a system which can and ought to adapt as our relationship with calcium continues to change.
AnimationBodyEcologyFilmHealthHistoryLandscapelightMaterialityMetabolismPerformanceSustainability
Intervention concept: prosthesis/ support structures

Intervention concept: prosthesis/ support structures

Support structures presentation film
The Pumping Walkway and Petrifying Well

The Pumping Walkway and Petrifying Well

Rock Prosthesis

Rock Prosthesis

Calcite-Sun Bridge

Calcite-Sun Bridge

Interventions in context

Interventions in context

Three interventions sit within the abandoned quarry: the Pumping Walkway and Petrifying Well, Rock Prosthesis and Calcite-Sun Bridge. The aim of the interventions is centred around the rehabilitation of the quarry and of the body through the implementation of support structures. These structures are prosthesis of the landscape or body, responding to their condition to support the production of calcium.

Victorian: Legs with rickets

Calcium metabolism during the Victorian era

Calcium metabolism during the Victorian era

Mid-1900s: Legs with normal formation

Calcium metabolism during the mid-1900s

Calcium metabolism during the mid-1900s

Current: Legs with mild rickets

Calcium metabolism during the current era

Calcium metabolism during the current era

Three eras of calcium metabolism
The Victorian, mid-1900s and current era, three moments in time that represent key events in the history of calcium metabolism. Through exploring the social and political issues associated with calcium, health and the built environment, the project aims to learn from them to envision the new era.
The calcium landscape

The calcium landscape

Quarry section with notation

The landscape is losing calcium

The landscape is losing calcium

The area that the project focuses on is the Peak district, Derbyshire, UK’s largest limestone producer with 20 million tonnes quarried annually. Whilst such an abundance of calcium is in the landscape, very little of it enters bodies of those living in close proximity. The Peak district is surrounded by the former industrial cities of Derby, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield and Manchester, the settlements of which would have suffered the most with calcium deficiency in the 1800s and are first to experience it today due to low annual income and diet choices.

The landscape is losing calcium.

In the Peak District we are seeing massive areas of disrupted land appearing as abandoned wastelands. The site I am focusing on is Middle Peak Quarry, an abandoned limestone quarry in Derbyshire. Whilst these sites have been stripped of their natural resources, the project aims to analyse the calcium potential of the site, depicted in these illustrations using techniques of layering and transparencies used in x rays.

Notation for the Walkway/ crags

Notation for the rocks

Notation for the Bridge/ lagoon

Two notation systems were designed, one for the body and one for the landscape, to record the performance of the existing site and opportunities for a new landscape strategy based on calcium rehabilitation. The geological notation refers to elements on the site that contributes to it’s calcium deficiency such as shadow and water, whilst the notation for the body references the movement of bones and joints. The visual language represents the spatial and temporal qualities of the site, a written form of architectural space, transcribing the interactions between space, movement and calcium.
Developing the Notation short film — This film captures some initial tests made in order to develop the notation for the body, analysing the movements of the bones and joints, how they can be represented in written form and how this can be used to analyse a landscape

Film still: Notation Symbols

Film Still: Writing the notation on site

Film Still: Performance and the Landscape

The Five Scales
Performance of the five scales

Performance of the five scales

Developing the notation

The project looks at performance as a critical tool to rethink architecture, and help uncover new strategies for addressing the challenges faced by calcium deficiency. The movements of the cell, the bone, the quarry is directly affected by our relationship with the substance, and performance opens up opportunities to new ways of designing, where environment and movement are symbiotic.

Performance of the five scales

The project focuses on five scales: the cell, the bone, the body, the medical institution and the quarry. The project questions whether we can learn from the performance of the cell's microstructure, particularly the process of remodelling, to understand how we can remodel the post-industrial landscape. The performance of these elements are not understood figuratively, but are ones in which are altered directly in response to our relationship with calcium.
Osteoconstruction: Remodelling the Post-industrial Body and Landscape
Overview film of the MA final project

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