2014 International Design Exchange Project, the 5th Hidden Space Project, Re-energising space

This is now the 5th Book in the Hidden Space series. It has historically been a project between the Interior design students of London Metropolitan University, Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design and now called the CASS and the students of Dong Yang University, Seoul, South Korea and at points we have also collaborated with Kyung Won University also in Seoul. This year we have invited Hunan University of Changsha in China to join with us, so we welcome our new collaborators and look forward to the exchange of ideas and the cultural interchange that is both fascinating but helps us to understand and reflect with different methodologies. \n \nThe CASS Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design now bases its projects within a studio, running an atelier system. Each studio is led by a practitioner or an expert with in the specific discipline which not only allows the students to develop skills and understanding it shows precise insights of practice. The studios have allowed us to broaden our range of projects, as we ran two projects rather than one this year that looked at Re-energising space. \n \nStudio 1, Unspoken Revolution has looked at a large and complex set of derelict warehouse factory buildings situated in the ‘out of town’ South East of London where the river edges into the estuary. The Millennium Mills sits opposite London City airport abandoned and dilapidated. But it’s this quality of dilapidation and the memory of older practices that takes the imagination. The studio has endeavoured to keep the romantic materiality but suggest interventions that make this location a place for its community to enjoy. \n \nStudio 2, The Shoreditch Vibe, has looked at a semi vacant space situated in the East End, where it shares space with the local infrastructure of the telephone exchange. Being originally built by the government owned GPO in 1956, the cost of refurbishment is now too expensive to contemplate when considering the upheaval of the telephone exchange. However this part of the East End has many buildings whose architectural character has remained as until recently the developers overlooked this area in favour of the lucrative City and West End so the whole area offers an eclectic mix of authenticity, unpolished and makeshift spatial creativity.