Secret mission to the Elephant

9 Jan 2012: DNC visited the site for next semester's project which is going to be in the Elephant and Castle, London, wearing his best black hat. Chris Gaylord lives a mile away in Kennington, and turned up on a Boris bike.  Pelin Gurkan travelled down (also incognito) by bus and we all met near the Tabernacle, an impressive Roman portico. We did a walkabout of the area, including the site itself, then looking at the housing, the Strata tower, the leisure centre, the railway station, and the currently being demolished Heygate estate. The site itself is surrounded with hoarding, but this is not a problem, as it is flat and vacant, and there are enough views of it from aerial photos and cracks in the hoardings.

The programme for the building is to be the Vertical Passivhaus (or 'Active House' depending on how the students interpret the brief.)

Mission completed, we walked west a short while and had lunch in the Imperial War Museum. After a quick look at some of the exhibition, we got the Tube to Goodge St for a browse of the Building Centre. The London Model is excellent, and we shall make this the starting point for the Field course in February. We walked on to the office of MAKE, nearby, for a briefing about the Elephant and Castle, from John Prevc. Make have been the master planners for the most recent attempt at regeneration, and there has been a consultation process during 2011, and going on into 2012.