Forms of Collective Living

Maria Nefeli Stamatari




The project illustrates a possibility of an alternative life for the rural dwellers of Yorkshire, one that is not based in the instability and the constant loss of property but rather in moments of cohabitation and coming together. This constant negotiation between sea and land results in the loss of approximately half a million of properties along the British Coast every year. Specifically, the Holderness Coast, which is one of the fastest eroding cliffs in England, loses two meters of land every year. This draws our attention to the punctuality of the current coastal protection scheme; The Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plan. The ICZM plan was introduced in 2004 in an aim to provide guidance on how to protect these towns and their natural environments. But by looking closer at the said scheme, one finds out the disconnection it has with the communities. In fact, the ICZM is only activated when Grade I listed buildings are under an immediate threat from the sea. With this said, the current maintenance protocols of the cliff, the lack of a social institution that protect the communities, combined with the inability of the production and communal activities to adapt to these environmental conditions has created a general de population and isolation of the settlements.


     

 Therefore, a new scenario for the rural context of Holderness coast is envisioned by re - introducing the commons, not only as a field of collective cultivation, but as a system that was able to form different settings for human interactions. With this said, the project will look at the way the communities are able to come together through four main interventions; A collection of the localised forms of Production, the element of the Garden as a protected space of care that organises and frames a collective experience, the Shed a linear structure that cuts through the landscape, connects the settlement with the foreshore and lastly,the Sea Pavilion that extends life to the sea, while trying to form a new experience with it. Ultimately this network of spatial manipulation creates an urban protocol that can be deployed across the coastline, now forming a coherent urban structure.



Therefore, the aim of the project is to create or rather highlight a sense of civic orientation, a better adaptation of the settlements with their surroundings such land and sea and ultimately through the intervations a new meaning for coastal protection is formed. But, as much as the project is about creating a system in aim to bring people together through agriculture, leisure and gardening is also a project that works with ways the ground and the landscape can be molded, manipulated to give boundaries, connections, and define space.