B-SIDE - MARCH II

This project explores the creative reuse of the abandoned Royal Albert Docks Office site sitting empty since Brexit and the Pandemic. It aims to repurpose this ‘post-financial’ building into a multidisciplinary club space promoting a mixed-(re)use design - flipping the failed commercial ‘A-side’ of the building to the untapped potential of its ‘B-side’. Inspired by the conditions in which DJing emerged from, my proposal uses music as an urban strategy to reactivate the empty site and reinterprets the technique of sampling as an architectural approach to reuse. The structural grid and modularity of the existing office block offers a pragmatic framework within which the architect becomes a spatial composer, or a DJ, through the act of sampling: amplifying the existing, reprogramming the space, cutting layers of construct and reusing them to juxtapose a new narrative onto the past.