Miranda Zahedieh

Disused land and derelict buildings were a consistent element in the landscape of the Metropolis between 1977–1985, offering a paradoxical confirmation of both decline and progress. These neglected objects made visible the unrelenting tensions between the old and the new, disrupting the seamlessness of government and planners’ urban vision.

Proposing that the design of the city lies within use as well as buildings, my dissertation explores both design and non-design practices that engaged in a dialogue with abandonment and decay. The research gathers together a range and scale of examples, from ad hoc and narrative architecture to squatting and protest graffiti, the invention of Docklands by a Thatcherite committee to ‘one-off’ furniture salvaged from the scrap heap of urban abundance. Drawing on the concept developed by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss of bricolage, an improvised process of making the world from whatever is at hand, it aims to unpack the ways space was thought about in the post-industrial capitalist city and also the new ways of resisting it.