James Wallis
About
James is an architectural designer from London. His interests involve using architecture as a tool for mitigating societal changes and how its deployment can generate different behaviours, attitudes and environmental benefits.
In his first year at the RCA, he was part of ADS7: Something in the Air; Politics of the Atmosphere, where his project focused on carbon removal, specifically the process of producing and implementing Biochar and its potential realisation in the form of a production industry. He was able to engage interests in simultaneous environmental and social remediation, something he has been able to continue in ADS1 through a focus on adaptive re-use.
Prior to the RCA, he studied as a scholar at the Architectural Association, graduating in 2020. Following this he spent his year out working for both a landscape designer and sole practitioner based in London.
Statement
Remember Me Digitally intends to re-use the existing block of Baynard House as a new interactive, lasting, and reverent space for memorial. The proposal challenges the way in which we pay our respects to individuals who have passed and suggests an alternative way in which we can mourn, celebrate and admire the dead.
Baynard House currently functions as a a BT office block and data centre on the North Bank of the Thames. It was originally designed as a telephone exchange and opened in 1979. BT aim to vacate the building within a decade leaving it vulnerable for unnecessary demolition.
The project attempts to realise the partly built 1960’s/70s idea of the pedway in the City of London, revising its design and learning from its spatial and practical failures which can be seen in an underused surviving segment that runs through the existing building. It seeks to adapt the principles of the pedway to mourning by creating accessibility to the City and surrounding environment, separating the pedestrian from the motorcar, and creating curated sequences to walk through. The proposal also uses the pedway as a tool to infiltrate the building, elevating the experience of the pedestrian and producing a more inviting building.
The proposal suggests a more interactive form of remembrance to the Western tradition of storing human remains with gravestones and urns is more applicable to the digital age. It therefore aims to create spaces to record/collect, experience and explore digital legacies. In this way, the proposal is adapting the existing building’s role as a data collector making the data stored obtainable and interactive whilst attempting to cater for a variety of requirements related to grief.
Re-using Baynard House as an urban digital memorial provides the building with a lasting, future focussed use that sustains the life of the existing building and improves its relationship with the City of London. The project looks to advance remembrance as a civic practice as whilst its sequences of spaces will assist people with the ordeal of mourning and allow people to create their own digital legacies that go further than the outdated forms of memorial we see today, ensuring they will not be forgotten.
Condition
The Pedway as a Tool for Re-use
The Pedway
Investigations into the site began with an interest in the ‘invisible city’, in particular, the more evocative semi-public spaces like churchyards, courts and gardens that offer emotional relief from the bustle and density of City of London. Accessibility to the public domain and the potential sequencing from one to another was considered, resulting in attempts at realising the partly built vision of the 1960’s pedway.
This allowed for a thorough appreciation of the City’s public dominions and the practice of wandering. It also provided the project with a clear intention to improve the experience of the pedestrian whilst acknowledging the precedents within the City of London to do this. The pedway also sparked particular inspiration as its subsequent iterations, seen worldwide, for example, the Highline in New York, Metropolitano Parasol in Seville or Promenade Plantee in Paris, have been hugely successful, creating new experiences that connect buildings, exhibit the city and provide new spaces separate from the street. However, the original pedway proposed by the City of London Authority in the 1960s/70s must be considered a failure due to the fact its surviving spaces are poorly maintained and underused. The project therefore attempts to challenge the disuse and discontinuation of the pedway whilst acknowledging its failures.
A new model of rememberance
