Noah Judge

Noah Judge featured image

About

I grew up in London and studied foundation art at Falmouth University and undergraduate architecture at Edinburgh University before I began my masters in architecture at the RCA. My work in between has included architecture, construction, agriculture and couriering across the UK, the US and the Czech Republic. My studio practice has been inspired by Mike Davis’s argument that the climate emergency gives cause to “return to explicitly utopian thinking [to] clarify the minimal conditions for the preservation of human solidarity in [the] face of convergent planetary crises.” My first year project in ADS1 tested spaces for collective care in an adaptive reuse of an office block in Stratford. My second year project in ADS10 explores the potential architectural and infrastructural supports for sustainable ways of moving.

Statement

The aim of this project is to imagine the kinds of institutions, infrastructures, organisations & forms that might support and enable a transition away from a private, individualised model of car ownership toward a public, socialised model. The idea came from the observation that, amidst discussions around the future of transport and mobility in the low carbon city, there are already signs of a decline in car ownership, especially in big cities like London, but that these changing practices are being organised and mediated by large corporations like Uber. These businesses are platforms; they have used innovations in communications technology to monetise the sharing of information. There is a case to de-commodify and democratise the services organised by Uber; and there is an architectural potential in bringing these services all under one roof.

My proposal is a new kind of station: a ‘neighbourhood service station’. The idea is that this building will be the locus of, and house the operations of, a municipally run platform for taxi, delivery and vehicle rental services, as well as offering other neighbourhood services, becoming a social and civic centre with the potential to transform the quality of suburban life. The hope is that this building can support mobility and improve connectivity while reducing the number of vehicles on the road and the trips they need to make. This strategy is oriented toward a future transition to electric vehicles, given that the scarcity of lithium means we must break with the 20th century planning creed of one car per household. The design can also help in the present simply by reducing traffic right now.

All Under One Roof

The Edge of London

Your Neighbourhood Service Station

An Elevated Shed on the Edge of Town