LSA Alumnus Jack Banting published in FRAME

FRAME, Issue 148, Sep-Oct 2022

Our Alumnus Jack Banting’s final thesis has been published in FRAME.

Jack’s thesis ‘Common Ground’ marries community and commerce by granting local residents agency over the public spaces they inhabit. His project interrogated existing social housing in Hackney, focusing on the existing spaces that intervene estate housing.

‘Common Ground’ proposes that the Hackney Local authority make an offering of these ‘commons’ sites throughout its estates, to the ownership of newly formed Tenants and Residents Associations. Communities throughout Hackney would be given new rights to govern, and new agency to deliberate and determine the future-use of available sites. In construction, the project proposes collaborative partnerships between Common Ground contractors and volunteering residents, using the process of building and design, as a means of community engagement and learning.

Jack Banting, ‘Common Ground’, 2021

The ‘Common Ground’ proposal imagines a type of community infrastructure that finds new ways to bring people together and enables residents to become the authors of their estates. An intervention formed of a deployable, framework architecture ensures the scheme’s affordability, adaptability and its potential for disassembly & post-life cycle use. The design facilitates the future authorship of the building throughout its occupancy– outlining plans for adaptable thresholds, partitions, storage solutions and furniture. In the hands of the community, increased spatial agency will provide residents with spaces to work, to start businesses, to learn, grow food and to come together; granting residents with shared facilities, a sense of collective ownership and scope to create new opportunities.

Jack Banting, ‘Common Ground’, 2021