Urban Beach Corridor

University of Sheffield, Sheffield School of Architecture, Sheffield

Project idea

‘Sous les pavés, la plage’ // ‘Beneath the paving stones, the beach.’
- graffiti from Paris, May '68

The phrase was coined by the Situationists as an allusion to the natural, non-utilitarian realm that lies beneath the veneer of capitalism and its infrastructural manifestations in contemporary urbanism.

The main research question addresses the lack of a truly public, non-hegemonic realm in the contemporary urban context as a repercussion of increasing commodification of space in the city.

The thesis project adopts the Situationists’ social imagining conviction that the city streets, the expression of capital and consumption, could be rediscovered through demolishment of urban infrastructure to reveal the ‘Beach’, an undesignated public space.

Set in Coventry, The Urban Beach Corridor is a manifesto that employs urban densification as a tactic to generate a truly public realm. It is an architecture of resistance that emulates the liminal quality of the beach to challenge Coventry’s City Council’s water park ambition with an alternative typology.

By managing water above the surface through retention, day-lighting, filtration, heating and conveyance, the Urban Beach Corridor generates oppositional public realm for leisure while acting as a critical ‘cleanse and control apparatus’ to manage urban water. Offering visitors the opportunity to temporarily invert the codes of conduct that govern their everyday lives, the Urban Beach Corridor is a necessary piece of green infrastructure that symbolises liminality, exoticism and pleasure.

Abstracting from iconic seaside typologies and the roman aqueduct, the project aspire to develop a new form of architectural language and aesthetic that does not lapse into a vernacular style. This is done through the exploration of hybridised constructional techniques that is not merely a mimic of the past but a reflection of contemporary zeitgeist through a holistic approach to the exploration of double curvature form active structures.

Essentially, the Urban Beach Corridor re-thinks a new, invigorated meaning of inhabiting the city through the exploration of an alternative urbanisation typology that challenges the status quo.

Project description

Set in the context of Coventry, the Urban Beach Corridor introduces a beach within a city that is furthest from the coast. Coventry has a notorious reputation. The phrase ‘send to Coventry’ means to deliberately exclude someone. To challenge the preconceptions of the city, the Situationists’ experimental methodologies and techniques heavily influenced the conception of the Urban Beach Corridor. This thesis project is a Re-Think manifesto of an alternative typology condensed into five main ideas.


1. (Urban Beach Corridor) UBC as an architecture of resistance

As an attempt to recreate the subversive spirit of a pavement parking identified in earlier research, the staging of a picnic on the pavement backfired as all of my invitations to the passers-by to partake in the staged recreation were promptly declined. A few people were genuinely terrified as I approached them.

The act not only called into question the state of my mental health, it also initiated a heightened awareness of the repressive nature of the pavement and the streets as a transitional infrastructure that dictated how people should act. People were not willing to differ from the social & cultural norms and be seen as a lunatic.

The questioning of the streets’ public nature and functions were further reinforced through the employment of the KinoCineBomber as a studio. The elements of surprise and delight has enabled a new perspective in surveying the existing infrastructure of the city.

Well summarised in Situationist’s slogan of ‘The beach beneath the streets’, it is highlighted that underneath the formal infrastructure governed by capitalism, there is the beach, an inherently non-utilitarian, public and social realm.
Adopting the essence of the slogan, street infrastructure was pushed out to the minimum requirement with close reference to the Coventry Highway Design Guide and local city planning guidelines. Implementing 25 degree skyline rule to adjacent buildings, an expansive stretch of excessive space was extracted.

The liminal space is a manifesto that employs urban densification as a tactic to revert controlled spaces. It expands on The Ludic City’s conviction that public space is fundamentally a setting for informal, non-instrumental social interaction, or play. Adopting the liminal element of the beach, the infrastructure building stand against the capitalizing schemes of surrounding redevelopment space. It is an architecture of resistance conceived to generate oppositional public realm of leisure.

2. UBC as an alternative urban beach typology

This led into the study of the inherent and unique quality of the beach as a liminal landscape.

Historically, the quest for a distinctive architecture to set seaside architecture apart in the attempt to further transform the edge of the land into the extraordinary led into a rich fusion of Orientalist styles.

The beach is essentially a place of release and escape as norms and disciplines of everyday life are suspended. To translate the liminal nature of the beach into the Urban Beach Corridor, investigation into iconic seaside typologies served as a basis for developing a new form of language and aesthetic for the site in Coventry that lacks a truly public space.

As symbols of liminality, exoticism and pleasure; the winter garden, the tower, the pier and the promenade has been integrated with the movement of water throughout the infrastructure. From this, the Urban Beach Corridor provides an escape from the drudgery of everyday life into a more exotic and exciting place.

3. UBC as an inclusive social infrastructure

Contextually, the Urban Beach Corridor challenges Coventry City Council’s ambition of building a waterpark in the city centre with an alternative typology. In essence, the Urban Beach Corridor is conceived from the aspiration of providing a diverse, socially-inclusive recreational space.

The Urban Beach Corridor also becomes situated within the wider aspirations of the city by responding closely to Coventry Cultural Strategy and Coventry Sports Strategy, functioning as a truly inclusive and accessible realm for culture, sports and leisure activities to flourish. With this, the Urban Beach Corridor becomes a preventative mechanism that encourages people to manage their well-being and health via inclusive and active design principles. It is an architecture that is encompassing.

Emulating a real beach, the Urban Beach Corridor offers visitors the opportunity to temporarily invert the codes of conduct that govern their everyday lives, offering indoor ancillary spaces of showers, changing rooms and toilets, of which will be fully accessible. As a symbol of the exotic and pleasure, winter garden housing tropical palms and vegetation also envelops the main ancillary space to regulate indoor temperature all year round.

4. UBC as a necessary piece of green infrastructure

Since the aftermath of the Blitz, the city’s redevelopment phases predominantly removed the river from the surface of the map through culverts beneath the city.

The Urban Beach Corridor is a vital component of the studio’s collective response to de-culvert the river in four key character areas, of which is executed with reference to Aecom and local water authorities’ report. The reports estimated the regenerative benefits of managing urban water systems on surface. This exploration of the city’s adaptability to possible effects of climate change becomes the framework for our studio masterplan to reimagine a more exciting, sustainable and resilient city.

As the Urban Beach Corridor is located nearest to the river source within the city, it is designed as a critical water control apparatus for the city. By blurring natural and manmade, the necessary piece of infrastructure divert and de-culvert the city’s hidden river [in this key area]. The Urban Beach Corridor manages water on surface via regulation, retention, filtration and conveyance to provide public amenity and a habitat for wildlife.

Furthermore, the Urban Beach Corridor regulates and create a more comfortable urban microclimate by reducing the effects of urban heat island.

5. Finally, the UBC is conceived as a reflection of contemporary constructional techniques & technology

Abstracting from iconic seaside typologies and the roman aqueduct, the project aspire to develop a new form of architectural language and aesthetic that does not lapse into a vernacular style. This is done through the exploration of constructional techniques that is not merely a mimic of the past but a reflection of contemporary zeitgeist. Strutural strategy of the UBC is made up of three elements: the load bearing aqueduct, the lightweight orientalist enclosures, and boardwalk circulation.

The project adopts a holistic design approach through the exploration of double curvature form active structures to satisfy the increasingly complex demands of sustainability criteria. Form active structures offer the promise of significant material efficiency and dramatic forms by leveraging the intrinsic stability of doubly curved geometries. This led into the studies of hybridised construction techniques of reinforced masonry.

The minimisation of falsework is a prominent advantage of the Catalan brick vault. A layer of pre-tensioned reinforced sprayed concrete complements the brick vault with the structural performance of modern building materials.

Adopting historical construction technique from the vaults of St. John, the solid infill is translated as the beach. The beach, conceived as a complementary element to the integrity of the structure, is a levelled infill that strengthens the double curvature structure with compressive force, just like a keystone would in arches.

Concurrently, this addresses the integration of the upper deck with the structural viaduct for a more coherent architecture expression and integrity of structure.

Ultimately, the manifesto of the Urban Beach Corridor proposes a new, invigorated meaning of inhabiting the city through the exploration of an alternative urbanisation typology to revert controlled spaces. To sum up and perpetuate the thesis project’s working approach and philosophy, it is fitting to conclude with a quote on the Situationists:

‘Intelligent specialists only ever have the intelligence to play the game of specialists: hence the fearful conformity and fundamental lack of imagination that make them admit that this or that product is useful, good, necessary. In fact, the root of the reigning lack of imagination cannot be understood if one does not have access to the imagination of lack--that is to conceiving what is absent, forbidden, and hidden, and yet possible, in modern life.’

- McDonough, Tom (ed.) 2010 The Situationists and the City: A Reader, London, Verso.

Technical information

Please note that the technical information is weaved within the project description above.