Troy X

Peter Karl Becher and Matthew Barnett Howland

When Heinrich Schliemann began digging for Homer’s Troy in 1870 at Hissarlik in western Turkey it was impossible to know that over the course of 20 years he would reveal nine layers of settlement remains piled up to form an artificial hill of significant height. Built one on top of the other between c. 3000 and 100BCE, the layers encapsulate nearly three millennia of the rise and fall of different peoples and cultures, from prehistoric through western Anatolian, Mycenaean, Hellenistic and Roman.

This year the ambitious objective of Diploma 3 is to ‘reboot’ the western city by drawing on the intriguing history of the hill of Hissarlik. Disillusioned by the various attempts to modernise this globally applied model over the past 100 years, and dissatisfied by the latest proposals for new urban developments around the globe, the unit seeks clues to modernising the essential idea of the city by studying its origins in the Aegean Bronze Age.

The enterprising venture will oscillate between two scales: building design and urban design. This year the proposals will focus on the detailed design of a highly densified cluster of buildings on top of Troy’s ancient acropolis. This fictitious tenth layer – Troy X – will be supported by the schematic design of a self-sufficient city for 100,000 inhabitants below the acropolis. Broken into eight fragments that will run for three weeks each, the project will touch on contemporary urban issues ranging from multi-generational housing to city growth without horizontal expansion, from urban mathematics to fuelling and feeding the city, from approaching and entering the city to the protection of the hinterland, and from post-fossil fuel cars to the reintegration of domestic farm animals into the city. In the final term these fragments will be interpreted and joined together in an ‘archaeological’ manner.

With a focus on conceptual rigour and experimental building design, Diploma 3 is not interested in imitating any particular architectural style. Instead, it aims for inventive, diverse and unprecedented solutions, and for architectural form as result rather than anticipated intention.

The unit will be inspired and critiqued by international professionals from various disciplines including archaeology, engineering and architecture, history and theory, sculpture and painting.

Unit Staff

Peter Karl Becher established Studio Becher in London in 2007 after working for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Beijing (Bird’s Nest) and London. He studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Enric Miralles, Peter Cook, Mark Wigley and Cecil Balmond, as well as at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. He taught at London Metropolitan University, Kingston University and NTNU Trondheim before teaching at the AA.

Matthew Barnett Howland is co-founder of MPH Architects. He studied at Cambridge University and the Bartlett and has extensive teaching experience from Kingston University, London Metropolitan University, Cambridge and the University of East London. In 2004 he was awarded the RIBA Tutor Prize.