Reversed Manchester
Personal Profile
I am an individual with an ongoing ambition to seek and overcome challenges to gain experiences, knowledge, and skills. Following my former academic and professional exposure across the UK, Switzerland and Bulgaria, I established various approaches to architectural design and developed a passion for creating regenerative, environmentally and socially just architecture.
Thesis Project: ‘Reversed Manchester’
What if the only option to survive was to seek refuge underground?
The progressive disconnection between the natural and built environment in the era of the Anthropocene has been a significant barrier to ecologically responsive developments. Evidence indicates the possibility of a chaotic future filled with cataclysmic natural disasters. In order to prepare for survival, humanity needs to adapt to new ways of living. To achieve this, a radical change in urban development is needed.
The 'Reversed Manchester' proposal includes a subterranean shelter masterplan, utilising the obsolete infrastructural remains from the coal mining industry. The project site is located in Manchester, UK, on top of a former coal mine: 'Bradford Colliery'. The proposal includes a network of building typologies at different levels below ground, utilising the mine shafts as connectivity points and an underground metro system built along the existing coal seams. The proposed building design features the first mix-use unit as per the initial phase of the subterranean masterplan development: a research and training centre for future survival.
The end of the thesis project illustrates humanity's return with a shifted mindset after hundreds of years of underground habitation. The return of the primitive hut marks the death of the anthropocentric era and the beginning of a new utopian future. The natural balance is restored, and once again, humans and nature coexist in harmony.
