FreeMall
My thesis project builds on my 5th-year dissertation focusing on the privatisation of city centers and the alternative spaces created in response. Researching the spaces in autonomous, anarchist communites such as Exarchia in Athens, Greece allowed me to develop a community which could exist mostly as an isolated community within the urban landscape of Manchester.
An imagined scenario sharing many similarities to the murder of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a local homeless woman gets killed by security guards in the regnerated, privately owned Stretford Mall which then leads to city-wide riots demanding responsibility and change from authority. FreeMall envisions an anarchist squatters group occupying Stretford Mall and transforming it into a self-sustaining community. Using innovative and playful systems like a rainwater rollercoaster, FreeMall converts a car park into a network of hempcrete residential units and establishes a urban growing infrastructure. The project envisions a future where an urban community challenges authority and seeks to exist outside the market economy.
