The Rebirth Tower
Architecture: MArch
Oluwatobi Iwuoha
Year 01
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Project
This process has been produced along with a set of architectural drawings in support of the first year Intervening in the city project portfolio.
Through multi-layered material testing, joint production and climatic modelling, the design develops a mass-timber intervention at Frobisher Crescent acting as a primary anchor, alongside distal nodes that extend the tower’s reach through the Barbican. Wrapped in an experimental, bio-degradable seed-paper ‘bio skin,’ the intervention embraces material vulnerabilities and weathering as performance, translating complex environmental and tectonic investigations into an active civic commons that reframes Brutalist spatial anxiety into a restorative public ritual over time.
Spatial Concept
The Cephalopod; my proposed intervention is conceived as a living architectural system constructed from bio-based, gradually degrading materials. As the tower weathers over time, it provides the substrate to grow a distributed planting system woven into the Barbican’s highwalks and circulation network, spaces identified through the study as sites of both discomfort and calm.
This planting system acts as a soft intervention within the Barbican’s quieter, more isolated spaces, allowing those who value their tranquillity to continue experiencing them, while offering others a gentler, more inviting reading of these environments. Beyond its role as a third space, the planting system also functions as an intuitive navigational tool, responding to participants’ concerns around wayfinding.
