This unit has worked on a live project in Treherbert in the Upper Rhondda Fawr, South Wales Valleys, UK. We worked alongside the community partnership group 'Welcome To Our Woods' (WTOW Ltd, 2020). We explored an “architecture of territories” for a designated site to enable and support the long-term vision and aspirations of WTOW Ltd in developing an ecological symbiosis between the landscape of Treherbert and its individuals and communities. The work is underpinned by the notion of the territory and the vision of WTOW Ltd as well as by the ethos presented in the feasibility study Skyline (Blake, 2019) and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. WTOW Ltd provided a brief open to scrutiny, exploration, and conceptualisation.

The Welsh Government agreed to transfer the stewardship of publicly owned forest land around Treherbert to the local community for a long period of time. WTOW Ltd is taking the lead in the community asset transfer process with the determination to establish an ecological and productive symbiotic relationship between the individuals and the communities of Treherbert and its landscape while providing “income, jobs, a place of social and cultural activity, and a home for nature” (Blake, 2019:7). Development is supported within the ethos of eco-sustainable development aiming to restore, protect, and enhance the biodiversity of the environment and reduce the carbon footprint of its community. WTOW Ltd has already acquired a site at the intersection between the transferred land, railway lines, and the town. Once, this site held the Rhondda Valley Brewery and now, WTOW intends to repurpose it as their “hub” to reach their vision.

This unit proposes to repurpose the site with an “architecture of territories”; an architecture that emerges from or within the notion of territory. It is defined by and able to influence the territory/ies intrinsic to its ecological and cultural dimensions and in particular to its relationship with the land and its people. An architecture understood as an active agent in the process of territorialisation and de/re-territorialisation; able to adapt, generate and react, influenced and influencing. In the first phase we interpreted Treherbert, the site and the given brief through the notion of territory/ies and associated processes assisted by key readings and the re-drawing of selected precedents through this particular lens. In the second phase, Treherbert and the site is re-territorialised (re-imagined) through proposing an architecture of territories. The outcomes from the first phase provided focus and uniqueness to each project explicit in the conceptualisation of the hub, spatial studies and representations.

Blake, C. 2019, Skyline. Report on the Feasibility Study Into Landscape-Style Community Land Stewardship in to the South Wales Valleys. The
Green Valley CIC.
Development Trusts association Wales, 2020, Community Asset Transfer in Wales, available at: https://dtawales.org.uk/ [Accessed: 30 October
2020]
Welsh Government, Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, 2015 available at https://futuregenerations.wales/about-us/futuregenerations-act/ [Accessed: 30 October 2020]
WTOW Ltd, 2020, Welcome to Our Woods – Community Partnership in Rhondda, available at: https://welcometoourwoods.org/ [Accessed: 30
October 2020]