The Civic Cash & Carry: (Revealing Diasporic Infrastructure in Charlton Riverside)
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Bolurin-bolurin-march-arch-2026-thesis.pdf
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16.47 MB
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82733266fd24d41c9673e87d8726277f
Author(s)
Adedipe, Bolurin Michael
Advisor(s)
Shieh, Rosalyne
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis argues that the cash-and-carry is a form of civic infrastructure, and that architectural authorship can emerge from operating within its logistical, and diasporic systems rather than replacing them. Situated in Charlton Riverside, an active industrial corridor along the River Thames now subject to large-scale regeneration, the project takes as its site a family-run African cash-and-carry—a wholesale grocery store serving businesses, institutions, and households across South East London. Through everyday operations such as stacking, shelving, loading, circulation, and informal gathering, the store supports social and economic life that exceeds what is typically acknowledged by planning frameworks. Despite functioning as a civic anchor for diasporic communities, its public role is largely absent from redevelopment narratives that treat the site as a plot awaiting replacement. Rather than proposing a masterplan or a resolved future state, the thesis documents, intervenes in, and extends this active system at a moment of pressure. Architectural work is carried out from inside the existing condition through a series of incremental, carefully calibrated operations: the reconfiguration of racking as structure and mezzanine, the replacement and unification of canopies and awnings to form shared thresholds, the exaggeration of signage and entrances, and the calibration of edges and circulation where interior and exterior, industrial and civic space intersect. These moves do not seek to formalize or aestheticize the everyday, but to make legible the civic capacity that already exists through use. By treating maintenance and adjustment as forms of design, the project reframes the cash-and-carry not as an informal anomaly or temporary use, but as a durable civic platform whose internal logics offer an alternative model for engaging sites of redevelopment without erasure.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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