Interim reviews are taking place on Monday – visiting critics etc…
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As part of the brief the students were asked to undertake an ethical transaction – James and Sarahs studio group took part in a role play exercise . Each student had to convince/sell their transaction to their partner.
As part of the site analysis Laura and I have asked our two studio groups to explore the sites through diagrams, words and photos with aim to produce a beautiful book.
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Now we are asking the students to explore ethical consumption within the city centre… “It is now 2020 and due to radical changes in attitudes to consumption, various consumption dominated public spaces in the city centre are now able to be re-thought through. Manchester City Council has agreed that some of these sites may be used for purposes of ethical consumption. Site A MARKET STREET and THE ARNDALE Site B KING STREET and ST.ANNES PASSAGE Site C ST.ANNES SQUARE and BARTON ARCADE Site D EXCHANGE SQUARE and THE TRIANGLE For the consumed bodies project we are asking you to propose the following:
A Create a group site strategy based on ethical/sustainable consumption B Produce a 1:1 detail of an ethical transaction C Create a timeline for the development of your site D Your consumed bodies must: 1. actively engage the citizens of Manchester with the issue of sustainable and ethical consumption 2. have a minimum of three floors with some additional half landings 3. contain at least two volumetric space which is open to different levels or half levels 4. contain at least one other function beyond ethical consumption (agreed with your studio tutor) 5. contain a simple designed staircase which is correctly worked through and demonstrated in 3-dimensions 6. contain a series of outdoor spaces for the continuous urban production of food 7. develop a relationship to the scale of the human body and to the commercial scale of the landscape of shopping
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To end the term with a small amount of competition each studio group set upon the task of constructing four different bridges. Each bridge building team were given diagrammatic and limited plan and section/elevation so that little or few extras were the added during the construction and testing stage. The teaching assistants were also involved in the making stages with staff on hand for guidance.
The contained bodies garment might have challenged, co-existed, re-defined or might have complemented the environment surrounding the body. This brief continues the exploration of urban agriculture, by jumping to the small architectural scale with the starting point of a micro building and the larger scale exploration of the production and growing of food, based underneath the Mancunian Way between the Cambridge Street and Princess Road roundabouts.
The Mancunian Way is a monument to the bold, utopian thinking and planning of the 1960’s. It was seen as a means of making cities more efficient and better connected, and of separating vehicular movement from that of people. However, like so many other infrastructure projects of the period, there were unforeseen consequences including the severance of large parts of the city from each other or from the shops and facilities in the centre, as well as the creation of extensive lost or ‘non-space’ beneath and within the road system. Today, massive amounts of time and money are spent trying to overcome the problems this creates: trying to find useful purposes for ‘lost spaces’ and to make our cities more connected and safe. In an age of concern about the impact of human activities, and especially our cities, on the environment, there is huge potential for such spaces to contribute to adapting our cities to climate change, protecting biodiversity or producing food.
It is absolutely necessary for each student to understand space and place in relationship to the human body. An appreciation of this relationship will help them start to interpret and comprehend how humans function within the immediate and surrounding environment and develop a people-centred approach to design.
The project is run in jointly between the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture to allow [a number of] architecture and landscape architecture students to work together for some of the time.
The project must:
- contain space/s for economic production
- contain space/s for food/agricultural production
- have an additional function
- show the sequence of linked spaces [with views into, onto and beyond with an entrance, exit and gathering space] communicating this through perspectives
- make reference to or be inspired by your contained bodies
- respond to the site by inhabiting, cohabiting, morphing within or without, be a parasite to or just plain live within and around the Mancunian Way
- create an extended architectural landscape which has interior, exterior and material qualities
- consider climate change
Before leaving for Amsterdam the students were asked to research some dutch architects. This took place in groups and were presented within the 12 studio groups – the strogest presentation was chosen from each group and representedwithin the studio and humanities lectures prior to leaving for Amsterdam. Here are a selection of the presentations in the PetchaKucha style…
01_rietveld 02_NOX 04_unstudio 05_De Zwarte Hond 08_J.Duiker 12_onl
We have just returned from a busy trip to trip to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. Lots of walking, smiling, drizzly rain and of course inspirations.
an architecural and agricultural six pack!
breathing cleaner air!
distorted views of food statistics!
cramming all of the 180 students into one studio room is always difficult but when there are lots of first years transformed into ’contained bodies’ then you bring people togther. The reveiews took place on the 18th October.
the first session in studio are always a little bit of an unknown so Laura and I decided to ask the students to make a start on their contained body project.
It is absolutely necessary as architecture students for you to understand space in relationship to the human body, so that you can start to interpret and comprehend how our bodies function within the immediate and surrounding environment. Your contained body might challenge, might co-exist, might re-define or might complement this environment. But most of all, with the challenges of climate change we could start to grow our own food within and around our bodies, within and around our cities. As we travel through the academic year you will acknowledge a common theme of urban agriculture, food production and the notion of edible cities. This project is the starting point.
Your contained body must address ALL of the following:
01 be a garment which allows free movement for the wearer
02 demonstrate a thorough consideration of your materials
03 be beautifully crafted
04 be worn and exhibited by you during the fashion show/review
05 be made from recycled, reused, reclaimed, or remanufactured materials
06 be transportable and be fully planted
07 be able to be placed into a specific urban condition or set of urban conditions defined by you (and agreed with your tutor)
Shedding Around in Hulme Park, Manchester
occupying the arches
masterplanning the abandoned Gaythorn Estate – vertical farming and allotments
a new space for urban agriculture
Marketing the site propositions…
the site masterplan ideas…
elevation of the dwelling…
Coca Cola have caused crises in India.
Communities are experiencing severe water shortages due to ground water extractions for the bottling plants.
Coca Cola have distributed their solid waste, now proven to be toxic, to local farmers.
The anti-Coca Colanisation hood design incororates elements of an Indian headscarf with the appearance of a crushed can, and is worn in protest of the corporation drinking India dry.
Dominic Patel, Lawrence Cox, Karl Jefferson and Kristina Tumelyte.
A sketchbook is one of those objects you should probably always carry around with you, however large or small. For practicality a small one is usually compact but the best ones are the sketchbooks that you have made – scraps of waste paper found by the guillotine and lovingly bound together, a collection of old postcards beautifully drawn on and collated in a box, a concertina folded treasure trove of sketches on a huge sheet of paper which you keep on coming back to, an old book… in whatever format you choose, you must develop your own unique way of collating your sketches. There is an expectation that your sketching will be lively and vibrant, but most of all we want you to start to enjoy creating these individual studies of the everyday lives of the cities you live in and visit. Additionally the need to experiment is also a necessity. Not just experimenting in the medium of choice but in the way that you sketch in terms of angles, time frames, hierarchy, intention etc… You must attempt to develop new skills, abilities and reactions to the city by repeated efforts!
- sketches of everyday life
- diagramming of public spaces
- sketches of systems of movement
