ABOUT OUR PROJECT
We are a group of Masters of Architecture students at the University of Reading. As part of our studies we have identified a site that gives us an opportunity to explore new ideas - working with communities to better reflect local needs, create communal visions and inform new inclusive spaces.
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We also look to identify opportunities for new space uses across our cities. This is part of an idea to create sustainable communities, using city centre sites to create opportunity for employment and to renew and reinvigorate industrial sites.
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Weston Island site was identified as a possible site for us to explore and study these topics. There has already been some initial discussions about this site and its future and we are interested to understand the key issues that interest the local community so these ideas could inform the potential for the site and the surrounding communities - what could be enhanced on the site, what are the challenges that may exist to move through or around the site? How can this site be made more accessible for all? How could a future use such as an arts quarter reinvent this site and offer local communities opportunity to work, meet and engage with the River and the natural landscape?
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Our Organisations
University of Reading School of Architecture
Piers Taylor - Invisible Studio
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Project Collaborators
Georgie Grant - Onion Collective
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THE PROGRAMME
This project has been set up as a Design Studio module of our Post Graduate studies. This project will run from January to May 2021. As a part of this, our studies and development of the project will follow the programme highlighted below.
STAGE 1​
Territory (defining where we will impact) + Change (defining what we will change). When we work in a place, it is important to establish what our context is, beyond any specific site that we might be working on. We will hold on to the notion of ‘territory’ throughout the course of the project, and develop and re-develop an idea of how wide a context we can affect and make change with architecture. When we use the word territory, we mean:
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Social Territory. What is the economic and social context within which we are working? What are the ecosystems that support these structures? Could and should they be wider, or more local? How can we find out about and engage with these issues? Who lives and works in our immediate and wider territory? How can we begin to understand the consequences of our architecture on these people and this place? How do we work in such a way that we engage with issues that people care about, and make a difference?
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Physical Territory. What is the geography of our territory, and why is it important that we understand it? Towns and regions usually have socially constructed boundaries, so what is the ‘actual’ boundary? How can we work with rainfall, sunlight, wind, geology and other issues? Does regional identity and difference matter? How is it different now than in the past, and how should we engage with this issue in the future? What are the connections to other places (both near and far) like? How can we knit into and affect these connections?
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Architecture can be part of a process of enabling change. It can’t do it by itself, but can only do it by being of a wider system, which is what we will have established in Stage 1. Next, we need to be able to define what is we want to change. Is it that a town or neighbourhood is suffering because of a lack of specific resources, or connections, or interconnections? Is there a shortage of a specific type of building such as housing? Or are there skill shortages, or limited employment opportunities? How might our building be part of a system of making change to help address these issues? We will work with stakeholders who will help understand these issues, and help us reframe ways of seeing architecture that go beyond buildings, to explore ideas of consequences.
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STAGE 2​
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Defining how we will do it (Strategy) + Designing Our Design Process + Defining what our Buildings Are? Once we know what we want to change, the first phase of design is developing a strategy for how our architecture might help make this change. Again, we will work with stakeholders that will help us understand how to know what to do, and how to build a socially and financially sustainable case for it.
Stage 1 suggests important new tools we need to develop as designers in a changing world, and once we develop these skills, we can then design buildings to sit within the social, geographic and economic context we have defined. However, we are keen that you also develop new ways of designing, and making buildings. We are keen that you explore participatory design, where instead of a lone architect designing everything themselves, you develop frameworks for participation where others can contribute and feed in to the process of design and making. We are keen that you can articulate how you will do this, and develop your own clear methodologies that will challenge architectural conventions around design.
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In the knowledge of what our building needs to do, and how we need to do it, now, we can begin to define what our building is. But, if we are interested in a new manner of architecture, how will we represent and communicate this? What stories will we tell about it? How will we understand it? How will describe it? How will ‘making’ inform what we do? In the knowledge of how we want to make our buildings, how might we best procure these buildings?
In this stage the response to the brief to the issues identified and outlined in stage 1 will be considered and addressed through architectural propositions.
Meet The Team
Abdul Alothman
Ethan Cherrett
Gina Bugten Dinesen
Kim Pearce
Luke Maguire
Sellasie Humado
STAGE 3​
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Demonstrating how it has made a difference – impact Post occupancy evaluation. Finally, how will we know our architecture has ‘worked’? Even if we can’t necessary discover this ourselves during this programme, how could we? What timeframe are we interested in? How will we measure the issues that have changed? And how will we disseminate this information?
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This idea of moving through the stages of a project and how it builds towards an architecture is part of the proposed studio. We position that the architecture is not just what is the experience of the building , but part of a continuum from the idea at stage 1 defining the territory both in physical and intellectual terms. This is determined by the client needs and the constraints of the brief created and the physical site and context. It carries onto the predicted change that the project will effect and then moves through the implementation stages, the making stage , the inhabitation of the building.
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The final stage , is about demonstrating the impact of the building and is very important, this is about the success and relevance of the project . This final stage is about critical appraisal of the project – in relationship to its defined social and physical territories. The project needs to exist within this set of stages from predicting impact of a scheme using the triple bottom line of value. These value measurements should be predicted at the start and measured on completion. Various tools can be used to ensure that these values are built into the evaluation of a project.