Accrington Town Centre Today I was invited to ‘infiltrate’ the Accrington Live Project for the second time.  This brief is unusual in live-project terms because it emerged out of the project work that Studio 5 (co-ordinated by Carolyn Butterworth) carried out in 2005-6, which involved interactive/conceptual art based surveys and the display fo their ongoing projects in public space in the town and proposals that considered public space.  The work that last years students (I being one of them) completed was exhibited in a shop, council offices and a terrace in an Accrington housing regeneration area.  Claire Joyce of Mid-Pennine Arts (who had been involved in the studio through Carolyn) pushed this publicity and momentum forward with a view to linking it to Mid-Pennine’s initiatives.  The links that were formed and the interest that was generated led to the Council becoming attracted to the Sheffield live-projects.

This live-project aims to meet a brief set by Elevate East Lancashire (which is a government body in charge of te regeneration of the area – thanks Richard!), which was informed by the radical nature of the proposals for Accrington that the studio produced.  In this Live Project the group have developed their research through a market stall and events set up in Accrington Town Centre and also through a series of contacts with local businesses, shops, residents, arts and community groups; some of which had sprung from the previous year’s studio project and some that had been developed through visiting the town and contacting stakeholders directly. The market stall was chosen as it was considered to be an important situation in the town as it was a focal point, with historic importance and most importantly, without thresholds; their active research became very public. They have made fantastic connections in many different forms, some of which I mentioned in my previous blog about what live projects are trying to achieve. 

What I found particularly interesting about today’s meeting was the questioning of what their role was as a live project (in relation to what role the profession would have with the same brief), what they could acheive in six weeks and what their skills were, both as an individula and collectively.  Their negotiation seemed to end in an understanding that they could not solve problems as they did not necessarily have the time period of knowledge of highways engineering etc to do so, but they had made relationships within the town and got a bery personal/relational view of the activity and desires within the area; this could be filtered to become an ambitious and quite radical approach to public space.  However, they acknowledged the temptation to revert to more traditional forms of masterplanning where they dealt with issues of where to place the bus station etc.  This seemed to be due to the form of representation they were initially using (large scale maps etc) and from some conversations with people that focused on pragmatic concerns.  It is their intention to produce a booklet of ideas for the town, which is currently being developed out of their ‘alternative surveys’ and public interventions and further research into public space.

Please click on the link above for the updated programme which outlines the order of events at the Sheffield Platform, 23 – 25 October 2006. Events and venues are subject to change, a confirmed timetable will be discussed on the opening night.

The Inconspicuous Yellow Office looks forward to welcoming our guests and participants on Monday evening and hope you have a safe journey to Sheffield.

Monday 23 October 2006

18.00 Yellow Talks in the IYO office, Arts Tower floor 17

• University of Sheffield, Inconspicuous Yellow Office
• Glas, Florian Kossak & Tatjana Schneider
• Atelier D’Architecture Autogeree, Constantin Petcou & Doina Petrescu
• Electro Works, Alan Deadman
• George Lovett (TBC)

20.00 Opening night meal, East One Restaurant

21.00 Drinks, Brown Bear Pub

Tuesday 24 October 2006

Re-living the live projects

09.30 Introduction to the day in the IYO office, Arts Tower floor 17

10.30 Games, Walks and Workshop. Workshops will take place to investigate and debate various aspects of Live Projects, with the intention of making a magazine page which describes the outcomes of these debates. Magazine pages will be collated to create a full magazine which will be distributed at a later date. Lunch will be taken on site.

17.00 Groups return from sites to the IYO office, Arts Tower floor 17.

A live (project): Big & Small Conversation

17.45 Meet at Vestry Hall, Sharrow

18.00 Buffet

18.45 Presentation: IYO

19.00 Presentations: Kathrin Bohm, Public Works and Prue Chiles, BDR.

19.10 Presentations: Sam Vardy, GM Products; Carolyn Butterworth, University of Sheffield; Colin Havard, Sharrow Community Forum.

19.50 Break

20.00 Presentations: Constantin Petcou, AAA; Pierre Jambé, BRUSK.

20.10 Presentations: Rosie Parnell, University of Sheffield; Mark Kingsley; Teresa Hoskyns, University of Brighton.

20.40 Hat Led Discussion

21.30 Close

Wednesday 25 October 2006

09.30 Group work to complete magazine pages

10.30 New Lives to Projects (closing session: feedback on workshops and discussions on the future aspects of Live Projects)

12.30 Close

Please click on the link below for a pdf of the bio’s for the hit-list of key players for live-projects and alternative practice:

contributor_bios.pdf

The predominant interest in this project is the obvious failings of what can be deemed as ‘typical practice’.  Five years ago a school was designed that failed to acknowledge the general requirements of those that use the spaces.  “Working on Tapton” is approaching this issue by directly involving the users of the space, acquiring their input through a number of exercises that contribute to design solutions, but also their appreciation of the architecture.  This level of ‘consultation’ is not typical architecture and choreographing such involvement is no mean feat.  When carrying out games, plays and treasure hunts (see the Hunters Bar School Project – previously posted) with 4 year olds, the response can perhaps be easier to predict.  At Tapton encouraging interest and participation from students in their mid to late teens is a different ball game and perhaps often overlooked in typical architectural practice. 

The school is ‘owned’ by Interserve plc, a services, maintenance and building group.  The teachers and pupils are ‘tenants’.   The involvement of the tenants in moulding their immediate environment can only prove beneficial to their enjoyment of the architecture.  The ‘ownership’ of the project is also interesting to note.  Most commonly live-projects have two timescales.  Firstly, A six-week period where university students ‘own’ a project progressing it through a stage or number of stages, and secondly an indeterminate period that continues on beyond the students’ involvement when the project may or may not survive in the hands of the client, user and any other participants.  This ‘ownership’ of a project is key to its survival.  In the case of Tapton School, ten students and 1 tutor have been involved for 3 ½ weeks and will continue for another 2 ½ as contribution to their academic progress and education.  The impact of their work will depend on the school and Interserve’s ownership of the project.  A third ‘ownership’ or timescale is that of the involved school pupils, as the classroom sessions contribute to their education and curriculum.  Hopefully their inclusion will ensure the profile of the project is retained once the university students have moved on.

 

As part of IYO’s ‘adopt a live project’ scheme, I was kindly allowed to sit in on a current running live project here at the School of Architecture in Sheffield.

Following on from last years live-project of the same name, this year sees a new group of Sheffield M.Arch students take up the mantle of pushing SYNP into new fields of possibility.

The initial dilemma given by the client Alan Simpson was ‘What if South Yorkshire was a National Park?’ The immense scale and utopian nature of this live-project is one element that makes it stand out from many others. It raises the issue of size and scope for the live-project, and asks the questions; Are there any limits regarding size of task and time allocated to any given live-project? and Is there risk of students being exploited?

SYNP has been given credibility by last year’s ideas/research document and is now being considered by local and regional policy makers.

This year sees the team develop last year’s work by taking some of the principles and translating them into spatial strategies for specific areas of
South Yorkshire, as well as communicating the live project to a wider audience than before (communities/local businesses/government agencies).

One device the team this year are going to use is a ‘road trip’ that runs along a pre-determined line (transect) across South Yorkshire. This transect takes into account the current conditions and opportunities available for a potential SYNP spatial strategy. This will enable the live-project team to provide evidence of the effectiveness of the principles, and test via case-studies the benefit of deploying SYNP across the region of South Yorkshire.

Please leave your comments here, if you are involved in this project or would like to raise a question about this specific live-project to be answered by the SYNP live-project team themselves.

As part of an overall strategy to re-create the outdoor play spaces for the children at Hunters Bar Infant School, this Live Project intends to create a series of devices to help include the children in the design process. Due to the level of awarenss of a childs surrounding being extremely limited, such devices need to increase this awareness to then begin to encourage a process of relfection to draw out design proposals.

However, the term ‘devices’ is an unnecessarily architectural term for what the group are trying to do. The first ‘device’ was a play in which King Bertiys magical treasure had disappeared, and the children needed to find it! By looking for the treasure and then describing where they found it, the children could begin to think about the spaces around them. The treasure was then used in a variety of other games to help think about what changes could be made to the play areas to make them better.

The intention of the groups work is to empower the children to take a propositional role in the re-designing of their play spaces, which will encourage a futuer sense of ownership within the space.

Please see the comments section for updates to how the project progresses, and please feel free to add your own comments on what the group are up to…

A

The client’s role would seem to be pretty much fixed when it comes to live-projects. It is the role that is highlighted by most as making the live-project different from a studio project. But what happens when this is challenged? What happens if…

• the student/students become the client?
• the tutor/tutors become the client?
• the client becomes a student?
• the client becomes a tutor?

IYO are exploring this condition by using ‘office hats’ which are switched throughout the project’s duration. Will this end in complete chaos? or perhaps something else?> Watch this space…

Practice

In General Practice is an action or performance, but the term also implies a method of action, in the sense of habitual, customary, or routine. A professional practice, then, is the customary performance of professional activities.

Architectural Practice emerges through complex interactions among interested parties, from which the documents for a future building emerge.

Page 4 Chapter 1Architecture: The story of PracticeDana Cuff.
London

1. We divided these previous projects into a set of objective categories:

• Tutors
• Clients
• Date
• Size/ Location
• Types

2. Use of Sliding scale to form intricate ‘DNA’ strands on a specific Live Project.

Note: Slidng scales were reflected by personal opinion.

We tried to define some terms for Alternative Practice. Please feel free to fill up the board for “What is Typical Practice?“

Location: Studio, 17th Floor Art Tower

This would be an alternative thought influencing the traditional practice. Before feminism has been concerned and developed, should we consider this is an alternative practice during this period?So perhaps alternative practice is a process of development or investigation of new thoughts:

in organizing the material is the tracing of a number of different historical trajectories: the development of feminism over time, the shifting role of feminists in architectural history and the changes taking place in women’s role as architects, while at the same time aiming to charify the key conceptual points and theoretical concerns which define the paths of each trajectory and form the areas of their overlap. Another difficulty has been to create a framework which is simple yet complex enough to relate the different forms of architectural practice – history, theory and design.

Gender, Space and Architecture Chapter 26 Page 225endell, J., B. Penner, et al., Eds. (2000).
London, Routledge. P.S. there are more questions and discussions about feminism and architecture in this resources.

Could this approach to questioning architectural practice be appropriate for our study of alternative practices, in that a relevant (and even contraversial) comparison or interpretation can be utilised to question what we take for granted?

Why is it that the stable building has to be the only ‘raison d’être of architectural practice, the only origin and recognised end?

Why, in architectural education, is such an emphasis given to the final product? Why is such pressure exerted on the students to produce (ejaculate) visible, even spectacular, completed projects?

Why do all students have to reach, after a carefully monitored process, a male-like orgasm (only one will be accepted) by the end of each studio?

How many successful, male-like architectural orgasms must a student be able to exhibit in his/her portfolio before he/she can possibly be recognised as a (male) architect?

Why are we inclined to attribute so little (if any) meaning and value to all the preliminary investigations and design ‘foreplay’, and this only to the extent we think they will lead us safely (though, not prematurely) to the predefined and prescribed final climax? Where might such students’ pleasure (if there is any left) come from? Will such pleasure spring from a labyrinthine design process, from some apparently insignificant details or singular moments, or will it result from its final achievement and absolute physical exhaustion?

ed. Rüedi K., Wigglesworth S. and McCorquodale D. (1996) Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary. London, Black Dog Publishing