Unit10_Design&Visualisation

This book is a publication based on the “Unit 10 - Scriptwriter’s Library” studio group of BA Architecture Year 2, from Leicester School Of Architecture | De Montfort University. This studio was idealized and runned by Eileen Mcgonigal in 2015.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the autors.

Every effort has been made to seek permission to reproduce those images whose copyright does not reside to the autors, and we are greatful to the individuals who have assisted in this task. Any omissions are entirely unintentional, and the details should be addressed to the editor.

Front cover image: Ana Teresa Correia Editor: Gabrielly de Souza Lima Support: Science Without Borders and De Montfort University

Unit10

Edinburgh Old Town

Design & Visualisation Eileen McGonigal Gabrielly de Souza Lima

2015

“it is the peculiar boast of Edinburgh, the circumstances on which its marvellous beauty so essentially depends, that its architecture is its landscape; that nature has done everything, has laid every foundation, and disposed of every lone of its rocks and its hills, as if she had designed it for the display of architecture.�

Edinburgh Review 1838

18 The city as Scripted Narrative

Edinburgh

and Old Town

Hidden Layers

14

Edinburtgh

10

Edinburtgh

Scriptwriter’s Library

Unit 10

Contents 24

54 70

Dunbar’s Close

Scenes

Experience

Photography & Project Credits

Continuity Tectonics

Site Scripting

42 78

Unit 10

Scriptwriter`s Library

Unit 10 was an architecture studio group interested in architecture as layers of meaning – from the cultural and the social to the physical and phenomenological aspects of place.

Place, culture, programme and event – the spaces that responded to human need and expression – are intrinsically related to architectural space and the city as a whole. The dense urban fabric of the Old Town of the city of Edinburgh was the area of focus for our investigation and interventions. Unit 10 started with a study visit to Edinburgh and the in depth study of context, where students learned to question the city in a new way and developed unique and personal approaches to architectural design.

The aim of this studio was to develop ideas through context investigation and focused on methods of creating a site-specific narrative within the urban fabric of Edinburgh. The city was examined in terms of the physical place and also the events

10 Unit 10 | Scriptwriter’s Library

within and the roles these play in the creation of architecture. This exploration process allowed the students to interpret the conditions of a site, recording this character in a series of site investigations and resulted in a considered individual architectural narrative. This narrative leaded to analysis of programmatic typologies through precedent study – both historical and contemporary.

Knowledge of both place and programme became the basis for strategic design proposals for buildings that are embedded within the city fabric, connect with everyday culture and yet respond to the new and original. These programmatic propositions was explored and tested through space, structure and material and represented through a range of drawing techniques from 2D drawings to 3D constructions. The buildings provide programme and space that both mirror and transcend their locale.

The world’s largest arts festival transforms the city of Edinburgh every August with thousands of performers on hundreds of stages all over the city. The festival was founded in 1947, just after sec-

ond World War, inviting performers without prejudice and regardless of nationality. Almost 60 years on, Edinburgh is no longer transformed for a mere 4 weeks. Instead, the festivals have grown into world leading celebrations. These events of international excellence in art, culture and science have become integral to and a catalyst for the city fabric and its identity.

The vehicle for our investigations was the design of a Scriptwriters Library, a building to preserve and promote the art, craft and history of writing for film, the stage, comedy, TV and radio exemplified in the Edinburgh Festival. In addition to becoming the home for a collection of scripts, the building intented to educate the public about the role of writers and promote the already existing vibrant scriptwriters culture for both national and international writers. The building, which was situated in the heart of the Old Town of Edinburgh, housed a writer’s library, an archive, a members club, meeting spaces, performance/seminar space, offices and a festival space.

Unit 10 | Scriptwriter’s Library 11

“Edinburgh isn’t so much a city, more a way of life... I doubt I’ll ever tire of exploring Edinburgh, on foot or in print.”

Ian Rankin

12 Unit 10 | Scriptwriter’s Library

13

Edinburgh

and Hidden Layers

Edinburgh is a unique city, marked by a long history of changes in its territory, in which all the quality of urban space is attributed to various forms of overlapping layers - layers of topography, time and occupation. The journey through the Royal Mile resumes each of these aspects, and represents this influence in the project. Edinburgh as a background for the Scriptwriter’s Library offers a dynamic landscape, where each corner shows a new scene of the city, with new materials, views and people.

The city is marked by Edinburgh Castle, built on a rock of volcanic origin, and its urban development occurs along the axis between the castle and holyrood place (Royal Mile). After the unification of the Scottish parliament with England, Edinburgh lost its political importance but remained an important economic and cultural center. The city is known worldwide by the Edinburgh Festival which takes place during three weeks in August.

14 Unit 10 | Scriptwriter’s Library

and Old Town

The Old Town of Edinburgh stretches from the Castle in the north to Holyrood Palace in the south along 5 consecutive streets – Castlehill, the Lawnmarket, the High Street, Canongate and Abbey Strand – down the ridge of the extinct volcano. The Old Town retains the characteristic of a medieval city and is a World Heritage site. Its densely packed urban form with narrow closes is in direct contrast to the planned formal streets and open spaces of the New Town to the east.

18 Old Town

Old Town has preserved its medieval structure and many of its buildings of the Protestant Reformation. One end is closed by the castle and the main artery of small streets called closes or wynds.

There are also large squares that mark important places like Saint-Giles Cathedral. Other notable places of interest are the Royal Museum of Scotland, Surgeons’ Hall and numerous underground streets, which are relics of ancient building classes.

During the thirteenth century the population of Old Town had approximately 80,000 residents.

However, it was falling with time reaching 4,000 inhabitants, today has about 20,000 inhabitants in various parts of Old Town. The population began to build buildings out of the defensive wall of the castle, the need for housing has grown and tragically, many of these buildings were destroyed by the Great Fire of 1824; the reconstruction of these original foundations led to changes in terrain, which led to creation of several passages and streets underneath Old Town.

Edinburgh

A city as Scripted Narrative

Analysing a city is not merely a quantifiable exercise. A more thorough understanding of the city comes from also understanding how it is affected by the qualitative – the everyday activities that occur within its culture and the special events which may only impose on the city at certain times, but which also play a role in giving the city its unique character. The key focus of Unit 10 was the understanding of “place” and the way in which an architectural narrative can be derived from the analysis and experience of particular place.

Understanding a city fully could take a lifetime of study. In the short time we had, the unit focused on a fragment of the city, Dunbar’s Close, within the Old Town of the city. Edinburgh’s Old Town offers a rich context for research and analysis – layers of historical city fabric and their resultant patterns, architectural forms , typologies – historical solutions to architectural problems, materiality.

24 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

Unit 10 believes in the importance of understanding the historical narrative of a site AND its sense of place before proposing any changes.

The analysis we undertook was related to ideas of collage, where we looked at the site over time, understanding the presence of the development of the historical fabric AND the cultural memory – finding the scripted narrative of the site. With this understanding, we then explored the spatial and material potentials of the site, their subsequent possibilities and limitations and their role in the future city. This process, where the students tried to engage creatively with the fabric of the city will be a process of abstraction and spatial exploration through drawings and models.

26 Photographic Narrative

Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative 27

City Scripting. The drawing is an overlay of the identity of Old Town, it shows the historic urban tissue, which explain today’s; spatial qualities that have survived in time, such as buildings and those which serve as landmarks and the closes; gardens part of Geddes’ project of a network in the city, of which Dunbar’s Close is one; and today’s layering, including souvenir shops and the concentration of the crowd near the castle during the festival.

Henrique Delarue

28 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

29

30 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

32 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

33

Francesca Bufano

“I’ve never been to a city like Edinburgh. It had such a strong personality and unique sence of place from the moment you entered. The sence of history was apparent from the moment we stepped out of the station and it is obvious why it has been an inspirational place for so many people.”

Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative 35

“The most interesting parts of the city were the closes. They had a constricting feeling as you walked through and once on the other side they opened up into courtyards and it felt almost like you’d left the city as all the noise from the street fell away behind you.”

Robyn Carter

38 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

39

“Não é que se esteja misturando arquitetura e raízes, o que fazemos é dar continuidade. Não que as raízes tenham acabado e daí então começamos a modernidade, mas trata-se de um casamento das tradições com a arquitetura moderna. Há uma evolução. É simplesmente manter uma continuidade.”

“It’s not that we’re mixing architecture and roots, what we do is to continue. Not that the roots had finished and then we begin to modernity, but it is an association of tradition and modern architecture. There is an evolution. It’s simple maintain continuity.”

Ricardo Legorreta

40 Edinburgh | The City as Scripted Narrative

Dunbar’s Close Site Scripting

The site for the Scriptwriters Library is Dunbar’s Close on the Canongate. The location previously named Irelands Close, would originally have been the house and garden of a canon linked with the abbey. As the area prospered, burgesses – freemen - of the city built large single family dwellings on these long narrow plots with gardens behind. The site gets its name from the Dunbar family, including the writer David Dunbar, who lived there for many generations. The Dunbar’s were a titled family, the Lairds of Leuchold, who also owned a country estate at Linlithgow, outside of Edinburgh.

In the eighteenth century, in the time of the famous Scottish poet Robert Burns, Dunbar’s Close was famous for its oyster cellar where the rich went for dinner.

42 Dunbar’s Close | Site Scripting

The garden we see today was originally created by Sir Patrick Geddes, a Scottish biologist who was one of the first scientists to make a connection between the environment and health. He lived in the Old Town on the Royal Mile and designed a network of inner city gardens throughout the area. It is laid out in the style of a seventeenth century physic garden – a garden to promote health and wellbeing. The first British physic garden was created in Oxford in 1621, based on Italian designs. The area of Holyrood would have had a whole community of gardeners - the Monastery had an infirmary garden, there was a nursery at Holyrood House and there was a seed merchant at Blackfriars. Monastery infirmary gardens growing plants and herbs such as sage, rosemary, mint, thyme, borage to make ointments, cordials, infusions and purgatives.

The garden eventually fell into disrepair until it was restored by the Mushroom Trust in 1978. The garden today grows plants typical of a physic garden and laid out in traditional pattern.

44 Dunbar’s Close | Site Scripting

The site has a prime location, behind a secret garden of 18th century, hidden beyond a Close, a passage like so many others in Edinburgh. This context reminds a strong sense of identity of the place, as a continuation of the journey by the Royal Mile, but away from traditional tourists’ attention, as a refuge from all dramaticity and excitement of downtown. It is a public space and meeting place, where the local visitor find privacy and tranquility to rest or read a book.

45

“The garden is personal, it cannot be seen from the street, it is apart, yet belonging in history. This is not a place of encounters, it is a place for the self.”

Henrique Delarue

Dunbar’s Close | Site Scripting 51

Não é que se esteja misturando arquitetura e raízes, o que

fazemos é dar continuidade. Não que as raízes tenham acabado e daí então começamos a modernidade, mas trata-se de um casamento das tradições com a arquitetura moderna. Há uma evolução. É simplesmente manter uma continuidade.

“It’s not that we’re mixing architecture and roots, what we do is to continue. Not that the roots had finished and then we begin to modernity, but it is an association of tradition and modern architecture. There is an evolution. It’s simple maintain continuity.”

Ricardo Legorreta

Scenes

The site scripting drawings have attempted to understand the relationship between a specific place, itself and it’s surroundings and to investigate in minute detail the distinct qualities of a specific place.

This process of exposing and exploiting the memories of a situation tries to interpret the meanings and construct an additional layer of consequence that gives new value to the place. It is an interpretation of the potential of place - not just new spaces in a building, but a new layer of place with a relationship to the old and a series of new “places” or “scenes”.

This process reveals the true character of the place - it shows how the found qualities have stimulated something new, something that in a way for the moment completes the place. Shelia O’Donnell of the architects O’Donnell and Tuomey refers to this process as “applying a twenty-first century layer of archaeology”

At the moment, the focus is not to design a functioning building, but instead to concentrate upon a specific site, and design the relationship between the three-dimentional nature of the interior, the building, the streets and the town.

54 Scenes

“All our projects begin with an interpretation of the specifics of programme and a response to the place we are adding to, either as a series of sketches or a model exploring a building form.

A dialogue then begins about a ‘feeling’ of the project, its material presence and its language of construction. This method is useful because it provides a framework in which to take decisions and a structure that can be referred to” Jonathan Sergison & Stephen Bates “Architecture is not made with the brain” AA Publications

55

56

Scenes 57

58

Integration between architecture and place, textures and spaces.

Scenes 59

60 Scenes

Exploring relations Architecture_Context Materials_Vegetation Inner_Outer Spaces_Views.

“...(A Place) can retain a remembrance of the former function and value; it has a memory of its previous purpose engrained within its very structure. The exploitation and deveploment of this can create a composite of meaning and consequence.�

Sally Stone and Graeme Brooker, 2004

Plan_Section Selecting views according to space use.

62 Scenes

Section_Collage Space Quality - Architectural Identity - Program 63

64

Spacial collage texture and materiality Scenes 65

66

Spacial collage places - materiality 67

68

Spacial collage tragectory_views_materiality Scenes 69

Experience

Continuity Tectonics

70

“it is the peculiar boast of Edinburgh, the circumstances on which its marvellous beauty so essentially depends, that its architecture is its landscape; that nature has done everything, has laid every foundation, and disposed of every lone of its rocks and its hills, as if she had designed it for the display of architecture.�

Edinburgh Review 1838

Experience Continuity Tectonics 71

72

Planning Exercise

Experience Continuity Tectonics 73

74 Experience Continuity Tectonics

Final Section - building related to place 75

“I compose the architecture by seeking an essential logic inherent in the place.

The architectural pursuit implies a responsibility to find and draw out a site’s formal characteristcs, along with its cultural traditions, climate, and natural environmental features, the city structure that form its backdrop, and the living patterns and age-old customs that people will carry into the future. Without sentimentality, I aspire to transform place through architecture to the level of the abstract and universal.�

Tadao Ando

76 Experience Continuity Tectonics

77

Photography & Project Credits

Photography Correia, Ana Teresa 4, 19,25,43 Delarue, Henrique 14,15,16 left, 20, 22, 23, 46 right, 47 Lima, Gabrielly Contents,12,13, 16 right, 17,21,46 left, 48,49,50, 52.

78 Photography & Design Credits

Design Images Bufano, Francesca 35, 64, 65,68-69,74-75

Delarue, Henrique 28-29, 55, 56-57,70-71,72-73

Carter, Robyn 36-37

Huzeifa, Mulla 1, 26-27

Castro, Tatiana 38-39

De Souza Lima, Gabrielly 41, 44-45, 51, 53, 58-59, 62,63,77.

Daher, Ana Clara 27

60,

Rrenja, Sara 30-31,32-33, 66, 67, Photography & Design Credits 79

80

81