F E AT U R E Peter Durant and Micheline Mannion
Micheline Mannion Studio is a London-based design studio, with work including art direction, identities, publications, exhibitions and digital and a special interest in exhibition design.
Creating your ideal place Ebbsfleet Garden City comes to life with public engagement in action...
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he largest of ten Healthy New Town pilots, Ebbsfleet Garden City pledged to create ‘radical but realisable’ proposals through its Landscape Design Ideas Competition, run by the Landscape Institute in 2018. As a result, Ebbsfleet Development Corporation (EDC) commissioned Micheline Mannion Studio to create a public information and engagement display in Bluewater Shopping Centre. Shoppers were asked ‘what is your ideal place?’ and given an invitation to ‘create your ideal place’. The display was based on the winning ‘HALO’ entry for the Landscapes for Healthy Living competition, led by Bradley Murphy Design (Landscape, Summer 2018) and the highly commended design by Churchman Landscape Architects for its New Landscape Guides to Ebbsfleet project. The stand’s exterior invited the public to create their ideal place by considering what their natural environment should contain: a place to connect? Explore? Discover? Play?
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Exercise? Socialise? Create? Relax? Learn? or Grow Food? The interior contained detailed information on the Ebbsfleet Garden City project and other competition shortlist entries, via the lightbox and iTable. The display’s drum interior included an 8 metre panoramic of HALO’s proposals, alongside an ideas wall. Prompts and postcards, based on the nine themes, were included for feedback, with an iPad digital survey, creating an environment for visitors to reflect, express and create their sense of an ideal place. The stand was on display from January 9 to February 5, 2019. Team Exhibition Design: Micheline Mannion and Peter Durant Competition winner HALO = Model for Growing a Healthy Infrastructure Landscape Practice: Bradley Murphy Design (Team Leader) Architects & Masterplanners: JTP Engineers: Peter Brett Associates Artist: Sebastien Boyesen
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1. Overview of the display showing the drum interior with the HALO panoramic visual. 2. iTable showing shortlisted entries, plus details of what is happening in Ebbsfleet Garden City 3. Create Your Ideal Place Here – overview of the ideas wall and survey iPads zone 4. Detail of postbox for idea cards responses All photographs © Peter Durant
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