‘By adapting and manipulating rather than accepting or refusing the existing spatial system, it is the users who are exploring and defining new urban territories’. Feireiss, L. cited Ehmann, S. et al. (2010, p.2)
Issues raised in my special study unit showed, although Bournemouth is a very pleasant town, much of the town’s attraction is based on its natural environment, namely the beaches and pleasure gardens, with the Town Centre itself located inland, distinctly separate from the beach and therefore removed from the town’s main attraction. Although it is such a new town, much of the current architecture seems dated, with very few notable contemporary buildings; the BIC and IMAX buildings being amongst the newer constructions are some of the most unpopular amongst residents. The initial concept for my design was to create a space that invited the local community to engage with their urban surroundings by generating their own art and music to reestablish a connection with the architecture and urban environment. This led me to look at some of the most popular outdoor spaces in London, such as Camden Town, Bricklane, Spitalfields market and Covent Garden. One obvious element they all have in common is that they all have at least one market, and completely embrace urban cultures such as music, art and street performance. After looking at Bournemouth Council Planning documents these elements seemed to be exactly what Bournemouth needs to establish a stronger sense of community and identity. Numerous Council documents state that the town needs more public art and improved public space, with one document evaluating in detail the benefits of placing more
importance on the arts in the town centre and how local artists can help regenerate more neglected parts of town and attract more tourists. The most prominent materials in context to the site are brick and timber, and although there is almost no architectural regularity around Pier Approach there is a common use of arches and deep set rectangular windows. After looking at how to house the market stalls I decided to place beach huts onto my design for an idea of size, which then led me to looking at creating modular units for the markets, with foldable shutters to replicate the apex roofs of the beach huts. The intial units were to be corten steel boxes, because of the reference to the local red bricks and the association of rusting metal with the sea. Shipping containers provided a means of creating small, short stay bedrooms that could be arranged in a wide variety of layouts on site, making the designing of public space much easier. Containers also meet the contextual requirements of the site as they are all cor-ten, so, as they begin to corrode they blend in with the yellows, browns and oranges of the beach and cliffs, and whilst they still have their paint, they compliment the multicoloured beach huts that run parallel to the site. Containers also contextually fit with existing forms such as the deep set, rectangular windows of Harry Ramsdens directly below.
Through initial site analysis of Bournemouth town centre, Bournemouth; as a whole, appears to be a very pleasant town; it is listed as one of the happiest places in Britain by First Direct, with 82% of people saying they are happy with their lives. It is a popular destination for holiday goers and as a weekend retreat; it was also a popular destination for artists and writers in the early 1900’s. Much of the town’s attraction though is based on its natural environment, namely the beaches and pleasure gardens. The town centre itself is located inland, distinctly separate from the beach and therefore removed from the town’s main attraction. Although it is such a new town, much of the current architecture seems dated, with very few notable contemporary buildings; the BIC and IMAX buildings being amongst the newer constructions are some of the most unpopular amongst residents. Through the course of this unit I explored ways of engaging people to the built environment through the use of art and public interaction on a personal scale. My main areas of research for this project were ‘street art’ and ‘urban culture’. I found these subjects to be of interest and relevance due to the way street art and street culture is usually found in the more deprived areas of towns and cities, but as the ‘graffiti’ and illegal paintings become noticed, more people are drawn to the area to add their own art or simply to view other art that has been created without following the normal council rules and restrictions which often lead to bland and impersonal ‘public art’. Areas with a thriving street art scene often rapidly generate media interest, which generates money, which in turn attracts the more wealthy members of the art society who want to appear connected to the streets and its ‘real’ art forms; this often includes the music and fashion industries.
Therefore areas with a large street art community also have a thriving music and fashion community, creating a strong community spirit (Urban Culture) in otherwise neglected parts of town. Prime examples of deprived areas that have seen rapid increases in land value and public interest through Urban Culture are Camden Town and parts of East London, most notably Shoreditch and Bricklane. Bournemouth does not suffer from the same deprivation and social problems as inner city London, but the principles of the local community engaging with their urban surroundings and generating their own art and music is how I intended to reengage the local community in Bournemouth with the architecture. Through this project I explored ways of encouraging people to actively engage with an art installation instead of passively viewing a completed mural or sculpture. I attempted to achieve this by creating an intervention that people felt free to interact with without being told what to do and how to do it. The focus of this project was to design temporary interventions for bus shelters that the public can interact with through art and music they generated themselves. A bus shelter was a prime example of a mundane urban structure that people use on a daily basis but rarely engage with. Shelters are also often used for mass advertisements by faceless corporations, so through this project I attempted to create a space where the public felt as though they could claim back part of the ‘public space’ they use every day.
‘Architecture is like music; it is made to move and delight us.’ Nouvel, J.
The ‘Timbre’ of music is described as ‘The combination of qualities of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume’. (Farlex,inc. 2011) This is the quality of a musical note or tone that that separates it from another sound of the same note, pitch and volume. Timbre is also often called the color of music, it is impossible to describe timbre exactly as it varies constantly depending on individual interpretations of what the timbre of a particular instrument is. Common words used to describe timbre are: ‘Rounded, Piercing, Strident, Harsh, Warm, Mellow, Resonant, Dark or Bright, Heavy or Light, Flat’. (SchmidtJones, C. 2011). ‘Kandinsky used color in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre (the sound’s character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound. He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music’. Pioch, N. 2002. Initial ideas were based on bringing more colour and light to the site, especially at night as previous site analysis showed the only building in the immediate area that had any visual appeal after dark is the Lighthouse, which is brightly illuminated with varying patterns of blue light. This analysis led to looking at the link between music and colour, such as people often assossiating a colour with a certain type of music or instrument. This in turn led directly to researching ‘synesthesia’.
Synesthesia is defined as ‘A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color’. (Farlex, Inc. 2011). Designs developed on this principle of sounds or instruments having an assossiated colour. Initial ideas of how to express colour architecturally were to either clad specified walls in a coloured mesh to provide colour during the day and a ‘screen’ to project light on to at night, or to wrap all the main buildings in an external mesh facade. The reason for a mesh material is that it allows light in during the day and provides a screen for projections at night. All forms of mesh also have assosiations with the previous links to the habour and sail boats through the similarities or use of cables or canvas and busy appearance of woven lines.
One of the key reasons for using a mesh facade was the ability to project light on to it at night to create reflections, shadows, silhouettes and interaction with the public. The desired effects being the refraction of light between the many gaps and perforations in the mesh; the skyline of the internal structure being clearly visable, and most notably the intricate patterns made in the shadows from using steel mesh.
The location of the site is at the end of the new high street on the crossroads, which acts as a clear threshold separating the new and old high streets. There is currently no integration between the two areas. There are clear views of both parts of town from the site and it is immediately clear that the old town is the more affluent area. The old town ironically appears much newer and cleaner than the new town. Directly outside the site is an empty square which leads right on to the pedestrian crossings, providing an ideal spot for a pavilion, to create an interaction with people to break the barrier between the two sections of town. Inspiration for the pavilion was generated by looking at small structures and pavilions in the XS books by Pyllis Richardson. The building that really stood out was the ‘Leaf Chapel’ by Klein Dytham Architects. This stood out because of the effects of the perforated shell at night. This led to thinking about the use of light and how perforated structures can craft light to engage space. This created questions such as: How would sun light appear on the internal space during day time ? How could artificial light be used at night to luminate the interior whilst filtering through the perforations to engage the street at night ?
One of the main concepts for the pavilion was to engage the public by providing a convivial meeting space that could house a number of activities such as seating, market stalls or street performance. It was critical that the design did not seclude one highstreet from the other but actually brought them together. This led to creating a structure that had at least two clear openings. Looking at the surrounding forms of the street and the hardware store in particular, the one recurring theme was apex roofs. The buildings adjacent to the alley actually have double apex roofs. This led to the triangular form of the pavilion. The current design also has four symmetrical openings which complement the crossroads linking the two areas of town. Following the theory of using a pavilion to create an engaging public space, initial designs for the intervention consisted of using a large glass wall that would act as a viewing balcony down on to the street/pavilion. This idea took inspiration from the Punch & Judy pub in Covent Garden which has a balcony on the second floor of the pub which overlooks the main square that is frequently used by street performers.
Renga Project
The renga project was the first design project given in the first year at university. The project began with weekly tasks being given to create floors, walls and canopies on A3 boards using materials found around the house. These boards did not have to be designed to create anything of architectural merit, but were simply meant to help us explore forms and textures that could be represented in models by using a multitude of materials. These boards where then used in drawing tutorials, such as sketching from still life objects, drawing in perspective and drawing still life objects to different scales. The variety of materials used to create the floors, walls and canopies helped study different methods of mark making and sketching to represent materials. The next brief was to use forms created on the A3 boards to design a ‘Renga Retreat’ (a place for a type of Japanese poetry to be written and read). We were first asked to create 1:100 sketch models to explore form and then make larger, more accurate 1:50 models, using appropriate modelling materials to represent the real materials we would use if the project were to be built. 1:50 technical drawings were then produced by hand from the 1:50 models to teach us how to draft to scale using typical orthographic presentation on drawing boards.
Writer’s Retreat Project
The Writer’s Retreat was the major design project assigned in the second term of first year. It lead directly on from the Renga project and the design principles learnt from it. The brief was to design a small retreat for an author to escape to when they needed a private space for inspiration and to work. The building was to be designed as if it would be built in a real space, somewhere in Holton Lee park. The first task was a one week joint project with students from 1st year Fine Arts, with the simple brief of ‘Hide’. This collaboration gave us the opportunity to explore the park for suitable spaces for the retreat and to learn how the Fine Art students thought about designing in public space. After this collaboration we moved on to carrying out a site analysis of a number of spaces we thought appropriate for our designs and then made a final choice. We were then advised to research numerous famous authors’ writing spaces before starting to design a retreat based on the methods learnt from the floor, wall and canopy tasks of first term. The main requirements were that the building had to be a maximum of 60m2, a maximum of 3 main structural materials used, spaces for eating, sleeping and working provided and methods of off-grid energy researched and incorporated into the design as no services were provided on site.