Critical Reflection Architecture as a vehicle of Didacticism; this project seeks to explore the methods and principles that could inform desirable qualities from a centre of making, learning and community engagement. The process of ‘making’ has several interpretations yet all with a similar sense of purpose and potential. Dundee has a theatrical past filled with industry and making, from linen and flax mills to jute and the boom of the local textiles industry, Dundee was at the forefront of global production throughout the 1800’s. This era was all based around hands-on production, workers were skilled and machines basic but precise - fully constructed and maintained by hand. These elements have been in decline through modern times, with a complete shift of Dundee’s prominent industry overseas. This architecture wants to bring the ideas and concepts of making back into the city of Dundee and back into the local community. There is a certain theatricality about the hustle and bustle of industry and making – the didactic elements of learning by seeing and engaging with crafts or skills, expressed poetically through Maurice Broomfield’s photography of post-war Britain. Expression of this quality has since been lost, but there is an underlying cultural appreciation of the ‘making’ that used to take place all across the city, and specifically in the Roseangle and West End areas – that used to house a vast amount of the working/making population. However, there has been emerging creative cultures within Dundee recently with great success and interest – a great example of this new culture is the success of ‘Dundee Contemporary Arts’ designed by Richard Murphy Architects (see precedent chapter), providing spaces for activity across a variety of interests from film to printmaking. The DCA creates and engaging common ground for different communities, similar to the aims of this project in which the new culture of creatives and technological manufacturing is merged with the history and tradition of the making activities and industry that once dominated the area. In a parallel sense the merging of cultures comes with the juxtaposition between new and old. A contrast that can bring great quality and richness to architecture and space. This is a feature of expression within the project, utilising part of the existing warehouse building that has stood since the early 1900’s with a beautiful brick wall on the West that has been adapted and built up over time – producing an incredible array of textures, materials and sense of history. This brick wall makes up only a portion of the architecture however it acts to inform
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