THE FARESHARE LIVE PROJECT Simon Warren Head of Post Graduate Studies in Architecture, School of Art, Architecture and Design, Leeds Metropolitan University Broadcasting Place, Woodhouse Lane, LEEDS, LS2 9EN, United Kingdom tel: 0113 812 4077 email: s.p.warren@leedsmet.ac.uk Keywords: Problem-based learning, critical citizenship, architecture curriculum, education futures, live project methodologies
outcomes offering an antidote for educators to administer to the limitation of design-studio. As a minimum live projects could be seen as ‘complimentary’ and in the very best hands (Rural Studio’s [3] remarkable work in Alabama being an appropriate example) as an ‘alternative’ to orthodox design-studio. At Leeds Met we are engaging with live projects and examining their relationship to the undergraduate and postgraduate architecture courses. The FareShare Project, one of a small number we have undertaken so far, is illustrative of our current thinking and approach.
Abstract This paper considers the pedagogic outcomes of the FareShare Live Project using a chronological process of ideas, production, and construction and considers the relationship to design-studio. Students on the architecture courses at Leeds Metropolitan University (Leeds Met) designed, project managed and constructed an office and staffroom structure within a food distribution warehouse for the food charity FareShare (West Yorkshire)[1]. The project was funded through donations amounting to £1500. Students prefabricated, assembled and installed the project over a ten week period. Two conclusions convey our experience of live projects as event based learning and the importance of their role in developing teamwork and social responsibility to the wider community.
At this time I define a live project as a design project where there is meaningful collaboration with a constituency outside the academic institution. This does not necessarily mean that there has to be a built artefact as an outcome this would needlessly limit the scope of live projects. Post Graduate students for example have undertaken a city-region mapping exercise for a local authority.
1 Introduction Awan, Schneider and Till in Spatial Agency [2] reflect on architectural education as ‘the continuation of the master tutor and willing servant students, the privileging of the visual, the inculcation of absurd modes of behaviour (sleep deprivation, aggressive defensiveness, internal competition), the raising of individuals onto pedestals, all these and more self-perpetuate in schools of architecture around the world’.
FareShare is a national charity that responds to two urgent issues facing the UK – food poverty and food waste. It combines the two by redistributing surplus food, which would otherwise be thrown away, to the people who need it most. The office at FareShare (West Yorkshire) was a steel and glass structure within their warehouse. It was not fit for purpose: too cold and too small to function as both office and staffroom.
This description of the narrowness of designstudio provides a compelling argument for live projects having a role in architectural pedagogy through their potential for a broad range of
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graduates employing their relative skills and expertise.
Students from architecture courses at Leeds Met were assigned the design and build of a new office and staffroom structure. The project was initially supported by a donation of £500. The design work commenced in May 2010 and led into manufacture during the summer months. The FareShare Project was undertaken as an extracurricular project as it was one of our first projects but we have since embedded live projects within the design-studio curriculum at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
The initial academic input at the workshop was to propose that students focussed on two themes; the development of the brief and to make an assessment of the design constraints. Providing input to the groups were three people from FareShare, for most students this was their first contact with a client. The client contribution was to have in-depth face to face conversations with our students. This was the first time that they had designed for someone other than themselves and indeed was significant for our praxis. In addition, both workshop events were supported by a structural engineer and two project managers. It was not long before noise levels increased and a creative momentum and endeavour overtook the room, this model of working promoted team working without barriers across the client, professional and student cohort.
2 Ideas In undertaking this project we explored how live project praxis could contrast with design-studio. The immediate and obvious departure was that this was a work of collaboration. There is a conceit that design-studio promotes the ego rather than admitting that buildings are created by many hands but in the live project, collaboration and collective endeavour are at the heart of pedagogic purpose.
In design-studio students can tend to be casual in the way they communicate because it is carried out in a familiar forum with their tutors. Here, the groups had to elicit information effectively to enable clear development of the brief. At times, they had to consider and modify their acquired ‘quasi-student architect speak’ to communicate more effectively with the client. These exchanges helped the students learn about the importance of listening and the importance of constructing their spoken communication having first been more rigorous with their analysis and synthesis.
Following a visit to the site, participating students were invited to attend two design workshops at project manager Buro Four’s office in Leeds. By taking students out of our studio setting, where studio behaviour was established, the student expectation that the workshop would be like design-studio diminished. At a prosaic level, this was for some, their first insight into the ‘profession’. Additionally, students appreciated their value in the collaborative process and professionals were taking them seriously by inviting them into their world. I believe that architecture courses should expose students to an appropriate ‘real world’ context particularly at undergraduate level as this can develop understanding, maturity and professionalism. By suppressing the idea of individual competition and encouraging the ideal of collaboration we set to work. Brainstorming in groups of four and by integrating undergraduates and postgraduates we set another dynamic in motion that developed into mutual respect; post graduates learned to ‘teach’ through demonstration and undergraduates learned by example from post
Students presenting initial ideas at the first design workshop
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Towards the end of the first workshop event the student teams presented their initial thoughts. There was general consensus on the location of structure within the warehouse, consensus that it would probably be constructed from timber, and there was agreement on the brief and room areas. Students communicated their thoughts coherently and with confidence and there was no overt sense of ‘us and them’. Students appeared not to judge but to support each other. An unexpected outcome was that the forum seemed to empower normally less vocal students to contribute effectively.
different forms of timber manufacture and how timber can be joined to form constructions. We discussed sequencing of work and the information we would need to make the fabrication and assembly possible and how it should be drawn in detail. This was liberating, by simply working it out for themselves students cultivated the skills that they had been worried about.
Year 3 undergraduate student Aimee Major’s comments are telling, “I felt that my lack of knowledge in the construction side of things would mean my input would offer very little to the project. As time progressed, I was learning things from the other students that I wouldn’t necessarily have learnt in lectures.... When the design was complete and I was allocated the task of drawing up the final plans, I was confident that I could do a good job. This made me realise how much I had progressed since the project started.”
The second design workshop conducted in the same format a few days later took the preparatory work forward in a clear direction. However, the two sessions were not enough for a preferred design to emerge and so we held several more design events in studio until our collective design emerged as a robust sketch design. The key drivers and design characteristics that defined the sketch design were: • • • • •
The £500 starting fund was further increased to £1500 by further donations, and this remained the overarching constraint. The decision to construct the building out of timber was the easy part, but how could this be achieved within such a restrictive budget? Students considered a number of construction proposals in a ‘traditional’ architectural practice sense i.e. sketching details, specifying materials and checking costs with timber merchants. All propositions were over budget.
It had to be very cheap It had to be simple enough to be constructed by the student cohort It had to have design integrity and manufacture quality It had to be resource sensitive It had to achieve Building Regulation Approval
3 Production
At this point we witnessed a eureka moment. A student suggested a different approach; the group should start by finding cheap and available materials and use these to design the structure.
The next challenge was to prepare for construction; developing the design and completing working drawings. Students remarked that this was the most daunting part of the project, mostly because they perceived that hadn’t done anything like this before. Consequently, our approach was to allow students to self manage the production drawings stage and that academics would advise them on technical matters. We decided not to rush the process so it could become a valuable learning experience. This meant we had space to discuss different types of wood construction, the
Students re-thought the design process from design driven to resource driven. By doing so they learned something important and liberating, that there are different ways of designing buildings and that they are different to designstudio. The student mentioned that whenever he needed something cheap that he would usually search on eBay and proposed this as the way forward. A 3
number of students fired up their laptops and after many items had been considered and rejected an eBay transaction of two hundred sheets of 450mm by 2400mm, 4mm thick plywood off cuts singularly determined the design solution. Unfortunately, a student had to stay up until 1am to make sure a bid £46.05 sealed the deal.
eBay day
This methodology continued; local people through the internet recycling network Freegle contributed gifts of glass-fibre insulation, paint and varnish, and a door and ironmongery were donated by a friendly building contractor. Students evolved a way of working together and through negotiation became responsible for specific roles. This included: individuals taking on financial control, arranging for material collection and storage prior to construction and schedules for tools (and where they could be borrowed from). A comprehensive list of material quantities down to the number of nails and screws was prepared. The group then considered how to represent fabrication and assembly requirements. This reflected the process of IKEA product instruction manuals which required students to consider and visualise, step by step, how the structure had to be assembled once they were on site. It was an important learning experience to understand that in practice someone else has the job of constructing from the lines on an architect’s drawing. The group dynamic illustrated that students who were not considered the best in a design-studio context were in fact very good organisers and
Assembly sequence drawing
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strategists, and a few were talented in the creative use and detailing of materials. The spectrum of talents was clear to see. It is evident that traditional design-studio values are too narrow and accordingly educators are missing the opportunity to reward the wide range of creative skills that architects fundamentally need to acquire. 4 Construction Construction took place over 10 weeks during summer. As straightforward as this was we had underestimated how long it would take to complete. We had a supportive client who did not have a strict deadline so this did not become a problem. The message is, when undertaking a live project plenty of contingency time must be built in to the programme. We calculated that the on-site endeavour equated to 120 person days.
Structural Frame Construction
Initially, forty-two 450x2400mm wall panels were pre-fabricated. Each panel consisted of a softwood frame enclosed on both sides by the aforementioned ‘eBay’ plywood sheets with glassfibre insulation sealed in between. Following this the building footprint was set out on the warehouse floor and the structural softwood frame erected. The wall panels were screw fixed to the frame to complete the envelope. Flooring, glazing, roof and electrics (by a qualified electrical sub-contractor) and decoration followed.
Panel fabrication
Pre-fab panels fixed to structural frame
Students now realised the significance of spending an appropriate amount of time working through the construction sequence. Architecture is a unique art in that its production, unlike that of the artist, is carried out by a third party where the information is communicated through an intermediate process of construction drawings, specifications and schedules. Drawings tell others how to construct to the designer’s instruction. By having to build the project themselves students were able to make the connection between lines in construction drawings and the consequence of them in built artefact. Students identified how drawing at one to one with CAD software disassociated them from the construction processes and developed an understanding of material and construction tolerances. The most important learning outcome of the prefabrication and assemblage stage was the experience of making; engaging with the stuff that architecture is made of. Undergraduate students in particular may never have the opportunity to visit a working building site during their time at University in order to develop some appreciation
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of the complexity of building construction. These experiences are insightful for students when designing in design-studio. It was also revealing that one student had not used a hammer prior to this project (or so his colleagues were trying to convince me!). Observing him, I believed that this could be true, particularly as his hammer skill increased dramatically over the period.
could have included the value of this live project in covering ARB/EU criteria and attributes or the pedagogy in relation to Professional Studies. Therefore I consider it appropriate to conclude with two general but significant remarks about live projects, firstly as event-based learning and secondly the importance of their role in developing teamwork and social responsibility to the wider community Event-based Learning During the FareShare live lroject I watched team working and team spirit develop and witnessed the broad satisfaction of being involved in something that felt important. Our students commented on how refreshing, fun and challenging the experience was. Their achievement was more than an individual could have accomplished alone and there was ownership of all of it by all of them. Event-based learning whether it is through live projects or other group-participation activities have a memorable, enjoyable and bonding effect on students. I believe that architectural courses should be augmented by event-based learning and redirect attention away from orthodox designstudio pedagogy.
Year 3 undergraduate student Antonia Frondella remarked after this ‘event’, “The project was fulfilling and was a definite highlight of my university career experience”. Social Responsibility As Awan, Schneider and Till [4] reflect ‘If you ask a potential architecture student why they want to study architecture, the most common response is along the lines of “I want to design buildings and make the world a better place”’. If architects are meant to ‘do good’, isn’t this something we should uphold as a desirable professional virtue. For most the world is a precarious place and now more than ever architects are well placed to make a difference to the lives of people.
The FareShare live project completed
5 Conclusion The remarkable notion is that there do not appear to be many down sides live projects perhaps apart from ‘time’ constraints. Particularly, this refers to co-ordinating projects around the academic calendar and also the shortage of time that academics usually have at their disposal to engage with time intensive projects. The multitude of positives is surprising and can only be touched upon in a short paper but which, for example,
The overarching pedagogical value of live projects is their potential impact as a force for good. Live projects equip students to make informed choices 6
about the kind of architect they would like to be; particularly in raising the issues of their position regarding social responsibility.
[3] Rural Studio. http://apps.cadc.auburn.edu/ruralstudio/Default.aspx
For many students, perhaps in part because of their induction to design-studio, thoughts of social responsibility remain disconnected or at least dormant. They are taught that the focus is mostly on the ‘self’, the figurehead designer, and this is perpetuated by the architecture journals and websites they readily absorb. This, as we know, is not the reality in a world wrestling with global imperatives of climate change, energy depletion, increasing population and an ever increasing divide between rich and poor.
[5] V. Mkrtchyan. “FareShare Project Timelapse”, http://simonwarrenarchitect.tumblr.com/ (2010).
Finally, live projects achieve straightforward meaningful contributions (physical or otherwise) to our communities and built environment. This project has made a small but real difference to an organisation itself doing ‘good’. In every school of architecture the one resource we have in abundance is the student, this can be harnessed as a force for good. I would suggest that if all our schools of architecture carried out live projects then we could create a beneficial legacy in the wider community, the upshot could be that that this also has a positive impact on the public perception of our profession.
Donations: Various Individuals via Freegle, Bradford Community RePaint
Acknowledgements Client: Fareshare (West Yorkshire) Charlie Wilkinson Funding Organisations: Land Securities, Batley Roundtable, Leeds Metropolitan University
Consultants: Buro Four - John Murphy, Buro Happold - Sarah Cropley Students: Rachael Branton, Claire Burrell, Zoltan Deak, Alex Durie, Antonia Frondella, Ron Graham, Harry Hewlett, Jamie Ho, Nick Jones, Aimee Major, Vahagn Mkrtchyan, Tom Partridge Friends: Phil Taylor, Chris Needham, Vikram Kaushal
BA Year 3 student Harry Hewlett summed up the whole experience well, ‘the most important part of this project for me, was that at there was a finished building at the end. It brought my architectural education back down to earth and really cemented in my head why I want to be an architect’.
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A short film of the construction stage can be viewed at http://simonwarrenarchitect.tumblr.com/ [5] References [1] FareShare. http://www.fareshare.org.uk/ [2,4] N. Awan, T. Schneider, J Till. “Spatial agency Other ways of doing architecture”. pp. 3746, London, Routledge (2011)
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