MACMAG 47

MACMAG

MacMag issue 47 2022 A Publication by Andreea Stanuta Bethany Lim

MacMag 47 Team Andreea Stanuta Bethany Lim Anireju Joseph Lori Mackintosh School of Architecture Glasgow School of Art 167 Renfrew St, Glasgow, G3 6RQ All Rights Reserved Cover Image Morgan McComb and Tanya Belkaid ISSN 1363-3155

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MSA 2022 4

Photograph by Vivian Carvalho

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Foreword a short note from the editors

This academic year sees a gradual shift to what’s considered our new-normal. After two years of completely changing the way we work and function, we are slowly returning to what we were familiar with before the pandemic. The return to the studio was evident in that change, and made an impact to the way students work. We’ve brought our new ways (picked up over the course of working from home) and hybridized our workflows and communication.

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MacMag 47 would like to highlight the theme of collaboration within this issue, showing it as a tool, and how it has adapted through the pandemic. From its inception, we used it as a thread to tie together

all the carefully chosen pieces included within this publication.

Of course, this issue would not have been possible if not for the tireless support that members of staff and students have provided us with throughout this journey. Thank you especially to Sally, Louise, Craig, Sam, Jack, Vivian, and Ilias for your help throughout.

We hope, dear readers, that you will enjoy this issue of MacMag.

with love, the MacMag 47 editors Andreea Stanuta, Bethany Lim

a letter from the Head of School Just in Time

Our habits and daily lives changed dramatically over the last two years, and in circumstances that impacted everyone, not just the few. For the most part working became a solitary activity, or at least a physically distant one; we were separated from colleagues, classmates, clients, and our audiences.

Although we could meet virtually, there was little chance to rub up against each other – the creative abrasion that the Reid building was conceived of as encouraging.

Like the process of developing our ideas, little thrives in a depleted atmosphere, let alone a vacuum.

Creative thinking needs connections, prompts, nudges, obstacles, critique, encouragement and momentum to blossom. While we count still make some contact, much of what makes what we do vital, was missing.

Just in time, it seems, we have come to understand this. Being together in and around the studios and campus generates a different and very tangible energy. It allows us to expose and share our thinking, and recognise the diversity in the way we perceive and approach the same problems. It also allows us to recognise each other as part of a vibrant community of prac-

tice, the constellation in which we work and which works for us.

It’s therefore apposite that this year’s MacMag explores the idea of collaboration, working together, working with others, finding like minds, developing your own architectural ecosystem. Now more than ever we understand that we need each other to tackle contemporary challenges, develop our networks, extend our experience and expertise, and multiply our impact and the transformations we can achieve.

The chance to select, curate and show your work to a wider audience begins when you take a drawing off our desk, out of a printer, open a sketch book or turn your laptop screen towards someone else. It’s an age-old and critical part of understanding our own ideas, and deciding what to do to help them evolve. Being together in space makes this happen naturally, with the Studio becoming an engine (room). Just as we expect architecture to transform people’s lives for the better, our spatial routines can enhance our own working practices.

See you in Studio very soon.

Sally Stewart 7

contents

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8

Foreword

10

Collaboration

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in conversation with

an introduction

Collective Architecture

on collaborative practice

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Revival of Studio

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BArch

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In the Making + Big Noise Yard Build

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Friday Lecture Series

studio model events

stage one stage two stage three

the time is now know no bounds

90 100 108 144 162 174 182

in conversation with

Jack Self

what it means to be radical

Student Housing Co-ops making the cooperative dream a reality

DipArch stage four stage five

MArch architectural studies masters by conversion: canal life

G42 Pop-Ups placemaking through community markets

in conversation with

RCKa’s Alan Beveridge

on community engagement in architecture

Epilogue 9

MacMag 47, an issue on

Collaboration introduction

COLLABORATION, introduction

Andreea Stanuta Bethany Lim

1 Cambridge dictionary

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2 John Butcher and David Gilchrist, Collaboration for Impact, (Australia: ANU Press, 2020)

The definition of collaboration is simply ‘the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing.’1 If we are to go by this definition then all architecture could be deemed ‘collaborative’, so we will further narrow this definition. Within a series of conversations we had on the topic, aiming to define such a broad subject and based on our own experiences both in practice and in education, we define it as practice that has a distinct lack of dictatorial hierarchy or single authorship, where the relationship between the team is open and respectful, with a clear recognition of expertise and limitations, coming from a diverse range of voices, opinions and skill sets. It is therefore inherently inter-disciplinary and involves the sharing of ‘information, resources, activities and capabilities to achieve aims that no

single party could have achieved separately.’2 We believe that there should be a shift away from single authorship and the value placed on intellectual property, towards a more transparent acknowledgement of how architecture is truly made, in the hopes that the industry as a whole can shift the focus away from from profit, through exploitative means, towards an emphasis on care and honesty.

We do, of course, understand that a topic this broad has been discussed numerous times, perhaps exhaustingly, therefore we do not aim for this to be another critical engagement with the topic as a whole – instead throughout the course of this magazine, we will reflect on and analyse specific applications of ‘collaborative practice’ that we feel fall within our pre-determined definition and offer a practical and tangible framework for these ideas.

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COLLABORATION, introduction

For the purposes of framing the context of these specific applications, however, we also felt it necessary to study the subject on the whole and address a few basic questions: How is collaborative practice defined? How does it differ from other forms of practice?

What criticisms are there for collaborative architecture, or for a practice asserting itself as collaborative?

To further our definition past our initial assertion and to ensure we include a wide range of viewpoints, we posed the first two questions to various professionals within the field:

How is collaborative practice defined, and how does it differ from other forms of practice?

Robert Mantho, Senior Lecturer, MSA Collaborative practice is defined by the pursuit of a collective process, that is predicated on trust and an interest in seeing what can be found when all participants surrender the need for authorship. True collaborations take time to grow, developing their own languages through work and a willingness to stay open. This is a distinct way of working, that requires vulnerability and an indirect path, which while occasionally seeming chaotic, can produce unique and compelling results.

Alan Beveridge, Associate, RCKa Accessible communication is how I would define a collaborative practice. I believe that differs from other practices because often other practices aren’t transparent - you don’t know what happens in an architect’s practice - it’s quite closed off. The language that architects use is so inaccessible sometimes - it just needs to be honest.

Maisie Tudge, Part II Architectural Assistant, Collective Architecture Respect, trust and autonomy.

I think there’s a really interesting parallel about the idea of the individual working within the collective. It’s very easy to think of the collective and try to group it in as many different ways as you can, like how many different ways can you think of collectivism? But actually, it is also about the individual at CA.

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Miranda Webster, Architect, Cameron Webster, MSA Stage 5 Leader In practice, you’re collaborating all the time, not only with your client, you’re collaborating with your team, with structural engineers, mechanical engineers, quantity surveyors, all of these different partnerships exist within the profession. And then in the studio, you get collaboration happening all the time as well. It’s a really interesting way in which you find your place and your identity within an office or within the studio environment, and how that then drives the type of architecture that you want to design. It takes an egomaniac to think I can do all this myself – it’s fundamentally important and also important for everyone’s health and wellbeing to collaborate.

Nick Walker, Architect, Collective Architecture, MSA Stage 4 Design Tutor

It’s just about respecting how other people work and what everybody brings to the table. Everybody should have the chance to provide input, though it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will be included.

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Jack Self, Architect, REAL Foundation ‘‘In terms of collaborative practice, I think this is, frankly, just a recognition of how architecture is actually made. Architecture is highly collaborative, you need a lot of people, not just architects, you need engineers, historical consultants, planning consultants, suppliers, manufacturers, etc, etc. The idea that one person can draw a sketch on a bar napkin and imagine all of that in one go – it has always been a fantasy.’’ extract from interview with Jack, full version on page 90

Pete Smith, Architect, Collective Architecture It’s the idea of trust, that’s absolutely the heart of it. I’ve worked in practices where you just don’t feel that, where you feel like you’re just a cog in a machine, working toward somebody else’s end game. It isn’t collaborative, and it doesn’t feel particularly rewarding either. It doesn’t mean that by working at CA, I have all the answers and whenever I do something, it will be right. It just means that when I develop, I can share it with other people and trust that I’ll get honest feedback, and we can arrive at a consensus together.

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COLLABORATION, introduction

What criticisms are there for collaborative architecture, or for a practice asserting itself as collaborative?

Some people may believe this is an unrealistic objective and that we are naïve in portraying it as a viable form of practice. Whilst the image of people coming together for the greater good is a pleasant one, we may have to face the fact that architecture in general

‘‘gradual reform rather than an overnight revolution’’

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is limited ‘to the realities market constraints impose on practice and the fact that profit-making motives govern most projects’3 rather than being led by social objectives. This is an inevitable fact of the political and economic environment we currently live in - ‘form follows finance’4. Property developers dictate much of architecture and rarely is the focus shifted from profit. It is easy to feel defeated by these facts and therefore discard this magazine as another example of simple idealism, however we believe that the shift towards collaborative practice is a gradual reform rather than an overnight revolution.

It is a mindset that can be learnt and applied to a vast array of problems and relies on a collective acceptance of these ideals.

Examples of successes within the industry and frameworks for future work are present and we intend to present several of these within this magazine - and we believe we can take a certain level of

3 Judith Blau, The Context and Content of Collaboration - Architecture and Sociology, (Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 45, No. 1, Nov. 1991, pp. 36-40) 4 Jack Self quoting Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance, (1995) 5 Baharak Fareghi, Selim Okem, Token Phenomenon in Participatory Architectural Design and Sulukule Urban Transformation as a Tokenism Example, (Istanbul, International City Planning and Urban Design Conference, 2018) 6 Sherry R. Arnstein, A Ladder of Citizen Participation, (Journal of the American Planning Association, 1969)

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comfort from these examples.

Another criticism may be that the word ‘collaborative’, in relation to architecture, has become something of a trigger word – an insincere promise that portrays our work as something more valuable than the product. It then becomes less a methodology and more of a marketing tool, ‘assessed under a wide conceptual frame and known as a title generally confirmed and rarely criticised.’5 It becomes a pleasant topic of conversation that remains unexplored past the shallow end and allows us to feel like we are making a difference.

In ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’ by Sherry Arnstein, she compares citizen participation to ‘eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it is good for you.’6 Concluding Comments Although this risk presents itself, we hope to find the nuance in this discussion. The narrow caveats that we explore in more depth we believe are a series of good examples within this wider conversation and we hope that in discussing specific and practical applications within the following pages we can show how collaborative architecture can be used as a tool demonstrating change in an inspiring way that is more than just skin deep. We hope you enjoy the curation of ideas we have put together and that it resonates with, and encourages, your own ideas. •

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an interview with

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

on collaborative practice

Introduction by MacMag

Interviewers Andreea Stanuta AJ Lori Bethany Lim

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Speakers PS: Pete Smith NW: Nick Walker MT: Maisie Tudge MM: MacMag 47

As a practice that was established in pursuit of themes of participation and sustainability within the architecture industry, the MacMag team decided to interview Collective Architecture (CA), a practice that has completed highly varied outputs of work. The company is owned by an employee run trust, established to reward and further involve colleagues in practice development. The ethos of collaboration runs even within the organisation of the company. As we delve into the theme of Collaboration within this issue of the MacMag, we decided to investigate/explore/navigate what a collaborative practice looks like with Collective Architecture at their new Glasgow studio. The three members of CA the MacMag team had the privilege to speak to were Nick Walker, Pete Smith and Maisie Tudge. All three of them were past students of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, and Nick currently holds a teaching position as a Stage 4 Tutor at the school.

employed and stayed in Glasgow.

I watched the number of people in the office drop rapidly, but survived through the recession. I’ve worked in practices where it’s been less collaborative, where decisions are made by a small group of people, handed down to the rest of the office. It doesn’t suit the way I work. I much prefer the kind of open and collaborative approach here. So, when they advertised for somebody with my qualifications last summer, I jumped at the chance and got the job. I’m happy to be here and so far it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.

MT: I did my undergraduate at Oxford Brookes, and then worked in London for two years. Then because London kind of sucks you in, I thought it would be nice to not do my postgraduate in London. So I applied for GSA, and Nick happened to be my interviewer. My fifth thesis project was based on a building called the Springburn Winter Gardens, which is a derelict greenhouse up in Springburn Park. It is also an ongoing project at CA at the moment. So, I got in contact with Ross, who is leading the project, and spoke to him during the thesis year. At the end, I sent him my completed work and successfully interviewed for a job at CA.

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MM: As a starting point, tell us a little bit about yourselves, how you’ve ended up in Glasgow and how you have arrived at Collective Architecture.

NW: I came to Glasgow because my philosophy teacher at school in Brussels was from Glasgow, and he said it was a good place. I started off doing Management Studies in 1989, but had always wanted to study architecture. I then went to Paris for a year as part of my degree, and during this time I managed to transfer over to architecture at the Mac. During my year out, I worked in London at MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, came back up here and worked at Malcolm Frasers in Edinburgh, followed by Gareth Hoskins in Glasgow. I met our colleague Jude Barber, when we both worked at Malcolm’s. She then moved to what was Chris Stewart Architects, which became CA. I’m the longest serving member of CA amongst us here, but I think we’re all here for the same reasons, which is that collaborative way of working!

PS: I graduated from the Mac in 2007, and went on to work in a small practice in Glasgow. When the recession hit at the end of 2007, work dried up quite rapidly and there weren’t many jobs around, but I managed to stay 17

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

MM: CA talks about the practice itself as a collaborative practice, and it’s an employee run trust. Could you elaborate a little bit more about how this works? Are there any other elements of collaboration within your practice that you guys do?

NW: In terms of the history, the office was originally set up in 1997, the day of the Labour win. It was set up to explore themes of sustainability and participation, and these values have always been at the bedrock of the practice.

We were one of the first employee-owned practices, if not the first in Scotland, but everyone else is catching up. We were very much involved in sustainable building, in terms of device orientated solutions, as well as making sure that things were properly built, with a good level of insulation.

We also always had an interest in working with people who don’t have a voice. It’s really just helping communities to empower themselves, improve their housing and the places where they gather, so they have a sense of community.

‘‘It was set up to explore themes of sustainability and participation, and these values have always been at the bedrock of the practice.’’

MT: Another element of collaboration is collaboration with universities. Nick is a tutor, for a day a week. I’ve also recently been asked to do stage five reviews. Keeping in touch with universities and seeing what students are exploring is an important form of collaboration and knowledge exchange.

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architects that have not been recognised for their contribution to architecture and the built environment. I am involved with ‘Missing in Architecture’ with colleagues at MSA, which obviously overlaps a little bit with what the office does. We all have a lot of work to do, but with the way the office operates, we do all have space and support to pursue some of our own interests outside of Collective Architecture. It is a really good way of keeping everything fresh and everybody interested in architecture!

NW: The other thing we do is collaborating with Glasgow artists. For example Toby Paterson collaborated with us on elements of the design of our new studio. We also have quite a few connections to people with a variety of interests outwith architecture. Jude (Barber) was involved with ‘The Empire Café’ at the Commonwealth Games, looking at the history of slavery within the city of Glasgow and its legacy on today’s city. Jude and Nicola (McLachlan) are involved with ‘Voices of Experience’, championing female

PS: We recently held a series of inhouse workshops to discuss how the office is run, and how we could do things better, with input from everyone who works across our studios as to how current structures and systems of management and governance were performing. It was really interesting, particularly for somebody like me who is new to the practice, to understand a little better how the office was set up and how it currently operates up. One of the things that really struck me personally, was the change from working at other practices, to one that is an employee owned cooperative company. It is a true reflection of the way that Collective Architecture wants to work, and how we all want to build on our ways of working.

At the workshops, there was the emphasis on the collective, rather than the cooperative, and the cooperative is kind of a result of the collective, if that makes sense.

MM: Was CA founded with this kind of ethos – to be a collective and an employee-run trust? Or has this been adapted through time?

NW: I mean we definitely all support each other. But what’s interesting about the teams structure (the office is divided into 5 teams including HR/Finance/Office Admin), is that they have developed as a way of having a degree of self-management. In terms of invoicing and fees, we deal with these as teams. We, as each team, are cajoled along by the finance team, but it is each team that is responsible for generating invoices.

As a result, your understanding of how the office works is very broad, you know about everything. You know as a team, what you need to do for the end of the financial year, or when you need to get invoices out. You know when times are good, and when they could be better!

PS: Yeah, there’s definitely a kind of blissful ignorance working in an office where you don’t have to do any of that – where you don’t see how much money’s coming in and going out. But being aware of it makes you think, “I need to be more conscious about what I’m doing and how I am doing it”.

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NW: I think both. When the office started up, a lot of people who worked here had known Chris (Stewart) through him having taught them. The way of working grew out of the way that Chris and the people who were in the office at the time liked to work. That has always been at the core, I suppose it just had to change a wee bit as we’ve expanded. It’s much more difficult to make decisions for an office of 40-45 people than it is for an office of seven. So we have always had discussions about how the office operates. We all have a say in everything, but at the end of the day, some people need to make decisions – sometimes at a strategic level, and sometimes at a day to day level. Another aspect about collaborative working, is perhaps having trust in the people you work with. Pete you asked me if I wanted to check a fee before it went out this morning, and I said, well, if you’re happy with it then it’s fine. This was one of the first things that happened to me in this office when I first worked with Chris.

I had been so used to someone checking over my minutes taken at meetings before they were issued. Chris asked me, “are you happy with them?”. I said, “yes” and was met with the reply, “well, then it’s fine”. It’s not that we don’t check things, but there is a degree of trust and autonomy. The thing that works in our office is that you know where to go if you need help.

everyone actually needs to be independent.

Not in the sense that each person needs to be an autonomous individual, rather no one is completely dependent on another person. Everyone has their own sense of individual responsibility, as part of a collective.

NW: Not everybody needs to know everything at any one time. But if they want to, they can.

PS: I think that’s an absolutely central point; trust. One example of this is the open pay structure. Everybody knows what everyone is paid. It is that trust that the people you’re working with are working towards the same end and are rewarded fairly. You trust that your colleagues are working with as much commitment as you are, which is important, and are being paid equivalently.

MT: I think that’s a really interesting point, I’ve never thought of it that way before, the idea that to be collectively successful,

photographs provided by Collective Architecture

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MM: How do you define collaborative practice and how do you believe it differs from other forms of practice? How does it differ from your previous experiences?

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

NW: As one of the outcomes of the workshops, we wanted to work out what makes us different, and we all agreed that it is respect. Respecting how other people work and what everybody brings to the table.

Everybody should have the chance to provide input, however it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will always be included or actioned, and we all respect that.

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PS: We’ve already touched on this but trust, that’s absolutely the heart of it. In some practices you just don’t feel that level of trust, you feel like you’re just a cog in a machine, working toward somebody else’s end game. It isn’t collaborative, and it doesn’t feel particularly rewarding either. It doesn’t mean that by working here, I have all the answers and whenever I do something, it will be right. It just means that when I design, I can share with other people and trust that I’ll get honest feedback, and we can arrive at a consensus together.

MT: Our collaborative practice is probably defined by three key terms: respect, trust and autonomy. I think there’s a really interesting line of discussion about the idea of the individual working within the collective.

It’s very easy to think of the ‘collective’ and try to group people into a form of collectivism. But It is also about supporting the individual at CA. This is reflected in the company structure, we try very hard not to conform to a typical hierarchical model.

Of course it is almost impossible to have a company with no structure, it is always going to need some form of leadership to ensure that things get done!

‘‘It’s very easy to think of the ‘collective’ and try to group people into a form of collectivism. But It is also about supporting the individual at CA’’ NW: If you think about the ‘collective’ in terms of communism, I suppose individuals are treated as the cogs in a bigger machine as Pete said. I don’t know if any of you are Star Trek fans, but the Borg are a collective, where they assimilate different cultures and everybody sort of becomes the same. And that’s not what happens here at all. That’s a really good point Maisie.

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‘‘Everybody knows what everyone is paid. It is that trust that the people you’re working with are working towards the same end and are rewarded fairly’’ 21

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

MM: ‘Collaboration’ has become such a trigger word within the architecture industry, with a lot of practices promoting themselves as collaborative with a generally widespread positive response. When do you think this label goes beyond marketing and trends, and becomes an active approach?

NW: Possibly when you don’t talk about it?

As a practice, we can tend to forget to promote what makes us different in the way that we work. I’m a member of the Academy of Urbanism, a group of people who are interested in the urban realm and the fabric of our cities, and we talk a lot about non-siloed working. That’s the real buzzword at the moment. It is about getting out of your silos and not doing things in a linear way, but working together collaboratively at all stages of the design process. That was one of the things we did right from the start, workshopping things. Instead of the linear way of passing information backwards and forwards, we get everyone around the table and just talk it out. It’s interesting from a teaching point of view, because collaborative working can be seen in a negative way, students often want to work as individuals. But the reality of the industry is that it’s about collaborative working, working in teams.

MT: Anything that’s a buzzword can be misconstrued, and if you’re shouting about it, then of course, it is a buzzword, like greenwashing. But I liked your point about communication. To be collaborative, it’s just about solid communication, and constantly letting everyone know where you’re at, as well as finding out where everyone else is at.

NW: Maisie, how are you finding the Liveable Neighbourhoods project, both within the office and with the wider community?

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MT: A little background on the Liveable Neighbourhoods project, we’re working with Arcadis, going into communities – looking at the concept of the 20-minute city, defining local town centres and

thinking of streets for the people, not cars.

Before Christmas, I was involved in four community consultations in the wider Govan area. We separated Govan into four key areas: Kinning Park, Ibrox, Govan and Linthouse. We went with a massive map and spoke to people about their communities, we tried not to give them too much guidance, in order not to force the outcomes. We brought plasticine, children’s building blocks, straws, everything! Locals worked with us through using these to describe what worked and what didn’t in their area. They were able to describe how their communities could be improved, in a visual way with these tools. I guess, they managed to have their own voice through the use of the maps and these media.

Sorry for the slight spiel, but I think working like this was really good, because it was evident that it wasn’t just about collaboration with the community, but also how you then translate that into something that is actionable. We ended up with a list of over 100 projects that people wanted to see across Govan. I’ve just been working on Excel, categorising the projects, then rating them. I see where they overlap, and if they could be combined into one big project to try and get as much of what people want to see to improve their community.

NW: What’s interesting is that you are working with Chris, who’s just as enthusiastic about community consultation as he was 20 years ago. He loves the whole process of engaging with people. With our projects that work with communities, we find that a lot of the time there’s a lot of information out there already, but it doesn’t overlap, it is all siloed and is difficult to un-

derstand as a whole. We have to find ways of making it accessible. I think that’s what the Liveable Neighbourhood projects are about, finding clarity in all the information that is already out there. Collaboration really helps in the process of taking onboard a variety of information from different parties, and then finding a way of presenting it legibly, for all to understand. The thing about being an architect is that it’s obvious there are hundreds of people involved in the design process, from the person who’s designing the flooring, to the planner, or the client. The whole process is collaborative, and it has to be.

‘‘I think collaboration at its heart, is an instinctive thing. You can talk about it, or you can do it’’

NW: It is the thing I can never understand at reviews, students who switch off when it is not their work that is being discussed.

You’ve got so much to learn from everyone else’s work. That’s the important thing, the understanding of how other people have dealt with the same issues you have had to resolve. That’s what the learning experience is, it’s about that wider conversation, and not just a 20-minute tutorial with your tutor, or 15-minute presentation of your work.

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PS: I think collaboration at its heart, is an instinctive thing. You can talk about it, or you can do it. Politicians talk all the time about how they are working with communities to do this and that, whereas the communities they work with are often disappointed in what the engagement actually amounts to. What they say and what they do is not the same. But when you actually engage with people properly, it’s a rewarding experience.

weeks ago, twenty years after we had all started uni. All our families and kids, hanging out together. We’re still very close and collaborative, we talk about work and what we’re doing, and how we can do it better.

We’re all at different places in life, some are working for themselves, some working for other companies. Ultimately, you’re working on your own project, like in studio at the Mac. The studio environment was absolutely central, seeing what other people were doing, talking about it and sharing ideas by putting drawings up on the wall.

That, for me, is essential to how I work, and I have carried this on into practice.

NW: And why wouldn’t you collaborate?

We’re social beings after all and we are wired up to work together.

MM: Do you think the architectural education facilitates this mindset? Like you said, there’s a lot of individual work, where you work on your own project, for your own grade. How would you bring that mindset into education?

PS: I think my own personal experience at the Mac is a perfect example of collaboration, and this will of course vary from person to person. I’m still in touch with many of the people within my year at the Mac. In fact, I was away with a lot of them two

ABOVE visualisations from Collective Architecture’s shortlisted submission for the Ironline Competition run by Colander and Copeland LEFT Community workshops, Liveable neighbourhood project.

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THE POETRY OF LANDSCAPE ‘between the beauty of nature and industrial waste’ - Norman Nicholson

A wall walks slowly, At each give of the ground, Each creak of the rock’s ribs, It puts its foot gingerly, Arches its hog-holes, Lets cobble and knee-joint Settle and grip.

As the slipping fellside Erodes and drifts, The wall shifts with it, Is always on the move.

They built a wall slowly, A day a week; Built it to stand, But not stand still.

They built a wall to walk.

MILLOM

IRON PLUG

HAVERIGG WILD SWIM CYCLE THE IRON LINE WALK THE SEAWALL

Strategic Map

Historic Images

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

Extract from : ‘Wall’ by Norman Nicholson

NESTING TERNS LIGHTHOUSE VIEWS

Inspired by the words of local poet Norman Nicholson, this strategy celebrates the beautiful natural context of Millom, Cumbria. As an expert botanist, Nicholson asserted that nature might repair itself better than mankind could. Believing in the preservation of the post-industrial remnants of Millom, the salvation of mines, factories and pitheads, allows for future generations to appreciate the achievements and struggles of the former industrial age.

With this, the proposal becomes one of preservation and appreciation over intervention itself. Through memorialising the industrial past, the future focus can be one of ecology and environmentalism. The natural world and industrial legacies become the focal point of Cumbrian tourism. The ambition will be through connecting Millom to the wider area; bringing heritage, ecology and commerce together.

Proposal Concept

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ABOVE visualisations from Collective Architecture’s shortlisted submission for the Ironline Competition run by Colander and Copeland

MM: In terms of having such a strong ethos within the practice, does that affect who you work with as well?

MT: I think it is a massive influence. At my last practice, one of my clients was a billionaire and we were detailing Lalique crystal finishes. That’s just not going to happen at CA, and they wouldn’t want CA for their project!

PS: I think there’s a degree of reciprocity and it’s like you say, that kind of client isn’t going to come to us. They can see the kind of work we do, and we will appeal to a certain type of client.

However, I suppose as an architect, anything you do should be about trying to improve on what already exists, or is the given norm.

PS: That’s something we talk about quite a lot in our team, the dilemma between being a socialist and also wanting to make money. I’m a socialist, but I also want to have a decent life. I don’t want to be crawling from pay cheque to pay cheque. It’s how you balance those two things. The private developers that we do work with are perhaps more interested in the bottom line. Up to a point, that’s okay, as long as they’re interested in doing something good as well.

MT: The thing is, if we did have, let’s say, a very big private client, then there is an opportunity to have pro-bono projects, because the larger projects can support the smaller more community orientated projects. So you have to weigh it all up, and balance it all out.

MM: What are some tools you employ for collaboration to happen?

MT: Any form of communication you can find! We’ve had to go down a digital avenue because of the pandemic which has been really interesting. Or it’s creating a platform where people can physically communicate, like in Liveable Neighbourhoods projects where we host venues for people to come in and talk face to face, albeit with masks!

NW: A little boring, but Microsoft Teams, which we adopted during the pandemic, has been great because there are so many different channels of discussion within the studio. They can be about a specific project, about materials, or what you’re doing after work.

PS: I think a really important tool for collaboration is humour! Just don’t take yourself too seriously. I think that opens up communication like nothing else, if you’re able to have a bit of a laugh, smile and joke with people, you can actually get to the heart of an issue. When people are more relaxed and open they tend to be more collaborative.

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NW: There are some really easy noes, we would never do vivisection laboratories!

Personally I think something like a prison could be a challenge, in terms of how architecture might help to rehabilitate people in the prison system. But that is more related to the penal system and politics, and prisons certainly are not top of the list of building types we want to be involved with.

NW: That’s a good point. Again, back to how the office was set up, social housing projects were always the bread and butter.

These projects are still our main income, that allow us to do other more community-focused projects, which perhaps are often found less economically viable.

NW: Honesty is another good tool! I’m still in contact with a guy I used to work with at Malcolm Fraser Architects, called Jens. I always remember that he would just pick up the phone and say, “Listen I don’t know anything about this, but…”. I think as a student you are always worried that you won’t know the answer to something and that someone is going to find you out. But being honest is much better than trying to pretend that you know everything, because you can’t possibly know everything!

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MM: On a slightly different note, do you think your vision for life ties in with the vision of the company?

PS: Absolutely, that’s why I’m here and why I applied for the job. Because I knew the company reflected what my approach to life is, I’m a socialist at heart, and that’s the spirit of the company.

COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE

‘‘the company reflected what my approach to life is, I’m a socialist at heart, and that’s the spirit of the company’’

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NW: I’m surprised at how much of a socialist I am, more than I ever thought I was. I’m much more interested in helping people than having a five-bedroom house and a Mercedes. I think one of the things about working here is that, yeah, it might not always be great, sometimes you’ve got too much pressure and you’re having a bad week, but it’s good work! You really feel like you‘re changing people’s lives. There’s this guy that lives in Anderston called Billy, who lives in one of the flats we designed at ground floor that has a garden. We always used to chat to him when we were doing the final phases of the development. He once said that living in his new flat was like ‘being on holiday’ and that he could not believe how amazing the house was and that it was ‘life changing’. To me, that just means so much.

PS: This is something I’ve been speaking quite a lot to Nicola (McLachlan) about; how we develop post-occupancy analysis within the practice, and how we learn from the work we have already done. Instinctively, when you finish one job, you move on to the next, but there’s so much to learn from what we’ve already done, particularly jobs that were finished 5, 10, 15 years ago – finding out what has worked and what hasn’t. That’s a form of collaboration too,

with people who are living and working in the houses and buildings you’ve designed.

MM: Do you think being run as an employee-owned trust affects the turnover rate of the practice?

NW: We’ve always had this discussion about how people never leave CA. However, as a result of the pandemic, a lot of people have thought about what they want to do generally, resulting in a few more people leaving than normal. They all left on good terms though, and as a result we have seen quite a few new folk joining ,which I think is great. New faces and new ways of working.

PS: That reciprocity thing also applies to the people working here as well. If somebody came to work here, but was interested in big, flashy skyscrapers, then they probably would not stay here that long. But if people are interested in working the way we do, they will naturally stay for longer. I think this is generally reflected in the make up of the people who work here.

NW: We’ve actually got a colleague coming back in March, he did his part three in the office. He relocated to Manchester but after nine years, and his family’s decision to move back to Scotland, we found that he was the best person for the job we were interviewing for. So he’s coming back to join us, but with all that different experience working with other practices.

‘‘we develop post-occupancy analysis within the practice, and we learn from the work we have already done’’

MM: In such a flat hierarchical practice with such a strong ethos, who makes the decision during the interview process?

NW: We do. Everybody has the opportunity to get involved in the interviewing process.

Who interviewed you, Maisie?

MT: Gerry Hogan and Fiona Welch did. I feel like a stuck record but, going back to the autonomy aspect of collaboration, everyone would have trusted Gerry and Fiona to make a good decision.

NW: The other important thing is recognising that either Barry (Crawford) or Jade (McKenzie) always support us, as part our HR team. They look at other aspects of what makes a good colleague to join us all at CA. MM: Can you quickly summarise what being an employee-run trust means, day to day?

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NW: Day to day, it probably influences the way we work, give us a sense of how we work. Practically, it means there can be profit sharing. Of late, we’ve been pushing profit back into the business, upgrading to Revit, changing our computers to laptops and buying this new office. On a social level, it means that, as Pete touched on, you’re not working for somebody who’s earning eight times as much as you. We were set up on the basis that there would only be a differential of salary of three times between the most experienced colleagues at CA and the least qualified. I just feel like we are the company, we are the collective. Do you agree?

‘‘It’s what drives me to do the work I do here. It’s difficult to put your finger on it and say it’s this or that, because it’s nuanced.

It’s all of it, it’s my attitude when I step through the door, how I speak to my colleagues, how I make decisions and how my colleagues have placed their trust in me to make those decisions.’’

PS: Just what you said. It’s what drives me to do the work I do here. It’s difficult to put your finger on it and say it’s this or that, because it’s nuanced. It’s all of it, it’s my attitude when I step through the door, how I speak to my colleagues, how I make decisions and how my colleagues have placed their trust in me to make those decisions. •

ABOVE Image from the Liveable Neighbourhood project.

BELOW Collective Architecture’s new office at 13 Bath Street, Glasgow

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REVIVAL OF STUDIO

revival of studio In this issue we celebrate the collaborative and communicative nature of architecture; it’s a practice that has been so baked into the way we work, that it was hard to imagine an architectural pedagogy without studio culture.

After a difficult two years of limited studio access, social distancing, and on-screen interactions, we no longer take the studio culture for granted. It has been a steady progression back to the new normal, but thanks to the efforts of staff and students alike, the Bourdon is buzzing again!

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This section celebrates the revival of studio culture and looks at some of the highlights of the academic year. From tentative steps back towards in-person teaching in semester one, to the various workshops, guest lectures and provocations we have benefitted from in semester two.

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REVIVAL REVIVAL OF OF STUDIO STUDIO As part of our efforts to document the revival of studio, we decided to collate the return of the model across MSA.

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MODELS

Stephanie Chawla Stage 4

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Megan Devlin Stage 5

Joe ELbourn Stage 5

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Rachel Crooks Stage 4

Nandini Goel Stage 4

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Shona Beattie Stage 4

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Bethany Lim Stage 4

Lily Whitehouse Stage 4

Olivia Bissell Stage 4

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Charlotte Randall Stage 4

Emily Dan Stage 5

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Andreea Stanuta Stage 4

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Florence Hanley Stage 4

Joachim Brönner Stage 3

Taeyoung Ro Stage 4

John Pottage Stage 4

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Ilias Muckli Stage 4

architecture & value

1:1 drawing workshop

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stage one

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ABOVE photographs provided by Kathy Li

Our second project, Architecture & Value, continued our introduction to architectural issues of climate change.

It was an intense 3-week period for our students to practice drawing skills and learn about adaptive re-use. Luckily, we were able to take advantage of a live project by one of our tutors - Sam Brown, of O’Donnell Brown - using their Olympia House project in Bridgeton.

Not only was this a chance to reinvigorate a return to studio, it was also the first time Stage 1 could visit a building together in 2 years.

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The brief asked our students to produce a series of observational and record drawings at scales 1:1, 1:10, 1:100, and the urban scale of 1:1000. By doing so we asked the students; ‘what do you value about this building?’. The work was celebrated in a wonderful pinup session that enabled a discussion of Olympia House through everyone’s drawings. Reproductions don’t really do the work justice as we had some beautifully observed 1:1s and some huge 1:10 studies on the wall. What a great day was had by all.

Kathy Li stage 1 leader

RIGHT photographs provided by Kathy Li

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Mining Renfrew Street

REVIVAL OF STUDIO

MSA Stage 2 + Product Design Engineers year 3

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ABOVE photographs provided by Vivian Carvalho

The ‘Mining Renfrew Street’ project was about being able to quantify and visualise the material used in building. 17 different buildings were picked by groups of MSA and Product Design students who were tasked with calculating the weight of each material used in their chosen building, then investigating where the material came from, estimating the environmental impact of the whole process, with the eventual goal of working out how much material could then be re-used in other projects.

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The exhibition showed the outcomes of these studies, representing the weight of the material by a collection of colour coded blocks adjacent to a model, and displaying the findings on the wall. On top of this, each group had to come up with an artefact, showing the building at a human scale. These artefacts could have been anything; some groups chose to make a model of the particular type of window at 1:1 scale, others brought samples of the building’s material. Altogether, the combined models, blocks, artefacts, and output pages gave you a glimpse of the entire lifecycle of these buildings as well as the history of the street we at the Mac sit on top of.

Adam Walsh stage 2

RIGHT photographs provided by Vivian Carvalho and Adam Walsh

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series of provocations

civic city & architecture

REVIVAL OF STUDIO

stage four

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ABOVE series of provocations that took place in the Reid Lecture Theatre, on 20th April 2022 photographs provided by Vivian Carvalho

Thierry Lye with When Architecture Gets Political Chris Platt with What Does A Building Speak Of? Who Gives It A Voice?

Rosalie Menon with Civic Space: Did The Victorians Get It Right In Glasgow?

Samuel Stair with Queer Nihilism and the Flux-City Felicity Steers with Landscape Is More Important Than Architecture Andy Summers with Civil Agency & Civic Society: The Architecture Fringe The Stage 4 Final Reviews were held over two days with a day-and-a-half of reviews followed by a half-day forum of provocation and debate on the civic city and architecture. The reviews were in a hybrid format with guest reviewers joining us both in-person in Glasgow and from different parts of the world via Zoom. All students and Stage 4 staff were in-person. The work under review was hosted on Miro and projected onto the wall in-situ, simulating a physical pin-up whilst maintaining digital accessibility. Our guests on Zoom could view the work either on Miro itself or via the shared screen on Zoom. Held in the Reid Lecture Theatre, the half-day forum was entirely in-person and featured provocative reflections touching

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GUESTS

on a variety of aspects associated with the civic city such as civil agency, queer nihilism, Victorian city-making, public engagement, and the evolving nature of meaning and association between buildings and a difficult civic past.

The forum invited guests to reflect on the civic city and architecture through a five-to-ten minute provocation, where positions taken could highlight relevant aspects of their work or practice, talk to lived experience, explore built examples or typologies, or discuss ways in which different societies around the world have been organised in civic spatial terms.

Andy Summers.

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photographs provided by Vivian Carvalho

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Friday Lecture Series

REVIVAL OF STUDIO

Mackintosh special

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ABOVE Ranald Lawrence images provided by Ilias Muckli

In the first lecture, Peter Lee, Carmody Groarke, spoke about the Hill House Box Project in Helensburgh. After explaining the history of the 120 year old masterpiece, as well as the reasons for its gradual deterioration at the hands of weathering, Peter presented the practice’s unusual response to the moisture causing damage within the cracked Portland cement render. The vast steel structure, built in only 6 months, acts as a ‘Ship in a Bottle’ allowing the iconic house to dry out whilst remaining visible to the visitors. In doing so, the public is kept at the heart of the experience as well as the ongoing discussions on how to proceed with the renovations. It raised the question whether the ‘box’ structure (which is fully demountable and recyclable) should be removed once it has served its function, or kept as an added attraction, and resulted in an interesting discussion about how we approach our built heritage in general.

The scholarship launch event took place at the Queens Cross Church in Maryhill; the only church designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh to be realised. The setting, as well as the return to an in-person lecture, made for a special evening. Dr. Ranald Lawrence, author of ‘The Victorian Art School’, outlined the socio-economic and environmental contexts which lead to the rise of nineteenth century art schools in Britain’s major industrial cities. Ranald then explained the technical and atmospheric qualities of Mackintosh’s greatest building, moving between lecture slides and an old-school overhead projector, where he progressively added to an orthographic drawing as he spoke, outlining the building’s various structural and technical features in different colours.

For students who never got the chance to experience the building in its original form, it was great to hear such an in-depth and impassioned account of the building, whilst members of the CRMS were elated to see Mackintosh’s legacy being kept alive through research of such quality.

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To celebrate the launch of the Charles Rennie Mackinosh Society (CRMS) and DSB Travelling scholarship, Alan Hooper and the Y4 Friday Lectures team organised two weeks of Mackintosh Special events.

Ilias Muckli stage 4

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STAGE 1 STAGE 1

Kathy Li

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Stage Leader 2021/2022 This year in Stage 1 we continue to address the climate emergency, ethical design, and for the first time we introduced students to the RIBA Way Ahead. Our first project, Architecture & Humans followed the theme of previous years, an investigation of design for disability. Students were challenged to imagine how they could modify their own home environment for an impairment they had researched. The next project Architecture & Value runs parallel to a live regeneration project

by O’Donnell Brown for Olympia House in the east end of Glasgow.

We asked our students to ‘value’ the building by exploring at scales by making drawings each step of the way, moving in powers of 10, from 1:1 internal details through to 1:1000 urban observations. This study will lead to the

final project to develop proposals for Olympia House, through physical modelling, and a ‘loose fit, low energy’ approach.

An innovation for this academic year, and inspired by our Stage 4 RP4 project, is the introduction of a semester long self-directed design research project, Architecture & Me. It is centred around the CPD topics given in the RIBA Way Ahead documentation it allows our students freedom to explore architecture under their own auspices and will also provide staff with vital feedback on the interests of our cohort. We look forward to seeing the results.

In 20-21 our theme was ‘Places of Learning’ which was particularly apt as we moved between virtual classrooms, online archives,

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real and virtual studio and out into Glasgow and our own habitats. Our ethos used the RIAS strapline ‘Maximum Architectural Value - Minimum Architectural Harm’ to collaboratively explore architecture through this period of global uncertainty and urgent concerns about climate change. Our first investigation examined the foundations of sustainable design through an analysis of 30 examples of global vernacular architecture.

There were some really beautiful drawings produced. This was followed by ‘Being Human’, a project exploring social and spatial justice in a design for disability. ‘Our Habitat’ allowed them to collaborate with other first year students from across GSA on an open brief. Our studio project introduced our students to the opportunities for adaptive re-use of several buildings at risk in Glasgow, asking them to develop and design their own Place of Learning.

Last year the effects of the global pandemic and lockdowns insulated our students from the wonderful introduction to architectural life in an art school. We sorely missed their energy and enthusiasm and despite never meeting them in person, the results of their work were terrific. This year we were able to welcome our new students to some form of studio life for much of the academic year. We now hope that we can fully return to that crucial, tactile, social, noisy, messy, and interactive way of learning.

The Stage 1 Studio Team Kathy Li, James Tait, Sam Brown, Iain Monteith, Chris Platt, India Czulowski Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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Kiln and Workshops

STAGE 1

Stefans Pavloskis

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A new volume appears adjacent to the old Lock Keeper’s house.

It seems as though it should have always been there - it couldn’t be built anywhere else.

The house itself, left unchanged, celebrates a community-led ceramics workshop. The potential use of the added volume is undefined. It can host anything from slip casting workshops to film screenings opening up to the protected courtyard or the canal. The space morphs to its users’ ever-changing needs and is heavily shaped by the circumstances present at its construction time by directly sourcing the materials from the numerous demolition sites around Glasgow or the nearby surroundings. The only thing set is the basic premises of old/ new volume and the overall logic of inhabiting the given plot of land. I then step back and see how the space unfolds in time.

A series of installations drawing attention to inequality in Glasgow.

Imbalance: you are invited to place a stone in your corresponding postcode dookit whenever you feel something unfair or unjust has happened to you.

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Community: Carers, cleaners, baristas, artist, nurses, engineers, lorry drivers, we are the rocks of society and without us the upper classes could not function. We are foundations, solid, strong, and honest.

The installation invites people to grafitti their professions onto the rocks. The shape inspired by the Gallowgate Twins (built in 1969, demolished in 2016).

Poverty: investigating the most deprived areas of Glasgow.

Imbalance, Community, Poverty Kirsten McDove GSA Sustainability Prize 2021

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520 Sauchiehall Street

STAGE 1

Jack Kerr

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Reinventing 520 Sauchiehall Street, a building on the atrisk buildings register, into a new Dance School to serve the large and vibrant community of dance artists in Glasgow. The project sought to maintain and celebrate 520’s layered past as a home, a piano shop, a cinema (later of ill-repute) and finally a much-loved clubbing scene.

Playing with site massing, removing parts but not entire elements allowed light and space to be brought deep into the plan; revealing the history of the building and creating a public performance space that draws Sauchiehall Street in.

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I began by looking into the Dance Hall and its wider social significance within Glasgow.

I discovered that these spaces were dominated by white, heterosexual men and women. Historical images of dance halls reveal the lack of diversity - one never sees a person of colour dancing with a white person, or two men dancing together. This led me to explore the architecture of the dance hall and its history, which highlighted the gendered nature of these spaces.

Seeking to reinvent the traditional dance hall, creating a space with the same kind of cultural significance as the dance hall once had within Glasgow, but reshaping it and thus making it more equal and diverse for the community.

A Dance Hall for Equality Connor Tweedie 57

STAGE 2 STAGE 2

Luca Brunelli

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Stage Leader 2021/2022 Inspired by Ivan Illich ‘Tools for Conviviality’, stage 2 Studio investigates the potential of architecture to address the ecological crisis, offering people a social/intellectual and spatial framework from where to interact and contribute creatively to the environment in which they live, outside the dominant forms of production and consumerism. Architecture as a tool for conviviality has been explored along the threads of 6 main themes: a tactical and creative approach to resources, working as a bricoleur with matter, parts and form; a thoughtful strategy of adaptation and reuse, to reassemble and connect typologies, structures and spaces; a consistent approximation to context, seeking for places and their meaning; a critical stance on activities, to their individual and collective

spatial and temporal dimensions; a focus on rooms’ occupation, their atmospheres, boundaries and environmental properties; and a reflection on the dual nature of buildings enclosures, delimiting the interior and relating to the public realm.

In the first semester conviviality is explored at the scale of dwelling and asked students to speculate on Robert Owen’s utopian legacy and imagine new “live/work” scenarios within the World Heritage site of New Lanark. The task was to design a convivial dwelling community that could host sustainable lifestyles reducing transport needs, lower energy use and sharing of resources, affording live/work conditions that can stabilise the population within a renewed rural economy.

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In the second semester stage 2 studio looked at conviviality within the urban context of a Scottish town-centre contributing to the revitalisation of the local high street by intervening on the existing public library. Libraries - suggested Illich - can be prototypes of ‘convivial tool’, as far as they offer public and inclusive access to information and opportunities for interaction that are not framed under the terms of a producer/consumer relationship. The brief engages students with the contemporary debate on sustainability and adaptive reuse and requires students to interrogate the existing structure, and to carefully craft a tectonic strategy to achieve a resilient architectural response reinterpreting a public library as a “family” of public rooms open for study, discussion and innovation, a renewed civic centre.

The Stage 2 Studio Team Luca Brunelli, Neil Mochrie, Graeme Armet, Johnny Fisher, Isabel Garriga, Alan Hooper Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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Re-assembling the Library Bo’ness

STAGE 2

Philippa Cooks

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Working amidst the context of the climate emergency, my adaptive re-use proposal for Bo’ness Library focuses on four main areas: the retention of existing spaces where practicable, the recycling of materials on site, modest expansion to meet current and future needs and bringing an ‘at risk’ heritage property back in to use.

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The programme of use includes new facilities which provide opportunity for serendipitous encounters for a diverse range of people and support the sustainability of this once, thriving town. These foci come together to create a building which responds to the needs of a changing community whilst celebrating the collective history of what came before.

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1. Entrance with seating areas 2. Lift, disabled WC and lockers 3. Children’s library 4. Flexible space shown as children’s workshop area and seminar room

5. Young adult library 6. Staff office 7. WCs (one disabled and two standard cubicles) 8. Cafe bar with separate entry for night-time use

9. Screening pods 10. Outdoor seating area 11. Landscaping in the New Perennial style.

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Situated North-East of Glasgow, Bo’ness Library is hidden down Scotlands Close overlooking the sea. The project brief was a sustainably-minded renovation and extension of the building to invite activity and foster multi-generational engagement. Following a principle of doing more with less, the concept looked to provide solutions to the design deficiencies of the existing building. Primarily; taking advantage of the site by providing internal-external connections, improving the natural light within all deficient spaces, and reducing congestion by alternative modes of storage. Protruding outwards to the North-East, the extension provides multi-generational space activities with inter-level connections and independent circulation to reduce noise pollution from the quieter spaces.

Swimming Pool Luke Cowen 61

live//work

STAGE 2

Tanya Belkaid Alessia Crolla Morgan McComb

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Our proposal in New Lanark speculates living and working contemporary conditions, with Peter Barber’s Moray Mews as precedents. Adaptations to the original mews primarily include widening the lane at the rear of the building to create a public realm, and sinking the mews further into the ground to coincide with the contours of the site. This allowed us to separate living and working activities, creating a more social workplace, and a private lower level.

We integrated a vegetable garden into a picnic and play area adjacent to the site. Food grown on site could be sold and supply local commercial entities, creating a circular economy and ultimately a wholly immersive experience for visitors and residents alike.

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Reflecting on the effects of the pandemic on work-life balance within our living spaces, we create dwellings that could cater for both aspects without tipping the balance. With ramifications of the pandemic also felt by the creative industry, we wanted to create a permanent artist community. Allowing work display through gallery windows and the introduction of an exterior ‘New Artist Lane’ would also bring a new lease of life to our site in New Lanark.

Both upper and lower dwellings have a flexible gallery space with an entrance onto ‘NewArtist’s Lane’. From this ‘New Artist’s Lane’ visitors and residents can view all the dwelling’s gallery spaces

Artist Community Beth Lomas Lilli Osbourne Kate Bacarreza

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Bo’ness Library Hamid Habibi

STAGE 2

The existing Bo’ness library is reused and adapted, the proposal seeks to improve the connection and visibility of the new library within the public realm of the town centre by enhancing its attractiveness and potential as a place of convivial encounter.

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A basement is designed to provide more space; having the main library in the basement, and ground floor as a socializing space for locals would be ideal. A key priority was to design a ramp, accessible to all.

A cylinder ramp and walkway with platforms is introduced, with a large skylight incorporated within the cylinder allows light to reach the basement.

Environmental strategies were considered with the choice of reusing the same materials in different ways.

Our units are arranged to be ‘touching’ each other, creating an interconnected form that all residents can use for the development of their creative practice. The amalgamation of sorts would contain internally subdivided living spaces for a small collection of the residents to live in. The living spaces would all have direct internal access to the studio, the studio effectively acting as a ‘bridge’ between the residences.

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Our live/work concept is to form a collection of amalgamat­ ed studio/living quarters within site D of New Lanark. Since New Lanark at present brings in income through various revenue streams, we see it prosperous for the development of the site that we encour­age the growth of its potential to be a place for artists to live/work in.

Stonemason’s Studio Joseph M.C. Crawley Anthony di Gaetano

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STAGE 3 STAGE 3

Tilo Einert Stage Leader 2021/2022 The aim at the end of Stage 3 is for students to exit the undergraduate course with strong design, representational and technical skills to enter the PPYO (Professional Practice Year Out) with confidence, intellectual maturity and environmental literacy. These skills are refined and strengthened through a design project exploring the key themes of “Energy, Landscape, Culture” at different scales. To cultivate a holistic approach to architectural design, the disciplines of Architectural Technology and Interdisciplinary Design are integrated into and influenced by the studio project.

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‘Feeding cities ... arguably has a greater social and physical impact on our lives and planet than anything else we do.’ (Steele, C, Hungry City, London: Vintage, 2008).

By 2050 the urban population is expected to have doubled to what it is now. In preparing our cities for the future we must not only consider the regeneration of the existing infrastructure, but also develop and implement new infrastructures, capable of creating smart, empowered, and resilient communities.

The two-semester studio project in 2021-22 was concerned with the development of a framework and typologies for an Urban Food Exchange (UFEx). The concept was explored at the urban and the building scale in two different locations along the Glasgow canal network.

The UFEx is a concept for a facility for horticultural and nutritional production, learning and knowl-

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edge exchange. It is meant to be a place where hand, mind and spirit are brought into creative collaboration, a place that brings together people from near and far interested in learning from one another the skills and knowledge needed to engage with the art of growing, cooking, and healthy living. UFEx accommodates spaces where vegetables are grown and processed, shared and distributed with local and wider communities, with the long-term goal of sustainable urban food supply and distribution for the city’s nutritional needs.

The Stage 3 Studio Team Tilo Einert, Georgia Battye, Henry McKeown, Ian Alexander, Isabel Garriga, Adrian Stewart Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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The Liberation of Order

STAGE 3

Frances Grant

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Placemaking is a palpable form of poetry in which architecture and poetry are containers of the lived experience. Through the creation of an archetypal catalogue of children’s interactions, Liberation of Order seeks to create a self-resolving architectural typology with energy, landscape and culture at its core. Liberation of Order is more than immersive architecture, At its best, it is a methodological suggestion to how we design more careful, user-orientated solutions.

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Located in Balloch, Scotland, this project is a doll’s house, if you will, for Sistema. At the core of the scheme is a frame, that in small but important ways, is adaptable and allows Sistema to grow. Embodying their program of ‘life long learning’, the scheme provides a useful tool suitable for all ages and can be wielded in flexible ways.

The buildings’ language sits in-between the vernacular and contemporary.

Complimenting the existing landscape and expressing its modernity. The campus is welcoming, highly legible and non-institutional, expressing Sistema’s core ethos, which is all about inclusion, playfulness and diversity. It enriches the landscape with civic buildings and public realm, in place of the previous boring, car-centric infrastructure.

Nonprescriptive Play Oliver Simpson The Lynn Scobie Memorial Prize for Architecture

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Place of Connection

STAGE 3

Dag von der Decken

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The proposal builds a connection between Sistema and Balloch, drawing on the history of the place as a result of geography and how this relates to the present and future. Through these means, it aims to establish a link between the individual and the public. All to be experienced within the architecture through the articulation of music.

The overarching significance of the site gets highlighted through a directional void. The negative space of a former railway contains the historical and geographical context as an important transition point between the low and highlands.

This void now frames music from the retreat.

The qualities of spaces are defined by their degree of timelessness, achieved through materiality, cultural relevance, variations of durability, flexibility and arrangement. As a result, the structure becomes one with the architecture, truly reflecting the program.

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Plug-in/capsule architecture usually delivers the idea and its visual expression rather than the practicality. Today, the potential of the plug-in concept is being neglected and rarely furthered.

Key areas are identified and rethought, such as material, manufacturing processes, and structural design. The project aims to reinvent the plug-in typology for the practicality, affordability, and much greater sustainability to enables pods to be unplugged, recycled, or relocated efficiently. The project also studies the use of carbon fibre as a structural material, exploring its possibilities and impracticalities.

The programme is applied to Sistema Scotland, a music charity for underprivileged children, and the site in Balloch on the shores of Loch Lomond is used as a testing ground for the programme.

Big Noise Balloch Vincent Pu Zhang RIBA President’s Bronze Medal Nominee

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Balloch Music Retreat Euan Clarke SiAG Graduate Degree Show Prize

The beauty of music is that it can be played anywhere without the need for a specific environment or space. The proposal looks to offer coherent objects and spaces, both internally and externally, that promote the spontaneous playing of music.

Po d E x p l o d e d I s o

STAGE 3

For the Balloch community, the proposal reinstates a physical and visual link with the pier that has become abandoned over time. Its strategic positioning and elongated fingers stretch into the landscape creating a physical axis that encourages the public to use the pier again. It was important for the scheme to remain sensitive to the surrounding natural world in massing, scale and materiality.

Location Plan

South Elevation

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Large Practice room

(slidin g doors)

Eating Area

(extern a l con n ection )

Raked seating

Private Social Hu b

(con n ection to pods)

Pod 3

Sheltered External Pod Space

The proposal draws upon overarching phenomena where interventions aim to act as reminders towards the collective identity of the locals and the self-meaning of its users.

Basalt stone from the surrounding mountains gathers as a series of splaying columns, creating a public path where the former railway used to pass.

They frame Balloch’s geography, history and in turn culture.

Transcending the notion of energy from physical to spiritual, orthogonally arranged timber beams form interiors which aim to trigger an emotional response to their users. They contain Sistema’s transcending quality.

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Building a residential retreat and performance hall, stories in Balloch, a harbour town by the banks of Loch Lomond, are confronted by the ethos of Sistema; a charity organisation helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Framing and Containing Mentor Voyatzakis RIBA President’s Bronze Medal Nominee

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In the Making Lily Whitehouse and Zoe Hyatt

IN THE MAKING

Introduction by MacMag

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As young people in architecture, it can feel difficult to have a sense of control over the work you do and how this represents you and your values - or if this is even a priority when starting out. Lily and Zoe, currently stage 4 students at MSA, decided to push the status quo and gain experience in as hands-on a way as possible following frustrations at the lack of opportunities for this experience elsewhere. We asked them to outline and evaluate how this process went for them as a short guide for other young architects with similar thoughts and questions about their own lives beyond education.

‘In the Making’ started during the pandemic when - as four friends who met at the Mac - we decided to create our own opportunities.

We wanted to explore hands-on building, collaborate with communities, and discover alternative ways of practicing architecture - all of which we felt were missing from our educational experience.

For our first project we approached Big Noise Govanhill, who quickly identified their back lane, primarily used for bins, as an opportunity to create a secure outdoor space.

Before carrying out the build, we reached out to people within the field for advice. This led to our research project ‘MAKE Big Noise’.

We learnt about the practical side of things – insurance, meeting health and safety standards, site management, working with children. We also had great conversations about non extractive participatory work. Through these experiences we have become increasingly aware of the people and groups doing amazing work around the theme of collaboration, which we believe is still undervalued within architecture.

With things having been on pause for a while, we are excited to continue existing projects and embark on new ones. We do not intend for ‘In the Making’ to be a static or definitive thing and are always looking for people to contribute and to help shape it.

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What is Collaborative Design?

Co-design has a multiplicity of meanings, ambiguity, and loaded terms surrounding it. For us it is a changing definition that is only growing in complexity as we explore it more. We have settled with a definition that changes depending on what you’re doing, and what your priorities and desired outcomes are, for each project.

Designers tend to focus on the physical, but there is a wealth of social resources everywhere. We believe ‘community knowledge’ is precious and that it is important to start from what already exists rather than what is lacking.

Giving people the opportunity to engage to a degree that they are comfortable with is important, as is providing opportunities for non verbal communication, such as collage, model making, and scribbling.

Ownership

g

Final P roduc

kin

hin al T

Control IN THE MAKING

t

tic Cri

Permanence

Lea r

nin Pro g Des ces ign s

Democratic Skill Sharing Fun permission

Inclusivity

Document

public liability

Insurance

creating an archive

professional indemnity storage

Co

nt ra

ct

Materials delivery

risk assesment

experts

Team

Health + Safety

roles access conditions

Funding 76

accounting

inductions

clearing up communication

Site Management

method statement supervision

Less focus on designing the object and more about the engagement, the workshops and activities to draw out the needs and ideas. Group site analysis is a good place to start.

Providing an enjoyable experience

Process over final outcome Forming basic brief with clients prior to engagment to gauge their requirements, deadlines, timescales, and responsibilities.

Purist approach to co-design but always bound to comply with practicalities of structural stability, safety, feasibilty, budget - all things that shape the final output.

Teaching design and building skills

Allowing for enough flexibility in the brief for the participants to genuinely have a say on the day(s).

Everyone can learn, contribute, and share their skills.

Make space for everyone’s voice

How do you evaluate the success?

How do you maintain objectivity?

How do you assess your own progress?

We like to see facilitating an engagement the same way we see throwing a great party. A host puts in the effort, money, and time to provide an experience for others. People might bring gifts to the occasion, things to share with the group, and might even help host or clear up after. There is an understanding that the host too should enjoy the party and it would be impractical for them to maintain it without an incentive. Maybe someone else will host the party next time or maybe it will escalate from dinner party to festival!

We hope you’ve found this useful advice for throwing your own party! Carry on reading for an example of how we put this guide to use in our first live project...

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Plan every detail whilst being flexible and prepared to abandon the plan and have many many backups.

They are the experts on their space and what they need.

Forming/supporting more resilient communities and trying to add value... measurable impacts

immeasurable impacts

some useful resources: Loose Fit City, Maurice Mitchell & Bo Ming Tang (2017) Magic Moments: Collaboration Between Artists and Young People, Anna Harding (2005) Spaces for Participatory Design Innovation, Gemma Teal and Tara French (2020)

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Big Noise Yard Build BIG NOISE YARD BUILD

Lily Whitehouse and Zoe Hyatt

In July 2021, a small group of 10-12 year-old musicians from the charity Big Noise Govanhill worked with In The Making and Building Together CIC to transform their backyard into a comfortable, renewed space for outdoor relaxation.

At Big Noise, inspirational musicians work with children from nursery to school leaving age, using music to build confidence, raise aspirations and above all improve wellbeing and happiness. As well as teaching strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, the centre provides a place to grow and nurture friendships, supporting each person to reach their potential and lead successful and fulfilled lives.

We approached Big Noise proposing a co-design project. Our aim was to build the young people’s confidence in their own ideas and conviction that their opinions are valid and important while provid-

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ing an experience of making that they may not have had before. We wanted them to feel empowered to take an active role in forming their surroundings, to question, be bold and vocal. The charity’s aim was to promote ‘youth voice’ and saw our proposition as an opportunity for the kids to leave a legacy and create a lasting connection with Big Noise.

Collectively, we worked to discover the features that exist within the social, cultural, physical, and institutional layers that make the space truly theirs. Considering these layers as resources, we selected and collated them, to help us identify constraints and opportunities of the yard. We offered our detective work as a resource to be used; illuminating what is there and encouraging others to notice and contribute to the conversation. We became facilitators rather than designers, focusing as much on the journey as on the end point.

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BIG NOISE YARD BUILD

We started by investigating the space through a series of performative workshops. Exploring the local area we gathered found objects, ate lots of ice cream, and tested possibilities of what the yard could become. We made quick mockup spatial interventions from cardboard and rope, took rubbings of textures in the space, and worked to decipher what was possible from their ideas without our own design bias taking over. In between the engagements, we had access to the site to do the groundwork, respond to the outcomes of the workshops, and prepare for the next ones. The nature of co-designing meant we had to make decisions quickly in order to fabricate them the next day.

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The skills we gained ranged from an understanding of the architectural design process to safely using tools, collaborative team working, and communication of complex ideas in expressive and creative ways. The most impactful feedback from the young people was how much they enjoyed learning to use tools and having the opportunity to build.

By the end of the build, the team left having co-created a durable, self-supporting structure that acts as a framework that the young people can add to. We learned so much about hosting workshops, hands-on building, and teaching design methodology.

This project has contributed greatly to our personal understanding of the realities of designing and building practices. We’ve learned about: insurance, health and safety procedures, how to write funding applications, procuring materials, budgeting, marketing, project management, designing workshops for successful engagement, and how to do all of this as part of a supportive team of friends. Learning to effectively record and evaluate the project has been invaluable. Our position on successful community engagement is constantly evolving as we learn from others and reflect on the experience. We hope that this project can be useful to anyone interested in doing something similar.

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This experience went way beyond our expectations and it felt incredibly fulfilling to offer our design education for something tangible that aligned with our values. A huge part of our ambition for the project was to create a lasting relationship with the charity. From our first introduction to Big Noise, we were immediately taken by their commitment to creating lasting impact and resilient relationships in their community. Once we involved ourselves, we had a duty of care to be realistic and transparent about our level of skill and what we could reasonably deliver. We know there are so many additional ways of improving the space and have future workshops in the pipeline to develop it. So watch this yard! • Thanks to: Big Noise Govanhill Building Together CIC G.I.A GSA sustainability And everyone who donated to our Go Fund Me Our work can be seen at: https://weareinthemaking.cargo.site/ instagram: @weare_inthemaking

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Friday Lecture Series

The Time is NOW Isabel Deakin

THE TIME IS NOW

M.I.A

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‘Missing in Architecture’ for the last 4 years has organised the Friday Lecture Series at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, for the autumn semester. ‘Missing in Architecture’ is a collection of architects and educators at the Glasgow School of Art, founded to promote creativity and action within the architecture profession. The MSA Friday Lectures traditionally conclude the school week and over many years, students and members of staff have benefitted immeasurably from a great variety of distinguished speakers. This year, similar to last session, due to Covid 19 restrictions all lectures were delivered virtually through zoom.

This series, we chose to focus on the Climate Crisis and asked a diverse range of speakers to talk about how we, as educators, students, and architects, can make a difference in tackling the climate emergency whilst the spotlight was on Glasgow for the COP26 summit.

We embraced the opportunity that zoom afforded us and were able to ask a wide variety of guests. We invited a number of large practic-

es which are focusing on climate, including Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Haworth Tompkins, who have been pioneering best practice in climate literacy for a number of years. We also had the opportunity to hear from smaller practices, Amin Taha, Groupwork, focusing on innovative material use, and Studio Bark who talked about activism in architecture. Sofie Pelsmakers, author of the book ‘Everything Must Change’ inspired us whilst COP26 was in full swing.

Educators Dr Barnabas Calder and Dr Lindsay Blair Howe educated us on the history of climate crisis and the opportunities of earth as a building material. We began the series with a talk from Hattie Hartman, the AJ Sustainability Editor and host of the AJ Climate Champions podcast, and concluded with Sumita Singha who has worked to promote sustainable practice across the UK, India, Palestinian territories and Venezuela.

The series supported continued discussion and education of the community at the MSA and highlighted the need for action now within all areas of architecture. •

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Friday Lecture Series

KnowNo Bounds KNOW NO BOUNDS

Ilias Muckli and Mia Pinder-Hussein

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After the ‘Time is Now’ lecture series we wanted to provide a series of speakers who could continue discussions on pressing issues we face and the wider implications on the future role of the architect.

The speakers were not picked due to their built architectural achievements, but rather for their thought-provoking work ranging from exhibitions and publications, to new models of ownership and shared research platforms. This was to further iterate the point that the role of the architect is changing and architects must not only be measured for what they build – but for the buildings they reuse, the values they uphold, the knowledge which they share. Unfortunately, this shift of ideals is happening too slowly, and whilst as graduating students we may go into the profession with plans to uphold these values, we are quickly reminded that the hierarchical nature of the profession and the economic structures we exist within means we hold little power to do so.

The linear and slow progression to becoming an architect does not lend itself well to the speed at which our generation must ‘take matters into our own hands’ to implement new ideals to overcome the issues we are already experiencing the effects of right now.

Speakers were chosen for the ways in which their moral codes were upheld and embodied in their work, which usually transcended the traditional confines of architecture. This prompted interesting and varied discussions, motivating students to question the status quo within our profession and as part of a wider reflection of our role as activists in society today.

The curation and organisation of the Friday Lecture Series as well as our joint dissertation formed the basis of our Year 4 Research Project. The pages that follow are excerpts from our essay, which have overlapping themes with that of MacMag 47.

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Breaking spatial, social and environmental architectural boundaries: an exploration into collaborative architectural practices excerpts from our dissertation

KNOW NO BOUNDS

The image of the Starchitect

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Having invited speakers whose activities do not fall within the conventional modes of a practicing architect, we must first interrogate the role that architectural norms have played in creating the framework of a ‘conventional’ architect’s roles. It may be simplest to begin with the idealised image of the architect: the starchitect.

The perception of the architect in recent times has been defined by the lone, white, hypermasculine figure and, whilst the UK industry is overwhelmingly dominated by white men, the perception that architecture is the product of a single mind concretely juxtaposes reality.

Our environments are not conceived, built or experienced by a singular person and they never have been, yet the profession steadfastly attempts to realise this imagery through an individ-

ualistic pedagogy, reinforced by a system of awards and competitions (an arguably masculine way of doing), commissions and media attention. Architecture enables us to construct society through ‘material, relational and performative means’1, and continued fascination with the architect as a solo figure, perpetuates the idea that architecture is a practice about the individual rather than the collective, is about imposed notions of perfection rather than collective compromise, and about the ego rather than social purpose. In a time of social, spatial and environmental reform, the architectural profession must become collaborative and inclusive to survive. Born out of this, is the possibility for an architectural practice founded in intensely contextual and explorative methodologies, with a profound respect for those inhabiting the built environment.

1 Andrés Jaque, Architects After Architecture, (Routledge, 2020), p.71 2 Jack Self, What it means to be radical 3, 4, 5, Justine Clark, Architects after Architecture, (Routledge, 2020), p.55 6, 7, Luke Jones, Non-Extractive Architecture : on Designing Without Depletion, (Sternberg Press, 2021), p.122 8 Joseph Grima, Non-Extractive Architecture : on Designing Without Depletion, (Sternberg Press, 2021), p.16

Widening boundaries of architecture to unlock new possibilities

“Just over half the women identified architecture as their principal field. Others worked in interior architecture, urban design, heritage, project management, in design and film, in craft and fine art… government, in media, in education, client side, or for construction companies.”3 This not only shows that women’s impact on society based on their architectural education is often overlooked as it is harder to follow, but it means that a whole pool of knowledge is cast aside. Given that many of these women use their architectural background every day, these activities “need to be understood as a vital extension of the professional landscape, rather than positioned as ‘atypical’ or ‘alternative’.” 4

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The scope of our education has become increasingly wide, going far beyond the solitary design of buildings. Many courses focus entire units on the study of new materials or live projects that are judged not on the output of a building, but on how well the students have collaborated with the local community to overcome real social issues. Yet when we graduate, to complete the certification and qualify as an architect we must gain experience in practices involved in the realising of buildings at different stages. Although this is effective in adding further rigour to the graduates who want to build buildings, this creates a further divide between architects and graduates who choose to use their knowledge in other ways. As an example, JACK SELF told us; “I am a registered architect, which was difficult to achieve, and largely unnecessary... I became a registered architect so that I can say, ‘I could be a normal architect, but I choose not to be.’”2 If this title really is a necessary step to be more heard or respected within the field of architecture, the discipline needs to do more to legitimise the more unconventional career paths that some graduates take, and acknowledging this work as architecture would lead to

more recognition and therefore collaboration with ‘mainstream’ architects.

This ‘legitimisation’ also plays a role in perpetuating the conception of the male, white architect. Australian advocacy group Parlour’s survey of over two thousand architecture graduates found that men, as a group, were more likely to follow the more traditional career path of an architect, and occupied roles with more influence and power in conventional architecture practices. Women, on the other hand were more likely to follow atypical career paths, with roles that were less linear in progression, with some changing paths completely and others changing in intensity or taking a break to focus on other ventures.

“experiences beyond the studio might offer meaningful insight back to the profession and its future development. Indeed, those on the edges of architecture are often among the most thoughtful in considering architecture’s potential and possibilities. The challenge is to ensure that these careers are seen.”5

Collectives such as EDIT, who are made up of architecturally educated women now working for the council, as set designers, in freelance, and in academia, are hugely important in creating counter-narratives to the experiences of the conventional and often male architect.

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KNOW NO BOUNDS 88

The discontinuation of exploitative practices through alternative methodologies Currently, architectural education and theory is still largely detached from the extraction and political ecology of its materials. In SPACE CAVIAR’s Non-Extractive Architecture Vol. 1, Luke Jones argues that reliance on the use of standardised materials and processes of familiarity, a methodology that grew exponentially with the industrial revolution, “marks a kind of gradual loss of architectural agency within the process of design and construction”6.

Materiality has historically been a key signifier of cultural context and has demonstrated the building practices of communities close to where it is sourced. In choosing to utilise our access to materials globally, conforming to specific aesthetic norms and prioritising efficiency in design, the fundamental concept of responding to context ceases to exist. Focusing on resources that are locally available and sustainably sourced can become an opportunity to centre material as a vessel for collaboration.

Through adopting this practice, an architectural language “that emanates from the material as an active principle, [and] permeates the system”7 can emerge. Materiality can be viewed as something to be inspired by and designed with, rather than a resource to be taken from and imposed upon. This approach to design would heighten the importance of local craftspeople and encourage collaboration throughout a number of disciplines. Architects cannot hope to be omniscient and instead must learn from the practice of other crafts, seeking to gain a better understanding of the materials we use, wielding that knowledge of craft and, finally, implementing those materials within the built environment. The importance of investing in the local economy is not just beneficial in terms of sustainable building practices: it also empowers the community directly rather than relying on trickle-down economics. In rejecting the “starchitect” construct and the foundations of social and environmental exploitation on which the image was built, Space Caviar believe there is potential to explore new ways of

9, 10, Dele Adeyemo, Non-Extractive Architecture : on Designing Without Depletion, (Sternberg Press, 2021), p.60-63 11 Sara Ahmed, Embodying diversity: problems and paradoxes for Black feminists, (Race Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2009, p.41–52) 12 Sumayya Vally, Sumayya Vally in Johannesburg -: Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed

by Counterspace, Youtube, uploaded

by Serpentine Galleries, June 2021 13 Sarah Wigglesworth, Women in Practice, (The Architects’ Journal, 2012, p.28-29) 14, 15 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, (Rout-

An inclusion that goes beyond diversity, but ensures a plurality of input Diversity is often hailed as a symbol for hope, evidenced as progressive change.

People of colour, protected identities and those with disabilities often become bodies with which this superficial image of equality is propped up with.

In the case of racial diversity, it becomes about “changing perceptions of whiteness rather than changing the whiteness of organisations”11 and, as a consequence, offers nothing but superficial condemnation

‘‘ask ourselves if the world around us is being made in our image, and if it isn’t, whose image is it being made of?’’

Sumayya Vally

‘‘Other worlds are possible, urgent, and necessary’’

bell hooks

of a violently unequal society. We must be re-educated on the process of design and provide an architecture that has no parameters for who can exist within it. SUMAYYA VALLY suggests we “ask ourselves if the world around us is being made in our image, and if it isn’t, whose image is it being made of?”12. When objectively analysed, the present-day industry continues to be dominated by white men and built for the idealised white client. Furthermore, despite unending declarations about the industry’s attempt to champion diversity, only 1% of UK architects are black whilst 84% of UK architects are white.

Gender equality is a topic similarly spoken about within the industry. In Sarah Wigglesworth’s opinion, the “culture of large, business-oriented firms”13 is generally to blame for the drowning out and subsequent atrophy of female architects. This logic can also be applied to many minority groups: the culture of architectural practices that have been inherited from previous generations were founded on ideals created to drown out the voices it now superficially attempts to champion. Wigglesworth goes on to argue that “we need new business models that reflect our interests and life patterns”11 and this cannot be achieved through inviting a selected set of diverse identities into the current system.

Author and social activist, bell hooks, famously stated that “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility” 14 and collectively engaging with this idea beyond the formal setting of an educational institution is imperative to creating an architectural practice that is ever evolving. hooks later stated: “it is imperative that we use our critical faculties to deconstruct our ways of imagining the world. Other worlds are possible, urgent, and necessary”15. Future modes of practice must be founded on the process of listening and learning and, equally importantly, to succeed they must be reliant on the process of critically unlearning. •

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being that are not “dependent on the accumulation of eco-systemic ruptures on a planetary scale”8.

The exploitation of resources would not be possible without the exploitation of people and labour. Present day mechanisms of the “extractive architecture of global capitalism”9 emerged during Europe’s ‘Age of Discovery’ where practices of agricultural production on an industrial scale and the practices of colonisation were prototyped.

DELE ADEYEMO, the architect, urban theorist and critic has spent years documenting the consequential “logics of dividing bodies and the Earth for the accumulation of surplus capital”10 and the impact these processes have on Western society presently. Adeyemo believes that the continuation of these practices is so prevalent in part because they were never eradicated, they simply evolved. Therefore, the collaboration that we seek cannot be founded on hierarchies and exploitative practices, as that would continue to perpetuate devastating architectural and societal norms. We cannot build a system that reinforces the notion that only some opinions and experiences are valid.

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in conversation with

JACK SELF

JACK SELF

‘What it Means to be Radical’

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Interviewers Bethany Lim Andreea Stanuta AJ Lori

Introduction by MacMag

MacMag:

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Jack Self was invited by the student organisers of the Friday lecture series to give a talk titled ‘What it Means to be Radical’. He was invited as a creative ‘whose work […] reflects on what must change in, and beyond, the profession to create a new generation of architects that know no bounds’.

Jack’s candour and frankness inspired and encouraged many of the students that attended, so we invited him to continue the conversation with us, with housing as the focus.

Could we start with a little bit about yourself to introduce you to our readers?

Jack Self: I am a registered architect, which was difficult to achieve, and largely unnecessary. I have a background in economics and philosophy. I am director of the REAL foundation, which is an architectural firm and Cultural Institute based in London, and I’m editor in chief of REAL review, which is a contemporary culture magazine.

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JACK SELF

MM: You mentioned the REAL foundation, which you founded in 2016, could you introduce the foundation to us, perhaps talk us through your journey to setting it up, your approach and ethos?

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JS: The first design project of any architect is themselves - how they want to present themselves in society, be understood as a practitioner, how other people understand their work. The second design, if they choose to go into business for themselves, is the structure of their firm.

In my case, when I graduated, I could not work for anyone else because when I looked at the architectural profession it had many problems. Firstly, the pay was very bad. Secondly, the work was very hard.

Thirdly, I had very little freedom. And finally, I felt that being involved in the architectural profession would be against some of my core values as a person. What I mean by that is, as you will know, architecture is overwhelmingly privileged, white, and male.

I don’t come from a wealthy family, so studying architecture was very difficult for me and I have a lot of debt as a result of this process. I didn’t want to be involved in such an elite profession, I didn’t think that was in the spirit of what had attracted me to architecture in the beginning, which was, in a very tangible sense, improving the conditions of the spaces for the people around me and of society at large. This meant I had to start my own company – I couldn’t see another alternative. The question then is; what type of company are you going to start? How could that company, not just represent your values, but how do you live and practice your values? What are the consequences of that?

Initially I thought I would start a charity, but that didn’t work out. The next best option was a foundation. At the REAL foundation, the idea was to create a company that only

‘‘the role of the star architect is as a financial tool of other interests.’’

‘‘the first design project of any architect is themselves’’

takes on projects that promote democracy, inclusivity, and equalities of many kinds – amongst them, but not limited to, gender, race, class, wealth, and space. That’s the core. To be perfectly frank, it’s been a struggle ever since to live those values and stay true to that ambition.

The other part of that is how you want to design the figure of the architect and how you want to be perceived. For myself, and what I think I want to be as an architect, that is a kind of spatial practitioner. I think that the ability to design and shape space, and the ways in which those spaces that you create evolve through time, and so the types of relationships that are made possible by those spaces, is my core focus.

This means sometimes designing buildings, and sometimes designing other types of spatial relationships, and even other types of objects beyond those that create relationships between people. That’s how I think about architecture.

MM: Following on from that, you are director of the REAL foundation, yet you have stated in previous interviews that you intend for the practice to work without you as a personified leader, could you elaborate on that idea? Are we shifting from the ‘starchitect’ era?

JS: Yeah, the starchitect era is definitely over, we’re just waiting for the last ones to die. And that’s good, because the role of the star architect is as a financial tool of other interests. It was the case that before the financial crash in 2008, an architect could do a beautiful 3D render of a building, in the absence of planning development or funding, and the value of that piece of land would suddenly go up because ‘‘wow, a famous architect did a building design here’’.

That was used as a tool of speculation to create imaginary profit. I think this idea

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ABOVE postcards created for 2016 Venice Biennale exhibition, Home Economics. Art direction by JACK SELF with OK-RM, photography by MATTHIEU LAVANCHY

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of the architect as a singular genius, as a kind of hero figure, is not something that we should embrace. In terms of collaborative practice, I think this is, frankly, just a recognition of how architecture is actually made. Architecture is highly collaborative, you need a lot of people, not just architects; you need engineers, historical consultants, planning consultants, suppliers, manufacturers, etc, etc. The idea that one person can draw a sketch on a bar napkin and imagine all of that in one go – it has always been a fantasy.

In terms of the actual realities of collaborative practice, it’s very difficult. An assumption that a lot of people have when they go into the idea of collective practices is that there will be a flat hierarchy and no rules. For us, there are hierarchies, but the hierarchy comes with accountability and responsibility. If you have a large group of people where there’s no one that is responsible for things, and there’s no rules governing how they engage with each other, you just end up with chaos.

With REAL foundation, the structure of how we work collaboratively is always changing, and it’s always evolving based on ongoing feedback, which to me is healthy. The types of communities I see with long-term problems are the ones where the rules are fixed and rigid.

don, I’ve lived mostly in social housing, or very low rent, semi-converted warehouse spaces. My housing condition has been getting better and now I think I live in quite a nice apartment. What I noticed was that in my life there were three major spheres of activity; there were romantic relationships, professional relationships, and my housing situation. I can take instability in my romantic relationships and my work situation, but it was when my housing situation became really unstable that I found my mental health under the highest level of pressure. If you don’t know where you’re living or can’t pay the rent, it changes your entire relationship with everything. So, the utopian dream for me is that I would have the perfect house for me in exactly the location I want and it would be free forever, because that would fundamentally change my relationship with other people and with work, with how I earned my money. Therefore, that’s what I have been pursuing, first for myself, then what can I do as an individual and as a professional to try and improve the conditions of other people as well. I decided that housing makes the biggest impact on people’s lives and their possibility for the future, so this was the one thing I wanted to focus on – I’m only interested in housing.

‘‘ In terms of collaborative practice, I think this is, frankly, just a recognition of how architecture is actually made’’

MM: Shifting the tangent towards housing now, during the lecture you gave as part of the Friday lecture series, you mentioned that you are mainly, in fact, ONLY, interested in housing. Where is it that this fascination stems from?

MM: In the Friday lecture you also eloquently explained the detrimental effects of Thatcherite policies on social housing, and housing generally, in the UK. To set the context for your own approach towards housing, could you just concisely reiterate that for the readers?

JS: It began from a very personal reflection, as most of my adult life and a big part of my childhood I’ve lived in very low-quality housing. In Australia when I was at university, I lived in a halfway house for recovering heroin and cocaine addicts because it was the only place I could afford to live. In Lon-

JS: In the beginning of Margaret Thatcher’s first term in 1980, she had a unique set of problems. The British economy had just been opened up to global production, so productive industry was being shifted from places where labour was expensive, such as Britain, to China, where wages

‘‘The housing crisis in Britain is an artificial and engineered problem created specifically as a way to increase consumerism.’’

‘‘I decided that housing makes the biggest impact on people’s lives and their possibility for the future, so this was the one thing I wanted to focus on – I’m only interested in housing’’ To conclude, in the last 100 years, or more actually, the last 200 years, as far as I’m aware, there has never been a major financial crash which wasn’t started in the property sector. This tells you that housing and the economy are intricately linked. Fundamentally, it is an economic question about the relationship between ownership and property. The housing crisis in Britain is an artificial and engineered problem created specifically as a way to increase consumerism.

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and material costs were low. This basically caused the Western productive economy to collapse and China to boom. Thatcher had an economy which was doing very badly – we couldn’t really make any money, there were high levels of unemployment and inflation. In 1976, the suggested solution to this was to sell social housing for 25% of its value. This means that within one day, the person who buys it at 25% now owns something that has a value of 100%, and so you can lend them 75% of the value of the house in debt, which they can use to buy all these products being made in China. This massively boosts spending - a temporary solution to stimulate the economy. But Margaret Thatcher made one other rule, which fucked it all up for everyone. Her Housing Minister realised that if you sell all of the social housing, then make more, the value of the housing will not go up, and you have to make sure that housing always goes up in value, otherwise the whole system stops. So how do you make sure that housing always goes up in value? You make sure there’s always a lack of supply. There’s always been an incentive in capitalist property exchange for there to not be enough.

So, the rule that Thatcher made was; any money that comes from the sale of social housing, cannot be used to make more social housing. Between, I believe, 1983 and 2003, there was no social housing made in Britain at all - not a single unit. This created catastrophic shortages, I mean, hundreds of thousands of homes short. That’s also what led to the economic boom, that lasted up until 2008. Houses just kept going up and up in price and people kept borrowing more and more debt against those prices, believing that it will always go up, and that they could use this money to then buy cars and televisions and all sorts of amazing stuff.

MM: Now, looking towards the future instead, what do you see the effects of the pandemic on housing being?

JS: The only other events of a comparable scale to the pandemic that I’ve lived through are the financial crash of 2008, and 9/11. If you told me on September 12 that the effects of 9/11 would be a 14-year war in Afghanistan, it just wouldn’t have made sense, right? You can’t predict lots of outcomes, we’re too close to the pandemic to know what the long-term effects will be.

However, there are a couple of hints. Often these types of events accelerate changes that were already underway. In 2008, one of the effects right after was the sense that maybe capitalism was not the best structure for society. In the 1990s, that was not a question you could consider, you were seen as some sort of fringe member of some unusual political affiliation, but suddenly after 2008, you had middle-class people in

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JACK SELF ABOVE photographs from Mean Home, an exhibition held in 2019 at the British School at Rome

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how housing is made, how it’s owned, and how it’s run. The main existing problem with housing is that, in the UK, 99.58% of all buildings are built to sell. The motivations of a developer are to build fast and cheap, they do not care about the longevity or environmental impact of the building, they have no interest in the social impact of the building. What REAL Homes is trying to do is suggest that if we build and operate our own buildings, then the cost of operations is very important. The environmental standards that we’re pursuing should allow us to reduce the cost of operation by about 70%. That allows us to lower the cost of rent and make affordable housing.

From a social standpoint, we’re exploring alternative ownership mechanisms, so tenants get shares in our holding company – not just in their building, but the whole network. That means they don’t need a deposit for a mortgage, they don’t need to be in debt, they will get a portion of ownership just by living in the building. We think this will change people’s relationship with the building – as soon as you have a stake in that space, it changes your entire attitude to where you live. From a governance standpoint, we’re pursuing standards which will make us accountable, transparent, and inclusive. That’s what I’m trying to do with our housing company, I have no idea if I will be successful, it is a very, very difficult and stressful thing to do.

‘‘ The sea change that I’m seeing at the moment in society as a whole is towards a real quest for a sense of purpose’’

MM: You and REAL founded the ‘world’s first ethical housing company’, REAL homes in 2020. Could you introduce this to us?

What is the ultimate goal for this venture?

JS: The ambition of the housing company is to create the world’s most inclusive housing company. Our objectives are to change

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suburbia talking about Karl Marx. This led to a number of things, such as the optimism and hope that we could change society.

The moment that we find ourselves in now has some obvious trajectories as a result of the pandemic. One is the energy behind civil rights struggles - which include greater social justice, racial justice, climate justice, and gender equality – is very difficult to reverse or stop. We should imagine that these types of values, which began to become mainstream with Millennials, will continue through Gen Z, and will get more intense with the generation that follows that. The other thing, which is really remarkable about the pandemic is that it has caused everyone to reflect deeply on what they want for their own lives, and what they want for society in general. The sea change that I’m seeing at the moment in society as a whole is towards a real quest for a sense of purpose - there has to be some meaning to our lives, because we are dissatisfied with the argument that capitalism has made, which is you will get a highpaid, easy job, and that will allow you to buy all of the things you want, and you will be happy forever. We know that is not possible or desirable. That means that we’re about to enter into a space in which I think there will be profound change, and I think it will happen very rapidly. I am hopeful that the outcome of that will be that we no longer live in a world which is exploitative, unjust, linear, and accumulative, and which is generated by profit rather than by care. That makes me quite hopeful, I’m quite optimistic about our future in that way.

MM: You have said in previous interviews that you believe copying within the architectural profession should be de-stigmatised. Could you elaborate on this, and what do you think the positive benefits of this would be?

JS: Oscar Wilde said that originality is plagiarism of the obscure. I think that’s true a lot of the time. The only reason that copying is a negative concept is because we live in a society in which intellectual property

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JACK SELF

is also commercially valuable. If you live in a society in which ideas are shared freely, then the idea of copying is not a problem.

In architecture this is called a typology, so copying already takes place, often over things which don’t appear to be copyrighted. You can’t copy the shape of a Zaha Hadid building, but I guarantee that all of the houses that you’re in have a bathroom, kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Where do you draw the limit on what is a copy, and in my case, I’m just interested in making proposals for how we can improve the world. And I’m only really interested in how they can be implemented, how people can actually use them. If you become obsessed by ownership, and a fear of copying, then you cannot achieve any type of meaningful change.

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MM: Do you see REAL Homes tying in with that idea? Do you see it being easily replicated moving forward?

JS: We believe that our system of building, which is heavily prefabricated, will be cost neutral. It will cost the same amount to build one of our buildings as a normal building. However, it will be 60-80% cheaper to run. At that point, the barrier to building this type of building will be really low, so even for a private developer, hopefully, they will start to choose our building system over existing forms of construction. I’m expecting that as soon as people see us being successful, other developers or other companies will start to copy what we’re doing. I’m okay with that because it’s just not going to be possible to achieve anything unless we can create a scalable model.

There are still many barriers to achieving

‘‘It’s not that all money is evil, it has a lot to do with the terms and conditions of that money’

‘‘If you become obsessed by ownership [...] then you cannot achieve any type of meaningful change’’ what I hope to do. However, I also feel that if I do fail, I’m just going to publish all of the research and all of the material that we’ve produced for free and hopefully someone who’s better placed might be able to use it.

M: Do you find it difficult to balance the M ethics of this? As you have said before, ‘ethical real estate’ is an oxymoron - it does not exist - so how do you manage your own quite socialist ideals within a wholly capitalist environment?

JS: Well, I’m not going through traditional development finance, I’m not working with banks, or funds, or entities which are only interested in speculation – buy low, sell high, etc. I’m only looking to work with sources of finance that are called patient capitalists. They’re not trying to buy and sell, they’re interested in the income stream, which is predictable and safe. Already, that’s a very different relationship – they want to build long-term, sustainable relationships with people.

It’s not that all money is evil, it has a lot to do with the terms and conditions of that money. I’m trying to find the most ethical way, within the existing structure of society, that we can achieve our goals. My experience of being involved with a lot of protest movements is that, the more idealistic and unable to compromise you are, the less progress you can make. I think it would be very easy for me to say that I refuse to be involved in capitalist production and property, full stop, it’s immoral and I refuse to engage with it, but it’s a very privileged position to be able to say that. Then I feel good about myself because I’ve been true to my ideals, but I have not achieved any change for anyone else.

MM: So, to conclude, are you optimistic about the future of housing within the UK? Where do you see it going?

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JS: No, I’m not. Because it is not clear to me at the moment that systemic change is on the horizon. However, there is a theory called the Black Swan event. The phrase ‘’as likely as a Black Swan’’, was used in the 1600s to mean something which is impossible. All swans are white, there are no black swans. Then Dutch sailors got to the West Coast of Australia, and they saw black swans. This radically changed everyone’s opinion - if there are black swans, who knows? It was unpredictable! We could never have imagined another continent on the other half of the planet, where there were black swans. So, the idea of a Black Swan event is something that is unpredictable and unimaginable, but which afterwards, you think, yeah, it makes sense that there could be black swans. The pandemic is a Black Swan event. Afterwards, we think, obviously, pandemics can happen and they can become really awful and global, but in January 2020, none of us thought that we were about to enter into a major pandemic.

These are events which are unpredictable, unforeseeable, but at the same time, have some familiarity to them. What I’m waiting for is the next great Black Swan event, one which fundamentally changes our relationship with property and ownership. I don’t know what that will be, or what form it will take, but I am optimistic that it will come.

The current model of society is unsustainable and the current housing trajectory in the UK is impossible, so there must be something that will arise. I’m optimistic about that.

MM: Thank you so much for your time!

JS: I’m very grateful for the invitation. • ABOVE REAL Review 1 and 2 LINKS https://real-review.org/ https://real.foundation/ https://jackself.com/

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Student Housing Co-ops GLASGOW STUDENT HOUSING COOPERATIVE

making the cooperative dream a reality

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Glasgow Student Housing Cooperative

Introduction by MacMag When considering active applications of collaborative practice within architecture, housing cooperatives were a particular point of interest for us. We wanted to write about countries where this is a widely accepted and successful model of development, such as Switzerland (about 20% of the housing market in Zurich is cooperative run), and where established housing cooperatives buy the land and then commission the design from an architect themselves, resulting in some beautiful and unique housing designs. However, it quickly became apparent that this model (buying land, new build) was not transferrable to the UK. Whilst this was interesting to look at, we wanted the content of the MacMag to feel tangible and

relevant to the readers’ own contexts, and especially to the students reading.

We then heard about Glasgow Student Housing Cooperatives and saw that they were hosting an event at DRAM, inviting guests to collage their dream housing co-op situation, and went along to see what they were all about.

We were excited by what we saw and so invited them to verbalise their ambitions within the magazine, and in doing so, hopefully encourage students to think about housing in a different way to the current status quo in the UK today. The group co-wrote this piece and so requested the author be kept as ‘Glasgow Student Housing Cooperative’.

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GLASGOW STUDENT HOUSING COOPERATIVE

What is it and how does it work?

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The first question we get asked is: How are you going to buy a house?

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than just a bunch of students coming together to buy a house, but I’ll try to explain it.

Glasgow Student Housing Cooperative is a group of students from universities across Glasgow, who are working together with the aim to set up the first student housing coop in Glasgow and provide affordable housing, which is owned and managed by students. Our founding members were initially inspired by a visit to Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op, who are still the only housed student housing co-op in Scotland.

GSHC was set up in 2016 and while we have secured funding we are still in the process of securing a building.

Simply put, a co-operative is an organisation or business that is owned and controlled by its mem-

bers. There are many different types of co-ops, including housing co-ops, workers’ co-ops, food co-ops, but they are all characterised by being run and managed by their members, usually in a non-hierarchical and consensus-led manner. Instead of voting, we make decisions by ‘consensus’ - we discuss the topic and try to find a solution/decision which works for everyone, with the aim of making better and more inclusive decisions. We have a horizontal organisational structure: no members have more or less say than others and members are Directors of the co-op, and have equal rights to participate in decision making. We have a Secretary who is responsible for calling meetings, helping members join or leave the co-op and calling Annual General Meetings and a Treasurer/Co-treasurers. We decide who will fill these 2 roles once a year at our AGM. While we have a treasurer and a secretary for legal

We intend to run the co-operative in adherence with the seven Rochdale Co-operative Principles of: •Voluntary and open membership •Democratic member control •Member economic participation •Autonomy and independence •Education, training and information

•Co-operation amongst co-operatives

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reasons we try to complete all tasks cooperatively in order to share skills, knowledge and power. We also have rotating officer positions for social media, house-hunting and finances to ensure everyone gets a shot to try everything and no one is bored!

•Concern for community We hold General Meetings (GMs) every two weeks, where members discuss the governance of the co-operative, strategy and updates on progress, member engagement and community, financial matters, and communication with our wider network. We decide on how to move forward by allocating Action Points for members to complete. We also have a set of policies which we write collectively and agree to abide by, in order to have a clear set of values and guidelines of how we would like to work and live together.

We run public events such as Coop mixers with other cooperatives, or collaborative events with other societies. Recently we had a very

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GLASGOW STUDENT HOUSING COOPERATIVE

‘‘the private rented sector is failing at providing decent and affordable homes’’ successful event with Pith at DRAM, where we collaged and made zines about our ideal student house (presented throughout this article). We run socials to get to know each other and we attend trainings and meetings with other cooperatives in the UK and abroad - we just returned from a 3-day gathering in Edinburgh Student Housing Cooperative. It’s been inspiring and motivating to see what ESHC has achieved, and we can’t wait to make that happen in Glasgow!

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profit. This left many students paying more rent, living further away from University or couch-surfing for months.

Moreover, during the pandemic students have been left isolated in halls and deprived of the communal experience of student living. They have had to pay expensive rent despite the fact that many of them moved back home and lost their sources of income, which relied on casual employment opportunities. This has led to higher levels of stress and poor mental health. Rising student activism such as the Glasgow University Student Tenants Union or Greater Glasgow Tenants Union show that students are dissatisfied with the way they have been treated and how university halls handled the situation. Students are increasingly aware of the ways they are exploited by private landlords and university accommodation and they demand a different alternative.

Firstly, the private rented sector is failing at providing decent and affordable homes, and students are often taken advantage of by landlords. It can be difficult for students to find suitable and affordable housing and some students experience problems getting repairs in a timely manner. With rising rent and worsening living conditions, students’ wellbeing and mental health is starting to suffer. As we have seen the past year, Glasgow is a prime example of this. Although the HMO system is in place to ensure student housing meets safety standards, this led to a separate housing stock for students, which is often subpar and more expensive than the rest of Glasgow. While the housing market in Glasgow has been in crisis for a while, the past year has been significantly worse as, during COP26, some landlords preferred to rent their flats on Airbnb to make more

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Why did we set up GSHC?

Student housing co-ops are appearing in direct response to the frustration of feeling that as largely inexperienced students, with (overall) a lack of understanding of housing law and the private rental sector, we have little control over our living situations. We believe that a housing co-op is an effective way to combat increasing rent prices, and provide a democratically controlled living environment. Housing cooperatives are an innovative model which puts students in control of their housing and eliminates the role of the landlord. A co-op provides democratic control - students have a say in how their housing is run and are empowered to make decisions affecting their lives. Collectively, members of a co-op take on the role of landlord and have a direct say in their living conditions. This allows students to have more rights, such as to personalise their homes through decorating, painting and building furniture, and owning pets. Moreover, this also allows students to make important changes to their housing to make it more accessible or sustainable, such as adding ramps, accessible bathrooms, or starting a garden.

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GLASGOW STUDENT HOUSING COOPERATIVE 106

In this way co-ops can improve students’ wellbeing and the quality of their housing, while also allowing students to gain a wide range of valuable life skills and learn about co-operative values, culture and practices.

This model could benefit all tenants but it is particularly relevant to students, who may be moving away from home for the first time or who have just arrived in Glasgow and may not be fully aware of their rights as a tenant. While student housing co-ops have a long and varied history in the US, they are a more recent phenomenon in the UK. Currently, these have been successfully set up in Birmingham (the very first in the UK, which opened in 2014), Edinburgh (the biggest one in the UK housing 106 students), Brighton and Sheffield. Progress is underway for establishing more in Nottingham, Bristol, Cork and Glasgow. With several student housing co-ops already successfully operating we know it’s a model that works!

Finding and buying a property Finding a property is not easy. When house-hunting we need to ensure that the property is in a location that is near multiple universities or easily reachable by public transport, and in an area attractive to students. The property must be financially viable to allow for affordable rent, which we usually aim to be at £300 to maximum £400 per month. It is important to us that wherever the co-op is housed, we don’t contribute to further gentrification but instead make a meaningful contribution to the wider community. The focus on inclusiveness and community in cooperatives can also help to break down barriers that can sometimes exist between students and the existing community in the area.

When we get housed we are hoping to have events, training, gardening sessions and potlucks for the wider community in order to foster togetherness.

Once we find the perfect property how will we buy it? While different cooperatives have different models, we are a member of Student Co-op Homes (SCH) who is

purchasing the property and then leasing it to us. Student Co op Homes is the UK federation of student housing co ops and have raised over £300,000 through their first community share offer. This will allow them to start buying properties for cooperatives such as GSHC and help create a thriving student housing co-op movement across the UK. What’s next?

While Glasgow Student Housing Co-op is in the slightly ironic position of being a housing co-op without a house, we have been working hard to make this dream a reality. In the last couple of years we have viewed all sorts of properties in Glasgow - from tenement flats to giant mansions, from derelict care homes to old schools.

‘‘from tenement flats to giant mansions, from derelict care homes to old schools’

‘‘autonomous, sustainable, and democratically managed by the tenants’’

in touch. We welcome students who are passionate about co-operative living and at university, college and in apprenticeships. Our meetings are every two weeks and always open to new members - you just need to come to 6 of them to become a full and registered member. See you there!•

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While our ideal building would have space for around 20 members, this is not something that comes up frequently. So our vision for now is to find a smaller property to act as a base for a flat, and then slowly accumulate some wealth so we are able to invest in more properties across Glasgow.

This would allow us to build a large cooperative movement throughout Glasgow but also have properties near major universities in Glasgow.

Housing co-operatives are autonomous, sustainable, and democratically managed by the tenants, which appeals to people who want below market rents, a source of community, and the responsibility and freedom of running their own accommodation. If this sounds like you, then please get

ABOVE photograph of early members NOTE all collages were produced by attendees to GSHC’s event at DRAM LINKS http://facebook.com/glasgowstudenthousingcoop/ https://www.instagram.com/glasgowstudenthousingcoop/

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STAGE 4 STAGE 4

Kirsty Lees Stage Leader 2021/2022 Stage 4, is, and always has been concerned with the relationships between architecture and the city, and Glasgow in particular. It uses the city of Glasgow as its urban laboratory to develop an understanding of the complexities of living and working in sustainable cities.

Urban reconstructions in the form of housing projects and urban interventions in the form of public buildings offer students the opportunity to develop responses to the city ranging in scale from the re-structuring of an urban quarter to the impact of the individual building.

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Our investigations this year have centred on the relationships between domesticity, labour, and urban form. Collectively, we have

conducted research and developed speculative designs based in Glasgow’s Barras Market, a significant historic area of culture and exchange, and an emerging live/ work/creative industries node, which is expected to transform over the next decade.

The study is premised on the idea that productive activity (the exchange of labour, service, and knowledge) and domestic provision are the enduring and underlying motivation for collective living in the city. The cultural production that results from the interface between domestic life and productive activity is of particular interest in contemporary society. Recent exchange models and global networks are generating distinct versions of the key aspect of human existence, with physical

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and non-physical production influencing both domestic patterns and working habits. The recent pandemic also enforced self-isolating home working and as we collectively negotiate a new landscape of hybrid models these questions are as pertinent as ever.

The Stage 4 Studio Team Kirsty Lees, Andy Summers, Nick Walker, Rory Corr, Isabel Deakin, Robert Mantho Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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Salutogenesis

STAGE 4

William White-Howe

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This project aims to tackle the subject of poor public health using a ‘salutogenic’ approach.

This is a medical approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease. Creating a public building that acts as the precursor to a hospital by allowing people to prevent and treat ill health themselves. The proposal speculates on measures that could help reduce strain on NHS resources. This is a typology of a publicly funded building that currently does not exist within the UK and thus precedents are difficult to find.

As such, the project theorises the type and conditions a building of this type could achieve.

Through the creation of nodes targeting 4 main subcategories of wellness; Mental, Physical, Holistic and Social wellness the proposal creates intermediary access to healthcare, reducing stigma and promoting positive self-development.

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Public Space Announcement

STAGE 4

Emily Dan

Opera houses are white elephants amongst our cities. They represent the best and worst capabilities of public buildings – at their best they are regenerative, a symbol of the future. At their worst they are the expensive self-indulgence of starchitects – alienating, “top-down” buildings that aren’t accepted by the people who live there.

The Barras is one of many local economies that is suffering as the flea markets are becoming redundant. Public buildings are facing a similar crisis - the archaic institution of the opera house must respond to the duplicitous world of contrasts in which we live. This project refocuses the ‘opera house’; the heart of the building is not a black box auditorium, but public space.

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Urban Textile Institute

STAGE 4

Ailish Whooley

Textiles played a crucial role in the development of the Calton area. However, developments in textile manufacturing have led to a situation where ‘fast fashion’ is the norm. The industry accounts for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, with many garments produced in unsafe working conditions.

This project aims to encourage ethical consumption while providing opportunities for local people, redefining what we think of as ‘production’. As we move away from fast fashion, public spaces for the repair of clothing become critical. The process of collectively repairing is an event through which relationships develop through acts of public domesticity.

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By examining the cultural significance of the public wash house, this project proposes a new civic institution for the repair and reuse of clothes.

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Theatre of Accidental Encounters

STAGE 4

Magdalena Włoczka Art, in any form, might take us by surprise, bring the long-desired catharsis caused by its beauty. Modern urban conditions often prevent us from experiencing art within our daily lives, with only a narrow group of people purposefully seeking it, while its impact is often lost on the remaining majority.

The Barras Theatre aims to superimpose the widely understood art on the market passers-by and residents of Calton through enabling opportunities for accidental encounters.

Building’s programme is contained within 5 solid volumes placed around a transparent core filled with a lattice of timber columns and walkways. The public street connects different parts of the building and allows a flow of people through, creating a modern-day agora where different activities can take place in the presence of art.

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Creative Campus

STAGE 4

Charles Dunn A centre for music within the Calton District. Responding to the existing context, it aims to form part of a creative campus, drawing upon existing cultural landmarks often overlooked for their transformative potential to target social deprivation.

By providing a visible, accessible and approachable place for learning, coupled with the provision of free music lessons for young people, the architectural and pedagogical traditions which have long permeated classical music venues and institutions are reframed.

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Defined tectonic relationships and material gestures form an assemblage of distinct spaces for the user to inhabit. Moving away from the large object building and civic institution, instead there is both a symbolic and physical disassembly of the institution. Elemental timber volumes form an abstract expression of both form and programme.

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Wellness Center Angeliki Sachliki THE PROBLEM _ CURRENT SITUATION

STAGE 4

tric Hospital and Places for treatment are more about punishment and control than places of therapy and love.

You cannot run away from your personal problems by changing your city or country.

Power

For that to happen they need to change their outlook of life. Nowadays the hectic and stressful life in the cities has negative implications on a person’s mental health.

Therefore, a possible solution to this problem isBoundaries to disconnect from the hectic rhythms of the city by enhancing the notion of retreat through sensory stimuli.

To achieve that, people need to explore spaces that will let them use their senses in a therapeutic way.

Control

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TRANSLATE Blurring Threshold

Psychically and Emotionally

TRANSLATE MAIN CONCEPTS INTO SPACES MAIN CONCEPTS INTO SPACES Imagination Imagination

Blurring Threshold

Stimulate senses and interest

tion Tower

Art Studio

Art Studio Bird house

Blurring Threshold

TRANSLATE MAIN CONCEPTS INTO SPACES Express Emotions TRANSLATE MAIN CONCEPT

Express Emotions Psychically and Emotionally Blurring Threshold Stimulate senses and interest

Psychically and Emotionally

Amphitheater Tree House

Anger Tower Tree House

Anger Tower Gardening Cooking Workshopss Art Studio

Imagination

Imagination

Stimulate senses and interest

Art Studio

Stimulate senses and interest

Relaxation Tower

Isolatio Anger

TRANSLATE MAIN CONCEPTS INTO SPACES Imagination

Psychically and Emotionally

Express Emotions

Stimulate senses and interest

Cooking Workshopss on Tower Tree House

Gardening

Amphitheater

Amphitheater

Gardening

Bird house Art Studio

Relaxation Tower Bird house

Cooking Workshopss Amphitheater Isolation Tower Amphitheater

Gardening

Relaxation Tower Cooking Workshopss Anger Tower

Gardening

Isolation Tower

Relaxation Tower Gardening

Cooking Workshopss

Gardening

Isolation Tower

Relaxatio

Isolatio

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Bird house

Cooking Workshopss

Isolation Tower

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A Politics of the Joyful Body the Barras steamie

STAGE 4

Kacper Ryske

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The leisure society is a predicted future society that will allow individuals to work less and have more free time than today. The concept of leisure is defined as an act of enjoyment done outside the framework of capitalist production and consumption. It is realised by focusing on collective gestures and the rhythms of the body.

Bathing is the ultimate leisure activity – an immersive experience that allows total liberation from productivity. By incorporating the philosophy of bathing rituals into the local infrastructure of the east end of Glasgow, this project’s aim is to generate societal and cultural value while reducing the destitution and inequalities in the area. The new conception of the public bathhouse can initiate new social dynamics, new social opportunities, and new public behaviours and improve the lifestyle of the Carlton community.

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La Música

STAGE 4

Katy McGregor

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An intervention into an area of the city that has for too long been ignored. Its urban structure has been broken up through neglect and demolition and weak redevelopment.

The project here is a small part of the regeneration of the area in human and urban terms.

The proposals take as a seed to grow on the positive presence of the Barrowland and its place in Glasgow’s and indeed Scotland’s successful music culture. The proposed building has two aims. The first is to reinforce the infrastructure for the promotion of music in the city that this part of the Calton has, to bring footfall to the area and inward investment to local businesses to expand and create new jobs. That will act as a catalyst for the more important task of transforming the community by providing a focal point for a grassroots promotion of the learning of music, performing that within groups and bands.

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Barras Youth Hub Lotta Pulkkinen

STAGE 4

SiAG Graduate Degree Show Prize

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Over 34% of children in Glasgow were estimated to be living in poverty. Loneliness and low self-esteem are growing issues among children and young adults. The project is located in Calton, Glasgow and proposes a youth centre and youth quarter that expands around the urban block. The neighbourhood suffers especially from high child poverty and a lack of safe spaces for the youth. The proposal suggests a plan for a child-friendly Calton, providing play opportunities throughout the public realm. The youth centre offers a supervised environment for socially engaged spare time and informal learning.

The ideal environment for children creates a positive interaction between a child and the environment. Independent mobility enables a child to discover and experience the material world.

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STAGE 5 STAGE 5

Miranda Webster Stage Leader 2021/2022 The Diploma School at the Mackintosh School of Architecture has, for many years, been intimately concerned with the reciprocal relationships between architecture and the city in both their generic and specific mainifestations.

Glasgow’s geographic situation, topography and climate as well as the potent political, economic, social and cultural aspects which shaped, and continue to shape, the particular morphologies and character, the relative constancy or shifting dynamics of these influential forces have variously informed the continuous process of urban repair, renewal, reinvigoration and sometimes reinvention.

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With the current COVID 19 pandemic situation and the Climate Emergency, we can ask the ques-

tion, what does this mean for the current city and the future of our city? Climate change exacerbates existing inequalities and ethical decision making and processes relating to the planet, society and in the choices that we make can no longer be separated from architectural design.

Architecture and urbanism is the spatial framework around which we organise ourselves socially and live our lives privately. It is the space we inhabit in order to exist.

The final year of architectural education is a chance to determine what constitutes an Ethical City.

Studio work focus’ on a self-directed architectural design thesis that is framed and explored through a design proposal. Asking searching questions of our cities

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and our buildings in light of all contexts. The Final Design Thesis explores how these contexts impact architecturally on our cities, our buildings, and on the spaces in between that we all share. How they have determined our cities historically, how ought they determine the form of our cities in the future.

The Stage 5 Studio Team Miranda Webster, Jonny Fisher, Stacey Philips, Thomas Woodcock, Graeme Massie, Charlie Sutherland Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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A Re-establishment of Making to the Narrative of the Clyde Sandy Vile STAGE 5

RIBA President’s Silver Medal Nominee

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We all occupy the places of people who have gone before us; those never known, forgotten or half remembered. Today’s fast and instant culture often ignores and forgets this. However historic architecture and ruins are a way of remembering and honouring what went before.

This thesis seeks to find an appropriate architecture with which to build onto an historic fabric, not to remake or replicate what once was but to continue the narrative, adding the next layer. It is an investigation into the unfinished; how can we make architecture intended not to exist in a final state from completion but one that is added to and adapted to the ebbs and flows of inhabitants over time, with each addition adding layers and scars of its previous life.

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The Atlas of the North Maisie Tudge

STAGE 5

RIBA President’s Silver Medal Nominee

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Through the anthropomorphication of architecture, we have given buildings life. They have bones and skin, a heart at their centre, and even hold memory.

Considering this sentiment, a building as a living entity, this thesis also adheres to Jane Jacob’s adage that ‘Buildings Must Die’. Sparked by the mass demolition Glasgow has faced since the 1960’s Comprehensive Development, this thesis will act as a memento mori, immortalising the lost and forgotten histories of Glasgow; acting as both monument and museum. The promotion of ruin salvation will culminate in the restoration of the Springburn Winter Gardens; where the historic built form will become the epicentre of hope for the future, and its proposed neighbour will become a collation of salvaged material from near by demolition sites. Taking on the ethos of circular economy; prolonging the material lifecycle from cradle to grave – to cradle to cradle.

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The Commonplace STAGE 5

Timothy Khoo

The Commonplace is conceived in contrast to dominant and imposing civic forms which the asylum seeker and refugee communities continue to face.

It is a non-institutional building with the concept of an “open house” – a concept that aims to build a society founded on the values of fairness, equality and opportunity for everyone in Scotland, where everyone matters and all are included.

These small services without red tape as well as small and autonomous programs counter bureaucratic norms, impersonal relationships to large institutions and traumas faced by the asylum seekers —changing the passive nature of their relationship to these institutions.

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The Urban Mantelpiece symbiotic design as sustainable design for the future of urban growth

STAGE 5

Siripat Rojnirun

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The Urban Mantelpiece is a speculative response to the consequential effect of population displacement due to the predicted mass Climate Migration of up to 1 billion people by 2050. The thesis explores the future of sustainable development within hyperdense urban areas by investigating the possibility of building on top of the already existing urban fabric – alternative to merely building new taller towers. It requires no major demolition or exploitation of natural landscape, as well as conserves urban identity. The symbiotic proposal is an elevated urban infill, enhancing the value of community by connecting the old with the new.

Using the metaphor of a Mantelpiece – every household’s furniture of sentiment, the thesis muse on the play of nostalgia and the city’s spirit of place.

The proposal observes the life of the city as it goes by, while at the same time shelters the memories inhabiting within.

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Imagine a City STAGE 5

Alesia Berahavaya

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The project is a critique at Glasgow’s current response to the issue of public space. It looks into the future and interrogates how public spaces can evolve to connect, involve and uplift every member of society.

The key objective of this thesis is to offer up an urban environment that holds the following to be self evident : “All people have the right to access all spaces at all time”. The delicate boundary between private and public is studied, protecting the inclusiveness of public spaces to foster tolerance, conviviality and dialogue. Derived building landscape aims to stimulate and frame vibrant public life between buildings - on streets, sidewalks, squares and covered public areas - though the means of adjacent, self-build enterprises and residential units.

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Post-Industrial Re-Mediation of Scotland’s Coastal Condition STAGE 5

Rebecca Robertson

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The thesis considers the architectural relationship between the built and natural environment, and looks at the forgotten industrial remains left upon the landscapes of the Western coastline of Scotland, that helped create the industrial powerhouse of Glasgow, without reaping the same levels of post-industrial regeneration.

Considering Patrick Geddes’ concept of the “region city”, the thesis examines the possibility of elevating and connecting smaller places related on a regional level to cities, which mutually binds the city and region on a level out-with conventional boundaries - enriching both rural and urban conditions. It further references local poetry of place, acknowledging the intrinsic links between culture, nature, and existing architectural remains.

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Assembling Communities by Disassembly STAGE 5

Rebecca Hodalova

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This thesis is looking into designing for disassembly infrastructure to facilitate a stronger community build network of social mobility engine rooms around Glasgow. It aims to reactive the disused sites around the city where communities are not being catered for. Situated at the old Bellgrove Meat Market, sitting on top of a railway line, connecting this site to the rest of Glasgow, and taking advantage of the existing market sheds, is the new Headquarters factory. It is a place of prefabrication, education, workshops, and community collaboration. Through the proposed infrastructure, the thesis aims to give the communities the means to participate in the creation of their city, and by doing so, provide them with a service rather than a product.

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MArch in ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Architectural Studies Isabel Deakin Programme Leader

The Masters in Architectural Studies 1 year (3 semester) programme combines individual specialist study, through a series of pathways, with the opportunity to share knowledge and experience with fellow students in a cross disciplinary context. Students are encouraged to explore Glasgow and to use the city as their laboratory.

Masters in Architectural Studies Pathways:

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Urban Design Creative Urban Practices Urban Building Digital Creativity Energy and Environmental Studies History and Theory of the City Zero-Energy Mass Customised Housing

Cross Disciplinary Context: The programme begins with a series of core lectures and seminars connected to each pathway, balanced by focused reading of key literature which give an overview of contemporary issues in and around architecture. This enables all of the Masters students on the programme to gain a multi-disciplinary perspective and provides the forum for shared discourse.

Course Structure: The course structure allows for a student’s Individual Research Project to develop throughout the year whilst also providing opportunities to explore an alternative pathway within MSA and undertake a Post Graduate Elective within GSA.

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The year culminates with an exhibition of the student’s Individual Research Project which forms part of the Post Graduate Degree Showcase.

MArch in Architectural Studies Team Dr Raid Hanna, Neil Simpson, Robert Mantho, Luca Brunelli, Dr Filbert Musau, Dr Florian Urban Student works featured in this segment are from 2020/2021.

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Thresholds of Cowcaddens MArch in ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Jekaterina Ancane

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Alternative model to the modern city of urban enclaves is a city of thresholds. These thresholds “possess power to mediate actions that open spatially as well as socially fixed identities and encourage chance encounters” (Stavrides, 2007) connecting one space to another, as a mode of transition within the urban fabric and interlink between public and private.

Cowcaddens, a neighbourhood located within the city centre, yet segregated by elevated roads and unwelcoming ground floor car park underneath the 1960s housing estate’s pilotis, presents a Glasgow specific issue of disintegrated urban fabric as a result of post-war developments. To address this challenge, the concept of thresholds is applied, setting up the research question: Can concept of thresholds be explored on the scale of a neighbourhood and become a tool to determine and replace physical and social boundaries?

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MArch in ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Sculpting Daylight from an Architectural Gem

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Xinyu Liu The Greek Thomson’s Egyptian Hall in Glasgow, which was A-listed in 1966, has lain empty for more than forty years and is an important opportunity to explore adaptive reuse. The proposal will retain the original façade and thus re-associate this famous public frontage with a new contemporary art gallery inside. The interior spaces once used for commercial purposes will cater for daily artistic and cultural activities.

The re-working of the interior, taking its cue from the existing lightwells, explores how daylight can be captured for the production and display of art.

The experience and sequence of gallery visitors, for example using an enfilade layout of generous rooms around a significant new void, introduces a new internal identity to Egyptian Hall. There is also the opportunity to explore visual and physical links between public gallery and more private areas of art production and administration.

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An Investigation into the Embodied Carbon, Material Cost and Energy Efficiency of Passivhaus Construction Materials for use in Affordable Housing MArch in ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Gary Livingstone

ABOVE results data

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With a rising demand for low energy net-zero carbon homes, in conjunction with the need for affordable homes, it is vital that a better knowledge is gained around how material selection affects a buildings overall carbon footprint. To do this, I collated several Passivhaus case studies and chose a recent project from the Glasgow housing association as a benchmark. I dissected the material fabric of each building’s insulative envelope and calculated the embodied carbon, operational carbon and material capital cost.

Upon conclusion, the best performing element of each case study was collated and compared to the benchmark study on all three categories, using energy modeling software. The results proved that by using Passivhaus design principles and materials it was possible to see large reduction in embodied carbon and a reduction of almost 34% in operational carbon, but at a cost significantly greater than that of the current affordable housing in Glasgow.

MACMAG 47 ABOVE using Passivhaus design principles in 3D energy modeling software

Shawbridge Street

BELOW current Glasgow affordable housing benchmark

6. OPTIMAL SOLUTION

Performance Comparison Current Affordable Housing

Optimal Solution

Embodied Carbon 600

Golcar

BELOW Passivhaus case studies

BELOW optimal solution

500 400 300

Fulford

200 100

Stonebank

0

Annual Heating

Material Cost

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Master of Architecture by conversion

C a n a l L i fe An exploration of sustainable regeneration of public space for wellbeing

CANAL LIFE

Gabriella Togni

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Introduction by MacMag Gabriella Togni completed her Master of Architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, where she won the GIA Final Year Parchment for her Diploma thesis, and is currently working as an Architectural Assistant at 7N Architects. Prior to this, Gabriella worked at AHMM in London and completed her Honours degree in Architecture and Environmental Engineering at UWE Bristol, a field of study jointly accredited by the RIBA and CIBSE in developing socially conscious and climatically responsive architecture.

ARTICLE This extract is taken from the research project by Gabriella Togni as part of the Master of Architecture (by Conversion) taken during semester 1 of 2021/2022.

Canal Life explores the extent to which the design of the public realm can be a powerful tool to improve quality of life in deprived communities. The research investigates a regeneration ethic that acknowledges the transition to a more equitable society as part of a more sustainable city - born through the hypothesis that better public spaces lead to better public lives, which support wellbeing. North Glasgow is studied as a testbed for the hypothesis, with the Forth & Clyde Canal acting as the key axis and anchor point in the area. Understanding the links between the public realm and wellbeing can help practitioners in both the public and private sectors to challenge the lack of investment in public spaces. This, in turn, can have transformative effects on the quality of life in suffering communities and how we experience cities.

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Across the UK, developers are recognising the economic potential of post-industrial canal sites for new residential communities.

These developments aim to regenerate disused post-industrial sites with convenient access to city centres by attracting white-collar professionals and their families. This ‘canal renaissance’ is evident in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and many other cities like Glasgow that have a complex legacy of deindustrialisation compounded with high levels of poverty and physical decay.1 Regeneration has developed negative connotations and is increasingly recognised as alienating locals and causing a change in the local economy that gives rise to gentrification.2 The topic of gentrification is especially urgent in North Glasgow, an area that consistently ranks in the highest levels of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation

(SIMD 20), dissected and bound by the Forth & Clyde Canal.2 Deprivation is a compounded concept of economic, social, and environmental conditions, the positive functioning of which are essential for healthy communities to thrive.3 Interventions in the shared public realm can have a greater and more immediate effect on improving quality of life over regeneration strategies that target individual health and access to employment - quality of life being a separate but important iteration of the indicators of deprivation.4 Quality of life is affected by both physical and mental health, and architecture and design are important tools to create fulfilling shared physical environments in struggling communities.5 Architecture can directly affect the dimensions of deprivation that are born from the built environment, while in-

1 Brian Evans, John Lord and Mark Robertson, Scotland’s Urban Age, Aberdeen, Glasgow And Edinburgh In The Century Of The City (Glasgow: The Glasgow Urban Laboratory, 2022), p. 74.

2 Neil Gray, ‘Neoliberal Urbanism and Spatial Composition in Recessionary Glasgow’, (PHD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015) p.20.

3 Richard Crisp and others, Regeneration And Poverty: Evidence And Policy Review (Sheffield Hallam University, 2014), p.78.

4 Scottish Government, Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020: Introduction, (Scottish Government, 2020).

5 Crisp, p.78.

LEFT Vacant land at Hamiltonhill.

6 Stefan Noble et al, The English Indices of Deprivation 2019 Research Report, (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2019).

7 Peter Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom, (London: Allen Lane and Penguin Books, 1979).

8 Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, (London: Penguin Random House, 2013).

tervention in public space can contribute to a sense of community, and encourage active and healthy behaviours.

Throughout the 20th-century Glasgow suffered from continued central government disinvestment that has resulted in complex housing stock and associated public realm, yet the city has a vibrant and diverse culture that many people call home. Most of the Scottish population reside in urban environments, and cities themselves release up to 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.6,7 The northern neighbourhoods of Glasgow offer an opportunity to test a more equitable form of design that considers the long-term wellbeing of the population tied to the wellbeing of the environment. Considering the benefits of sustainable regeneration may be the crucial step required to address the inequalities

affected by the built environment in deprived communities.

Care for the environment is also care for people - the link between physiological health and the urban realm is inextricable.8 The selection of materials, consumption of energy and consideration of the natural environment are imperative as the climate and biodiversity crisis begins to manifest its catastrophic effects.

Struggling communities are less able to withstand changes in temperature, precipitation, and flooding, and this will further affect their ability to live healthily.

Government policies that engage holistically in a climate-neutral economy need to be put in place to standardise these strategies in design, thus encouraging rigorous sustainable practice as the baseline for the construction of public infrastructure.

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ABOVE The Scottish Canals buildings at the junction with Hamiltonhill as seen from the south bank of the Forth & Clyde Canal.

155

eet

Maryhill Housing Phase 3

2011 35 homes for social rent by Elder and Cannon Architects Value: £4.5 million Client: Maryhill Housing Association

2017 40 homes for private sale by McGinlay Bell Value: £4million Client: Bigg Regeneration

2012-2016 106 homes for private sale and social rent by Hypostyle Architects Value: £16 million Client: Maryhill Housing Association and City Building LLP

Stockingfield Bridge

2022 Foot and cycle bridge connecting Ruchill and Maryhill Value: £12.8 million Client: Sustrans and the Glasgow City Council Vacant Derelict Land Fund

Eriboll Street

2017 50 new homes for social rent by Collective Architecture Value: £6.7 million Client: Loretto Housing Association

The Botany Corner

2021-Ongoing 62 homes for private sale

by Hypostyle Architects Value: £11.5 million Client: Maryhill Housing Cruden Group

Panmure Street

2015 108 new homes, 98 shared equity and socially rented by Mast Architects Value: £12 million Client: CCG (Scotland) Ltd and Queens Cross Housing Association

5 min walking distance 6 km/hr

Ruchill Hospital

2022 403 new homes for private sale Value: na Client: Bellway Homes

Maryhill Housing Phase 4 2018 33 homes for private sale by JM Architects Value: £4.8 million Client: Bigg Regeneration

Hamiltonhill Development

2022 670 new homes, 320 for social rent and 350 for private sale, children’s area and park by Collective Architecture Value: na Client: Queens Cross Housing Association, Robertson Partnership Homes and Urban Union

Ruchill Street and Ruchill Place and Hugo Street, Ruchill 2011 191 homes, 52 socially rented

by Holmes Miller Value: na Client: Bellway Homes

Maryhill Locks

2011 Improvements to the public realm of the canal Value: na Client: Scottish Canals

Maryhill Transformational Regeneration Area

Completed development Proposed housing development Proposed public realm development

Spiers Wharf

2008 Public realm improvements Value: na Client: Glasgow Canal Regeneration Project

Sale postponed in 2021 Value: £na Client: Glasgow City Council

Claypits Nature Reserve

2021 New park, canal footbridge and landscaping with play area Value: £6million Client: Glasgow City Countil.

Scottish Canals and Sustrans Scotland

The Pinkston Paddlesports Centre

2012-2014 Watersports centre by 7N Architects Value: na Client: Engineering Paddler Designs with support from Glasgow City Council

Sighthill Transformational Regeneration Area

2021- Ongoing 1’000 homes, community centre and new bridge Value: £250 million Client: Glasgow City Council and Keepmoat Homes Scotland

Garscube Link

2021 Improvements to the footpath Value: £na Client: Glasgow City Council, Scottish Canals

Woodside Multistorey Flats

2019 Passivehaus retrofit Value: £13.3 million Client: Queens Cross Housing Association

CANAL LIFE

g

Maryhill Locks Phase 2

Botany Phase 1

Eriboll Street

2017 50 new homes for social rent by Collective Architecture Value: £6.7 million Client: Loretto Housing Association

Dundashill Landscape

Phoenix Flowers

2009-2010 Public realm by 7N Architects Value: na Client: Glasgow Canal Regeneration Partnership

1 km

2019 Masterplan and landscape HTA Design and Rankin Fraser Landscape Architects Value: £5.4 million Client: Igloo Regeneration

Dundashill Regeneration

2022 600 homes by Collective Architecture, Stallan Brand and Ann Nisbet Studio Value: £120 million Client: Igloo Regeneration

red equity y Mast

on Ltd and ssociation

Hamiltonhill Development

2022 670 new homes, 320 for social rent and 350 for private sale, children’s area and park by Collective Architecture Value: na Client: Queens Cross Housing Association, Robertson Partnership Homes and Urban Union

ctive and and o on ation

“Care for the environment is also care for people - the link between physiological health and the urban realm is inextricable” The Pinkston Paddlesports Centre

2012-2014 Watersports centre by 7N Architects Value: na Client: Engineering Paddler Designs with support from Glasgow City Council

Sighthill Transformational Regeneration Area

2021- Ongoing 1’000 homes, community centre and new bridge Value: £250 million Client: Glasgow City Council and Keepmoat Homes Scotland

14 y 7N Architects a g Paddler port from Council

ration

Proposed housing development Proposed public realm development

2008

ddlesports e

nal ship

Completed development

Public realm improvements Proposed housing Value: na development Client: Glasgow Canal Proposed public realm Project Regeneration development

rovements a w Canal roject

chitects

5 min walking distance 6 km/hr

Spiers Wharf Completed development

harf

ers

5 min walking distance 6 km/hr

Ruchill Hospital

2022 403 new homes for private sale Value: na Client: Bellway Homes

Dundashill Landscape

2019 Masterplan and landscape HTA Design and Rankin Fraser Landscape Architects Value: £5.4 million Client: Igloo Regeneration

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Dundashill Regeneration

2022 600 homes by Collective Architecture, Stallan Brand and Ann Nisbet Studio Value: £120 million Client: Igloo Regeneration

Sighthill Transformational Regeneration Area

2021- Ongoing 1’000 homes, community centre and new bridge Value: £250 million Client: Glasgow City Council and Keepmoat Homes Scotland

Testing in the Forth & Clyde The canal today connects four key neighbourhoods at the heart of this investigation, all of which feature in the SIMD. Maryhill, North Woodside, Ruchill and Hamiltonhill are predominantly residential areas, while Port Dundas is home to the North Glasgow ‘cultural quarter’ and business parks. The canal remained closed from 1964 until the early 2000s,

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ABOVE Map of the key developments in the canal area indicating the large proportion of housing works taking place.

when the Millennium Link project restored the entire length of the canal to navigation, recognising the importance of the route for leisure and tourism, and showcasing for the first time the potential benefits that the infrastructure of the canal could bring to the community. The City Centre Strategic Development Framework by Glasgow City Council aims to develop Port Dundas as a core inner-city district.9 A hidden asset ready to be capitalised on to drive up land value along the canal’s immediate environment.

10 Isabella Lami, Beatrice Mecca, Assessing Social Sustainability for Achieving Sustainable Architecture’ in Sustainability, 13, 1, (2020) 142, p.4.

11 Glasgow City Council, ‘City Centre Strategic Development Framework’ (2021) 12 Douglas Farr, Sustainable Urbanism, Urban Design with Nature, (John Wiley & Sons: New Jersery, 2008).

13 Alasdair Rae and others, Overcoming Deprivation And Disconnection In UK Cities (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2016), p.9.

The residential areas of Hamiltonhill, Port Dundas and Sighthill are set to change dramatically with the addition of a considerable number of new homes. The neighbourhoods are two of seven key Transformational Regeneration Areas (TRAs) by Glasgow City Council. New housing is hoped to help regenerate the area by attracting new higher-income residents seeking to be close to

Large scale development projects around the canal contrast with many examples of smallscale community spaces in the area that are a testament to the historical community, for example, the Hamiltonhill Allotments and North Kelvin Children’s Wood.

Community rallying and organising is evident in the Wyndford Tenants Union, Ruchill Hospital Living Rent Campaign, and Collina Street Living Rent Campaign to name a few. However, over-reliance on community self-organising to drive regeneration is an unrealistic expectation.

Community organising is tiring, time-consuming and especially difficult for those in precarious circumstances.12 Residents have bigger daily worries.

The ‘Still Game for the Valley Campaign’ is an interesting example of community organising at Collina Street in Maryhill. The 5.2-acre site is known for being the set of the popular TV satire ‘Still Game’.

The tenements that formed a backdrop to the show were demolished in 2007, displacing the local community and the land lay vacant until the proposed sale in 2020 by GCC, stipulating a high proportion of private-for-sale homes. The community protested the development and occupied the land to stop it from being sold, arguing insufficient consultation in the proposal. The Maryhill Transformational Regeneration Masterplan was described

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9 Evans, p. 3.

More recently, a new approach to redeveloping the canal environs has seen additional projects aiming to establish the canal as a wildlife corridor and to improve the connectivity across its neighbourhoods. These projects seem to recognise the importance of improving public infrastructure to support positive regeneration aligned with a more contemporary view of urban design.10 Two proposals stand out as significantly altering the public spaces of the canals, all of which are being delivered through public-private partnerships between Glasgow City Council and other developers. The Claypits Nature Reserve opened in 2021 and the Stockingfield Bridge is due to open in 2022.

the city centre, while providing interspersed accommodation for ‘affordable housing’ and social housing tenants. This housing-first approach is common to many cities of the UK for transforming the neighbourhoods deemed as deprived.11

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CANAL LIFE

as outdated and not reflecting their needs or the realities of the climate crisis.13 Instead, the community aspires for the land to be developed as high-performance zero-carbon social housing with a community facility at the heart of the scheme.

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Overall, the canal neighbourhoods continue to feel disconnected from the city by large A-roads and the canal itself.

There are very few places to sit and the high-speed roads have a dramatic effect on the pedestrian navigation of the environment, particularly in Maryhill. Traversing the canal on foot is difficult, but new strategic bridge links will begin to reconnect the neighbourhoods back to the city. If ecological improvements along the canal are embedded within the scope of development, there is an opportunity to create a larger wildlife corridor and green route across the North of the city. These simple yet powerful interventions combined with forward-thinking policy to tackle the causes of deprivation could begin to foster positive transformation in the community’s wellbeing. Changes in planning policy could stipulate that any new development should designate a proportion of high-quality public space outside of the plot boundary for the benefit of the community, the private sector could start to contribute to a better version of our cities.

Methods to evaluate the impacts of regeneration on the community and the environment must be put in place to learn what the relationship is between the two factors. Top-down design approach from designers and policymakers is likely to miss a deeper understanding of what these

communities need. A more effective design approach involves consulting communities during the decision-making process and establishing a brief with the users even when they are not the financial backers.14 Most importantly, gathering evidence of the effectiveness of transformations of the public realm can support decision-making at the highest levels to then target the most effective improvements to areas of the city. Examples include the Neighbourhoods Law in Catalonia which finances interventions in the built environment that utilise participatory design processes among socially excluded groups.

Being able to quantify how much value is generated by investing in solutions that foster sustainable regeneration through design for community, healthy movement, and nature could allow designers to clearly express their benefits to clients.15 The value of architecture is often quantified in measures like net sales area, while environmental design value can be expressed in physical attributes, kgCO2e of embodied carbon for example. Data gathered through qualitative methods such as surveys and Post Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) can be compared to quantitative data to establish the impact that design may be having on wellbeing. For example, the number of users in a square before and after strategies to improve walking and cycling in the area. Comparison would help determine cause and effect between perceived experience and reality of use.16 Presently there is no widely accepted methodology for assessing social value added by design.17 The RIBA Social Value Toolkit

14 Pablo Sendra, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Community-led Regeneration.

A Toolkit for Residents and Planners, (London: UCLPress, 2020) p. 153.

15 Norman Cunningham, ‘Norman Cunningham: We call on the Scottish Government to help us transform Maryhill’s Valley’, Source (16 December 2020).

16 Crisp, p. 78.

17 University of Reading, Flora Samuel, Social Value Toolkit for Architecture, (London: RIBA, 2020).

18 Michaerl Riebel, Delivering Social Value, (Hawkins Brown, 2021) p.2-3..

19 University of Reading, Flora Samuel, Social Value Toolkit for Architecture, (London: RIBA, 2020).

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RIGHT Waste along the canal towpath

suggests that value should be expressed as value for money and value in wellbeing.18 The current economic structure of the capital-based economy requires design professionals to make apparent the value for sociability and sustainability to avoid them being lost in value engineering.

Constrained public spending requires designers to express the value of transformation in tangible impacts for the community, and by quantifying in financial terms the savings it could bring to public services.19 Gathering evidence on the effectiveness of de-

sign in deprived contexts may inform local authorities to develop better regeneration strategies.20 Anecdotal evidence gathered in interviews with key professionals as part of this research suggests being able to quantify design impact financially is helpful for making a case to support investment, although this method is also viewed as unreliable.

The framework developed through the research aims to set out an approach that can be used in Glasgow and further afield to test the hypothesis that sustain-

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Canal Life: Chapter 4

FRAMEWORK IN DETAIL Why conduct each action at that stage and what can be gained.

PREPARATION PHASE

ACTION PHASE

1.1 Conduct stakeholder analysis

• Consult brief and investigate area.

• Makes explicit a tacit process of architectural design development.

• Gather historical information.

• Gather information on the current context, population data etc.

• Check regulatory context, planning policy, relevant design standards.

• Generates information on who to survey, who benefits from the intervention, who may be negatively affected, who has the power to support the intervention and help implement it successfully.

• Gather information on micro climate, energy context, sustainability ambition.

• Formally communicate assumptions.

EVALUATION PHASE

ACTION PHASE

RIBA STAGE 7

RIBA STAGE 2/3

6. Conduct POE minimum 1 year

5.3 Consult community and adapt

after occupation

design • Present the proposal to the necessary stakeholders.

• Gather lessons learnt.

• Gather feedback and adjust where appropriate.

• Develop future knowledge.

2. Conduct community charette and/ or survey • Useful at the outset to measure change pre and post intervention.

• If surveying existing residents it generates information on the current conditions to target.

• Surveying the new population group to investigate on wants and needs.

3. Collect and analyse results • Important to judge what information is relevant and important to the project.

• Use judgement and experience on what is relevant to the design and what is achievable.

• Analysing results before starting the design process allows for compromise between the client’s brief and the needs of the community.

• Fosters community involvement.

• Gather feedback on the impact of the intervention on subjective wellbeing.

• Make changes to functional configurations where required and possible.

What is the POE process?

RIBA STAGE 2

1.Ethnographical research

• Opportunity to refine the design.

• Community consultation may be repeated multiple times before Technical Design RIBA Stage 4.

5.2 Conduct a SROI investigation

5.1 Conduct SWOT analysis

• If necessary to overcome barriers and demonstrate value in terms understood to the client or local authority.

• Formalise a tacit process of architectural design development.

• Consult RIBA Social Value Toolkit for Architecture for detailed methodology.

• Important to highlight limitations to any claims of monetary value.

4. Develop design

RIBA STAGE 1

• Identify any barriers to the intervention for example, cost or procurement.

• Evaluate the design proposal.

• Useful tool to be able to quickly summarise the successful measures and address the weaknesses.

CONSOLIDATION PHASE RIBA STAGE 7+

6.1 Obtain permission and prepare • Ethical context established at the beginning of the survey process to ensure sensitivity of the study and the validity of the results.

• Understand what can be gained from the population sampled in the survey.

6.2 Select questions from the survey question bank and add appropriate criteria • Important to evaluate the questions and survey methodology for appropriateness to the intervention and what is sought in the discovery.

• Understand barriers to taking part in surveys in deprived communities.

6.3 Select survey method and undertake POE • Use judgement on what is most appropriate for the context.

• Consider barriers to taking part for example, availability of internet connection.

7. Gather results and analyse • Use judgement on how best to present data. Select any outstanding examples for discussion.

7.1 Feedback

• Consider the average responses across the sample.

• Present the responses and communicate lessons learnt within the organisation and to stakeholders.

Fig. 48.The proposed framework in detail suggesting the benefits that each action could bring to the process.

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“A barrier to achieving regeneration is the lack of follow-through from community engagement processes.”

able regeneration of public space is crucial for better public life and wellbeing. To evaluate the findings and gather real-world data, the framework was tested by disseminating a digital prototype of a wellbeing survey designed to gather qualitative data assessing changes in wellbeing and by interviewing industry professionals on the barriers to sustainable regeneration. Both aimed to formalise elements that form part of the innate processes of design, supported by additional tools that support the measurement of design value.

further before undertaking this work. Collecting thorough feedback is important to increase understanding of the target user groups and to develop more sophisticated strategies that work long-term to change the built environment.

Early engagement of the community can highlight areas that require intervention and generate an understanding that is foreign to members outside of the local area. This process may be repeated multiple times to refine the proposal and the methods to conduct successful community consultations should be studied

The framework was tested by surveying the community and interviewing key architectural professionals working in North Glasgow. Both interviewees discussed the importance of community engagement in their work for producing richer outcomes. A barrier to achieving regeneration is the lack of follow-through from com-

munity engagement processes.

Inability to complete projects is cited as being due to lack of funding from the local authorities, carrying out engagement exercises without the ability to finance full interventions, in addition to the additional fee of engagement adding expenditure to the project. Overall, to deliver better improvements of the public realm multi-faceted and multi-agency approaches are critical, collaborating with diverse stakeholders to deliver regeneration.

Conclusion

BELOW The Claypits Nature Reserve.

The performance gap between design stage and the reality of practice demonstrates the need for analysis of the barriers faced by the local authority, developers, and architectural practice in achieving positive, sustainable transformations of the public realm. Developing a framework with emphasis on community consultation and post-occupancy evaluation suggests further areas of study to test the hypothesis in practice and to assess the changes in subjective wellbeing that can be attributed to design.

Defining the impacts of design is necessary for the profession to produce stronger, more effective design interventions which will improve quality of life. •

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LEFT The proposed framework in detail suggesting the benefits that each action could bring to the process.

North Glasgow has a rich and diverse history with many unique features beginning to be nurtured into vibrant community amenities. The historical factors that lead to systemic deprivation are complex and difficult to challenge by the design practitioner.

While the availability of using and employment cannot be underes-

timated, evaluating the theoretical implications of positive transformations in the public realm has been a useful first step to understanding strategies to tackle wider issues of wellbeing.

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G42 Pop-Ups

placemaking through community markets Dana Cherepkova

G42 POP-UPS

Introduction by MacMag

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When considering the theme of collaboration, markets were quickly suggested as a topic of interest. Markets have existed for centuries, not simply as a place to accommodate the transactional exchange of goods for money, but also as an exchange of skills, culture, and as somewhere to accommodate the social gathering of people from different backgrounds. When this vast potential is applied correctly, markets have the ability to activate otherwise forgotten spaces and create a sense of community and understanding.

Dana Cherepkova – an MSA alumnus, currently working as a part II architectural assistant at O’Donnell Brown Architects tapped into this potential when she co-founded G42 Pop-Ups and then coordinated the first Govanhill Community Market after a long and thorough investigation of the topic during her masters project at MSA. We asked Dana to document this journey for the MacMag.

What happens when you share your student research project with the people from your neighbourhood? How can you transform overlooked places whilst helping to strengthen a dialogue between different communities? How do the physical spaces we move in shape social relations and how do the social relations shape the physical spaces?

I asked myself these questions while walking the streets of my local Govanhill neighbourhood during lockdown. In order to address these questions, I set up the G42 Pop-Ups initiative. G42 Pop-ups explores how community markets could weave a path for long-term urban transformations in Govanhill.

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‘‘The aim of the market was to strengthen connections between the diverse communities of Govanhill, support local economy, nurture local pride and individual self-worth and activate underused spaces’’ RIGHT street study from Dana’s student research project

G42 POP-UPS

BELOW 1. existing site (Batson Street) 2. market proposal

What is G42 Pop-Ups?

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G42 Pop-Ups is a platform for hyper local community actions in Govanhill. Its first action was to set up and coordinate a neighbourhood market called Govanhill Community Market, which it ran in partnership with locally based Glasgow Artists Moving Image Studios, Govanhill Baths Community Trust, and Romano Lav. The aim of the market was to strengthen connections between the diverse communities of Govanhill, support local economy, nurture local pride and individual self-worth and activate underused spaces. The market was run by and for residents of Govanhill including migrant communities, families, young people, and older generations.

and buildings, and vice versa. I realised that any physical transformations in the neighbourhood would only be meaningful and long-lasting if local communities would be involved in the decision-making and their realisation from the beginning.

These decisions needed to be collaborative across all parties within the community.

Markets as a tool for placemaking

I live in Govanhill and wanted to do something that would benefit the community and help transform overlooked spaces there. Govanhill is the most diverse neighbourhood in Scotland, resulting in a remarkable mix of cultures. Whilst this fact may seem to be an overarching positive, it can mean there are misunderstandings, social tensions, and overlooked places that suffer from fly tipping and antisocial behaviour.

The project started as part of my student research within the master’s by conversion course at the MSA. By studying the neighbourhood, I identified how social connections between diverse communities affected the condition of streets, public spaces,

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How did it start?

Following my graduation, I was curious to see if and how the strategies that I came up with could be put into practice. Could pop-up community events in the overlooked places pave a way for sustainable long-term transformations? I shared my findings with local organisations and the council and found that many people supported them.

Various communities expressed that there was a need for a market in the neighbourhood, as markets are important social spaces for many cultures represented in Govanhill. And so, I concluded that a market would be an effective way to carry out positive community transformation.

In preparation for our pilot market in September 2021, we carried out online and in-person community consultations, reaching out to local partner organisations who have established trust with different communities of Govanhill. Responses from 108 people shaped the format of the market event, they helped to identify an appropriate location and curate the types of stalls that would be on offer at the market (responses from the survey are presented in the accompanying graphics overleaf).

The surveys showed that people really wanted to see a market in the neighbourhood that would be accessible and inclusive, that it must truly reflect the extent of diversity and cre-

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G42 POP-UPS

ativity of Govanhill communities and not be a part of the perceived gentrification of the area.

People saw the market as an opportunity to make improvements to underused places. Batson Street (a dead-end street next to the Govanhill Picture House, which is currently used as a warehouse) was amongst the most popular location suggestions for market events. We partnered with GAMIS, who have just formed the Bat.Lab. community space and started working on revitalisation of Batson Street.

To create a comfortable social space, I recorded how people related to different places in the neighbourhood. I documented

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where people rushed to pass by, where they lingered and where people felt comfortable to chat to others. I mapped all the physical elements of those spaces like fences, widths of roads, seating and the amount of greenery around. We adapted this knowledge and organised the market space using different spatial tools like planters, seating and stages in a way that would encourage people to linger and enjoy themselves. It was important to create defined intimate spaces for different activities whilst ensuring that people could also passively participate in all activities by observing them from a distance.

BELOW photograph from first market RIGHT survey graphics

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G42 POP-UPS

‘‘transformations in the neighbourhood would only be meaningful and longlasting if local communities were involved in the decision-making’’

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G42 POP-UPS

First Market

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We successfully piloted the first Govanhill Community Market in September 2021 with over 460 visitors from different Scottish and migrant communities. Many visitors stayed for hours, eating food from the various stalls, chatting to locals and visitors, participating in the activities on offer, or just enjoying the atmosphere.

We were thrilled to see how we had managed to create a comfortable social space where people felt relaxed and enjoyed themselves.

All stall holders were locals from Govanhill or nearby areas. The majority of them had never participated in markets before, but they felt that the Govanhill community market was a safe place to try new things. We had a variety of stalls and activities; people selling homemade pastries, giving henna tattoos, teaching traditional Roma dance, and many more.

We also had free workshops, such as pottery making sessions by Rumpus Room and performances from local artists and musicians. It was important to us to create a socially inclusive space by offering activities which were not solely based on monetary exchange.

‘‘many visitors stayed for hours, eating food from the various stalls, chatting to locals and visitors, participating in the activities on offer or just enjoying the atmosphere’’ Reflections

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The process of making the market and the actual event fostered new and existing collaborations between Govanhill neighbours and groups. Local organisations and businesses who took part in the event said that a number of local residents signed up to take part in their wider activities and to volunteer.

Organising a street event in a public space brought up particular challenges and benefits. On one hand, having the event on the street made it very accessible as many visitors joined as they were passing by. On the other hand, it created barriers for inclusivity, as we needed to ensure we complied with all safety regulations, which was costly and limited spontaneity. It did, however, also strengthen collaborations between residents and businesses - we matched residents who wanted to run stalls, but didn’t have the necessary tools, with local cafes, who gave them training and appropriate equipment.

Many visitors mentioned that they never visited this part of the neighbourhood and many were not aware that the area around Batson Street is a historical centre of Govanhill; people said they were curious to find out more about the place. We were thrilled that the market introduced new people to the neighbourhood and created a space where locals could host people from the rest of Glasgow, fostering a sense of pride

and ownership in the area.

A particularly moving moment for me was when we received a heart-warming comment from a Scottish lady. She had previously mentioned to us that she felt unsettled by migrant communities who she believed contributed to the fly tipping issue in the area. However, after she chatted to ladies selling traditional Romani food at the market, she came to us and said: “It is a shame that some migrant communities are judged so unjustly”. This made me think that the market had been a space where people’s preconceptions of the place and social divisions that exist with the community were challenged, helping to form and strengthen relationships with the space and neighbours.

The market has been a wonderful and incredible adventure. Although it was a far way off from making long-term physical changes to Govanhill, it has shown that pop up events, when run in collaboration by, and for, members of the neighbourhood, can cause many positive benefits to the community. They can encourage new relationships to be formed, foster a sense of pride, and the social sentiment and feeling of a place can be transformed.

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Future Plans way down the street, neighbours from all over Govanhill sharing their favourite homemade dishes, endless chats with new and old friends across the table, market stalls, live music and fun family activities to accompany. We invite you to join us! •

G42 POP-UPS

After the success of the market, G42 Pop-Ups are continuing to work with GAMIS and Govanhill Baths to prepare three markets this summer. The first will be on the 25th of June and will include a massive street feast. We imagine having long tables running all the

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NOTE all photographs are from the first market. All images included are the author’s own.

‘‘we imagine having long tables running all the way down the street, neighbours sharing their favourite homemade dishes, and endless chats with new and old friends’’

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in conversation with RCKa’s

AL AN B EVER ID G E

ALAN BEVERIDGE, RCKa

on community engagement in architecture

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Introduction by MacMag

Interviewers Andreea Stanuta Bethany Lim AJ Lori

MacMag: Perhaps we can start with a bit about you and your journey so far from MSA to RCKa? Alan Beveridge: I started my professional journey as a part one at GSA and graduated during the recession in 2008.

So, that was an interesting pivotal point in my career – going straight from my graduation into a world where work was quite scarce. At the same time, I was going through a reflective period with architecture itself, in terms of whether it was something that I fundamentally wanted to do. I felt a bit detached at the time from the way architecture was taught, and what I thought architecture was about. I was jobless for about six, seven months, and then eventually came across RCKa, which was a small, upcoming practice with just three directors and one other architect at the time. They were working on small scale projects, but, quite interestingly, they were also involved in a lot of fundraising and bigger strategic visions at the same time - even though they didn’t necessarily have the clients - which was really intriguing to me.

When I started working at RCKa,

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Alan Beveridge is an associate at the architectural practice RCKa and a GSA alumnus. He joined RCKa as a part one architectural assistant, when the practice was still in its infancy, and has carried on his professional journey with them to where he is now. RCKa was founded in 2008 and has quickly established itself as an innovative, socially conscious, and incredibly relevant practice. Their grounded, no-frills approach to architecture is rooted within the community, with decisions made in a people-focused manner. We invited Alan to talk with us about this approach and how it has developed over time, as well as share his reflections on his personal professional journey.

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ALAN BEVERIDGE, RCKa

TNG (The New Generation Youth & Community Centre) was the project that I worked on as a part one. I got fully immersed into that project and ended up spending two years at the practice as a part one - I saw that project through to site. It felt like a real journey that I was on during that time. The lessons that I was learning as an individual were things that I felt I could take back into my studies, and progress with at the GSA. I was continually learning about what architecture means to me, and TNG was the springboard for that. As a practice, what it means to us is - we’re a people focused practice - the decisions are made on a people level basis, they’re not based on architecture with a capital ‘A’. A building might not be the solution to a lot of the problems we are asked to address. Sometimes the problems that you find yourselves in are social, economic, environmental, cultural issues, and you might not need an architectural solution. The role of the architect is forever changing, so I think that’s what I’m interested in, and always have been - not necessarily buildings.

What became fascinating was the process that we set up during those two or three years prior to building. We fully immersed ourselves in the community - we went out there to schools, we had our own events, we tried to publicise the site as best we could and get as much feedback on the local issues and the site itself. We really wanted these people to have a voice, and to make sure that their ideas and their vision for their community could be heard. The building itself, in terms of what we submitted for funding and what we ended up building, was completely different. Through this process of engagement, the building rotated, it became much more open plan, the spaces were interlinked with long views through the building so that it can be managed successfully - all the strategic design principles were developed hand in hand with the people that we talked to. For me, that was incredibly enlightening, and I think for the office as well. In the end, we ended up with a building that, at the time, felt quite contemporary. It has a CLT structure, something which at the time had never been done for a community centre - we had people telling us that we needed block walls, that the plaster board needs to be incredibly robust if young people are going to be using it. Through our conversations with people, we found out that it’s about respect, so the whole building is incredibly fragile; you could take a pen and you could score the building. I think what’s remarkable is that it’s over 10 years old and it hasn’t got a single bit of graffiti on the inside. The outside of the building has completely changed over the years. We had this light polycarbonate for the facade with a robust wavy concrete base. The point of the base being wavy was about graffiti - we didn’t really want people to graffiti.

Now there’s a massive mural of graffiti on one side of the building that’s being commissioned. So, it’s an incredibly fascinating

‘‘ the decisions are made on a people level basis, they’re not based on architecture with a capital ‘A’ ’’

MM: You mentioned TNG, could you talk to us a little more about that project?

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be addressed through a building.

AB: Yeah, sure. TNG was the springboard for our practice into this realm of work. We were aware at the time of the site itself the site was derelict and used to have a youth facility on it, I think it was in a small outbuilding that was on the site, and it closed down. Our director lived close by, so he would often walk past the site. We got in contact directly with Lewisham council, seeking that opportunity to regenerate the site. So, we really took it upon ourselves to work with the council and to put together a funding plan to make this vision of a community center come to life. There were problems in the local area with antisocial behaviour, high teenage pregnancies, and a lot of this I think, maybe idealistically, could

process of how people change, society changes and suddenly you find your creation has a new life at the end of it. If it gets demolished next year, it served its purpose, it’s been something that the community needed for that period of time, and it served people well. A lot of the lessons that we took from this project are what’s defined us today and have shaped us as a company and also probably shaped us as people.

‘‘We fully immersed ourselves in the community ... all the strategic design principles were developed hand in hand with the people that we talked to. ’

MM: You’ve mentioned quite a lot about community participation and engagement.

Is that where you spring from with all your projects?

‘‘It’s about the conversations that you have with people, that’s how we design. ’’

MM: How do you think you achieve meaningful community participation without resulting in a tick box exercise?

AB: That’s a good question. I think it’s very easy for architects to fall into that trap.

You see it through policy as well, when you submit an application for certain scales of projects, you need to issue a statement of community involvement. A lot of practices see that as a bit of a faff and they just host an event, they get feedback and then they don’t really engage with it, because, typically, it’ll be quite negative. We try to do things differently to that, and it’s about allowing the community to have a voice. For instance, on the Highgate Newton community project that I was working on, we had what we call our ‘project champions’ group.

That was a selection of key stakeholders in the local community who could represent the wider people. For example, it might be a resident that lives on a street that’s nearby, and they become the representative for that street. We would have group meetings and they would get to see the designs before anyone else, before we went out to consultation, so they would be fully active and involved in the challenges and the discussions that we would have to have as a design team. Those tough questions, that are typically held behind closed doors, we are really honest and transparent about.

Those are the discussions that are important, that level of transparency is what

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AB: TNG was the first where we used the idea of community engagement, and it was a realisation for us how valuable it can be.

It’s not just valuable in the sense of raw design ideas, but it’s also valuable in the sense of people beginning to get a buzz about what may be there in the future. There are multiple social levels that happen through community engagement which are incredibly fascinating; people start to realise that the council are investing in your services, and just knowing that changes people’s attitudes to how they live in their society.

We like to use community engagement on every project that we have; I think being on the ground is incredibly helpful - you have to go to site, you have to speak to people.

It’s just part and parcel, it’s part of our site analysis. It’s also really dependent on the type of project, but I think the value it has is unquestionable - every project would benefit from it, no matter what the scale of the project is, even if it’s a domestic house extension. We use the phrase ‘nurture the potential’ an awful lot, and I think that sticks

with me. It’s about the conversations that you have with people, that’s how we design.

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ALAN BEVERIDGE, RCKa

ABOVE TNG Youth & Community Centre

brings the community along. It’s about treating people with respect and honesty and bringing them along, whether you like it or not. I think you have to have a bit of a tough skin to do it.

MM: We’ve discussed this issue a lot whilst bringing this publication together about how ‘collaborative practice’ can sometimes just be a buzzword, and it’s used to market the practice as socially conscious, like you said, but again, it’s just a tick box. You talk about participation of young people throughout the design, construction, management, and governance. Could you talk a little bit about that process?

AB: There was a cafe space in TNG, and we provided them with this cafe space, but it was up to them to make a business out of it. So, then it’s this problem solving and application of life skills – how much is the rent? How much do I then need to charge for the products? Those levels of communication with the young people, it’s about

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taking them through that whole process of what it’s like to run a business, what it’s like to communicate your ideas to someone in order to realise your vision. They all had hopes and dreams about what they wanted the building to be like and they became almost like actual clients. We had frequent workshops with them and from their feedback, we made a lot of decisions. For example, we had a sexual health clinic on the top floor, and we got lots of comments telling us ‘don’t tuck it away’, because you’re always aware of someone peeling off to go there - it should be something that you can just slip off to and no one really notices. So, we changed the placement of the sexual health clinic based on this feedback. There are things that came out of those conversations with people that really shaped the design and it made it work. If we didn’t have those conversations or include those people and encourage them to talk about these subjects, then the design would have been completely different. The ability to communicate with all different people, and to talk in layman terms is really important. One of

my bugbears about architecture is the inaccessibility of the language used by some architects. I think the accessibility of language and being able to make the profession more transparent and open is critical to our survival - it can’t be a niche subject.

MM: Do you think there are any issues with this approach of using community engagement and feedback so extensively?

one was all about the qualities of architectural space, which is not to say that’s not something that should be considered, but there’s a whole other world of architecture, socially, that just was never touched on. I think that’s why I enjoy architecture more in the real world than I ever did when I was producing theoretical buildings at the GSA. I think the detachment from education to the real world is growing. The whole industry needs to be thrown up and rethought.

‘‘ I enjoy architecture more in the real world than I ever did when I was producing theoretical buildings at the GSA. ’

MM: You mentioned you wouldn’t mind if TNG was demolished after 10 years because it would have served its purpose. Do you see this as an issue of community engagement? Is there a temporary aspect to it as community needs change over time?

We’re obviously generally aiming to build for longevity, so I was a bit surprised to hear you say that.

AB: Yeah, I did just say that off the cuff…

But if it did get demolished, like next week, I wouldn’t be sad. Because I would think it served its function, and it’s clearly not

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AB: I think the issue I see with community engagement today is not treating people with respect and honesty about design and about issues with design. People see it as an exercise that they just have to go through, and they don’t want to actually engage in the difficult subject matters that need to be addressed.

Community engagement needs to be done carefully, sensitively, honestly, you have to be trustworthy, and you have to enable.

Sometimes you have to put your foot down and know you can’t bend on certain things.

It’s also something that I never learned at the GSA; it was not even a subject. My part BELOW community workshop

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ALAN BEVERIDGE, RCKa

‘‘there’s a real conundrum there between designing flexibly and the fluid nature of society ’’

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functioning anymore. Now if that were the case, I would probably advocate for its reuse to a different function. I think reuse of existing buildings is critical, designing for flexibility is key. This project is 10 years old, and we were designing in order to make this building very specific to its users and to its context. I think, as a practice, what we have learned from that experience, is when we design, we are designing more flexibly.

But, you do the best you can with the information that is available at that specific time – you need to create a bit of architecture which becomes stationary from that body of information.

Naturally, as a process, what you find is that the everything moves; the world moves, people move, problems shift, the dynamics of culture shift, societal issues shift. So, the reason I’m saying the building can be demolished next year and I’m not bothered about it is in relation to that.

If we were to go through that whole process again, to design a new community center on that site today, with the same brief, that design would be completely different - it would look nothing like what it is today. To get to the point where you put something fixed in the landscape, all you’re doing is capturing a moment in time. There is a temporary nature to that, which is why designing more flexibly is incredibly interesting. That changes how you think about architecture. I’m not just designing something that can be demolished, which was my view 10 years ago, I’m now designing something that can be adapted. That’s far trickier because you can’t predict. Take, for example, Oxford High Street in London.

You’ve got all these shop fronts that are closing down and they’re trying to find other uses for them, but they don’t quite know how because the character and the social qualities of the High Street have changed.

Is it a shopping street, or is it something else entirely? Designing flexibly is still really challenging, and I think Oxford High Street epitomizes that, because you’ve got shells of buildings, and it’s still really tricky to understand how to use them. These were once some of the most valuable buildings in London, yet most of them are empty. So, there’s a real conundrum there between designing flexibly and the fluid nature of culture and society.

MM: And then moving forward, what would you say your own goals are? In your future?

AB: That’s a really tricky question... I don’t know, is the short answer to that. I really enjoy teaching, and talking about architecture, and also making it more accessible to people. Making it a more diverse profession I think is critical. Whether or not that’s in practicing architecture, or it’s through some other forum, or it’s through education, wherever it might lead to, I think that’s what I would like to do. If I don’t design another building that’s fine, it doesn’t really bother me too much. It’s more seeing other people designing buildings that have that level of thought and resolution that I talk about. That’s what I’d like to achieve.

MM: Thank you so much for your time!

AB: Absolutely! Good luck with it all, I look forward to seeing it. •

ABOVE TNG Youth & Community Centre RIGHT community workshops

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Epilogue

this has been an extraordinary year

EPILOGUE

Alan Hooper

‘Another year over…a new one just begun…..let’s hope it’s a good one…’

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) / Plastic Ono Band (John Lennon/Yoko Ono), 1971

Not quite there yet, however the sentiment of Lennon’s lyrics resonates as we near completion of another extraordinary year. Let’s hope next year is indeed a good one, let’s hope it is also extraordinary but for other reasons. That said, a return to normal is not an option. The world has changed and so must the school. Blended learning is here to stay, we cannot unlearn our digital discoveries over the last couple of years and only those schools that embrace the new technologies will flourish. Increased access to learning is key, diverse learning styles, diverse lifestyles, diverse commitments; each need accommodated in the delivery of our curricula. But our blend of in-person and on182

line learning must be founded on the reconstruction of our school as a community of learning, beginning with the re-animation of our studios as places of production, discovery, and socialising, as places to build both artefacts and relationships. We need to rediscover the production value in everything we make. Everyone staff and students - has a role to play. Staff need to devise activities that encourage inhabitation of our studios, we need a diverse range of events, workshops, exhibitions, reviews, happenings, whatever it takes. Students need to commit to their studio space, to be present on a daily basis, to make a base in the studio; only by students being

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present will these spaces come back to life. Students, see it as an investment in your education, commit to your studio space and your work will improve no end, and you will make friends for life, and you will be happier…and… and…and. Together, staff and students, we should use this time to rethink our studio environment.

What does MSA’s commitment to a dedicated studio space for every student mean in practical terms?

Is every student allocated a dedicated desk? Or perhaps every student gains access to a shared studio space that encourages and accommodates a diverse range of activities, a learning space which is dynamic, flexible and alive with

possibilities? And we need the MASS Bar back in full swing, open all hours, a reliable source for coffee and chat, and the occasional game of ping-pong. Students, after all it’s your studio, your space, and staff are merely interlopers on your studio tutorial day. The studio is your creative home so create it.

The Covid hiatus has delivered us an opportunity to re-think things, to do things differently so let’s embrace change and LET’S MAKE NEXT YEAR EXTRAORDINARY! •

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People-centred Co-created Precision-made

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Lancer Square, Kensington

Space House, Covent Garden

Clockwise from above: Lancer Square in Kensington, completed 2021; The Broadway in Westminster, completing 2022; Space House in Covent Garden, completing 2023.

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Geneva Airport, Aile Est, Switzerland, 2021 (Right) The primary structure and low energy technologies are orchestrated and celebrated into one simple bold statement, with each engineering component finely crafted not unlike that of a beautiful Swiss watch.

Park View - YMCA Romford, England, 2021 (Bottom) The off-site volumetric technology used to deliver these generous, high quality spaces with exceptional insulation, daylight and acoustics promotes a more sustainable and equitable approach to house building.

The Macallan Distillery and Visitor Experience, Scotland, 2018 (Top) Set into the naturally sloping contours of the site, the design makes direct references to ancient Scottish earthworks. Internally, a series of engineered production cells are arranged in a linear format with an open-plan layout revealing all stages of the process at once.

14A Konstitucijos Avenue, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2024 (Left) A balance of passive design features supported by sciencebased engineering solutions paved the way for this nearly net zero operational carbon business centre.

The scheme aims to be a place for coming together, with a new city square and public roof terrace at the heart of the design.

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Without the generosity and support of our sponsors, this year’s edition would not have been possible. Our thanks goes to: Page\Park Architects Sheppard Robson MAST Architects New Practice Squire & Partners Chris Dyson Architects Stallan-Brand Cooper Cromar JM Architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Studio KAP To see more of our students work, head on over to our online exhibition: https://gsashowcase.net/school-of-architecture/ Social media: Facebook: facebook.com/macmag Instagram: Instagram.com/themacmag Email: macmag@gsa.ac.uk

Making of the Cover cover competition winners; Tanya Belkaid, Morgan McComb

Acknowledgements Head of School Sally Stewart Prog Leader-UG Studies Alan Hooper Prog Leader-Postgrad - Diploma, Masters Isabel Deakin Academic Support Manager Pauline O’Neill Admin Officer Kate Stewart Louise Horne Technical Team Craig Laurie Jack Bishop Vivian Carvalho Sam Currie Cover Morgan McComb & Tanya Belkaid (process images below)

In memory of Mark and Jo

MACMAG 47 | 2021-22 Mackintosh School of Architecture