Monthly Archives: February 2014

1:200 Castlefield Site Model, Richard Coskie

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Year Six student Richard Coskie has a history of making things from clear cut hand finished materials in our workshop. This project is no exception and as Richard explains, is continuing to influence his design decisions as the project develops.

“My project is an Urban Cultivation Cooperative Centre, located on a site that is nestled between train tracks and the canal, on the old Castlefield junction at the south end of Deansgate. The 1:200 scale site model I have crafted in the workshop from pine, is proving very useful in the development of the project for investigating relationships between different programmes. I hope to display the final scheme on the site model, as well as creating other models at other scales.

The decision to create the site model void of any digital fabrication was an easy choice for me. Firstly, because the site has a low-tech and industrial aesthetic, which is better achieved by sculpting arches from a single, chunky, piece of wood. But most importantly, as a designer, I feel it is important to learn the dimensions of a site, by actually planing the topography to scale, or sawing, carving and sanding the arches to size. For the moments that one is engaged with the manipulation of their model, I believe that it is as vital a time as any for visions to come to fruition.”

We will add some studio photographs of this model in the near future. Find out more about MSAp here: http://www.msa.ac.uk/atelier/msap/

Warrington Town Centre Flow Model, Baljit Panesar

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Baljit is using a slide system to convey the different mapping she has looked at in her study of Warrington High Street.

The key question for this project was ‘What is the future of the High Street?’.

The project has looked at empty shop spaces and their potential for non retail use as a reinvention of the traditional high street. Baljit mapped the variety of creative industries in the Warrington area and is looking at the potential to place them within the empty high street store spaces.

Contested Peripheries Baljit Panesar (5)

Her main site focus is the Garnetts Cabinet Works which is due to be demolished. By using this site as an ‘incubator’ or hub for creative services, Baljit proposes a ‘launch site’ for services that would normally be based outside of the high street with the Garnetts site acting as the gateway for those services.

This working model is constructed as a grid allowing pins to be placed in the board to indicate changes in site flow at specific locations across the high street and bigger city site.Points of intervention can easily be updated by simply relocating the relevant pin.  Each mapped industry or feature has been screen printed onto acrylic slides which are stored in the base of the model and slotted in above the engraved map and below the grid. This model will continue to change and inform as this project is refined and understood, partly due to the creation of the model itself.

New B.15 Photographic Studio

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After a lot of re-ordering, cleaning and a successful equipment bid, we now have a photographic studio at our disposal!

This will come in handy for documenting your completed work straight  out of the workshop at a high standard. We currently have a white backdrop in place and are awaiting delivery of grey and black as well. As projects are completed and photographed we will most likely include them on a dedicated page here on the blog for all to see.

Over the next week or so we will be getting an idea of how this area will be used so please bare with us whilst we figure out what suits your needs best.

Should you want to use the facility please don’t hesitate to ask either myself or Jim.

We look forward to seeing some great photographs of your finished work.

Scott

Contested Peripheries Sessions

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Every Tuesday morning is now focussed on the 5th and 6th Year Contested Peripheries Group. The sessions so far have allowed students to voice any questions on their projects and refine their ideas through converse with their tutors and workshop staff.

Having tutors on hand in the workshop has been very beneficial to the group and we hope to encourage other Ateliers to be involved in the workshop in a similar way. As projects are completed we will give a more in depth look at their models and how they are being used to inform their designs. 5th year cp (1)

Peak Pavilion, Dunham Massey

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After many months of design and development the pavilion projects have come to a close over the last week with their installation on site at Dunham Massey. The Peak Pavilion project consists of 8 ‘peak’ sections connected by a steel ring. Each peak features CNC engraved poetry written by former Dunham Massey Hospital patients during World War 1. Each text panel was CNC’d using a V-Bit cutter.

Despite the rain construction went smoothly on site and Omer kindly sent us these pictures of the completed Peaks.