Design Development

I feel like I am really close to a design now. I began to model my designs in a more permanent form. Using greyboard allowed me to see past the boxes and where the space could be manipulated and changed to create more interesting arrangements. I was also able to look at how the spaces would (or wouldn't) work. I immediately saw where the flaws in my arrangements were and used the next models to correct them. Playing around with light was also quite insightful and I have been able to start considering how this works and the experiences involved with the designs.
In Matrix's book, I found a reference to the Introduction to Housing Layout and after acquiring it from the library, I have managed to put it to good use. One chapter talks about public movement and although my building isn't housing, I want it to become an extension of the street so the ideas were insightful.

I also began to really work on the housing aspect of my project. I decided that it would make most sense to develop a design before I arranged the site as I needed to take the orientation into account when designing. The idea is to create housing that has some sort of shared space in which the residents can interact with one another and form a community. This feeds back into my original idea of blurred boundaries: blurring the line between what is private and what is shared. 

Charrettes

This week I have been developing my designs. I gave myself a 30 minute session in which to come up with each design. I began by using my model and then photograph it and annotate it on Photoshop. Each design brought out an idea for the next one although not all of them were as successful as I hoped.
I became quite attached to my first design, it seemed to convey everything I wanted but once I had begun playing about with the site axes, it mixed up the arrangement and I felt that it grounded the design to the site and wider area.

I had no luck finding any of the original plans so I guess this project will just be façade retention but there was no guarantee that the building as it stands would be suitable for my  building anyway. I'm not exactly sure how to go about navigating this problem.

I still need to start work on my designs for the housing aspect of my programme. After considering that 'cohousing' might not be the way forward, I started looking at Byker again, especially at the enclosed spaces shared by a small group of housing. I think something like this would work as having shared spaces would encourage small communities to form, much like as was discussed in Matrix's book.

Precedents and development

My primary programme is to allow stay at home women to become integrated in the community to remove the isolation felt by many of them.

I began to look at precedents of communal housing, the idea that while there are individual homes, there are also spaces within the site that are shared between the households. This would allow for interaction and a community to be formed.

The example I looked at was the first cohousing project in the UK. It comprises of 34 residences and a central 'common house' where communal meal take place a few times a week. There is also a large common room and communal garden.

I also started looking at precedents for the community building. I remembered the New Arts Exchange from a lecture I went to by Habinder Birdi from Hawkins\Brown Architects. The gallery, in Nottingham, has a similar programme to mine in that it is a building for the community and aims to create a stronger sense of community through the arts. I started to look at how this was achieved through the use of light and space.

From here, and after reading MATRIX, I began to redevelop my programme. While it was still quite vague and I hadn't even started to think about the housing, now it seems to all be coming together.

My next step it to look at the spatial values of my programme and give dimensions to this. Once this is done, I am going to start making marks on site. I want to make a site model and smaller models to represent the different spaces. This will let me play around with my programme on the sites and help me to start generating a design for my buildings. 

Onwards

I am still in need of developing my programme and while I have been discussing events with others who are also focusing their projects on women, with the drawing having taken over the last couple of weeks, we haven't had the chance to get much further than discussions.

It was suggested that I look at Matrix's book Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment. The introduction started talking about 'a woman's place' and comparing home and work. Essentially, there is a distinct boundary between home and work for employed men while, whether employed or unemployed, this boundary isn't there for women as work continues at home in the form of housework or child care. In a way this links back to my main theme of blurred boundaries although instead of the physical boundary between public and private, it is a mental one between leisure and work.

It also talked about women outside of the home and the potential dangers in the streets, especially after dark. This has made me look again at the sites and the accessibility to each other and to Cheetham Hill Road. Pedestrian access to the graveyard site is via a couple of short but quiet roads that could be quiet intimidating during the day, let alone at night. While there is only one entrance to the Library site, there is a potential for a second in the cut through from Cheetham Hill Road to the World Wide supermarket and this again isn't the most welcoming. Humphey Street, running perpendicular to Cheetham Hill Road and one of the links between the sites, is more of a major road that the others but it's tall brick walls with very few windows again make for an intimidating route.

If I am to design mainly for the women of Cheetham Hill, I am going to have to look at the accessibility between the sites and to improve these routes of transit. Site analysis to look at the light levels will be beneficial, if not necessary in order to develop this part of my design.