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.
We were warned but it still crept up on us (well, me at least). Thursday's IDR seminar also came with a sub brief for our projects. A 1:1 isometric drawing at least 2m in one direction to explain our concept. I've never done a 1:1 drawing. Ever. I'm still struggling to get my head around the whole scale of it. I start to come up with an idea and then remember it has to be iso or 1:1 and then the idea's gone. When we were first handed the brief, I'm not going to lie, it was terrifying and just another thing to add to my list of things to get stressed about but now that I have sat down and broken it up into bits, annotating and labelling and linking each part to my project, it's not as daunting. I think it's something that just needs to sit in the back of my mind for a few days and it'll start to work itself out.
I began brainstorming yesterday, starting with the idea of domestic items on the street; looking at breaking down the inside/outside, public/private boundaries.This then led onto the idea of books and their link with learning and the old library as well as the domestic. I like the way that this is going although I may be in danger of starting to change my project and rather than focusing on women, designing a library. Which I'm not sure I necessarily want to do.
As part of our manifesto, as we were looking at street life and the elements that make up the community, I did some market studies around Manchester. I did have a list of markets that I could visit but unfortunately didn't get to see all of them. The two I did visit though, Castlefield Market and Church Street Market were interesting to study and I particular found studying Church Street Market useful. I also got back into contact with Victoria Baths where I recently did a craft fair, asking for the layout as another case study. While I did hear back from them, I was unable to really use them as I wanted to look at what was where in relation to other stalls and how this might affect sales etc but there was no information as to which tables sold what. The key thing was the circulation around the fair. There was an order to the tables, creating a single 'street' through the fair. This was the same on the first floor.
Castlefield Market was different. From ground view, there didn't seem to be much order to the stalls but after I sketch out the plan, while there was still a sense of lack of order to the market, there was a clear route through. There was an order to the tables; food items were gathered together around the edges of the room while other items such as art work and home decorations were in the centre of the hall.
Church Street Market, just outside the Arndale Centre is a small row of what are essentially permanent pop-up shops. I only found it as I went past on the tram one day. It was very reminiscent of the markets in Cheetham Hill. The shops displayed their good on the street, creating a blurred boundary between public and semi public, what was street and what was shop. The canopy over the front of the shops also added to this sense of uncertainty.
I also saw this when I was working on my sections of Cheetham Hill Road. My first section through the industrial estate showed very clear boundaries between public/private, street/building etc but the further into Cheetham Hill I went, there were more overlaps and more public spaces that weren't just the street or the pavement. I began to wonder if this was a correlation with the sense community in the areas.
