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.
Today, we went up to the site again to find out what the general consensus of where the Cheetham Hill boundary was. We had printed maps and we were going to ask people to mark on where they thought the Cheetham Hill boundary was.
We started at The Fort and tried asking people if they had a couple of minutes to answer out questions. While we did get a couple of answers, the majority of people we asked clearly didn't want to talk to us.
We had to try a different approach.
Rather than asking people, pen and paper in hand, if they had a couple of minutes. I suggested we went for the 'lost person' approach. We began asking people if we were in Cheetham Hill and if not, where it was. People were more open to helping us and extended the conversation by asking us where we were trying to get to exactly.
Once we had the information we needed, we then simply marked it on the maps ourselves. It was interesting to see that people in the industrial estate considered themselves to be part of Cheetham Hill although they acknowledged that the main town was further north.
As we approached Strangeways and the Prison, people did begin to seem unsure as to whether they were in Cheetham Hill or not.
Some people didn't seem to understand our question and pointed us in the direction of Cheetham Hill Road.
