Buckling down to work this evening, one of the things I really needed to work out was how to tie Lynch's 5 elements theory into my work. I have already made the connection between his 5 elements making up the city and our 5 elements making up the community but I felt that I needed to go deeper than then to enable me to use it in my project.
While Lynch uses them to critique the city and its imageability, as I am in the process of doing with Newcastle, I've realised that I can reverse engineer his method and use it to create a space that allows a community to either begin or grow.
I can turn the theory into a formula:
Paths + Landmarks + Nodes + Edges + Districts = City
People + Employment + Markets + Street + Housing = Community
With the quality of each of these elements making up the quality of the total (City or Community). In Lynch's text, he works out the quality of each of them to find the quality of the city. In my project, I know what I want the end result to be and can work backwards by looking at what the current state of each of the elements is to then create what is lacking or improve what is in poor condition in my project.
In order to do this, another trip up north (that is, to Cheetham Hill, not Newcastle) may be needed and a closer look at the other groups' findings is definitely needed. However, just from looking at the area and listening to presentations etc, I can already make a start piecing together what is required:
People: Cheetham Hill has such a diverse population that I would be willing to say that the richness of the community in this sense doesn't need to be altered.
Employment: As with much of the country in the current climate, the state of employment in Cheetham Hill is not good, although I think it was suggested that this area is one of the worst. Something that needs looking into.
Markets: I've looked at markets in Cheetham Hill enough to know that this isn't an issue within the community and doesn't need faffing with by architecture students.
Street: This varies throughout the area but while the sites are in the centre, there is a good sense of street life although the street is something that is the main focus of my work anyway.
Housing: I already know there is a lot of housing around Cheetham Hill, much of it off the main high street through the sites though. Housing does however form part of our brief.
After quickly listing what the state of each of the elements is, I can see that my project will mainly be focusing on Employment, Street and Housing although I will still keep People and Markets in mind throughout the project.
Now to choose my site!
Today I was working though my personal manifesto and how I am going to approach this project.
I have made links between Lynch's 5 elements of the city and our manifesto's 5 elements of the community although I am yet to tie it into my project completely (it's too good a link not to use!).
I also spent some time looking at the sections from yesterday and making comparing the empty spaces within them: the demolition site, the car park and the park. With this being a strong idea that I want to carry forward. I am now left with a bit of a dilemma.
The site that interested me the most, the one adjacent to the old library, wouldn't necessarily be the best site for my project, considering my manifesto. The third site, the cemetery seems to be a better fit as it is completely an empty space.
It was also commented on that I might be taking on too much if I wanted to have retrofit as part of my project alongside the brief.
Decisions, decisions . . . .
Yesterday, we had our individual tutorials in studio.
As well as discussing our study tours, we've also began to think about our personal manifestos for our individual projects.
I haven't really given much though to my project since Newcastle but after re-reading though our manifesto (in an attempt to edit it) I began to make links between the manifesto and my trip.
The major link was the five aspects that we wanted to focus on and the five elements in Lynch's text. While the first makes up a community, the other makes up the city. I think that this is a strong idea that can be used in my manifesto and I want to look further into it.
I also want to look closer at my visit to Byker estate in an attempt to see what makes a community project work and what doesn't. When it was first proposed and built, the project was ground breaking but further down the line and it seems to have fallen into disrepair and I can't help but feel that it doesn't function as well as it did when first built.
As a group, we still have a little bit of editing to do on our manifesto and this is something that we were working on today. We identified what needed sorting and improving and after much discussion, we assigned ourself tasks and are aiming to finish it by Sunday (Monday at the very latest if rearranging is needed). This evening, as well as working on the group blog, I am going to look at market typology. The idea is that I will map out different markets and similar arrangements and we will then be able to compare them. This is something I am going to continue tomorrow when I go to the Arndale Market and Church Street Market. Tonight though, I am going to map out the Victoria Baths Craft Fair that I attended at the weekend as a slightly different type of market.
