Photographs showing the shadows reflecting the pattern creating by broken trusses.

Finally, after a lot of hard work and a lot of fun, our final physical model stands tall just like St. Luke's Church, a reflection of the suffering and destruction, as well as a reflection of the bravery and resilience of the people of Liverpool.

Final tutorial gave us chance to check out all the other great projects!

After visiting the site we took a detour and visited the Liverpool Cathedral, which is based of one of Giles Gilbert Scott's designs. We also had the chance get a bird's eye view of our site from the tower of the Cathedral.

One of the drawbacks of our initial concept was that we failed to unite all the elements in our concept. This brings us to our final concept. After a lot of brainstorming sessions and heated group discussions, we finally came to a conclusion. In order to unite all the elements of our concept, we decided to not showcase the broken fragments in plinths. Instead, we decided to hang them from the roof using several strings and wherever these strings are connected to the roof for each fragment, we took out that portion of the roof and hung it below the fragment using strings, thus uniting all the elements.

Our initial concept had the roof design which represented the destroyed trusses, the gaps filled with shattered glass representing the shattered souls and the broken fragments of the lost elements of the church showcased in plinths. Each glass plinth showcased an element. Spot lights above the plinths and diffused light coming out from the bottom of the plinths were installed to portray a subtle image, a reflection, an idea. The idea was to create a subtle image of bombs hitting the ground. If we can imagine a bomb hitting the ground and freeze the image at the very moment it touches the ground. We'll be able to a trail of smoke behind the bomb and fire just about to rise from the part of the bomb which hits the ground. The concept was to create a subtle reflection of this through the lights where the plinths act as the bombs.

Reflections of the past: the final part of our concept. When the church was bombed, a lot of its elements/organs were destroyed as well. Elements like the columns, the altar, the bells, the tapestry, the benches, the trusses, the beams, the sculptures, the stained glass, all burnt, all destroyed. We wanted people visiting the church to experience the destruction, we wanted them to see a reflection of what used to be there but isn't there anymore. Therefore, our concept included fabrication of these elements in white color. Our intervention has broken fragments of these elements hanging from the roof at different heights. Thus, a reflection of the past.

On our first day we went to Liverpool to familiarise ourselves with the site and its surroundings. Given the fact that we were to design a war memorial inside the ruined church, context was as important as the intervention itself.

The next part of our concept was to fill the gaps in the roof created by the design, with 4000 broken pieces of glass. These 4000 pieces of shattered glass represents the 4000 shattered souls, the 4000 lives which were lost during the Liverpool Blitz which also destroyed the church.

Look up and you see trusses holding up the roof. Look down and you see a reflection of the destroyed trusses.

Final effect of shadows: shadows create pattern that represents
fallen trusses because of the church bombing

Final site model: we used layers to create thick wall and also to achieve the depth in windows

Kaili taking picture of our site model

UoM Workshop: working on final model

The image above shows our final exploded axonometric drawing alongside a sectional drawing portraying vividly out installation in the church.

On the last day of events, each group made a presentation of their final concept development sheets as well as a physical model of the installation. The presentation went well and it was really interesting seeing all the installations and interventions created by the other groups as they all had different approaches to the church. Reflecting back at the beginning of the events, it is really fascinating to see our development from day 1 through the final presentation today. I really enjoyed this project, it was a memorable and enjoyable leaning experience.

Once we had all finished our models, we presented our work to the events group. The middle picture shows an exploded diagram showing the form of the design. The picture below was our final rendered perspective which I did.

Following the first 2 days we started having group sessions every day. One of the first concepts that we developed for the intervention was the restoration/installation of a roof. Its a restoration cause the roof would be a reflection of the original roof which used to be there. But its also an installation cause its not the exact reflection. We decided to adapt the original shape of it but add a design to it. This design was particularly interesting as it reflected what had happened when it was bombed. The concept was that, the original roof had trusses supporting it, but when it was bombed, the wooded trusses were destroyed and laid burnt on the ground. So we decided to do a quick experiment. We made a scissor truss, identical to the original one, broke it into pieces and dropped those pieces from the height of the roof at a 1:100 scale, repeating it for each truss. Thus, emerged an interesting pattern. We used this pattern to make gaps in the roof through which light would enter into a rather dark atmosphere inside the church.

1:100 physical model of our intervention placed within the church for context

After a lot of work, we completed our final model at 1:100. there are 280 pieces of string shooting out of the altar and the tower. We made a model which had a base so that we could easily place it within the site model of the church, and take it out for closer examination.

Day 11: Today is our final review day, each of the four groups had 10-15 minutes to present our design. This is one of the pages extracted from our presentation which explains our concept of the installation:
Playing with light and fragments suspended from the ceiling as a remembrance of the war.

sketches of past concepts

Day 6 - In the workshop making the model, by laser cutting the proposed pillar structures and creating an inlay floor plan to be able to place our proposed installation within the Church model. We made a 1-100 and a 1-20 of the altar end of the Church to express the anchor point of the altar to encourage people towards this central point. [ Short video of our proposal for the installation for St Lukes -> https://youtu.be/Dmt3rPE6lfU]

Having already come up with our final concept, the process of sketching and creating models reminded me of Thomas Heatherwick's 'B of the Bang' which stood as the tallest sculpture in the UK until 2008. The explosive yet elegant aesthetic of the art mirrored what we are aiming for with our intervention.

The second day started off with everyone presenting their ideas and concepts for commemorating the 70th anniversary of the bombing of St. Luke's Church. Following that, we were dividing into 4 groups depending on our ideas. Thus, started our(Group 04) journey through the Fragments Of The Past.

We continued to develop our final concept by creating further sketch models and digital models of the intervention, which helped us understand where we wanted to attatch the string, and how we were going to assemble the final model. The string had to be threaded through the different columns in a specific order in order to avoid the string getting tangled up and changing course.

Day 10: Final model completed. This picture captures the atmospheric internal view of the light effect created by the jagged pattern on the roof.

Day 7 - On that day, we finally went to the workshop to work on the model showing our final concept. We started off by laser cutting the files we had and preparing the materials. Unfortunately, the first time the pieces did not really fit together very well and it was almost impossible to sand them because of how thin they are. So we had to laser cut the file again making sure that this time they will fit together and finally they did. We are really proud of our final model as well as the choice of materials as it shows clearly our concept concerning our intervention in the church memorial.

This detail to our concept memorialises our intervention. Over 4000 lives were lost during the war as a result of blitzing in Liverpool. A sculpted pot, designed from the ornamentation on the top window on St Luke's church, will represent 1 life. These will make up the large structure as well as feature throughout the church plan.

Day 7
We decide to laser cut our model (1:100) with the help of a new program 123D Make. Sadly it didn't account of the right spacing and the pieces didn't fit together. The file was fixed and reprinted with the right measurements this time and we are happy with the final result!

A monster is born! Our intervention reflects on the ability that the nature of man and nature itself has to destroy and create. Through this installation the creative and destructive forces of nature will be shown through the lifecycle of the plants themselves. The way the structure wraps around St Luke's church represents how the new is built from the old, and how the values of society and mankind manifest from events like the war.

DAY 6
Further development of our instalattion

DAY 5
Exploded axonometric highlighting the complex roof structure that spirals down at the centre to reflect the bomb impact. Also this provides support to the structure and was the best solution for hanging debris.

Day 4
After analysing the site we worked out the percentage of lost materials during the bombing. Our installation will feature the same amount of debris as originally in the church and replicate the moment the bomb hit the church

Unorthodox site analysis. 'You gotta do what you gotta do!'

DAY 3
Timeline is a compilation of our research on the church from its construction to the bombing, till the present day. Even though only the outer shell remains it's endurance through the years is remarkable and has inspired our concept.

Kick started Events with an early train to Liverpool for a day of site analysis and conceiving ideas. Ended on a high with a Katsu curry and a group meal. Next stop, the drawing board...

Day 2
Back to studio. Starting to discuss our concept and looking at precedent (such as Jaehyo Lee). Our main theme is destruction and we intend to make an installation to commemorate all that was lost during the bombing. We were inspired by the shattered glass still visible in the ruins.

Another shot of the installation showing the hanging debris at the side and a series of stained glass towers installed at the end of the visitors path, representing the stained glass lost after the bomb.

Day 1
We started Events with a trip to St Luke's bombed out church, Liverpool. This was a great starting for the project as it gave us valuable insight on the church's characteristics such as the dimensions and the atmosphere and an overall better understanding of the site.

This is what the final model looks like when installed inside the church. Full credits to the other group who did an amazing job on the church model and kindly shared it with us. Teamwork at its best!

Laser cutting our final model (scale 1:100), with the help of '123D Make' application which transformed a 3d digital model into 2d pieces ready to be printed and slotted into other pieces. However, the program failed to calculate the appropriate size of the slots and they ended up not fitting into each other. This meant one of our passionate group members had to fix each slot in Autocad before reprinting them. Lesson Learnt!

Post 5- Once we finished the physical model of our design, we fitted it onto the site model to see it with the surrounding context. Playing around with shadows and light was also interesting. We managed to get lots of amazing photos and had learnt a lot from this experience.

Working on the final model of the roof intervention in workshop today and yesterday, we were also creating sketch up model for final perspective presentation.

1:100 site model completed. It will be used for presentation and giving context to our memorial intervention.

[ Fig. 4 ]
Our group decided to use interlocked slices as the model construction technique. Further improvement is made due to my concern towards loads transfer. The cad drawings is finally ready for laser cut in the end of the day.

Since finalising our concept idea, we have been able to begin producing images representing our proposal for the intervention in St Luke's Church. This is a perspective of the church from within, showing the effect of the web, which creates a clear path from the tower to the altar.

This image is an axonometric done AutoCad of our concept showing the ruins and our intervention.

The image above shows two rendering of our concept done on SketchUp and photoshop.

Day 6- We went to the studio to meet up with our tutors and discuss our work so far with them. Their advice was really helpful as they clarified what we need to do to make sure that our concept is finalized and that our drawings and work shows everything we want to. They also approved of the concept and helped us with technical problems and with precedence. Afterwards, we decided on how our model will be made and agreed to laser cut it. As of the drawings, they are almost done but they need some adjustments and we need to adapt the tutor’s advice to make sure that the work is on the right track.

Day 5- After the tutors advice, we met as a group with an aim to discuss and finalize our concept. Eventually, we ended up with even more precedence, which lead us toward a better and more detailed concept. We did a sketch model of our concept and we made a checklist consisting of the following: An axonometric, a final photomontage of the installation, and various diagrams for a better understanding of the concept as well as a final model.

Day 4- on that day, each group had to make a presentation describing their work and analysis and basically the whole purpose is to have a complete and full understanding of the site, history and all the aspects related to the church. So we went first and we presented our timeline, analysis as well as our precedents and initial ideas and concept. Later on, our tutors discussed the idea with us making sure that we are on the right track towards a final concept concerning our architectural intervention in the bombed out church. Afterwards, the other groups presented their work and it was really interesting seeing the work of the other groups as well as their concepts and their approach to the church,

Day 3 – We met as a group (the 4 of us) and we started off by doing some research about the history of the church as well as collecting and assembling the photos we took to include in our research. Later on, we decided to divide the history into three main parts: Construction of the church and pre-bombing usage, the bombing during WW2 and finally post-bombing events and state of the church. Concerning the presentation, we decided that we would create a timeline showing the main events of the church alongside relevant pictures.

Day 2 – On that day, we firstly introduced our selves in order to be more familiar with each other and then we individually stated what we particularly liked in the church as well as sharing our individual concepts. Eventually, we got divided into 4 groups, each working on a different concept as well as a site related aspect. Our group had to prepare a presentation about the site history.

Day 6: Sketch Model Developed. It was used for testing the position of trusses and the pattern of the jagged holes in the roof. It has also illustrated the spacial relationship between the exhibition boxes and the building volume, we later found that it seems unsympathetic to the human scale so we decided to change our method of displaying the exhibiting items.

Brainstorms:
using sketch model to create final concept

Day 1 -- That day of events was my favorite day so far as we all went to Liverpool on a wonderful sunny day to visit St. Luke's Church and to launch the project.It was brilliant to start the project by a group site visit in order to get a feel of the atmosphere and the surrounding of the church. We got the opportunity to take good quality pictures, investigate the church and its ruins as well as have a group discussion about our improvised analysis. Afterwards, we went for a coffee in Everyman as we discussed the site and planned ahead our timetable and program for the upcoming weeks. Later on, we got to visit the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King as an inspiration for a gothic revival and contemporary church, which i thought was really eccentric and interesting.

After a few discussions, we had come up with (yet) another strong concept, which is going to be our final design. A timber mesh panel will be installed as a roof while a hole in the middle represents the bomb's effect towards the church. The rest of the debris will still be installed at the edges of the church, providing some space in the middle for the visitors to circulate around.

Our group's very first concept gravitated towards the idea of having the lost debris of the church hang on several strings attached from the top of the church. However, we had to take the church's lack of roof into account and come up with an appropriate solution to what these strings are to be attached to.

Timeline created for site history research before moving on to designing the actual installation

A great day for a site visit on a sunny Monday in Liverpool. It only took us around 15 minutes to walk from Liverpool Lime Street Station to the Church of St. Luke, or the Bombed Out Church. We then spent around 45 minutes walking around and exploring the site for the first time, before heading off to the Everyman Theatre for some coffee as we discussed our plans towards the next two weeks of this event.

Having approached various concepts, we decided to pursue the idea of experimenting with netting and string, and began to look at ways in which this idea could manifest itself. Originally, we planned to create a chaotic intervention within the church, which would represent the smoke and rubble of the explosion. However, once we started experimenting with a more elegant approach, with all the string being focused into 2 points, at the altar and the tower (symbolically, the most significant features of the church), we decided this idea suited the nature of the site far better.

In order to develop our initial ideas, we made a sketch model of the church which we could use in order to experiment with various ideas. The theme of our intervention was destruction, so we originally planned to capture a freeze frame of the church exploding, and we came up with 3 concepts which we could use to achieve this:
-hanging objects off beams
-having objects exploding through windows using metal structures
-using net or string to create the sense of an explosion within the church itself

Following our site visit, we were given the task of compiling our site analysis in which we looked at factors such as climate, sound, population, use and nature of the site. All this data was used to help us develop our interventions, and progress our designs.

Day 5 - Today we discussed our final concept design for the memorial installation for St Luke's, and started to figure out how to construct the model and the view points for the perspectives. With both aspects we wanted to enforce the the anchor point for the altar to demonstrate that all the strands connect at one central point.

The web system will be supported by lace columns and get denser in the less used areas allowing natural light and shadows.

After further analysis of the site we changed our installation design and decided to wrap the altar-the main focus for a religious ritual, with a web constructed to connect each part of the ruins to it.

The floating pieces would stick out from the windows gradually overpowering the site with the bomb explosion.

Our first proposal for the memorial was to create an image of explosion inside the church and make an overwhelming impression of the bomb attack by exploding the walls elements out

[ Fig. 3 ]
Our design scheme is to create a memorial intervention within the church. The commemoration to the WW2 is being reflected by the frozen explosion scenario. As you can see from the image, the structure in the centre of the church represent the twist made by the falling bomb while the random brick-like material on both side represent the loosen material of the church after WW2.

[ Fig. 2 ]
Before formulating our own response towards a scheme in group, we were told to advance our knowledge towards the bombed out church in the historical aspect.

[ Fig. 1 ]
We started our day off to visit St Luke's Church in Liverpool. We did diagrams and sketches, well as took photographs, in order to develop a full understanding about the site. This result is then used as a starting point for the development of the design process.

3-Dimensional Model of the Bombed Out Church (WIP).

Once we had chosen a concept design, I 3d modelled it and had a go at creating some perspectives to have an idea of how it would look like.

Day 5: After further refining our design narrative today. I've drawn these two illustrations of burnt wood beams after the destruction of fire, they are to help interpreting the symbolic meaning behind the staggered patterns which the sky light of the roof takes form from.

Day 4- Through diagramming the procession through the church this led to the idea of having a greater density of mass of the material in the less used areas. Then through a number of maquettes we decided on a string pattern to help with creating the weaved density of material, it also allowed us to apprehend the atmosphere and lighting created by it.

The first day of events began with a rainy Manchester and a surprisingly sunny Liverpool. We started off by visiting St. Luke's Church, our site and spending about an hour taking pictures, sketching and diagramming. Then we headed off to the RIBA Stirling Prize winner of 2014, the Everyman Theatre, where we had coffee and got briefed on our project. This was followed by a visit to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, which was an absolute spectacle. I had never seen anything like that before. After spending some time admiring the revolutionary architecture of the cathedral, we came out, still stunned by its sheer presence, and headed off in search for a place to have lunch in. The end of lunch also marked the end of the fun and refreshing journey as we broke off and went our own ways.

Coming in on our day off, we decided to work together to develop our concept/design further and also we were assigned to the task of making the site model. So we were trying to figure out how to make the site model the best we could in the time given.

The day after the site visit, we split into four groups and started to create quick concept diagrams about how we saw the site being used. Whether it was a procession or a deconstruction route, each group had different and unique ideas which made it interesting.

On the first day, we travelled to Liverpool and carried out some site analysis on St Luke church. We looked at how people used and treated the site and how the church fit in with the surrounding context. We took some photos, quick sketches and the picture below is the sketch up model of the site, something we used as a starting point in our memorial installation.