Events 2017

For the past two days group 07 have been in Elterwater in the Lake District visiting with our collaborators at the Merz Barn.

Today we're in the Whitworth again, designing dioramas to illustrate the ideas that we've been talking about earlier in the week. More posts to follow!

Everyone please meet at 10am in meeting room 3 at MMU Students' Union!

Some of the works from today's session with Manchester Urban Sketchers!

Mixed media sketch, pen + watercolor by Simone Ridyard.

Participants are seen scattered around Council Chamber and Manchester Museum, sketching. Everyone is into their own thing, producing their best masterpiece.

The benefits of urban sketching are manifold. At the very least, you will find that boredom becomes a thing of the past, for while a plein air sketch requires a bit of time and organisation, an urban sketch can happen anywhere and everywhere.

Day 3
Drop-in session. Individual sessions carried out to clarify doubts and discussions to best pitch their ideas.

Day 03 - A day well spent in Old Quadrangle + Manchester Museum with some of the urban sketchers from Manchester Urban Sketching group. It was amazing to see how a sketching event bring people from all walks of life together.

Day 3: We spent the day at the Student Union for the "Honest Discussions on Homelessness", hosted by the Big Change Society that focuses on ending homelessness.
The discussions gave a unique perspectives on the issue of homelessness that included talks from academia, NGOs, the health industry, government representatives, and the general public to spark a discussion about an issue that we often ignore.

My first ever attempt at live-sketching a scene in Council Chamber, University of Manchester. Spent an hour sketching, most of the time trying to understand how to apply the vanishing point technique when drawing perspective. I'm hoping that everything looks proportionate, it didn't really work out well given that the scale is incorrect, but it's a start!

Day 3:
Some of the maquette models and design sketches from todays workshop detailing the exploration of the site, its constraints and its potential.

It rained all the way as we walked to the initial venue (Old Quadrangle) and finally decided to do an indoor sketching session in the Council Chamber of University of Manchester and also within Manchester Museum. We had an interesting session earlier today together with our collaborator Manchester Urban Sketchers.

We've been preparing for tomorrow's interim meeting with Gemma from MIF. Over the past couple of days we have seen lots of models, drawings, montages and 3D computer work.

Day 3:
Final process of the day was to chat through the schemes and possible improvements for Friday's presentations. Students listening intently to the information and knowledge passed on by the 5th year mentors to improve the proposals and models.

Day 3:
In order to provide inspiration on sheet layouts and presentation techniques, the 5th year mentors showed examples of previous work to the students ready for the production of portfolio sheets. Tomorrows session will utilise these examples shown to influence the students portfolio sheets ready for Friday's presentations to external Architects.

Day 3:
Informal reviews during the afternoon presented the chance for helpful and important feedback from students and mentors on the models and the schemes ready for a final day of development tomorrow. Some great models and ideas on show throughout the day so credit must go to all students!

Day 3:
The morning session began with further design development through the creation of small maquette models to explore the schemes at scale and within the site.

Concept sketches coming along nicely! Make sure to check the Facebook group for tomorrows timings.

A pin up of our individual chair designs on Monday. We did 3 drawings each, timed to 10 minutes, then 30 and finally an hour. We had some impressive ideas all round that have lead to some great group designs.

Individuals were encouraged to present their ideas to the group, giving people more ideas to work off when further developing the chosen design. Some really good ideas were presented.

In the afternoon, we moved forward to the main part of our events which is to design a pavilion, inspired by the abstractions of the city created in the past days. Designs are be selected through a non-hierarchical decision making process - The roll of a dice.

Here are some examples of the vast collection abstractions of the city, which have been distorted even further. The use of color is very prominent in everybody's work.

Another successful day with the Flaneur Team. We are really starting to come up with some amazing work! Well done to the crew.

A pretty cool beer matt design from our mini design challenge yesterday advertising our collaborator the Pilcrow Pub.

It may only be half a chair, but it's perfectly proportioned and made to scale!

Group 2 presenting their 1:1 models to the group.

Please find a collection of our work at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0eqQDKFYZgfQ3lJX0tMcUNfdWc?usp=sharing

Three different module proposals for the installation produced by students, all beautiful and promising!

Students working in groups to finalize their designs

To begin day three of the event, we gave a lecture on changing urban environments. The lecture began with thinking about significance of buildings and related to statutory framework of listed buildings. From this we moved through the different architectural styles, highlighting key features to help the students identify the age of buildings they are looking at.

Focusing down on Manchester, and the change which has occurred here, we discussed the significance of the industrial revolution, the IRA bombing, gentrification and globalisation and the architecture which has come from these events.

This lecture led us on to thinking about the problems which are faced in the modern city and developing themes which can be explored later in the week with reference to the final output of the installation.

These are a selection of the drawings each group produced for our mini presentations today.
We discussed how each group tackled their interpretations of the districts that we visited yesterday:

The first (ancoats / new islington) were struck by the emptiness of the space. It lacked a connection to the communities that lived there. Developments lacked the holistic design that many suburbs still retained. The group suggested that the place was made of 'the developers hand', if they were to fill a box with Ancoats new islington, it would be made of Rebar, and make a space void of people because thats how it made them feel.

The second group (Canal Street / China Town) were interested with the boundaries of space. How the gate of China Town became the centre, rather than the threshold in London's version. Each destination developed organically over time as a space of protection, however they used their own character to put their mark on the space without touching the traditionally Mancunian buildings. We discussed how these spaces were made of the 'Community's hand', and their box would be full of people.

Finally (Northern Quarter) discussed how the space in the northern quarter was layered. The facade, led to a artistic and organic impression. However contrary to that, the reality is much more business driven.
Their space is made by the 'hand of the Brand' Their box would be layered as a result, made of brick or of colour to show the vibrance of the space, the industry of the past and the cold financial priority of their future.

Some good ideas shaping up!

MEET THE FACES OF GROUP 14!!

We really got to know each other today, when we our peers with the techniques that we practiced on Monday.

Testing different methods of fixing the installation to the ceiling of the venue

Presenting group proposals for the installation

Great to see the design for the pop up bar coming along this morning

Great Sketch from our pub walk on Monday at the Lass O Gowrie.

Day 1: Also on the bill was THX 1138 (1970), George Lucas's first feature film. Portraying an underground city 500 years in the future, humans are kept under control by a central authority, in order to escape whatever horrors lie on the surface that has driven them underground. The film centres on one man's sensory awakening and drive to escape this prison he has been born into.

Day 1: we talked to the students about our quest to visualise a future utopian/dystopian Manchester. To get them in the spirit we invited them to watch some films which portray alternate futures. The first of these was Bladerunner (1982), a the 1982 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, an adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Portraying a dystopian Los Angeles, genetically engineered replicants have been manufactured to be visually indistinguishable from adult humans. The use of replicants on Earth is banned and they are exclusively utilized for dangerous or menial work on off-world colonies. The world of Bladerunner is simultaneously bright and futuristic, and dark and decaying.

Nothing beats actually working together as a group!

Designing our pieces of furniture! Looking good!

The initial designs are really starting to progress. This morning we're drawing detailed joinery drawings ready for presentation at Ralph Capper.

Constructing a ceiling model to hang and test the designs

We started the day by splitting the students into three groups in order to develop concepts for the rehabilitation of the multipurpose room, which were later communicated through informal crits. The students had some great ideas, which will further developed during the third day, so we could be prepared to present them to Gareth on Thursday.

Great ideas by 1st and 2nd year students. Colour Scheme Time....

Students presenting their initial ideas... Splendid

Day 3
Morning presentation introducing the timetable of the day.
Students will work in groups to produce brief presentations
for the client meeting tomorrow.

22.3.17
Model making day today! Students are asked to produce 1:1 scale models to test their designs.

Yesterday,

We visited the Peoples History Museum to look at the ways in which Artefacts are presented.

Hopefully we're all feeling inspired!! Particularly enjoyed the use of sound, interactive objects and huge artefacts that helped us to understand the way in which Manchester developed as a city of empowerment that really focussed the experience of empowerment and activism.

Next task, each group is looking to their own districts where they will present their findings tomorrow morning. Looking forward to seeing what each group has got!

Day 2
Sketching as a form of representation of space.(sample work of students produced today)

This sums up our Day 02 workshop with Simone Ridyard.

Looking forward to see all of you tomorrow at Old Quadrangle; University of Manchester, for the outdoor urban sketching session with our collaborator Manchester Urban Sketchers! Don’t forget to bring along your own sketchbooks, pens, pencil etc. We will not provide any sketching material. Tomorrow’s session start at 2.00pm till 4.30pm, be sure to arrive earlier so that you won’t miss out any briefing!

Simone has given us a greater insight into perspective drawings and an exercise by giving us approximately 20 minutes to recreate the given image. The task is to re-imagine and sketch the upper floor of a single storey building with the help of a vanishing point.

In graphical perspective, a vanishing point is a point in the picture plane that is the intersection of the projections (or drawings) of a set of parallel lines in space on to the picture plane. It becomes a very precise baseline reference when drawing a perspective.

As the result, everyone came up with various perspective drawing base on their imaginations, with different line weight, line strokes, hatches and different building design!

Archisketcher by Simone Ridyard, this book features two-page spreads presenting the work of artists who have their own interpretations of famous landmarks like, the Eiffel Tower and New York skyline or the neighborhood they live in like San Francisco, Montreal, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Berlin.

As an urban sketcher you are probably drawn to the architecture and structures in cityscapes. With Archisketcher you will learn to spot and recognize a wide range of common architectural styles and characteristic features on structures from around the world!

Simone Ridyard, the founder of Manchester Urban Sketchers has kindly come in to talk about her deep interest in urban sketching earlier today.

Urban Sketchers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel.

Day 2
After lunch we shared/discussed our ideas with each other produced in the morning and further worked on developing the photographs and sketches.

Day 2
We split in 4 groups and explored areas assigned to each group producing photographs and sketches depicting the emotion and atmosphere of the space.

Great work and ideas from the students today in the workshop. A Pinterest board has been created for the students to use as precedents or inspiration.

https://uk.pinterest.com/interstitialand/events-1-mood-board-and-inspiration/

Day 2:
We rounded up the day with informal crits presented by each team.
It was nice to see three very different and exciting proposals from our first and second years!

Day 2:
As the design proposals developed, each team began to express initial thoughts on the assembly and structure of their installation ideas with the material palette available

Day 2:
Another site visit allowed each group to engage with the site parameters and further develop their ideas as we can see from these action shots!

Day 2:
The morning was spent developing ideas, which were communicated to the rest of Group 15. Other teams provided feedback for each idea presented to allow cross-team engagement.

Day 2:
Following on from Day 1's visit to the National Football Museum, each group composed a collage of elements of the exhibition that particularly interested them. These were then used to drive their design proposals for the installation.

Thank you Simone for the souvenir! :D

Day 02 - Morning well spent with our collaborator, Simone Riyard, the founder of Manchester Urban Sketchers. A talk was given by her, followed by a 15 min session of perspective drawings. Everyone was given an image of a building and the task was to sketch an additional floor to the building. The aim of the activity was to learn how to sketch at the right perspective angle. The outcomes were amazing as every student came out with a different creative drawing.

Project Brief

Site Visit to the Beehive Cringle Park Community Hub, which included a quick brief overview of the needs of property from Pheobe Cross, who runs the community hub.

Modelling Game - The students developed ideas of form based on several words, including 'light and heavy', 'play', 'honey' . This produced a range of outcomes following each students interpretation. The first and second year students may begin to use these abstract ideas and forms as a starting point for the beehive project.

This mornings Modelling Game in progress. For this model the student was developing form the word 'play'.

Susan from dBx acoustics came to the studio today and gave a very insightful presentation on acoustic principles that need be considered. We had individual chats with each group, looking at how their initial concepts could integrate these acoustic principles.

We had an interesting visit to a potential site this morning. It was great to see the students considering scale and how their design proposals can respond to the surrounding environment.

We are picking up scrap material from Bowmer + Kirkland Holiday Inn Express site on Friday as it nears hand over. Hopefully we can add to our growing materials palette.

tessellated paper structures - test ideas

Day two and we're starting to produce some really good designs. This is series of sketches from one group looking at creating a temporary living space over defensive spikes to raise awareness of the homeless situation in Manchester.

Presenting the results of today's workshop

Today's workshop - testing tessellated paper structures

Initial Ideas for the bar - making models!

Some interesting pieces at Mustard Tree

The Team

Great abstraction by Jhower, representing the rushed atmosphere of Manchester City Centre.

Here are a few abstractions some people produced - taking elements from the map and distorting them into unique translations.