Overall, we were really impressed with the way everyone worked during the week and especially with how the students presented their work during the exhibition at the Pozzoni office. All the teams spoke clearly and confidently about their projects to a busy and somewhat intimidating room of architects.

Well done guys!

Site analysis was a key part of the design of group 4’s care hotel located within Stretford mall. It was important for the team to map out the proximity of the site to existing hospital infrastructure as well as its connection to public transport and road networks.

Here is he programmatic model from group 3 which was exhibited at the Pozzoni office. The simplicity of these models made the schemes easy to understand, without the need for explanation. This work will remain on display for the coming weeks.

Group 4 designed a care hotel scheme which focused on stroke recovery patients. They represented their ideas clearly through the use of diagrams and sketches, which spoke for themselves during the exhibition. This image shows an adjacency diagram outlining the buildings programme as well as sketches for ideas in which deceased residents can leave the building in a dignified manner.

The work looked great today for the exhibition at the Pozzoni office.

The presentations were informal and everyone did a great job of explaining their projects - all the hard work paid off!

Here is group 2 presenting to Ian from Pozzoni. He was impressed with how far they have developed their design in such a short time.

For the exhibition on Monday they will develop their proposal further, refining the lobby space and making everything look great for the exhibition.

The Owen's Park Tower group have developed their scheme well, settling with central circulation. This will double as communal spaces for residents.

They are starting to develop this idea further, looking at how protrusions into the central atrium space can expand the communal area.

We have started modelling!

All four groups are working on programmatic models which will be on display in the Pozzoni office on Monday. This exercise was really useful, helping us understand the layout for each proposal and how this relates to the existing context.

The option of having the communal areas and circulation space situated around the main atrium of the tower seems to be the best option for this project.

Group 3 will continue to develop this idea today ready to present to Pozzoni Architects tomorrow.

Let's see what they think!

Group 3 have been developing the circulation for their scheme, trying to find out which arrangement will work best in relation to the large atrium space.

They have decided to use Owens Park Tower as accommodation for residents with staff and students located in the adjoining block.

Today we presented our ideas to two of the architects from Pozzoni.

They were really impressed with how far we have come in such a short space of time. Each group has really unique ideas and has a clear direction of where they want to go with their project.

We will now keep developing these ideas for our final review with Pozzoni on Thursday!

The video is coming along nicely!

Keep on working hard guys.

We have practiced our presentations for our review with Pozzoni.
Everyone has worked really hard and there are some great ideas!

Also some great footage of people pointing at things for the film!

Last minute preparations before we present our research and initial design ideas to Pozzoni.

Each group will discuss their individual research topics as well as which site they have chosen and why it will be suitable for a care hotel.

A great start!

Today we divided into 4 groups, each looking into a different design aspect key to care hotels. We then presented our findings to each other.

We will continue working hard tomorrow, ready to present our ideas to Pozzoni on Monday!

Online research was very helpful to see how architects have addressed the issues of care in the past.

This group are looking at how student living can be combined with care hotels in a way that is mutually beneficial for all. Very interesting!

The teams collated their research in the form of reference images, sketches and mind maps to present to the rest of the group.

This was really helpful. We will be able share the knowledge and will now be able to apply this to each individual project!

Here are the rooms we will be working in from Monday onward.

Be sure to refer to this as we are in a different room every day!

Team photo outside the Pozzoni office!

#memories

Today we were briefed by architects at Pozzoni.

They gave us an overview of their research into care hotels. We were shown 3 examples of built projects they have visited in the Netherlands giving us an insight into what a care hotel is.

This is a great foundation for our research over the coming weeks!

We recommend downloading the 'get me there' app for purchasing tickets to and from Altrincham.

This should speed up our journeys to the Pozzoni office!

Wait until the day of travel before you buy your tickets. We will need to buy a return ticket from St Peters Square to Altrincham.

The app is free and available for Apple and Android.

It's optional, so if you want to stick to good old fashioned paper tickets, that's not a problem!

*UPDATE*

We have changed the meeting time for Wednesday 18th.
We will now be meeting at 8.30am to ensure we arrive to the Pozzoni office on time.

See you there!

I'm Matt, from just down the road in Macclesfield. I too am new to MSA, originally studying in Newcastle. I have worked on residential and infrastructure projects, but also have experience with set and video design for live productions. Very excited to meet the rest of the team!