Group 20
REVITALISING THE TOWN HALL

‘Revitalising the Town Hall’ is about the creation of a conceptual artistic installation that allows people to learn about the Town Hall while it is being renovated. The installation will be designed to interact with the public and convert the energy of the human body into electricity which will contribute to powering up the Town Hall. A chance to collaborate with Purcell Architects who have a vast experience in historical buildings, sustainability and community interaction is provided.

Tianyi W / Yimeng Z / Junfu X / Shuo P / Kaja Marta S / Yan C

Kaja Marta S
MEET THE TEAM

We are a group of 5th yeah MArch students who will be working with you on revitalising Manchester Town Hall.

Our group offers diverse skills and Events experience.

Kaja from &rchitecture enjoys thinking outside the box and searching for innovative design solutions that allow community to engage with architecture. She is interested in visualising architecture and assembling portfolios and will encourage you to challenge your creativity throughout the whole process! BA degree in Kent School of Architecture.

Willa from &rchitecture has a good understanding of sustainability and its history, especially from energy perspective. She enjoys critical thinking and evaluation or understanding things from different aspects. She will be glad to discuss any of those with you! BA degree at Queen’s University Belfast.

Augus (or Shuo Pan) from Advanced Practice is a prospective architect who manages own design studio in Beijing. He has gained a lot of experience during his practical work, especially when working with public buildings. He is currently interested in housing for aging people and is glad to share his experience and knowledge with you! BA at Beijing University of Technology in China.

Yan from Advanced Practice enjoys the process of digital and physical modelling. He is glad to share any useful software or physical model making skills. BA degree at Cardiff University.

Junfu from USE, a visual art enthusiast who loves hand sketch and digital painting, will be glad to share the drawing skills with you. BA degree University of Liverpool.

Yimeng (or Amanda) from USE has many years of work experience. She has participated in variety of projects when working in China. Interested in adaptive reuse, she is glad to share practical knowledge. BA degree at Zhengzhou University in China.
Posted 11 Mar 2020 14:45
Shuo P
SOCIAL VALUE

The installation we are proposing is to provide social interaction between the society and the town hall during its closure. We will let multi-generations to engage with the touchable/movable creature.
Posted 15 Mar 2020 01:14
Tianyi W
MEET THE COLLABORATOR

We are collaborating with Purcell Architects, who were funded in 1940s by a conservation expert Donovan Purcell. They have a vast experience at working with historic buildings, as well as architecture and master planning.

The main collaborator within Purcell Architects will be Vanessa Torri who will be representing the office during the final presentation of our project to the Architects and who will host a site visit in the Town Hall during the intensive week. The renovation works will be in place, so joining our group gives you a unique opportunity to not only see the Town Hall inside, which is closed to the visitors until 2024, but also to visit a construction site!

Click here to the Purcell Architects:
https://www.purcelluk.com/about
Posted 15 Mar 2020 01:23
Shuo P
THE GROUP MEETING

Welcome you to join our team! Following our meeting with collaborator when we had a quick glimpse of the site, we have come together to discuss our session plan. Together, we have been working on designing an exciting event, which will provide our undergraduate students team with a great range of new skills learned both from us and from our professional collaborators, knowledge and unique opportunities, such as visit into the Town Hall.
Posted 15 Mar 2020 01:36
Kaja Marta S
PROFESSIONAL SEMINAR

Dave Wakelin, who is a Sustainability Associate Director at Mace as well as Craig Dick, a Construction Manager at Lendlease have been working with Purcell Architects on the Town Hall renovation and will give our group a seminar to aid our design. This is a rare chance for our group to learn more about sustainability and construction directly from professionals!

For more information about our seminar collaborators follow the links:
Mace - https://www.macegroup.com/
Lendlease - https://www.lendlease.com/uk/
Posted 16 Mar 2020 19:14
Yimeng Z
OUTPUT: CONCEPTUAL INSTALLATION

The main concept of our project is to create an interactive installation which could help to transfer the kinetic power generated from people‘s behavior into electricity for the utilization town hall. Human interaction can include touching, jumping, sounding and body heating, etc.
Posted 16 Mar 2020 19:47
Yan C
EVERYTHING WILL HAPPENED HERE:

Manchester Townhall,
Albert Square,
Manchester
M2 5DB
Posted 16 Mar 2020 21:07
Tianyi W
SITE VISIT

We have organised a internal visit of Town Hall on 28th April to let our group members take a glance of the interior and the live site before designing. The tour is hosted by Purcell staff and it is a good chance to see how the constructional site is working during the closure of town hall.
Posted 16 Mar 2020 21:09
Junfu X
PRECEDENTS

The mock-up room is going to become an exciting place for the public to interact with the new-built installation. During this process, the energy of the human body is converted into electricity.
Posted 16 Mar 2020 21:45
Junfu X
HAND DRAWING TOOLS

Hand drawing can be regarded as an important way to advance your designing process. It expresses your ideas quickly and effectively, and it allows you to review your design during the drawing process as well. In this workshop, we will not only teach you how to create an artwork by hand, but also teach you how to use multiple methods to express as much information as possible on one drawing. Therefore, we will encourage you to use a variety of painting tools and media, such as pencil sketch, watercolour, pen drawing, digital painting created by iPad, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, etc., and we will also teach you how to combine these painting tools to create a composite presentation on your drawing. In a sense, these comprehensive expression media and creative processes enable you to get more design motivation and inspiration. Thus, I hope you will enjoy the process in our workshop.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 15:31
Junfu X
HAND DRAWING SKILLS

Different types of drawings will have different types of expression methods. Our workshop will mainly teach you how to use hand drawing to quickly express your concept generation, analysis diagrams and sketches of scene effects. We will not only teach you to make the images more expressive of design elements, but also teach you how to make the images vivid, lovely and attractive. Considering that different BA students may have different aesthetic and painting preferences, we will try to show as many painting styles as possible to meet the painting habits of different students.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 15:32
Junfu X
DESIGNING SKILLS

In addition to drawing skills, in our group you can also learn five common design methods and ideas we have teased out. These methods will help you to think more effectively and scientifically about the concepts of future design assignments, and also help you better understand the design works of others. Different design methods are suitable for different people, we hope that each of you can find the most suitable design method for you after our workshop.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 15:33
Tianyi W
INTENSE WEEK ONE

During the first week, the whole group will visit the town hall and attend an seminar held by mace staff. After a brief tutorial of the essential software for BA students, the group will separate into two sub-groups and run parallel brain storming, as well as concept development. The design stage will be closed at the end of this week with two creative installation waiting to be modeled and visulised.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 19:15
Tianyi W
INTENSE WEEK TWO

After an informative week, the second week is more productive. Each of the sub-group will have half of members to do physical model, while the other half undergoing visualisation for the final presentation. The most exciting thing is the formal presentation, which is happen at the last day of this week. There will be secret guests been invited to the presentation together with the Purcell Architect. The group are required to dress formally.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 19:19
Yimeng Z
MOCK-UP ROOM: EXISTING CONDITION

The MOCK-UP room is located on the fourth floor of the Town Hall, which is a room we could enter during the construction process.
Posted 23 Mar 2020 21:25
Tianyi W
PPE PRE-REGISTRATION

Both BA students and MA students need to go to the mmu AV store in person to register in the system for online booking access of PPE before the intense week start. Students are required to show and scan their student card at the AV store counter.
(Link to mmu AV store: https://msaphotoavstore.mmu.ac.uk/default.aspx )
Posted 23 Mar 2020 21:42
Yimeng Z
MOCK-UP ROOM: LAYOUT

The mock-up room is a square space which is about 4.8X9.25m and 3.6m height. In addition, there are three windows and two doors connect to the corridor. This space is very suitable for us to make experiential installations.
Posted 24 Mar 2020 00:58
Yan C
'Learn and design through making' is an essential approach for studying architecture. As one of the major outputs in this event, we aim to produce 2 high-quality physical models to present our conceptual design of the energy transition installation. we are going to explore multiple model-making methods with different materials in order to explore the best option to demonstrate our thinking.
Posted 24 Mar 2020 01:03
Tianyi W
WHAT IS INSTALLATION ART?

The term “installation”, which appeared in the 1970’s, generally applies to works created for interior spaces (ie. gallery, museum); outdoor works are more often referred to as public art, land art, or, to put it roughly, humans intervening on an environment and putting their “stamp” on it.

Click here to learn more about installation art: https://davidcharlesfox.com/what-is-installation-art-description-history-and-prominent-artists/
Posted 24 Mar 2020 01:04
Yimeng Z
CASE: THE SUSTAINABLE DANCING FLOOR

The dancing floor shown above is converting kinetic energy into electricity which is powering up its LED lights at the same time. Through this process the floor reacts to human actions over it and provide them with a more interactive and sustainable experience. There are various of technical ways to power up the Energy Plugins, such as digital energy meter, photo application as well as LED battery.
Posted 24 Mar 2020 06:33
Shuo P
SITE VISIT: DATA COLLECTION

During the site visit, we would like the group to collect site information comprehensively through various methods, such as measurement, photography, video and audio, etc. This process is aiming to get fully prepared for the coming design since we cannot access the town hall for a second time during the intense week.
Posted 24 Mar 2020 16:34
Tianyi W
FORMAL REVIEWER FROM UOM

Dr Kim Förster is an Architectural studies Lecturer in the University of Manchester and member of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). His current project deals with architecture and the environment, i.e. notions of ecology, archives of energy transition, and the politics and economies of sustainability at different spatial scales over the last five decades.

Dr Kim Förster will be the key reviewer of the final presentation together with the Purcell Architects, having the opportunity to provide critical perspective from a larger context of the urban space for the project. He is extremely helpful and considerable and it will be a precious chance to discuss your personal study interests with Kim in an academical way.


Click here to get to know Dr Kim Förster better: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/kim-foerster(4cce14f2-0d7e-43d0-bcaf-e4df175c40c1).html
Posted 28 Mar 2020 11:16