TASC LOCATION

The Architecture School for Children is located on Varna Street and Barrass Street at Rogue Artist Studios in Gorton.

Based in a Grade II listed Victorian building, with high ceilings and mill-like appearance, the building was erected as a school on May 16th 1898. The building is nestled in a corner formed by the Lanky Cut and the train line below, surrounded by terraced homes. With one thousand five hundred pupils, it was dubbed the largest school in Lancashire. Eventually, the school bell rang for the last time, lights were turned off and the doors of Varna Street Primary School were closed.

Rogue Studios were offered the site by the local authority, and soon after they created a home for artists, project space and a community resource. Today many of the old-school features remain at the Barrass Street building, while much-needed creative space is provided for talented artists.

TASC, Rogue’s partner organisation, moved into Rogue studios a couple of years ago. This move was a testament to how ambitious Rogue are about cultivating a diverse creative community. TASC are based on the ground floor of school block 2, with a spacious studio/workshop environment, however currently the space does not function as TASC would want it to.

FINAL OUTCOME: PUBLICATION

For the second final outcome, Dan and Catherine expressed their desire for a publication, both online and printed versions. They have already produced some publications to showcase some of their previous completed projects. They all seemed to follow the same format (21cm x 21cm) and a similar layout, so we agreed the events publication would also reflect this.

For the content, Catherine was very keen to see hand-drawn images in addition to digital visualisations, as a familiar medium that children can also acknowledge and enjoy viewing. Hand sketches are also good at communicating quick ideas and its a skill that everyone within the group possesses. As well as that, all the models produced during the 2 weeks, both mock-up models and the final presentation model will be photographed along the way by the group and then included in the publication. The models, as well as sketch drawings, would document the overall process and tell the story of the project. Final visualisations produced throughout the second week of the external space, studio and flexible furniture design would round the publication off.

The Master students will create a template for the publication for the overall content, and then members of the team will fill this in as the content gets developed. This will be produced in InDesign, and the final outcome would be professionally printed and bounded before the presentation to TASC.

THANK YOU!

We have some unfortunate news. We regret to announce that due to the outbreak of COVID-19 we can no longer continue with the events project. However, we are reflecting on the fulfilling experience we have had as a group up until this point of planning the event. We are confident this would have continued to be a successful project which would have had a positive impact on the wider community of Gorton.

We would like to thank our tutor Becky for organising Events 20 and the invaluable feedback she provided to our group during tutorials. Most of all, we would like to thank our collaborators Catherine, Dan and Tam from TASC who were so passionate and enthusiastic about the Make • Shape • Discover project, they infused us with bundles of energy from day one!

What we take away from this project is the understanding of the fundamentality of cooperative group work, the understanding of design for the greater good and social value. Collaboration and communication with the collaborators have been a unique, invaluable experience.

Despite the project coming to an abrupt end and the design stage of the project not taking place, we hope that the work that we have produced so far serves as a good foundation for concepts of what could be done for TASC and the community.

Thank you and look after yourselves!