Hey there!
I'm Urvi Nandha. I'm thrilled to be working on a live project at MSA and connecting with the wider Manchester community.
A little about me: I love meeting new people, collecting stories through photography, travelling, and generally - being inspired.
I'm passionate about learning of all kinds and I study architecture to understand more about the world around us.
Over the last few years, I've been involved in exciting initiatives like NY-LON and the National Saturday Club. I've worked in Prague, London, and Manchester and travelled around Europe too. This opportunity to learn with students and the community alike is incredibly exciting for me, and I’m curious to see how this experience will teach me something new. Looking forward to connecting with the students and community.

EXHIBITION:

During the MSA Live Action Week in parallel to the outputs that we are producing for our clients, we will be conducting our own personal inquiries into the future of ‘The Library’. Over the 10 days, our reflections will help us produce exhibition pieces as findings, that we will share with the Levenshulme Old Library and the MSA community.

Students will be able to freely explore their ideas in the above outputs, with the support of Masters students and their expertise.

Check out how our icebreaker turned out! We asked the students to produce portraits as they got to know one another. It's been great to see them support each other and help each other learn new skills over the last few days.

Day 7: Today the students were working on their exhibition pieces and refining their design explorations for their collaborators. Diona Iseini (BA2) produced an illustration exploring a temporary structure for the 'theatre' space.

A'lla Ibrahim, on our earlier site visit was drawn to the ornamental features of the L.O.L building; particularly the tiles at the entrance of the site. Following on from earlier client conversations, A'lla was inspired by these features and chose to explore them further in her response to improving the library through the installation of a stained glass window portal, taking into consideration the community of artisans connected to L.O.L. A'lla's exhibition response was thoughtful in function as well as aesthetic, as she sought to actively improve features that were in disrepair whilst celebrating the identity of the space! We're very proud and impressed by the thoughtful and sincere approach to design the students exhibited through the Action Weeks.

Though L.O.L stopped operating as a conventional library, it prevails to be a popular and essential resource for Levenshulme, providing community members spaces to perform and facilitate creative community-driven activities. This MSA Live project prompted me to consider "resource" and the act of 'borrowing'. Much like books, the users of Levenshulme Old Library 'check out' spaces. I explored this concept through the information we borrow from other people. MTC, despite being a host for architectural students, has little 'resources' available other than 'human resources'.

"The past two weeks have been very positive. Although communicating with the collaborators was difficult as the facility is entirely run by a few volunteers, it meant that as a team we had to work even more closely together and think creatively to create solutions to the problems we saw. Working on a real project which we physically visited was helpful as someone who often finds it difficult to conceptualize space. I really enjoyed working through plan iterations and thinking about how to manipulate space based on different design drivers and considerations. In studio, there is always a pressure to produce a set output so working through plans often feels rushed and sometimes I do not understand why one plan works better than another. MSA LIVE has allowed me to fully brainstorm and consider space without the pressure of a studio brief and weekly tutorials. As well as this, the opportunity to work with students in different years of study was great. We were able to learn more about different ways of working and get feedback and advice as well as offer feedback and provide constructive feedback to one another." - Nia Peters

A CONCLUSION