Our site is the Moss Side Millenium Powerhouse, a multi-service youth hub located in the heart of Moss Side.

Through their large variety of spaces, ranging from a recording studio, a youth zone and more, the mission of the Powerhouse is to empower young people to reach their full potential.

During this site visit, Lisa gave us a tour of the building, while also highlighting the key spaces of the building and where the interventions could be useful to improve either the thermal performance or internal layout of the building. This particular discussion and site visit helped form the foundation of our project!

Hello! I'm Hana.

I'm from Brunei, but I completed my Part 1 here at the Manchester School of Architecture. I took a little under 2 years out to work in practice before coming back to Manchester to start my Master's in the PRAXXIS atelier.

My interests in architecture revolve around creating meaningful community and user-centric architecture with a social agenda alongside participatory design. My architecture skills mainly lie in Revit, Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) and AutoCAD though I have some experience with Lumion.

Outside of architecture, I also love to travel, eat, binge watch series and read.

I'm looking forward to being able to work with both the community and collaborators in order to come up with creative ways to improve the fabric performance and internal spaces of the Powerhouse. I'm excited to meet everyone and see what we come up with!

The Powerhouse provides arts, mental health, physical and educational services to hundreds of young people each year.

For this project, we will be enhancing the Powerhouse's performance and sustainability in order to promote its usage and help to keep its services running at the quality the community deserves and at a long-term cost they can manage. We will also be looking at how the internal spaces and layout of the Powerhouse can be improved in order to further improve community life, foster cohesion and empower the youth of Moss Side.

Here are some of the design and software skills you will develop and learn over the 2 action weeks!

Apart from teamwork and working collaboratively with each other and the clients, we will focus on SWOT analysis, design development, technical resolution and graphic presentation skills - all which are valuable in both architecture school and in a professional context. We will also be providing different workshops for different softwares in order to support you in creating the outputs that will be presented to the collaborators at the end of the project.

Action Plan for Week 1

During the first week, we will focus on getting familar with the site and begin planning the focus areas for the 3 outputs in small groups. Small workshops will also be held by the MArch students to introduce the FDN/BA1/BA2 students to different softwares and skills throughout the week, before presenting the progress to the architects on Friday morning.

Day 1 - Group & site introductions

What an outstanding group of students we have! Our first day we encountered a few obstacles and had to improvise along the way as we couldn’t make it to the site today. Instead, we talked about what the students wanted to learn from the two weeks, gave them an overview of the site and asked them to annotate and pick out potential study areas of the building for the outputs. We also showed them the site photos we took during our visit in January in preparation for the site visit that we had to push back to tomorrow morning!

Day 2 - Splitting into groups and initial discussion

Today we split everyone into three groups to focus on the three outputs: A modelmaking group, a detail group and a 3D modelling/visualisation group.

Day 2 - Site visit

After splitting the groups, we walked to the Powerhouse and had a tour of the building site by Michelle, the youth & community manager. During the site visit, we met the staff and members of the community. Compared to the visit in January, we got to see the building bustling with activity and in action.

Day 3 - SketchUp/Revit (3D modelling) workshop

We held a short SketchUp and Revit session for the students which introduces the basics of the two softwares. Isaac led the SketchUp session and the students were particularly interested in how to set up a model from an existing AutoCAD file. He went through how to set up a SketchUp file from an AutoCAD drawing and how to make components and groups within the model. He also shared some examples from his portfolio to give an idea how you would use a SketchUp view to explain the design process.

We then introduced the students to the basics of Revit with a focus on the features that would be more useful, such as the displace elements feature which is helpful for creating exploded axonometrics and how to set up Revit sheets. We also demonstrated how to create walls, floors and doors/windows in the model.

Day 3 - Starting on the 3D model of the existing Youth Zone

The Visualisation group started on building a basic Revit model of the existing Youth Zone, which is the main focus area for the new interior proposal. So far, they have constructed a basic base of the first floor.

Day 3 - Planning out the physical model

The physical model group started planning out the model. Meg created a simple Revit model to help the FDN/BA1/BA2 students visualise the physical model. This also helped the students delegate the different pieces of the building amongst themselves to prepare the AutoCAD drawing for laser printing next week.

Day 3 - Detailing the existing facade buildup

Meanwhile, Group B began detailing the existing buildup of the library curtain wall and Youth Zone facade on the 1st floor. Isaac shared some detail precedents to the BA1/BA2 students and they also had a go at drawing out their own detail by hand and on AutoCAD.

Day 3 - 3D model progress

This is the progress of the 3D model of the existing Youth Zone by the end of day 3! The team also began exploring what to change in the interior in preparation for tomorrow's meeting with the architects.

Some of the initial ideas for the interior improvements include moving the storage room in the art zone to the north to maximise the amount of natural light in the space along. They also played around with eliminating the balcony space as it is unusable and unsafe for kids and extending the room footprint into the balcony instead. Additionally, a potential break of the curved wall and insertion of glass panels might create visual connectivity between the art room and central area of circulation.

Day 4 - Visit to the Corstorphine & Wright office (Part 1)

We kicked off the final day of the first action week with a visit to the Corstorphine & Wright office. Each group presented what they've done so far and we had a discussion with the architects about the student's initial thoughts about the exising Powerhouse building. The response was very positive and the architects were very enthusiastic and happy with the direction of our project so far. They shared the current progress along with the key focus areas of the refurbishment which gave the students a small glimpse of how a live project would unfold and the different phases included.

Day 4 - Visit to the Corstorphine & Wright office (Part 2)

We also had the pleasure of meeting the Senior Architectural Technologist in charge of the Powerhouse's refurbishment, Phil, who kindly shared some of the original as-built detail drawings from when the building was first built in 1999.

Day 4 - Portfolio advice

After lunch, we looked at some of the BA2 portfolios and projects and offered advice and software support for their upcoming submission. Overall, we were very impressed by the standards of the BA2 students portfolios! Some of the areas that the BA2 wanted particular help with concerned 3D modelling and also their visual renders, so we offered some advice on how to model more organic shapes on Revit and how to elevate existing renders using Photoshop.

Day 4 - Collaging workshop

In the afternoon, Meg held a creative artwork workshop where the students created collages that encapsulated the spirit of the Powerhouse and the Moss Side community in groups of 2-3. We introduced this workshop to potentially come up with ideas that we could present to the client and architect as a starting point for a community mural. This mural would be placed on the facade of the building to mark the arrival to the Powerhouse and express the culture and community of Moss Side.

Despite giving them the same set of images to work from, we got two very diverse yet intricate collages that had their own charms!

Day 4 - Collage #1 from the collaging workshop

This first collage was done by Freya and Rafiqah. They took a more lighthearted and whimsical approach in order to create a more energetic and playful collage. Their collage focuses on depicting both the history and the contemporary context of the area, whilst still portraying the character of Moss Side.

Day 4 - Collage #2 from the collaging workshop

The second collage was done by Yumiko, Ishmeen and Regine. Their ambition was to create a collage and mural which was colourful and inviting to the community as it would be placed on the facade of the Powerhouse. The bright colours and patterns were used to celebrate the culture and diversity of the community.

Action Plan for Week 2

During the second week, we will focus on producing the three outputs - A) the physical model, B) the CAD details and C) architectural visualisations. We have planned a rendering and inDesign workshop throughout the week but have smaller studio/portfolio tutorials for any students who want additional support or help. On the last day, we will present everything we have done to the client and the architect, before having a wider discussion on portfolios and CVs and ending the two action weeks with pizza and food.

Day 5 - End of Day Round up

At the end of the day, we held a roundup and each person presented what they’ve produced so far and how their intended progress for the remainder of the week.

Day 9 - That's a wrap!

What an incredible and fruitful two weeks it has been! We'd like to especially thank our collaborators at the Moss Side Millienium Powerhouse (Lisa, Fiona, Rachel & Michelle) and Corstorphine & Wright (Kim, Joe & Phil) for giving us such a wonderful brief and project to work on. Ultimately, we hope that the outputs we've produced can be used to further improve the Powerhouse to allow it to continue serving the youth of Moss Side and Manchester.

We'd also like to extend our appreciation to the FDN/BA1/BA2 students for being absolute stars throughout the two action weeks! Their enthuasiasm and positivity allowed us to successfully complete the outputs, where their dedication to learn and produce is clearly evident in and has elevated the final outputs for the Powerhouse.

All team members had clear and superb communication and collaboration which made the whole project enjoyable. Through the tutorials and workshops held, we hope that the skills learnt from the two weeks benefits everyone beyond MSALive.