Name: Irina-Elena Popescu

Atelier: Some Kind of Nature

Undergraduate: Manchester School of Architecture

Arch Skills: AutoCAD, SketchUp, Revit, Enscape, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign

Hobbies: Photography, Cooking, Travelling

It was a pleasure to meet Sam Sin on the 6th of December at Manchester Technology Centre to talk more about Gorton and its community.
HMHC operates a community center (Gorton Central) alongside an award-winning community garden in Gorton and Abbey, East Manchester. Their focus lies within the underprivileged neighborhoods, aiming to improve health outcomes for local residents. The team aims to expand participation in well-being activities within the currently fenced community garden, enhancing its accessibility and utilization for a wider audience. Additionally, they plan to adopt a section of the 'Yellow Brick Road' (YBR), transforming it into a safer and more enjoyable space while preserving its historical significance as a former canal. Manchester City Council's scheduled safety improvements for the YBR prompt community involvement in maintenance efforts, with HMHC committing to oversee the nearest section to the community center and seeking innovative ways to develop it further.

On the 5th of February we met Sam Sin and Amanda Aitken at Gorton Central to visit the site. Amanda Aitken is our new contact for the project, and we were excited to meet her for the first time. We took a walk around the garden while talking to our collaborators about their aspirations for the space, its accessibility and how to improve the experience of the community members while using the proposed spaces. It became clear to us that multiple areas need improvement, and we will have to work on multiple sections in this project: a patio, a multi-purpose room, the garden area and the Yellow Brick Road.
The meeting went by very fast while exchanging ideas and we cannot wait to be back in spring with a full team!

Our small team is working hard to organise things for the time we will be joined by the rest of our members from different years here at MSA. We are very excited to have a full team working with us soon! Please follow our blog to see our progress and to the MLA, Adaptive Reuse and Undergraduate students that will join us: we can't wait to meet you!

Thank you to all team members who made time to meet us last Friday, ahead of the action weeks. It was very nice to see you all. This way, we got the chance to introduce the project to the rest of the team and hopefully get everyone as excited as we are! Please keep an eye on our blog, as we will upload daily posts showing our progress.

Day 1

We started the day early with a team meeting on campus and the split the group in two. Half of us stayed on campus to brainstorm ideas for the upcoming community consultation that we have planned and also look into concepts for the design we have to prepare. Thank you everyone for your work!

Day 1

The first day on site was a busy one for the second group as we volunteered to clear a portion of the Yellow Brick Road making it more welcoming for the community and had some fun gardening on site! Thank you Healthy me Healthy Community for a lovely day of volunteer work and to all students for their work and enthusiasm!

Day 9

Thank to both our team and our collaborators for this experience! For our last day we wanted to celebrate the end of this project and reflect on the past weeks. We were able to exchange feedback, look back on the whole project and show our appreciation to the rest of the team for their amazing work! Thank you to our collaborators for all their help and we cannot wait to get their feedback in our final meeting next week!

Thank you!

Today we had our final project meeting with our client represented by Amanda Aitken. Through this post, we would like to thank everyone who made this experience possible starting with Healthy Me Healthy Community. We have learnt a lot during this project and we are very excited for the future plans for this community garden. Thank you to all the volunteers that spoke to us and guided us on site. Also, thank you again to the whole team and have a great summer everyone!