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Thesis

THESIS

SPACES OF EDIFICATION -

REIMAGINING THE URBAN UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

This thesis studies the potential of a defunct urban university campus – the UMIST campus, Manchester – aiming to understand the utopian and political origins of its past, and to deploy the positive aspects of the campus in a counter-project to imagine its future. 

As an autonomous institution, and also a significant urban environment, the campus in the city is a specific urban structure, a world of its own imposed upon the fabric of the post-industrial metropolis. This academic enclave, dedicated to advancement in science and technology in the era of post-war ‘White Heat’, signified a moment of restructuring regional identity; directing Manchester towards a knowledge economy, and national identity; in attempting to re-establish Britain at the forefront of scientific innovation. At that juncture, the campus reflected a particular political and architectural movement whose testament today is due to be erased, with the demolition of the UMIST campus. 

This design project works within the context of the decommissioned UMIST campus, seeking to reanimate the campus by exposing its latent structure as a microcosmic city. As the original campus explored how new forms of space can exist in the city, this project will explore how the city can exist within the space of the campus, thus recharging the campus with a condensed urbanity. In a critique of the loss of civic space within the city at large, the design component will draw upon the political and utopianist aspirations of the urban university campus type to propose a new prototype for an urban microdistrict, and in so doing propose a counter-project against the total erasure of the UMIST campus.

Cambridge Design Research Studio - CDRS

Design Supervisors:

Aram Mooradian

Conrad Koslowsky

Ingrid Schroder 

Research Supervisor:

Dr. Felipe Hernandez

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UMIST Campus

MANCHESTER

UMIST Campus - a hypothetical future
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