YEAR ONE
COMPILATION
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 1 -
Work carried out at Manchester School of Architecture 2015-2016
First year focused on the relationship between music and architecture, our first project stipulated that we design a listening chamber on the Rochdale Canal for a specific song with the proviso that its dimensions don't exceed the span of a human arm. I chose to emulate the echoic nature of a choral cathedral aria in a space no larger than a phone box, the ensuing project was an investigation into amplifying acoustics and maximising echo, the final listening chamber is an ode to Manchester's industrial past by appropriating the form of one of its no longer existent chimneys to create the necessary internal reverberation.
Subsequent projects involved the design of a transient home and artist's studio, through which the relevant themes of anthropometrics and ergonomics were explored. The final project for the year engaged a Manchester based digital platform, Manchester District Music Archive, and we were given the task of designing their new home. The brief was extensive and called for three primary programmes, an archive, a repository and a performance building, I decided to allocate each programme a dedicated building thus profiting from the existing site geometry and invigorating an inert space between each of the buildings, creating a harmonious collective and enhancing the public realm.
YEAR ONE
COMPILATION
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 1 -
Work carried out at Manchester School of Architecture 2015-2016
First year focused on the relationship between music and architecture, our first project stipulated that we design a listening chamber on the Rochdale Canal for a specific song with the proviso that its dimensions don't exceed the span of a human arm. I chose to emulate the echoic nature of a choral cathedral aria in a space no larger than a phone box, the ensuing project was an investigation into amplifying acoustics and maximising echo, the final listening chamber is an ode to Manchester's industrial past by appropriating the form of one of its no longer existent chimneys to create the necessary internal reverberation.
Subsequent projects involved the design of a transient home and artist's studio, through which the relevant themes of anthropometrics and ergonomics were explored. The final project for the year engaged a Manchester based digital platform, Manchester District Music Archive, and we were given the task of designing their new home. The brief was extensive and called for three primary programmes, an archive, a repository and a performance building, I decided to allocate each programme a dedicated building thus profiting from the existing site geometry and invigorating an inert space between each of the buildings, creating a harmonious collective and enhancing the public realm.
YEAR ONE
COMPILATION
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 1 -
Work carried out at Manchester School of Architecture 2015-2016
First year focused on the relationship between music and architecture, our first project stipulated that we design a listening chamber on the Rochdale Canal for a specific song with the proviso that its dimensions don't exceed the span of a human arm. I chose to emulate the echoic nature of a choral cathedral aria in a space no larger than a phone box, the ensuing project was an investigation into amplifying acoustics and maximising echo, the final listening chamber is an ode to Manchester's industrial past by appropriating the form of one of its no longer existent chimneys to create the necessary internal reverberation.
Subsequent projects involved the design of a transient home and artist's studio, through which the relevant themes of anthropometrics and ergonomics were explored. The final project for the year engaged a Manchester based digital platform, Manchester District Music Archive, and we were given the task of designing their new home. The brief was extensive and called for three primary programmes, an archive, a repository and a performance building, I decided to allocate each programme a dedicated building thus profiting from the existing site geometry and invigorating an inert space between each of the buildings, creating a harmonious collective and enhancing the public realm.
First year focused on the relationship between music and architecture, our first project stipulated that we design a listening chamber on the Rochdale Canal for a specific song with the proviso that its dimensions don't exceed the span of a human arm. I chose to emulate the echoic nature of a choral cathedral aria in a space no larger than a phone box, the ensuing project was an investigation into amplifying acoustics and maximising echo, the final listening chamber is an ode to Manchester's industrial past by appropriating the form of one of its no longer existent chimneys to create the necessary internal reverberation.
Subsequent projects involved the design of a transient home and artist's studio, through which the relevant themes of anthropometrics and ergonomics were explored. The final project for the year engaged a Manchester based digital platform, Manchester District Music Archive, and we were given the task of designing their new home. The brief was extensive and called for three primary programmes, an archive, a repository and a performance building, I decided to allocate each programme a dedicated building thus profiting from the existing site geometry and invigorating an inert space between each of the buildings, creating a harmonious collective and enhancing the public realm.
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 1 -
Work carried out at Manchester School of Architecture 2015-2016
YEAR ONE
COMPILATION
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 3 -
Atelier Common Ground
Atelier Leaders:
Stephen Connah
Ronan Connelley
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 3 -
Atelier Common Ground
Atelier Leaders:
Stephen Connah
Ronan Connelley
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 3 -
Atelier Common Ground
Atelier Leaders:
Stephen Connah
Ronan Connelley
BA [hons] ARCHITECTURE
Year 3 -
Atelier Common Ground
Atelier Leaders:
Stephen Connah
Ronan Connelley
CANTEEN AEDICULE
THE URBANISM OF THE POSTWAR CAMPUS
The UMIST Campus is a rare example of a complete postwar campus in a British urban centre. A cohesive cluster of campus buildings designed according to common ‘canons of design’ created in the UMIST Campus a total modernist environment. These urban principles which governed the design of the campus established codes and constraints which reconciled truth to building technology with expression of form; ensuring that the campus would retain a sense of continuity across time and in the hands of different architects.
The White City which rapidly superseded the postindustrial squalor of Manchester’s inner city industrial belt presented a bright vision of modernity, contributing to the city’s title of ‘Shock City’ of the modern age. Tall monumental buildings interspersed amongst low perimeter buildings created a varied skyline and visible symbols of a new Manchester; a technopole of faith in science and technology. At the time of its construction, the campus represented more than the estate of an emerging university, but furthermore a standard bearer for urban renewal in the postwar period. This is a history which today is fated to fade following the departure of the university to a consolidated facility, abandoning the campus to extramural market forces to determine its future.
THE URBANISM OF THE POSTWAR CAMPUS
The UMIST Campus is a rare example of a complete postwar campus in a British urban centre. A cohesive cluster of campus buildings designed according to common ‘canons of design’ created in the UMIST Campus a total modernist environment. These urban principles which governed the design of the campus established codes and constraints which reconciled truth to building technology with expression of form; ensuring that the campus would retain a sense of continuity across time and in the hands of different architects.
The White City which rapidly superseded the postindustrial squalor of Manchester’s inner city industrial belt presented a bright vision of modernity, contributing to the city’s title of ‘Shock City’ of the modern age. Tall monumental buildings interspersed amongst low perimeter buildings created a varied skyline and visible symbols of a new Manchester; a technopole of faith in science and technology. At the time of its construction, the campus represented more than the estate of an emerging university, but furthermore a standard bearer for urban renewal in the postwar period. This is a history which today is fated to fade following the departure of the university to a consolidated facility, abandoning the campus to extramural market forces to determine its future.
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
Project site
Former university campus
Manchester City Centre
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
Project site
Former university campus
Manchester City Centre
CANTEEN AEDICULE
Updated: Jun 19, 2022
In a continuation of Fieldwork research conducted at Northwestern University in Chicago, this short article addresses the university library specifically, which was labelled as the "Intellectual Capital" of the campus. The piece looks at the the way in which the architecture of the library was a precursor to ‘Field Theory’ - a geometric ordering developed by the architect Walter Netsch - and how democratic ideas of librarianship were addressed in the relationships between reader and resource.
Updated: Feb 27, 2022
This document records the urban condition of university colleges and campuses visited between Spring and Winter 2021. It forms the foundation of a wider study into the spatiality of the university campus which examines the relationships between higher education, architecture and urbanism.
1 - Campus Case Studies (see also, posts below)
2 - Site Sketchbooks
3 - Site Photographs
4 - Fieldwork Itinerary
click here to read
Excerpt: University campuses — particularly those of the New Universities of the 1960s — are microcosmic representations of a society, where the holistically planned environment establishes the preconditions for the evolution of that society.
On the level of the individual and the collective, university campuses are thus examples of a total environment which contain the possibility of being didactic in their own right: informing behaviour and providing the formative conditions for individual self-realisation and collective action.
The fieldwork component of this thesis entailed a series of visits to postwar university campuses in the UK and US to record their physical composition. Primarily involving on-site sketches, photography and taking record of their spatial and architectural characteristics; this fieldwork aimed to extrapolate common features from each postwar campus to establish a retrospective architectural theory of the postwar campus. In the UK, this manifested most clearly in the campuses of the New Universities (eg York, UEA etc), where their large rural sites permitted unprecedented license to shape a radical 'map of learning'. In the US, campuses in urban environments (Chicago was taken as an exemplary location) permitted a heightened relationship between town and gown, and posited the campus as a vehicle for urban renewal. In all, 11 sites were visited of varying kinds, from conservative establishments in modern appearances; such as Churchill College, Cambridge, to existing campus expansion plans: such as the University of Leeds, to inner city de novo institutions; such as UIC, Chicago. Over this fieldwork I aimed to visit a variety of different postwar universities to examine the extremes of university and campus-planning logic, however remarkable international consensus in what constituted modern higher education was apparent, reified through the form of the campus. It was clear that international modernism had established a universal campus language with local inflections. In the concluding period of this course, one particular case study will serve as a site for design interventions in a 'post-university' campus, examining creative reuse strategies for a defunct campus in Manchester. This design will draw upon the universal campus language which is set out in the thesis component of this course, employing it as a lodestar for an approach to reprogramme the campus beyond the university.
University campuses visited between Spring - Winter 2021, case study reports for each campus are found below:
08 UMIST, Manchester (1960) - subject of further study
Limitations of Study: due to the covid-19 pandemic and the coincidence of this fieldwork with university vacations many of the campuses visited were done so without students present. Whilst this enabled relatively unencumbered access around the campus, human activity was largely absent, which proved to be a key determinant in the conception of the campus. As such, this thesis focusses more upon the architectural and urban composition of the campus than the potential implications on individual and collective action and sociology.