Academic
Academic
Academic
Academic
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
Academic
CAMPUS
URBANISM
MPhil Architecture and Urban Design
Cambridge Design Research Studio - CDRS
Design Supervisors:
Ingrid Schroder
Conrad Koslowsky
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Stage 02 project
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Urban restructuring project
UMIST CAMPUS, MANCHESTER
RESTRUCTURING THE 1960s UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
This project seeks to physically and programmatically restructure the former UMIST Campus, balancing the economic imperative for reinvention with the environmental imperative for retention. Judicious decisions concerning the value of the existing buildings drive this project. The design emerges from over a year’s research into the spatial qualities of modernist architecture and postwar campuses, producing an informed alternative to comprehensive redevelopment.
The ambition for the project is to create a city micro-district, reprogramming the single use university campus in favour of a heterogeneous mix of uses and an amplified sense of urbanity. New uses are found for old buildings: lecture theatres become cinemas, large labs become sports halls, towers become communal apartments - saving a vast quantum of embodied carbon. At the heart of the campus a new civic and cultural centre - the Aula - anchors public activity within the district. The former UMIST Campus is transformed into a city within the city.
Using an infill strategy, a series of coherent new buildings replace low rise lab buildings which contribute little to the campus environment. Whilst retained campus buildings are reframed and their significance heightened by the creation of a new urban setting. The objective of this dual reinvention/retention strategy is to introduce a critical mass of inhabitants and workers into the campus whilst preserving its unique attributes, in order to adapt the campus from an institutional enclave into a mixed use urban quarter.
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A CITY WITHIN THE CITY
CAMPUS AS FORUM
The university campus in the city poses a unique relationship of a self-contained polity within a larger urban environment, acting as a nested city, or an alternative city. The heterotopian condition of the campus is spliced back into the urban grid under this project, whilst re-asserting its unique identity with respect to the city at large. Campus Urbanism takes the latent qualities of the campus environment to generate an urban forum comprising a wider spectrum of civic society than its once rarefied collegiate purpose - in order to establish a communitarian urban quarter.
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ESTABLISHING COHESION
ANALOGUE ARCHITECTURE
Based on research into the form of modernist campuses - in order to develop a site and type-specific architectural response - the proposed architecture of new campus buildings can be understood to be analogous. Facades based on the composition of mass and grid apply to both new and existing buildings, insofar as to be mimetic of the modernist building stock. The frame acts as a primary architectural trope which provides a consistent tectonic rhythm for new campus architecture, one which permits a greater expression and use of the facade.
BRIDGING ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM
LARGE SCALE URBAN RECONFIGURATION
Campus design is reliant on the interrelationships between buildings over their autonomy. Here, the process of campus restructuring falls into multiple categories; first, the Aula; second, selective demolition and infill with new buildings; third, adaptive reuse of existing buildings; fourth, a common ground landscape. Therefore, the fomal intent of the project is to balance proposed and existing architecture, and establish cohesion through spatial order. However, it does more than create physical unity from diverse parts, but develops an urban idea which seeks to create from a redundant urban environment, a complete and significant city quarter which is more than the sum of its parts.
TOWER AND PODIUM
TYPOLOGICAL TRANSFER
In order to establish a resonant spatiality between new and existing, the architecture of the proposed buildings respect the pre-existing tower and podium type. A mid-level break between the tower and podium allows the each tower to express its monumental qualities on the skyline, whilst below the podium encloses the townscape. At ground level, the building line is recessed to accommodate projecting bays, aedicular entrance structures, and specific elements which reduce the magnitude of each building to a scale familiar to the individual.
FRAMES AND PLATFORMS
A SCAFFOLD FOR NEW USE
To facilitate adaptive reuse of existing buildings, a scaffold approach is taken to enabling their new purpose. Involving the lining of building envelopes with new frames, this serves a twofold purpose in correcting their building fabric, while simultaneously opening the facades for terraces, and projecting window elements. The depth of the structure allows for individual appropriation of the facade, projecting internal life into the public realm.
A SEQUENCE OF CITY ROOMS
PRECINCTUAL PLANNING
A spatial form which the project seeks to reinstate is that of the precinct. Precinctual planning proposes pedestrian areas with enclosed spatial envelopes in such a way to create a heightened urban experience - based on rhythms of exposure and enclosure - and the sense of ‘city rooms’. Within the wider campus plan, the precincts, each marked by a chequerboard square, represent points of concentration where activity and space reciprocate to create a relation between the citizen and the city, a setting for civic life.
THE INHABITED FACADE
CREATING DEPTH
In a critique and counterpoint to the immediacy between interior and exterior of the existing building stock, the new architecture of the campus subtracts the space behind the frame in order to provide a civic depth to the building edge. Resulting in a series of loggias, colonnades and arcades, the recessed building line creates a sheltered intermediate zone and a space which filters between individual and collective interests. In one key instance at the centre of the campus, a section of an existing building is entirely hollowed- out behind its facade to create a semi-internal ‘Campus Hall’. Within, key public artworks are concentrated in a partially enclosed loggia as a space given over to unprogrammed public use and temporary event.
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SATELLITE ELEMENTS
New routes into the campus from the city are driven through existing barriers to movement, enhancing the porosity of the site. The campus grid is extended beyond its limits into the city grid, marked at their junction by freestanding satellite elements such as gateways and sheltered colonnades, which form static points to recognise the transition between twin conditions. From the campus threshold, the site remains appreciable as a distinct urban quarter, intensifying its appearance as a city within a city of a different spatial order.
click for further detail on stage 2 of the project