Saga's Studio

MADE International Urban Design Summer School

It was suggested that this four day urban design summer school could be an interesting way  to extend my skills in urban design, and of getting further experience of  working with  professionals and practitioners from across the built environment sector.

The programme included walking seminars, site visits, skills workshops and key-note presentations from leading practitioners.

At the core of the summer school was the Big Design Project.  In a team of four, together with a principle planning officer, a member of the Locality Assets Transfer team and an urban designer from Singapore I worked for three days  to develop a masterplan for a real development site to the east of Birmingham city centre. 

We undertook an analysis of the site, considering the site area and boundary, surrounding area and adjacent sites, natural features and setting, character and distinctiveness, historical eature and context, exisiting transport connections and social context, exisiting character, in order to identify the site's opportunities and constraints. Over the following two days we talked animatedly, sketched and shared ideas, drawing from our range of perspectives and skills to develop a sustainable and convivial vision and masterplan for the site.

Considering how people would live, work and enjoy the site remained at the centre of all our thinking.

Our team was selected by the judges to have developed the winning proposal, and each went home with a copy of Robert Cowan's Dictionary of Urbanism, which appears to define and explain almost every word or phrase related to buildings, architecture and urban design  I'm ever likely to hear or use.

I built on and utilised my exisiting knowledge, and appreciated the opportunity to engage with my fellow delegates and their different perspectives and skills as much as the formal course work. 

 

Gathering: Coming Together

Saga Arpino from Neil Edwards on Vimeo.

A little film to give you a flavour of the installation I'm making for The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs.

 

Thanks Tim and Anna

Setting the composition out in the studio in preparation for the installation. I've made it using laser cut perspex sheets and rods, coloured with layers of transparent vinyl: a painterly and hand crafted approach to these crisp, machined materials.

Gathering

[thanks, tim and anna]

Yesterday it was great to welcome Coffeesmiths Tim and Anna  to the studio. to see how I'm coming along with the art piece that I'll be installing at the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs on Leather Lane, EC1 later this month.

As I've mulled over in previous blog posts, the idea of how creativity happens, what sort of environment encourages it to flourish is something that I've been thinking about, the idea that creativity happens when people lives their lives in close proximity, when they sit and chat and explore ideas daily, and the installation I'm creating for the windows of the Dept speaks of this.

I'm working in perspex and translucent vinyls to capture the ring marks left by coffee cups, in part developing a technique I first used to  make Abstracted Geographies, a public art project for Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry. 

The fun theory

 

”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers.

But rarely do we do what we're told..

VW has set up the Fun Theory Awards, which is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better.

Go and have a look. www.thefuntheory.com

Talk: Jan Gehl speaks at NLA

The timing was unfortunate. Insomnia meant that by the time I had arrived at The Building Centre for the talk I'd been up for 34hours. There was a fluorescent light flickering just above my head. In short within fifteen minutes of sitting down to listen to the Danish city planner Jan Gehl speak about his approach to creating cities I'd fallen -almost- to sleep, that annoying head falling backwards stage. Unfortunate.

However, had I been fully awake I'd have heard him speak about changes in city planning from the 1960s until today, where people - after decades of neglect - have once been again elevated to be a main feature in architecture, urban design and urban planning.

Having read more about him I really wish I had been able to listen properly. It's always affirming when someone well respected shares your opinion.  ;p

Instinctively I've always thought that people should be at the heart of the architectural and urban design, that buildings are only successful if they enhance human interactions and work on a human scale. This thinking was at the heart of my MA thesis titled 'Between Spaces: Places of Delight' and remains my great motivator [and source of frustration when it comes to career development: I trained as a glass-maker, but what I want to do is be part of a creative team that works in the borderland of sociology, psychology, architecture and art to develop city spaces that enhance life. ]

I'm sorry that I didn't hear the whole talk, but I am pleased that I woke up in time to hear Gehl say something along the lines of "We should be designing cities for people, not helicopters. If we can afford to design cities for people and helicopters then great, but first of all we need to design cities for people."  Succinct. Spot-on. It prompted me to google him this evening, and I've some reading to do. And so I begin:

Life between buildings has become Jan Gehl’s major focus of study and work. By starting with public life and the areas in which it takes place, building design becomes a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Gehl emphasizes that life between buildings is a dimension of architecture that deserves more careful treatment. It is where social interaction and perception, urban recreation, and the sensory experience of city life take place. Life between buildings comprises the entire spectrum of human activities in public space – the necessary, the optional and the social types of behaviors which Gehl has studied meticulously. These are therefore vital areas, and planning processes must begin by understanding these spaces between buildings.

 

 

 

The CoffeeSmiths: Department of Coffee and Social Affairs

I met the CoffeeSmiths Tim and Chris, at a coffee and snack tasting session they hosted before opening their Leather Lane EC1 coffee shop. Delighted by their great coffee and thrilled by the baked produce they had sourced (oh my Juliet's Ricciarelli are a delight!) I was keen to see the opening of the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs. 

The CoffeeSmiths have renovated and remodelled the old architectural ironmongers, aiming to create a coffee focused social hub for local workers and residents. They wanted to retain as much of the hardware store's character, so the interior is a rich but raw mix of naked brick and reclaimed timber. They decided to keep the existing front door handle, onto which I etched the Department's logo: They only opened in December 2010, but it feels like they've been there forever.

The Sensory Garden: Kaleidoscopes and Peep-holes

 
A series of kaleidoscopes, peep-holes, distorting lenses and reflectors pierce the wall.

The Sensory Garden: The boxes

 

Interactive elements incorporated into the timber wall. To encourage young children to explore the variying qualities of light, colour, texture, material and movement. Below I have outlined some of the boxes.

Progress in the Sensory Garden

With snow and freezing weather affecting the area throughout December and January we've had to keep a light hand on the schedule. Yesterday was an exciting day; the installation of Joe Mellows cedar clad wall was completed. It's great to see the layout of the boxes and peep-holes I set-out in reality.

The Sensory Garden- Textured Push Pulls

I decided to incorporate a series of push-pulls in the wall. The rods, made of layers of different coloured perspex, cut to create different textures and appearance, can be moved in and out of the wall.

Thanks to the guys at cut laser cut, for the nice job of cutting of the perspex elements I've used to construct the nine push pulls, and the steel elements were fabricated by PAG sheet metal

Materials

So. The planning and making goes on.

This week I have received samples of silicone cord, dibond mirror, cedar, faceted lenses, perspex tube, coloured mirror perspex. I've visited the carpenter that I'm collaborating with and spoken to engineers about making steel components, stonemasons about carving and a cnc company about cutting and etching pretty much everything.

I'm trying to incorporate a rich variety of textures and visual qualities. Sensory gardens for children are an  interesting concept, I'm having to avoid the dangerous and unpleasant: the itchy, the sharp and scratchy, the very hot, and very cold to name a few that I suspect would be unwelcome. Further more the demands for it to be very low/no maintenance means that I'm wary of incorporating elements that are inherently fragile, that flutter and that could be ripped, that will rot or corrode.

But I keep reminding myself that other elements in the garden will offer other sensory qualities, the shifting seasons bringing changes to plant-life, with transitions in colour, scent and texture. The squishy and the slimey, and the rough, the rigid. Cold stones in winter and warmed ones in summer.

Birds in a bush | Ditton Hill

A first glimpse at the set of windows installed this evening.

Altnagelvin Hospital: Unveiled

Sparks Studio illustrate our collaboration on their website and newsletter