The Pie Project
For my final year project, I decided to make a Lancashire Butter pie factory and a bakery. I believe that this project has great potential to positively affect the community of Burnley & encourage local entrepreneurship. This intervention into Burnley’s landscape will strengthen inter communal relationships and help my client (actor) Kelly; who is a local vegetable vendor struggling to compete with multinational chains that have opened up in Burnley.
Considering the reuse nature of the project, I have used the existing building of the Burnley empire theatre and repurposed it into an industrial space which manufactures pies. Lancashire butter pies are a creation and staple of Burnley and a space dedicated to them will give the residents of the city something to be proud of and bond with over each other. Considering the two very different spaces in my programme (the bakery & the factory), the main challenge in this project was to find a way to merge these two designs together and create a user-friendly space. Along with creating a feasible spatial arrangement I also had to solve major technical challenges like ventilation and the roofing design for the factory. Due to the energy intensive nature of the factory, I had to think about the materiality and a sustainable way to construct the project, so I used materials like hempcrete and a timber frame to lessen the carbon emissions from the building.
The project also incorporates principles of degrowth throughout the process which involved interacting with the residents and choosing sustainable methods of construction to design the whole structure. &architecture gave me the confidence and knowledge to realise that I can use my present skillset to make a change in the world and the community through architecture and I’m extremely proud of everything I learned this past year.
