[UP]Cycling Fashion Centre
[UP]Cycling Fashion Centre aims to establish an inclusive fashion community in Preston that addresses the throwaway culture of fast fashion. Home to Preston’s local fashion designers and students, it weaves the community together to explore methods of repurposing used clothes and to educate the public on the ethical sourcing of garments for daily wear.
The programme comprises used clothes collection points, sorting and manufacturing facilities, workshops, studios, classrooms, galleries, café, shops, and libraries. These programmes are split into four main design fragments that are linked to each other. A one-way route is designed specifically for visitors to have an immersive and hands-on learning experience of the upcycling process that begins at the art gallery and ends in the building’s own clothes shop. Its strategic location nestled between Preston Town Hall and Preston Bus Station provides an extension to the town that is celebrated through a seamless public green space that cuts across the site.
My proposal focuses on creating a design scheme that has low-embodied carbon. This would be achieved by retrofitting the existing buildings and reusing existing materials in the new buildings to reduce the carbon emissions from the construction process. My design scheme emphasizes the use of the glulam structure, which offsets more carbon than it outsets. The motif of textile patterns has been a recurring theme throughout my design. These could be seen from the perforated exterior brick walls that mimic the overlaying and intersecting threads in knitting. Sculptured internal plaster wall panels in the art gallery space which portray folds of fabric induce the desire for touch from visitors. Atrium space with a top light and clerestory window will be applied to welcome more daylight into the space and increase the solar gain to reduce reliance on the mechanical system.
