Architecture in a state of change. Architecture for a state of change.

Architecture in Flux: Our focus is on establishing an open urbanism that recognises that the city is always being made.

The process by which we make our cities in the UK has been handed down from an era of industrialisation and empire where consuming materials was seen as progress and hate crimes were legal. Inequality and climate change are baked into city-making. If tomorrow’s cities are to construct a more equitable and diverse public realm, then we need to start here and now with reimagining how we practice architecture and with whom.

Teaching in Flux

Our starting point is that each student writes their own brief and programme in response to the live transformation of Manchester city centre south. Flux students determining their own matters of concern and care. This happens in dialogue with the property developer for the area (Landsec) and with the people we encounter and seek out along the way. Individual programmes are developed through a series of one week ‘labs’, incrementally testing and re-testing propositions for the Mayfield regeneration area.

Situated Practice

Flux labs investigate and develop students situated practice. Each Lab delves into the temporality of architecture and explores an open urbanism through inscriptive, mobile and improvisational practices. These afford us the opportunity to work both at the scale of the city and in person at a 1:1 scale.

Flux Archipelago

Flux projects have explored assumed ownership on the periphery of the regeneration area. Each student has assumed ownership and developed unique architectural propositions spanning from themes of material savage, protest, and play. The 20 individual sites across the regeneration area establish an archipelago of propositions transforming Mayfield as a collective.