From the Valley to the Moors.
My thesis question was built around the factual disconnect between the built and unbuilt environment and the synthesis of the disparate elements encountered within these realms. Can these ambiguous spaces bridge the gap between nature and architecture - the valley and the moors - to create a stronger sense of community and, in turn a holistic sense of place?
In view of Jane Jacobs’ ‘ballet of the pavement’, the emphasis on public and ‘in-between’ spaces and their hold on society have been woven into the narrative of the project. A settlement of independent typologies becomes interconnected through the marriage of indoor and outdoor thresholds. Front gardens where neighbours catch up, benches where mothers sit to watch their children play, parks where friends can take strolls. It is in these acts of human behaviour, or rather intentional ‘chance encounters’, that community members inhabit the outdoors and come together.
Based in Todmorden, a small market town and significant contributor to Britain’s industrial past, my proposal “Calder Canvas Hub” serves as an artist village for the town’s creative community. The hub’s programmatic functions assume a public/private stance and include a cafe, shops, an art gallery, artist residency units and co-work and public workshop studios. The courtyard as a threshold is applied within all typologies as a means to extend internal activities outward and ultimately grant spatial agency to those whose creativity knows no bounds.
Pieter De Hooch’s series of paintings portraying the spatial interchangeability of courtyards in domestic settings and his application of differing perspectives ultimately laid the foundation for the physical formation of key moments on site. Framed paintings, framed spaces, framed ‘memories’ - these are the conceptual principles adopted to architecturally realise the ethos of life happening around us.
