Who is the city for?
Urban regeneration should account for all voices, not just some. FLUX Atelier sets how those voices might be discovered, heard and included when we transform cities. Instead of designing in offices, far removed from people and places, FLUX students investigate how to make architecture by working in the places they are transforming. We start from the site and from a position of ‘not-knowing’.
Cities are always in the making
FLUX seeks an architecture that activates a state of change. This involves shifting the role of design from providing fixed solutions, to providing designs that recognise that a city is always incomplete, and that establish a direction of travel for a place where the outcome remains open.
In 2024-25, FLUX BA3 students developed propositions for an archipelago of 30 sites across Mayfield, an area disconnected from Manchester both spatially and temporally for about 100 years. The propositions were conceived as a collaboration between students, property developers (Landsec U+I) and urban denizens. Each student approached their site asking: What could this place become? Who will it be for? And how may it transform over time?
What kind of an architect do you want to become?
FLUX Atelier nurtures each student’s discovery of their unique modes of creative practice that engage the city’s transformation. FLUX Labs immersed students in their site through direct experiences of its people, its materiality and atmospheres, its stories and life cycles. Through improvised situated practices and actions, each student discerned a matter-of-care on behalf a community and the public realm. Each devised their own brief to initiate narratives of reconnection in response to Manchester’s transformations, and proposed built structure(s) that aspire to an equitable urbanism.
