‘How is this made? ‘

This was the question the Continuity Atelier returned to repeatedly over the course of our year in Crewe, Cheshire. The nature of all human endeavour is in the deployment of resources, skills and systems to will something into being. This applies whether it is a lychgate, a labyrinth or a locomotive – and all featured in our discussions across BA3, MArch1 and MArch2. A productive partnership with Crewe Town Council afforded us access to some of the town’s most intractable challenges, but also to the warmth of the community, and the underlying pride in being long associated with excellence in manufacturing.

Many of the projects picked up on this heritage, both tangible and intangible. Students imagined a future for the town containing multiple versions of a new Heritage Centre (BA3), new insertions in the shell of Christchurch (MArch1), and then diverse thesis projects (MArch2) interrogating the terms ‘craft’, ‘context’ and ‘future heritage’. ‘How is this made?’ was applied as much to investigations into the past as to Crewe’s exciting projected future.

Under the overarching title of ‘Seeing the Join’ the various discontinuities of the town were explored whether social, infrastructural, cultural, or administrative. The language of repair predominated, as projects stitched, connected, tied, linked, bound.

And in the end … we made it.

Professional Studies

Professional Studies 1

PS1

Working in the industrial heart of Britain’s rail network, Crewe in Cheshire, students were invited to work with a neglected building in the town centre. Christchurch is a C19 stone and brick building, whose central worship space had been reduced to a shell by fire and rot. What remained was the subject of the adaptive reuse project, with an open programme derived from the students’ investigations of the town and its needs.

The overall title for the year was ‘Seeing the Join’, inviting reflections on the discontinuities and disruptions in the urban fabric, heritage, and even society. Beginning with baseline survey work on the town, students then produced inventories of the existing structure, assigning value to the remnants they found. Rhythms and patterns were derived, and a strategy of surgery and intervention established. A diverse range of programmes were explored, from community to gallery to art spaces, all focused on the heritage of people and place.

Professional Studies 2

PS2

Building on the strategic work from PS1, the physical interventions in Christchurch Crewe were explored by students. They did this through considering the relationship of the individual, the interior and the city, mediated by the building envelope. They analysed fine art precedents to develop this as a thematic approach linked to their chosen programme. Working with construction they continued to focus on ‘craft’ and what it meant for their work on the church. They were encouraged to work with material mockups and large scale modelling. The term ‘expressive construction’ was introduced to encourage reflections on how the utilitarian parts of the construction might become culturally relevant, lyrical, and even exuberant. Spatial qualities were explored through artistic rendering processes. Most importantly, the emerging technical detail was expanded and enhanced to produce architecture in detail, attending to the design values of the school. The resulting projects were of extraordinary variety, imagining a bold future for an old building in a weary but proud town.

Students

MArch2