PS1 explores how infrastructural architecture can serve both human and environmental needs simultaneously, reimagining industrial, cultural, and social productivity through strategic site interventions. Through critical engagement with Data Mapping Cumbria and independent research, each student appraised four potential sites — Whitehaven Turkish Baths, Leconfield Industrial Park, Florence Mine, and Cleator Mill — selecting one to develop based on individual interests and broader group data mapping. Site visits, stakeholder consultations, and heritage assessments informed the evolution of project briefs, with careful consideration of local economic conditions, industrial histories, and ecological futures.

Students were tasked with the adaptive reuse of existing structures, proposing new public, industrial, or cultural uses supported by landscaping and ecological strategies. Emphasis was placed on documenting and evaluating historic fabric, feasibility, and materiality, while responding to real-world economic constraints and the complex property dynamics shaped by West Cumbria’s unique relationship with the Sellafield supply chain.

The work presents a series of speculative proposals that question how infrastructure can become an active agent for positive change, negotiating between past legacies and future resilience. The work reflects a critical, site-specific approach to infrastructure, responding to the challenges and potentials of a shifting socio-economic and environmental landscape.

PS2 buildings on the foundations laid in PS1, deepening the design process into detailed architectural, structural, environmental, and technical resolution. Students rigorously developed their proposals through iterative stakeholder engagement, regulatory compliance analysis, and advanced material and environmental strategies. Focusing on tectonics, performance, and carbon impact, each project responds critically to the demands of reuse, climate resilience, and economic viability. Detailed investigations into structure, building fabric, and sustainable systems were supported by 1:5/1:10 construction details, embodied carbon studies, and Building Regulations analyses. Students explored active and passive environmental strategies, carefully balancing technical innovation with pragmatic construction approaches.

Through project management planning and life-cycle assessments, proposals were mapped across the RIBA Workstages, reflecting an understanding of buildability, maintenance, and future adaptability/resilience. Diagrams, visualisations and models further explore and test how designs contribute to their wider territorial, social, and ecological contexts. The PS2 body of work exemplifies the Infrastructure Space Atelier’s ethos: to combine rigorous technical skill with ambitious, context-responsive thinking to the atelier methodological “Stack”. The outcomes showcase the ability of our student to imagine and deliver projects that are resilient, resourceful, and relevant to future communities and environments.