FLUX Atelier 25-26 explored the urban regeneration of Mayfield, Manchester, in a live collaboration between students, property developers, the city and its people. Beginning with in-situ vertical action research ‘labs’, BA3 students selected their own project site, identified an individual Matter of Care, and wrote a brief for a building of medium complexity containing a programme/s of choice. In considering how architecture activates a state of urban change, students were given three lenses that inform specific ways of working:
- Situated practice: Starting from ‘not knowing’, inscribe and draw the site with your body. Work on, from and with the site, visiting often at different times. Let your design grow out of existing socio-spatial realities.
- Temporality: Consider time, and the continuum of change. Map and respond to human and natural rhythms and phenomenological stimuli. Imagine radical future possibilities and how architecture adapts to changing circumstances and the climate emergency.
- Open urbanism: Collaborate at every level, engaging the full spectrum of urban inhabitants. Activate urban space and embrace bold, playful, experimental, inclusive city-making.
Studio 3.1 focused on theoretical, conceptual and narrative development, while in Studio 3.2, students developed their architectural proposal in more detail, resolving it spatially and technically.