Maker's Quarter
Maker's Quarter
The layers of place hidden beneath Crewe’s existing urban fabric had to be unpacked and seep through the current context. The masterplan to reimagine Crewe as a Maker’s Town is rooted in the narrative of skilled workers migrating across the nation to help develop the town’s railway infrastructure.
The proposed masterplan for the Maker’s Quarter is to attract new residents who are eager to hone their crafts to the town centre of Crewe, as the new maker’s homes provide dedicated workshop space within the footprint. Similarly, it integrates the surrounding context of St. Paul’s Church and Jubilee Gardens into the site, allowing the expansion of the landscape and celebrating the church’s character in its homes. There is an opportunity for the residents to utilise the workshop space to become their own shop fronts, as each has a great active frontage that can evidently be transformed into a shop front. These front facades facilitate public interaction, as openable windows blur the public/private threshold. A vision of allowing St. Paul’s Community Hub to utilise the maker’s square within the crescent space to showcase their engagement with the community. New residents within the Quarter can assist in the celebration of the making and sharing of skills to generate community cohesion within Crewe’s town centre.
My ArchitectureThroughout my academic experience, I have developed an architectural language that engages with the memories and histories embedded within a place, expressing them through spatial and material qualities. I see architecture as the backdrop to everyday life, shaping how people experience and interact with their environment. Consequently, my design process carefully integrates context, user interaction, and narrative, whilst focusing on designing for people by creating spaces that respond sensitively to context and exploring sustainable construction methods, such as adaptive reuse and locally informed design strategies.
