Introducing the #livebuild project at the May Shape My City workshop

 

In the second Shape My City workshop of 2015 (14 May), the young participants met Sally and Lawrence from Tangentfield and were presented with the first ever #livebuild project in Shape My City history. The live project is being pioneered by Shape My City 2014 alumni Hani (@HaniDanikwoBear). Inspired by a recent trip to Ethiopia where he saw traditional earth dwellings, Hani wanted to bring this sustainable and resourceful building practice to a real project in Bristol. With the backdrop of Bristol’s Green Capital year, it seemed that this ambition could become a reality.

 

With the help of Sally, Lawrence, Woody, Maira, and Amy as the ‘development team’, a perfect live project was  found: The Asylum Seekers Allotment Project (ASAP) in St George, East Bristol, which is in need of a new outdoor shelter and cooking area for its participants to meet, talk and to share food and ideas. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During May the development team made site visits to take photographs, talk to allotment project staff about the project brief and to map the site. The ASAP project wants the shelter to use natural, and recycled resources found on site or in the local area. The shelter needs to be able to accommodate 10 people, not be enclosed and feel connected to the rest of the garden. It will be situated in the corner of the site and be in keeping with the peaceful, serene atmosphere of the natural surroundings. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first step in bringing this project to life was to get the Shape My City young people thinking about the structure and layout of the shelter. During the May workshop the participants split into small teams and guided by the expertise of the development team, the groups discussed how the shelter would look, the various needs it must fulfil, how it will fill the allocated space and importantly what materials it would be constructed from. They created 2D sketches of their designs and simple 3D models to illustrate thaie ideas. Each group then presented their concepts to their peers and the development team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Ideas were abundant throughout the workshop, each group motivated by the fact that their structures would provide shelter and warmth to particpants of this vital community project, enabling staff and asylum seekers to use the site more frequently and for longer during bad weather. The design ideas created by the young people will feed into to the final design and structure being worked up by Hani and Tangentfield, in partnership with ASAP staff and participants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Shape My City #livebuild will be taking place on site in St George during July 2015 with support from Engineers Without Borders students from UWE. A project blog has been set up and a film and exhibition about the project will be produced for dispay in the Architecture Centre's City Ideas Studio in the Autumn. If you are interested in supporting the project contact the project team through the ArchitectureCentre or Tangentfield.

To find out out more about this workshop session visit the Shape My City blog.   #livebuild

First Sketches

After a quick consultations with the participants of Shape My City, during an evening design session, we came up with some initial sketches for the design and modelled our ideas. After this, we went away and brought all these ideas together to make our preliminary sketches. 

Sketch showing how the structure would sit on the site

 

Close up birds eye of the structure, incorporating some the ideas from the session.

The design is a little more curvy now, this might complicate the construction process a little if the length of the perimeter of the structure given our limited time and resources. The little nudge in the design accommodates the harvest storage that was mentioned on the site visit, as well as providing the opening to provide access to the small slightly more wild section next to the site that had some bamboo growing, I thought this would also be a great place to try and get a small clamp to store some of the harvest, another thing we briefly discussed on the first site visit. Another reason for this nudge is so that if the "front" door is open, it would deflect the wind from the cooking area, keeping the area a little cleaner and easier to maintain, the wind should also be deflected towards the seating area, allowing for fresh air to reach the most private part of the structure. Although I can't prove that this would work, I'm not sure what the prevailing wind direction is on the site.  

Sketches of the sides of the structure showing how
it would sit in its surroundings

Another idea that came from the session on Thursday was to use glass bottles as windows in the structure, it didn't take a lot of research but here's almost exactly what I'm thinking of. This would allow quite a bit of natural light into the structure, but there's also a possibility of using different coloured bottles for windows in different parts of the structure to indicate certain times of the day. So in the top down sketch, the small grey boxes show where the windows would, ideally, be positioned. Which should roughly follow the direction of the sun over the site throughout the day. This should make the structure feel different throughout the day, whilst also maximising the amount of light let in. The biggest window would probably be just over the seating area, where the bottles will be built into the roof. 

The roof is inclined in the curve, so that its curve matches the curve of the structure as it turns around the corner of the site, which should reduce the push force exerted on the outer wall on the curve. But I think that a pillar might be needed to support the roof around the seating area because the walls slightly further apart at that point. The roof is actually inclined towards the "front" entrance too, creating a pinch point at the entrance giving the impression that the space is bigger as you walk through the structure, although I'm not sure if this is possible with the materials that we have available. The roof will overhang to protect the cob from the elements, though the extent of this overhang is yet to be determined, but a possibility might be to allow for a front porch-type overhang which protects the structure but also provides an outdoor space which could be utilised in warmer conditions, however rare they may be. 

After this first round of sketches, there are a few courses of action that we must take. The first of which is to get feedback on this first few ideas from the people directly involved in the project, as well as some experts. Some other items would be access to water, how is that already being supplied to the site, if it is at all, and how that would affect the cooking area's requirements. As well as some of the more practical elements of the build, such as planning a timeline, making materials lists and working on some construction sketches to help better visualise the build process. But for the time being, further research and exploration of ideas will be the best way forward.

Site photos

to get you in the mood…
here are some site images from our visit with Emmy.
Hani, Amy, Sally, Lawrence & Woody

 Main building area

 Greenhouse. can we work this in with the design?

 Polytunnel spot

site photos

to get you in the mood…
here are some site images from our visit with Emmy.
Hani, Amy, Sally, Lawrence & Woody

welcome

#livebuild 2015

Welcome
to the open studio for Shape my City #livebuild 2015

the project this year is a new earth shelter and cobb oven for Speedwell Asylum Seeker's Allotments. East Bristol
This will be a collaborative design project between tangentstudio, students from University of West of England and Engineers Without Borders, young people on the 'Shape my City' programme [Architecture Centre] and the allotment volunteers from around Speedwell community.

A place for posting thoughts and ideas about the design, drawings and sketches as they develop and information about what will be happening leading up to and during the three day #livebuild from 17th-19th July. Feel free to leave comments and discuss the ideas with us.