My thesis project is going to be developed within the 'Field Works' studio, led by Nick Tyson. This is a new studio this year, making it an exciting opportunity to forge a new path unconstrained by the context of and comparisons with previous students work responding to the same brief.
Studio position
Nick's initial brief has set out the Field Works studio as being focused on exploring a "contemporary material culture", and looking to facilitate open-ended inhabitation programmes on the site, which allow for both planned and spontaneous activities to take place alongside each other.
"...to explore a contemporary material culture, taking particular interest in circular yet open ended material flows - seeking to understand how to best deploy an ever-depleting set of primary resources, reprocessing remnants & waste, or looking at the potential to grow construction materials." ––– extract from the studio brief
A direct engagement with fabrication processes is used to explore material potential as well as initiate a response to found conditions of site and investigate spatial systems and details.
In terms of the working methods of the studio, Nick places an emphasis on direct engagement with materials and physical modelling. This is one of the main reasons that I chose this studio, as I enjoyed doing a lot of physical modelling during my Theoria project, and felt that it played to my strengths well.
Project site
The project site is Pomona Island in Manchester. It used to be the site of the Manchester Docks, and lies sandwiched between various key pieces of infrastructure such as the Bridgewater Canal, Manchester Ship Canal, arterial roads and Metrolink tram lines.
As existing site plan
Pomona is set to undergo intensive housing development, and thus our projects will propose alternative future for the site instead. It definitely seem to be a very unique site which should hopefully lead to an interesting and diverse collection of projects within our studio by the end of the year.
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