During our meeting, the clients mentioned that the pegboards at the Whitworth Gallery shop were not strong enough to support their displayed items. Therefore, we visited the Whitworth …More
Gallery shop to see what caused the displayed cabinets sag. The newly designed furniture shall take current problems into consideration, improving the durability and usability of the furniture. We noticed there was no support underneath the boxes and that the main back support of the pegboards is a single layered wood. In order to create a stronger pegboard, a double layer wood shall be used for the back support, a gap shall be provided, and the hanging display element should be supported underneath. We also noticed more neutral colors were used at the Whitworth gallery shop -painted greyish blue, and light colored wood would allow the sharp colors of products pop out.

The project is a design and build project, where the previous group of students from Research Methods L.O.O.P. developed a conceptual design and we will take in the position of technical …More
design and construction. When preparing the brief, we took in consideration that the designs might actually be built in the museum shop, therefore a step by step pamphlet would be provided for the client for reference in the future if they actually decide to build it in the shop. We would like to encouragement more engagement between the university and the Manchester Museum to gain their confidence in the students to increase the potential of future projects, where the Museum would benefit from our expertise at a certain level and the students would benefit from learning in a live architectural project. Through design, we would like to attract customers into the Museum shop increasing their revenue, so that they would be able to collect more artifacts at the Manchester museum for the community.

We will be aiming to produce one 1:200 site model, detail models (ideally one to ones), and a pamphlet to present to the clients.
The following outputs will aim to......
1) 1:200 …More
Site Model- To propose on the atmospheric qualities, colour schemes to give the shop an identity and attract more customers. Amount of actual cabinet required for the amount of stock the museum has shall also be resolved.
2) Detail models- To investigate durability and the potentials of re-using existing wood.
3) Pamphlet- To propose design ideas and aid the Museum team during the actual construction of the shop to accelerate the time of the project.
Physical models are the best way to communicate to non-professionals. In having something physical in hand, it is a lot easier perceive and understand space as we naturally perceive information in three dimensions.

Precedents
The Manchester Museum clients wanted to create an identity for the shop. We have analysed several precedents to demonstrate how identity is created in the different shops …More
below.
Venice Biennale
Basic wood furniture for display. Items sold were mostly branded for the Biennale which results commercialization. The items designed for the Biennale had really strong colors, therefore it really catches the eye.
Victoria Albert
The use of lighting is very strong in this precedent. The floating cube structure above creates an impression of the shop.
Fred Aldous, Manchester
The art supply shop is organised through the types of products that are sold. The design of the furniture shows the craftsmanship and simplicity. A lot of different types of furniture have been considered for the wide range of art supplies.

"Architecture is increasingly conceived as a product divorced from the particularities of place and as transferable as a chair."- Edwin Heathcote, Is Architecture Furniture?
The essay …More
demonstrates of how architecture in the current age is as movable as a chair. There have been trends on designing homes in shipping containers, which creates flexibility for space. We shall understand this project as a smaller scale of a real project, where furniture act as walls and internal rooms as the facade of the 'building'.