Here are some highlights for Week 1!

We'll start off chill by playing games and conversing to break the 'ice'. Teams will be split into 2, carrying out different but complementing tasks. This week, we will be focusing on getting as much informations on Albert Square and its surrounding context. We will try to understand and connect the dots to create a timeline in forming our story of the Albert Square. We will brainstorm and discuss design ideas to encourage visitors participation and make the 'story' interesting.

On top of that, we have specially invited guest speakers for sharing sessions throughout this week. We also have a skills workshop by our very own talented team member, Elliott.

Looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow!

HERITAGE TEAM: RESEARCH DAY 1

Following site introduction and team voting, allocated members of the Heritage team move to a separate call for initial brainstorming session. Findings are collated in our shared Miro board so everyone on the team can access the information. The goal of the session is to get to know Albert Square better, its surrounding context as well as historical facts and narrative that could potentially feed into our 'story' later.

Collectively, we found many interesting informations, quick facts, historical imageries, landmarks as well as site drawings. Some interesting informations include the story during the initial idea of the square which involves demolition of dense housing on site as a prerequisite for locating the Albert Memorial. Other than that, we have also patched together informations from different sources to create a historical timeline recording as early as the 1850s until present, showing when the square and the Town Hall was built and completed, later refurbishment and current restoration, Our Town Hall project.

Overall, this session was a great start to develop our narrative further.

VIRTUAL SITE VISIT: ALBERT SQUARE

Using Google Earth application, we had a virtual tour led by Payam and an overview of the Albert Square to get a better understanding of the site. As part of the exercise, we have carried out S.W.O.T analysis based on our first impression of the site, identifying strength, weakness, opportunity and threats present. Our discussion and findings consisting of some observations and initial ideas on potential elements to include such as skateboarding/ cycle ramps, visualisations of precedents, even the type of trees that can be planted to convey different seasonal vibes. All these are collated in our shared Miro board.

HERITAGE TEAM: DRAFT LAYOUT 2
By Syahirah

This draft layout option uses the whole 2 page spread and integrates several narrative topics in a page as compared to Draft 1. It uses interactive features in which readers can click on certain buttons for informations to show. There is also opportunity for comparing Albert Square and the Town Hall between the past and contemporary times (municipality to civic) in the second layout, however team members had raised concern over the capability to accurately singled-out the exact year of when this supposedly happened due to the constant changes in past events. Alternatives suggested include to put the focus of the page on the events accordingly, not on the year when they happened.

HERITAGE TEAM: DRAFT LAYOUT 3
By Elliott

In contrast to the first 2 drafts, this layout follows the masterpages template provided more closely as an option. While the idea to represent each narrative topics are similar with the other two drafts, one interesting idea in this is to use dialogue bubbles or 'comical' strips style in conveying information. This is to engage the readers more through 'story telling' and 'casual conversation' instead of having them to read lines of informative text that can be overwhelming.

Week 1 fly by so fast! Here are some highlights for Week 2!

As we completed all sharing sessions with guest speakers in the first week, in Week 2, we'll be more focused in visual productions and compiling materials obtained into our publication. Heritage Team will look into connecting the 'story' of Albert Square and Town Hall and represent this visually. Design Team will refine and finalise the design for the visitor's experience centre and QR code display, followed by visual productions. Both teams' works will be integrated in which the narratives set by the Heritage Team will complement design being proposed as well as the Design Team to reflect our 'story' into the design of the visitor's centre. Prior to submission, we'll have a session with our collaborator from Lendlease, Ms. Tamara Karim, on Wednesday to review and provide feedbacks.

Can't wait to see the finished product! Looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow!

Today, the Heritage Team had a thorough discussion to decide our catalogue format as well as the content for each sections based on all of our Week 1 research. We went over from the graphic style for all visuals planned up to text placement and effects to be applied. To kick start our catalogue, each one of us are assigned to edit photos of landmarks and sculptures, as well as creating a short introductory paragraph in Indesign. These are then collated in our publication document by Kostis (BA1), who will apply necessary interactive elements as agreed by the team. We also had short sharing sessions on how to create interactive buttons in Indesign by Kostis, as well as using the camera raw filter in Photoshop by Farah (M.Arch). At the end of our meeting, everyone took a page each to work on for tomorrow, before our review session with our collaborator, Ms. Tamara Karim (Lendlease) on Wednesday.

Prior to submission this Friday, we had a final review session today with our collaborator from Lendlease, Ms. Tamara Karim. Overall, we received positive feedbacks from her. For the narrative catalogue, Tamara appreciates the interactive elements we did as they were considering for digital publication to reduce use of paper. It would be great to have a printed version as well for now to cater to those without access to digital device.

In terms of the visitor experience centre, she loves our design which she described as modern, in contrast to the more classic architecture of the Town Hall and other listed buildings around the site. She likes our concept that uses hexagonal elements to represent Manchester's iconic symbol of worker bees, which indirectly tells the story and history of Mancunians itself. Her key concern is the mobility of the visitor experience centre to be able to cater to events that will be actively organized in Albert Square all year-long. Luckily, we have considered this since the very beginning by using lightweight and easily dismantled materials for the construction, enabling the centre to easily adapt and moved when required. She gave us a 'green light' to proceed with our proposal and even requested a copy of our work when it is complete.

Our next step is to format our final publication and to clearly show the buildability and mobility aspect of the visitor experience centre in order to convince our audience.

Scan our QR code to get access to our catalogue (extended version) and find out more about the 'story' of Manchester, the Town Hall and Albert Square. Also, check out the thought process of our design for the Manchester BEE Pavilion to be constructed on Albert Square that aims to connect and share stories of Mancunians, past and present, to the wider community.

Scan this QR code to get an exclusive tour into our Manchester BEE Pavilion in Albert Square!