Max Frost

Atelier: &rchitecture
BArch: MSA
Experience: Gagarin Studio
Skills: Photoshop, Illustrator, Hand Drawing
Interested in: Social housing and community focussed projects. I’m really keen on looking at the future of public housing, and architecture’s role in addressing social issues.

Meet the Collaborator

The Tetley is an art gallery and social hub on the south bank of the river Aire in Leeds, providing a platform for local artists and workshops for both the local community and visitors to Leeds since 2013. The gallery is based in the 1930s Tetley’s Brewery, hosting a range of free exhibitions, as well as workshop spaces, powering the thriving creative scene in Leeds and West Yorkshire.

The Tetley supports both emerging artists with mentoring, investment, and space to exhibit work. It is also a key creative hub for the local community with arts workshops for kids and adults, a programme of free exhibitions, talks and events, plus a brilliant bar and kitchen!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_tetley/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_Tetley
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheTetleyLeeds

Website: https://www.thetetley.org/

Contact: Bryony Bond - Director

We had a great morning session to kick off the project, getting to know each other as well as getting to grips with the project brief. We got stuck into understanding the gallery typology, using sketches and precedents to work out what the gallery could offer architecturally, but also socially. We used these sketches to start a discussion on the direction the project should go, and how we can incorporate the local community in Leeds into the scheme.

We finished up todays work by trying to put together an image of the communities that we want this extension to properly serve. We split up and each developed a character that would use the site, whether a tourist, member of staff, volunteer, student or local visitor. From these user profiles we put together routes of how they would approach the site, and from where, and what the project could offer them individually.

After everyone in the group had a go at putting together these user profiles, and trying to understand what the extension could do for them, we used sketching exercises to try turn these needs into ideas for spaces, landscaping and facilities that would all be wrapped up in the project. We looked at people who may not be that interested in Art, and what the extension could do to interest them, and involve them better into the project.

We spent today taking our existing concepts, and pushing them into 3D, to see how they interacted with the wider site, as well as the park. This was a great opportunity to see how sunlight and key views could affect the massing of the extension as we established that daylight and framing views of the park were both key drivers of the project.

Understanding the extension in the wider context of the Leeds South Bank is really important for the social value of the project, as the scheme needs to act as a community hub for local residents, as well as a gallery for tourists.

We also spent time putting together the concepts developed last week with the feedback from our meetings with Bryony and Derek, as well as our narratives developed from the character studies at the start of last week. The designs are now really coming together to be well thought out and exciting strategies for the future of the South Bank.

Today we had the chance to chat with local architects Gagarin Studio about their work in West Yorkshire, particularly community projects like the Orange Box Young People's Centre in Halifax. We discussed how a single project can be a catalyst for wider change, and how you can accomodate a wide variety of stakeholders, users and actors within a single project.

We also chatted about representation techniques, and how as architects we can successfully communicate a project to an audience without having to use plans and sections, which can often be quite exclusionary. We discussed who our audience was in this project, and how we can properly tailor the extension and the gallery spaces for a Leeds audience, using local heritage and arts culture as a jumping off point for the project and the visuals.

This was a great chance to have some last-minute feedback on how our projects were developing, and what we could do to really push them into being successful schemes that encapsulate what makes Leeds and it's art so special.