This project will enhance your graphical skills with the use of Photoshop and Indesign, as well as your drawing skills on Autocad and Sketch up. We aim to organise workshops and create an environment to encourage you to ask questions. This project is a great opportunity for you to learn how to conduct social mapping research, understand the local community needs and their dynamics, in order to design a gastronomic community space for the local people to gather and enjoy it. Architecture is about making places for people to enjoy, therefore the project will help you boost your communication skills and human understanding.

LiveWires DAY #01 TIMETABLE:

10:00: Informal team meeting & ice breaker activities
10:30: Brief outline
11:00: Coffee break
11:15: Introduction to the Indesign Templates and familiarising with everyone's software skills.
11:45: Lunch Break
12:45: Meet the collaborators who we will be working closely with - The Workhouse Project Team's presentation
15:00: Coffee break
15:30: Get to know the site - Presentation of the site by the MArch students
16:00: Run-through Day #02 schedule

Manchester Hulme area possesses a very diverse community with different cultures co-existing together. However, due to cultural differences and language barrier, migrants and refugees struggle to integrate within the local community. Consequently, to solve local social segregation, the design proposal comprises pop-up dining/kitchen mobile pods that aim to unite the community by being self-built demountable structures, which fold and unfold according to daily usage.

The site visit allowed the design team to experience the space. It exposed us to the local dynamics and the place’s culture.
The site turned out looking and feeling a lot different from what we had envisioned. As a result, the group visit of the site allowed us to get a better sense of scale and contributed to gathering details that will strengthen our design responses. The site visit was crucial to creating design solutions sensitive and responsive to a place's characteristics and the partners' needs.

Our design team met face-to-face with Dominic Sagar, a member of The Workhouse Project, our external partners. Bringing the design team and the external partners face to face together allowed to share knowledge, experiences and accomplishments to learn from one another. In order to understand what is expected from the project entirely, we discussed vital design ideas with the external partners and their priorities. The meeting served us to refine our design responses later.

Our design process comprised profound site analysis, sketching and modelling the first week, where the whole design team contributed. This week, we have begun refining and rendering our final design ideas after testing them on-site and discussing them with our external partners, who have approved them.

LiveWires DAY #10 - Final Presentation meeting and handover to the partners!

Today we presented our final publication document to our partners of the Workhouse Project. Thanks to the whole design team and the BA1 - BA2 students contributions, we received positive feedback from our clients, who were very satisfied with our outputs and researches, which responded to their requirements and needs.
We will definetely keep in contact with our partners to follow the future development of our project in the next few weeks to offer further support.