Name: Chris Waltham

MArch Atelier: Continuity in Architecture

BArch: University of Brighton

Hometown: Brentwood, Essex

Skills: Revit, Enscape, Photoshop, Avoiding Hand Drawing, Model Making, Being undeniably from Essex whilst trying my hardest not to be.

Why I Chose In Our Nature: I chose In Our Nature because it is an exciting project in the Northern Quarter with genuine potential to be built. Our design proposal could help our clients gain lottery funding for a community garden on the top of an existing car park, and the prospect of making this happen made it something I really wanted to get on board with.

Fun Fact: I was once put to bed after a night out by World Champion javelin thrower and ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ winner Fatima Whitbread.

The skills that you will learn and develop within In Our Nature are centred around those gained in a real-life architecture project. To begin the first week, students will be taken to our site to analyse and document the space through sketching and photos. We will meet with members from In Our Nature to develop client-worker relationships, and from there we will work in small teams drawing, modelling, and collaging uses for the space on top of the Northern Quarter Car Park, with the first week leading to a presentation of our ideas to the external collaborators.

Our second week will be a development from our first, as we seek to create plans, elevations, atmospheric drawings and renders of the community garden space to present to the Manchester City Council. Through the help of the team and your peers, you will learn software’s like Photoshop, Indesign, Revit, Enscape, Sketchup, as well as sketching and collaging. You will work together to develop collaborative skills within teams and with the client, encouraging communication, team building and leadership qualities, whilst most importantly, having a good laugh!

The aims of this project are to promote awareness and tackle climate change within Manchester by creating a community garden and inner-city green space in the Northern Quarter. Through our external collaborator, In Our Nature, we aim to create a greener city with the community garden that will be used by the public and restaurants in the Northern Quarter, promoting local sourcing of foods within the city. As well as this, the aim is to create a new space for social interaction, through the addition of a skate park, outdoor cinema, or event space – you decide with your design!

The overarching goal of this project is to gain more funding from the National Lottery Fund for In Our Nature to help this project get built, so not only will you be designing a great project in the Northern Quarter, but it could also get built!

DAY TWO (AFTERNOON)

In the afternoon we headed back to the studio to brainstorm all the different ideas we had for the project, before splitting into two teams to work on developing these great ideas. Here are some programme collages by the students that show some of the amazing ideas we have for the rooftop of the car park.

We could see some sick kickflips coming in the Northern Quarter soon! And did someone say Pizza???

DAY FIVE

To round off the week, we wanted to show you some of the great sketch designs that everyone had come up with! It’s great to see all the amazing ideas for the car park roof top, and what that disused space could be transformed into in the future. We are all looking forward to developing the project now in line with the clients feedback and designing a really incredible space for the Northern Quarter.

DAY SEVEN

Today we continued to delve deeper into our designs for the car park. Here is some amazing design work from Louis Louth, who has proposed to add some lovely signage to show people what's going on up on the roof top!

DAY SEVEN

As we get to crunch time with the project, the team got together to agree on a final sketch plan which will be drawn up and submitted to the client. Everyone is really happy and excited about the design we have come up with and can't wait to show it to everyone. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

DAY EIGHT

Today we continued working in small teams to meet our deadline for Friday. Students Cameron Griffin and Keisuke Sakamoto have been working hard on different planter designs and drew up axonometric drawings for these amazing concepts. All the planters are designed using the dimensions of pallets to create a more sustainable and efficient product.

DAY EIGHT

Following on from designing the planters, our team members Cameron and Keisuke put their rendering skills into practice and created these beautiful renders. These renders showcase how well people will interact with the design and how stunning the designs are. We enjoyed the merging of the planters with the seating, as well as these areas have been adapted to include sustainable energy solutions.

DAY EIGHT

We also had a team working on the event space that we were proposing for the car park roof top. This team, made up of Alice Barnes, Arya Vahidi, Daud Ahmad, and Louis Louth, were experimenting with tensile structures to act as a cover for a stage space within our design. Here are some images of the process, alongside some images of the great design.

DAY EIGHT

Look at that!! An amazing model by Alice, Arya, Daud, and Louis really shows off their fantastic design work. Excited to see how people may interact with this structure… Stay tuned!

DAY NINE

Continuing on from yesterday's amazing work, our stage design team created visuals of how this space could look when populated and in situ. Great work from Alice, Arya, Daud, and Louis! If you look close enough you might be able to see some greenhouses in the background...

DAY TEN

From yesterday’s work, we wanted to showcase Louis’s beautiful drawing of the stage area for the car park roof top! An incredible use of model making, hand drawing skills and photoshop made this what it is, and it’s great to see everyone using all their talents to present such amazing designs.

DAY TEN

With greening the city at the heart of our client’s philosophy student Ankita Rani set out to come up with rain water collection technologies. Her designs for this are innovative and were loved by us and the client alike, using the collection system to create a stunning water feature that also functions as a hydroponic planter!

Ankita’s work was made into a reality with the help of Cameron’s amazing computer skills. Great work guys!

DAY TEN

Here is a design for a potential green wall that could be added to the front of the car park along Church Street by Ankita. We love the use of all the different plants to make up the façade, as well as the variation across the street. Did we mention this is in the Northern Quarter…?

DAY TEN

During our review with the clients, one thing they mentioned was how much they liked the idea of having greenhouses within this space. Students Regina Jedrzejek and Cameron Griffin worked hard on different ideas for how these could look. They played with different variations of closed and open greenhouses that will be filled with planters for public use. We think they look incredible.

DAY TEN

We continued to work on different visuals for the project. Keisuke Sakamoto rendered these stunning images displaying the atmosphere of both the roof top gardens and the street level planters. We can’t get over how great these are!!

DAY TEN

Since we finalised our plans students Regina Jedrzejek and Rafaella Falquez have been working tirelessly to come up with this beautiful plan. It’s great to see how teamwork really pays off and has created such an amazing design that everyone has been a part of. We love what this MSA Live project has produced and hope you love it as much as we do.

DAY TEN

As the week ends, we are extremely grateful for our team for all the hard work and effort they have put in to this project. It was great to see how the team bonded throughout the week and were working together to design the best project that they could. It was also amazing to see how talented these students are, we can definitely see this group going places and it was a pleasure to work with them all!

We want to say a big thank you to everyone that took part, as well as a thank you to our clients In Our Nature for giving the students space to be as creative as possible. We hope you like the work as much as we do.