NAME: Kayla Dabu
MArch Year 5
ATELIER: Flux
BArch: University of Kent
SKILL: Autocad, Revit, Photoshops, Indesign, Sketch Up.

Favourite Childhood Memory:

When I was little me and friends would always play out in the street after school, it was the best time as we had no worries in the world. We simply played for hours whilst we waited for the ice cream van to come around the corner.

NAME: Lauren Fung
MArch Year 5
ATELIER: Making
BArch: University of Kent
SKILL: Autocad, Photoshop, Indesign, Sketch Up, Rhino

Favourite Childhood Memory:
Having my grandmother’s homemade rice cakes with my whole family during Chinese New Year

NAME: Zhiyuan Xie
MArch Year 5
ATELIER: Continuity in Architecture
BArch: Shandong University of Architecture, Jinan, China
SKILL: Spatial Design, Graphics design (Rhino, Photoshops, Illustrator, InDesign, Auto CAD, Sketch Up)

Favourite Childhood Memory:
Play LEGO games with my childhood playmates and assemble the amusing castles by myself.

NAME: Kaiyan Xu
MArch Year 5
ATELIER: Infrastructure Space
BArch: University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China
SKILL: Illustrator, Photoshops, Auto CAD, Sketch Up

Favourite Childhood Memory:
Playing computer games with friends and eating fried chicken after school. It is very interesting.

NAME: Nuoya Li
MArch Year 5
ATELIER: CPU
BArch: University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China
SKILL: Graphics design, Model making, (Auto CAD, Sketch Up, Rhino, Photoshops, Illustrator, …)

Favourite Childhood Memory:
When I was 6 years old, I went to an outdoor classes, the teacher played games with me. He threw me up and catched me, I was sure that he could catch me, that is very interesting.

Collaborators:

The Architecture School for Children (TASC) are working with students from MSA’s annual programme of student-led live projects, along with Year 8 students from Didsbury High School. We, as young people, will co-design a mobile gallery, in addition to a workshop space, to form a creative space for young people.

Over the past 18 years, TASC has worked with children and communities to bring together people and the wider community to view their environment in a creative persepctive. They aim to develop people’s creative talents from a young age, help children to form lifelong relationships with the community and the city, and raise aspirations of young people to create healthy and happy communities. They have also partnered with organisations (MMU, UoM, RIBA etc.) to engage with architecture students to achieve their aims.

Didsbury High School has a cohort of talented Year 8 students who are eager to learn about architecture. The students are keen to learn and develop new skills about drawing, designing and model making.

For more information, check out
https://www.tascmanchester.com/
and
https://www.didsburyhighschool.org.uk/.

Skills:

Workshops are held to develop drawing and modelling skills digitally and physically. Software used consist of AutoCAD, Sketchup, Photoshop and Indesign. Working with students from Didsbury High School will also allow young people at different stages to learn from each other and to work with each other. Presentations will enable students to share ideas and take inspiration from different backgrounds.

Social Values:

2022 is OUR YEAR.

In conjunction with our collaborators, we believe that young people should be able to live, learn, play, and grow in a space that inspires them. It is important for young people to develop a deep connection with the city from an early stage, therefore we, with other young creatives, are designing a creative space that will act as a platform for young people to have a visible presence in the city. The workshop facilitates a variety of artistic practices, so young people can experiment with different media in response to their experience of the city. The art produced will be displayed in a flexible exhibition space that is the mobile gallery. The art forms part of a showcase for the Manchester City Council initiative, ‘Our Year 2022’, to celebrate Manchester’s children and young people.

Day 1

Hello! We spent the first day getting to know the rest of the team, followed by a brief introduction to the project. The team is then split into groups to brainstorm ideas and research precedents. Some ideas experimented with folding techniques and other ideas incorporated the use of wheels. As a group, we discussed interesting elements from each idea that could be further developed. There were lovely sketches produced from the team. This was a great start to the project!

Day 2

Both Team 1 and Team 2 focused on further developing their ideas from the previous session. The idea from Team 1 consisted of a gallery space made up of timber frames with a colourful canopy roof. There were physical and digital models made to demonstrate the undulating form.

Day 2

The idea from Team 2 stemmed from a caravan. Developed from a simple ‘box on wheels’, the team experimented with ways to manipulate the rectangular form. The sketches and concept models show how the box could be expanded to create an exhibition space.

Day 4

The lecture in the morning was given by Clover Lee, who is the director of plusClover. Based in Hong Kong, Clover has worked on various projects ranging from residential interiors to retail design. Collaboration is an essential element in her work, so it was great for her to share her experiences with us. The projects presented were related to the project we are currently developing as they all targeted a younger demographic, so it was beneficial for us to learn about how graphics could be used to reinforce branding.

Day 4

We visited the Whitworth Gallery in the afternoon and we had the pleasure of meeting our collaborators, Dan and Catherine from TASC. They gave us a brief introduction to TASC and showed us projects they have previously worked on. We then had a discussion about the combination of ideas from the previous sessions and focused on the construction of the mobile gallery. It had been an eventful day gathering inspiration from external speakers and sharing ideas.

Day 6

After finalising our design last week, we started preparing drawings for our design manual. There was an Autocad workshop for students to learn about basic Autocad commands. They were then divided, so half of them worked on the plan, sections and elevations, and the other half worked on preparing files for the laser cut model. It took some time at first to get used to the new software, but everyone managed to contribute to the drawings after familiarising themselves with Autocad.

Day 7

Using the orthographic drawings that we had drawn yesterday, we built a 3D model using Sketchup in today’s session. We had a brief tutorial to learn about basic digital modelling in Sketchup, then each student was tasked to build a part of the mobile gallery. They focused on modelling the joint details, which was then put together to form the whole gallery. The final 3D model turned out as we had imagined and we will be using it for our renders.

Day 9

During today’s session, we met up with Catherine and Dan at the Whitworth Gallery to finalise our outputs. We presented the drawings and model that were produced with the DHS students, and also showed them our progress this week as we approach the end of the programme. Using our Sketchup model, we generated images that were then compiled together to make a design manual. The design manual acts as a guide to demonstrate how the mobile gallery would be constructed if the opportunity arises to build the gallery in reality.