Name: Omar Arif
Current Atelier: MArch Architecture – Flux
Skills: Rhino + VRay/ Photoshop/ Illustrator/ Indesign/ Premiere Pro/ Blender
Undergraduate: New Delhi, India
Personality: Paradoxical
Random Fact: Jack of all trades, better than a master of one.

Our project is located at the Withington Baths in Manchester and aims to transform it into a more comprehensive community facility to meet various needs. We plan to repurpose the basement to provide a shared gathering space for community members of all ages, promoting social interaction and communication.
Our design is capable of meeting the diverse needs and aspirations of the community by providing engaging spaces that offer unique visual and spatial experiences. Through promoting social interaction, communication, and a sense of belonging, our design enhances community cohesion, fosters personal growth and development of community members, and ultimately creates a better future for community members.
The basement of the Withington Baths is filled with a complex network of irregular passages or pathways, where it is difficult to find paths to existing walls and partitions, which inspired us. We plan to view the basement as a group of maze-like alleys and further design the space prototype based on it to provide a unique spatial experience for the community.

Join our project and you will learn various representation and experimentation techniques, including sketching, physical and digital model making, as well as post-production and presentation, and apply them to create a welcoming, friendly, and vibrant community center. Let's work together to create a brighter future and a special place for Witton Baths in everyone's heart.
We aim to involve and teach in the process, various representation and experimentation techniques ranging from sketching, physical & digital model making as well as postproduction and representation.

The action plan outlines brief objectives for the next two weeks which provide an all-round design development experience to the participants of being part of a collaborative environment while working on a live project.

Week 1 is packed with site visit and discussions to collective brainstorming sessions in 2D and 3D (physical and digital) spaces.

Week 2 is packed with healthy competitive project pitches in groups to skill development and application workshops.

The action plan outlines brief objectives for the next two weeks which provide an all-round design development experience to the participants of being part of a collaborative environment while working on a live project.

Week 1 is packed with site visit and discussions to collective brainstorming sessions in 2D and 3D (physical and digital) spaces.

Week 2 is packed with healthy competitive project pitches in groups to skill development and application workshops.

The day kicked off with the first meeting on site and a guided heritage tour by Paul and Emma which we are extremely grateful for.
It was almost immediately evident how loved these baths were from the brief interactions we had with them. The Edwardian bath's foundation stone being held in 1911 and on the verge of closure in 2010, it was the local community after all which fought to save them. Today, it not only has pools, but other gym and leisure facilities that have continued to bring people together since over 100 years. However, many areas continue to call for improvements.
The students were able to assess the current condition of the baths and visually explore potential spatial connections in the basement that could be made in order to enable the spaces and incorporate appropriate functions as per the collaborator’s requirements. The site visit was followed by a discussion session back in MTC.

An induction presentation followed the site visit which outlined the brief points to be kept in consideration (THE 3 BIG: What? Why? And How?) throughout the project during the two weeks. Later the students and team members engaged in meaningful discussions, recalling their feelings of the spaces on site, interesting observations and very first abstract ideas. Physical models of the basement were provided to the students to helpm them understand areas from a wider perspective. The day ended with multiple ideation sketches and zoning proposals on a single piece of paper to discuss the interventions. Collaboration and healthy critique were the main focus throughout the process.

A presentation on adaptive reuse practices with a follow up question-answer session broke the second day of week 1. Soon after, based on yesterday's design sketches, the students continued to experiment with their proposals in groups by changing and manipulating spaces in the physical models. The team members involved the students in continuous discussions regarding their proposals to foster a lively and interactive interactive environment.
Sand bar held a post work informal gathering towards the end of the day.

A glimpse of student work in progress for tomorrow's final proposal representations.

Day 3 mainly revolved around technical lectures regarding ergonomics and space standards to equip the groups with specific knowledge to aid their design proposals. Students used the given existing models of the Baths to showcase their interventions along with sketches and handcrafted / digital drawings. The day ended with groups finetuning their designs and composing the outputs in a predefined layout given to them for tomorrow's design jury on site in front of the collaborators.

"Our group was focusing on improving existing community facilities through an additional café area and multifunctional exhibition space throughout extending the northern façade of the building. The crucial point for our team was to make narrow corridors between two existing pool volumes more efficient. To achieve this task, it was decided to dismantle the existing wall, which divides the space into two narrow rectangles. To distribute the load intended for the existing wall, our team proposes installing structural arches, which will also set a certain rhythm and diversify the elongated space. In the middle of this zone, there will be a bar counter being a continuation of the serving zone of the café, which is located closer to the entrance. The stand is made of frosted acrylic with internal lighting, which will make the room not so dark, giving indirect diffused lighting. We also set as our task the regulation of the flow of people entering the basement level, so we fenced off part of the space around the walls of the existing pool to create storage areas and control access to office premises. In our scheme plan, the movement of people is encouraged towards the café and further to the exit to the annex of the exhibition space. In the exhibition space's architecture, we tried to follow the motifs of the existing façade: first of all, we propose to return the original bricked windows and use the same pattern in the new stained glass wall. The extension is made of a steel frame and filled with glass to create the lightest space and the greatest transmission of natural light into the baths. We believe this space can be used by different age groups as well as local artists. The tank supposed to store clean water will be used by us as an office space with a meeting room. The location of these spaces at the back of the baths will also encourage people to pass through the space next to the café or exhibition."

"Our group focused on creating a connection between the ground floor level and the foundation. To achieve this goal, we chose the strategy of expanding the existing café area towards the exit on the northern façade. Filling the space between the pylons made it possible to divide the café into cooking and serving areas. Freeing up the original bricked windows allowed us to create a seating area along the north wall, with the possibility of expanding the outdoor café when climatic conditions permit. Another important element of our design is the replacement of the wall of the fitness room, bordering the area of the proposed café, with a transparent partition, which will not only let in natural light from the fitness room, but also involve the visitors of the gym and the café in the visual interaction. Thus, visitors to the fitness room will be aware of the opportunity to visit the café before or after classes, and café visitors will not be isolated from other sauna spaces. The clean water tank area will be used by us as an office space with flexible filling. The passage will also be carried out through the café area, which will increase its permeability. At the same time, an isolated passage to the office space is possible in case of conferences or unwillingness to interact with other functions of the baths. We assume the possibility of access to this space from the street for faster access of employees, as well as the possibility of independent functioning of this space."

"Resolving the difficulty of navigating the narrow labyrinth of corridors that form the basement of the Bath House was our focus as a group. Adding a new public entrance point on the North side allowed us to create a clear route to the café and the rest of the new facilities. The café extends outdoors into the courtyard on the South of the building, allowing for a sheltered yet sunny (hopefully) coffee break. The office/meeting space runs along the North facing exterior wall of the building. Unbricking the original windows will allow a gentle, indirect source of natural light into the workspace. This space will also be privately accessible from the street. The old clean water tank has been redesigned to form a double-height space with a mezzanine level. This will be an open and naturally lit space used for a range of community activities, such as lifeguard training; artistic activities like painting sessions; general discussion space and possibly an extra room for exercise such as yoga. In terms of practical facilities, the toilets run down the middle corridor between the two baths, leaving an open corridor for circulation as well as being easily accessible – being equally close to the café, office, and community space. Storage has been positioned in the Southern corridor as well as a smaller storage room adjacent to the toilets. Lastly, a staff room has been added at the end of the central corridor – allowing staff to wind down for a break."

First half of Day 4 was dedicated to final project proposal presentations by teams across the two MSA Live Groups: 4 & 11 working collaboratively on Withington Baths. This was to identify clashing ideas and improve the respective designs. These presentations ended with enlightening discussions within the MSA Live groups and the teams within these groups. This was followed by an on-site meet with the collaborators.

Second half of Day 4 was pre-planned to be a meeting with the collaborators on site. All the students and team members after lunch travelled to the Withington Baths with the presentation sheets and physical models to discuss the best ideas with the collaborator team. Various design aspects were appreciated by the collaborators as the students took on a role of looking at the Baths and the way it functions for a completely different perspective. A few missed insights also came to light after the discussions that would help in improving the designs. Overall, all three proposals were appreciated and the students were encouraged to come up with a combined and improved design solution taking in the best aspects from all three for the next week's final design presentation meeting.

First day of the second week started with design discussions to come up with the best options by combining all the best intervention aspects proposed by the different groups. Soon after, the MSA Team finalised zoning and functions of the spaces in plan, sections and digital/physical model. Later, a software skill workshop was conducted to introduce rhino and therefore, enable the students to use it for the final outputs including drawings and visuals. Towards the end of the day, work was equally distributed to the bachelor students for the upcoming day.

Day 6 was all about working in isolation as compared to the collaborative working in the past week, on the tasks allocated to each individual for the final design presentation to the collaborators.

The full day was dedicated to finalising the design proposals in terms of plans, elevations, sections and visualisations. Each individual was tasked with an output for the final presentation to the collaborators on site for the next day.

The final design presentation was made to the collaborators on Day 8 at Withington Baths. Design changes previously suggested in last week's meeting with them were incorporated and other structural and financial factors were taken into consideration. Later we bid our goodbyes to the bachelor students.

Last day was dedicated to working on the final outputs to be sent to the collaborators and work continued on the publication with final visualisations in progress.