Meet Emma, she works at the community centre as a learning coordinator and she will be our point of contact during the project. Emma organizes the activities at the community centre, making sure that everyone has the chance to learn new things and enjoy their time together

St. John's Centre is a community-based, voluntary organisation that offers many activities to the community members.
They provide basic skills training and classes, such as ESOL, Math and Computing, but also Yoga or Karate sessions and so much more.

Atelier: PRAXXIS

Skills: AutoCAD, SkecthUp, Adobe Suite

Hobbies: Reading, Cooking, Walking

MSA Live Role: Adobe Softwares and Presentation Coordinator, Point of Contact

Undergraduate: University of Liverpool

Architectural Interest: Residential Architecture and Heritage Conservation

During these two weeks journey together, we will focus on developing and enhancing design skills, that we as architecture students employ every day and that are fundamental to our architectural careers.

We will undertake different workshops, in the two weeks, focusing on specific, always useful softwares.

In the timetable, we have highlighted the main activities we will do every day. In the first week we will get to know each other and the collaborator, going to site visits, to develop initial approaches for our design.
In the second week, we will focus on developing those ideas and work on the publication as well as the client's outputs.

On the first day, we got to know each other and shared our experiences about architecture. Moreover, we did a small presentation on St. John's Centre before going to our first site visit.

In the afternoon of our first day, we all went for the first time to the community centre to meet the staff working there and our collaborator, Emma. She showed us around the building and talked to us about the opportunities the centre offers to those who visit it.

On the morning of the second day, part of the team visited the centre again to be able to meet one of the ESOL classes that are thought at the centre. It was an inspiring insight into the needs of the users and it informed our design approach.
At the same time, the part of the team that stayed back, undertook a workshop on the use of site analysis as a design tool.

In the afternoon, after the initial site visits and site analysis, we applied our findings onto spatial arrangements exercises, producing bubble diagrams.

We started our 3rd day with a workshop on AutoCAD, to offer the students an overview of the software and start drafting refined plans to show the collaborator.

We went to our last site visit! We had the chance to meet an elderly exercise class and share our ideas with them, while they were enjoying their weekly tea and cake.

We started our day with a workshop on SkecthUp and modelled our building together, to give an idea of workflow as well as introducing basic tools.

In the afternoon, we worked together on producing the first drawings for the final publication, across different softwares, in particular Photoshop.

We connected online with Emma, our collaborator, to present the plans we have worked on, providing them with a few options they could choose from.
She was excited to see the progress and discuss it with the rest of the staff at St John's Centre.

After the meeting, we moved on to produce, in groups, the conceptual elements of our publication. We focused on highlighting who our actors were and what the centre represents for the community.
We also enjoyed the view onto All Saints Park, while watching a good movie.

We started the day by working on the feedback that Emma, has provided us. It was a great opportunity for the group to understand how to improve the design proposal.

We applied changes to the plans, to satisfy the needs of the users of the community centre. Moreover, the students started to explore a few landscaping interventions.

We had our last meeting with Emma, for some final feedback on the options we had provided her. Finally, we started to finalize the design!

We dedicated the afternoon to the plans of our proposal, both for the client outputs and our own. We let the student experiment with skecthup to model the new intervention on the building.

Getting there! Today the team focused on different activities all targeted toward the publication. Rendering plans, experimenting with renders elements and so much more.

We all love a good movie! We enjoyed a quiet afternoon while watching a movie together and producing great visuals for the project.

Powering through! From layouts to layout and publication drawings, we are finally making the final adjustments to the project. We are almost ready to go!

From one movie to another we finally made it! That's a wrap MSA Live. Thank you for the amazing experience. Working on this project was very valuable, not only working with real people but creating connections and meeting fantastic students.