Name: Yiyuan Cao
Atelier: FLUX
Undergraduate: University of Kent
Skills: Digital model makings (Rhino and SketchUp); Physical model making; Hand drawing; Photoshop; Illustrator; InDesign; AutoCAD
Hobbies: Participating in musical performances; Practicing photography skills; Listening music
Fun fact: Hiking for lovely scenery

Name: Yuxin Teng
Atelier: Infrastructure Space
Undergraduate: Xi'an Jiao-tong Liverpool University
Skills: PS, AI, ID, Pr, AutoCAD, Rhino, Enscape, Lumion
Hobbies: Music, Fashion, Vintage, Travel, Movies
Fun fact: I can read tarot

Name: Anjali Biju
Atelier: &rchitecture
Undergraduate: Manchester School of Architecture (MSA)
Skills: Photoshop, Indesign, Model making, Sketching
Hobbies: Nature Photography, Dance, Flower Arranging
Fun Fact: I like listening to podcasts when I’m stressed.

Name: James Farrimond
Atelier: Infrastructure Space
Undergraduate: Sheffield Hallam
Skills: model making, photoshop, indesign, AutoCAD
Hobbies: Live music gigs, visiting art galleries
Fun Fact: I met Raheem Sterling in the pub once!

Name: Lauritz Kobor
Atelier: Infrastructure Space
Undergraduate: Uni of Innsbruck, Austria
Skills: Rhino, Model making, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AutoCAD
Hobbies: Any mountaineering sport
Fun fact: I don’t know

Name: Leila Hooshmand
Atelier: &rchitecture
Undergraduate: University of Shiraz
Skills: Rhino, Revit, Grasshopper, Photoshop, InDesign, AutoCAD, Lumion
Hobbies: Gym, Running
Fun fact: Always want to be social and then decide to go home and be alone.

Town generation: Florence Art Centre is in a small town called Egremont in Cumbria. This exhibition may help to strengthen the interaction not only between town centre and FAC, but also between Egremont and neighbour city in Cumbria.

Community: The exhibition will encourage people to build a community surrounded by FAC by supporting local businesses and communication. This will increase diversity, and provide a stronger sense of community.

Art: This exhibition may arise residents' and visitors' attention of art education, and provide more opportunities for children and artists.

Environmentally friendly: During this exhibition, we won't leave any trash onto the site, and we will use environmentally friendly material.

The process and environment of working with our team will be fun and productive. Our team of MArch1 will work and study with BA students, and we believe we can learn a lot from each other's way of working. The two-week project is divided into two main phases, each lasting about one week, the first phase is the exhibition design phase and the second is the implementation phase. During this time, you will learn the ability to express your own design ideas, the ability to work as a team, the ability to redraw the history of the site and the composition of design ideas, and the ability to redraw and analyse the city.

As we work with each other, students from the MArch1 team can also mentor you on the software. You can learn a range of software that aim to digital models such as rhino, Sketchup and Revit. Other software skills such as AutoCAD, Photoshop, illustrator as well as InDesign will be learned and used by BA students during the design process.

OUR COLLABORATOR : FLORENCE MINE & ARTS CENTRE

Historic England: Grade II Listed

‘Florence Mine in West Cumbria is one of the best-surviving mining sites of any type nationally and is the best-surviving example of an iron mining pit head in England: it retains a full suite of buildings complete with nearly all of its machinery and equipment.’ The mine is linked to the local area's economic and industrial history; its closure followed trends in the decline of mining and steel production in England. The arts centre sits adjacent to the historic mine and is home to a gallery, performance space and artist studios. Their ethos centres around the environment, using sustainable means to practice creativity and to support local artists within their community. The arts centre runs workshops for the local community. They also have two full time paint markers on site – who produce paints, pastels and inks from the iron ore which was historically mined on site.

Our aim: we would like to continue the centre's ethos by creating an exhibition to showcase work from Infrastructure Space from MSA. In the first semester of this academic year, MArch1 students from the atelier proposed reuse projects for the existing Florence Mine. Where better to exhibit the work than on site itself. Our collaborators are keen for us to design and curate the exhibition, a great opportunity for anyone interested in gallery/exhibition design.

WEEK 1 // DAY ONE: We kick-started our MSA Live journey with a quick icebreaker exercise to introduce the MArch to the BA students and vice versa, this was followed by a presentation from the MArch students introducing Group 37’s MSA Live brief and discussing outcomes for the next 2 weeks. Collaborative design ideas and thoughts were discussed and curated through mood boarding as a team on miro which in the evening session aided in the initial sketching exercise conducted to explore initial exhibition framework prototypes. We had Polina Chizhova who visited us and presented a presentation on curation and the process behind it. This presentation helped us as a team to understand how to curate projects with a deeper understanding and consideration of the space and materials that we would be using and interacting with, this was a valuable presentation for our team as we learned skills to not only implement in our MSA Live project but for future exhibitions, we will be presenting in our architectural journey.

WEEK 1 // DAY TWO: Today we split the team into two groups one team took on Polina’s advice from yesterday and began curating the Infrastructure Space work from the first semester. The others built on our sketches from yesterday and continued to develop the exhibition design. Sam from Infrastructure Space joined us for a design tutorial which gave us ideas on detailing the exhibition stands and sustainable timber joint construction. After lunch, the curation team looked through all the Portfolios and started to categorise the work into subthemes based on their focus, including Heritage, Industry, environmental and cultural. Rhino whiz Lauritz gave a beginner’s tutorial on the software to the BA students who then began modelling the designs on Rhino.

WEEK 1 // DAY THREE: We all returned to one big group today, the morning was designated to curating and we ran through portfolios looking for 5 key drawings from each which can be taken to the exhibition. In the afternoon, we physically modelled our design within the Florence Art Centre exhibition space. We used the model to experiment with different iterations of how the exhibition stands could be used and their flexibility in the gallery space. A smaller group of us visited B-15 to speak about our designs and materiality with the workshop team – this really helped us develop the design and assess its feasibility. We went away and redesigned some of the hinges between the exhibition panels.

WEEK 1 // DAY FOUR: Today we talked to Pete about the production process and material selectional, this allowed us to explore and conduct cost analysis and a timescale of manufacturing of panels for the exhibition space. The team also explored different iterations of the hinge design process to create an exhibition where its form could be manipulated to maximise the space it is in and discussed structure stability to withstand the load of exhibition boards.

WEEK 2 // DAY ONE: We kicked off week two by catching up on the weekend and began developing iterations of our exhibition design within the gallery space at Florence Arts Centre. By lunch, we had 15 iterations to work with finally cutting it down to 2. The two were then amended to suit building regulations such as fire and access which led to us finally collectively voting on our favourite layout. On the curating side, we have begun creating poster layouts for the portfolios we ran through in week 1. Also, we have been working on some background information which will accompany the exhibition, such as the history of the site, how the site was surveyed and the MArch PS1 brief.

WEEK 2 // DAY TWO: We were back in our two teams today. The curation side put together a presentation for our meeting with our collaborator Sue and continued with creating posters of the portfolios. The design team were busy in B15 prototyping our exhibition panels at a 1:1 scale – they had a productive day and will be in B15 a couple more days prototyping. In the afternoon, the curation team met up with Sue (our collaborator) to run through our designs and ideas for the exhibition. Sue was happy with the way things are progressing and directed us into looking into how we can engage the public with the exhibition more. 

WEEK 2 // DAY THREE: We caught up with the design/build team to check the progress of the prototype exhibition panels – they’ve created the timber hinges which are looking great! The prototype is successful so far. The curation team reflected on Sue’s comments from the previous day and came up with some titles for the exhibition at Florence Arts Centre. To take a break from putting together exhibition panels we designed some seating for the exhibition and did a little sketch up tutorial on modelling the seating designs. Some of the design/build team continued constructing the prototype whilst others began to create the construction sequence so the process can be copied to easily create more panels in the future. We have begun to discuss the lifecycle of the exhibition and ideas for its repurposing after multiple exhibitions.

WEEK 2 // DAY FOUR: Everything seemed to come together today! The team who has spent the past few days working on building the prototype completed and brought their work up to the studio for everyone to see. We are all extremely happy with how it turned out – to think the design was just a sketch this time last week! The curation team completed the final poster layouts and has now begun printing some examples to pin to the prototype frame. After speaking to our collaborator Sue the other day, it was raised how important the exhibition title is. We threw out some ideas for the title and then after a democratic vote we landed on Beneath the Surface: Architectural Visions for Repurposing Florence Mine. 

Week2 // Day 5: WE FINISHED !! On the last day of MSA Live, we quickly debriefed with our BA students and presented the publication our MArch had been creating over the 2 weeks. We later printed some of our posters which we had curated as a team and pined these up on our 1.1 prototypes, we pitched our panels to Richard and Sam and it was smiles all around! To end our MSA Live journey, the MArch submitted the publications and all did a happy dance.