The first meeting between team members and collaborators

The cooperators state the design requirements and sketch the sites.

Project Introduction:
Gorse Hill Studios (GHS) is a Youth & Community arts Charity based in south Manchester, the building and the space is an important part of the organisation, and the collaborator's vision is to make the area more accessible and match the needs of the people they serve, the space for us to design is an open and flexible garden in front of the building. The collaborator seeks an approach to develop a functional outdoor space for artwork exhibitions surrounded by green elements.

The first time of the site visit to the Gorse Hill Studio.

The garden in front of the building is small and faces many problems wait to be solved like side street noise and sunlight, etc. The narrow space also requires us to come up with a design approach to maximize the garden space area, try to design a furniture can satisfy the needs of both art exhibitions and feature of flexibility.

Our initial idea is to design a foldable furniture which can transform into a display board during the exhibition time and folded into a small block during the daily used to maximize the space area. At the meantime, we should also give this furniture a movable feature that can used to be a road guide for users.

Yuexuan Meng
Atelier // CPU
Qualification // BEng from Beijing University of Civil Engineering And Architecture
Skills // Adobe, Rhino, Grasshopper, Python, Lumion, Sketch Up, Autodesk (Revit, CAD)
Hobbies // Model Making, badminton

As the initial idea of a temporary plan, one of the tasks of the first day of the intensive week is to discuss and deepen the existing plan with the students in BA1 and BA2, and explore more possibilities.

Day 1 saw us meeting for the first time, and carrying out tasks outlined in our action plans.

We had an initial group discussion with self introductions and later split into two design discussion groups as per our project agendas - permanent and temporary structures.

With this we brainstormed in our groups and shared our design ideas as well as consolidating what we liked and what could be utilised as part of the site proposal. In addition, we also carried out some site analysis and 3D modelling for our proposed site.

Then we finished the day with a quick ice breaker and a debrief of the day.

Day 2 encompassed us preparing collage materials for our site visit on Day 3. Each member collated images that were in relation to enhancing the use and aesthetics of the site. This was targeted for the users of the site (children-youths-adults ranging from 5-25 year olds), thus a wide range of collaging elements were prepared.

Other than that, we also prepared and printed off site photos for the collage activity as well.

Day 3, we lead the students of BA1 and BA2 to visit the site. Verify and be familiar with the customer's needs and the site profile. At the same time, we had a collage activity prepared the day before with children aged 12-16, and each of the children contributed their own unique ideas, which played a key role in determining the direction of our subsequent design.

Day 4 comprised a consolidation and brainstorming session from the site visit on the previous day. We split into two groups and developed two masterplan proposals as per the brief. After a brief presentation and discussion of ideas, likes and dislikes of the proposals, we carefully curated a single masterplan proposal that everyone was content with.

After this, we split the masterplan into parts, having two or three members working on their designated part of the proposal. This was inclusive of schematic designs through sketching and digital modelling.

Before the end of the day, the MArch 1 students met with the individual groups and discussed their thought processes as well as outcomes of their brief design session, this was done so to ensure a more cohesive output for the proposal.