Name: Fraser Matthews (MArch 1)
Atelier: Continuity (CTY)
About me:
As a graduate of CTY at BA level, I have long had an interest in heritage. I believe that high quality existing buildings are the biggest asset to interventions in any built environment.
I am interested in responsibly transformative urban architecture. The lens in which I view urban interventions is usually concerned with the political and social. I am especially interested in the targeted interventions of our project, aiming to address specific social issues through architecture, while honouring the fantastic physical heritage of Bradford’s buildings.

Undergrad study: Manchester School of Architecture
Skill: Revit, Enscape, Photoshop, Procreate, InDesign

Wednesday 21st February

Our group, along with Group 29, met with our shared collaborator in Bradford for a tour of the City Hall, a major source of Bradford’s pride in its heritage. This is not just a grand building, but a centre of Bradford's council and is actively used and maintained. We as a group wish all of Bradford's exceptional heritage could be treated similarly.

Jade Ibegbuna, our collaborator, was an exceptional help and discussing Bradford with her is always a joy.

Wednesday 21st February

We walked along a route through the city, taking notes and photographs, familiarising ourselves with the city.

We began to take notes on vacant architecture, prominent buildings, social issues and the broader urban grain of Bradford.

Wednesday 21st February

We attended a presentation on Bradford City of Culture 2025. The fourth city to win this opportunity, Bradford will host 12 months of festivities celebrating art, culture and its own sense of place.

We will situate our own interventions within this – attempting to add to and enhance multiple placemaking and improving schemes.

We also discussed other overlapping projects, such as the Townscape Heritage Scheme (coming to an end) and the Heritage Action Zone, which we will unpack more when we visit the site with our BA students.

Wednesday 21st February

While our project site is distanced from Bradford university itself, we are eager to consider young people’s usage of the city in our scheme. Bradford is the youngest city in the country, so addressing this demographic is key.

March (multiple days)

As a team we produced a poster to represent our project and conveyed our key aims and approach, as well as letting the younger BA students know which skills are to be expected to be used or taught by us.

Monday 18th March

Breaking down, in detail, our aspirations for each day. Week 1 will include research and preparation as younger students familiarise themselves with Bradford, its heritage, and various plans to improve its built environment.

Later in Week 1 we will visit the site, giving students the opportunity to reflect on Bradford and choose specific buildings, sites and streets, taking notes and making sketches.

Monday 18th March

A more structured, output-led Action Plan. Week 2 will focus on taking our ideas and producing high quality sketches, diagrams and modelling which would all be preprepared the week before.

We will produce Serial Visions, Masterplans and Axonometric of our interventions.

This is assembled into a publication, with descriptive text, which will match the style and typeface of our poster.

3rd May

Fraser has been arranging the details of our site visit on Thurs 9th with our collaborator, and it become clear that extra assistance from the council would help our team understand what is already happening in Bradford.

Fraser spoke informally over the phone with the Landscape Architect and Team Leader for Landscape, Design and Conservation at Bradford Council, Dr Saira Ali, about other projects such as the Darley Street Market and the Bradford City Village scheme. We agreed to expand on this discussion on Thurs 9th but this provided a much needed overview of what the students needed to be aware of before visiting the site.

We discussed the following schemes:
• Transforming Cities Fund
• Heritage Action Zone
• Townscape Heritage Scheme
• City Village residential scheme
• The new Darley Street Market

7th May

Morning presentation by Fraser, taking the students through an introduction to Bradford and our original MSA Live brief as well as our own interpretation and goal.
We explained that Bradford is undergoing regeneration through a variety of schemes and that our work would involve understanding these schemes and what we might do differently.
In addition, we brought with us examples of past publications from previous MSA Live projects to show younger students what kind of work is expected from an MSA Live team.

7th May – DAY ONE

Afternoon discussion led by Mariam, Mi and Pranali. We encouraged feedback and discussion rather than strictly presenting our own ideas and findings.

We discussed what we had learned earlier in the day regarding Bradfords rich heritage, student perceptions of Bradford, Bradford’s status as a young city. We talked to them about our site visit conducted in February and walked them through Google street views to familiarise them with the site and the city.

We also answered student questions and provided information about Thursdays’ site visit, as well as loosely assigning roles based on skill, interest, and potential development.

8th May – DAY TWO
We spent our second day focused on more in-depth site analysis, setting up shared folders for each of the following schemes:
• Transforming Cities Fund
• Heritage Action Zone
• Townscape Heritage Scheme
• City Village residential scheme
• The new Darley Street Market
• Culture is Our Plan (2021 - 2031)
We wanted to give students the opportunity to see where the “gaps” were in the various projects. In addition, we researched and discussed critical social issues and deprivation in Bradford, namely the high rate of building vacancy and homelessness.
We also researched:
• Specific vacant buildings
• Landmark buildings with a deep heritage
• Transport routes and links
• Precedent studies for buildings and building reuse and streetscape interventions
• Limits and scope of project, including specific site boundaries

7th and 8th May – DAY ONE & TWO
While the main group work was ongoing, Fraser has been emailing our collaborator and engaging in cross-group discussion with Group 29 to negotiate the best use of our time on-site on Thursday 9th.

We checked our collaborators initial plan and offered notes and changes, receiving the final timetable on the 8th at midday.

9th May – DAY THREE – SITE VISIT
Introduction by our Bradford City council collaborator, Jade, giving us a recap of our collaboration up to this point and showing us, and especially the younger students, updates on the Bradford ‘Culture is Our Plan’ branding and intentions. This particular project is the context in which all other projects we discuss will be situated in, as it is a decade-long plan to rejuvenate and celebrate Bradford’s cultural sector.
Ethics forms signed by Jade before walking tour.

9th May – DAY THREE – SITE VISIT

New Darley Street Market site visit where we met people working on the project and were encouraged to ask questions about the project. Our own efforts would be very close to this market, so this was a good indicator of what kind of development was ongoing.
We then divided into 2 groups with the 1st focusing on key buildings and the 2nd on key streets and views. Sketches were begun and we documented as much as we could through notes and photography.
We also toured the bounds of the ‘Heritage Action Zone’ with Richard Middleton, a townscape heritage project officer, where he spoke about Bradford’s history and the challenges in the project such as ‘conservation deficit’ and provided further information of surrounding regeneration projects.

9th May – DAY THREE – SITE VISIT

We adjourned for lunch back at the Alambra Theatre, where Richard Middleton, a townscape heritage project officer, walked the younger students through a presentation on Bradford City of Culture 2025, similar to the presentation the MArch students were given in our initial site visit.
This was granular and detailed enough to include details such as branding colours.

9th May – DAY THREE – SITE VISIT

The group was once again split into 2, where the 1st were taken by Jade on a guided visit on the town hall. The MArch students had previously had a similar tour, so only one of us went with the BA students for this.
The remaining MArch students, and the 2nd group, started working on serial vision sketches, simple vignettes of the journey we took through Bradford earlier in the day.
These activities saw us through to 16:30 where we gathered again to take our agreed-upon coach home.

10th May – DAY FOUR

On Friday morning, we engaged as a group in an exercise with a printed map and pens. We selected buildings we had sketched and studied during the site visit, and especially the street connecting them. This established a spacial narrative of the townscape and the BA students were enthusiastic in bringing their own ideas and experience of the city.
This mapping exercise ensured all of us understood which streets we would be focusing on, and which key building we would suggest improvement for (many of which were partially or fully vacant).
We also briefed our BA students on their roles, which can be split up into the following:
• Site sketches
• Site modelling on SketchUp and Rhino

10th May – DAY FOUR

In the afternoon, ourselves and our BA students had formally split into two groups:
• Site sketches – those who enjoy sketching created 6-10 polished vignettes of our journey through Bradford. We asked these students to research “serial visions” by architect Gorden Cullen for reference to the style of images we expect, while also encouraging them to also show off their own styles.

• Site modelling on SketchUp and Rhino – led by Mariam and Mi. This involved showing younger students what practises are best for setting up a site model efficiently and then delegating students a range of buildings to work on in pairs or as individuals. Modelling the building exterior was key, as the depth of our project generally extends only to what kinds of new programme our buildings might require, as well as later intervention into the building frontages themselves in Week 2.