Course: MArch 1
Atelier: FLUX

Hi, I’m Eleanor!

I completed my Bachelor’s in Architecture at the University of Liverpool, and after graduating in summer 2023 moved to Manchester for my Part I Architectural Assistant experience. After a year of working in practice, I joined the MSA to start the Masters course.

During my year in practice, I worked on a variety of projects specialising in social housing, estate regeneration and community projects. One of my highlights of working in practice is attending and running community engagement events, getting to interact and hear feedback from residents. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in practice and continue to work part-time here alongside the course.

I am really looking forward to this project collaborating with students and The Canal and River Trust to create an exciting new space on the water, helping to celebrate the local community and the docks!

Our first Site Visit!

Last month, we travelled as a group to visit the Salthouse Dock in Liverpool, the site for the new floating activity hub. In the morning, we met with the Canal & River Trust team based in Liverpool, who took us on a boat tour around the docks! It was a great opportunity to hear more about all the work they do around the docks; the life underwater that they encourage, and their ambitions for the future. We were also able to see the condition of the existing floating structure which was damaged beyond repair after a storm in early 2024.

In the afternoon, we had the chance to sit down with Donald Insall Associates alongside the Canal & River Trust, who talked us through the work they're currently involved in on the docks, such as the International Slavery Museum and the Canning dock. This was a valuable insight into how the docks are evolving and gave us important context to consider when designing the new floating activity hub.

The site visit was a great team day out, allowing us to get to know the collaborators better and situate the project in its historic surroundings. We look forward to starting design work and, hopefully, another site visit to the Docks in May!

Day 2!

A day of site explorations through sketches, historic desktop analysis and starting to map the site! We split into focused groups to explore different methods of site analysis, understanding the site’s significance and its main opportunities and challenges, such as its sensitive heritage setting.

From our immersive site visit yesterday, we took plenty of photos on the water and the surrounding context around the pontoon to bring back with us to Manchester. We collected these together and used these to capture the atmosphere of the site through sketches, serial visions and mixed-media collages.

Meanwhile, our history team delved into the rich history of the docks, unearthing stories of their significance to the city, as well as the background of our clients, The Canal & River Trust.

Lastly, our mapping team got stuck into the technical side and worked hard to learn on the spot. Our Master’s students mentored the BA students in the tools Digimap and AutoCAD, to produce key base maps to sketch and annotate over. This spontaneous peer learning brought a great energy to the room.

It was a great day to come together to reflect on the site visit and get to know each other better. We’re looking forward to continuing this momentum tomorrow.

Day 4!

We began the day with group presentations, reflecting on the findings from our site visit and desktop research. The presentations were divided into historic analysis, mapping of key views and access, and site serial visions and collages. It was exciting to see the work come together and build confidence with presenting in front of the group.

In the afternoon, we introduced a new task: storyboarding the potential key actors of the site. We showed different methods to convey this, such as through a comic book style or Sarah Wigglesworth's dining table before use, in-use and after use. We also discussed who these key actors may be, from fish in the docks to students and the key design considerations these each pose. This was a great task to get the creativity and conversation flowing.

Day 6!

To kick-start the design week, we developed our conceptual designs from last week, beginning the process by drawing sketch plans, elevations, and sections. To warm up and bring some energy in the morning, we also played a few games such as the time guesser and food guesser!

In the afternoon, the Masters students each showed their portfolios to help the undergraduate students get a feel for each of our different ateliers; from [CPU]ai and Infrastructure Space to &rchitecture and FLUX. Lastly, to help set up the activities for tomorrow we held an introductory AutoCAD workshop as we take the sketch designs into the next, more technical stage.

Day 7!

Today, we focused on finalising our sketch proposals and taking these into technical drawings and 3D designs on AutoCAD, Rhino and SketchUp. Seeing the proposals take shape is exciting, from organic jellyfish-inspired shapes to more function-led designs. This task is key in communicating our designs confidently in our catch-up with Donald Insall Associates tomorrow!

We look forward to presenting and getting feedback / support on our work-in-progress designs, with a heritage emphasis. This will help to progress our designs towards completion for the client presentation on Friday.

Day 8!

We had a great day meeting with Jack from Donald Insall who are our heritage consultants on this project! In the morning, we prepared our presentations for the informal review, scanning in sketches to show our process and work-in-progress designs to evidence the development of these initial concepts, from jellyfish to Scandinavian-inspired pontoons. This illustrates the array and variety of designs and the different scales of ambition these present for the client to consider.

After lunch, we walked over as a group to their Manchester office in the Northern Quarter. Some of the feedback we received in the meeting was to diagram our ideas more to show the flexibility of the spaces, which is key to the brief. Jack was also keen to see the human activity in plan and section to show the different types of uses that the designs afford.

This visit was a great opportunity for the undergraduates to present in a professional setting and ask any questions, both project-wise and career-wise! We’re looking forward to implementing this feedback and finalising our designs over the last two days.

Day 9!

This is the last push towards our final outputs and client presentation tomorrow! Our master's students delivered an introductory tutorial on rendering in Lumion and how to situate designs in more context and with more textures. We then went on to put our different designs into the software, bringing them to life as key visuals in our proposals.

Some of us are also developing collage visuals for a more hands-on aesthetics to complement the dock's as a cultural and creativity hotspot.