Day 3 of the Possibility Machine!

Today was all about bringing ideas to life through model-making and thinking in scale. Each group tackled a different aspect of the machine, pushing boundaries while keeping it grounded in SHEAFS – our school’s design values: Sustainable, Healthy, Ethical, Accessible, Fair, and Safe.

Group 1 explored shelter, creating clever shade solutions using layered fabrics. They got inventive—using balloons to model perforated, dappled shadows and gathering recycled textiles from the School of Fashion. Smart, sustainable, and full of texture!

Group 2 focused on mark-making surfaces, imagining how the client could co-create art with the community. They made the most of the client’s recycled materials, thinking big to maximise creative space and collaboration.

Group 3 tackled stability, designing grounding interventions that ensure the machine is safe and secure wherever it’s used.

Together, the teams balanced practicality with possibility, and function with imagination. The result? A truly thoughtful machine that’s as inspiring as it is responsible.

Day 4 (Morning) – The Possibility Machine Arrives!

This morning marked an exciting milestone—we welcomed Joseph to Manchester, and with him came the skeleton of the Possibility Machine!

The first challenge? Hauling all the parts up to the third floor of MTC—our makeshift construction zone. No small feat, but the team rose to it with energy and teamwork.

Once everything was safely upstairs, the focus shifted to assembly. Piece by piece, the framework started to take shape, ready to receive each group’s creative interventions. The Possibility Machine is coming to life!

Day 4 (Afternoon) – Assembling Ideas and the Machine!

After lunch, excitement was in the air—the Possibility Machine was officially assembled! With the structure standing tall, each group presented their design ideas to Joseph, sharing their visions for stability, mark-making surfaces, and shelter.

It was a brilliant moment of collaboration, feedback, and fresh perspective. Spirits were high, and of course, we capped it off with a wholesome group photo—smiles all around!

This afternoon marked a major turning point: the team finally got hands-on with the physical build—the part we’ve all been waiting for.

Wish them luck as they take the next steps in bringing their designs to life!

BA Students: From Concept to Construction: Shelter, Stability, Surface

After presenting their proposals to the client last Thursday, our brilliant BA students swiftly transitioned into the next stage of the project, design resolution and build prep for The Possibility Machine. With energy, imagination, and a lot of hands-on hustle, they’ve begun gathering materials, planning their interventions, and gearing up to bring their ideas to life on site.

Working in three focused groups, Shelter, Stability, and Surface, each team responded to the client’s evolving brief with care, creativity, and collaboration:

🌀 Shelter – Led by Maddie (with some hands-on support from Taoran), this group developed a beautifully holistic fabric shelter that fits seamlessly onto the existing trolley frame. Meeting the client’s needs for shade and playful interaction, Maddie sourced recycled textiles through some ingenious Lowry building “dumpster diving,” turning fabric scraps into a controllable mess-making canopy.

⚖️ Stability – Irmak and Elena formed the grounding force of the build, designing and prototyping wire footings to stabilise the machine in unpredictable outdoor settings. Their design responds directly to the mobility and safety challenges of the site, providing much-needed anchoring.

🖍️ Surface – Sana, Regine, and Alyssa reimagined The Possibility Machine’s creative core: its surfaces. Using repurposed timber and incorporating fragments of Joseph’s collaborative artwork from the previous iteration, they developed a series of playful, squiggly workspaces perfect for mark-making and engagement.

Throughout the process, the students have worked not only with the client but with one another, adapting designs to ensure coherence across groups and contributing to a shared vision (their scale model is testament to this!) With guidance and support from Sofia, Shiv, and Hannah, they've navigated everything from sourcing to problem-solving with curiosity and dedication.

Tomorrow, the real-world testing begins. But already, their thoughtful, initiative-driven work shows how design can respond to community, context, and collaboration in powerful ways.

Stay tuned as The Possibility Machine comes to life!

Day 5: Stitching, Shaping, and Structuring: The Build Continues

As the build phase of The Possibility Machine gains momentum, Day 5 saw our BA students diving deeper into the making process, testing ideas, refining details, and bringing their collaborative visions to life.

🧵 Shelter – Maddie and Taoran began assembling the recycled fabric canopy, laying out and stitching pieces onto a carefully shaped pattern-piece, developed with the support of Sofiah, Shiv, and Hannah. With extra hands from Gongxin, Liu, and April, the fabric collage began to take form—an evolving patchwork of colour and texture that will provide both shade and play for the machine’s users. Hannah continued to support the Shelter team with hands-on guidance throughout the day.

⚖️ Stability – Irmak and Elena made strong progress refining their wire-frame “stability baskets.” These baskets are designed to hold site-sourced weights like rocks, grounding The Possibility Machine against wind and uneven terrain. The duo experimented with form and fit, developing a modular structure that is as functional as it is adaptable.

🛠️ Surface – Sana, Regine, and Alyssa cut and prepared their repurposed timber panels, carving out the mark-making surfaces that will invite public interaction. With design help from Shiv, They also developed and constructed a key structural element: a module to support the machine’s extendable table. The workshop build was expertly overseen by Sofiah and Scott, who provided practical guidance and ensured safe and effective construction throughout.

As always, the day was fuelled by collaboration, adaptability, and inventive problem-solving. With every fabric strip sewn, wire bent, and surface 'squiggled', The Possibility Machine edges closer to its full, multi-functional artistic form.

More to come as the build takes shape!

Day 6: Stitching, Strengthening, and Structural Ingenuity

Despite being a slow Monday (as they always are), Day 6 was all about momentum! Refining details, strengthening structures, and pushing collaborative making even further. The students continued to adapt and respond dynamically to the build’s evolving needs, pooling their skills and resources to make the most of recycled materials and collective energy.

🧵 Shelter – Maddie, Sofiah, and Taoran pressed on with the fabric canopy, continuing to source additional materials and stitch together the shelter in line with their original pattern-piece. They remained in constant iteration mode, tweaking and adjusting to ensure the structure fit the machine and its movements. Their patchwork shelter is growing into a beautifully messy, functional form, offering shade and sensory engagement all at once.

⚖️ Stability – With their wire-frame stability baskets complete and client-approved, Elena and Irmak officially wrapped up the stability component on Monday. Their thoughtful and lightweight solution met the design brief with elegance and efficiency, allowing them to now shift their focus and energy into new areas of the build.

🛠️ Surface + Structure – As a newly expanded group, Sana, Regine, and Irmak joined forces to continue the fabrication of key structural elements. (Elena was busy with design extensions - wish her luck!) Oversaw by Sofiah, the group focused on building strong, extendable supports for the machine’s table feature, an essential element for workshops and community engagement. Working with recycled bolts provided by the client and salvaged timber from B.15, the team demonstrated ingenuity and sustainability at every step.

Goodluck to Gongxin and Shiv today who are busy working on their dissertation extensions! 🍀

The build is entering its final stages, but the collaborative spirit remains high. With each screw tightened and seam stitched, The Possibility Machine grows more ready to roll into the world.


More soon from the workshop floor!

Day 7: Light, Layers & Last Touches – Prepping for the Client Visit

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!

As the countdown to The Possibility Machine’s soft launch continues, Day 7 brought a focused and full-on day of making. With a client reveal on the horizon, the teams pushed themselves to get every component presentation-ready, balancing refinement, construction, and care.

🧵 Shelter – Maddie, with helping hand Taoran, continued developing the fabric canopy, adding an inner lining that provides a clean, functional surface for the client to work beneath. Supported by Hannah, Maddie carefully stitched and layered recycled materials, ensuring both durability and delight. The outer layer features thoughtfully placed holes, allowing light to filter through and animate the canopy, creating a soft, glowing environment that offers shade, atmosphere, and interaction all at once. Harry showed up for the photo-op and helped a little!

🛠️ Surface + Structure – Irmak powered through a big day of making. Sana, Alyssa, Regine, and Elena were missed but were busy powering through other extensions. Irmak, overseen and helped by Sofiah and Scott at B.15, the team prepped, laminated, cut, and assembled the components of the extendable table, one of the machine’s key public-facing features. From material handling to structural precision, their focus was sharp, and their energy tireless. Tuesday’s efforts were especially intense, driven by the goal of getting everything client-ready for final feedback and any last tweaks ahead of Thursday’s site visit and soft launch.

📚 Behind the Build – In the background, Gongxin worked diligently on the project’s publication, crafting a record of the process that will accompany the machine and tell its story. Meanwhile, Liu, finance partner and resident snack master, kept the team energised and hydrated throughout the day, ensuring no one flagged in the final push.

From the stitching table to the workshop bench, today was a powerful reminder of what collective energy, care, and a deadline can do. The Possibility Machine is almost ready to roll, and it’s looking good.

Stay tuned for the next big milestone!

Day 8: Polishing, Assembling, and Preparing for the World

With the client visit just hours away, Day 8 was all about the final polish, bringing all the hard work of the past week into alignment and watching The Possibility Machine come to life in full.

🧵 Shelter – Maddie, with the support of Shiv and Hannah, mounted the fabric canopy onto the machine for the first time—carefully adjusting and tightening it to fit just right. The result? A beautifully strange, glowing shelter that transforms light into texture. The holes in the recycled outer layer cast dappled shadows through the clean inner surface, creating an environment that’s both alien and intimate. A huge well done to Maddie for bringing such a poetic and purposeful concept to life!

🛠️ Surface + Structure – Alyssa, Sana, Irmak, and Sofiah came together to assemble the final elements of the extendable table and mark-making surfaces. Their design resulted in a modular system of interchangeable panels, allowing the client to adapt and rearrange the surfaces based on activity, setting, or audience. Flexible, inventive, and future-ready, an excellent achievement from the team!

✨ Client Response – The client was more than overjoyed with the final outputs. Seeing the machine fully assembled and functioning, with each design element working cohesively, brought genuine excitement and gratitude. It was a powerful reminder of the real-world impact this collaborative project holds.

🌱 Core Values in Action – Today wasn’t just about finishing the build, it was a moment to reflect on what’s been accomplished. Every team held fast to our project’s core goals: mess-making, sustainability, creativity, and ethics. These principles align directly with the SHEAFS ethos of our school, and it’s a credit to the entire group that they were embedded not only in the final design but in the way the process unfolded.

🚚 Wrap-Up & Pack-Down – At the close of the day, Gongxin and Liu helped Joseph disassemble the machine and carefully transport each part from the MTC to his car, ready for tomorrow’s big site visit and soft launch. The final pieces are in place, the machine is ready to meet the world.

Well done, everyone. The Possibility Machine is almost out in the wild!

COLLABORATION 30X39
THE POSSIBILITY MACHINE X PLASTIC SHED

On Day 8 Possibility Machine and Plastic shed collaborated, hanging a recycled-plastic chandelier from the inside of the Possibility machine, exploring the endless possibilities of creative collaboration and drive!

Day 9: On the Road – The Possibility Machine Comes to Life

After 2 weeks of making, refining, and imagining, The Possibility Machine finally left the studio, and hit the road. Day 9 marked our much-anticipated site visit to Oswestry, where the project met the public for the first time.

🚌 The Journey – We travelled by coach—an hour and twenty minutes through sleepy roads and rolling countryside. The journey was filled with naps, snacks, uni work, and laughter. A quiet energy spread through the bus, part anticipation, part exhaustion, part pride.

🌤️ Arrival & Acclimatisation – Once we arrived, we met the client, Joseph, who encouraged us to explore the surroundings while he began initial setup. We wandered, took in the local atmosphere, and got a sense of the place The Possibility Machine would soon inhabit.

🛠️ Assembly – After 20 minutes, we returned to begin the reassembly. Joseph led the process, with students guiding and supporting, testing how our components performed outside the studio. This was a key part of the day: ensuring each design element was easy to mount, adaptable, and held up in the real world. Watching it all come together on site brought a new kind of satisfaction, our collective efforts translating from drawings and prototypes into something alive.

🚶‍♂️ Rolling into Town – With the machine fully assembled, we rolled it into Oswestry town centre. What followed was a burst of creative expression, we spread out, chalked the pavements, and left a trail of colour and curiosity. Locals stopped, smiled, and joined in. Conversations sparked. Hands got messy. Our inner children emerged, and for a few hours, The Possibility Machine did exactly what it was built for: inviting play, participation, and possibility.

🎨 Engagement & Goodbye – From mark-making to shared moments, the interaction with the community felt genuine and joyful. At 3pm, we helped Joseph disassemble the machine, packed up, and said our goodbyes. Tired but buzzing with pride.

🌟 Reflection – Today, we saw our work not just function but flourish. We watched something we built together come alive, and we watched people respond to it. That feeling of collaboration realised, of impact made, is hard to top. What an achievement.

Well done, everyone.

Design Summary: Shelter

Concept
The shelter canopy was designed to provide a soft, protective envelope over The Possibility Machine, offering shade, a sense of intimacy, and visual intrigue. Maddie’s concept responded directly to the client’s desire for sun protection and sensory engagement. Taking inspiration from ideas of controlled mess and patchwork aesthetics, the canopy became both a functional roof and an expressive, dynamic skin. A key feature was the incorporation of holes in the outer layer, allowing light to filter through in soft patterns, animating the space beneath and turning it into a place of quiet magic and possibility.

Construction
The shelter was constructed entirely from reclaimed fabrics, many of which were sourced by Maddie through material scavenge missions, including salvaging fabric scraps from the Lowry Building’s bins. The structure used a double-layer design: an outer patchwork skin of mixed-texture recycled fabrics, and an inner lining made from a single, clean surface to give clarity and definition from within. This duality—chaotic outer, calm inner, reflected the ethos of the machine as a space for messy, meaningful engagement. Stitching was done manually, with input and hands-on support from Taoran, Harry, Liu, and Gongxin, and design guidance from Shiv and Hannah.

Assembly
The shelter was mounted directly onto the client’s aluminium frame. Maddie, Shiv, and Hannah worked collaboratively to ensure the canopy was taut, well-fitted, and structurally stable. Thoughtful attention was given to the way it draped and interacted with the rest of the machine, maintaining visual coherence while remaining easy to dismantle and transport. The final result was both sculptural and practical—a highly adaptive covering that transformed the frame without overpowering it.

Use
In practice, the shelter provides shade for workshop activities, defines the space spatially and visually, and adds a soft layer of comfort and curiosity. The holes create shifting light effects throughout the day, drawing people in and offering a dynamic quality to the interior. It marks The Possibility Machine as a zone of focused play, and its tactile, handmade quality speaks directly to the values of reuse, creativity, and care at the heart of the project.

Design Summary: Stability

Concept
The steel wire basket feet were designed to provide stability to The Possibility Machine, anchoring it securely in outdoor, public, and uneven environments. Inspired by the gabion-style rock cages often seen at the sides of motorways, used for erosion control and structural reinforcement, these wire forms brought an industrial yet pragmatic elegance to the design. The concept was driven by the need for flexible, removable weight distribution that didn’t compromise mobility or aesthetics.

Construction
Designed and developed by Irmak and Elena, the baskets were crafted from malleable yet durable steel wire, shaped into open cages that could be filled with heavy materials (rocks, bricks, or other found weight). Their modularity allowed them to be adapted for different terrains and weight needs, while their open form made them visually light and spatially unobtrusive. The simplicity of the form belied its strength, and the team iterated on scale, form, and attachment to ensure a secure and balanced outcome.

Assembly
The baskets were attached to the base of the machine frame, strategically placed to counterbalance the height and uneven weight of other components. The design allowed for quick placement and removal, making them ideal for a machine that needs to be both grounded and mobile. The group worked closely with Joseph to ensure that the baskets integrated seamlessly with the frame's modular system.

Use
In practice, the baskets could be filled on-site with local rocks and materials, demonstrating adaptability and resourcefulness. They provide subtle but critical grounding to the machine, ensuring stability during movement and community engagement activities. Beyond their practical function, the baskets echoed the project’s themes of reuse, site-responsiveness, and low-tech ingenuity, showing how even the most utilitarian components can carry conceptual weight.

Design Summary: Surfaces

Concept
The surfaces were conceived as the primary output of The Possibility Machine, a space for mess-making, mark-making, and shared creativity. The design team (Sana, Regine, Alyssa, and later joined by Irmak and Elena) responded to the brief with an emphasis on playfulness, adaptability, and sustainability. Inspired by collaborative working, they developed a modular system of tables and surfaces that could be rearranged, replaced, or added to over time. The concept foregrounded process over perfection, celebrating impermanence, layering, and interaction with the community.

Construction
The surfaces were made using repurposed timber and components from previous versions of The Possibility Machine, notably recycling collaborative artworks made with the client, Joseph. Offcuts, laminated boards, and salvaged pieces were carefully cut, sanded, and treated by the team. Each surface was distinct in shape and texture, some “squiggly,” others more structured, allowing for a variety of drawing, writing, or assemblage activities to take place simultaneously.

Assembly
Mounted onto a modular extendable table designed by the group, the surfaces could be added, removed, and rearranged with ease. Attention was given to how these elements connected to the frame of the machine, ensuring structural support while maintaining a sense of lightness and impermanence. This flexibility was key: surfaces were not fixed monuments, but evolving platforms for engagement, remixing their designs on the day to further extend the possibilities of the surfaces. The team worked collaboratively, adjusting fittings and modules right up to the client visit, ensuring everything was presentation-ready and robust enough for the site visit.

Use
On site, the surfaces became the heart of the machine. Children and adults alike engaged with them, drawing, chalking, collaging, and leaving traces of their presence. The modular nature allowed the client to reconfigure the layout based on space, audience, or activity, making it a tool that could grow with each outing. The result was a joyful, evolving workbench of expression, grounded in ethical making, recycled materials, and a deep care for the users it was made to serve.