03/02/2026
This day marks our first meeting with each other, upon arrival group 24 got to discuss our different backgrounds, experiences, strengths and weaknesses to help better understand the group’s dynamic and workflow. We then shared potential group names, poster ideas, our interpretations of the brief provided and briefly researched the site’s context. Our following meeting with the collaborators was the highlight of the day as we got to thoroughly understand what is expected from us while getting to know John and Michelle, who are well settled in the industry. From then, we knew this collaboration with them would only teach us more.

Hi, I'm Juwan, I'm Lebanese but I've lived in the UAE my whole life. As a first-year student at MSA, I'm exited to be getting early hands-on experience in the real archietcture world, where I can interact and learn from people with diverse skills, backgrounds and experiences that can help me develop my own understanding of design and practice.

W3: 03/03/2026
For this week’s session, instead of all trying to discuss and resolve one decision together, we learnt to split into much smaller groups and trust each other’s abilities and decision-making to complete more tasks simultaneously, like drafting sketches onto site plans, conducting demographic research on our area, and carrying out a site analysis. We were much more productive compared to last week, and time flew by so fast this time!

W4: 17/03/2026
Although our group's attendence was low, we managed to finalise our proposed concept that we have been developing from precedents and the meetings with our collaborators. This then led us to start planning on how and where we would engage with the Salford community in order for them to inform how we would execute and design a space that would meet their demand.

W5.1: 24/03/2026
Attendance doubled! We are back on track after communicating how important it is for us to work collectively. Today marked our 3rd meeting with the collaborators; hence, we met earlier in the day, finalised our engagement along with visuals that we would incorporate into it. The community venue we were in contact with got back to us with the specific dates, and we sketched, then presented our developed ideas to the collaborators. This was our most productive day yet.

W5.2: 24/03/2026
Post collaborator meeting: In general, feedback was great! The collaborators were happy with our engagement strategy, and they gave us good advice on what to implement to make it even more engaging, especially for our non-architecture audience, like printing our precedents for them to choose from and potentially including a collage activity.
In terms of our layered section proposals, we started to consider alternative divisions of the theatre's interior space; however, this would be influenced by the outcome of our engagement activity.