Community and Contested Spaces

Architecture is a political practice, so students are encouraged to consider the impact of their design decisions on local and global communities living in a climate emergency. They devise building programmes that contribute to the development of a resilient city. We design with low carbon construction and re-use existing structures. Students engage in value judgments regarding the social and cultural value of existing buildings, their embodied carbon content, and the development and justification of appropriate strategies for intervention, repair and re-use. We use large scale models of architectural moments to explore how users experience our designs, considering aesthetics, internal environmental qualities, and construction.

The student’s first project employed timber construction and proposed a Community Kitchen for sites in Sefton Park. Their final project, Make Eat Share, explored how buildings on our campus could be re-purposed for making the things we use every day in sustainable ways, and to provide spaces that contribute to the social life of the city. Students began by studying and modelling these buildings, then researching an everyday object, to understand the process and impact of its production in a globalized world, alongside sustainable alternatives.

Students have used the existing structures in exciting and unexpected ways, creating useful and delightful spaces which illustrate the potential that exists in our built environment today.

Students

Studio Tutors

Emma Curtin LSA
Ranald Lawrence LSA
Michael Southern Architectural Emporium
Hazel Weir Hazel Weir Architecture

Special Thanks

Eamonn Canniffe Manchester School of Architecture
David Miller Heyne Tillet Steel
Ted Ruffell LSA
Squash Liverpool Project Client Consultants
Becky Vipond Squash Liverpool

Guest Critics

Daniel Aston-Clarke LSA
Alex Dusterloh LSA
Dan Gibson Gibson Architects
Finnegan Hulbert LSA
Tom James Tom James Artist, Absolute Beginners
Andrea Ku Friends of Sefton Park
Peter Mitchell FCB
Kelly Morris
Francesca Piazzoni LSA
Lucretia Ray LSA
Raphael Selby Page Park
May Tang Heatherwick
Dominic Walker Witherford Watson Mann Architects
Alexandra Williams Wilma Works
Patrick Zamarian LSA

Events of note

Manchester Field Trip
Sefton Park Field Trip
Squash Liverpool Visit
Granby Winter Garden Visit