Studio NOW

What is NOW? How long is NOW?

Designing can be a contradictory process. At once making for the present, with the inherent optimism of forming something for the future, whilst also considering and referencing our shared histories. Our understanding of what is ‘NOW’, and how that affects future ‘NOWs’ is critical if we are to address the challenges ahead.

Studio NOW addresses pertinent questions being asked ‘NOW’ in architectural practice. Within the freedoms of an academic context we discuss the priorities for architecture in the UK, looking back to celebrated and debated histories, while also looking forward towards sustainable yet uncertain futures. We simply ask, how can we design ‘NOW’?

This year we have been looking at production and industry, testing new ideas that explore how these uses can remain part of our urban environment. We considered how existing buildings could be re-used as well as thinking about how our newly designed buildings could be re-used for future NOW’s.

The Productive City

“How Long is Now is half melancholic sigh of resignation, half utopian gesture.
On the one hand it laments the quality of lived time as a continual perishing of
the instant, the present moment. On the other, it suggests the eternal significance that the present moment might hold for us”
Long Now Foundation

Over the past decades, the renewal of our cities has been accompanied by the rapid growth of services and knowledge economy. But in our effort to turn the city into an attractive living and working environment, we have also driven out our industry. Productive areas disappear into the outskirts, turning the city into a place of consumption, without production. We feel this is problematic.

A productive city is a healthy city. This year Studio NOW continues its research into the resurgence of our cities, placing a focus on production rather than consumption. We look to create resilient networks at building and city scale through the densification of healthy light industrial workspace uses.

A light industrial incubator forms the first semester brief. New adaptable buildings are designed as testbeds to bring small scale production back to our urban centers. In semester two the students develop an institute of production each with their own dedicated material research. Both projects are located in Liverpool’s Fabric District, an area in flux that has the potential to become the cities productive hub.

On our field trip, the studio explored Milan and studied the eclectic mix of styles and building programmes the city has to offer.

Header Image:  Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt – The Museum in the Park – William Jenner

Tutors

Alexander Turner
Graham Burn
James Crawford
Daniel Wiltshire

Special Thanks

Leonora Aigbokhae Public Practice
Ione Braddick Public Practice
Mat Barns CAN
Rachel Cronin Piercy & Company
Joanne Edmunds shed km
Laura Gaskell Haworth Tompkins
Owen Hopkins Farrell Centre
Emma Loughnane Studio MUTT
Ben Machin Architect Benjamin Machin
Huma Mahmood Studio MUTT
Anna Parker Intervention Architecture
Mehrnoush Rad make
Sayan Skandarajah Reading University
Edward Turner Studio MUTT
Manijeh Verghese Architecture Association
Choon Yuan Wang Studio MUTT
Hannah Wilson Piercy & Company
Katerina Antonopoulou UoL
Naeem Biviji UoL
Christina Malathouni UoL
Ola Uduku UoL
Nick Webb UoL
Mark Shtanov nobalsa
Sophi Percival studio sp