Studio 06 Brief: New Brighthelmstone.
The investigation for the year will focus on re-imagining the multi-layered territory of Pool Valley, an area once dedicated to supporting Brighton’s fishing industry and later for leisure, as the site of Brighton’s first seawater baths opened in 1769. Since 1929, Pool Valley has operated as the city’s principal coach station.
As designers we are party in the process of constructing the built environment. This however rarely takes place as a single act but is part of longer and wider process in the production of space and does not finish with the execution of any single architectural design. Evidence of lives and events, past and present, inhabit the built fabric, often bringing with them value for those who occupy and use these spaces. Our appreciation of this is crucial in order to prevent its erasure. Likewise, our understanding of our role in the creation of future interfaces and an ongoing enrichment of the environment is vital. The studio will engage with these concerns, working deeply within place and across time.
The studio interests will be explored through the premise that this territory is notable for its layering of uses which privilege movement: flow of water; bathing; transportation and which in turn rely on physical, social and economic structures which constrain, contain and connect.
Contrary to apparent logic, movement offers opportunities in the way that we develop propositional architecture and contemporary architectural references are numerous to support this design approach. Students will explore their own enquiries in relation to this method of working in developing their architectural investigations over the coming year.
k e y t h e m e s :
body and landscape; connective architecture; movement; natural and social ecologies; time-sensitive architectures