Sheffield School of Architecture

‘The City must be formed from the culture of its residents; otherwise the city will begin to form its residents and become a tool that works against them.’
Hans Scharoun, Grundlinien der Stadtplanung 1946

The studio targets a City in Flux, as a ginger group1‘Working from within’, seeking opportunities of un-solicited, re-activist architectural intervention. Our aim is to change the perception of an area’s potential by responding to the needs and wellbeing of future occupants to establish a new community relevance.

Social Space

Interaction with the environment is filtered through socially determined actions. Foregrounding architecture as a “site of group co-ordination in space over time,”2; we will seek to launch indirect attacks on the status quo, creating participatory practices which are counter-hegemonic; resisting dominant expressions of heritage.

Situations

Initial explorations through constructed situations/settings will free the studio to operate beyond the architectural object. While exploring the potential of performative practices for re-activating architecture, the studio will have a visioning role, focused on place-making and experience. We will explore culture as though it were an infrastructure of equal status to transport and communication. Our territory is under-utilised, identified but stalled sites in a state of perceived valueless; areas that are apparently lacking conventional perceptions of ‘community.’

Spatial Practice

We will explore how our role as architects might be developed into that of concept managers or curators with on-going relationships to place-making, influencing policy, defining space, public use and participatory involvement. Through this continuous activity we will identify sites for pragmatic adaptation/appropriation creating an Architecture that challenges boundaries of political engagement and aesthetic perfection.

We aim to create proactive proposals for the city that are formed from the culture of its residents