Adapting St. Vincent’s workshop

Introduction

Figure 1 Exterior of church (left) Sheffield City Centre (right)

On April 2^nd – 4^th, the AF team engaged with a cohort of enthusiastic undergraduate and graduate architecture students from Sheffield Hallam University to investigate the potential for adapting St. Vincent’s church and its large multi-tiered site that houses a collection of derelict buildings.  The three day workshop involved a series of exercises designed to encourage students to think about adaptability, the site and the use of film as a medium to communicate their architectural interventions.  The aim was to broaden their approach to design by thinking about their intervention(s) as a serious of small, incremental changes over time rather than one large transformational step at a single point in time, integrating ideas around time and change through a time-based medium (film), using new software.

Day one

What does adaptability mean to you?

Figure 2 Students present ideas about adaptability

After brief introductions, the students broke into three groups and spent the morning discussing adaptability.  The first exercise asked the students, ‘what does adaptability mean to you?’  After brainstorming their thoughts on post-its each group stuck their ideas on the wall and presented some of their core thoughts for discussion.  The students immediately picked up on some of the core issues surrounding adaptability, including looking both to the past as well as the future, allowing for an appropriate level of leeway and the interplay of context and the building.  The dialogue allowed the students to make connections between contingencies which exist outside the conventional understanding of what constitutes adaptability, unravelling synergies and tensions between several issues.  Figure 3 below captures the topics raised by the students with the underlined text highlighting some of the ones elaborated on in discussion.

Figure 3 Graphic capturing thoughts about adaptability

Types of change

The second exercise asked the students to think about the types of change that a building may have to endure over its life and plausible solutions to accommodate those scenarios over time.  In a similar fashion as the first exercise students discussed this in groups before presenting their thoughts to the collective.  They were asked to plot the scenarios and solutions on a timeline which featured cyclical periods of time (24 hour, 7 day and seasonal) as well as a linear timeline (Figure 3 and 4).  The exercise provided an opportunity for the students to think about how a building might need to change to accommodate different needs or conditions from day to night, weekday to weekend, spring to winter and over years of use.  An example of a solution that was talked about was the use of seasonal landscaping (e.g. shading from trees) to help mitigate climatic changes throughout the year rather than the use of mechanical systems. On the long-end of the timeline certain materials, building systems and use types were debated as lending themselves better to long-life durability and flexibility (and social acceptance).  An array of ‘side’ topics arose from the exchange including the fact that they had never really had to think about the long-term reality of buildings, particularly how to design for it.  One aspect that became clear is that all design interventions are temporal and whether we have designed for it or not, buildings change, so how can we ease the accommodation of that change while allowing for the integrity of our design to remain (since facility managers and/ or users probably won’t)?

Figure 4 Graphic illustrating captured changes/ solutions over time

Figure 5 Students present change scenarios

Site Investigation

After lunch, the students went to investigate and document the site.  In a slight contrast to simply photographing the site, students had to think about capturing sequence(s) of images rather than the perfect image to superimpose on to – the possibility of time lapse, dynamic photo montages and sequence photography are all methods to incorporate time into photography.  The integration of time reinforces the student to think about how one experiences or moves through the building, the site or the surrounding neighbourhood as opposed to a static object in Cartesian space.  It also strengthens understanding the building in its context as it begins to construct a narrative.  These of course are not new to architectural thinking, but an evolution in its explicit consideration as part of the representation/ communication process (for more on this thinking read Latour and Yaneva 2008, Give Me A Gun and I’ll make all buildings move).

The site, whilst only being a 10 minute walk away, felt disconnected from the city centre, separated by the B6329 – underlined by the fact that many of the students had never been past the church before.  The church’s site sits atop a hill and is heavily sloped and tiered into two main levels – the lower level consisting of a group of ancillary buildings.  At first glance, the exterior of the church appears like any other of its period that is still in operation, supported by the full parking lot (on both tiers).  But upon closer inspection the car park functions as a commuter parking lot, physical signs of a lack of care are evident and made abundantly obvious once stepping through the main door (Figure 5) where the interior of the church has been stripped of all its religious valuables and moved to the congregations new home 11 years ago.  The interior now is filled with an interesting sea of eclectic items, ranging from a large sofa chair to a hoover from the early 90s.  One can easily see traces of what was a beautifully ornate space with some of its décor in remarkably good condition while other pieces (including the confessional booths) in great disarray.

Figure 6 Interior of St. Vincent’s church

The students spent an hour documenting the site before retreating to the architectural office of Race Cottam, located on the adjacent corner, to hear from Mathew Hayman from the City Planning Department.  Matt presented a historic overview of the area (or quite simply its deterioration) and how the council hoped to see the site (re)developed in the future.  The presentation made clear the ambition for the church to once again become a focal point of the community, but at the same time illustrated the many issues which have hindered its reuse (e.g. perception of safety, neighbouring buildings, and low footfall in the area).

Opportunities and constraints of the site

Upon returning to the studio, students split back into their groups to reflect on the site conditions (constraints and opportunities), which were captured in a third discussion.  Many of the issues came out on both sides of the coin depending on how they were interpreted, some of the key topics discussed were the lack of amenities in the area, the building’s historic value, its massive scale, site accessibility, ownership and building regulations (the topics are captured in Figure 7 below).  Some of the key questions amongst the groups that began to take prevalence included:

• How can better use be made of what they have now?
• What are the quick wins that can be done without large investment from any one organisation?
• What kind of temporary activities (quick and dirty) could draw a range of groups together to generate excitement and appreciation for the site in preparation for a larger investment in the future?
• Who would want to take on a longer term investment in the site?  How could this be shared amongst different organisations?
• In building momentum, how do you engage with the growing, energetic, yet transient community of students in the area, providing them with a reason to interact with the site?
• Can you connect to/ build off of the soon to be complete Edward Street Park (what value / activity will that add to the area)?
• Can you tie into one or both of the universities or the success of the Creative Arts Development Space (given the neighbouring student accommodations)? (i.e. how do you link to large communities not necessarily associated with the area)
• Can you connect to the commuters who use the parking lot? (e.g. day care/ after school programme?) Or with the owner/ church community?
• Can you improve on the site’s connectivity to the centre? The surrounding uses/ amenities?
• How do you use and/ or improve on the area’s topographic barriers?

Figure 7 Opportunities and constraints around the site

Mapping and Storyboarding

The day concluded with a presentation on visualising (mapping) information and storyboarding in an effort to get the students to begin to think about alternative ways of visualising the site outside of conventional architectural methods – i.e. how might they use film as a medium to convey the dynamic aspects of the issues at hand by conveying a narrative of architectural intervention (Figure 8). The students were introduced to a three step process as a way of developing their ideas – sketching out a storyboard, animating the storyboard (animatic) and finally developing the animatic into a film.  As a first step the storyboards can explore several aspects of the finished film including the narrative, scene, filming technique, sound, action, etc.  The animatics are meant then to further ‘test’ those ideas by quickly ‘mocking up’ the movie using the imagery from the storyboard with rough timings, effects, transitions, audio, etc. To help them visualize the intended output, students were then shown some examples of animatics and films from the AF website illustrating examples of how to bring to life the concepts considered in the storyboards.

Figure 8 Mississippi River bed changes over time (left) Edward Tufte’s Path of life (center) Ward Shelley’s Media role models (right)

Day two

Day two started with the students developing their ideas via informal tutorials and sketching them out prior to returning to the site to gather additional footage and/ or images for their films.  The afternoon was spent with an introductory tutorial on Adobe After Effects (a composition and motion graphic software) which served as the primary software for developing their films (in addition to some use of Adobe Premiere and Quicktime Pro).  While potentially being utterly complicated, the familiar interface of Adobe allows the students to quite quickly understand the basics and see the intriguing possibilities of the software.  In many ways it is very much like developing layered images in Photoshop, but with the associated use of a timeline to allow the layers to change over time.   The tutorial presents a foundation for how they can use the software to create their films (or comedic animations of ‘dead’ pigeons found in the building the day earlier).

Figure 9 Adobe After Effects Interface

Day three

On Wednesday the students spent the day developing their storyboards and film ideas.  In the afternoon, we were joined by Ivan Rabodzeenko from SKINN, a not-for-profit development agency working in the area (Shalesmoor, Kelham Island & Neepsend, i.e. SKIN Network).  Ivan gave the students a brief introduction to SKINN and the interesting work they’ve been doing in the area (including the CADS development).  The students then presented their work from the three days, which while still evolving, allowed the groups to communicate and share their thoughtful and interesting responses to the conditions at hand.  Playful yet viable interventions of scattered billboards, a slice through the building and site and strategically inserted studio pods presented some entertaining food for thought.  The next step involves each group taking their ideas forward and submitting a finished film to our student design competition at the beginning of June.  The competition provides the students with an incentive to have their work aired to a wider audience.  In addition, the students will also have the opportunity to exhibit their films at CADS this summer.

Figure 10 Student storyboard example

Concluding Thoughts

The workshop sought to encourage students to think beyond an immediate design solution and to understand the possibility for making tactical design interventions over time.  Creating a film gives the students a new skill that they can use in future projects.  Film serves as a familiar way to communicate to (and engage with) a broader audience outside of the architectural and construction community, and can help provide an increased capacity to imagine how the site could be transformed now and in the future.  The workshop is our third of its kind and is contributing towards a revised perspective on architectural education. The workshops themselves have become a great platform for engaging the community, council and the students in a discussion forum, where the students bring fresh ideas and knowledge from a demographic which is generally underrepresented in these types of conversations. The council and community bring real design considerations and a valuable voice that differs from their tutors.  The workshops have received positive feedback from the students as an opportunity to a) develop a new skill, b) take a refreshing break away from their yearlong projects and c) sharpen their design thinking and illustration skills; whereas, on the other hand, the community organisations and council see it as an important way to communicate design ideas and to excite the broader community about the possibilities to change an area. There is a plan in the works to run a longer and cross-disciplinary workshop in Sheffield this autumn.

Notes towards an adaptable future

This guest post comes from Chris Brown, the Chief Executive of Igloo Regeneration.  The text originally appeared as part of a joint submission to our design competition last year with Ash Sakula Architects which was one of the winning submissions (see image above) for an adaptable neighbourhood.  Chris actively writes on his own blog as part of the Regeneration and Renewal website.  Igloo has been involved in several interesting and successfully adapted projects including the recently completed Porth Teigr in Cardiff designed by FAT Architecture one of our collaborators.

Collaborative consumption

Collaborative consumption is a major trend in sustainability at the moment. For example, Zipcar, the largest of the car clubs where cars are shared by communities in half-hour slots, is now a billion dollar company in America. At the other end of the scale, the social centre at 56a Crampton Street in south London includes a bicycle repair space with a full set of tools, which the local community can share to fix their own bicycles. Sustainability is driving away from consumption of goods to consumption of services.  Of course, car rental companies and bicycle repair shops have been doing things like this for ages. However, the ways and means of sharing resources have become more innovative against a backdrop of the likelihood of resource shortages and the need to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. The question for us is how we can apply this to the built environment.

Commercial office buildings are inhabited for less than a quarter of the time. That is to say, for 10 hours out of the 24-hour day (40%) and for five days out of seven in a week, on top of bank holidays (65%). In addition, people are either ill or on holiday for about 15% of the time.  Ideas about the working environment have become more flexible with the increasing popularity of hot desking and serviced offices. Equally, a mobile workspace is embraced more and more; from home, in the café or park, at clients’ premises or while on the move.

Space is underused

Businesses want to be functioning 24 hours but employees don’t want to work night shifts, so they have offices in different time zones. Consequently, all around the world, office buildings lie empty most of the time. And as the world’s population grows and urbanises, even more offices are built that lie empty most of the time.  In the developed world, as the economy changes from an industrial to an information age, fewer factories and more offices are needed. This increasingly mobile and knowledge working population requires more smaller homes as people live longer, have children later and divorce more. But while space per office worker reduces, residential space per person is increasing. Small homes are inefficient to build and to run.

The cities we have inherited are generally far from efficient. They are often low density with poor streets and public spaces. They are often not nice places to be, which is why people flee to the suburbs to even more low density where there is a reliance on cars. Such a reliance is unsustainable as petrol becomes more expensive and the resources scarce.  Life in suburbia doesn’t bring people happiness, however, as they lose contact with community, commute further to work and consume more as a result. Leisure is increasingly digital and mobile, as smartphones and tablet computers deliver television and social networks to us wherever we are in a compact format.  As a result of spending more time commuting, and more money and time eating out and social networking, we increasingly use ‘home’ just as a place to sleep and procreate. Web-based networks, such as couchsurfing.org, suggest that many young people in society no longer feel the need to nest. They carry their life in a bag, travelling extensively and moving base regularly.

Making better use of expensive space

So, what if we could use our buildings and places more flexibly and more efficiently: buy the use of the space rather than the space itself?  Perhaps we should aim to occupy a building half of the time instead of a quarter? This opens up the possibility that the entire doubling of the world’s urban population between now and 2050 (three billion extra city dwellers) could be accommodated in existing buildings. Therefore reducing environmental destruction through mining or greenhouse gas emissions for building materials.

But could a future like this ever work?
Would people accept it?
How wouldit be organised?
What would it look like?

In this groundbreaking piece of commercially grounded research and development innovation, we have set out to provide some potential answers to these questions.
Market-driven adaptation
Innovation tends to be driven by markets so we need to understand the market drivers behind these changes.  Is new build value greater than total development cost including external costs of mining finite resources and production of green house gases (excluding land)?
If yes: Is it greater than total development cost as above including the value of the land and any buildings?
If yes: Is it greater than the value of the land and the enhanced value of the buildings plus the value of embodied carbon and social value of existing fabric and use?
If yes: Consider demolition and redevelopment with new maximum sustainable adaptable buildings.
If no to any of the above: Consider value enhancement through adaptation.
Similar questions can be asked for existing buildings and spaces.
Is the building/space in the highest value use?
Is the building/place fully utilised (intensity of existing use, 24/7)?
If yes: do nothing
If no, consider: Change to highest value uses
Add meanwhile buildings (beach huts, roof pods, floating spaces)
Create Nomad Pavilions (intensify 24/7 use within buildings)
Ameliorate and animate space between buildings
Add transition spaces (cafes, libraries, outdoor seating)

Monitor, Feedback and Adapt
This process doesn’t stop, it is a continuous process of questioning.

Have social, climate, physical, institutional, technological or market conditions changed?
If no: do nothing
If yes: go back to stage one.
Space Efficiency – Nomad Pavilions

The technology is in place to use internet booking systems to find somewhere to work or sleep with short notice. There is already the demand from travellers, low budget workers and sofa surfers Storage lockers, which are accessible 24/7, can be used to store possessions. At the moment, serviced offices are more like car clubs. A further stage of innovation could be to design buildings with spaces that can be used for both work and sleep during a 24-hour and seven-day period?  These same principles would apply to the buildings that we once called offices and in the future will be known as Nomad Pavilions. With sliding and pivoting walls, furniture that folds or rolls away, these buildings would convert incrementally from office to residential at the touch of a button each weekday evening. Many offices already have showers and Wi-Fi.  It’s a bit like living in hotel but with all your own possessions. 

These moves would also require innovations in our regulatory system. For example, which use class these would fit into – currently sui generis but potentially B1/C3? Also, there would need to be consideration of the security of tenure desired by occupants as well as how prices might be controlled.  As mentioned above, markets always adapt. If this increased use of space were to generate higher revenues, which more than compensate for higher costs (particularly if the embodied carbon in buildings and in combustion engine travel starts costing more) then the funds for these buildings will be forthcoming.

Pods

It is no longer as simple as travelling from point A to point B; people want to be in different places at different times. Caravans and campervans serve this function but are dated and underused. Instead we could designate pod sites all over the place, in the city (on the roof, in the yard, on the riverbank) and in the country (on the beach, in the hills). These pods would be designed to operate as workspace and as living space, and move to meet demand. We would hire them by the time slot: 8am-6pm five days a week or 6pm-8am plus weekends.  Our personal belongings, which are increasingly few in an anti-consumerist information world, would live in our secure private store (accessible 24/7). Thus, accommodation costs would be halved, our discretionary disposable incomes would double and we spend more time travelling.

In-between times and places

At the beginning and end of the day, we would move from our working place to our sleeping place and we would meet our friends virtually, in the spaces between buildings (streets, squares, parks) and as we travel. Libraries will re-establish themselves as public spaces where our communities store all the things that we share between us, along with cafes and shops.  Where building uses overlap, we would use these, probably ground floor, transient spaces as our social spaces to eat and meet and also to wait for our private space to come available.

Educating Architecture Students through Film

Architectural education sets the foundation as to how architects learn in practice and can provide insights into how value systems are shaped. Cuff (1991) insists that architectural education has, for a considerable amount of time, been very much based around learning how to be creative and thinking for yourself; while (Lawson et al. 2003) adds that ‘knowing by doing’ is a readily accepted method of educating within architecture.  A strong criticism of the education system is that “adaptive use is the destiny of most buildings, but it is not taught in architectural schools” (Brand 1994). Most programs emphasis innovation and novelty (Glasser 2000), very little education goes into how to change existing buildings, thus there is little knowledge taken forward from education into practice in this area (Kohler & Hassler 2002).

Dyckhoff (2011) states, “Too many architects design for this moment, the perfect idealised space on the inside, iconic form on the outside. But put the people in here and it just doesn’t work.” The quote suggests that architects tend to ignore the medium of time and how users will occupy and appropriate space over time, in order to concentrate on the ideal aesthetics and performance of a building (Schmidt III, et al. 2010).  The dismissal of time can be seen as highly problematic, considering a building and its demands will continue to change throughout its life span.

It could be argued that this idealised, timeless view of buildings emanates directly from architectural education, where students are able to explore their own creativity to a much greater extent than when in practice (Glasser 2000). This is a critical time for a burgeoning architect and the only time where they can really design whatever they desire (UIA 2005), essentially opening their minds to what could be possible. This educational process is essentially indoctrinated in the visual where architectural students are asked to complete one graphic representation after another for one project after another as a series of design studios aimed at developing a visual portfolio of their academic career exploring the creation of objects in space.  Whilst architectural education produces fantastically free thinking architects in the sense of form, does it actually close the mind of many architects to the idea of time and how a building they create transforms throughout its existence?

Film becomes an interesting intervention for students to investigate beyond the object in space into the complex interplay of contingencies in time.  Dynamic in nature, it could provide a useful medium to expand an architect’s design consciousness. It is not suggested that film should replace other visual aspects of architectural education, but simply taught alongside them as a way to develop an architect’s ability to conceptualise the evolution of a building – a complex perpetually evolving product that is as much a social process as a technical object.

How does the process of producing films help architects envision time better?

It forces the student to bring the building to life – partially through the movement evident in any film (the moments, experiences, intervals, sequences), but also through the story the film tells. Intuitively, even in its simplest form (a sequence of images), a film still shows an account of an event or a series of events (a story). A film can focus a student to look beyond the initial form and function and give the building a timeline in which a ‘life’ can play out. It allows students to think about the building as a series of events rather than just what the building looks like, or how it will function at a single moment in time (how will it transform with users and in space, performance, scale, use, or location?). It allows them to think beyond initial occupation, to query what can happen in the future not just as a linear progression, but also as cycles of time – days, weeks or seasons.  Most importantly it ‘moves’ architecture past its initial form into a more accurate depiction of its spatio-temporal reality.  It embodies  a sense of what Till (2009) refers  to as ‘thick time’ – time is an embodiment of the past as much as the future – moving beyond a simplistic linear production unpacking the immediacy, multiplicity, connectedness, and powerfulness.

Adding scenarios to what was once a singular vision is one of the key advantages to producing films in architecture. Film allows the ability to ask ‘what if’ using different scenarios, which is a question of what could happen over time, not about absolutes derived from an initial brief. Scenarios can play out a variety of ways within the film, illustrating options, changes over time or simply a multitude of futures.  It intuitively creates an environment where the architect is forced to think longitudinally about the building and its context. Architecture should not and cannot be about absolutes.  For example, Norman Foster’s design of the Swiss Re building (the gherkin) in London, Foster is quoted as saying “In the end unless you are doing a building for yourself, you have to let go at some point. So you will come into a building, see the way it is used and there will be shock horror. I don’t think, it’s not, you know a disaster, but you know it could be better.” (Norman Foster, 2011). Here, Foster is essentially saying that the users are using the building in a way that is unintended (in a poor way) – this is partially due to the fact that once complete the building was meant to be fully occupied by Swiss Re, however, this never came to fruition.  On the other hand, it is partially due to Foster’s focus on creating a ‘beautiful’ object for a particular client at a particular moment and not on deriving a variety of possible futures that could allow the building to be successful under a handful of contexts.  If this had been the case, would he have been so shocked by the way the building is being used?  Would he have designed something differently?

This blog entry is an abridged version of an article that will be published in the upcoming issue of cSUR from The University of Tokyo.

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CUFF, D., 1991. Architecture: The Story of Practice. USA: The MIT Press.

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KOHLER, N. and HASSLER, U., 2002. The building stock as a research object. Building Research & Information, 30(4), pp. 226.

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SCHMIDT III, R., EGUCHI, T., AUSTIN, S. and GIBB, A., 2010. What is the meaning of Adaptability in the building industry?  16th International Conference on “Open and Sustainable Building”, May 17-19 2010.

TILL, J., 2009. Architecture Depends. Cambridge: MIT Press.

UIA, 2005. UNESCO/UIA charter for architectural education.