Drawing is not enough

Posted on April 11, 2012 by admin

Mostly in the world of commercial interior design and architecture, you are limited to what you can draw, set down on paper, quantify and schedule.

Obviously, this is the only way any building work can be costed, and it takes time to produce this information.

There is a real skill in bringing the identity of a design concept and the vision of the client through in the final scheme.

Its a battle to preserve the character of the design. To stop it getting lost in the paperwork and bureaucracy of the process.

Increasingly, the magic I see in completed building design comes from owner/builders, that control their own project, and even their own contracting team.

Here is where you see spaces and places that have a soul, and an identity.

As it happens, this was the only way to approach the latest work we are doing with Fforest over in West Wales.

Here we are developing a complex piece of landscaping using difficult to work with materials, dealing with many levels changes, and all the time seeking to make these old building accessible to all.

We tried a few times to draw our intent, but frankly it was too difficult to make it work in either standard CAD layouts or 3D visualising.

In the end the scheme progressed with a series of sketches by both myself and the client which slowly directed the site work so it hangs together as a scheme.

I know that if we had turned up at site with a finished drawing it would have been flawed in many ways.

This might be counter to the accepted way of directing a building project in the commercial world, but it won’t be news to self builders of residential projects were an intimacy with the build is a given.

I also can’t think of a big commercial project I’ve worked on where there hasn’t been some sort improvisation at points despite what you might believe.

Change doesn’t wait for a design process to run its course. Sometimes you have to respond to what is in front of you instead of drive some abstract intent on a drawing.

The site is now nearing completion, in readiness to receive guests for the Do Lectures coming up at the end of this month. Its also a great wedding venue for Fforest.

http://www.coldatnight.co.uk/

http://www.dolectures.com/the-event/

Posted in Build by Hand, Reclaimed, Sheds, Sleepers, Timber, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hiut Denim

Posted on March 25, 2012 by admin

Think about the difference between the factory space and the workshop.

One is about production, the other is about craft.

Remodel has helped design a new manufacturing facility for Hiut Denim.

One particular challenge was key.

Can you have a modern production space, geared to the high speed needs of the marketplace.

But still create a place that supports the workflow and thought process of craft.

The finished space has the space planning and organisation of an efficient manufacturer.

But also allowed to creep in here and there, is the mild chaos of the creative space, the workshop and the artists studio.

The new space tells the story of a serious little company, with its roots firmly in the craft tradition.

These are no ordinary jeans.

http://hiutdenim.co.uk/

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Diversification to Specialisation

Posted on February 27, 2012 by admin

Something that made me smile recently. A now defunct business in Keighley.

Electrical services for two very different markets and all under the same roof. I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall in this establishment. Just to see how it worked.

I have this image of a greasy leather clad biker (motor cycle customer) stood next to gent in tweeds (gramophone customer) at a wooden counter with lots of drawers and pigeon holes in it for electrical spares.

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The Ideal Interior?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by admin

Some thoughts on the Dolls House;

-A totally flexible plan

-Infinite possibilities of layout

-No intruding elements of immovable structure

-Accessible Site

-Change is controlled by the occupants/users

-Time to play with different possibilities and learn about the best configurations

Of course, a dolls house is an abstract thing, but it points to a number of useful ideas that should drive useful commercial space in buildings.

The main appeal of the Dolls house for me is the idea of user control over interior space, something architects and designers are often reluctant to do.

In good newer commercial space, there is an increasing realisation that total flexibility is useful. Some older building shells also lend themselves to this approach.

We have to be careful here though. Often the possibilities of flexible space are never explored. Its not as easy as with the dolls house. Its costs money to play.

The real challenge perhaps is to achieve Doll house flexibility, (the right amount of useful change potential) and then mate this with an intent for users to make the space their own, like they would in their home over time.

Change will happen in a healthy way if driven by user need, not by a designers predictions. All we can do as designers is anticipate a number of different outcomes and then allow for these.

I think if you champion a degree of chance in interior design and allow for occupants to grow into their space and change it, you make better buildings.

You get closer to an ideal interior, that is different for every user, at least to some degree, and is fun to be in and contribute to the future of.

*Note – There was a queue of kids for this Dolls House. Each time they changed its configuration, searching for the ideal layout for them. None accepted what had gone before. They all wanted to participate in some way to change it. Definitely a lesson for building designers, who in my experience, almost never fully engage with the users of buildings.

 

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Woodwork – A Shed Manifesto

Posted on February 16, 2012 by admin

My dad has just built and fitted-out his own workshop, the realisation of a lifelong dream and an escape from a dark an cramped garage.

Common with other structures of the type, here’s a few ideas we could borrow to some degree when building bigger interior design schemes;

-Simple materials. They can be modified at will with local non industrial scale skills ie. your neighbourhood carpenter or in this case, Dad. Timber frames can be easily adapted, simple wall linings and cladding that is screwed rather than nailed can be swapped out. What if he needs a bigger door to move larger projects in and out.

-Basic Finishes. The concrete floor can be left as is, honed, painted, covered. Its all adds to flexibility.

- Indecision is OK. If there is hesitation about an element of the build (in this case the floor finish) its usually for a reason so can you then leave it unit later. No point in going down the wrong road.

-Re-use of old Building Elements. In this case, dads old kitchen units make ideal workbenches. Also the old back door from the house and a fully double glazed window found by the local timber merchants lurking round the back of their warehouse.

-Spend money on the things that matter. Dad’s made an amazing beech workbench (which he planed by hand before he bought a flat bed planer!) which will be critical to the quality of the work he produces.

-Organisation. Fix what is known to be more static, like machinery, plumbed services etc. and allow for flexibility around what will change, like storage.

-Time. Its taken a while. No set of blueprints has been drawn. There is a reason for the location of nearly everything in this space, fitted precisely to the way he works with wood.

-Not quite finished. I think this is a good thing. There’s always a new project, something left to chance. He might decide he needs to work with metal.

-Worry less about what it looks like. Worry more about how it works. If it works, it will have a beauty of its own.

-Limitations. The scope of this project was based on what he could do himself. This drove many of the design decisions in the direction of economy, re-use and practicality. No bad thing in building design.

Posted in Build by Hand, Design and Build, Sheds, Timber, Time, Workshops | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Now and Then

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin

For evidence of how our towns and have changed and will change again, take a trip to Cliffe Castle in Keighley, one of my favorite gritty ex-industrial northern towns.

These images are part of an interesting collection of exhibits on the history of the town and how it developed from the industrial revolution to today.

I was struck by how the motor vehicle has opened up our towns centres (mostly with inaccessible and inhuman space) and that we now fight to reclaim our streets with the kind of pedestrianisation we once had.

Agreed, we can do without the sanitation problems and overcrowding of the past. We ourselves are much healthier people physically, but our communities paid a high price.

The price is we lose a human scale and civic purpose to our towns that sanitised re-development and retail space alone cannot put back.

Time will have a hard task softening what we have done to our urban space, but as these photos show, it will do its work.

http://www.bradfordmuseums.org/venues/cliffecastle/index.php

 

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The Quality

Posted on December 21, 2011 by admin

Three restaurants.

One Italian, One Spanish, One Turkish.

All are independent businesses, family owned in fact.

They are not held back by the corporate guidelines of a chain.

They are filled with the kind of customers who value an authentic experience.

These places are not consciously designed.

Rather the spaces are an accumulation of ideas from different people, sometimes generations.

They are about the informal enjoyment of food, not just its presentation

They create and add to the community. These are real places. Comfortable and unpretentious.

They have what Christopher Alexander describes as ‘the quality without a name’. *

The ‘quality’ is something remarkable that makes a place feel whole. It’s not possible to describe it specifically Alexander says, but it’s a feeling you get in a place or space when you feel most ‘alive’.

My three restaurants  feel ‘alive’. I feel ‘alive’ in them. A result of the building, the diners, the owners, and the atmosphere all being in some sort of sync.

My interpretation of this is that we as humans have the ability to discern whether this quality exists (the space is alive) or not (the space is dead). This is a basic instinct that makes us feel comfortable or uncomfortable respectively. This must be a natural response from way back that we extend to our current human/urban environment.

Designing buildings or at least bits of buildings, its assumed by many that this ‘quality’ can just be conjured. Surely it’s easy to create a space with this complex layering of feeling, atmosphere and social vibrancy.

Here’s the reality.

Something this complete must be arrived at over time.

You might get some of the way with a few good decisions but often a ‘designed’ space can miss the mark.

If you try to fake the ‘quality’, it’s obvious.

You must program a space to work towards the ‘quality’. Plant the seeds that will grow. Prioritise slowness in the spaces development. Allow for flex.  Don’t fix things in stone.

A good restaurant will concentrate on delivering the food in the most simple, beautiful way. They reduce the menu choice to a handful of great dishes but rotate and develop these over time depending on feedback, ingredients and seasonality.

A restaurant space should be the same. Do a few things well and grow into the space. Keep what works and discard what fails.

Pretty soon you will have a more amazingly complex space than you could ever have designed in one go. A space that has evolved with the ‘quality’.

Small independent businesses often grasp this approach more easily. They are constrained by budget which limits growth. They find themselves creating a space in a series of steps. It’s exactly this process that allows for the ability to change things as they go along.

It’s exactly this evolution that leads to the ‘quality’. An interconnectedness of context, building, layout, customers, food and service.

These spaces have character, not sterility. They become unique to a particular business and place.

It doesn’t matter so much what my three restaurants look like.

In fact I deliberately won’t share images here. They are best judged on how they feel to actually be there, which is the point of the ‘quality’.  An image reduces things to a visual assessment which is only one part of the ‘quality’.

There are similar venues in your neighbourhood.  They are without doubt the best places to eat.

Go and look for the ‘quality without a name’. How would you start to work towards it in your space?

For more insight into Alexander’s  theories on space and place get his book here;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Timeless-Building-Center-Environmental-Structure/dp/0195024028/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1323985146&sr=8-3

If you run a business from a building, it would be good to remember that humans are pre-programmed to look for the ‘quality’ If you manage to create this, they will come.

*Christopher Alexander – The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

Posted in Bar, Creative Reuse, Evolution, Restaurant, Time, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Waiting

Posted on November 9, 2011 by admin

Kings Cross Station concourse, shortly to be ripped up to make way for another retail ‘destination’ crossed with a railway terminus.

The floor, which is grim indeed got me thinking about change in buildings. These ‘queue’ lanes have been here since the last time it was re-designed (80′s?). The idea is that everyone neatly lines up for their train in designated lane.

How very British. First come first serve, rather than the every man for himself dash of today. The lanes are now redundant. Too higher volume of passengers for them to work.

So now we await a new design. The question that intrigues me is how traveler’s will be serviced in 30 years time? What will we be doing differently at transport hubs that can’t be anticipated right now.

Will King Cross avoid the curse of the queue lane.

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High Road, Low Road

Posted on November 9, 2011 by admin

The title is robbed from my favorite writer on building design and architecture, Stewart Brand in ‘How Buildings Learn’.

I’ve twisted the meaning a bit.

We have a choice when it comes to specifying the materials we use in buildings.

1 – High Road – Spending more on something that lasts (usually because it’s a slow moving part of the building, or something that won’t change too much).

2 – Low Road – Spending less on something that will likely need to change in the not-too-distant future.

I don’t believe this is a sustainable versus non sustainable choice. Both should be low impact.

I do believe this is a choice based around use. Can your choice of materials be based on a rate of change measurement. Different parts of building’s recycle at different rates.

I had this choice to make recently. Slate worktop versus a chipboard laminate finish.

It was easy actually. A domestic residence, a low rate of change, a timeless finish required that would last and still look good over time.

The hard choice? Finding the additional money from somewhere else in the budget to pay for it. It came down to choosing cheaper unitry and other small savings elsewhere.

Confirmation that ‘Use’ should drive specification and other decisions in the wider building project, not aesthetics alone. Here we managed to consider both.

As a bonus our choice will likely have more than one life in its current form

I’d be interested to know where it will end up in the next hundred years. It’s satisfying to know that someone will reclaim it and use it again.

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Something about Manchester

Posted on October 14, 2011 by admin

Whenever I go to Manchester, I can’t help noticing a city centre (for the most part) that knits together.

You can read in the streets, buildings and places, a forward thinking planning policy and a bravery to get things done in the past 10-20 years.

Change is never perfect for everyone, but somehow new and old in this centre sit together with a degree of comfort.

Here’s a few photos from my route. I’d say there is more special stuff from the past than from the present.

Many of the newer buildings can’t quite seem to address the human scale, and don’t have that special quality that brings them to life. A result of the way we procure our buildings now, and how we design and assemble them.

Most people are proud of where they come from, but Mancunians seem happiest to tell everyone else rather than keep it to themselves.

If people are proud of a place, then I guess it follows that they will look after it and take an interest in its health.

Its no accident I think that this is the city, along with Liverpool, that spawned developer Urban Splash.

Northern Quarter backstreets

A great shopfront – Inviting – Warm – Enclosed but still feeling open. Not accessible though.

Manchester Craft and Design Centre.

A big building shell allows internal complexity that really works to develop in stages over time.

Old buildings, new uses. Ground floors change must faster than the upper floors. Nearly all of Remodel’s commercial work is on the ground floor level.

Campfield Market Hall waiting for life to return.

The Old Rochdale Canal heading West. There’s and book on Manchester in the 1970′s. This same view shows the canal basin drained and the hulk of wooden barges resting on the bottom rotting. Now a bit of the countryside in the hearth of the city.

I can see the Beetham Tower when I’m running along the top of the Peninnes to the East of the city. No doubt the residents can see the Peninnes too. Its definitely not my idea of a home.

I sense that Manchester centre is the collaboration a commited and creative local authority, designers and developers. In its new buildings though, I see buildings that speak a lot of the corporate world, and not enough of the down to earth real world that Manchester is famous for.

I wonder how Cameron’s overhaul of the planning system might change our inner cities?Might a new fast track planning system derail years of careful thought in Manchester, or will it let back in an element of experimentation to counter the glass and steel of the corporations. We can’t rely on our historic building fabric to humanise our built environment. We need to design this into new buildings too.

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