The Brief
The Manchester School of Architecture's third and final year of study consists of six different ateliers which us students are placed in. The atelier I chose is Manchester Spatial Agents (Praxis*), short MSAP.
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Our project this year investigates real communities and works on live projects by using our individual and collective architectural research and creative skills in parallel with the deep local knowledge of residents. We are using these skills and imaginations on projects to work towards making cities more inclusive. Our overall aim is to create places shared between people of all
ages, abilities, attitudes and occupations.
The core task of our final year project is proposing a civic space project for Stretford Public Hall in Stretford, Manchester.
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To reach this core task we formed architectural practices within our Studio group, according to similar ethos and interests. The practice I formed with my team is All People.
Monika Naydenova
Anya Tineva
Patricia Belcin
The Location
United Kingdom
Manchester
Stretford
The Client
Who is the client? What does the client want? What does the client want to achieve?
The Event
The Stretford Public Hall Event marked the start of our project as a practice and of our individual projects. The main aim for the event was to make the most of the interactions with local townspeople and to identify the issues, suggestions and proposals raised by them.
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We want to find out who our clients are and what kind of wishes and needs they have.
The information we gained from the event was collected and categorised and after group analysis it was up to each one of us to draw conclusions and to develop those conclusions into ideas, schemes and concepts.
We wanted to know what the people of Stretford wished for and their opinion about the town.
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We enabled people that attended the event to express their views, thoughts and wishes with a range of different activities.
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Every member of the team concluded this information into different points to base their projects on.
Conclusions
What do people want?
more independent cafés for afternoon chats
bringing the canal into the community
restoring the Essoldo to its old use as cinema
safe and accessible parks to meet
new space to embrace community spirit
more restaurant options in town
The Project
''There is a sense of community, just no physical space for it.''
-Marva-
A heart for Stretford
A town square is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, piazza, plaza, and town green.
