Design Yearbook 2017

Revisiting the Modernist Dream
Prue Chiles
Processes and Practices of Architecture
This project explores the newly renovated Park Hill in Sheffield, an iconic modernist
megastructure. We worked with the new residents living there, stakeholders and people
with memories of the old Park Hill, to build up a picture of domesticity, everyday living
and how the residents interact with the building, the concrete and the space. From indepth
interviews and interactive workshops with models and drawings the subsequent
exhibition, we found that the new residents came from a surprisingly wide demographic
and had diverse and inspiring thought and attitudes about their new lives at Park Hill
and how they are making it home.
Collaborators:
Museums Sheffield, Kate Pahl and others at the University of Sheffield. Part of the
‘Imagine’ project sponsored by the AHRC/ESRC 2012-2017
Solar Futures
Prue Chiles
Ecologies, Infrastructures and Sustainable Environments
An experimental, transdisciplinary and collaborative project to develop independent
energy visions and neighbourhood strategies for the future of Stockbridge, South
Yorkshire. Working closely and co-productively with a group of local residents for three
years the project and energy systems modelling to describe the current possibilities,
research ideas and local values of the transition. We explore the role of strategic national
policy and the potential for holistic design in planning energy transitions. We develop
a more visionary set of speculative “what if” projects/scenarios for discussion that could
be relevant for all places like Stocksbridge. The nature of transdisiplinarity and coproduction
in the project were key findings.
Collaborators: In partnership with Durham and Sheffield Universities. An EPSRC
funded project 2012-2016
Art, Economy and Space
Ed Wainwright
History, Cultures and Landscape
Artist’s practices are intimately linked to space – its availability is intricately tied to the
emergence of scenes of artistic activity. The spaces available for use by artists are directly
affected by changing economies. The ebb and flow of capital being reflected in often
surprising ways through environments that become available for studios and workshops.
The effect these spaces have on modes of artistic production and the relations between
artists forms the basis of an emerging research project, with collaborators between
architecture, business and fine art at Newcastle University, and the arts organisation The
NewBridge Project, in Newcastle upon Type.
Collaborators:
David Butler (School of Arts & Culture, Newcastle University) Charlie Gregory (The
NewBrigde Project, Newcastle) Paul Richeter (Newcastle University Business School)
Moon Writing
Rachel Armstrong
Experimental Architecture
Moonlight in the bay around the iconic Fish House at the Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation in Captiva produces graphical traces on the surface of the water that suggest
a correspondence between the sun and the earth, which is orchestrated by the tides.
This Moon Writing invokes the production of symbols from a generative surface, which
raises deeper questions about the kinds of languages that the natural world produces
spontaneously and even understands – be they between cosmic bodies, or bacteria – and
how do we begin to design with them?
Acknowledgments:
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
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