Design Yearbook 2017

Studio 7 - Potteries Thinkbelt
Matthew Margetts & Cara Lund
Continuing an interest in Infrastructure as background processes and systems this year we have revisited Cedric Price’s ‘Potteries Think Belt’
- 50 years after its conception. We used the Potteries Think Belt plan as a ‘treasure map’ to navigate the delights of contemporary Stoke-on-
Trent.
The studio was one of three ‘vertical’ studios pioneered this year, taught jointly between Stages 3 and 6, and began with the group exercise of
building a ‘Stoke-o-Matic’ dynamic mapping model. The model was used to explore systematic relationships between transport, education,
environment and identity with enjoyably unpredictable results.
Stage 3 students were then asked to develop their own hybrid briefs based on components of the Potteries Thinkbelt’s original brief –
incubators, knowledge stores, accommodation units and interchange stations. Sites were selected along infrastructural routes past, present
and future.
Linked with Stage 6 (see pg.144)
52 Symposium - Group work