Our collective individual sites for the year will be along a notional line across the Lower Don Valley, South Yorkshire

"We approach the existent in a similar manner [to a found landscape]. The more we comprehend it, the less we must stand in opposition to it, and the easier it will be to understand our decisions as a continuation of the whole. Transforming an existing building is more interesting than building a new one - because in essence, everything is transformation."

Pluralism, Hermann Czech

Unit 1 are concerned with care, repair, re-use, adjustment, and transformation; with the life of objects, buildings, and cities over time. We will be working with generic fabric both at 1:1, with objects we can touch and then directly, at the urban scale of contemporary industrial premises in the Lower Don Valley.

Architecture perhaps conceptually struggles to design for change, and our fashions might continue to dictate an endless cycle of consumption. In the midst of a lack-lustre 1980's regeneration; in the heart of 'Made in Sheffield', we will look at radical re-invention as well as delicate adjustment. Urban scale we will reinterpret at arms-length the model of Snozzi's form-based change in Monte Carrasso. We will use survey, models, drawings and material experiments to test and explore methods of transformation and change. We will be concerned with the pragmatics of structure, fabric and environmental performance whilst developing transformative future scenarios.

We are against waste and look for ingenuity in the reuse of fabric, components and spaces. What are the tactics for adjustment? What is a critical language of care and repair as we face climate change and material scarcity? How do we imagine our existing cities for a long term liveable future? Our proposals for Don Valley will be a first test...

Each student’s thesis will critically engage with architecture as a site for urban research; proposing a university faculty building for Science Technology Studies (STS), requiring an assessment of potential research outputs gathered post-occupancy. Strategies will develop from current and future use – focussing on the lived experience and operation of buildings as fundamental to understanding long term sustainability of built fabric.

The unit will visit the Lower Don Valley in Semester one, staying overnight and exploring sites together. In February we will travel by plane to Barcelona with an itinerary including projects by Flores & Pratts, Ricardo Bofil, Lacol, David Cardelus, Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, Dominique Perrault, Enric Miralles, David Chipperfield, Frank Gehry and Enric Ruiz Geli... but it would be nuts to stop just there... so much to see ; as well as exploring the re-urbanised and gentrified district of el Poblenou.