The commission at St Bede’s College in Bristol started with a four-day workshop with the students and discussion with the staff at the College. At the same time in the four days I looked around Laurence Weston, visited the Blaise Castle House Museum and grounds and the local Library. I had a meeting with the architect and a second visit of the new school site where the work will be placed. The architect introduced me to a friend of his who use to go to the same school and through a lunch all together talked about Terries memory of what the school use to be like and how much is changed…. It was a very pleasant afternoon.
On my way back from Bristol I when to the New Forest where we had a meeting at Longdown Estate Office regarding a project called ArtChitecture.
‘Artchitecture’ is a project initiated by the Solent Centre for Architecture and Design in partnership with ArtSway (contemporary visual arts organization in the New Forest) to bring together architects, artists and engineers to collaborate on exploring new models for rural architecture, through a series of temporary buildings in the New Forest National Park. The buildings will be a resource for interaction and debate on issues of sustainability, recycling, energy conservation and rural development. Artists’ use of the buildings will be the catalyst for this debate.
The artist will work as part of the team in developing the design and will subsequently use the space as a ‘studio’ to produce new work. The artist will effectively be testing the building as work space but will be expected to produce art work that responds in some way to the nature of the building and the unique environment of the New Forest. During the period the artist is in residence there will be a range of events that will involve audiences in debate and discussion around not only the work being undertaken but the building itself and the sustainable development issues raised by it.”
12 people (including Phil from Solent and Mark from Artsway) were invited to an initial workshop meeting to brainstorm ideas and ways forward. Very quickly we where separated into three groups, artists, architects and engineers. My group consist of Myself, Paul Bulkeley, architect from Snag Projects and Trevor Thickett an engineer from
We are now on our Stage 2 to taking the project to RIBA stage D (Planning Application) which is to be done by June 2010.
Stage 3 will be the construction, from September 2010 and occupation of the buildings and programming from Summer 2011.
The meeting in the Forest was to show and discuss initial concepts of design to all other groups, members from the Forestry commission, planners and other stakeholders.
