People Making Places by studiopolpo

PEOPLE MAKING PLACES

This booklet presents a selection of Studio Polpoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s projects showing various strategies used to empower current and future users of buildings and spaces to be able to influence the way in which these spaces work. featured projects: Engage Involve Empower, Preston

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Portland Works, Sheffield

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ROAR, Rotherham p.15 Shirle Hill CoHousing

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Experimental Residental/Stagehands

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www.studiopolpo.com

2018

ENGAGE INVOLVE EMPOWER Preston Engage Involve Empower is a project involving a community led social housing provider (Community Gateway Association), its staff, its tenants and residents, the Gateway Tenant Committee and socially engaged artists. The project had two key aims: to increase external interest in the Gateway Tenant Committee and encourage new people to become members, and find new ways for the Gateway Tenant Committee to communicate within itself and to a broader audience. Studio Polpo worked with arts practitioners Edwin Pink and Dan Russell and the staff and tenants of the Gateway Tenant Committee and Community Gateway Association in an open way to explore what was possible, and what their ideas and aspirations were, and then combine our technical knowledge and expertise with the local knowledge and skills of those we are collaborating with to enable these initial ideas to be realised. Over the course of four sessions, we explored a strategies for allowing CGA tenants to meaningful engage in the areas in which they live, and mechanisms for enagament to be realised in further phases. Our work included walking explorations, discussion of precedents, ideas workshops, including collectively creating content for the report and posters, and sheltering from the rain eating pies.

01. We created a set of playful and graphically bold props that the steering group took out and about on walks to highlight/frame issues they felt were important.

02 01. We went on a series of walks with residents and steering group members so they could explain their area to us, mapping resources and making connections. This walking process also allowed a more relaxed and less pressured conversations to take place. 02. We presented a range of precedent studies to the steering group, at a number of scales and with varying levels of community involvement.

03. We discovered that the housing association was also involved in a vocational training programme, where young people were taught construction skills, and suggested that this skills be linked to the creation of structures or objects.

01. We proposed how design students might collaborate with vocational apprentices to design and make products that might be sold of showcased in empty shops, to connect things already happening.

02. We proposed a festival of follies, designed and built in each of Prestonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s areas, as a way of bringing together skills and addressing a location-specific issue.

03. We used cut-outs of our precedent studies and photographs of areas identified on group walks in collage workshops to allow quick testing of ideas by the group. 04. Finally we proposed three strategies connecting locations and events to be considered by the group in the next phase.

PORTLAND WORKS Sheffield Portland Works is an integrated metal works on the outskirts of Sheffield city centre. It was the birthplace of stainless steel cutlery, making it one of the outstanding examples of Sheffieldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial heritage. Today it is home to a mix of artists, musicians, small scale craftspeople as well as metalworkers, continuing a tradition of innovative manufacture. In 2009 an application to turn it into studio flats placed Portland Worksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tenants under theat. We worked with the Little Sheffield Development Trust and other organisations to consolidate, share and transfer knowledge about the strategies, tools and tactics available to safeguard Portland Works (and other similar organisations). This collaboration helped the local community to imagine a future that was environmentally, socially and economically sustainable for Portland Works. The project (funded by a Knowledge Transfer Rapid Response grant) facilitated the exploration and appraisal of organisation types, business models, legal structures, ownership and management options that are available to small business communities based in industrial heritage (or historical) sites. It also resulted in a resource pack that not only documents the futures planning and options appraisal processes undertaken with the Portland Works tenants, but also provides a concise and accessible guide for other groups undergoing similar processes. The report pack was designed by Sheffield based graphic designers Eleven.

Following this process, social enterprise Portland Works Little Sheffield was formed that was able to raise community share capital and buy the building. Portland Works is now owned and managed by the community. Following this, we were commissioned to create a report to assist tenants, volunteers and shareholders with the management and renovation of the Works, focusing on collective and co-operative approaches. It makes information that already exists about the Portland Works visual and easy to use, comments on what has been learnt and identifies areas where there are gaps or unknowns. The report aims to make information about the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fabric, tenants, and heritage visible to steering groups and decisionmaking bodies. It also contributes new work and research to suggest how Portland Works might develop to maintain its character as a lively, creative and innovative space for small scale making. The report includes a range of costed retrofit strategies and recommendations of how and where these could be implemented, and references these to the conservation management study being developed by Wessex Archaeology. Tenant issues (including use patterns and rental costs) have also been mapped onto future aspirations for the continuing use of the works as a place of making and innovation. As well as being a snapshot of the Works at the end of 2013 a number of live documents will allow the client group to update and add information over the coming months.

01. A poster campaign to highlight what was taken place in the building to passersby.

01. We ran a series of workshops on governance, looking at how an organisation might be formed to take on the building, and what the priorities might be.

02. We created a guide to bring together existing studies and inform how the group might prioritise building works, linking different elements, costs and state of disrepair.

03. We provided a set of fabric-upgrade options to suit various parts of the historic fabric, with notes on ease of application and cost..

04. A strong network of volunteers and the tenants themselves have been gradually bringing spaces back into use and upgrading them.

05. We created a travelling Portland Works exhibition for an event in Liverpool to showcase makers in the building.

ROAR Rotherham Studio Polpo worked with Rotherham Arts Renaissance (ROAR) to investigate how the organisation might take on a derelict former school in the town and turn it into an arts hub. Given the scale of the project, and limit to the funding available, we split the works into phases, exploring how ROAR might exploit the character of the larger, semiruined spaces to host interesting events and bring in visitors, whilst providing, refurbished core facilities such as WCs and a workshop. Our strategy used the workshop as place in which the fit-out of later phases might take place, working with users and people interested in learning new skills to do this, and thus potentially allowing access to other grants.

01. We used cases studies, and example images to explain our strategy of different levels of interventions, from quick, rough & ready refurbishment, to final/new-build

02. Ours strategy was to suggest that the organisation looked at three levels of work from basic safety/water-tightness to finished and decorated, and concentrated on a core that could include a workshop. The workshop would then work with building users to create the fit-out for other spaces.

SHIRLE HILL CO-HOUSING Sheffield Studio Polpo and Architype are working with the Shirle Hill co-housing group to turn a site near the centre of Sheffield into a shared housing community. The Shirle Hill site was formerly a large house and grounds and more recently used by the NHS. The scheme includes five selfcontained houses and four flats as well as a large number of shared spaces and facilities, both internal and external, to facilitate collective cooking, growing and living. The project involves the retrofit and refurbishment of the old building, which is being undertaken by the co-housing group themselves, and the creation of five low-energy and environmentally sustainable new dwellings (targeting the AECB Silver Standard) designed by us with the group. A site landscape strategy, designed to be developed over time, is also part of the proposals. We worked intensivekly with the group of 11 people to develop designs for the site that would take into account the numerous constraints from Conservation Area issues, to personal design preferences and a tight budget. The scheme is currently on site.

01 01. We used photographic examples of a wide range of architectural projects (not all housing) to create a series of cards, with questions and prompts on the reverse in workshops with the client group to establish their desires and preferences for the project.

02. We used a range of models and drawings throughout the project to help explain and discuss the designs of the new houses on the site.

EXPERIMENTAL RESIDENTIAL/ STAGEHANDS Sheffield Experimental Residential: How could short-term shared living be introduced into UK city centres? is a newspaper published by Studio Polpo. It contains practical and professional advice, case studies and research for groups looking to set up short term shared living in non-residential buildings. The newspaper was commissioned by a group attempting to turn 121 Eyre Street, a mid-20th century former funeral parlour and college in Sheffield, into a co-operatively managed shared house. The project changed focus when we discovered that the building could not be used as intended for legal reasons, and we broadened the scope of the project to include collecting and analysing relevant case-studies; instigating round-table discussions with planners, housing officers and developers (to explore barriers and opportunities for short term shared living); and prototyping and testing a demountable and low-cost secondary glazing system. For the latter we worked with acoustic specialists from the University of Sheffield and built on previous student work. The findings have been made freely available both online and in print. This project was featured in the RIBA publication Demystifying Architectural Research, selected as a practice-based research exemplar. The interest in low-cost and adaptable 23

secondary glazing continues in the practice with new prototypes being developed and installed. Stagehands was a lottery-funded project developed by Studio Polpo to engage young people in digital design and manufacturing. We undertook a number of workshops to collaboratively design, prototype and fabricate a mobile stage set, taking design cues from a shared meal hosted & documented by Studio Polpo, and attended by representatives from local theatre makers/commissioners including Theatre Deli North, Point Blank and The Bear Project. Throughout the project we worked with young people from Sharrow and Page Hall, using simple design tools such as Sketchup and cardboard models. As the ideas took shape, we worked with Chopshop CNC to prototype and test the modular design. Two final versions have now been produced: one is based at the Page Hall youth centre, where a number of workshops took place and the second is being used at 121 Eyre Street, a waste food cafe and event space. The designs can be used as a simple stage or arranged into bespoke theatre sets, seating or displays. We also developed a plugin table tennis top for the Page Hall youth club.

01 01. We created a free newspaper that was distributed across the city in which we set out various strategies for setting up groups, and tenant/landlord structures.

02. We mapped the timeline of the project showing what had gone wrong, and also potential future trajectories, or ways in which similar projects might work.

03. We ran design workshops with young people using example images, free 3D design software and prototypes

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03. We used the stage set in a number of locations, including the Foodhall Project.

04. The Foodhall Project, set-up by a collaborator on Stagehands, occupies the site featured in the Experimental Residential building.