Birkenhead: Points in a Post-Industrial Landscape Part 2 Project 2004 Alexander DusterlohMartyn Thomas University of Liverpool | UK Not considering the shrinking city so much as the scale of landscape revealed by the contraction of Birkenhead’s large scale industries and the systems that powered them. The project deals in these open un-urban spaces driven by the scalar exchange accompanying the restructured maritime trades and the downing of tools in favour of the desk, telephone and mouse.Placing making as key to the architectural project, the exhibition concludes a process that sees the thesis operate from the regional/global through the urban and the scale and density of the building, to the tactile inhabitable scale of the installation. At a time when architects are re-discovering the value of staying in touch with reality (political, strategic, physical) and the need to think laterally and design in detail, the work of Alex and Martyn has taken such approaches to a level of great sophistication. Their 5th year design thesis addressed Birkenhead (Wirral) in the light of its industrial past and its present urban infrastructural and systemic problems. The resultant designs addressed critical spatial conditions to clarify infras truct ural and spatial systems through ‘thin’ yet ‘dense’ and defined programmes. In both cases, they exhibited a very sophisticated representational ability.il