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Devolving Yorkshire: politics and poetics

Part 2 Project 2005
Mark Swinburne
 University of Sheffield | UK
This project for a Regional Assembly was born out of the desire to bring people together. An initial intervention used the medium of street theatre to encourage and stimulate debate.

The Regional Assembly goes on to provide a more permanent address for such debate. In order to function at a cultural, political and social level, there needs to be a strong relationship between people, politics and place. This forms the fundamental theoretical spine to the project.

The political and public realms are exposed to one another, so encouraging informal communication. Physically this is manifest through the design of the public realm realised as a series of pleasure gardens. This opens up the site as a flow of movement integrated into the historic fabric of York.



Studio 7 investigated the relationship between our media driven society and the relatively static nature of the built environment.

Mark’s project evolved from proposals for performance theatre in the public realm as a strategy for communicating and stimulating political debate and awareness.

This resulted in a proposed regional assembly – formalising the environment for debate – with site and building informing each other. By placing people at the heart of the Regional Assembly, public space becomes the key mechanism for communication, realised through a series of gardens in which the pragmatic elements (library, debating chambers, offices) are sub-ordinate to the public realm.

2005
CONTEXT The site within the context of Yorkshire. Formed between the infrastructural routes of road and rail, the site acts as a spacer, preventing the collapse of time and space. Is the site Yorkshire's secret garden?
URBAN DEVELOPMENT Two approaches to urban development: Alsop’s zeit-geist Supercity and Prescott’s genius loci Northern Way. Neither proposal can exist without making a connection to one another. This is the distance between word and image.
INTERVENTION The design of a performance process, which through the medium of street theatre disseminates information out to the public of the region, encouraging discussion and debate. Feedback mechanisms create a truly collaborative planning process.
LOCATION The project finds it home in York, as the historic capital, former seat of religious power and geographical centre of the region, the city will provide the fundamental sense of stability for people throughout the region.
EBBS & FLOWS The site is understood as a series of movement flows-domestic, cultural, tourist, economic, political.etc. These flows travel at various speeds and are influenced by the pressures emitted by physical and non-physical entities.
COMMUNICATIONThe desire exists to expose the political and public realms. The public are placed at the heart of the assembly, with public space used as the key mechanism for communication which is realised through a series of public pleasure gardens.
GROUND FLOOR PLAN The public gardens become a destination in themselves. The gardens merge with the fast pedestrian flows of the site, while the debate chambers and pragmatic elements occupy the slow ebbing spaces left over.
1ST & 2ND FLOOR PLANS In merging with the movement flows of the site, the regional assembly becomes merely an extension of the public realm. The 3 distinct built elements of the assembly are the major and minor debate chambers and library.
This concept is continued in the roof. Constructed as 2 timber gridshells joined at the perimeter, the shells are prised apart by the 3 major built elements. The gridshells find their own form, responding to the tensile and gravitational forces at work.
SECTION The building's functional hierarchy is aided by the sectional qualities of the design. The lower floor slips away towards the river forming an enclosed and thermally sealed environment housing the MP’s offices, RDA, press conference facilities.
CONTEXTUAL ELEVATION Externally the chambers appear contained by the gridshell.In reality the concrete truss wall constructed chambers determine the roof form.Light enters high in the timber roof creating an overwhelming and resonant material presence.
The public gardens serve as both destination and route. They provide a landscape of communication between politic and public, creating spaces for informal meetings between politicians, government officials, regional consortia members and the public.
WATER GARDEN The gardens are developed around the paradigms of water, earth and air. The water garden is formed by reinstating a previous water garden, forming a new inlet for the River Foss.
EARTH GARDEN The earth garden is formed through the sculpting of the ground as it is pushed up to form two slowly rising ramped walkways, which serve as the major entry points to the complex.
AIR GARDEN Playing upon the notion of the secret garden, a hidden element to be discovered.Occupying the uppermost level, the garden froms where the gentle curves of the gridshell fall away, revealing the site and theatrical performance of the RA itself.
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