Holding Spaces Part 2 Project 2006 Peter HoranMatthew Ashton University of Liverpool | UK HOLDING SPACES is a reading of the hinterland, a series of layers drawn together around the themes of trade, commodification and excise control, focusing on the world’s first mercantile dock system in Liverpool. The location provides a rich context in which to investigate modification of structures and spaces in a process landscape. The dock wall was initially investigated as a document of the history of land use, providing clues to the physical processes of the building fabric. The programme for an art auction hall and bonded store facility explored tensions between high value commodity and low-rent environment. The students combine a sophisticated understanding of the international art market, with an original proposal for the utilisation of surplus ‘bonded’ warehouse space in the redundant north Liverpool docks. Taking the potential of Liverpool’s trading context as the starting point they turn the tax advantages of bonded status into the generator of a new function for these secure but undervalued warehouse spaces. The variety of spatial conditions within the redundant fabric becomes inhabited by the variety of traded art. The complexity of the spaces, and the subtlety of the chosen insertions, is illustrated in a clear and concise manner.