The Washhouse Part 1 Project 2015 Michael CradockAlice MoxleyEdward Ponti Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | UK The Washhouse responds to a Crisis in Edinburgh; it aims to reinvigorate a foundering art scene by providing arts production and exhibition space for emerging artists. The proposal combines three sites in Edinburgh, two of which retain existing buildings; a neoclassical end-of-terrace, a derelict warehouse, and a ‘Steamie’ (municipal washhouse) separated by Union Street. Confronting an existing architectural contrast between New Town grandiosity and the lowly post-industrial, the terrace would present a ‘respectable face’ to the city. The ‘institutional’ functions within the building form an extended concrete armature (both structurally and metaphorically) supporting the activities of the artists within. This tectonic thread is translated into permanent ‘Core’ and the temporary studios occupied by the artists. Using off-the-shelf materials, easily construction and adapted over time, responding to research workshops we conducted in which we engaged with the needs of emerging artists. An aspect of the project focused on a ‘microtecture’, a palette of interventions that extends across the city. Precipitating a climate of art in Edinburgh and a mythology of artistic production in which expectation and production commingles to perpetuate an atmosphere of creative enterprise, this is a direct material and metaphorical link to its construction and conception in The Washhouse. Michael CradockAlice MoxleyEdward Ponti Tutor(s)