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Multicultural Language and Linguistics Centre, Smethwick.

Part 2 Project 2005
Matt Edwards
Deborah Nicol
 Birmingham City University | UK
The new urban park design transforms the current ‘as found’ condition/identity of the site, referencing the area’s social and political past and its current social condition. Each of the intimate gardens represents a ‘heart’ (first) language spoken in the area, celebrating the importance of difference whilst encouraging social cohesion and understanding. The Multicultural Language and Linguistics Centre, set within the park, is an interpretation of the fragmentation of heart languages in this particular multicultural society, breaking down the social, political and geographic divides, and allowing a more fluid relationship to emerge between the different languages/cultures (shifting towards a pluralist multiculturalism).


Matt's project, located in 'unglamorous' Smethwick, a disadvantaged area in the West Midlands which is crying out for regeneration. The programme for a language school developed out of a social and cultural site analysis which identified a vast number of different nationalities and languages within a small area. Ideas of host, remote, and combined languages emerged, as well as a recognition of different generations and the spoken and written word. The proposal is a dramatic series of flowing and fragmented forms which draw reference from both the purity of language and its various iterations via everyday use and abuse
Tutor(s)
2005
Each of the 26 first languages spoken in Smethwick is represented on the site, each space is axially orientated to the languages' origin.
Film clip_004 is a still frame in an explosive sequence, whick looks at the potential impact of fragmenting multicultural languages in a specific environment.
Film clip_008. Fragment collisions create hybrid languages specific to their Cartesian coordinates in space.
Conceptual image of the spatial quality post-fragmentation.
Conceptual image. Architecture as 'a moment in time.'
Proto language strands hold the decomposing composition together and exhibit a common link to an ancient root language believed to have originated in what is now Turkey by nomadic farmers (basis of the theoretical Proto-Indo-European language).
The breakdown of social and physical boundaries allows a new fluid space to emerge, weaving its way through the debris. This image shows the twin steel lattice structure walls used to form each of the three main wings of the building.
Eye-level view of the steel lattice structure.
The sub-structure delineates the pure language spaces. The coloured strands represent the journey of languages to the area.
Aerial view of the Multicultural Language and Linguistics building set in the urban park. Social, political, historic and 'as found' maps are overlaid to create a hybrid map revealing the site's hidden identity.
Perspective view. The building transgresses man-made boundaries.
Eye-level view. The red nodes are a 3D representation (braille translation) of Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech given in the area. Their uncompromising nature forces new pedestrian paths to evolve.
View of the underbelly of the building from the new vehicular underpass.
Internal experience of the violent clash of languages and cultures in 'one of the most deprived multi-cultural urban communities in England.'
Physical model.
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