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SoftScape

Part 2 Project 2006
Anna Holder
Gabi Watkins
University of Sheffield | UK
The SoftScape project posits an architecture of flexible and changing uses, of multiple users, with multiple intents.

SoftScape exists in moments, stories, routes and rules. The project begins with studies of 'soft' and 'hard' spaces, evolving into the design of a multi-use building in central Sheffield.

The design of the building was developed through writing stories which follow a day in the life of the imagined users - elderly residents of the sheltered apartments, young children from the kindergarten, a waitress from the café… their routes, views, chance encounters and shared glances become moments of intensity within the building.

Anna Holder
Gabi Watkins


Anna Holder's project came out of a studio investigating 'SoftSpace', an approach that challenges the determinist, abstracting and ordering tendencies of modernism.

The skill of Anna's work lies in its interweaving of a number of strands - impulsive paintings, a set of rules, stories, snatched depictions of specific settings - in order to arrive at a design. The journey is incredibly rich, always infused with snippets of life and informed by the project's relationship to its surroundings.

The result is a project that is spatially fecund
and very touching in its understanding of contingent human experience.

Tutor(s)

2006
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