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Commendation
SOM Foundation UK Award

The Secret Policemen's Saloon

Part 1 Project 2009
Robert Taylor
 University of Sheffield | UK
Hidden inside Castlegate’s old Police Station, the Secret Policeman’s Saloon provides an after work club for the adjacent South Yorkshire Police’s headquarters in Sheffield’s city centre.

Accommodating a bar, an illegal brewery and a rugged hotel for the inebriated off duty officers, the project aims to expose Castlegate’s immoral underbelly and monumentalise its specific archaeology in a way that resists the future development plans for the area.

The narrative of the project was developed alongside its physical architecture as the complexity of the place’s moral condition was explored. As such, an architecture was conceived through a filmic schedule of operations and allegorically driven through 4 literal reversals of current architectural paradigms in Castlegate and the contemporary architectural canon:


Architecture posits the FAKE (not the AUTHENTIC)

DARKNESS is the revealer of form (not LIGHT)

Man is OFF-CENTRE of divine creation (not AT the centre)

Architecture is CONFRONTATION (not ACCOMMODATION)

These litanies, and every architectural idea, have been STOLEN from conveniently deceased architects so as to remove any responsibility for this illegal building from myself.


Augmented to propose a sustainable tactic to renovate the area in an alternate way to that Sheffield Council’s disruptive gentrification plan, in re-writing the future of a part of the city sous-rature, the Saloon aims to challenge both Castlegate and the modern city’s current divorce between provision and consumption and address the relegation of the factory from the urban landscape whilst including the city’s essential (though condemned) marginal spaces and activities.

Though the project is drawn as if it exists some time in the past, it speculates a regressive future for Castlegate and the unanaesthetised city. Through the use of a constantly updating palette of salvaged materials, the Saloon tectonically crystallises Castlegate’s current and past archaeology in order to provide spaces for the policemen to ultimately question their retreat from the progressive exhaustion of civic duty.

Should this criminal enterprise be disrupted by the authorities, the Saloon is designed to self destruct in a blaze of glory, committing suicide by pulling the Old Police Station and the neighbouring South Yorkshire Police Archive's walls in on themselves.


This project offers a Facility for a number of ‘vocations’ within the Castlegate area of Sheffield. Early studies included a the derivation of a carefully developed narrative, which posited police officers, brewers and traders (legal and illegal) within close proximity to each other. This narrative was thoughtful and highly inventive in terms of its reading of place, experience and subsequence representation and a subtle response to the idea of information exchange.

Relationships between buildings and power were embraced and furthered through rigorous research both in grounding the narrative in some challenging theory and the application of detail design at key moments in the design process. Rob took real ownership of his project and was intent on pushing the narrative and the subsequent engagement with building to a high standard.

The underlying polemic of the project- an alternative vocabulary of architecture from programme to detail- is well handled and successfully embeds the narrative without cliché. This has, along with his sophisticated satirical approach, produced a sophisticated resolution to the project which is rarely seen at degree level

The final piece of work is exemplary as not only does it offer fantastic tectonically resolved architectures but also a subtle and varied spatial sequence which weave and intervene not only with each other but also the existing fabric. His working methods have been excellent, his ability to think creatively in 3 dimensions is apparent through all the proposals. Overall this is an amazing piece of work that clearly shows a student who is able to produce stimulating architecture that is materially tactile and theoretically questioning. The architecture that he has produced is not only visually exciting but also theoretically rigorous in execution. Overall his work was awarded a 1st class degree and the final piece is a testament to his rigorous and thoughtful approach.
Tutor(s)
Carol Latham
Mr Satwinder Samra
2009
Scrutinising The Overlooked: The visual dictaphone augments the body to an instrument of recording and reviewing the Castlegate's banal spaces, enabling the production of a forensic examination around Castlegate's Old Police Station.
Deriving a Ghostwritten Ideogram: Applicable precedents were drawn from the Castlegate's general and more intimate situations. Their associated theorisings and technologies are amalgamated and reinterpreted sous-rature to form a composite monument to the
The Saloon's Immediate Spatial Context: The Saloon will become as close to a permanant feature of the invisible urban landscape as possible, a symbolic knot in Castlegate's Urban fabric.
Old Police Station Isometric: The Saloon intervenes in an Old Police Station's existing fabric. A bar and hotel provide a place for South Yorkshire Police Force's officers to interrogate their relationship with the city's spaces.
A Plan of The Saloon Revealing its Accommodation: Though unconsecrated, the Saloon's cruciform arrangement subverts traditional religious building typology, addressing Castlegate's spiritual vacuum.
A Section through The Castle Arms, South Yorkshire Police Force's Constable's Club: The Castle Arms is a place to sit and reflect upon the progressive exhaustion of civic duty, whilst drinking oneself into a stupor.
A Plan of the Factory Floor.
A Section through The Brewing Chamber: Hung from the Roof and Walls of the Old Police Station, it is the starting point for the brewing process the Saloon accommodates as well as a radio transmitter to facilitate a broadcast.
Plate 1: Showing the Constable's precipitous station during the Saloon’s radio broadcast.
A Section looking at The Saloon's Hotel: Though the brewing chamber accommodated the reconciliation of the human body with the goods it consumes, the Hotel is a place the inebriated officer confronts the viscerality of consumption.
A Section through Rooms 202 & 203: The Saloon deploys a constantly updating palette of salvaged materials. In the hotel room, the action of the Constable's warm urine on the glass urinal permits a drunken view down into the factory.
A Long Section taken through The Old Police Station, revealing the act of Constable McSweeney retiring to his Hotel Room.
A Birdseye View of The Saloon. The constable's procession through the Saloon leads him from denial through exposure towards reconciliation.
A Wormseye view of The Saloon: A complete parasite, the Saloon illegally draws the water it uses to brew from the city's mains water. It holds the city of Sheffield hostage, for it is powerless to stop the Saloon's detrimental effect on its listed host...
...Should the Saloon's illegal operation be disrupted, it commits suicide, pulling the Old Police Station's and its neighbouring Police Records Archive walls in on themselves.
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