Unit 5 speed dating
There is a kind of play common to nearly every child: it is to get under a piece of furniture or some extemporized shelter of his own and to explain that he is in a ‘house’… It is a symbolism – of a fundamental kind, expressed in terms of play. This kind of play has much to do with the aesthetics of architecture.
Heavenly Mansions – An Interpretation of Gothic by John Summerson, 1963
Unit 5 are exploring spaces for music and performance in secondary schools and over the coming year will be collaborating with five schools in Croydon, working in parallel with Croydon Council’s ongoing Building Schools for the Future programme. We will be directly working with the schools, organising field-trips and workshops with a client group of pupils in an effort to best understand the needs of young people and their aspirations for music and arts facilities. Extensive research and participation projects will inform hypothetical designs for exemplar spaces in schools in which young people can practice, experience and perform music. This process will be recorded on our website and blog: www.worldswithinworlds.org
In an initial two week project Unit 5 has been designing in response to aedicules – directly translated from Latin meaning ‘little houses’. Summerson talks of the aedicular nature of the Gothic, which has acted as a catalyst for our exploration of small enclosing spaces. Gathered and piled together into a collection of little houses, these collectively form expansive social spaces: ‘the cathedrals of the day’ – a concept which will inform our final design projects.
In a bid to embrace a more playful form of consultation our first client meeting took the form of a speed dating session. The Unit was divided into groups of three and each group had five minutes to meet our prospective client from each school, giving both parties an opportunity to quiz one another before teaming up. Tutors David Kohn and Silvia Ullmayer are now acting as match-makers, pairing each group of students with a school to form a collaborative team for the rest of the project.
