 Proposals for mulitfunctional structures in Gunpowder Park | HIDE was the first true working example of the Gunpowder Park programming policy to explore the use of open space through arts-led collaborations. HIDE brings together the University of East London, Terry Orchard and Pioneer School, to work with the Haring Woods Studio team at Gunpowder Park, to link several strands of activity to address the need for small, multi-functional structures for use in open spaces.
The project name, which was adopted as a short hand working title, has come to inform the creative process through the assortment of meanings, archaic and current:
HIDE:
> An old English measure of land, usually the amount held adequate for one free family and its dependents.
> To prevent the disclosure or recognition of; conceal: tried to hide the facts.
> To cut off from sight; cover up.
> The skin of an animal, especially the thick tough skin or pelt of a large animal.
> A place where people can watch wild animals or birds without being noticed by them.
The project began as a response to one of Lee Valley Regional Park’s main attractions – bird watching. Hides are located throughout the Park to enable visitors to watch the thousands of birds, especially the Bitterns that enjoy the Park’s wetlands and meadows. Gunpowder Park hosts an unusual sculptural metal hide, an almost indestructible structure set in the seclusion of The Salix (Osier Marsh) a mature woodland and wetland. But the majority of the hides throughout Lee Valley Regional Park are the traditional, wooden buildings which attract and are repeatedly subjected to vandalism. The marketplace currently offers no easy options for public parks and the team began the process of challenging tradition to create a viable alternative.
Tony Beckwith, Senior Consultant for Haring Woods Studio, facilitated a radical new design by bringing together Country Parks Manager Ian Kendall and artist Anita Rivera to provide a creative solution. Plover Hide, in the River Lee Country Park is the result and is due for completion and installation April 2005. The stunning new shape has been constructed by The Sculpture Factory, specialists in the manufacture of metal sculpture and applied art objects. An additional design element is digital media monitoring equipment to be installed at a future date, to be adopted and cared for by selected local students and community groups. Overall the outcomes are good design, sensible construction and a new opportunity to teach responsibility to young people.
Working from the specific challenge of Plover Hide, developed the notion of further exploring hides with the mix of the physical: design, architecture, construction, and the social: education, behaviour, interaction. With our remit of facilitation and collaboration, the team began to forge new links to expand this notion of hides to embrace the wider and most stimulating idea of new concepts for multi-functional small buildings for open spaces.
The team had begun working with the University of East London on a variety of research projects with the School of Architecture and Visual Arts. One of which involved sixteen BSc students from Unit G, tutored by Tak Hoshino and David Buck. The students have been using Gunpowder Park as a resource for their course in ‘small architecture’.
What started as ‘Shed Life’ evolved to incorporate the direction of our work and imperative to produce practical and achievable small structures. We brought in specialist fabricator, Mark Cosgrove, of Cosgrove Woods Associates to work with the UeL students to realise one of the designs as a working prototype and consider the implications of their concepts; budget, materials, construction, maintenance.
A parallel research strand, initiated by Tony Beckwith, involved artist Terry Orchard and his work with severely disabled children at Pioneer School in Essex. The social strand of Terry’s project, ‘A Walk in the Park’ dovetailed with the physical strand of HIDE and the emerging solutions are fuelled by necessity, compassion and craft. HIDE is the start of an ongoing process.
Exhibition notes by Eileen Woods, Creative Development Director, Gunpowder Park/Senior Partner, Haring Woods Studio
| Project Notes by Tak Hoshino, University of East London | | Animal Architecture and Artificial Nature
Sixteen BSc students from School of Architecture and the Visual Arts University of East London, known as Unit G tutored by Tak Hoshino and David Buck, have this year been developing symbiotic housing prototypes for the Thames Gateway development, called "Animal Architecture". At the initial stage of the development they have collaborated with Gunpowder Park to design a series of sheds as "small architecture", which are exhibited in the Field Station exhibition together with a prototype of the one of the ideas.
The concept of Animal Architecture, or Symbiotic Houses, is based on the knowledge that many organisms on Earth, with the exception of human beings as the usual suspect, tend to live in balance with the other organisms as well as the environment on which they are depen-dent, even if they are taking advantage of the former. The majority of human settlements, particularly those of the contemporary developments, do not follow this constraint, often creat-ing irresolvable conflicts of policies, developments and conservation. The Thames Gateway development in Southeast England as planned by the government is not an exception.
Unit G's intention is to overcome the dichotomy of simplistic argument by developing housing prototypes which are both dependent on their environment for various resources, such as energy, water, wastes recycling and so on but at the same time contribute to the maintenance of the environment long term. Although the housing prototypes are still to be developed towards the end of the academic year, the ideas of this mutual dependency between human settlement and the environment, namely symbiotic relation, can be glimpsed in the some of the initial ideas behind the Shed designs we are showing here.
We also employed a principle of symbiotic relation between the environment and individuals in the process of design. In order to develop an individual design we used collaboration and competition to a certain extent, as a means of process. As a natural step, each student started the project from investigation into animal behaviour in relation to their habitats. Then they are translated into new artefacts (tools) for human uses in order to enhance our ability to deal with specific environments. From this point onwards the students developed shed designs through joint proposals with their team partners. In the exhibition, this subtle relationship between an individual and a group is demonstrated as threads that connect square panels of corresponding stages (or components) of the individual design as well as collaborations of individuals. | HIDE - a walk in the park | | Creating an open space environment from which to understand the autistic child’s perspective and use this knowledge to inform future design of public space.
For the last three years Terry Orchard has been the Artist in Residence for Pioneer School in Essex, a place of learning for profoundly disabled youngsters. The success of the day to day life within the school’s community relies on exceptionally close team work and mutual support. Terry’s work to date with the school has earned him the privilege to be able to say that he is part of this very special ‘team’.
During his residency, Terry transformed a storage cupboard, a small confined space attached to a classroom for young children with the developmental disorder known as autism, into the ‘quiet room’.
Using soft coloured light and covering the walls and ceiling with a colourful fantasy underwater scene, the space offers autistic children a means of ‘escape’ and somewhere to be safe.
In July 2004 Terry began a research and development project at Gunpowder Park titled ‘A Walk in the Park’. The project focuses on the issues of accessibility of open space to children with autism. How does an autistic child take that step from the safe, familiar and protected environment of the quiet room and their school into the vast expanse of openness rich in sensory stimulation that we call a park?
Independently students at the University of East London were designing new concepts for multi-functional small buildings, which can be used as shelters, bird hides or performance spaces. One design inspired a potential use that was pertinent to the work Terry was researching. A mobile ‘quiet room’ offers a point of familiarity, a visually distinguishable sanctuary which can be found in the school playground could also be placed into the ‘unfamiliar’. It becomes a symbol of safety within the unfamiliarity of open space.
Terry described how a walk in the park for many autistic children would be like “floating away out of control in deep space”. His work will explore the concept of securing an open area in such a way that the essence of place, the integrity of its openness is not compromised by traditional barriers and fences.
Central to the Gunpowder Park ethos is the coming together of ideas, creativity and practitioners, always envisaged as an organic process as much determined by chance as by design.
The Haring Woods team at Gunpowder Park: Tony Beckwith, Michael Woods, Eileen Woods, Sherry Dobbin
Specialist Fabricator: Mark Cosgrove, Cosgrove Woods Associates
A Walk in the Park: Terry Orchard, Pioneer School
For Lee Valley Regional Park: Country Parks Manager, Ian Kendall
Plover Hide Design: Anita Rivera
For University of East London School of Architecture and Visual Arts; Clifford Nicholls, Head of School; Signy Svalastoga, Subject Director, Architecture; Tak Hoshino; David Buck. Peter Hasdell and Mimi Mollica for the initial concept formation
Students of UeL (Unit G) Aisha Chaudry, Amir Hakim Javadi, Andromeda Halawi, Carina Farrell, David Collett, Elena Foccoli, James Warne, Jeffrey Leopando, Jovian Ka Yan Sin, Julian Croxson, Kiran Sharma, Konstantinos Elezis, Ryan Manton, Sabrina Amade, Silvano Musgrave and Yee Hui Khoo. | |
