the Underpass: Section

Section through Underpass identifying different areas and sequence of events

the Underpass: Details

some detailing sketches on various features around the Underpass. Light installations, forms, shapes, seating, materials.

Underpass: Experimenting with volumes

This video demonstrates the basic concept behind the design approach of the Underpass design. The walls of the Underpass will lose their verticality and develop inside it like rocks, shapes that represent an abstract form similar to a colliery site, linking the history of the Underpass to its main use years ago from the Tanshelf community.
The process has four parts. In first we divide the Volume of the Underpass into 15 equal parts (every 1 meter). The 15 planes that we have, are divided into a square grid that represent points in space and then we connect these points in order to create volumes. The final result is then attached back to the original volume.

This process is on a conceptual stage at the moment and will be examined more specifically with accurate measurements. That is the stage where the design will be examined in ways of connecting with the surrounding area, materials that can be used, light fixtures and other details.

Research: Poème Electronique

In 1958 Philips commend to Le Corbusier the construction of its Pavillion at the International Fair in Brusels, Belgium. Le Corbusier - Xenakis - Varese compound Sound and Image Technology, Architecture, Music and Poetry under the Poème Electronique.

The Philips Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958 was designed in large part by Iannis Xenakis, at the time one of Le Corbusier's architectural assistants. The program in the pavilion during the World's Fair consisted of Edgard Varèse' Poème Electronique played through 400 loudspeakers, projected images and colored lights created by Le Corbusier, and Iannis Xenakis' Concrète PH played as an interlude between shows.

As Varèse later described it, the sound followed paths through the loudspeaker arrays, and groups of speakers were used to create effects such as reverberation. He said, "I heard my music literally projected into space."

Influences: Tod Hanson

At Cell Project Space, Hanson will continue his characteristic manipulation of architectural space, decoration and the language of interior design to explore the rush of an over-amplified globalised environment – its war, celebration and delirium. Once in the white gallery space visitors are enticed to walk over the threshold into an Alice in Wonderland riot of line and form. Hanson creates a 360 degree painted and taped world where floor, walls and ceiling become one through the meticulous graphic accentuation of every plane, every join, every architectural detail.

From the centre of the gallery a frenzy of what at first sight appear to be party streamers festoon the walls drawing the viewer into a bright golden back space. Here the streamers morph from torn rags through ticker tape and bandages into cut straw and rays of sunshine. Enveloping the viewer in a comic book world, Hanson constantly plays with their visual expectations through his bold graphic style and ability to create changes in atmosphere through colour and altered vistas.

source: http://www.cell.org.uk/

Influences: Vier5

The work of Vier5 is based on a classical notion of design. Design as the possibility of drafting and
creating new, forward-looking images in the field of visual communication. a further focus of our work lies on designing and applying new, up-to-date fonts.

The work of Vier5 aims to prevent any visual empty phrases and to replace them with individual, creative statements, which were developed especially for the used medium and client.

intresting work. see more!

Influences: Peter Eisenman - Casa Guardiola

great video studying Eisenman's Guardiola House and Deconstruction concepts..

the Underpass: Materials Research

Theatre Square Schouwbergplein / West 8 / Rotterdam

Maritime Youth Centre / PLOT Architects / Copenhagen

Westblaak Skate Park/ Rotterdam

Memorial Bridge / 3LHD Architects / Croatia

Brogard Square / SLA Landscape Architects / Copenhagen

Blue Carpet / Thomas Heatherwick Studio / Newcastle, UK

the Underpass: Movement Studies

Based on the 3d model created, these are some studies on movement (people, sound, light) that is dictated from the form of the Underpass. Yellow lines represent frontages, Red line a vertical and horizontal sound movement (or light too) and the blue line a sort of combination of the other two. These lines can help us identify potential positions of lights or other installations that can be developed inside the Underpass.

the Underpass: History Research

The Colonels Walk Underpass was a pedestrian link from the Tanshelf community with the Pit Yard Colliery site of Prince of Wales.

The Community was built close to the colliery in order to house the people working in the colliery. A series of houses as well as small businesses, a theatre and a cinema, shops and small streets were developed inside this area which was a kind of a town within the greater town of Pontefract.

Most of the people (men) were working in the colliery. The approach to the colliery depending on where they needed to be was from a number of small pedestrian routes that were connecting the town of Pontefract with the Pit Yard. Colonels Walk was one of the most major roads of Tanshelf and the Colonels Walk Underpass one of the most used and important access points to the side of the Colliery. Its only use was from workers that would need to walk from their houses to work.

In the 1960’s, after the colliery was closed, the Tanshelf community had to be demolised as it mostly had small two-room houses in not the greatest state.

'..It was inevitable that the old terraced properties would have to be demolished, the houses were small and cramped, having mostly only two bedrooms, one small scullery, and one living room, with others a little larger having three bedrooms. There was no indoor bathroom and the toilet was situated in the back yard. Open coal fires provided a source of heat while the lighting was by gaslight and candles..'

Maurice Haigh from TANSHELF - A Bygone Community

People speak about the Tanshelf community with a sense of a great communal place, where people were feeling really close to their neighbours and their place. After a small telephone interview with mr. Peter Cookson (Pontefract Railway Society+Civic Society), I discovered myself this great sense that Tanshelf had and how people were feeling living in such a place.

'..Every street had a corner shop. At the bottom of our street was the fish and chip shop where Mrs Bessie Beaumont and Mrs Mabel Ellis worked. You always had a good laugh when you went in there. Opposite the fish shop was Tonks shop. Many a time we had been playing rounders in the street (men included) and somebody had sent the ball into Tonky’s shop and knocked the pop bottles over. Another game we played was skipping, with a clothes line the full width of the road.

Colonel’s Walk was all cobbles and every winter, after a fall of snow, it became the venue for sledging from top to bottom. It was like a sheet of glass until the council workmen came and salted it or one of our parents came out with shovels full of ashes and threw them all over the road..'

Maureen Holt (nee O’Hara) from FURTHER MEMORIES OF TANSHELF

You can read three very intresting stories from people that were part of the Tanshelf community taken from the Pontefract Digest publication. [story 01, story 02, story 03]

the Underpass: Massing Model Video

massing 3d model animation

the Underpass: Massing 3d Model

a couple of renders from the initial massing model..

the Underpass: Initial Masterplan

'..This initial concept design for Colonels Walk shows our intentions within the masterplan and the wider area surrounding the site and into Pontefract. Within the prince of wales masterplan, there is a strong aspiration to greatly enhance this pedestrian route from the site through to the centre of Pontefract. It is on a key desire line through the site which will enable pedestrians to walk through the site to the proposed retail and community units and beyond to Pontefract park, racecourse and ultimately up to Xscape and Freeport.

Colonels Walk Underpass strides both adjacent sites to the north and south and is located on a clear spine route that connects these two areas. We would like the pedestrian to interpret both sides of the Underpass as one space so that the Underpass is the key transitional element that links these spaces. Therefore, it is important that we ensure that the design intentions on both sides (and within the underpass itself) are well designed and ultimately, coherent. It is paramount that this area is promoted as a safe, attractive and pleasant environment for pedestrians. We can enable this by creating an urbanised environment, with buildings that front up to and onto the spaces around the underpass to allow good overlooking opportunities and levels of interaction and also by continuation of the building line with a high quality wall, lighting, landscaping, seating, etc.

It is intended that this route is to be retained as pedestrian only allowing the pedestrian user to feel in a unique place. So it is also important that this route goes beyond a simple thoroughfare and is conceived as an intuitive and unique experience. An instinctive route will be achieved in design terms through the landscaping of quality public realm materials. A sense of experience will be created with visual design features like the installation of light on the floor/walls/ceiling. We want to signify the importance of this route by creating an element of interactive design in the receptor spaces either side of the underpass. We currently looking at the potential of Colonels Walk in terms of experiential and interactive design and the possibilities of light and sound installations within the Underpass. Promoting the three major elements of Colonels walk (as shown on the diagram) as interconnecting threads is key to the success of this area..'

extract from the first issued document

the Underpass: Concept Ideas

In order to explain this process, we need to divide the experience in three parts. The old Pontefract town centre is area ‘1’, the Underpass is area ‘2’ and the new Prince of Wales development is area ‘3’.

The interaction between these three areas should not be isolated from each other. In the diagram below, we can see all the possible interrelations between the three key points in no particular order. In simple words, we are not seeking a logical progress from point 1 to point 2 and then 3 but more an experience that can jump from point 1 to 3, then 2 to 1 and back to 2, 3 and so on.

This can be achieved by mixing the qualities of these three points (either by the use of sound, light or any other technologies) and therefore ‘brake’ each point’s individuality. Therefore point 1 becomes another version of point 2 or 3 and vice versa. These ideas should be more developed in future research and ideas as well actual facts that will be posted here soon.

the Underpass: Initial Sketches

Here are some initial sketches in order to study the flow of movement through the underpass. By extending the actual area of the Underpass experience, we can manage to eliminate the ‘dangerous’ aspects of it. A logical progress from one side to the other can be established with a series of events. A series of events that progress as the user walks through the Underpass from one side to the other.

the Underpass: Brainstorming

first notes on project approach

Interaction Design

Interaction Design (IxD or IaD) is the discipline of defining and creating the behavior of technical, biological, environmental and organizational systems. Examples of these systems are software, products, mobile devices, environments, services, wearables, and even organizations themselves. Interaction design defines the behavior (the "interaction") of an artifact or system in response to its users over time.

Interaction designers are typically informed by user research, design with an emphasis on behavior as well as form, and evaluate design in terms of usability and emotional factors.

Existing Underpass Video

Research: Greyworld - The Layer

' The Layer is an art system created to articulate transit spaces through a series of contact sculptures.

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel was the first installation in a public space to use the Layer system. We had been experimenting with different ways to articulate these transit spaces, from purely analogue methods of sound capture and distortion, to more complex means of digesting movement and form.

A long blue carpet was installed in the dark tunnel running underneath the Thames. Tiny sensors, beneath the carpet detected the direction weight and speed of pedestrians as they passed along its length and translated this information into a generatively produced sound environment. An album - 'Various Walkers' was created by recording these performances.

The installation was commissioned by the London Docklands Commission and sponsored by the Daily Telegraph.

The Layer has undergone many changes since the Greenwich foot tunnel. These allow both a wider range of inputs to be used, such as colour and shape as well as a large range of expressive outputs, such as light and generative display. Essentially though, it is the legibility of the installation to a broad public that remains paramount to us.

The work of art was also installed along the Millennium Bridge that runs across the Iffey in Dublin, Ireland. It gave pedestrians crossing an opportunity to crate and interact, simply by passing through the space. The installation was a counterpoint to another work of art, which we installed in the Guinness Storehouse.

We installed a bright blue carpet along the bridge, to signify that something was different in the centre of Dublin. We then embedded sensors in the carpet that responded to each footstep across the bridge, generating unexpected sounds and melodies - a plaintive piano phrase or the sounds of footsteps crunching through snow or sploshing through puddles. '

extract from Greyworld's website

The Underpass Project

A new project.
The Underpass Project is a side project of the larger Prince of Wales regeneration in Pontefract, Yorkshire.

Prince of Wales Masterplan (copyright Spawforths)

Spawforths have been working for the last two years for UKCoal on a Development Framework and Masterplan for the re-development of Pontefract Pit Yard Colliery Site (Prince of Wales) and recently, in December 2006 submitted an outline planning application to Wakefield MDC.
At the moment, Spawforths - alongside sub-consultants - are working on a Design Code for this proposed development, which explores detailed design aspects.

The Underpass is an existing pedestrian link between Pontefract town centre and the Prince of Wales site. The opportunity to improve and urbanise Colonels Walk will help to promote it as a key pedestrian connection between the new development and the old town centre.

The Underpass detail

I am really excited to work on this particular project that can definitely test some ideas of how graphic design can co-exist with architecture and urbanism. This is an opportunity to apply graphic design to a wider context, to make it become part of the design process and introduce it to other disciplines.

This is a project to explore cultural factors, experiences, spatial environments and links. An exciting process after all that can introduce new ways of thinking about design solutions and will attempt to explore opportunities of a multi-discipline approach.