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About the Unit

Manchester School of Architecture Projects group (MSAp) was set up in 2005 to develop architectural projects with a life outside of the school. Since then we have collaborated with the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester City Council Joint Health Unit and numerous Manchester community groups and individuals. This year and next we are funded under the Central Government project 'generations together' which encourages local councils to integrate urban design and architecture with attempts to reduce health inequalities.

Collaborations and impact

Formal and informal collaborations with Manchester City Council over the last three years have highlighted architecture and urban design issues with respect to health inequalities at a governmental level. This year a formal collaboration funded under the Cabinet Office 'Generations Together' programme has engaged over 300 members of the public through workshops and presentations in urban design issues relating to social inequalities. Ministers have visited projects in the Manchester Generations Together programme and have been presented documentation of previous work and current research. Council officers have attended workshops and presentations of student work exploring the issues of urban design with respect to inequalities under the MCC Joint Health Unit's Valuing Older people programme.

This year's work culminates in an exhibition at the Noise gallery on Market Street in central Manchester alongside a website and publication for dissemination to a wider audience. We have been invited to present the project to representatives from the Cabinet Office in July and chair a panel on inclusive urban design at an national conference entitled 'Towards the ageless city' in November next year.

Thank you to Manchester City Council's Joint Health Unit and all participants.

Projects during 2009/10

Sharing the city

MSAp have spent this year using their architectural skills and imaginations in collaborative projects working to make Manchester more inclusive, open, fair and accessible. We have investigated how people share the city and imagined how the city could be shared. To structure our efforts we have taken a theoretical position which is based around the concept of affect.

We have worked to understand how the architecture of the city helps the people who live in it to share, feel or find - care, affection, humour, fun, joy and love - and how those experiences shape what the city becomes and can be. We understand these moments of affect as the social labour of the city, the unpaid and unvalued labour which makes the city 'sustainable' – as in desirable, liveable, loved.

Through a series of creative and collaborative workshops involving a diverse range of invitees, both within and outside the school, tutor-led and student-led, we have explored how we can imagine, design and influence the future of the city as a place shared between people of all ages, attitudes and occupations. We have investigated how these unusual meetings and encounters affect us and our practices and have used these experiences to develop our architectural abilities in unexpected situations, collaborations and projects. We use conventional and unconventional methods of drawing, model making, participatory research, film-making, presenting and performance to explore our subject and extend the capabilities of architecture.

This year the 5th yr students have developed projects which include:

  • Communicating urban design issues to lay groups involved in city redevelopment projects so they can better represent their constituencies in planning and consultation exercises – in St.Peter's Square and in Chorlton;
  • developing community resources in a live project for combining education and allotment facilities across the city;
  • changing perceptions and experiences of Ardwick through performance spaces, night galleries and themed public spaces;
  • improving access to the green spaces of the Irk valley including proposals for Sandhills park and street installations in Cheetham hill;
  • community led proposals for improvements to Wynthenshawe Civic Centre;
  • improving access to the hidden spaces of Manchester's canals;
  • and questioning the gentrification of the Northern Quarter.

The 6th years have also developed the themes of their projects through community engagement while focussing on demonstrating the coherent design requirement in the professional course criteria. Their projects include:

  • Bringing the next G20 summit to Manchester - finding ways of using the massive policing budgets more constructively;
  • Seeking support from the Co-op for safe routes out of prostitution in Angel Meadows;
  • promoting collaboration between the creative industries and Job centres in Ardwick;
  • engaging the citizens of Oldham in re-imagining and saving their dilapidated town hall and civic centre;
  • Recycling Manchester City Centre's half-developed sites as sites for recycling and community involvement;
  • Using squatting as a positive path out of homelessness; Helping destitute asylum seekers become active citizens;
  • Investigating 'iStore' bottom-up urban planning in East Manchester;
  • asking if parametricism is a new, new brutalism;
  • and using science-fiction film architecture to imagine the future of Manchester.

We hope that these projects and collaborations will influence the future of Manchester as they will be used to inform discussions about services, planning and urban design and will be presented to the public in an exhibition and via a website and publication.

msa projects has had visiting tutor contributions from Philip Hall-Patch of Nicholas Hare Architects and Jochen Rabe of Arup.