Reclaiming the Urban Core: Revitalising Manchester Piccadilly Gardens
I am a designer whose heart lies in the gentle art of shaping spaces that resonate with the spirit of community. With deft hands and a mind that finds solace in modelmaking and craft, I bring to life visions that speak not just of structures, but of stories and aspirations. Each cut of cardboard and each line of pencil is an invitation to dialogue, an opening for voices to be heard.
I believe that architecture is not merely about walls and roofs, but about belonging. In my work with communities, I listen intently, absorbing the hopes and memories of those I serve.
My designs reflect not just form, but care, inclusivity, and the promise of growth. Highly motivated and deeply thoughtful, I strive to balance precision with empathy, always weaving the human spirit into the fabric of built space. In my hands, architecture becomes an act of care, a testament to the belief that places should not only shelter us, but also nourish our souls.
This thesis begins with a question I hold close: how can architecture reclaim spaces of control and exclusion, transforming them into places of refuge, agency, and collective presence? Set within the contested terrain of Piccadilly Gardens, this project is my critique and proposition a refusal of public spaces that police and surveil, and an invitation to imagine an urban commons that nurtures, shelters, and listens.
At its heart is a series of modular, circular follies architectural gestures that gather without enclosing, that adapt without imposing. Soft yet radical, they offer thresholds for rest, play, protest, and shared existence. These structures resist permanence and monumentality, embracing instead the flows of daily life and the quiet acts of care that make public space truly public. For me, every spatial decision acknowledges that architecture is never neutral and the personal is always political.
Design for me is a living, breathing framework that evolves with the communities who inhabit it, where every path is an invitation and every edge a place of negotiation. In reclaiming the urban core, I believe public space must belong to everybody, and the work of architecture is to make that belonging visible, tangible, and real.
