Project 06

Neighbourhood

With multiple external partners

STANDART PRACTICE (+ landscape company PanIT)
NOMA (20 acre site)
RNIB (exploring sensory spaces)
THE NATIONAL TRUST (natural landscapes)
ARTEZ Institute of the Arts (International partners)
UNIDENTIFIED FACILITY (design research experts)
CIRMAP (materials development)
GUEST EXPERTS + DESIGNERS (to inspire new approaches and thinking)

The Neighbourhood project links with the design studio Standard Practice, RNIB and National Trust on a city greening project to explore how nature can nurture new communities around the NOMA site on the edge of the Northern Quarter. This hands-on project explores new methods of community engagement, grass-roots initiatives, materials and prototyping to garden new models for socially engaged city space. The project also links with ArtEZ Institute of the Arts Product Design, alumni, tutors, and experts through a series of workshops and fieldwork on site.

Students and staff join forces as co-producers to create new ideas and initiate provocations. Communities are formed where species come together, not only human but all biotic living organisms, plants and fungi. Together they form an intricate balance for all living systems. The project asks how we can grow our understanding of living together in city spaces and reimagine, prototype and test new models and initiatives for future city spaces. Understanding how we ‘garden’ new communities is central to the project.

One of the National Trusts original founding directions was to bring green space to cities, to enable people to access nature in new ways that nurtures wellbeing. The project forms a research lab through creating design teams to test ideas with input and expertise from our partners. The Noma site is a former banking district, but its location is developed and social value has become the new focus. Through the project's interventions the site has found new potential to host and explore new opportunities which will test the sustainable impact of development sites and how waste can be reprocessed into new materials and purposes, linking with Circular Economy European funded research project CIRMAP and Print City.

Keywords: Design, Research, Ecology, Gardening, Making, City, Urban, Intervention, Futures, Sustainability, Well-being, Installation