Epilogue

Beautiful Chaos: As we finally draw the curtains, we hope the journey in finding the beautiful chaos and the moments in the city has brought us all to appreciate the erased, concealed and unbuilt. Where deep falseness lies upon our imagination, we are able to construct an interface between the city and the room. It is in these mundane scenes, we see the perfect depiction of chaos; a wonderful presentation of drawings of people, space and time into their narrative structure.

Beautiful Chaos: As we finally draw the curtains, we hope the journey in finding the beautiful chaos and the moments in the city has brought us all to appreciate the erased, concealed and unbuilt. Where deep falseness lies upon our imagination, we are able to construct an interface between the city and the room. It is in these mundane scenes, we see the perfect depiction of chaos; a wonderful presentation of drawings of people, space and time into their narrative structure.

Beautiful Chaos: As we finally draw the curtains, we hope the journey in finding the beautiful chaos and the moments in the city has brought us all to appreciate the erased, concealed and unbuilt. Where deep falseness lies upon our imagination, we are able to construct an interface between the city and the room. It is in these mundane scenes, we see the perfect depiction of chaos; a wonderful presentation of drawings of people, space and time into their narrative structure.

Beautiful Chaos: To describe our project as a series of spaces and its simultaneous connection to the city and the chaos and narration of the city, we were thinking of that one image that could help us lay everything in place. We felt that it should be a hypothetical image or something that is surreal and imaginary. It is like how we begin our journey with the Invisible City, something so ever surreal; we want to introduce this tension between the stories and the reality.

This piece seeks to distort the present, revealing snippets of the past whilst injecting the new possibilities of the emerging future. It is indeed the encounter of timelines that we wish to portray and what you receive in exchange is this beautiful chaos within the City of Bradford.

Axonometric: One of the buildings in our Communal Villa network.

Axonometric: One of the buildings in our Communal Villa network.

A work in progress: Inspired by the visual ambiguity of invisible Cities, this is an experimental montage of handrawn pieces to express the parallel layers that is a fleeting apparition; ephemeral and ethereal.

Experimental: This illustration was initiated by collaging the existing floor plans of the Communal Villas (all drawn to the same scale). We realised how the dimension of things act as a point of transfer between buildings and how we could make some sense of all the small works while also trying to use them together to create a little city that made sense too. This experimentation expanded to form a metaphoric expression of the inbetween spaces in the notion of parallel layers.

Catalogue of statement pieces: Inspired by John Hejduk, these were pieces selected from our many interventions and would create a certain sequence in space as one takes on a route that intertwines from private to public spaces. These are the statement pieces that have been catalogued however we would expect this catalogue to be expanded as time passes by; hoping the city will be filled with insertions like these.

Looking at details: Along the way we were very critical in our presentation of the monochrome drawings and used it as a means to communicate the honesty in our drawings. It occurred to us that working with black and white either turn spaces on or shut them off- and it is about finding harmony in dichotomy.

Zero Axonometric: The creative process always begins with a good old sketch where a constructive, compositional and symbolic thought is born.

Zero Axonometric: The creative process always begins with a good old sketch where a constructive, compositional and symbolic thought is born.

Zero axonometric: The creative process always begins with a good old sketch where a constructive, compositional and symbolic thought is born.

Interlude

Looking within the Bowl: As the series of exploring the Bradford Bowl continues, we see the Top of Town in Bradford as a series of parallel layers through the manifestation of the medieval town. Our research digs deep into the individual buildings; piecing a city together by taking its object apart and eventually forming a collective set of pockets within the city.

The intersection: The public intervention project was a prequel to our collective set of buildings. The illustration depicts the connection of the two key interventions that is being proposed to form a network; hopefully in the late future, a typology that is being replicated in the pockets of the Top of Town area.

Lessons from Leon Krier: Upon decoding the essence of the place, we began to initiate the possibilities of the scheme. Referencing theories by Leon Krier where he made comparisons between the traditional and modernist approach, we began to draw parallels with it and illustrate his theory in the Top of Town area. Leon Krier introduces two scenarios – one being an architectural speech and another which he calls it an architectural stutter. These two scenarios were illustrated to compare what the Top of Town area could be- will it make Bradford ore Bradford or will it steer away and create a brand-new urban landscape for Bradford?

Parallel layers:The drawing indicates the network of buildings sitting within the east-west axis which potentially feed into a collective set of building reuse projects.

Parallel layers: The drawing is an aerial view of the Top of Town area where it highlights the parallel layers through the post-medieval configuration. The emphasis on the layering of windows defines the character of the city that is identifiable as a landscape.

Diagramming spaces: This is one of the buildings in our collection of building reuse projects which are developing as a whole scheme of Communal Villas.

Diagramming spaces: This is one of the buildings in our collection of building reuse projects which are developing as a whole scheme of Communal Villas.

Diagramming spaces: This is one of the buildings in our collection of building reuse projects which are developing as a whole scheme of Communal Villas.

Medieval Towns: Inspired by M.R.G Conzen’s British Town Plan Analysis, the Ordnance Survey plan of both Coventry and Bradford were used to create a base plan to trace out its morphological skeleton and its axes formed through the street pattern and plots. We felt that it was a methodology to trace the past which would reveal the hidden meaning of the places.

Prologue

The Bradford Bowl: We felt that we needed an image to conclude our Studio 01 journey. From getting to know the Top of Town up to rendering Bradford as Invisible Cities, we wanted to capture everything in the bowl.

The Invisible Cities of Bradford: What if Bradford itself is a series of cities? This series was drawn to illustrate the 'cities' in the Bradford across the timeline. With the Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino as an inspiration, we sought to reveal the invisible cities within Bradford.

Celebration of Invisible Cities: We begin to shift our interventions up to the Top of Town area and creating a connected public realm. We thought the intervention could be a portal leading into the city centre and could possibly be integrated into our main thesis project in Studio 02.

Room of 5 Remote Views: We were at this point , very inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and we thought how about seeing Bradford as a series of cities, Our task was to reveal these cities and the city within this chosen place for intervention. We begin to study the quality of the place and realised it was like a room of 5 remote views.

The Overlaid Triangle: Upon deep diving into our individual works, Jo Lynn and I decided to overlay the figure ground drawings to trace the persistent pattern. This was our first step as both of us were working with a 'city-scale' and thought it would be a suitable starting point. We started off by tracing maps from 1750 up to 2020 and revealed a persistent area which was previously the market place. We decided, this, would be the place for our intervention.

A city in a Bowl: The first few weeks evolved around the understanding of Bradford since the Anglo-Saxon period up till the contemporary era; decoding forgotten stories, lost artefacts and the hidden Beck. I was particularly interested at the Unfinished Visions of Bradford through the master planning studies. There is the element of make believe here but it was pretty much a window to the ambiguous possibilities of Bradford.