Architectural Nous: How York Wrote its Identity Through Architecture During the 1951 Festival of Britain

Architectural nous: How York wrote their identity through architecture, during the 1951 Festival of Britain. York Festival was three years in the planning and held over two weeks in June 1951 as the city’s contribution to the nationwide call to celebrate the 1951 Festival of Britain. This paper looks at how York’s Festival Committee and Corporation actively used architecture to articulate ideas about its identity of place. The study will argue that York used the built environment in a number of ways during its Festival; it celebrated its ancient architectural heritage as a backdrop for events, used the Festival as a catalyst to speed up the restoration of one Georgian and one Victorian building and commissioned two sets of housing stock for its residents, which were in keeping with surrounding Georgian architecture in one case and gave a nod to Modernism in the other. York’s Festival Director, Keith Thompson planned to attract ‘five or more of the world’s leading architects’ to play a part in the Festival. He recognised the value of York’s ancient buildings but was keen to dispel the idea that York was a city stuck in ‘951’, so this paper uses minutes, planning notes and newspaper reports from the period 1948-1951 to show that York’s use of and attitude towards architecture in their Festival of Britain celebrations was centred around the present at the very least, but also to its future

What do they think? A potential research methodology for understanding identities of place from a community perspective

This research speculates that bringing together established and emerging research methodologies from brand ethnography, product design and community history could be beneficial to researchers working to understand communities’ relationships to place making and the unmaking of place The user as consultant or subject for observation is not new. Sensorial ethnographic data capture (Pink, 2013) and user-centered research methodologies for co-design are rich, efficient ways of capturing, interpreting and applying real-world strategies for responsive design iterations; work by Cooper & Press, IDEO, RCA and Huddersfield University Product Design students and staff attest to this. In the field of community history, collaboration known as co-production enables data capture strategies and their outcomes to become anterior to the historian (Lloyd & Moore and Pente et Al, 2015). A given community can negotiate what the outcome of their participatory research will be, e.g. digital oral histories, an exhibition, a publication. So what might this hybrid methodology look like? Researcher(s) could brief the user-community as to what they need to find out, but the methodology and output be negotiated between the parties involved. Researchers may need to re-present the data in alternative formats for post research analysis, for clients and other audiences. Academics and agencies working with(in) any community bring ethical parameters in to play. Some ethical and social issues can be anticipated but others may emerge and will need to be responsively negotiated and reflected upon (Banks & Manners, 2012). Within a built environment context where place making or unmaking data is sought from a user-community, a research methodology that melds co-design and co-production might be more efficacious than more common methodologies such as observations, questionnaires, focus groups or interviews. It is hypothesized that this hybrid methodology could empower the subject to communicate with less constraints, allowing for richer and thicker meanings to emerge

Populating Praxis of Place, Stonehenge: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This presentation, discussed the potential and efficacy of undertaking a praxis based methodology to investigate a combination of new Computer Aided Design tools to teach theoretical concepts related to space and place making. Traditionally, History and Theoretical teaching takes place in a lecture theatre with students viewing 2D images. The use of the population tool in 3D Studio Max and 123D Make were discussed in the light of making an animated film, and 3D ½ scale representation of a trilith from Stonehenge. Testing phases of the animation, trilith manufacture and student feedback were discussed. The interdisciplinary team concluded that this kinaesthetic and holistic pedagogy was appropriate in the teaching of place making and suggested further contexts of use

The 1951 Festival of Britain: A Northern Perspective

A discussion of the types of events that the cities of York, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Hull chose to explore for their own celebrations of the Festival of Britain and some of the rivalries that ensued

Signposts: The Festival of Britain 1951

A critical overview of available research material for the scholar or interested reader on the 1951 Festival of Britai

BBC Stoke Breakfast with Pete Morgan - Caterina Benincasa-Sharman talking about Staffordshire's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain in the London based and Travelling Exhibitions.

Notes the Pottery Companies who exhibited their wares at the Festival of Britain EXhibitions at the Southbank, on HMS Festival Ship Campania and the Travelling Exhibition

We are not dealing with someone else’s “left overs”! Northern English Cities’ response to the 1951 Festival of Britain

There has been a welcome expansion in literature documenting aspects of the 1951 Festival of Britain since the publication of Becky Conekin’s The Autobiography of a Nation, a decade ago. Even though the Festival was a celebration of culture, work and production across the whole of the nation, most of the works published after the event, solely discuss, or at best emphasise what happened or was conceived in London. Even now, there are expressions of surprise that events happened elsewhere. This disconnect, was perceived at the time, by places outside the southern capital, with criticism being made about the Festivals London centric narrative of ‘Britishness’. Northern English cities recognised this ‘London and not London’ binary for the duration of the planning and performance of their own festivities, reacting to it with alternative regional, or metropolitan identities. London was publicly goaded for its inefficiency by Liverpool and ignored by York who favoured Edinburgh as a mentor. Manchester pleaded with London for a larger part to play in the Festival while Leeds was surprised to feel as important as the English capital. This paper will explore how cities responded to London’s call to celebrate their Festival(s) of Britain

Hyper naturalism and simulacra in Stonehenge art

Unver and Taylor have explored digitally a methodology that has interested makers and observers for decades. In the 1930’s Walter Benjamin in his seminal discussion of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction worried about the destruction of authenticity and aura that reproductions of the real created for the viewer, whilst acknowledging that this reproduction allowed artefacts to be dislocated from their original ritual purposes and therefore making the once scared more accessible. In 1977 Roland Barthes liberated the emphasis of construction and understanding of knowledge from the makers to the spectator by proposing that the author (in the case of Stonehenge this is a point for discussion) was no longer the ‘god’ that should be sought out to explain the works on offer. In fact, once the understanding of a text is placed with the viewer he suggested that to try to impose a final reading of an object is ineffective. Baudrillard believed that when a reader seeks out an image of the real (at the Stonehenge monument there is a physical barrier in place between the tourist and the object) the more vast the schism between a lived experience. Unver and Taylor, have helped to reinstate an immersive experience through the Stonehenge Virtual Reconstruction research. Up for debate is whether their output really is another example of ‘technological inertia’ or whether, because digital life and real life are now so closely intertwined they have enabled new spectators to be perceptually closer to the stones and the surrounding site. [1] Roland Barthes. Image Music Text [1978] [2] Jean Buadrillard. The Consumer Society (1970

LifeHacket Trio

The Summer of 2015 witnessed the mass migration of people seeking refuge, safety and security in Europe. Over 1 million people made the perilous journey via the Greek Islands. The small island of Kos became a frontline destination with 800 arrivals per day in October 2015. Many arrived with nothing but their life jacket. Agencies such as UNHCR, MSF and Kos-Solidarity provided essential non-food items such as donated clothing, blankets and hygiene kits. The LifeHacket project, in association with Kos-Solidarity seeks to address two challenges. Firstly, to repurpose discarded lifejackets into a trio of useful products for refugees and irregular migrants: a backpack for storing life’s essentials, a pillow made from used foam inserts and a simple belt to make ill-fitting trousers fit. Secondly, to restore the natural environment spoilt by abandoned life jackets. Kos-Solidarity is 1 of 16 volunteer groups that was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian support