ADAM DOBSON
AAM AD2 // REGENERATIVE DESIGN - RESEARCH BLOG
An Urban Escape // Bringing Balance to Bristol
"Radical Retrofit & Adaptive Reuse" / Master of Architecture Design Research Unit #2
Context
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The Architecture Centre, Bristol’s centre for design and the built environment, are working with English Heritage, Bristol City Council, local business and community stakeholders to imagine a new future for Temple Church – a historic site in central Bristol, imbuing it with life and civic value. With its ruined church structure and a graveyard converted into a public park, the site offers an opportunity not only for intertwining narratives attentive to multiple actors – human and non-human – but also for stimulating questions about the role reuse and radical retrofit can play in addressing climate change.
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The Temple Church has played a significant role in the history of the city. Founded and built in the 12th century by the legendary order of Knights Templar, the original round church, which shape is marked out in the ground, was replaced in the 14th century with a more spacious rectangular one. It is considered to have been the administrative centre for the Templars for south west England (Historic England, n.d.).
The church visible today with its distinctive leaning tower (1.6 metres out of the vertical), was the second largest in the city. Refitted in the 18th century, the church underwent several restorations but was badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War during the Bristol Blitz of 1940. Currently closed to the public due to safety concerns, Temple Church is in the top 20 worst condition buildings belonging to English Heritage (The Architecture Centre, n.d.; English Heritage, n.d.).
Structure & Process
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The project will be framed by four inter-dependent and, at times, simultaneous research activities, combining both group and individual investigations, which will act as critical mechanisms for design developments. Each activity builds on the one before:
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DR#1 Understanding Regenerative Design: Past, Present and Future.
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DR1.1 Regenerative Design Atlas
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DR#2 System Thinking
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DR2.1 Ecologies & Energy Flows
DR2.2 Material Flows & Life Cycle
DR2.3 A Set of Material ‘Scratch’ Projects
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DR#3 A Regenerative Design Response to the Site and Project Brief
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DR3.1 Defining the Ecology & Brief of the Project
DR3.2 Defining the Regenerative Design Framework
DR3.3 System Engagement
DR3.4 Creating to Regenerate
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DR#4 A Design Toolkit for Regenerative Design
Programme
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The Temple Church site of approximately 6.525 m2 is to be transformed into a public facility, able to accommodate diverse activities, audiences and events, imbuing it with a ‘new life.’ The ambition of the project is to propose a spatial intervention interrogating the relationship between RUINATION and TRANSFORMATION, CONSERVATION and PRESERVATION, CULTURE and NATURE, HEALING and REWILDING, engaging with cultural, historical and environmental narratives of the place.
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New economic and social relations with the context, community-based flexible spaces, mental health services, ecotherapy, performance space, multifunctionality,
re-orientation of building processes and products, rewilding initiatives to promote biodiversity, energy efficiency and resource savings, are just some of the possible strategies, uses and fields of study.
