Design activity this weekend!

All are welcome - please contact us at scarboroughlive@gmail.com and we will get back to you with the venue address. Join us for a morning of design and ideas!

The Past Week

Following our consultation weekend in Scarborough, last weekend, we have been working hard to put together a competition brief worthy of international promotion.  This week we have not had a visual public presence [no green balloons this week], but serious advances have been made in producing the competition brief, organising a design charette for the 31st Oct, developing a website and a research document.

Sunday - Dean Road

Further consultation took place on Dean Road during Sunday, to take on further comments and concerns from passers-by.

The Green Route Walk

The Green Route Walk set off from Scarborough Town Hall at 12noon.  The purpose of the walk was to encourage informal discussion about the Dean Road site and Scarborough's future vision.  The walk demonstrated the links that exist out to the west and the potential circular walk through Peasholm Park back to the Sea Front.

Sunday - Preparing the Green Route

Early sunday morning consisted of blowing up balloons, the rest was spent decorating a route through Scarborough to denote a Green Route from the Town Hall out and past the Dean Road site.  This involved covering lamposts and railings with posters, tags, arrows and balloons.

Saturday - Dean Road

A drop-in consultation station was set up on the Dean Road site with 'What if...' images showing potential uses for the site, passers-by were also asked to choose from a mixture of images, possible features or uses for the site which they would like to see.  All were encouraged to comment on the site and pass on their ideas and aspirations.

photo collage - what people like and want to see more of in Scarborough

Saturday - Sand Side

The temporary event set up on Sand Side enabled a good engagement with both tourists and locals.  Passers-by were asked to show 'where they had been' and 'where they were going' using coloured ribbon on a large Scarborough map.  The exercise demonstrated how areas are under used or unknown.

Several tourists said they did not realise Scarborough was so big.

This weekend - Sunday

Reconnect with Scarborough’s green spaces this Sunday, join the walk from town out to Peasholm park. We’ll be meeting at 12 noon on the green outside the town hall to start our Sunday afternoon stroll

This weekend - Saturday

Two temporary community forums are being set up in Scarborough this Saturday. We hope you can stop by for cakes and a chat about what you feel would make Scarborough a better place to live. It will be a chance to get your ideas and opinions on the future of the Scarborough

You can find us at Sandside or the old car park on lower Dean Road (Wrea lane) from 12pm on Saturday

Dean Road panoramic

Urban Space meeting

We're really grateful to the Urban Space Group for inviting us to present at their meeting yesterday at Scarborough's Royal hotel.  We ran through some of the work we've been doing looking at Scarborough, the site itself and what we feel could be brought to the site as a result of a design competition. The presentation sparked debate and a number of comments, and was followed with a consultation exercise where we tried to learn more about what residents felt were important routes and landmarks in Scarborough, as well as what they liked/disliked about the town.

Thanks for everyone's participation!

Prison visit

Hugh Smith from Scarborough Town Council very kindly arranged a site visit for us to the listed prison on the current depot site. We had a lot of fun wandering through the building, checking out the cells and trying to think of ways open up such an interesting building to a wider audience.

view from the atrium

some of the cells

Competitions

Yesterday morning we met Linda Roberts from RIBA competitions, to get the official line on what needs to be included, who needs to be involved and how much the process costs. 

In addition to getting some feedback on the potential for the competition, we really wanted to get RIBA on board. The meeting went really well - Linda was enthusiastic about or project and really happy to help us out. She introduced us to some comparable competitions and came away really optimistic about the kind of responses this competition could generate for the site.

(l-r) Ewan, Rob, Linda

Presentation in Scarborough

The next meeting of the Urban Space Group will be held in the Cavalier Suite of the Royal Hotel on Thursday 08 October 2009and will start at 19h15.


Come watch us present our initial response and join in the debate!

Looking at existing research

The diagram below is taken from West 8's report 'Kissing sleeping beauty', published 2003. It shows the practices ideas for a phased approach at improving the town.

diagram: West 8

Site visit

We had our first meeting with Urban Space at the Urban Renaissance offices on Thursday 1st October. This was also our first chance to see the site

Image of the listed prison

Melrose Street area of the site

plus a trip to the harbour

Scarborough Live Project

Live projects are integrated into the MArch program at the Sheffield University's School of Architecture, where groups of master's students work to deliver a project for a real client within a six week timeframe. These clients are varied, as are the objectives and focus of each project. In each case, a group of students is working with a client whose needs are real, and the outcome should satisfy this need.

Scarborough Live falls under the aegis of the Live Project initiative. We're looking at a site on the edge of Scarborough's town centre, which houses buildings of historical interest, including a listed Victorian prison and some light industrial units. The site is part of what has been envisioned as a green route in Scarborough, and links the guesthouses and hotels of Columbus ravine to the seafront and town centre.

A design competition represents an opportunity to go further than the Development Brief being drafted by the council at present. This brief is trying to encourage responsible and sustainable development, but a successful competition could bring much more to the site! We're hoping it will open up debate, provoke thoughtful responses and generate the best possible solution the site.