14/07/16 . GLASGOW. Speirs Locks, north Glasgow.
Kids play in Test Unit – Anan Devlin (4) straight hair & Robyn 3, curly hair. An Independent Fringe for Architecture | Scotland 1—24 July 2016
Test Unit is an art, design and architecture summer school and events programme that saw a vacant piece of land in Speirs Locks converted into a public space over the course of a week. Thirty participants led by 4 facilitators designed, prototyped and tested ideas on the site that explored the issues and challenges of the area.
Test Unit is a summer school and events programme exploring how we can create change in cities.
For Test Unit 2016 we will be focussing on Speirs Locks, north Glasgow – an area changing through cultural activity.
The aims of Test Unit are to:
• Prototype ideas in public space, to inform urban development
• Place culture, people and education at the heart of regeneration
• Transform a vacant site into a public space over an intensive live-build programme
• Deliver a public events programme to stimulate discussion and debate
• Build capacity for people to initiate grass-roots projects
Background
Test Unit has been developed by Agile City, a platform for research and events exploring grass-roots approaches to city development.
Often we find regeneration focused on physical and definitive outcomes instead of designing projects that are responsive to social and economic change.
We are interested in holistic design and explore the processes, business models and cross-disciplinary practices that have a positive and sustainable impact on our cities.
Agile City was founded in 2015 by TAKTAL. For more info visit www.agile-city.com
Test Unit has been made possible by the invaluable support and partnership of A Feral Studio, BAXENDALE, The Glasgow School of Art, UZ Arts & Scottish Canals, Creative Scotland, EventScotland as part of the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design and Glasgow City Council’s Stalled Spaces programme.
Unit: Occupation
Year
2016
Bairds Brae creates a unique opportunity to revisit some of the fundamental contextual principles of human settlement as a means of creating community and ultimately public space. Our group will examine these conditions and design, develop and prototype an intervention that could support human occupation of the site at the scale of the individual but with the possibility of replication.
The project developed was titled ‘Nettle Inn’ – responding to the old ‘Basin House Tavern’ that used to occupy the site in the 1800s, which also contained a brewery and acted as social hub for people working on the canal on this key intersection site.
Nettle Inn:
A micro tavern providing 1:1 engagement between traveller and inn keeper. Acts as a point of curiosity that invites external engagement with the site. The project has a ground floor occupied by the inn keeper where they can prepare food and drink and sleep and a first floor single room with a view to allow an overnight stay for the weary traveller. A green wall of potted plants is created by foraging edible wildlife on the site itself, these foraged elements were used by the group to create nettle tea, elder-flower cordial and nettle pesto for pasta and salad.
