Cities are made up of overlapping material flows. At a time of rapid urbanisation, these flows are getting ever faster, denser and more complex. The construction industry accounts for 38% of total global emissions. Waste, water and air-borne pollution exacerbate existing spatial and social injustices and store up environmental problems for generations to come. In […]

Test Unit is a summer school exploring cross-disciplinary approaches to city development. Through an intensive week we aim to turn talk into action by testing ideas in public space. Each year we inhabit a building or site and learn through engaging with ideas, materials, people and place. The project is based in Speirs Locks, an […]

A week long experiment in thinking through building, without models or drawings. How do mainstream cultures of construction impact on our shared experience of the city, and day-to-day possibilities of urban life? What might building together offer as way of thinking differently in or about our environment?

Glasgow’s canal area is bringing its future into collective hands. But how to enact something that is yet to be imagined?

Over the next 10 years the Glasgow Canal Co-op is expected to bring a much needed impact to Glasgow’s canal area. At its start, today, it is a coalition of 12 small and larger actors. What are the most challenging changes to take on? And how will the decisions on these be made?

The designer Paul Elliman said ‘a school is a building with a school in it’.

Do we agree? Where next for creative education? What would independent creative learning, embedded in place and context, look, act and feel like?

How can the act of site responsive making be used as a tool for engagement? Through sourcing local material we will use this as a tool to map/register the social, cultural and economic condition of the area and construct a new scenario for the occupation and use of the Phoenix Nursery site. The methodology will consist of 4 stages – Observe – React – Gather – Make.

The Institute for Spontaneous Generation has been developed over the course of Test Unit to explore ways of building collaborative economies which question our current notion of wealth and value.

How could we could re-imagine the possibilities for Phoenix Nursery? How could design interventions communicate these possibilities? How can a two dimensional objects inhabit a three dimensional space?

Spatial Occupation Unit has been exploring the idea of the commons as a way of breaking down the false binary of public/private, and grappling with the possibility of growing more collective, self driven and co-owned models of occupying and developing urban space.

Considering alternative forms of micro-tourism on Civic House evolved by the group into an intention that our structure should be used to educate the occupant on the history and impact of the adjacent M8 motorway