In the first few days following our presentation to the first and second years we ran a number of trips to local pubs of worthy architectural note in the area included the Wharf in Walsall by Sergison Bates, The Anchor and The White Swan in Digbeth by Lister Lee, The Victoria in Birmingham city centre and the Posada in Wolverhampton. As well as these trips we encouraged students to spend as much time in their local as possible and soak up not only the drinks but also the atmosphere of the place, to measure out certain elements, to notice how people behaved in different areas of the pub.
After becoming interested in a certain element we then encouraged the students to really interrogate what was happening at that point in the pub and produce an A2 drawing and a model of what was being investigated. We stipulated that the drawing shouldn’t just show the dimensions, although we wanted that also, but should show why that dimension is important, what the effect of it is, how we could use it and what would happen if we changed it. We also tried to instil an ambition within the students to try and produce a drawing in a way they never had before, so if they were used to CAD to draw by hand etc. As there were no marks being attributed to this we tried to get the students to see it as a chance to experiment with different media. Luckily the group had a diverse range of skills and as we ran it as a studio project lots of expertise was shared so that proficient CAD users showed those less literate certain ways of doing things. For a week a really studio culture was established.
The workshop began producing some really diverse work, some people being interested in movement through the whole pub, some people being interested only in the height and positioning of the footrest, some being more interested in the lighting/lines of sight and the paradox between the privitisation of a public space.
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