The Armature: A physical and social intervention designed, made and delivered as part of The Happenstance; Scotland's contribution to the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale

Abstract

The Armature is an award winning and internationally recognised installation delivered as the key component of Scotland’s contribution to the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and critiques accepted and current techniques deployed by institutional stakeholders to engage communities in the development of their neighbourhoods. Despite a growing appreciation of the role of participation and ‘co-production’ within community development and regeneration these processes are often applied to communities rather than generated from within. Quite often a ‘development agenda’ is already somewhat determined and the role of the community as a participant in this process is as a consultee rather than an instigator or critical actor.

This project proposes a new form of civic and public space that provides an infrastructure for communities to conceive, create and test potential activity and programme. This method employs the idea of ‘learning through doing’ and creates a process where both programme and place are prototyped and developed symbiotically in a constant cycle of action, reflection and response. These prototypes (spatial, performative, economic etc.) become the method through which a range of possibilities within a community can be tested at a scale and degree of complexity that is relatable to the existing skills and capacity of local people.

The Armature has been reviewed widely in the international architecture and design press along with the regular press such as the Guardian, Evening Times and Scotsman and has been presented at a range of public and academic institutions in the UK and abroad. The project was commissioned by Scottish Government body Architecture and Design Scotland and has been used to inform and improve their own approach to supporting community involvement in place making via its funding mechanisms, publications and policy for Architecture and Place.

This work presents a mode of practice developed over ten years through my architecture and design studio Baxendale and is also informed by a growing critique of socially engaged arts practice by authors such as Claire Bishop and Marcus Miessen and the recent emergence of a generation of activist architects and designers such as recent Turner Prize winners Assemble.