PLUG in & PLAY

Over the preceding eight months, the Master of Architecture students at Northumbria University have looked behind the public facade of NewcastleGateshead, reading the rich palimpsest they found there and embracing the appropriation of spaces left hidden in plain sight. The exhibition features proposals by the first year M.Arch students for the ubiquitous exurbia. Through a prolonged interaction with Britain’s first Enterprise Zone, Team Valley Trading Estate, in the year of its 75th anniversary, the projects challenge the current planning orthodoxy. They hint at an inclusive, eclectic and creative built environment which neighbourhood forums could herald… if only we are brave enough. This work is contributing to discussions for a pilot “Local Development Order” to establish planning priorities for the TVTE area. Individual theses by second year M.Arch students represent the culmination of their full-time education. The selected works shown here demonstrate a diversity of interests and approaches but which all embody the ethos of the school; to address real issues, grounded in specific contexts, with unique and appropriate architecture simultaneously of our time and timelessly of its place. The contingent and ephemeral use of the city as playground is documented in photography and video work inspired by the Cultural Olympiad, produced by skateboarders and BMXers on Tyneside themselves, as part of a research project.