Ben Watkinson

Negotiating the notion of public spaces, conservation of intangible heritage and connections between the ‘collective procedures of everyday activity’ and the experience of the city, the proposal facilitates the casting and etching of glass tiles, and archiving of them upon the reincarnated glassworks cones.

Going beyond a typical museum typology, it invites people to contribute to a collective layering of memorialised experiences, consequently avoiding glassware’s inherent elitism of commission and ownership; handing the power of historical authorship back to the everyday individual.

The Architecture looks to re-imagine an urban typology, woven into the excavated ruins of the former glassworks site, expressing the forms of the original glassworks and vernacular of the site’s industrial heritage, but re-imagined through layered tracings and interpretations of site and context. Key moments in the story are arranged amongst courtyards, canopies and alleys, embedded with places of refuge encouraging a deeper notion of dwelling.

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Phoenix Cast Works