Dudley Time Portal

What if...

people could develop deep connections with the places they live or work in: connections that invite care, relationships with life, and learning through creative doing that deepens the climate resilience of that place?

Dudley People's School for Climate Justice collage

Wander through our archive…

Shopping in groups, families / friends

Faint waft of scented police man and woman

We created a visual representation of the main factors and sectors we came across in our research and explored individually: environment, economy, technology and education. It also summarises our goal of creating a connected High Street, and the steps we took to achieve this goal.

More-than-humanising data through sonification

Sound artist Bill Laybourne invited Dudley time rebels to create a collective score inspired by street detectorist findings through noise making.

This visual represents the vision for the thesis, buildings covered in lichens, air purifying plants and community activities held on the Highstreet. This visual focuses in on the proposed site for the building and shows expression of a raised new build component on site as well as a full and wild landscaping plan.

The third Stepping Stone project attempted to design the community kitchen in one of the empty shops on Dudley High Street. We all know that food is an essential factor in our life and eating and cooking the food is not an abstract activity we do, it is part of our everyday routine. In our initial research, we found that many people live alone in compact housing on the High Street. We thought the kitchen connect the residents with society. We decided to make the process of preparing food more enjoyable. As our aim was to grow food on the street wherever possible, we can use these vegetables for the community kitchen. This will encourage residents to come down onto the street and engage with it. This could also be a new experience for the visitors of the High Street.

Smoking pit

Slow Rick stopping to talk to shop keeper

Weeds growing on pavement

Things we wish we could tell you

Industrial aesthetic functional utilitarian

Our collective vision for Dudley is to support a creative community that is connected through our internet of things; creating spaces that allow for the collection and redistribution of materials that locals can use to construct products with. Community engagement is central to this design network with local businesses encouraged to get involved in manufacturing.

We decided to bring alive this vision through a series of pavilions positioned through the High Street, following a process through recycling, storing constructing and manufacturing. To take this idea further, we allocated several empty units along the High Street to become spaces involved in the open factory, from workshops, educational centres and co-working hubs. Since we wanted to show the journey people would be able to take, we decided to create a storyboard for our final visual.

These visuals show how the pavilions could sit in the High Street, starting at the market place, past CoLab Dudley’s base, and ending up at Top Church. We wanted to show how people would be able to interact with these different spaces and navigate between them.

Localising Material Accessibility
During my initial walk through the High Street of Dudley, I noticed an inevitable decline in the area. There were vacant shops, but those open had apparent facade damage. For the area to thrive, there needs to be an aesthetical uplift. Here I began to question how to make the repairs. On the one hand, one could complete a like for like repair with a deep clean to provide a new lease of life to achieve an aesthetical value. Alternatively, the repairs could be a status of where the street aims to be in the future. To achieve a statement, the implementation of repair work needs to stand out. It needs to be futuristic, a bold contrast to the existing.

At this point, I decided that after being informed of the damage the built environment has on the climate crisis, only carbon zero/ carbon sequestering materials would be present during repairs. This does not aim to destroy existing buildings but instead carefully implement repairs creating a patchwork effect across the street. This would then grow over time as more repair work is required.

Over time, the high street would transform into a zero-carbon environment. The manufacturing and growth of these materials need to be local, so consideration is vital. This provides an opportunity for the site to be a material producer itself.

It's funny how the street is jammed with parked cars @ 5:30pm

Lichen as bioindicators

Lichen Vs Carbon. These concept models look to document both the current state of Dudley Highstreet and the vision looking towards the future within this thesis project.

The lichen covered model looks towards a future in Dudley that is rich in texture, colour, nature and oxygen. Natural materials promote natural growth, and textures such as rough sawn timber and stone are the prefect hosts for lichen. All new buildings in Dudley would benefit massively from following a fabric first approach and adopt the use of sustainable and recycled building materials along with systems that use minimal energy.

The lichen model represents a vision for this thesis, buildings that are covered in natural materials and lichens that help sequester carbon and promote a healthier Highstreet. Suggestions of raised buildings also proposes less disruption to the ground and natural landscape, giving plants and animals the opportunity to thrive in an otherwise hostile concrete environment. Raised buildings also look towards a future planet with rising sea levels, future factors that will drastically affect the way we carry out daily lives and futureproofing all buildings for generations to come.

This second model uses the Shou Sugi Ban method of charring timber to waterproof it. In this case however it represents the embodied carbon and pollution within the highstreet as it exists now. The simplicity and repetition is also used to symbolise the plain nature of the highstreet with only a few materials exhibited, mainly brick & concrete. Once burnt the timber forms were brushed with wire wool to reveal the natural grain of the wood, a visual representation of degradation of layers of buildings that are built poorly or not constructed to last longer than a generation.

People chatting & saying hi to someone passing in their car

Ferns growing in the drain pipe

We initially collaged together all the facade images taken and then annotated them with further reference to key areas. The right hand side looking at materiality, street furniture and observations of people. The
left hand side looks at observing some of the most dominant features - the traffic, shopping centre and busy public market in the centre.

Religion

Padlock

Opening takes advantage of another classic view

The fourth Stepping Stone project focused on the design of 2-in-1 flower pot seating for the exterior of the community kitchen. The design also integrates a canopy for growing herbs to also use in the kitchen. Through a collaboration with another Time Rebel collecting reusable waste, we thought about how this could be integrated into the materiality of this concept. The product analysis of this design is that it has a detachable seat to cater for a variety of arrangements. The flower pot can be raised to create a seating area, and lowered to be become a flower pot on the High Street.

Material Accessibility is The Problem
The accessibility to brick products outweigh that of the hemp equivalent. But why?

A More-Than-Human Story of Dudley High Street
This story is a collective outcome after utilising completed Street Detectorism maps, and More-Than-Human findings to create of 'A More-Than-Human Story of Dudley High Street'.
As part of a dissertation study, this workshop invited participants to share their imagination and develop stories from the previous findings on Dudley High Street. This story creatively archives nature on Dudley High Street, with emphasis for the value of storytelling and nature at the forefront of this task.

Extrapersonnel is for rent - so there might be a NEW shop comeing