I have designed this project during my exchange semester at the University of Bath, in UK. It deals with the transformation of a former industrial site in Bristol into a community school.
This project is about two flourishing encounters. The city encounters the river, creating a rift that leads to small islands separated by wet lands flooded when the tide is high. Creating an evolving tidal landscape was a way to offer Bristol inhabitants a new look on their natural heritage.
The second encounter is about two important communities of the Cumberland Basin : the Create Centre - civic centre and coworking space - and the Underfall Yard - former harbour now converted in a boat workshop. This encounter generates an epicentre in the rift, where the project would be located.
The community school aims to bring back the link between the city and the river by having these two communities meet. Its equipment and services complement those of the Create Centre and the Underfall Yard : a boat hall, an auditorium, exhibition spaces, a restaurant and some dwellings.
The community school offers marine engineering classes for students from Bristol and elsewhere. It also offers open classrooms and workshops and hosts local events : movie screening, theatre...
The integration of a part of the school in the A Bond is a way to initiate a forthcoming transformation of this building in more workshop, classroom, office space, or housing for a reappropriation of the Cumberland Basin by Bristol’s inhabitants.