Interdisciplinary Project - Design Week

This week I had been involved in a design project with students of landscape architecture, human geography and project management. The brief was simple - find a function for Fearn Island (below) that will help draw people down to the River Aire, a well-developed but thoroughly under-populated area of Leeds.

The site was an unusual shape and the only access was via the lock just next to the Royal Armouries (see my Royal Armouries blog post). We decided between us that a link via the existing bridge was a suitable way of entering the island. The landscape students quickly got to work on designing an array of different vegetation and pathways, seen on this image:

One problem we soon learned was the flood history of Fearn Island, illustrated in the image below. Whatever we decided to design on the island, it would have to withstand the flooding.

We decided that we wanted to use sport to promote the island. We spent a while pondering over kayak racing, rubber duck 'racing' events that would bring large numbers of people to the area not very often, but we decided it was best to design something permanent for the island to attract visitors. Finding a sport that would work on such a long, narrow site was tricky. We dismissed archery (health and safety) and jousting (this already exists close by at the Royal Armouries).

Eventually we decided that a rope-walking course could work on the site. A 'Go Ape' style course could cater for anything from childrens' parties to stag dos due to the flexibility of the rope walking courses. We did some research on the sizes and features (bridges, nets, zip lines etc) of rope walking courses:

The common structural feature were the tall columns that supported all of the rope bridges and nets around them. The advantage to using tall vertical columns on Fearn Island was that in the event of flooding, the main building/usable space would be well above ground level. The storage for all the equipment could be housed in one of the existing warehouses on site - this structure could even be raised up to protect it from high river levels. My job was to create the visuals, which I did in the last two days of the week. I wanted the columns to be at different heights, sculptural, and be adaptable to different course layouts.

Our design was praised for its simplicity. No water, electricity or services of any kind would have to be built because there would be no real building on the site. It was also praised for its flooding strategy... of no flooding strategy. If the river floods then the course would not be used; but it would also not be damaged. The potential was also highlighted - zip lines over the river to end the course and some sort of lighting scheme in the cylinders to promote the space at night were mentioned. As concept images go I feel my visuals are quite self explanatory - two environments - a public park below with people swinging about on ropes above. 

Our group quickly bonded after the initial ideas stage. We were all enthusiastic about the idea of a 'Go Ape' course - and I think this helped us work together well. 

The landscape students were keen to plan the percentage of deciduous and coniferous plants, and where they were grown, what seasons they were in bloom etc. This bemused me and the other architecture student, as it was a bit too much detail for a concept design. The human geography students did not feel suited to a design project - they said they did not do anything like this in their course, but they were always keen to lend a hand and were useful in the research stage, the desktop study. The project management students were good at managing, although the rest of our group were annoyed and a bit embarrassed when they decided to rename Fearn Island 'Adventure Island' without consulting us about it. This may have been because they did not play a part in the design stage so felt they had to do something creative. It may have also been because their PowerPoint design was particularly uninspiring and overly-wordy so we voted to summarise it into simple image/diagram/bullet point format, and the creative among us (landscape & architecture students) redesigned it to a presentable standard. 

We all enjoyed the brief, working with students from different courses from the initial ideas to concept image design, but felt the last day was a bit rushed so our presentation was not quite as planned as it could have been. i.e. it ran over the time limit and some of the points were a bit over-explained so that everyone had something to say in the presentation. We all liked the design though, and I'll be biased and say it was certainly the most fun design in the competition.