My Green City outreach workshops at Bristol Family Arts Festival

As part of the 2015 Bristol Family Arts Festival the Architecture Centre, Watershed and Children's Scrapstore  hosted two creative family outreach workshops at Junction 3 Library, Easton and Lawrence Weston Community Farm. Families were asked to help populate a green city full of eco-friendly buildings, green transport and sustainable energy solutions. Some great creations were made!

Learn more about projects around Bristol that are helping the city be more green at our City Ideas Studio

Visit our website for information on upcoming events

Shoe boxes and shipping containers! Make your own snug home

The City Ideas Studio was taken over for our Snug Homes family workshop last Friday (30 October), as part of the Bristol Family Arts Festival and Art Weekender.

Families were asked to model their own eco-friendly snug home. A really small house, still containing all the essentials that a house should have. It was a busy and creative afternoon of designing and making, take a look at some of the great creations that were made...

Learn more about Ecomotive SNUG homes here and at our Resources residency.

Visit the Architecture Centre's website for more events and information.

City Ideas Studio: Resources

We are a few weeks into our third City Ideas Studio residency, Resources, where we are addressing the question: How can we make more of the things we have? Visit the gallery 11-5 Wednesday-Friday and 12-5 Saturday-Sunday to explore all aspects of resourcefulness.

Seat made by Round Wood Design, based at Bower
Ashton Woodyard

The exhibition explores not only how best to use finite resources such as building
materials, land and money, but also how cities should harness the powerful resource
of human inventiveness and action.

There is a lot to find out about and explore:

• BuroHappold Engineering's range of global and local resourceful initiatives
• Our touch screen where you can learn about our previous exhibitions, projects and organisations that are exploring solutions for a sustainable future, we’re gradually adding all our City Ideas Studio content onto the touch screen so have a read up on our previous residencies.
• Watch videos and read up on local resourceful projects including: Bristol Green Doors, Bristol ReUse Network and Ecomotive SNUG Homes
• Take part in our SNUG Homes family activity - can you design a 'snug' home (a compact and environmentally friendly house)
• Add your comments and ideas to our map on resourceful projects in Bristol
• View UWE Department of Architecture and the Built Environment's installation, that offers a thought-provoking response to the exhibition theme
• Learn about Bower Ashton Woodyard and Round Wood Design and try out the wood furniture
• Visit our foyer to learn about the Architecture Centre's Shape My City #livebuild sustainable building project

Visit the Architecture Centre website for information on events and exhibitions coming soon.

Visit the City Ideas Studio resources exhibition after hours in our special twilight opening on 30 October, part of Art Weekender: Bristol & Bath

Bristol Green Doors: The Route to Retrofit

Add your comments to our map

City of Ideas touch screen

Early prototype design of a SNUG Home by Ecomotive

UWE Department of Architecture and the Built Environment display

Shape My City #livebuild foyer exhibition

Snug Homes: Family Activity

Visit our City Ideas Studio Resources residency to get involved in our family activity. Our gallery is open 11-5 Wednesday-Friday and 12-5 Saturday-Sunday.

 Your challenge is to design a 'snug' home, a compact, environmentally friendly house that is small in size but still has everything you need. Learn about Ecomotive SNUG homes in our exhibition, take inspiration from the sheets on our activity table and get designing.

A snug home is important because the UK needs more affordable homes (smaller houses are usually cheaper), space in the cities is limited and expensive (future homes need to take up less space), small homes generally have a smaller carbon footprint and due to climate change rising sea levels we may have less land to build houses on.

When designing and making think about:

• The layout inside - how can you squeeze everything you need into the space and what don't we need
• Whether your home could be stackable and fit together
• What environmentally friendly materials your snug home could be made from
• If your snug home generate its own electricity

Share your creations on our gallery wall and ask a member of staff to photograph your design and share via our Twitter: @archcentre #snughomes

Learn more about Ecomotive SNUG homes here and at our Resources residency.

As part of Bristol Family Arts Festival there's also a chance to join in at our Shoe boxes and shipping containers: make your own snug home workshop on Friday 30 October.

Visit the Architecture Centre's website for more events and information.

My Wild City: Meet a wildlife expert

On Saturday 1 August we had our first 'Meet a wildlife expert' drop-in session, Avon Wildlife Trust expert Matt offered his expertise on how we can all support wildlife in our area. He offered top tips on how to make your own insect hotel and encourage wildlife to flourish. In our own insect hotel we spotted zebra spiders, aphids and some snail trails, Matt also helped us harvest some seeds and water the meadow. Visitors also got their hands dirty and made free seed bombs to take home!

Come to our next 'meet a wildlife expert' session on 5 September 1-4pm to find out more ways we can do something amazing for nature. More information here

For information about other Architecture Centre events, please visit:
http://architecturecentre.co.uk/events

Visit City Ideas Studio: Nature - 15 July to 13 September

Your Green Future event at University of the West of England

On the 19 and 20 May the Architecture Centre took the City Ideas Studio food theme on tour - taking part in the Your Green Future 2015 event held at the University of the West of England. Over 300 secondary school students signed up to work alongside over 40 businesses in a range of interactive workshops. Your Green Future recognises that a low carbon economy and new environmental technologies are key growth sectors for the region. The event aimed to actively engage young people in thinking about an environmentally friendly and sustainable future city.

The Architecture Centre’s workshop Your Green City focused on the theme of food, asking the big question ‘How will cities feed themselves in the future?’ We asked the students to think about how our cities will need to be designed differently as the population of the world increases and most people will be living in cities (many in Megacities of 10 million+ people). Space and land will be limited and expensive, costs of transporting food will increase, it is time to think about how we can utilise any space we can find to grow our food more locally, helping to meet the predicted 70% increase in global food production in a sustainable and creative way.

Groups of 35-40 students were split into teams of 6/7. Architects from White Design, Noma Architects, Buro Happold, Askew Architects and Skanska as well as two current UWE Architecture and Planning students worked with the student teams as mentors. The groups were asked to take on the role of architect, landscape architect or master planner and develop 2D and 3D design ideas for a future city, thinking about how public spaces could be used to grow food, (eg. roundabouts, graveyards, roadside verges). Students could also think about designing vertical farms, indoor growing spaces on a domestic and industrial scale and altering buildings so they can grow as much food as possible (using wall and roof spaces).

After a kickstarter presentation the students had to develop their own designs, first drawing 2D plans and then constructing 3D models. At the end of each workshop students shared their ideas with the rest of the group, highlighting the key design solutions to the challenge ‘how will cities feed themselves in the future’. With the support of their professional mentors, the students came up with some innovative ideas, including:

• A tiered cake-stand inspired tall building for growing vegetables (with light loving plants such tomatoes/strawberries grown nearest the top)
• Turning  disused  mines into underground mushroom farms
• Boat farms to utilise space on water which could also transport food to where it was needed whilst growing it
• Using wind turbines to create energy to pump rainwater around buildings to water food crops growing on walls and roofs 

Students and teachers who were inspired by the workshop were encouraged to:

• enter the Architecture Centre’s My Green City Design Challenge for Schools
• attend the Architecture Centre’s free Feeding the Future City Family event

#YourGreenFuture   #mygreencity