Course: Unit 11 Archiving Place

This year the Archiving Place unit is concerned with the past, present and future possibilities of agricultural landscapes within Wales. The unit will immerse itself in a process of archiving the places, cultures and spirit of the Welsh landscape, focusing the research on the decline of agriculture in Wales. During the primer project students will be encouraged to develop their own distinct archiving techniques (video, mapping, drawing, painting, coding and diagramming) which will allow them to discover the possibilities of the wider site based on the deep understanding that they will have developed.Looking at the Archive as a conceptual lens through which a place is recorded, students will be encouraged to produce an architectural response that challenges what it means for land to be “productive”.

We started with a study of the typology of the park and a criticial rethinking of the notion of productive land through an exploration of land rights, policies and use. Students will begin by thinking critically about the Brecon Beacons National Park, the policies that allow it to exist and the conditions of its borders. We will use the Park and the current decline of agricultural rural landscape as a way to explore ideas of exploitation and reappropriation. The unit will be equally concerned with discovering the beauty, rhythm and pattern within the sites and using this to inform strategies that can be translated through the proposal of architectural interventions.Sustainability will be a key focus for year and we are interested in viewing sustainability as a multi-faceted term. Our focus will be on approaching the physical land and the culture that occupies it as a resource in itself. We will be encouraging students to produce holistic, well-reasoned, culturally sustainable proposals.