Theatre + social space + ceramic tiles

1 Ceramic tiles: Referencing existing elements of an existing building (St Vincent's Works' Warehouse), and reimagining it in a playful way
2 Materiality, colour palette & form
- Reuse the to-be demolished materials of the existing building and refencing the form and colour scheme from the same existing building
3 Journey for the theatre visitors: Create different theatre journeys that allow visitors to have a through understanding of the play before watching it.
- The visitors of the theatre can feel how the theatre design merges the old and the new of the area (Bristol temple meads).

My new design will be facing the St Vincent's Works Warehouse across the canal. St Vincent's Works warehouse is originally a prosperous galvanized steel factory in the 19th century. The warehouses will be removed in the future because of the new development of the Bristol Temple meads area. However, the rhythm of the red brick facade of the St Vincent's Works warehouse has become an aesthetics of the area. Therefore, my design intent is strongly inspired by the facade forms and patterns of the warehouse.

I create ceramic tile patterns based on the patterns on the brick warehouse structure. For example the arches, strip textures, and brick textures. That means referencing existing elements of an existing building- St Vincent's Works warehouse, and reimagining it in a playful way. I use different methods to test out the patterns and the depth of patterns in my design, for example, casting part of the 1:1 tile with plaster, making 1:50 tiles from terracotta clay , hand drawings, Autocad drawings to have a better sense of the dimensions, Sketchup + Vray to test the shadows of the 'push and pull' patterns accurately. For the arrangements of the facade, I test the dimensions using Autocad, and also use watercolours painting on beige paper to test out the aesthetics of the facade.

I realized that physical work allows me to think out of the box, not being just constrained to the size of the laptop screen. Eg, the 1:10 precedent model making(which is compulsory in our unit) has influenced the way I present my work. I also create a 1:10 model for the indoor social space. The hand drawn emblematic image and section drawing are inspired by by Aldo Rossi's freehand, colourful watercolour drawings. I have overcome the fear of getting things wrong and getting everything to be done perfectly. I learnt a lot through the trial-and-error design process.