digital architecture_ historical context
Having researched the history of the market square, i am particularly interested with its ties to the lace industry in the 19th century. Nottingham was once a powerhouse of the international lace industry. It provided nottingham with 40,000 jobs, there were 186 lace manufactures and 70 hosiery manufacturers. After both world wars the lace industry of nottingham and the lace market area fell into rag and ruin.
The whole history of the nottingham lace industry is very fascinating. There now only stands one fully operational lace factory Feweks lace and embroidery factory, which i plan to go and see on friday. Having lived in nottingham for several years it had never occurred to me how important the lace industry was to nottingham. Rather than base my design around the history of the lace industry its more the weaves used in the lace its self i am more interested in. My intention is to use either lace or the lace weave to create a structured that can be erected in a day, and according to a set of parameters governed
by solar radiation, acoustics, circulation around the site etc the weave will change and mutate to provide the necessary requirement to fulfil the requirement. The advantage behind his is that not only will the structures be able to be erected in nottingham but after the event is over it will be possible to move the structure to another site. The interesting part being the pattern of the lace and the lay out of the structures will be completely different due to the change in parameters of the new site. Thus my design will be fully transitory. I intend to further investigate ‘adaptive architecture’ swell as trying to model the circulation throughout the site to get a greater feel for what trends and behavioural patterns are occurring.
site analysis_historical mapping
from searching though archive maps of nottingham during the 19th century i have located the most prominent lace factories of the time and plotted them on top of a recent map. i thought at first that all of the lace industry was going to take place in the lace market, however my mapping shows that although a lot of the industry was located there, there is quite a spread across the city centre. Having since walked around the lace market area none of these factories exits, in fact no lace factories exist in the city centre area. I feel its important in my design to not only investigate the formation of the lace and how this can be adapted for architectural means, but to reconnect the history of the lace industry to the site.
jontyhallettdigitalarch 