X05. London prototype: The Building Exploratory model - colouring-cities/manual GitHub Wiki
Currently being edited by @polly64
The Colouring London prototype and the Colouring Cities Research Programme have been heavily influenced by work undertaken by The Building Exploratory charitable trust. The trust was set up in the 1990s by Polly Hudson to provide a model for local, multidisciplinary, knowledge sharing centres about buildings and the built environment as a whole. Its free public exhibition was built by the local community over a six year period, in collaboration with stakeholders in academia, industry, government and the third sector. Though the focus was local, information on the regional, national and global context was provided where relevant. The Exploratory ran for over 20 years, with its live, experimental, exhibition combining learning from the arts and humanities with science/technology built between 1996 and 2001. Its development principles and its community GIS platform interface (built 1998-9), represent the first iteration of Colouring London and embody its ethos of inclusivity, and its promotion of safe, creative, stimulating spaces that help all stakeholders to begin share their expert knowledge in ways that benefit others, and to work to conserve built environment resources and improve their quality.
Like Colouring Cities, The Building Exploratory was designed to improve stock quality and sustainability, and to engage stakeholders in the collaborative development and maintenance of a free, reproducible public resource that supported this process. The programme involved over 700 residents from the London Borough of Hackney, local artists, and many stakeholders from government, academia, industry and the third sector in building the prototype, bringing together expertise from science, the humanities and the arts. Like Colouring Cities, The Building Exploratory was supported by local and central government bodies, academia, industry and institutions/organisations involved subjects including housing, heritage, historical research, information technology, creative learning, architecture, education (all levels) and planning. Exhibits for the centre were built incrementally, as funding pots became available, as part of free creative, skills development programme for local residents of diverse ages and abilities. The exhibits were then joined together over time and used as free teaching tools. These ranged from a 3D periodic table funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, to interactive voting systems exploring housing types, to a giant model of Hackney made by 350 children working with community artists. Physical and digital maps (showing footprints at building level), and spatial data animations and 3D models at building level, provided the basic building blocks of the exhibition.
The exhibition was accompanied by a community Geographic Information System, the interface for which was designed by Polly Hudson and built by Spencer Chainey, GIS Manager at Hackney Council, in 1999. The system, which was funded by the Housing Corporation and New Islington and Hackney Housing Association, allowed residents to type in their address and zoom down onto their homes using council licensed OS maps and satellite imagery. Users could then bring up layered historical and current data relating to their homes and their local area, or the borough as a whole. The system also included a basic streetview facility, to enable images of housing association (HA) properties to be viewed. This enabled both virtual inspection and comparison between location of HA and council properties, encouraging more efficient transfer of housing stock. The platform used a local authority license to access heavily restricted digital footprints held by Ordnance Survey. 3D animations, which visualised a range of London datasets, supplied by The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London, were also exhibited, and showcased alongside the giant multi-layered jigsaw of London shown above.
Accessibility, openness and trustworthiness were found to be fundamental features of the Exploratory, required, to encourage diverse stakeholders to become involved. Information produced in digital and physical form on local areas and buildings, on their history, present characteristics and location, and their quality were all found to be interest to residents, with the home used as the hook on which data from the science and humanities was connected to. Colour and simple high quality graphic design were found to be critical in engage diverse stakeholder audiences. It was also identified that to be and to remain relevant and interesting to users, the model needed to be developed as a live project, with stakeholders, created by trial and error, over time.
The Building Exploratory, like CCRP platforms, was developed as a free, resource, and a reproducible model, able to be managed at low cost and funded though diverse funding sources. It was also designed to be permanent, flexible, multidimensional, collaborative, highly efficient, open and constantly improving and evolving. It was run by a small agile multidisciplinary core development team, and a group of volunteers. Significant contribution to exhibition design was made by Dr Polly Richards (1997-2001). From 2001 until it closed in 2019, the project was directed by Dr Nicole Crockett.
The Building Exploratory used the London borough of Hackney (population c350,000) as its prototype area. During its development its free resources and free educational programme were used by the following stakeholders:
- Local schools for visits and creative sessions
- Local residents and residents' groups
- Local planning groups trying to improve/conserve and restore/save areas and buildings (Hackney Society. Hackney Historic Buildings Trust)
- Local artists and designers (e.g. Escrapology. Russell Beck Studio, Tom Hunter and James McKinnon)
- Local history museums/archives/urban study centres promoting the value of historical resources and research (Hackney archives)
- Local regional environmental centres demoing sustainable practise (Groundwork)
- Local authority departments involved in housing, planning, regeneration, conservation, education, community arts, special needs education (London Borough of Hackney)
- Construction industry training programmes (Construction Industry Training Board, Hackney Community College)
- Construction and design industry partners interested in promoting education (Sodem)
- Universities involved in the the spatial analysis of cities (e.g. CASA, UCL)
- National housing associations wishing to use the GIS platform to map stock transfers (New Islington and Hackney Housing Assosciation)
- National museums wishing to extend outreach programmes (e.g. The Science Museum, The Natural History Museum)
- Learned institutions wishing to to extend outreach programmes ( e.g. The Royal Society of Chemistry)
- National bodies involved in historic buildings (e.g. English Heritage)
- National architecture centre network promoting high quality design and construction (The Architecture Network)
The Building Exploratory was generously supported by many public bodies and charitable trusts and in particular by the Clore Duffield Foundation, The Joseph Rowntree Trust, The Housing Corporation, English Heritage, the Arts Council, Hackney Council, The Hackney Society and the Department of National Heritage. Funders of prototype development and testing (1996-2001) were as follows: The Hackney Society, The Hackney Historic Buildings Trust, Hackney Education and Business Partnership, The Department of Culture Media and Sport, The Ashden Trust, The Glass-House Trust, The Tudor Trust, The Housing Corporation, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Clore Duffield Foundation, The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Ernest Cook Trust, the DETR, English Heritage, Arts Council England, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), the Heritage Lottery Fund, MLA, New Opportunities Fund, The Big Lottery, The City Bridge Trust, The Stuart Heath Charitable Settlement, The Stepney Community Trust, London Borough of Islington, London Borough of Hackney, The Learning Trust, The JJ Charitable Trust, the Mark Leonard Trust, Jack Petchey Foundation, Taylor Woodrow, the Learning Trust, Thames Wharf Charity, The Institute of Structural Engineers, JP Morgan Fleming Educational Trust, the Mercer’s Company, the Thames Gateway Creative Skills Partnership, The Royal Society, Cable London, Thames Water, The Rayne Foundation, Stanhope PLC, Lend Lease, Pollard Thomas Edwards, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Shepphard Robson, Teighmore Limited, Gardinier & Theobald, Investland Group PLC, John Doyle Group, Service Point.
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