Furnace Park

Year | 2012

Location | Shalesmoor, Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Clients | SKINN

Furnace Park is currently undergoing development by SKINN, a young, not-for-profit organisation set up to encourage better developments within the Shalesmoor, Kelham Island and Neepsend area of Sheffield. The intention is to make the site available to local, community members, to use for numerous activities and events, working with various organisations. Collaboration is at the heart of SKINN’s ethos. The Live Project lasted six-weeks, forming a small part of the sites three year, projected lifespan. Furnace Park is expected to open in May 2013, as a community Park/urban green space. After the three year lease expires, the site has been ear-marked for development.

The Live Project team, comprising of 13 students, were asked to conduct a study of the park and design an infrastructure for its future use. The intention was that the proposals could be built and adapted by volunteers and other stakeholders using the site. The team developed a series of resources for the clients. Throughout the Live Project we developed a blog and twitter profile and held two public engagement events to find out what people within the locality want from the site. We then designed a basic set of furniture, which could be built from pallets by anyone involved in the project, and used to facilitate activities on the site. We presented these ideas at a number of exhibitions to generate further interest in and backing for the future development of the park.

The document ‘Introducing Furnace Park’ explains the project through key design stages, providing instructions of how to construct the pallet furniture, information about the site, a series of precedents of similar projects, potential collaborator diagrams and a risk assessment of the site. In order to publicise the site, we added to the blog and created public boards that were displayed on the fence, marking the site boundary.

Credits

Mentor:

Cristina Cerulli