Design portfolio

Jack livingstone

Jack Livingstone

0752683661

jrblivingstone1@gmail.com

50 Beech House, The Beeches, West Didsbury, Manchester.M20 2AH

Education

Software skills

Professional affiliations

University of Manchester

University of Leicester

Urban Design and International Planning (Msc) (2016-2018). Predicted grade: Distinction.

Urban Design Studio An introduction to urban design analysis and skills through assessing townscape.

International Urban Design

Understanding urban design’s theory, history and concepts through critically understanding examples of best practice.

Urban Design Project Analysing a corner site and providing an appropriate design intervention.

Urban Design Masterplanning

Performing a baseline analysis of a site up to 20ha before carrying through a masterplan.

Understanding the history and relevant policies which have influenced design led regeneration.

International Design Fieldtrip

Critically exploring the policies and projects which make Vienna’s urban form so highly regarded.

Design Dissertation

Urban Regeneration

Building on Poppleton’s Greenbelt: Changing Green Infrastructural Strategies and Incorporating Cohousing.

BA Human Geography (2010-2013) 2:1

Skills

Urban AnalysisContextual AnalysisCharacter StudiesSmall Scale Interventions

Photography3d ModellingMasterplanningSketching

Royal Town Planning Institute

Contact

ProfileMy passion for urbanism and design have led me to be a driven individual with a strong desire to succeed. My thorough approach has helped consistently produce high quality work and obtain excellent results.

I excel at collaboration with others and have experience of working with people from many different cultures.

I enjoy testing my creativity through new challenges and working within different constraints.

I am eager to contribute to the design and planning of beautiful places while continuing to grow my skill set.

Seeking an entry level position in urban design and urban planning roles.

Contents

1. Swinton

2. Holt Town

3. Handforth

4. Poppleton

1-4

5-8

9-14

15-20

Urban design analyses and character area study.

Corner site development informed by urban design analyses.

Masterplan informed by urban design analyses.

Design dissertation.

1 2

Swinton

Swinton

ManchesterSalford

This project was completed as part of urban design studio 1. It served as an introduction to urban design analyses.

Starting at around a one mile radius of Swinton train station, the focus narrows in to the integral character areas and finally culminates in a proposed site intervention.

N 0 300m

Building Use

Residential

Industrial

RetailMixed use

Civic

Legibility

Path

Edge

Area

Landmark

Node

Public Open Space

Inaccessible green space

Accessible green space

PlazaCar park

Amenitygreen space

Age of Area

1930s -1950s

1920s and older

1960s- 1980s

1990s onwards

Character Area

Pendlebury

St. Augustine

Victoria

St. Peters

Newtown

Clifton

St. Ambrose

Wardley

Moorside

Swinton Park

Hazelhurst

Key Character Areas

Newtown

St Augustine

Victoria

Moorside

• Primarily residential, some mixed use.

• Victorian core with some accretions from each decade.

• Fine grain.• Generally a grid, with

some curvilinearity.

• Industrial.• Almost entirely postwar• A superblock street

structure leading to poor permeability.

• Coarse grain.• Very little open space or

green infrastructure.

• Largely Victorian with some later additions.

• Very fine grain, the highest density out of each area.

• Mixed use main street with residential hinterland.

• Often in gridiron shapes.• Little GI within residential

areas, but provision of large public green areas.

• Almost entirely residential.• Largely built after 1930.• An organic, adaptive grid• Lowest density out of each

area.• Large amounts of both

open space and green infrastructure.

3 4

Defining Characteristics of St. Peters

1.a

1.b

2.a

2.b34

5

1. Primarily retail (1.a) and civic buildings (1.b).

2. A coarse grain, rupturing Swinton’s urban fabric caused by: an overabundance of car parking (2.a) and an overabundance of unused amenity green space (2.b).

3. A feeling of centrality through possessing almost all of Swinton’s visually dominant buildings.

4. Poor permeability throughout especially focussed in Swinton’s town centre.

5. A diverse mix of building types from big box style shops, to minimal classicism and brutalism.

lanc house town hall

Site Intervention

Building

Road

Green space

Building to remove

Building to add

New pedestrian route

Improved frontage

Remove parking area

• Increase permeability through removing strategic buildings. Increasing visibility and attractiveness to pedestrians on key routes.

• Re-stablish direct connections with the houses to the south east.

• Reduce reliance on poorly fronted stair cases with low accessibility, by replacing with slopes.

• Tighten the urban fabric by removing two sections of surface car parking, but retaining the underground parking.

image of stairs, sketch

Key routes

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1:5000at A4

N0 50m

1:2500at A4

N0 50m

1:5000at A4

5 6

Holt Town

This project in Holt Town involved choosing a 1.7 ha adjacent to the Ashton canal. A baseline analysis of the area was completed and considered with relevant literature, such as the Bradford Ward , Holt Town Regeneration Framework,2008-2018 East Manchester Regeneration Framework and Manchester Core Strategy.

Since 2006 Cibitas have been working on this site and they currently have a masterplan. However I have planned this site to be the vanguard to an alternative development. One which retains more of the areas heritage and which activates a neglected area of the Ashton Canal.

Etihad Campus

Holt Town

Piccadilly Train Station

Key road routes

Tramline

New Islington

Site

• Car parking exists within the buildings and in the car park building in the north east of the site• This means that the only area which requires direct vehicular servicing is that around the central bar area, allowing the

rest of the site to be traffic free.• Changing geometries and levels of enclosure make for a more interesting townscape, with shifting, terminating vistas.• The bridge across the canal both activates the opposite footpath, as well as giving the illusion that the Brunswick mills

heading the central space.• Large numbers of balconies create strong frontages.• The central stepped platform creates visual interest and increases places to sit.

Holt Town redevelopment

N 0 100m1:5000at 58 x 102 cm

Design principles:

1. Continue the axis of large buildings down the Ashton Canal by linking together the East Manchester redevelopment areas.2. Create a visual interplay of new and old, allowing Wellington Mill to retain visual dominance, without having timid newer buildings.3. Activate both the canal side and the potential connection with Brunswick Mill.4. Provision the extant creative activities in Wellington and Brunswick Mill with bars and cafés in a mixed use area.5. Create strong frontages for a safer area.6. Increase residential densities above what is expected in the Manchester Core Strategy.

Achievements

Contextual appraisal

N0 100m

1:5000at A4

Large building

Poorly defined residential

Derelict Holt Town area

Site

Key route

Node

Concrete

Opportunities and constraints

Key route

Heritage buildings

Heavily polluted land

Site

Potential bad neighbours

Building currently providing employment

Key viewOffering jobs in creative industries

Potential bridge

Inactive frontage

0 50m7 8

• 120 residential units created equalling 71 dwellings per hectare• 6 bars/ cafés created• 11132 m² of office/ workshop space preserved and created• 110 total car parking spaces.

• The existing Wellington Mills building is made more distinct and highlighted further through very different building types existing around it.

• The trend of buildings with large footprints down the Ashton canal is continued, however an undesirable coarse urban grain is avoided.

Serial Vision New Bar/cafe Area

Approach from the south west. Old and new forms contrast and complement each other.

Inviting configurations of open space create a desire to move through the public realm.

View onto the central bar area.

Cross section

Handforth

Manchester Stockport

HandforthManchester Airport

RailwayKey roads

Site Handforth Garden Village

Situated on the extreme north west of the future Handforth Garden Village site this 16ha site was designed to act as its first phase.

Design principles:

1. Create a primarily residential area, where possible incorporating mixed use areas.2. Due to its location next to key roads and as the first phase of the Handforth Garden Village site add later buildings to: increase legibility, create a sense of arrival and to provide the rest of the site with community facilities.3. As a garden village contain large amounts of private and public green space.4. Furthermore as a garden village uphold strong ecological values by, where possible preserving existing trees, ponds and helping priority species on site such as the great crested newt.5. Whilst accepting the area has to have large amounts of car use the site cars cannot be allowed to dominate the site.6. Capitalise on the traffic flow on the north western corner by constructing larger office buildings and creating a connection to Handforth Dean.

1:2000at 27 x 45 cm

• The main road view terminates with this large building, which contains apartments, some retail and a community centre.

• Tree cover is enhanced from before. Where possible existing treed areas have been retained

• Car parks have been set inside the blocks to minimise the need for on street parking

• The pattern of the road network has been inspired by the antecedents of the garden city movement, such as Bath and Edinburgh’s New Town.

• The central roads 15m width helps establish legibility and a road hierarchy.

• Trees next to the main roads have been retained to dampen noise

• The smaller local access roads have been made with porous paving to reduce flood risk

9 10

Masterplan

N 0 100m

From concept to option

• Larger buildings have been placed at the entrances to the site, to help create a sense of arrival

• Further taller buildings exist at the peripheries so the site is visible from the road

• The many buildings heights crates legibility and visual interest

Axonometric diagram

Building Use Phasing

• The site is largely residential. Creating 429 new dwellings, with 180 in apartments, 70 in semi detached houses, 118 in terraced houses and 61 in detached houses.

• 20439m² of office space has been created

• The presence of the nearby Handforth Dean retail and industrial park reduces the possibility of including more mixed use areas meaning there are 8 retail units on the site.

• The retail units are primarily focussed around the two key open spaces, in the north and south of the site respectively. This has been done to try and activate those spaces.

• Phase one prioritises the main road, from which all other roads on site are dependent. It also includes the road under the A34 and a connection to the rest of the Handforth Garden Village site.

• Phase two sees the construction of the new employment infrastructure for the area, as well as the larger ‘landmark’ buildings.

• Phases three and four see the construction of the more peripheral buildings on the site

Car park

Office

Mixed use, retail and residential

Residential

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

1:2000at A4

1:2000at A4

11 12N 0 100m N 0 100m

Northern green space at night

main street in the day

13 14

Poppleton

My dissertation project was a scheme to build on greenbelt land in a way which brought social and environmental benefits to the site. The area I chose was Poppleton, an exurb just outside of York.

This was an experimental design which utilised a form of developer led cohousing, partly for its social and environmental and partly for its open urban form. This open urban form allows green infrastructural strategies to be changed from a reactive defensive (in this case greenbelt designation) one to a more positive opportunistic approach. This was done concurrently with adopting an adaptable approach which allows the scheme to be ‘safe to fail’, through utilising built in modularity, redundancy and adaptive design. The added assurance through the ‘safe to fail’ approach allows this experimental design to be attempted with significantly reduced risks of failure.

Design Goals

York

Poppleton

Site

Harrogate

Leeds

Key Road Railway

1:1000 at 99 x 45 cm

15 16

Lower Poppleton

N 0 100m

Poppleton context

Adaptability• Create semi independent

modular residential areas.• Encourage self organisation in

the built form.

Cohousing aspects• Keep the number of dwellings

per module at numbers amenable to permitting interaction.

• Create communal infrastructure in each module

Green Infrastructure• Capitalise on the open form

conducive to successful cohousing to run connective GI through it.

• Support local biodiversity.

Connectivity

Vernacular concerns

• Build for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users without alienating drivers.

• Integrate with Poppleton.• Ensure streets are fronted, avoid

over insularity.

• Synthesise existing vernacular streetscapes: the village green and the cul-de-sac.

• Increase housing density whilst retaining a village aesthetic.

The site as it is now

1:2500 at A4N 0 100m

Bus stop

Train station

Area covered by train accessibility

Area covered by bus accessibility

Greenbelt

Edges

Hedge and tree

Village centre

Buildings to be removed

• Previous landscape elements such as hedges and the brook have been integrated into connective corridors. The brook is now the focal point of a multifunctional SuDS system.

• These landscape elements connect with stronger areas of external landscaping.• Porous paving has been used in concert with the drainage channels.• Extensive tree planting connects each module on the site together.• A 10m strip at the south of the site has been preserved for corn bunting to nest in.• Allotments have been created to cater for existing demand and for their ecological

benefits.• Each building by default has an extensive green roof, in order to offset any loss of

grassland.

• Increasing the permeability of the site, especially through the new bridge has significantly increased public transport coverage.

• Specialised pedestrian/ cycle paths allow for safer transportation.• Widened roads mean that buses can now pass into the site, further increasing

accessibility.

• All pre-existing buildings on the site have been removed• Each module consists of 20-30 residential dwellings, with one communal house and

one bike shed. Residential numbers over this are less conducive towards cohousing.• The centre of the site contains a large building with many wings, it is designed to be

able to be used flexibly based on the needs of the citizens of the site and the village. Facing this building are 3 mixed residential/ retail units, placed to create a small centre.

• Pains have been taken to ensure that the site would not become too insular, so it would connect with the rest of Poppleton.

• Furthermore a large effort has been made to make sure every road is well fronted, to ensure safety and connectivity from the scale of the module, to the site to the village.

• The main entrance points cover enough green-space to retain some of the vernacular feeling of the site, but without severing it from the village.

• From each entrance point a view of a four storey building exists, to ensure good legibility.

• The use of the flexible building would be partly determined by the existing villagers in Poppleton in order to foster better integration.

Flexible use

17 18

Green Infrastructure

Accessibility Building Use

Connectivity

1:1000 at 99 x 45 cmN 0 100m 1:1000

at 99 x 45 cmN 0 100m

1:1000 at 99 x 45 cm

N 0 100m 1:1000 at 99 x 45 cmN 0 100m

Within 400m of a bus stop

Area provisioned by new bus line

New bus route

Area within 800m of a train station

New pedestrian bridge and route across the railway

Within 800m of the train station

New bus stop

External GI route

Existing GI routes on siteTree rich area

SuDs network

Bioretention pond

Flight path for corn buntings

Green roof

Use of permeable surfaces

New connective elements

Allotment

Unimproved grassland

Residential

Common House

Bike shed

Flexible use

Mixed use: residential/ retail

Main route into the site

Key connective area

Front of building direction

Key view

4 storey building

19 20

Water taken to a drainage channel.

Drainage through permeable surfaces.

Allotments to keep the site provisioning food and to assist in raising biodiversity.

Central area with a mix of uses, to help foster social cohesion.

Lansdscape diagrams