Author: Matt McCluskey -
When Martin first e-mailed the year to encourage us to start assembling groups for Basil Spence, he suggested that a suitable team may consist of a visionary, a manager, and a deliverer. While I agree with him on principle, I would like to think that our team distributed these traits fairly evenly across the four of us, and that this enabled us to work cohesively and productively for the entire duration of the project.
Visualising our Basil Spence design
In terms of visualising the scheme, I always felt that the others within the group were seeing the scheme from the same perspective that I was. Although we sometimes had different opinions about how to develop the scheme, this was mainly resolved by making physical models. Not only did this highlight flaws in an idea through physical manifestation, but model making in itself provided much needed respite from endless debate, discussion and potential conflict. I was sometimes reluctant to spend time developing multiple solutions, but have realised that this was the only way that our scheme ever moved forward, and that without constantly modelling different ideas, we would have ended up with a very bland solution.
Delivering to our final goal
Individually, we were all self-motivated and set our own objectives, all the while bearing in mind the various milestones to work towards. Collectively, however, we sometimes struggled to commit to group goals and to decide who should complete which task, due to the unpredictability of the time taken to produce material. Once the scheme had been finalised, we realised that we faced a daunting task to produce all the necessary material for the final review. Emma and Helen had spent days in the workshop producing formwork for a concrete model which broke as soon as we prised the formwork off. This setback was extremely demoralising and frustrating in equal measure. We felt as if 5 days had been completely wasted, leaving us with less time than desired to produce the drawings for the final review. Helen took on the thankless task of building a 3D model to use for drawings and we managed to produce a cast model for the review.
Working as a team
In Zach, we not only had an incredibly gifted civil engineer, but a talented and immensely passionate designer who contributed greatly to every single aspect of the design process, while also producing an amazingly thorough engineering solution to our scheme. His positive outlook on the project and eagerness to push the boundaries of his knowledge have produced, in my opinion, a unique and innovative solution to a complex brief. I have never met an individual who works as hard or as unselfishly as Zach. Whether it was cutting tiny wooden buildings in the workshop, calculating the structural requirements of our building, or staying in studio hours after us to do his other coursework, his enthusiasm never wavered.
Thanks to Emma the main body of our scheme has stayed pure and undiluted in terms of its concept. Her amazing drawings brought to life the fantastical nature that we tried to instil in our scheme. Helen's calm demeanour and ability to think clearly and with reason has prevented several discussions from turning into arguments, as has her ability to weigh up the pros and cons of multiple solutions in order to produce the best result for the scheme. This is something that I occasionally found difficult, as I can develop tunnel-vision and struggle to imagine how another solution could work.
Without my team mates, I would not have had such a firm belief in our scheme. I can say whole-heartedly that I have enjoyed every single moment in their presence - our shared enjoyment of this process has made Basil Spence worthwhile; we have produced a scheme which I am proud to put our names on.
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