ART SCHOOL

 

‘Urban Print’ is a concept for a social space within Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Built in 1976, the Matthew Building’s North entrance on Level 5 was once described as ‘a vibrant internal street’. This new design mimics the city street, much like urban parks, by using a playful

language of line, colour and material. To accommodate this, the art school’s existing Print Unit would be hollowed out, creating a fitting motif of ‘Print’ in the city’s only art school, a city which once thrived off the printing industries.

 

A void from Floor 5 runs all the way up through departments of architecture and design on Level 6, 7 and 8. The roller plotter for years has allowed such disciplines to produce large scale vector graphics, transforming the digital into tangible print. A mechanical pen moves from left to right: realising complexities and changing direction. This printing process, almost 60 years on, still transforms the way the digital receive the analogue, and this pattern has been represented on Floor 5 through 2D surface and 3D stuff.

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 The furniture chosen, combined with steel structures, create sub environments, retaining the delicacy of a continuous line drawing. For groups of 1, 2 or more. Combined with bus-stop-like nooks outside 6 lecture theatres, the seating zones aim to blend all types of interaction: a momentary pause, a serendipitous encounter, or an active engagement with the space. The social atmosphere of this previously barren hallway should reflect creativity, collaboration and skill. It should encompass the individuality of the students that fill its lecture theatres, and have the confidence of a 21st centry art school.