Manual for the future city and time machines

Tina & Nicola run a Masters’ studio which explores the making and materiality of spatial practice. Considering the role of the architect as a physical novelist who weaves together past, present and future. Starting with a question: what is your commitment to the future? Through a collection of letters, the studio considers Architecture has agency to fulfil these promises made by soon-to-be architects. Valuing authenticity and identity, the studio considers global matters of concern – global pandemic linked to ecology and climate change. Going on to explore the narrative of Utopia and Dystopia in film, architecture, literature and history. in this context, the studio is working to produce a MANUAL FOR THE FUTURE CITY. Applied to Gosport, surrounded by a constellation of forts protecting the natural harbour at Portsmouth, UK; The City has a dystopian past and heritage rooted in war and defense. Layering the archaeologies and drawing out a palimpsest of spatial meanings, spatial practice is developed as active and comprising drawing, making and working with the digital. This research develops our explorations of an Island City of stories and aims to investigate how narrative informs understanding of context and authentic contemporary place-making. This paper will reveal the spatial practices and explorations carried out to comprise research through making and employ mapping, modelling and drawing as methods to reveal spatial attributes and layers of meaning in place. Different layers of history, stories and their interrelationships result in the particularities of place. This information requires architects to broaden their understanding of context through the consideration of tangible and intangible characteristics in order to place-make, in other words to consider the City as a textile of stories - fictional, historical, factual and biographical. We consider ourselves physical novelists weaving together past, present and future to produce a manual for the future city.