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The City of Art and Manufacture
“Los formed an Anvil
A Hammer of adamant then began
The binding of Golgonooza day and night”
-William Blake
In the modern world, a new type of craftsman emerges, the designer and manufacturer who embraces both creative human energy and the machine. In recent decades, urban manufacturing in London has been replaced by large scale retail and industry, and inner-city production has moved to peripheral locations. A move from an industrial economy to a knowledge based economy, Urban manufacturing can once again play a vital role in developing our cities. Speculating on a new identity for Thamesmead, a typology which merges small scale industry and craft. The project aims to insert working spaces in the city, which unite old and new ways of making.
Collectively an educational identity of the city reveals the worker. Reusing existing urban artefacts and reinvigorating them with the transport of materials, objects, people and ideas. Creating paths along unused canals which attach themselves to quarters of manufacturing neighbourhoods. creating distinct manufacturing identities of making ceramics, glass, textiles, electronics etc. Detailed design of the Ceramic Works shows the forming of new layered arefacts and fragments of the city which reveal the skill of the craftsman who makes an inhabits them.
