FLAX VILLAGE - 'SHE TOWN' CONSORTIUM & KINDERGARTEN

by Isabelle Reid

My first project celebrates the broken, and weaves past and present identities into the built environment. Silk is resurrected in Spitalfields and is used to restore Christ Church. Combining an ancient Huguenot craft with Bangladeshi culture, this material expresses decay and defects by lining the site with a new identity and vibrancy; a constellation of fluffy patchwork. The luxurious nature of silk coupled with bright sari hues dress the stone walls with a tactile play on building kintsugi that presents a new type of preservation and contingency. Continuing these values and the focus on natural fibres, my second project, Flax Village, situated in Dundee, utilises the derelict industrial fabric of the past. Linen weaving and flax workshops surround the site and like layers of an onion make way for a kindergarten at the core. The proposal celebrates the contribution of women and children to the flax and jute weaving industries and enables a shift from mass production industries to forms of micro and small enterprises with a spatial layout that aims to break down associations to conditions of the past. In Flax Village industry becomes a regenerative urban catalyst that blurs present day distinctions between social, productive and playful space.