Thomas Everett

From Rubble to Resources: Building a community through Regeneration and Education

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

thomas.w.everett18@gmail.com

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Image of Final Sectional Model showing the mixture of Garden and Workshop Landscape

Project description

The historic fabric of Dunbar holds potential for an alternative approach to redevelopment. Delivered through the local people with the construction and community charity, The Ridge.

This project aimed to establish a new hub of material and construction skills training within the old town of Dunbar. Focused on the reuse of existing fabric and the empowering of local people through construction education. The centre acting as a catalyst for a wider transition throughout the town. Initiating the construction of corridors of dense but diverse inhabitation which recentre the town back to its underutilised historic core.

Therefor re-establishing its historic urban core, reviving it’s forgotten green commons, and stitching together past fragmented sprawl, all while strengthening the community of and providing skills too the people of Dunbar.

Production, People and Place

Initial research examined the spatial conditions and planation patterns created in forest landscapes throughout Scotland, as a result of the demand of the timber industry. Linking production pressures to place.

This was followed by analysis of the town of Dunbar, the settlement typology which shaped the old town and the pressures which have created the contemporary town, with its fragmented and obscured connections to the surrounding countryside. Showing how the town as gradually lost it place as a centre within the wider territory and moved to a commuter town.

This links with work the Ridge already carry out within the town re-inhabiting historic building and building a resilient community.

Overlay of research, Historic town pattern, connection corridors

The Garden Workshop

The seemly intrusive proposal for a construction skills school off the high street of Dunbar, was subdued by the proposals sensitivities to a marriage between manufacturing and nature. Wild and plentiful garden spaces and intermixed with the workshops, creating a balanced setting for focused work and learning.

Inspired from the layered and protecting walls of Dunbar the project aims to create serval pockets of spaces each varying in use, environmental sheltering and privacy