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'Sheffield City Go-tel'

Part 2 Project 1999
Nick Brindley
University of Sheffield | UK
For me the most important process of how people inhabit their ground is through marks and traces that are testimony to a particular schedule,sequence or timing of human activity, anything that registers the passage of occupancy over time. Fields are very seldom static for programmes of
cultivation; growth and harvest lend rythmically changing dimensions to an agricultural landscape. Such 'landscapes' also exist within an urban environment for it is subject to constant change as individuals go about their daily routine, we all engage subconciously with our immediate
environment. A simple train journey to work provides us with an extensive network of communication and transportation, strategically choreographed through time-tables, locomotive allocation, signals, stations, crossings and many other measures of co-ordination. The experience of engaging with the landscape needs to be heightened and, through wrapping the landscape into the building , the Sheffield City 'Go-tel' will do just that.

Nick Brindley


Nick Brindley was an exceptional student in that he used the whole diploma course to develop his architectural understanding with each project informing the next. In this way we felt that Nick was the ideal post-graduate student, developing real depth in his enquiry. His response to the studio theme of living in the city centre and contemporary lifestyle was to deconstruct the idea of a hotel (go-tel ) and to recreate the idea from his own polemic - a functional alternative to commercial hospitality.The project centred around the particular schedule, sequence or timing of human activity. His reference points were the city in which it was located, Sheffield, the existing plans for the city centre ,the lifestyle of the hotel visitors, Central Park and Archigram. Again Nick's ability to
manipulate a drawing either drawn, painted or by computer in any way he wished and to conceptualise the project from the urban form to the plumbing made this project vivid and exciting.

1999
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