FRACTURED
SITE ANALYSIS
Located at the top of Roseangle overlooking the Perth Road. 2, Roseangle was originally designed by Dundee’s town architect David Neave in 1815. The Georgian Villa is most notably known as Dundee’s “murder house” after a gruesome double murder in 1980. Ever since that fateful day the building has been dying ever since after multiple attempts to convert the building falling through.
2, Roseangle was converted into student accommodation after being bought by the University of Dundee following the murders. In 2008, the villa was bought by artist Nael Hanna who had the desire to finally convert the building into a restaurant only for the building to be auctioned off in 2017 due to continuous vandalism.
2, Roseangle never recovered from its failed conversion in 2017 and has deteriorated rapidly ever since, with no care or attention being given to the building it has been left to die where it stands while everything else continues developing around it.
CONCEPT
RESEARCH/CONTEXT
The area around 2, Roseangle has changed drastically over time what was once a street of luxurious Georgian villas in the late 1800’s is now lying in what some would call Dundee’s student street being surrounded by multiple bars and cafes and facing the art school of the university.
With all of this being considered and with the Student Union failing to bounce back to what it was after Covid, “Fractured” aims to become an extension of the Student Union directed towards art students. “Fractured” strives to bring people together as a community from all different backgrounds and courses to socialize with others and view and discuss work from different disciplines and engage in conversations that you wouldn’t normally have in your typical day in university.
The V&A Dundee expresses its value of community as Designer Kengo Kuma detailing the decision of the social lounge as you enter the building before you see any form of exhibition. His aspiration was for it to be the “living room of the city”. “Fractured” strives for similar goals wanting the space to feel like the “living room of the University” for every student who enters.
The Inspiration for “Fractured” has been driven by the question “How does the Interior of 2, Roseangle hold up today if the exterior is falling into such disrepair?
In 1880, 2, Roseangle got highly detailed plaster tiles and mosaic tiles added into the interior of the building. With little to no access to the building “Fractured is heavily driven by the imagination of its current condition.
Duddells, London is a Cantonese cuisine located in St Thomas Church. This building transitioned from Church to serving Cocktails at the bar and this is showcased as they have kept details of its previous life in the new design. This communicates with people to show where the building has come from and shines a light on the building scars.
The idea for “Fractured” was to design an extension of the Union to bring art students together as a community and to create an space that can accommodate students from first thing Monday morning to last thing Sunday night. Somewhere to get a coffee Monday morning and to have weekend drinks Saturday night.
The Building hosts 3 floors with 3 different experiences, a café on the basement level, a community social space on the ground level and a bar on the First floor.
Residential Deterioration is the main driver to achieving this being inspired by broken objects in particularly Brick and Ceramic Tiles.
Kintsugi originated in the 15th Century in an act to repair sentimental or valuable ceramics and is nowadays known as the Japanese art of repairing. This process is considered inspirational as a reinforcement to the fact that there is beauty in broken things and in fact Kintsugi often restoring the object to a more attractive version of the original.
Gino Banana is a restaurant in Valencia, Spain that uses the nature of the deterioration as a display tool. In areas where there are bricks missing from the wall they have added an ornament into the gap to incorporate the deterioration into the design.
These two case studies were pivotal to the design of the space as examples that there is beauty in broken things and sometimes they just need adapted as opposed to being replaced
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
“Fractured” began with the engagement of other students through the use of collage on a broken ceramic tile.
During this task the students were asked 3 questions.
1. What makes a social space feel like home?
2. What can be improved in the current student union?
3. What is your ideal student union?
This provided information from the students to begin developing the special outcome of what was important when creating the space, the students then created a new tile with the broken shapes to create something new out of something broken.
Sketch Models were key to the development of the design creating 3 dimensional versions using the shapes of the broken tiles to help visualise special outcomes.
“Fractured” sought out great value in what current student wanted in their space with aspects such as areas to display student work and a wider variety of food options being a few of the main ideas.
I began to experiment digitally with brick forms, creating playful experiments with bricks removing and adding bricks from walls to create things like shelves or ledges for models or to create areas to hang artwork from.
SPACIAL DESIGN OUTCOME
The final design for “fractured” is an inviting space for art students to experience the world of design through multiple disciplines across DJCAD, a space to wind down from your own studies and learn through other people’s work and to engage in interesting conversation and create valuable connections.
Students experience the reinvention of 2, Roseangle through the inspiration of deterioration the gaps in the walls left behind by the fallen bay windows have now been converted into a large bay window connecting the spaces, and a focus on patterns inspired by brick and ceramic tiles.
“Fractured” maintains the same colour palette of the neutral colours of whites and greys to put the main focus on the student artwork as well as an orange accent to encourage the socialising of people according to the colour theory.
“Fractured” includes furniture influenced through the work of Italy Ohaly and his fracture chairs where he creates 2 singular chairs from a bench, enabling the ability for people to connect through furniture as well as artwork
