The Causey. Edinburgh
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Project: The Causey & Causey2. http://www.artinarchitecture.co.uk
Awarded 2 prize in the Architects Journal Small Projects 2007.
Client: Six Cities Design Festival 2007, The Lighthouse, Glasgow.
Date of Project: May 2007 & ongoing
Budget:£5000 from 6 Cities & £5000 from raised funds.
Project description: The Causey started out as a submitted proposal to the Six Cities Design Festival for project ideas. Art in Architecture submitted proposals to change a site in the Leith Docks area but were not successful. Only five to six projects within each of the six Scottish cities were funded. Consequently, a collaboration was struck between Arcade Architects and AiA. The chosen site was “The Causey”, Westcross Causeway, where the roads merge in an area at the Southside within the city of Edinburgh. The Causey site had been one of the earliest roads in the historic city and was in fact one of the corner of the busy Buccleugh Place, previously referred to in days gone past as The Road to London. As traffic methods changed over centuries the site became merely a busy car traffic turning space. It was decided that the site should be temporarily closed to give the space back to public and pedestrian use in order to ascertain how people reacted to the changed space.
Working with Southside Community Group, a design workshop was organised where participants were given historic background information and asked to consider the range of people living and working close to the site today. Three themes were also allocated to the groups attending the design workshop, Guse Dub, Exotic Island and Garden. The outcomes and models resulting from the workshop helped the professional team of Arcade Architects (www.arcadearchitects.com) & AiA to define what The Causey project was to be over the three days of the Six Cities Design Festival in May 2007.
Over a three day period the road was closed off, the main cobbled street area and central traffic island were grassed over. Street signage was taken down and disguised as palm trees or with large green leaves adding an exotic touch. Tents with a floral pattern were chosen to brighten up the site and relate to the Flower Garland stencils being spray painted across the site to provide shelter and also house recorded site history for the public to listen to inside each tent. One traffic signal was disguised as a wish tree. This encouraged people to spend time in the transformed site and then to write their response / wish for the future of the space on a red cardboard tag which they then tied onto the wish tree to form information leaves for the public to read and add their thoughts to. To create a community engaging activity Flower Garland stencils from an internationally toured art project by Shaeron Averbuch were spray painted onto all exposed tarmac surface across the site, creating a colourful patterned effect as a contrast to the usual dark tarmac and yellow lines. Throughout the day different performance artists and musicians added to the growing public interest and street party effectively developing within the site.
Public support for this event was overwhelming with the project momentum growing into Causey2. This has received funding to develop a further series of four design workshops that engage a wider age range and ethnicity within the local community and at the same time work with the Royal Commission for Ancient Monuments Scotland, (RCAMS).
The aim is now to effect the permanent closure of the through road and redesign the site in order to capture the successful elements of what happened previously happened and more.
The process of transformation can be viewed on You Tube.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SHIKjgifBNI
