Paul Cashin Architects
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Go! Southampton Urban Room Competition

Paul Cashin Architects 'PCA' is a creative architectural practice based in Winchester, Hampshire. PCA takes a design-led approach to the practice of contemporary architecture, believing that well thought and considered design is essential to the creation of successful architectural space.

The practice undertakes contemporary architectural design projects across residential, commercial and civic sectors of the construction industry. Currently having a number of live projects across Winchester, Hampshire and the South Coast including one-off new build houses, extensions and commercial business projects.

As a small practice, our strength lies in our inclusive and personal approach, working directly with clients, consultants, and contractors, encouraging the cross over between architecture and other areas of art and design.

We are in a consistent state of process, working through a range of media including physical and computer models, hand and computer drawings, sketching and conceptual diagrams, discussions and presentations.

Paul Cashin Architects was founded in 2012 by Paul Cashin. Paul studied Architecture at the Universities of Portsmouth and Vienna, graduating in 2011 with an RIBA Presidents Medal nomination. He has worked for numerous practices, including Design Engine Architects working on contemporary university, school, housing and one-off house projects between 2008 and 2012. Paul has also taught at the University of Portsmouth and was a member of the Project Office for the school. Paul started PCA in 2012 which has set up offices in Winchester in 2016.

Southampton Go

Southampton

Go! Southampton Urban Room Competition | Hampshire

Public Installation

Status: Completed

Client: Go! Southampton  

Type: Competition

Southampton, a gateway city, a portal city; "Port" in Olde English means 'gate' or 'gateway', 'entrance'. We propose a statement for our Urban Room as well as a space to inhabit - a two part proposal which is both "Gateway" and "Room". The Marlands entrance has an empty terrace space, not easily accessible and hidden from the passing public. The atrium space within the Marlands itself however is a bustling walkway between the High Street and the Shopping Centre. We propose a "Room" that is lifted above this space, supported by a "Gateway" at ground floor level.

The use of scaffolding as a temporary framing system allows us to construct, support, and remove the structure with ease, as well as relocate the room to other spaces and monuments within the City that could be host to this adaptable and flexible proposal. Scaffold is often recognised as an indication of building and upgrading, of the continual need to improve the city wherever it is seen. The use of pallets is a reference to the goods and materials traded through the port, a rough and ready material that can be easily recycled, and an adaptable material that can be used in many ways, as flooring, cladding, furniture. The use of a single colour such as red completes the proposals, as an unignorable statement, a signal that alerts the passerby.

The Gateway is a gesture as much as a structure; to notice this intervention means to capture a glimpse as one walks Above Bar, before you are then invited to walk under and through the Gateway. As you approach you can either walk through the "Gateway" to the shopping centre beyond, or you can ascend the stairs to the right and enter the "Room" at the first floor. The space is a single cuboidal volume with a single viewing window, another "Gateway" providing a vista back to where you first noticed the intervention.

The Room is made as an important space above the ground, and whilst it has functional uses for organised events it could also benefit the city when not in use. Perhaps it's a look out position similar to the strategic advantage points found in the City Walls. Or perhaps it's a place of seclusion away from the busy street below, where people can escape and be still for a short while. Or perhaps it becomes a lantern at night, when the Marlands is closed and the permeable shell of pallets is allowed to illuminate with night time lighting.

We propose the "Gateway" and "Room" to be dismantled and reinstated elsewhere in the City. We can imagine a similar structure alongside the Bargate, or alongside the City Walls, or as a free-standing emblem in one the parks.