The project addressed the many concerns that Price felt were the main issues with the ailing community such as the unemployment, vast areas of unused, unstable land, and a national need for scientists and engineers. The structure of Potteries Thinkbelt was unconventional and radical and did not conform to what was considered architecture at the time and could not be supported by the ministry of education.
It was not a single “building”, but a network of mobile classrooms and laboratories placed on the existing rail lines to move from place to place, from modular housing to administrative units to a library to onsite factory to computer center. This movement allowed for many variations within the system by permitting present and future configurations to be arranged and reassembled when the needs changed. There were to be three major transfer points, which formed a triangle from Pitts Hill to Madeley to Meir, spreading 100 square kilometers, encompassing all the towns inside as part of the institution. By taking advantage of the compartmentalization of rail cars, class rooms and laboratories could be linked to form larger units, with the largest lecture spanning across the three parallel rails joined by inflatable walls and portable decking
MADELEY TRANSFER AREA
PROGRAM AND CIRCULATION
PROGRAM AND CIRCULATION
The network is full of calculated uncertainty, providing users with the freedom to make decisions on their feet- to move in non-prescribed ways from one point to another. The existing rail lines and roadways are fixed, but the rest is not strictly determined. In a way, it accommodates change and transformation. By leaving gaps in the network's structure, there is support for endless invention and reconfiguration. The mega structural framework creates a network that is constrained. There is flexibility at the metropolitan scale, adaptability at the scale of the individual.
HYPOTHESIS
Making use of technology to allow full possibility of physical and remote learning using modular units
Modular Linear spaces with adequate circulation space proves to be a good configuration for education module
