alfie.tecture

The High Level Bingo project proposes a Bingo Hall new-build in the city centre of Newcastle.

The Bingo Hall functions in a way to manipulate the presence of money through the utilisation of tokens, with the aim of breaking the binaries of Wealth and Privilege between the disproportionate groups of people who frequent around the High Level Bridge site.

In order to manipulate the presence of money, visitors will exchange cash for tokens when entering the bingo hall, which can be used to play the game.

These exchanges will take place through the process of self-evaluation in which players answer questions that subtly pertain to class, wealth and privilege, and will in-turn allow their answers to equate to a financial exchange rate.

This self-evaluation process echoes the confession space of the Catholic church, which the Bingo Hall will be designed to reanimate due to the inherent superstitional qualities of the church and gambling, creating the architectural medium allowing for the desired subtle breaking of this binary.

These exchange rates will relate individuals to their personal wealth, and will subsequently make every player equal within the token environment.

As the Bingo game begins, players will allow the luck of the game alone to determine their success. As players decide to leave, everyone will re-exchange their winnings for cash at the same exact rate, so that every player is fundamentally equal.

Within the existing dense structure of the High Level Bridge, statues are intermittently inserted in order to further manipulate the presence of luck. This was decided upon in order to create an uncertain assessment of luck's presence within the environment of the Bingo Hall for the players. .

As the concept of the statue is inherently a 'lucky' object itself, as something that people are tangible with, during the game, depending of the luck or misfortune of players, statues can be seen, and engaged with in order to fulfil the belief that its' engagement will positively affect the players' luck into their favour.

These statues are also located within the structure of the bridge along the path, so that pedestrians can engage, in the hope of them also further engaging with the Bingo.

Aside from the how the proposal utilises the structure of the Bridge to inform the experience and the architecture, the structure of the internal spaces themselves are defined once again by Catholicism. The nature of the gridshell structure in theory is capable of creating Cathedral-like qualities with its height, grandeur and dense complexities.

The timber gridshell structure was developed and programmed in Grasshopper in such a way so that it completely evades the existing structure of the bridge.

HIGH LEVEL BINGO

functionality

brief

Structure - statues - superstition

STRUCTURE - GRIDSHELL- SITE RESTRICTIONS

final drawings

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