Vauxville

The Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester

Project idea

This project looks at potential industry development along the Irish border based on Tariff relating ramifications and loopholes of Brexit. The project is focused in Belleek, a town situated along the Irish border, becoming the testing grounds for a Vauxhall car factory and Model Village.

This unprecedented condition allows for the consideration of new urban and architectural typologies. Three large factories placed along the border end up aligning with the existing village’s Highstreet, thus influencing a Model Village design that merges commerce with industry. Homes are attached to the factory’s side facade to effectively bring the enormous volume down to the human scale while simultaneously formulating a new housing typology: the “Factory House”.

The Factory House is influenced by the automobile industry in two ways. First, like customers do with a Vauxhall Car, employees can build and price their home on an app that provides customization features such as: window style, truss shapes, façade material/colour, ornamentation and more. Secondly, like a car’s construction, homes will be prefabricated; effectively creating a physical analogy where a home is built from an assembly line, attached to an assembly line.

The industry-based Irish border condition gains attraction in other large industries that have extensive amounts of exports to both the UK and rest of Europe. Car manufacturing suppliers start relocating to the nearby towns of Belleek, as do prefabricated home manufacturers, such as the ones constructing the Factory Home. The result fifty year’s down the line is an industrially flourishing, commercially vibrant and densely populated urban Irish border.

Project description

The final drawing style takes inspiration from late 1800 adverts of Model Village living. The posters, often placed in high density areas such as train stations, encompass beautiful images of the village with bold text selling the viewer on a lifestyle of pure bliss.

Technical information

Housing is located on the factory exterior to obtain maximum sunlight and fresh air while simultanously being as close to work as possible. With the location of the factory on the border to benefit from products made in two locations at once, the factory building, as well as the housing attached to it, will adhere to both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom regulations simultanously.

Here we compare requirements as well as maximum and minumum categories to see what a building may look like that meets the best of both regulation sets. With double the regulations, an approved house is established at an undeniable higher quality.

This high quality of housing feeds into the high standard of living for Vauxville residents. This will no doubt contribute to the model village marketing scheme.