Constructing Atmosphere: The Gathering Place allowed us to rethink the high street of our traditional towns to meet the needs of tomorrow.

In selecting Dalkeith, historically a town which had a very strong social, spatial, and tectonic relationship between high street and surrounding landscape, we invited students to reimagine this vital co-dependency.

Initially working in groups within distinct land armatures, students undertook fieldwork research before individually synthesising group and individual investigation to locate, programme and tectonically develop a pavilion in the landscape. The pavilions as constructed become a conceptual catalyst and tectonic fragment for the development of a co-dependant Gathering Place on the high street.

These larger and more conventionally complex propositions serve what each student perceives as a vital societal need around which people will gather.

In the development of their bespoke narrative, the students sited, programmed, and designed architectural and urban responses to a level of formal resolution - spatially, materially, and tectonically - which enabled a clear built atmosphere to be established.