Linkages, James Watt Campus. Birmingham Metropolitan College

Client: Birmingham Metropolitan College

With BPN Architects

[2014]

I spent time researching Watt's notebooks held in Birmingham City Library. Inside I saw the magic of Watt's writings on such a large array of subjects, elegant simple diagrams, and the legacy of his inventions. I began thinking about the array of subjects in the College curriculum and what might connect everything from sun and planetary motion, to engineering and even hair growth patterns. I investigated the poetic, elegant motion of an array of mechanical linkages, tracing back to ‘Watt's Linkage’ and similar to a pantograph. The resulting whorls, orbits and sequences, as both drawings and physical structures, became integrated with the redevelopment.