VAUXVILLE

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.

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.

*Can you spot the clovers and Northern Lapwing?