Ark
The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment – Website for innovative initiative engaging local communities in design
2020 – ongoing
The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London is an academic centre for the study of the built environment and home to twelve departments that have expertise in various related fields.
The Melbourne Centre for Cities at the University of Melbourne is designed to foster responsible and cosmopolitan city leadership, and the information it needs, in an interconnected and increasingly urbanised planet.
Bottom-up Infrastructure (BUI) is a collaboration between Bartlett and Melbourne Centre for Cities that explores how communities can engage with infrastructure design to create sustainable and health places. We worked with BUI on a new visual identity and website to showcase their work.
Centred around projects
BUI needed a website to showcase eight different projects that had involved communities in the subject of infrastructure. They wanted it to be based around the ‘infrastructure lifecycle’ and for it to engage their target audience of interested communities, infrastructure engineers, designers, co-design practitioners and community engagement specialists.
We worked with them them to develop a site structure that enables users to browse and select a project of interest easily. Projects cover a range of topics from supporting communities to restore lost rivers to working with local groups to act upon concerns about air quality from construction works. Each project has a dedicated landing page with a narrative overview and some structured information around timescale, geographical scale and budget.
Distinctive visual identity
We developed a bold new visual identity that intentionally set it apart from the standard UCL and University of Melbourne brands. As BUI was a stand-alone fellowship project, we were free to take an entirely bespoke approach to the palette, interface and the layout of the website.
The stripped back colour palette is black, white and bright yellow. Large impactful photography is used sparingly throughout alongside an extensive library of custom iconography that is used distinguish different types of tools.
Methods, tools and publications.
The projects pages are supplemented by a cross-cutting set of ‘methods’ which are detailed statements of the co-design process used to implement the bottom-up infrastructure approach. Example methods include ‘setting aims’, ‘characterising communities’ and ‘crafting solutions’. Website users can explore the methods used on a given project or the projects on which a particular method was used.
Similarly, the website features a set of ‘tools’ such as school teaching materials, volunteering briefing documents, and field notes templates. Each tool has a page which contains a brief synopsis and links to download relevant files. Website visitors can see which projects or methods a tool has been used on and vice versa.
The website also features a publications library that details all of the published outputs from this body of work, with clear links out to relevant journals and other academic destinations.
Bureau created an online home that truly reflects the spirit of our real world work. We regularly receive compliments about the visual and structural design of our website, and it has become an important touchpoint as our work evolves. The team were great to work with as we developed the site, and have been a steady presence as our own work and people have changed over time.