ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a case study on Studio Polpo, which is a Sheffield-based micro architecture practice set up as a social enterprise. It provides information on approach research as a way of creating a space in which to test ideas that allows for failure or unexpected results. Experimental Residential was a piece of research that came out of a ‘failed’ project (the client was unable to source funding). Studio Polpo had been asked to put together a feasibility proposal for the reuse of an empty commercial building as a short-term live-work space for the Common People community interest company – an organisation primarily involved in pop-up shops and events in the city. The city of Sheffield has a large number of empty commercial and industrial buildings in its centre, many of which are of little architectural significance by themselves, but which form the layers of history that give the city its character.