What to do with Wool?
A flexible and tactile proposal for a mixed-use facility. Weaving, visiting and inhabiting. This facility sits within the urban context of Fort William, and so acts to respond to the fleeting nature of a town reliant on a tourist population. The building provides 3 floors of both public spaces and workshops. While the top two floors provide both temporary and permanent accommodation. Working on an existing site of the town’s library, this proposal reacts to the initial footprint and forms, and grows from it. The steel structural frame acts as the footprint for the central void and sits atop it. While the exhibition space is located where the current mural is, it exhibits both internally and externally.
This facility aims to engage with the tourist population, the local community and the wider industry of textiles and art, to encourage the growth of this industry. Scottish wool is obsolete, with it costing my to produce wool than farmers can sell it. So while Scotland has a rich heritage surrounding wool, it is now unviable as a localised product, with the work done here acting to reverse this.
Tourist engagement is fostered through the exhibition space and demonstration spaces located on the ground floor. The site is located a short walk through an underpass from the train station or at the end of the high street. It continues the veranda of the high street internally, creating a direct route through the building for a wander. The local community engages with the semi-public spaces: meeting rooms, classes etc. Industry engagement comes through the programme of the workshop, a natural dyeing facility, and a weaving and knitting workshop. With a focus on re-vitalising wool through experimental means.
