OB1 Live 16: Small Museum of Things for Archeox

Year one students from Oxford Brookes School of Architecture collaborated with Archeox, the East Oxford Archaeology and History Project, to make proposals for a small local museum for Archeox’s collection of archaeological artefacts found at Bartelmas Chapel, Cowley and Minchery Priory near Oxford United's football ground. The finds reveal important evidence of a leper hospital at Bartelmas Chapel and include prehistoric and medieval finds at Minchery Farm.connections.

Proposals were made for Small Museum of Things in the now derelict Cowley Road home of Victorian photographic pioneer, Henry Taunt. They had used his archive of photographs to assist with their research into the history of the area. These design proposals are now being used by Archeox as the basis of a bid to develop a local museum at the site.

Although each architectural proposal was unique, certain recurring conceptual ideas emerged that were particularly fruitful and revealed shared territories between the disciplines of architecture and archaeology. These included a fascination with tangible concepts such as layers; the earth; fragments; objects; weathering and ageing; the tactile and material nature of the activity of archaeology; and relationships between the act of digging and the act of building.

Intangible concepts that inspired several projects included uncovering and (re-)discovery – often expressed as a manipulation of light within a space or a gradual revealing of an object or space; re-connection of objects with their original context; the importance of stories sparked by the objects and artefacts; movement as a way to re-animate redundant objects; and an empathy with the need to record ideas and objects with images as well as words.

Culturally-based proposals tended to be concerned with exciting the public about the activity of archaeology itself and not just its finds; engagement with current and past communities; and the reinvention of the traditional glass museum case to create a more engaging and tactile interaction with artefacts.

October - December 2013

Team

Oluwatoyosi Adenuga, Cassandra Adjei, Nicole Akano, Daniel Almeida Carreno, Aslihan Arslan, Florence Atkin, William Audley , Craig Baigent, Samuel Barratt, Abdulmajid Basha, Kaloyan Baychev, Aylin Bayhan, Murad Baylarov, Dexter Benjamin, Jennifer Benton, Chintan Bhundiya, Fatima Bintube, Paul Bisbrown, Caroline Bowen-Long, George Brandon, James Brooks, Freja Brown, Joshua Brown, Michael Buckley, Gabrielle Bucknall, Phillippa Budd, Hannah Burrough, Rebecca Byren, Kirstin Campbell, Efe Chamay, Ben Chaney, Danai Charalampidi, Kieran Chauhan, Stephanie Chivers, Eunbi Choi, Dovile Ciapaite, Jermaine Coley Hines, William Conway-Smith, Emily Courtenay, Adrian Cristian, Marco Da Silva Rosa, Graham Davis, Enrique De La Cueva, Katherine Dechow, Hannah Drake, Emily Dudman, Ilze Dukovska, Isidora Durakic, Imogen Edwards, Sophia Edwards, Lucas Fabbri, Niloufar Fallah Damavandi, William Field, Sophie Flinder, Ioannis Galanos, Harriet Garbutt, Millie Gardiner, Christiana Georghiou, Robert Goacher, Joseph Goldman, Lucy Goldthorpe, Callum Graham, Sophie Grant, Frazer Gray, Faye Greenwood, Jessica Guy, Stefan Haest, Shahad Halawani, Emily Hawkings, Harriet Hawks, Adrian Hong, Alice Howland, Louisa Hunter, Joshua Hyland, Nikolay Ivanov, Konstanca Ivanova, Paige James, Mythilli Jeganathan, Gabriele Juzeliunaite, Sagarika Kaimal, Christina Knoff, Ayumi Konishi, Maria Konstantopoulou, Beril Kubin, Miranta Lafi, Daniela Larbalestier, Lucy Large, Var, Starbo Lind, Kristina Line, Luis Lopez Leon, Jessica Macnally, Conor Maher, Aliaksandr Manko, Minerva Mariotti, Rory Martin, Kwok Mau, Jonah Maxted, Olivia Mcandrew, Amber Mcleggan, Henry Meredith, Holly Mills, Dina Mjaland, Harriet Montague, Ali Morowa, Joy Mulandi, Catriona Musoko, Julie Myck, Olivia Myttion, Kimwa, Namrangwa Rai, Kieran Newell, Andrew Nicholls, Lucy Norton, Christina Odegaard Grytten, Esther Onaolapo, Xheremi Panariti, Mabel Parsons, Robert Pennington, Manu Pillai, Simona Puckovicova, Ingrid Rabo Halvorsen, Haydn Read, Antony Sadler,, Kriselle San Luis, Tariq Shah, Sandra Skjolde, Tomas Skurdauskis, Tayler Spruce, Katie Stares, Annabelle Stillman-Jones, Archie Stroud, Monika Strzyzewska, Agnieszka Szubert, William Thomas, Kara Thompson, Sophie Thompson, Sam Tottenham, Chloe Trevan, Victoria Tucker, Louise Tupas, Teodora Velkova, Arandeep Virdee, Oscar Von Claer, Thomas Walker, Rebecca Waller, Gabrielle Watson, Konrad Weka, Ellie Williams, Joseph Williams, Xiaomeng Wu, Jack Young

Collaborators

Archeox. With particular thanks to Jane Harrison (Archeox) for her input to develop the brief.

Participants

Staff at Archeox.

Tutors

Jane Anderson, Rob Houmøller, Orestes Chouchoulas, Merce Rodrigo Garcia, Ruth Cuenca, Neil Kahawatte.

Commissioned by

Archeox

Support

Archeox, Oxford Brookes School of Architecture.