Puppet Place

aim: The design proposal sets out ways in which Puppet Place can further integrate into the building and into the public’s lives; incorporating general building and facility upgrades along with attractive features such as a café, a community garden and dedicated workshop spaces. Our goal has been to create a strategy that supports the current work of Puppet Place and their mission to, bring puppetry as an art form further into the public eye.

THE TEAM: : Samuel Appleyard, Kath Dodds, Katherine Doyle, Charlotte Edwards and Mads Rosentoft

Client: Puppet Place

Collaborators: Joanne Kelly, Architect

 

Located in the heart of Spike Island in Bristol, Unit 18 is home to the Puppet Place. Unit 18 is owned by the Bristol City Council and is rented out on a lease to the Puppet Place. The council originally granted a 7-year lease to the business back in 2008. When that lease was renewed again in 2015, it once again was only extended for another 7 years. The lease is up for renewal again in 2022 and the hope is that with a clear and convincing proposal, the council will grant Puppet Place a long lease (30 years or more) to allow them to develop a creative hub in the centre of Bristol and truly settle into the space.

The aim of the proposal is to demonstrate the potential of Unit 18 and help secure a long-term lease from the council, which would allow Puppet Place and the local artistic community to secure the area as a Creative Hub in Bristol.

Through conversations with the artist of the Puppet Place we developed a proposal that focused on redeveloping the Puppet Place to a public puppet hub, as well as upgrading the existing building layout and structure. Our focus therefore was these listed points:

Public puppet hub:

  • Public garden

  • Café

  • Theatre

  • Public Workshops

Upgrading existing building layout and structure

  • Increased artist space

  • Building improvement (post-insulation, improve daylight on the ground floor)

  • Private balcony for the artist

  • Fabrication facilities

To get an idea of how puppetry artist worked we all created puppets that followed us from the sketches to the final presentation. A key aim throughout our work was to create a proposal that was in the spirit of puppetry and to show the client we had worked seriously on understanding the spirit of puppetry and storytelling. We therefore created a movie presented as a puppet show to explaining our proposal.