POTTERIES THINKBELT

1966

‘Potteries refers to northern Staffordshire, an important area for the now-waning English ceramics industry. This was to be a university for 20,000 students. The north Staffordshire region already had a network of rail and motorways, though arguably of little use to the declining ceramics industry. The idea, then, was to rethink how to utilize existing railway lines for an unprecedented new kind of exchangeable university. Former station train yards would become places of education, where specially designed teaching units could be transported and put together in situ. Eight styles of unit are classified according to the type of education, but basically all are designed to withstand constant movement and realignments to meet the curricula. Alternatively, they can be transported by rail to other locations or mutually interchanged'.

Arata Isozaki

‘Why to produce giant closed castles, which remain fixed to a certain place, if people and knowledge were flowing?’

Stephan Jung, Resources in SAFT 08