The Idea of a Renaissance Pavilion…

An introduction
Yorkshire & Humber is an attractive business location, and a magnet for ambitious and enterprising organisations, including 5 of the world’s top 10 companies. The region’s GDP exceeds £81 billion and ranks amongst the top third of the world’s national economies. Yorkshire Forward was set up by Government to promote sustainable economic Development throughout the Yorkshire and Humber region. We are an economic development and business focused organisation that aims to help improve the region’s economic performance and balance the many competing social, economic and environmental demands to help achieve a lower carbon economy.

At the heart of our Regional Economic Strategy lies Great Places.
We believe that distinctive places stimulate new opportunities, encourage a more enterprising culture and help to breathe life and vibrancy into the region’s towns, cities and rural capitals. In order to do this we have created a unique methodology, the Renaissance programme.

Our Renaissance Towns and Cities programme was launched in 2001, with an objective to ensure that our towns, cities and rural capitals are well-designed, connected and improve the quality of life for those who live and work there. Following a robust consultation process with these communities, local authorities and other partners, teams of experts were paired with ‘town teams’, to draw up their own vision frameworks for each place. Building on each place’s uniqueness, the frameworks aim to create places which are lively, well-functioning, clean and safe. Such places attract people, whose skills and enterprise add to our drive for prosperity. The Renaissance Towns and Cities programme will last possibly 30 years but is now well into its delivery phase, delivering on its promises, developing long term visions into practical projects to catalyse real change at a local level. The economic values of these Renaissance towns and cities are increasing, and research is proving how investment in quality is bringing this forward. Now, seven years into the programme we are looking at innovative ways of both refreshing and reinforcing this message and meeting anew the challenge of sustainable growth in the context of a lower carbon economy. We wish to develop the programme further with the Renaissance Pavilion.

Competition Aim
The Renaissance Pavilion is a demountable building for Yorkshire Forward to promote, showcase and host events to celebrate the continuing Renaissance of Yorkshire’s great places and to demonstrate the Renaissance Commitment to Great Places. The Renaissance programme has invested considerable sums in delivering high quality public realm and new public spaces across the region, and the Pavilion is conceived as a viable approach to encourage local authority ownership and programming of these new places for events throughout the year. This is a competition to find a design team for this pavilion.

Yorkshire Forward invites participants to suggest inspiring, deliverable ideas for this new demountable building which will provide a unique event space. The Renaissance Pavilion will open at a yet-to-be-confirmed location in Yorkshire, as part of the Renaissance Festival. Once open, it will travel throughout the region. The Pavilion must also be capable of creating its own sustainable lifetime beyond this Festival.

The budget for the fabrication of the building is £650,000.

Aspirations
Taking the space to the place
Yorkshire Forward aims to empower people to improve their own immediate environment. This means providing the facilities where people need them, when they need them.

The Pavilion will provide this multivalent space - part conference room, part gallery, part debating chamber - allowing communities to explore futures for their area, in their area.

A sign of change
The Pavilion itself must be a ‘Great Place’ – and must be capable of activating the Region’s own Public Spaces, helping demonstrate the potential of these places. It must promote social and cultural integration, and enable communal pride, identity and respect.

The arrival of the Pavilion will be an event in itself. It is intended to promote the best in contemporary architecture and innovation, and be stimulating and thought provoking. By providing a distinct new built presence it will change a locality on an immediate basis and provide a sign towards future possibilities and positive change.

The Pavilion’s form will communicate with the most diverse of public audiences. Similarly it will engage with a range of locations as either an extension of or alternative to the local environment.

A tailor made, adaptive suit, not an off-the-shelf readymade
In the past we have hosted events in existing buildings or hired marquees. In some situations this works very well. In others the events just don’t fit.

The Pavilion will be tailor made to fit the needs of Yorkshire Forward and the communities and partners they work with. It will easily adapt to accommodate different events, different moods and different publics. It must help differing audiences connect. Provide a neutral space for debate. It can operate on its own or link in with other elements.

The pavilion must provide learning experiences in itself- it must test practice against theory.

Complete Competition Brief