Design Research

Design research tools

Sheffield DesignLAB, 2025

Welcome to DesignLAB!An interdisciplinary platform for researchers, educators, and practitioners who use design as a way of thinking, making, and collaborating. Based at the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, DesignLAB brings together those exploring design as a methodology in research and teaching. It’s a space to share ideas, challenge perspectives, and build connections across the built environment disciplines. Join us in shaping new ways of seeing, questioning, and creating through design! Feel free to explore the design tools in our library, add one of yours or engage with our media content.Website, Design, Participation, Design, Carolyn Butterworth, Dan Jary, Emre Akbil and Leo Care

Castlegate Common Manifesto - reduced.pdf

Castlegate

Castlegate Commons Community Pavilion, February - May 2024

Inspired by the vision developed by students through the Live Project 'Castlegate Commons' in Oct-Nov 2023, Live Works was commissioned by Sheffield City Council to facilitate a co-design process with local stakeholders. This work builds on the last three years of co-production that have developed a clear community-led approach to the development and use of the park and its facilities. Using the 'Castlegate Commons Manifesto' as a foundation, we have worked with local community stakeholders to develop a vision for the design, operation and stewardship of a new pavilion in the Castle park.Throughout each stage, Live Works has aimed to facilitate a transparent, representative and effective co-production process that delivers meaningful engagement with local stakeholders and the public towards the development of the Castle site. We held two workshops and a study trip to London:

Workshop #1 Foundations: Sharing knowledge and aspirations, reaching common understanding, establishing good principles of design, developing an initial brief.
Study Trip: Visiting inspiring community/ecology/cultural venues and meeting the people who run them to understand how the projects were developed and are now used and managed sustainably
Workshop #2 Vision: Considering governance & time-scales, developing an initial spatial brief

Local Government Report, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, Design, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Leo Care

Castlegate

Co-production Index, September 2023 - January 2024

This digital index brings together for the first time all the work that students and academics at the School of Architecture have produced for Castlegate over the last decade.Castlegate is the historic birthplace of Sheffield, located at the confluence of the Rivers Don and Sheaf. This now dilapidated area of the city centre was once a bustling home to 800 years of market trading, theatres, industry and one of the largest mediaeval castles in England, demolished in 1650.Since 2014, students, graduates and academics from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield have been co-producing design work and participatory research with community groups, local independent businesses, public-sector institutions, Sheffield City Council and colleagues from the Departments of Archaeology and Computer Science, to develop an ambitious shared vision for the future development of the area.This co-production process is envisioning, campaigning for and supporting the development of a new neighbourhood, accessible to all, that celebrates the rich heritage and social history of Castlegate while creating a viable sustainable future.The School of Architecture, through its project office Live Works, is acting as an effective mediator between grassroots and the local authority, helping to build capacity towards meaningful co-production at all scales. Our students’ creative engagement activities, research and design ideas have been instrumental in building a vision, shared by all partners, to deliver an ambitious, community-driven, socially, economically and environmentally sustainable new city quarter.Website, Climate Emergency, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, History and Representation, Design, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Emre Akbil

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