Manchester, UK | 2025–2026 | Individual Work | Academic Study
New Ark explores how computational design methodologies can support climate-resilient urban design under climate change. Located in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester, the project proposes a residential-led mixed-use district for 2030 and beyond, responding to future risks of Extreme Heat, Extreme Rainfall, and prolonged Winter Cold.
Using parametric modelling, iterative urban testing, and scenario-based evaluation, the project develops adaptive strategies across urban planning, landscape systems, and architectural form.
The project aims to improve Trafford Park’s adaptive capacity while creating a new urban identity connected to the wider city. By reducing heat exposure, managing rainfall and flood risk, softening winter climate impacts, and supporting more comfortable public spaces, New Ark proposes a more sustainable, resilient, and liveable model for future urban communities.
Trafford Park is located in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, about 5.5 km south-west of Manchester city centre. Bounded by the Manchester Ship Canal and the Bridgewater Canal, it forms an almost island-like industrial estate covering around 12 km². It is widely recognised as the world’s first planned industrial estate, with key landmarks such as Old Trafford Stadium and the Trafford Centre located nearby.
Based on collected site data and contextual evidence, this project defines its main challenge as responding to the future impacts of climate change on the site. It aims to improve resilience under three key climate challenges: Extreme Heat, Extreme Rainfall, Winter Cold. Rather than treating these issues separately, the project develops an urban design response that considers their combined effects and explores integrated solutions to strengthen long-term resilience and adaptive capacity. H: Strongly summer-peaking seasonal and is trending towards more frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense heatwaves. R: Seasonally structured risk, with wetter winters on average and an increasing importance of high-intensity downpours. C: A long-standing baseline seasonal condition in the UK, which may become milder on average but still includes intermittent cold spells.
Using the Generic Foresight Process Framework and the RCP8.5 scenario, this diagram projects future climate risks for the site. It shows how extreme heat, extreme rainfall, and winter cold may appear as seasonal patterns, triggering different levels of risk across the year. These risks are likely to affect public comfort, health, resilience, and daily urban life, with their severity increasing over time.
The mapping shows the key destinations and climate risk zones across Trafford Park. High heat-risk areas cover much of the site, canal-edge zones are exposed to fluvial flood risk, and surface water flood hotspots are scattered across the area. Daily activity is mainly concentrated around the Trafford Centre and Old Trafford Stadium.
Based on the allocation rules and design typologies, the project generates a large number of computational iterations to test different spatial arrangements across the site. Each iteration explores how typologies can be distributed, combined, and adjusted under the same design logic. This page presents 36 selected iteration results, showing the range of possible outcomes produced through the workflow. These results are then classified, tested, and calculated through the evaluation method, before entering the screening stage for further comparison and selection. This page presents selected iteration results and their converted scores. The following score titles are abbreviated as: HS = Extreme Heat Score, RS = Extreme Rain Score, CS = Winter Cold Score, US = Urban Function Score, OS = Overall Score
The scoring framework converts urban function and climate performance results into comparable scores. This page uses the final selected result as a demonstration case to show how programme balance, extreme rainfall, extreme heat, and winter cold performance are evaluated and combined into an overall score for comparison and final selection.
This application presents and compares selected New Ark design iterations through an interactive visual interface. It is designed for students, designers, tutors, and stakeholders involved in climate-resilient urban design. Users can switch between ranking results, 2D and 3D views, and different climate modes, including heat, rain, and cold. The application helps users understand complex climate data, compare design performance, and explore how computational design can support future urban resilience.
The selected iteration shows weak winter performance and limited rainwater management capacity. Further analysis identifies gusts and high wind speed as key causes of winter discomfort, while flood resilience needs to address both RoFSW and RoFRS risks. Based on the original result, the design is upgraded through urban wind-control strategies and flood-management systems for surface water and canal-edge flooding.
The Urban Living district forms the main residential area within the masterplan, combining different housing typologies to create a varied and connected living environment. Twist Towers act as vertical landmarks, while Stacked Residential buildings provide higher-density housing and Connected Clusters create a gradual transition towards lower-rise areas. Rather than working as isolated buildings, these typologies are linked through shared terraces, roof gardens, balconies and landscaped public spaces. Together, they create a sequence of private, communal and public spaces across different levels. Their form and arrangement also respond to changing climate conditions. Building orientation, spacing, façade depth and planted terraces help provide summer shading, maintain winter solar access, reduce wind exposure and manage rainfall. The following drawings show how these principles are developed through the different residential typologies.
Urban Working brings together office, commercial and shared facilities to form the main employment and activity zone of NEW ARK. Its typologies range from larger office clusters to twin-block workplaces and lower commercial buildings, creating different scales of working space and a more active urban edge. The area is organised around movement and exchange. Linked office floors, shared circulation spaces and accessible ground-level uses encourage interaction between workers, visitors and surrounding public areas, while commercial functions help extend activity beyond normal office hours. Environmental performance is integrated into the architecture through layered façades, planted roofs and controlled building forms. These elements help reduce overheating and glare, moderate local wind conditions, and guide rainfall towards landscape and drainage systems. Together, the typologies create a more adaptable working district that combines workplace efficiency, public activity and climate-responsive design.
The allocation rules are developed by linking the Pattern Dictionary with site-specific functional analysis. The Pattern Dictionary first extracts climate-resilient spatial patterns from urban case studies and recombines them into a set of design languages. These design languages are then adapted to the site’s functional needs, climate risks, access routes, and spatial hierarchy, forming typologies that can be used within the computational design process. In the iteration process, these typologies become allocation rules, guiding where each type can be placed and how different urban functions are distributed across the site.
Based on the allocation rules and design typologies, the project generates a large number of computational iterations to test different spatial arrangements across the site. Each iteration explores how typologies can be distributed, combined, and adjusted under the same design logic. This page presents 36 selected iteration results, showing the range of possible outcomes produced through the workflow. These results are then classified, tested, and calculated through the evaluation method, before entering the screening stage for further comparison and selection. This page presents selected iteration results and their converted scores. The following score titles are abbreviated as: HS = Extreme Heat Score, RS = Extreme Rain Score, CS = Winter Cold Score, US = Urban Function Score, OS = Overall Score
As there is no single standard method that can directly evaluate the rainwater management capacity of every generated urban iteration, this project develops a simplified computational evaluation system. The method is based on a general understanding of rainfall behaviour. This system allows each iteration to be tested as it is generated, so that its surface water handling capacity can be compared within the design workflow. Two site-specific future rainfall conditions are defined for evaluation: a normal scenario and an extreme scenario. These scenarios are used to assess how different urban layouts perform under the projected rainfall pressures of the site.
As there is no single existing method that can fully meet the needs of evaluating outdoor comfort across every generated urban iteration, this project develops an adapted computational evaluation system. The method is based on Ladybug’s UTCI calculation, but is further modified and upgraded to fit the project’s climate scenarios, spatial scale, and iterative design workflow. This system allows each iteration to be tested for outdoor comfort performance as it is generated. By comparing comfort conditions under different future climate pressures, the algorithm helps assess how different urban forms, open spaces, shading conditions, and landscape strategies can improve the quality of public space. This algorithm is based on the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), which measures outdoor thermal comfort through equivalent temperature. It uses future weather data generated from the Manchester EPW file with the Future Weather Generator, based on RCP8.5 2050 and RCP8.5 2080 scenarios. UTCI is driven by four key inputs: 1) Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) 2) Air Temperature 3) Wind Speed (affected by context) 4) Humidity While this project further adjusts wind speed, surface conditions, sampling periods, and site context for iteration-based evaluation.
The scoring framework converts urban function and climate performance results into comparable scores. This page uses the final selected result as a demonstration case to show how programme balance, extreme rainfall, extreme heat, and winter cold performance are evaluated and combined into an overall score for comparison and final selection.
This application presents and compares selected New Ark design iterations through an interactive visual interface. It is designed for students, designers, tutors, and stakeholders involved in climate-resilient urban design. Users can switch between ranking results, 2D and 3D views, and different climate modes, including heat, rain, and cold. The application helps users understand complex climate data, compare design performance, and explore how computational design can support future urban resilience.
The selected iteration shows weak winter performance and limited rainwater management capacity. Further analysis identifies gusts and high wind speed as key causes of winter discomfort, while flood resilience needs to address both RoFSW and RoFRS risks. Based on the original result, the design is upgraded through urban wind-control strategies and flood-management systems for surface water and canal-edge flooding.
The Urban Living district forms the main residential area within the masterplan, combining different housing typologies to create a varied and connected living environment. Twist Towers act as vertical landmarks, while Stacked Residential buildings provide higher-density housing and Connected Clusters create a gradual transition towards lower-rise areas. Rather than working as isolated buildings, these typologies are linked through shared terraces, roof gardens, balconies and landscaped public spaces. Together, they create a sequence of private, communal and public spaces across different levels. Their form and arrangement also respond to changing climate conditions. Building orientation, spacing, façade depth and planted terraces help provide summer shading, maintain winter solar access, reduce wind exposure and manage rainfall. The following drawings show how these principles are developed through the different residential typologies.
Urban Working brings together office, commercial and shared facilities to form the main employment and activity zone of NEW ARK. Its typologies range from larger office clusters to twin-block workplaces and lower commercial buildings, creating different scales of working space and a more active urban edge. The area is organised around movement and exchange. Linked office floors, shared circulation spaces and accessible ground-level uses encourage interaction between workers, visitors and surrounding public areas, while commercial functions help extend activity beyond normal office hours. Environmental performance is integrated into the architecture through layered façades, planted roofs and controlled building forms. These elements help reduce overheating and glare, moderate local wind conditions, and guide rainfall towards landscape and drainage systems. Together, the typologies create a more adaptable working district that combines workplace efficiency, public activity and climate-responsive design.
