The role of the worker, and the architecture of the workplace are changing. Employment once meant stable, dependable work that could likely form an entire career. Paisley formed a distinct example of this with its thread works and heavy industry. However, this notion is becoming a thing of the past. What is known as the ‘gig’ economy is growing year on year. Where the worker has evolved into a free-lancer on the market, shifting between professions and skill sets. At its best this allows people to engage with work that they choose and enjoy, at its worst it means job-insecurity and zero-hours contacts. This changing paradigm is only set to continue with the threat that automation is likely to have in the job market in the coming decade. With one study suggesting a third of UK jobs are at a high risk of being automated in 13 years’ time. This a challenging notion, and one that we must collectively consider now, before the flood of change.

​

Over the past six decades we have collectively seen a reduction in our labouring hours, a blurring of the edges between work and play, and a need to re-skill into new and evolving rolls. These trends are likely to continue in light of the aforementioned.

​

This thesis takes the prior notions as its fulcrum. Proposing to pre-emptively re-appropriate Paisley town centre, with the aim of fostering the potential positive benefits of these shifts, through the creation of a series of spaces that can be appropriated for work, play and re-skilling. The project assumes the likely need for a Universal Basic Income in the coming decades, using this as one of the key social contexts behind the proposal. These ideas culminate in the proposition of ‘Open Thinkshops’, a swiss army knife of spaces that allow for people of varied professions, skill sets and life paths to gather in a series of public educational, work and think spaces. These volumes locate themselves in and around the railway line, utilising the empty spaces and car parks. This creates a new public realm that begins at the platforms, and pedestrianises the area around the station.

​

These spaces act as a catalyst for a re-definition of work and play. Where the notion of ‘work’ can become something we enjoy, or as Richard Sennett describes it, allowing us to get to the ‘special human condition of being engaged’ with what we do. Weather that be the learning of a new set of skills for a profession or hobby, the studying or practicing of a subject of interest, or simply using the space as an indoor public street, to be appropriated as the individual chooses. The development of these spaces has been developed by imagining a series of ‘characters’ that inhabit and use the space for various functions. Imagining existing individuals changing professions, learning new skills and adapting the way they work today.