Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
A Teacher’s Guide
Design Your MK is an exciting competition that gives your
students a chance to have their very own design made into
a public artwork on display in Central Milton Keynes!
Competition opens Monday 12th September and closes
Sunday 30th October.
This pack has been designed to help you to engage
students with The Porte Cochere Project and to provide you
with resources and ideas for use in the classroom.
Introduction to Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
Milton Keynes Council, funded by Arts Council England, has commissioned international artists to
create public artwork inspired by the Porte Cocheres.
There are currently three confirmed artists working on this project and their artworks are due to be
unveiled in Autumn/Winter 2011:
Michael Pinsky
Michel de Broin
Tea Makipaa
www.michaelpinsky.com
www.micheldebroin.org
www.tea-makipaa.eu
To celebrate these exciting new public artworks for Milton Keynes, MK Gallery has been asked to
deliver Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project in the form of a design competition for Milton
Keynes School pupils between the ages of 4 -16 years.
About the Porte Cocheres
The Porte Cocheres in Milton Keynes are the distinctive architectural structures that cover the
walkways between the main shopping centre and the other important sites around the city centre.
Their name originates from old Latin and French words meaning ‘Coach Gate’. Historically the
term refers to a covered area at the entrance to a house or building which welcomes arriving
visitors and protects them from the wind and rain.
These structures usually go unnoticed, even though many of you may see them every day. In
fact, there are 198 Porte Cocheres in Central Milton Keynes!
Stylistically they are very plain and simple – in keeping with the original ‘Modernist’ style of Milton
Keynes when it was first built. The Design Your MK competition aims to draw attention to the Porte
Cocheres, whilst giving local children and young people a chance to create new and interesting
artwork for their own city.
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Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
A Teacher’s Guide
About the Competition
The competition encourages children and young people to think imaginatively and create their own
designs for the Porte Cocheres.
There are three rules:
Designs must use no more than 4 colours.
They must be simple and vivid using bold shapes and lines (complicated designs will not
be accepted)
Any materials can be used, but they must be securely fixed to the template and not likely
to smudge when folded.
Eight of the designs will be shortlisted, and four chosen to be installed on to the Porte Cocheres in
November.
Inspiration for Designs
Students can draw inspiration for their designs from a number of different areas. If you are working
on Design Your MK in lesson time, you could choose one theme to focus on or integrate multiple
ideas for the students to experiment with.
The Design of Milton Keynes
As the Porte Cocheres are stylistically in keeping with Milton Keynes’ original 1970’s
modernist design, other architectural points of interest in Milton Keynes could be
incorporated into the students’ research and competition designs.
Inspiration could also be drawn from maps of the area which show the distinctive grid road
structure and numerous roundabouts and junctions that spread across the city.
Additionally, they may be inspired by something in their locality which is familiar and has
personal meaning, such as a local play-park. Students could be encouraged to gather
images of points of interest using a camera or sketchbook, and then develop these into
their designs.
A birds-eye view of Milton Keynes
showing the grid roads.
The ‘Point’ in Central Milton Keynes is
a good example of the modernist style
architecture of Milton Keynes.
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Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
A Teacher’s Guide
Anna Barriball Exhibition at MK Gallery
30 September – 27 November 2011
During the course of the competition, the main exhibition at MK Gallery will be a retrospective of
work by British artist Anna Barriball. Working with video, drawing, and found objects Barriball
makes minimal interventions that reference the everyday, the temporal and fleeting. Her practice
touches on the domestic and personal, investigating memory and a sense of place.
Anna Barriball, Bag drawing, 2000.
Marker pen on carrier bag, 46 x 37 x
21cm. Colección Bergé, Madrid.
Anna Barriball’s Chair, 2004, a domestic
chair wrapped carefully in ribbon.
Anna Barriball, Untitled, 2009.
Pencil on Paper, 218 x 134 cm.
Private Collection.
Barriball’s early work often involves transforming ordinary items such as Bag Drawing, 2000
in which a disposable, white plastic bag is completely covered with red marker pen to
create a glowing, concentrated object. Students can be encouraged to think imaginatively
about the materials that they use, recycling sweet wrappers or cut out scraps to create
interesting effects.
In the same way in which many of Barriball’s works often describe the physical qualities of
objects through intensive processes such as wrapping or covering the surface, students
could be encouraged to explore the shape and surface of a Porte Cochere and its
surrounding environment using rubbings or close-up drawings and photography.
Modern and Contemporary Art and Design
Students can be encouraged to think about artists they are already familiar with who work with
bold colours and simple shapes to create their artworks, particularly Modern artists they may have
already studied such as Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian. Other contemporary artists may be
sources of inspiration for ways to create vivid and exciting designs using a limited colour palette,
such as Michael Craig-Martin.
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Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
A Teacher’s Guide
As the entries can be designed using any materials, the bold designs and patterns of these
artists could be used as a starting point for experimentation with different mediums and
techniques for achieving these effects – such as collage, coloured tape, and painting with
masked off areas.
Students could focus on the work of one particular artist as a means of exploring materials
and techniques. For example, Bridget Riley, whose work was heavily influenced by Henri
Matisse, is a prime example of the Op Art movement which used geometric shapes and
contrasting colours to create optical illusion patterns. Using Op Art as a starting point,
students could experiment with different colours to discover complementary or contrasting
combinations. These could be incorporated into designs using tessellating geometric
shapes to create optically stimulating patterns.
Or, if focusing on the work of Michael Craig- Martin for example, students could incorporate
their other research into the architectural designs of Milton Keynes and their local
environment, or the everyday objects of Anna Barriball to create drawings using basic lines
and shapes with a paired down colour palette.
Possible artists
Henri Matisse
Alexander Calder
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Mark Rothko
Michael Craig- Martin
Piet Mondrian
Anselm Rayle
Bridget Riley
Jim Lambie
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Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project
A Teacher’s Guide
The Designs
The themes and key ideas we have provided are suggestions to get the ball rolling and we hope
that teachers will feel able to incorporate the project into their own lessons. However, it is essential
that the designs stick to the three rules: they must be bold and vivid, as the designable area of the
Porte Cochere is limited and so a colourful design will have a greater visual impact. Similarly, for
practical reasons the designs must not be too complicated or intricate, simple shapes and patterns
should be encouraged instead. Finally, the students can use any materials they like, but if they are
posting the template to us folded up it must be dry and not likely to smudge!
Aside from these three simple rules, the sky’s the limit! We are really looking forward to seeing the
children’s imaginative and colourful designs, and hearing your feedback about the project. We
hope that you enjoy working with your students on Design Your MK: The Porte Cochere Project.
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