Community Buildings

We have worked with a number of community groups wanting a base for meeting, training, social events.

In each case our role has begun with helping people to decide what they want to be able to do; what activities and what groups they want to accommodate. We then work with them to explore what spaces might provide for their needs, and will then work towards sketch design ideas.

Initial meetings might use anything from games to listmaking and brainstorming. Corrugated cardboard is a favourite ingredient of design workshops to look at possible layouts, along with simple "jigsaws" of building spaces which people can experiment with.

Once we start to give form to people's ideas, we tend to use 3D CAD software so we can quickly produce visualisations which show - with remarkable realism - what it would be like to walk through the building and to use it.

The same tools make discussions with other professionals - planners and cost consultants - easier. We try to make the design process accessible and fun.

Chapelfields
York
More projects...
...click to select

Chapelfields community centre was a 1960's building which was looking rather tired - and was inappropriate for current needs.

A steering group involving local residents and user groups was formed, and as part of a comprehensive redevelopment of the run-down site a smaller, more manageable facility to fit in with the domestic scale of neighbouring houses was designed.

Despite the small scale, this has

Oaken Grove, Haxby, York
Acomb Library, York
Kingscote Park, Blackpool

still been a complex design project, as a wide range of users have to be accommodated.

The building was completed in the autumn of 2005, and the local community group is currently working with help from the council to take on management of the centre.