Portacabins become creative community space
The Architecture Foundation and the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust have appointed up-and-coming young designers Practice Architecture to convert empty offices in South Kilburn into a temporary community hub.
Practice Architecture will transform the former home of South Kilburn Partnership into a space hosting a variety of workshops and activities linking designers and creators with new skills from Spring 2011.
Selected from an invited shortlist of four practices, Practice Architecture will undertake the design and construction of the project, dramatically transforming both the interior and exterior of the existing one storey portacabin block into ‘The South Kilburn Studios’. Inhabiting a number of small studio units, with a large central workshop space, tenants – in lieu of rent payments – will pledge to apprentice young people from the local area, running practical workshops and helping to build portfolios in trades from fashion and textiles to joinery and painting. The project aims to bring the underused space back to life, provide skilling opportunities for local young people, and provide rent-free working studio space for promising craftspeople, artists, and designers.
From spring through to autumn 2011 the tenants, working alongside visiting professionals, will stage exhibitions and share their expertise. The façade of the building will evolve and change to advertise and update the public on the activities taking place in the studios.
Practice Architecture is a design-build practice working on small-scale projects with an emphasis on pragmatic design and specialising in social spaces. Their recent projects include Frank’s Café; a café built from reclaimed timber on the roof of a disused multistory car park in Peckham – part of Bold Tendencies, an annual sculpture exhibition initiated by Hannah Barry Gallery. Others include Bench 1, an amphitheatre on stilts designed for the New Arts Centre in Salisbury.
South Kilburn is a designated New Deal for Communities area, corresponding to its significant levels of deprivation. South Kilburn Studios looks to address burning issues on the estate including unemployment and anti-social behaviour by designing out crime and offering useful workshops in a variety of creative disciplines to its neighbours.
This project is one of four current arts-led initiatives taking place in the local area, commissioned by the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust; it is based next door to the Empty Shops Network's Workshop 24 in Peel Precinct. Workshop 24 is a flexible, friendly community hub hosting a wide variety of creative community activity.