The London Borough of Lambeth has granted planning consent for a new community hub, Slade Gardens Community, in a conservation area in Stockwell, setting a new precedent for bringing important community projects forward through self-funding, designed by Max Architects.
The facility will accommodate multiple charities, community needs and social functions, while also safeguarding the site as a children??s play space for future generations.
The site, which was hit by a bomb in 1944, killing 11 people and destroying nine houses, is now known as Slade Gardens Adventure Playground. It is part of a small but important park sitting at the junction of three electoral wards, surrounded by five substantial housing estates representing diverse communities and an important historic conservation area. It has become a valued public amenity for a wide variety of user groups and the adventure playground in particular is a much-loved asset at the heart of the community.
Like many adventure playgrounds in London, the local authority can no longer fund the operation and its future is uncertain, along with the One O??clock club it also manages. The community, via the Slade Gardens Community Play Association has run the playground for the last 18 years and was invited by Lambeth to create a hub to maximise the value of the asset with a view to gaining an asset transfer (of the land) to become independently operated and financially self-sufficient.
MAX Architects and the consultant team have designed the new Hub and delivered the project to planning pro-bono. Conceived as a highly flexible community space, the hub contains the core activities of the Adventure Playground and the One O??clock Club. In addition, these facilities can be combined to create a multi-function space available for an inclusive range of community, cultural and social functions. A café is proposed to serve and enliven the wider park and help generate revenue.
The design was born out of a desire to create a playful building that would flow out of the landscape, blending in seamlessly with its park context and respecting the conservation area into which it overlaps. This ramping form emerges from the ground, reducing the height and visual impact but also providing a playscape for children.
Sustainable and inventive, the scheme uses exposed concrete construction, timber and rammed earth walls and an accessible biodiverse roof, resulting in a low-carbon development, which emerges from the landscape.
Max Titchmarsh, founding director of MAX Architects, said: ?By bringing together a team of experts, we have been able to develop a solution that can house multiple social amenities while acting as catalyst for the wider improvements to Slade Garden??s and providing the permanent roots that the adventure playground requires to resist any future development pressures.
?As a project conceived in the community and brought forward by voluntary involvement of both the charity client and the professional designers, this project is a true example of community development in action. The Slade Gardens Community Play Association, the One O??Clock Club, the Friends of Slade Gardens and the wider community wanted to secure this valuable amenity for our children and future generations; getting the go ahead means that we are now one step closer to making this dream a reality.??
In using an element of self-funding, the scheme has been given a real chance to succeed in the face of very significant public spending cuts. The future of many valuable play spaces and other public amenities will need to be secured using similar approaches in line with local authority Community Asset Transfer Policies designed to shift the balance of ownership and management of amenities towards the communities they serve.
To ensure viability, the application included the development of a single house containing two maisonettes in the style of one of the houses lost in 1944. Once built, all proceeds of the sale of these units will be invested into both the short and long term delivery of the project.
Now planning consent has been granted, start on site could begin as early as 2018.
Project data
Use: Community Hub Facility incorporating Adventure Playground, One O??clock Club, Café and Multi-function space
Total GIA: 475 sq m
Architecture: MAX Architects
Project Architect: Ashley Gilbert
Client: Slade Gardens Community Play Association
Landscape: Churchman
Landscape Architects
PM/QS: Equals Consulting
MEP/Sustainability: XC02 Structure: Waterman Group
