Studio 3

Studio brief

Re-imagining the Town Hall

Hayes, London

Studio 3 is the Live Projects Studio and explores new ways of practicing architecture. Students will learn to self-initiate projects and about the diversity of the architect’s skills that can be applied at different scales within spatial practice. The Live Projects network offers a unique opportunity to engage with real clients, stakeholders and local communities. Students will be developing what we call an “Architecture of Multiple Authorship”. This is based on the belief that architecture is not produced by one star architect but is a collective effort within community experts, cultural practitioners and designers.

This year we will work with real clients and community groups in Hayes, London, and build on the relationships that were established by the students last academic year. We will be working in the Austin Housing Estate and re-imagine a civic space for the Estate: the new ‘Town Hall’. Traditionally, Town Halls served smaller communities than the cities and towns we have today, which allowed them to be important political and social spaces for decision making and assembly.

We will take the traditional social, spatial and symbolic aspects of a town hall and re-imagine its contemporary meaning for the community residing in the housing estate.

We will continue to work with 1:1 hands-on constructions and intervene in the Estate by making 1:1 components of the re-imagined Town Hall and install them on site.

We will do a series of mappings to understand the local resources available, both local material and local partners.

We will explore creatively the use of locally sourced recycled materials mixed with contemporary production methods to develop a contemporary design language of bricolage. All the interventions on site and mappings will lead to a series of conceptual and representational models in order to inform the re-imagined Town Hall for the Austin Estate in Hayes.

We will discuss the architect’s continuing responsibility of their projects in the public realm.

The project will be facilitated and supported by Cass Projects, local groups such as Hillingdon Play Association, and the local council, and there are funding grants available which we will use to support and realize the project.