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London

142 Wood Vale
London, SE23 3EB
Tel: 0771 886 1387

e-mail: office@civic.org.uk

Edinburgh

1D Downie Place
Musselburgh, EH21 6JW

Civic architects is an award winning community-focused architecture and arts practice with expertise in community led design projects, sustainability, and place making.

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Rainham ROYALS Youth Centre

Posted on: June 18th, 2016 by cvc_admin No Comments

civic have completed the refurbishment and extension of the existing Rainham ROYALS Youth Centre for Havering Council and Design for London.

The most recognisable part of the scheme is the new enterprise space, which occupies the front part of the new floor and cantilevers over the existing entrance. This overhang engages the new extension with the approach routes from the village and from the neighbouring supermarket. A glazed corner gives the young users a vantage point from which to be in control of their environment, while at the same time displaying youth activities centre-stage in a prominent, visible way.

The project was tasked with achieving a lot on a tight budget; not only in creating more usable space and facilities for the youth centre, but also in attempting to give the youth centre an inviting new identity that participates in Rainham’s changing urban profile. The project was funded through contributions from Veolia North Thames Trust, the Mayor’s Outer London Fund and Havering’s Capital Budget.

Gamlingay Eco Hub Community Centre

Posted on: June 14th, 2016 by cvc_admin No Comments

The Gamlingay Community Centre is the first community centre in the country to incorporate three different passive technologies without fossil fuel backup, including photovoltaics to produce electricity and solar water heaters and a ground source heat array to provide heating and hot water.

The building provides the sort of facilities small communities aspire to, including a library, a large hall for sport and functions, a kitchen, a café/servery, changing rooms, a new dance studio and a Parish Council office. With additions to the front creating a more welcoming entrance, foyer and office, and a timber framed dance hall at the east end, the centre has increased its floor area by 60% and further enhanced its sustainability credentials by its re-use of the existing building, instead of demolition. The design considers the typology of the local region, pitching the new centre between the scale of the domestic house and an agricultural shed. The colours and material qualities of the scheme also draw on the local context and relate the building to the natural, rural environment.

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“Despite its long gestation, the Eco Hub feels like a project of striking relevance to our present situation. If any building suggests what the architecture of Cameron’s Big Society might look like, this surely is it.”

Ellis Woodman, Executive Editor of Building Design.

Becketts Atelier

Posted on: June 14th, 2015 by cvc_admin No Comments

Becketts Atelier is a new re-furbished house in the woods, remodeled from an old timber-framed studio positioned on the edge of the Greenbelt in Surrey. The new building serves as an addition to a main five bedroom dwelling in over three acres of Bluebells and woodland, a stunningly modernist house in an area of ‘Arts and Crafts’ mansions.

When the client originally bought the property, it had been semi-occupied by a mother and son for over twenty years, who emigrated to France. They had used the space as a workshop, artist’s studio and living quarters while the main house was under construction, and had also used it to prototype construction details for the main building. The main house was published, shortly after it was finished, in Homes and Gardens, May 1968.

When the client engaged Civic, they had already skilfully procured planning permission to convert the cabin into a two-bedroom single-storey dwelling. This is no mean feat on the edge of the Greenbelt. Civic then developed the detailed proposals for the Atelier within the parameters of the planning permission, developing the design of the internal plan and the design of the building’s relationship to its surrounding landscape, in particular.

The main contractor was chosen for his experience of working with timber, linked to constructing ‘garden buildings’ rather than dwellings. Close collaboration between the builder, the client and Civic during a builder-led ‘on site’ phase has meant that it has been possible to achieve a really elegant, simple dwelling on a very modest capital budget.

Tidworth Community Resource Centre

Posted on: March 13th, 2015 by cvc_admin No Comments

Tidworth Development Trust had the idea to build a community resource center after conversations with their Management Committee concluded that… ‘there is no community heart in Tidworth, there’s nothing for the whole community.’ The new Community Resource Centre was seen as an opportunity to create a community heart for Tidworth that was run wholly for the benefit of local people.

Different elements of the brief are distributed across the site according to whether they are more ‘domestic’ or more ‘civic’ in nature. There is a Youth Facility which provides the space they need to occupy unselfconsciously whilst still maintaining a central location in the scheme. There are training and conference facilities for the Development Trust, alongside a new home for the Town Council and licensed marriage rooms.

Across an enclosed courtyard is a community library and cafe which completes the centrally focused services, supported by a suite of Citizen’s Advice and Information rooms and office space for Youth Services and Police surgery space. The scheme is completed by a children’s nursery and creche which has been carefully designed to provide a large amount of natural playspace as well as covered external spaces to promote a close link between the building and its rural, natural context.

‘The building will provide services that aren’t currently available in Tidworth, a place for people to use to hang out so there’s a focus for the community’.

Duxford Community Hub

Posted on: March 13th, 2015 by cvc_admin No Comments

civic has been working closely with the wider community of Duxford to develop designs for its first significant public building in many years. Duxford is a rurally isolated, medium sized village which has no community facility at all. The village is experiencing an incremental withdrawal of core services and is now embracing the ethos of Localism to take control of its own community provision.

The proposal is to build an environmentally desirable and financially sustainable multi-functional Community Hub incorporating energy efficiency measures and renewable technologies which will meet the needs of the whole community now and well into the future. A suite of interlinking and various sized spaces will provide flexible accommodation for a wide variety of activities and initiative. This will include community led youth provision, sport, recreation, education, leisure and tourism.