Manor works, architecture 00

Fuente: architecture 00, riba
Fotografía: Joni Steiner

The building is a mature assured response to its context, content and community. Affordable and eminently accessible it eschews the usual tropes of community architecture – that of ‘jolly colour’ and ‘whizz-bang’ formal gestures, structuring instead a controlled confident proposition that acts as an armature for the business and social endeavours of its constituents.

Responding to the site’s complex topography, the building locks itself into the heavily sloping, ‘land-locked’ situation. The positive response to these significant physical challenges brings new hope to an area with a reputation for anti-social behaviour. 

Functions within Manor Works are effortlessly distributed according to level, access, servicing and orientation. Workshops are located at the lower level and benefit from secure yard space and parking. Being north facing they are naturally lit through generously scaled windows and access doors. Offices sit above and are accessed from the upper entry level, benefitting from top and side light. Communal spaces are loaded against the south side of the building, offering passive surveillance to the public footpath, which hugs this side of the building. 

A palette of robust, durable self-finished, easy to maintain materials defines the interior of the building. Power-floated concrete floors and block walls offer workmanlike tough surfaces, which contrast with the tactile and visual warmth of plywood linings and roof decks. The building has a cozy, resinous fragrance; an unintentional result of these plywood linings but one that is welcome and redolent of carpentry workshops and garden sheds….associations, which are both relevant and poetic. 

Galvanised steel metalwork acts as a simple counterpoint to the other materials, adding detail, reflectivity and a ‘full metal jacket’ sensibility. We enjoyed the architects inventive and considered attention to small details, details that often get overlooked, like the end of a galvanised steel handrail effortlessly bent like a paperclip, the thoughtfully distributed concealed doors and hatches that help transform the kitchen into a café and an adjacent tiny secret door in the plywood lining to access a stop cock. 

Año: 2014
Presupuesto: 3.000.000
Ubicación: South East Shefield, UK