Community

From a Disused Space to a Women’s Shelter  

Squire & Partners have completed a new Education and Community Centre adjacent to Brixton Windmill, the last remaining active windmill in London. The centre, designed for the local council and charity Friends of Windmill Gardens (FoWG), will support activities hosted by the Grade II* listed heritage building and secure its use for future generations.

The keyword AROPA was a major theme in leading this project as a corporate philosophy of “Plan-I.” “Plan-I,” as a young IT company in Daejeon, is a corporation that constantly struggles to maximize the creativity of its organization while seeking a horizontal relationship without authority between its members. “Plan-I” requested a creative, intimate, flexible space design that allows people to meet people and the company coexist with local communities instead of demanding traditional productiveness and efficiency-only space for an improve performance. 

Due to bureaucratic procedures, refugees arriving in Germany are condemned to sustain a long period of passiveness. In the refugee camp on the location of the former American Spinelli Barracks in Mannheim, they are well provided with the bare essentials, but the immediate surroundings are quite desolate and lack quality of common spaces.

“Make, Work, and Spread” Space – his is a project of centers for operation and activities for a civic organization. Collaborating with people with disabilities, this center is aimed to create new jobs that transcend the borders between art, design, and business. 

The project is in a newly developed Dazhulin district in the north of Chongqing downtown. When we first visited the site, it had an unfinished concrete structure from previous developments. Our Client Sunac stepped in and had the vision to develop Dazhulin as a new TOD project. Surrounded by future mixed-use developments, our goal is to reuse and redesign the abandoned concrete structure as a new community core. It will serve for nearby residents and visitors in daily use and host events for special occasions. This new community center has four levels including an indoor swimming pool, a gym, various community amenity rooms, a sky bar, and an art gallery. Stairs and elevators are used for circulation between levels. 

The São Pedro de Vilar do Paraíso Social Center is a social institution of solidarity, located in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. The institution plays a determining role in the community guaranteeing the most different social responses for community and old / senior people.

The site is located within the heritage setting of the Protected Structures of St. Columba’s College. The brief was to create a central social hub for the students, staff, and visitors of St. Columba’s College on the site of a former outbuilding, with poor quality classrooms constructed in the mid 20th Century on the first floor. The outbuilding was constructed, at approximately 3m below the level of the historic walled garden, outside and against the part retaining surviving boundary wall.