Shelter From The Storm / Holland Harvey Architects

Curated by María Francisca González
COMMUNITY • LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Architects : Holland Harvey Architects
Year : 2020
Photographs : Nicholas Worley

Textual content description supplied by the architects. Shelter from the Storm is a London based mostly homeless shelter that gives 42 beds, freshly cooked meals and holistic help to its friends to assist them reintegrate again into society. Shelter From The Storm (SFTS) approached us with a difficult website, a disused grocery store to be remodeled right into a everlasting residence for the charity. The temporary was to re-provide the shelter’s present amenities that may open through the daytime as a brand new group café to serve native residents. On the coronary heart of this challenge are the folks; with a view to develop the design, it was elementary to grasp the mindset of a visitor coming into the shelter for the very first time.

Sensitivity, domesticity and heat grew to become driving ideas. While the café has a big and open frontage, the shelter entrance is meant to be personal and acquainted, identifiable by a homely pink entrance door. Upon arrival, friends are greeted with an entrance house that’s home in scale with a smaller personal room immediately adjoining if needing to compose themselves earlier than coming into the shelter. As you progress by means of the shelter, the size of every house slowly will increase, aiding a easy transition to the open kitchen and eating space. All through the challenge, every element was fastidiously thought-about guaranteeing robustness in addition to dignity and a way of possession for the friends. Bedrooms and bogs are based mostly upon typical home typologies. For instance, sinks and mirrors are separate offering friends with one thing of their very own inside a communal house.

A necessary a part of our enterprise was to grasp and reply to preconceived concepts round homelessness and the homeless. Our strategy to this was to embed the concept of transparency into the scheme. This was achieved by means of the insertion of recent home windows and inner openings that enable views in, out and thru the house. Equally, the twin use of the shelter as a group café goals to open up the shelter to the broader group. By inviting most people into the shelter, they’re concurrently invited into the talk about methods to demystify homelessness.

Robinson Adey