Information about this scheme

Central Somers Town is the first phase of a wider regeneration of Somers Town by Camden Council, to provide new social infrastructure and housing. The Community Facilities are the key part of the overall regeneration project. Building on a strong sense of the neighbourhood’s identity and character, employing extensive co-design with users, the project provides 10 social homes, community play facilities, a youth drama club and a rooftop multi-use games area (MUGA). Embedded in the design process, Plot 10 offers childcare, each day before and after school, and during holidays, providing a critical lifeline to working parents. The design team worked with Plot 10 and a local nursery school from the outset, engaging staff and children in exploratory making workshops, to understand and develop the brief, and to upskill to be able to critique design. The community play facilities and youth club are laid out along a public park as an enfilade of courtyards and rooms, held together by a unifying celebratory façade. A strong hierarchy of openings, glimpses into courtyards and deep window reveals quietly satisfy the many and stringent safeguarding and privacy demands, whilst projecting a welcoming vitality. The shopfront windows display children’s work to the neighbourhood, whilst screening the classroom behind, and the drama club entrance hall is a kitchen to encourage parents to come in for a cup of tea. Swooping inverted arches enclose the MUGA, subsuming the sports elements into an overall singular façade and achieving a distortion of scale, a grandeur at odds with a familiar size, like a child’s model of a palace. The small tower of housing affirms the scale of the street whilst maintaining a delicate quality, with a gentle swooping top. The interiors further develop this play of scale. The rooms are tall, of exposed concrete and lined with large windows. These robust shells are fitted with Douglas Fir glazed partitions in an evident layering like a factory, creating functional rooms and structuring the open volume to create defined nooks within an overall discipline of clear supervision and sightlines. Linings and furniture are combined, to bring intimacy and softness. The deep, dark-coloured windows and tall ceilings create a softness of light. The trees outside and the acoustic absorption within, strengthen this atmosphere. The matrix of courtyards and rooms gives a rich porosity, flexibility of use and natural ventilation.

Judges’ Comments:

“The many parties involved in conceiving, commissioning, delivering and operating the project deserve to be congratulated.”