Dress for the Weather

For the 2017 Architecture Fringe Dress for the Weather were asked to reimagine a new model for the ‘community centre’ typology for the New Typologies programme strand:

Dress for the Weather propose future community centres should look to remove organizational ideas which stifle the free use of space and instead introduce an architecture that can encourage a much wider range of users and uses.

A community centre that can remove concerns relating to the management, supervision and control by particular groups becomes a community centre that can truly express the diversity, interests and democracy of the area which it serves. A building not owned by the community - not owned by anyone. A building that, by its design, encourages activities that have not yet been conceived. A building that is occupied by a range of groups but not beholden to the requirements of any.

Spaces are defined not by the activity that might take place there but by a series of environmental and climactic parameters. Volume, temperature, lighting, texture, shelter. The architecture exists; and groups then inhabit the space as they require. A building that opposes the idea of an affordable, standardised ‘community hall’ and instead creates a rough, robust, sculptural building that people can begin, and continue to, carve into.