Brief encounters: Community enterprise infrastructure by We Made That
A simple building from We Made That has provided enterprise infrastructure for the community in one of London’s poorest boroughs, says Veronica Simpson
All Images: Jakob Spriestersbach
Provision for ‘flexible working’ has become the latest must-have on the list of any institution, corporate giant or co-working hub; whether that translates as hot-desking or bookable meeting pods, it’s what you need to compete in the contemporary market place. But what if businesses and services within an ordinary and not particularly affluent local community could be given flexible workspace – for free?
A shiny red structure is providing exactly that service, just off the Old Kent Road – the cheapest road on the Monopoly map and long a byword for urban deprivation. East Street Exchange is a small but extrovert extension to East Street Library that enables this well-used but underfunded Sixties lending library to offer the kind of vital multifunctional, community-facing meeting, teaching, work and event spaces that are increasingly being specified in the new 21st-century libraries springing up around the nation.
The East Street Extension was born of an 18-month research process for architecture and urbanist practice We Made That, funded by the Greater London Authority’s High Street Fund, set up after the 2011 London riots to try and address tensions in the city’s worst-affected areas. This Walworth neighbourhood, in Southwark, is one of the most deprived areas within one of the UK’s most deprived boroughs. It is also caught at the sharp end of two controversial regeneration schemes: the proposed clearances of both the retail sheds and light industry sites along the Old Kent Road, and the demolition of two post-war social housing estates to make way for mostly private, mostly high-end (or market rate) housing. No wonder the locals feel disenfranchised. But, through a variety of fine tuned consultation tools – from mapping exercises to local-led Walking Workshops – We Made That’s research resulted in a What Walworth Wants manual, which presents with great clarity what both experts and locals feel is lacking in terms of opportunity and infrastructure.
Inside the East Street Exchange, a bookable community space is used by a variety of groups and individuals
Oliver Goodhall, co-founder and co-director of We Made That, says the manual was all about ‘the need to think about knitting together these major regeneration strategies with the needs of the existing community.’ And the Exchange is a way of plugging some of the most important gaps the research exposed.
The extension, funded by Southwark Council and the Mayor of London’s office, consists of a simple, 20 sq m bookable meeting room, with a small kitchen and an inclusiveuse toilet. This configuration can be separated off from the library and accessed out-of-hours.
The lending library itself has had a modest makeover too: the extension’s interior glazed wall looks on to a newly refurbished shared work zone, furnished with laptop ledges, stools and free wifi. Since it opened in October 2017, it has been fully occupied by a varied cast of freelancers, schoolchildren, mobile business owners, and a whole host of other locals who don’t have access to the kind of hipster cafes or co-working clusters that proliferate in the city’s trendier parts. The idea at the heart of it, says Goodhall, is that: ‘Southwark [Council] should have agency, and residents should have agency.’
For example, the East Street Exchange addresses a shortage of space at a local GP surgery, which has nowhere to host staff meetings, health-promoting seminars or workshops. The bookable meeting room is now part of its shared discussion and service space. The library staff is also using it regularly, as are local activist groups, from the Walworth Society to Pembroke House. The meeting room also hosts peer-to-peer language classes (there are many locals for whom English is a second language), as well as after-school homework clubs.
We Made That had to make a capital budget of £300,000 go as far as possible. So adding a public toilet was crucial as no one would book a meeting room without that. Anodised aluminium cladding is a good, low-maintenance material, and the red colour, as well as the turret, are in part inspired by the old-fashioned red telephone box nearby (a vanishing marker of a life before smartphone ubiquity). Blinds inside the meeting room can be pulled down for the privacy that a yoga class or Alcoholics Anonymous meeting might want. As for the interiors, the simple panelled walls have pegs and peg holes to hang whiteboards, or to allow the bespoke, demountable meeting table and chairs to be hung up, as there is no room for storage.
Inside the East Street Exchange, a bookable community space is used by a variety of groups and individuals
Says Goodhall: ‘It had to become a civic asset rather than something that looks closed half the time. It’s now this red shiny thing that always pokes out – it cranks out slightly so you can see it from the Old Kent Road. It is all about engagement. There’s an exchange now with the street. The library had forgotten that that’s what a good civic asset does.’
Having taken 16 weeks to build, the sad thing is that it may only have a life of up to three years: part of the rebuilding of the nearby Aylesbury estate includes a relocation of library facilities there. But the provision of kitchen, toilet and meeting room means that even if the library function is no longer relevant, the building can continue to offer multiple uses for the community.
Goodhall says: ‘Our point has always been that this East Street Exchange project builds capacity and interest in civic or community uses on this site. When library services relocate then the remnant civic or social uses will be a key part of this succession on East Street, if strong enough to be sustainable. This is what we’ve advocated to Southwark and the GLA. If this happens then that, to me, is what real success looks like.’
