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Architects: DROO Architects
- Area: 1500 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Henry Woide
Text description provided by the architects. Dalston Lane, home to the London Youth Charity, St Mathias Boys Club, is now developed into 9 new Residential units. London Youth is a charity that focuses on supporting youth clubs all over London, although they had to sell their sites for cost and maintenance reasons. They have secured their future spaces through Legal agreements and planning to ensure they are guaranteed rent-controlled space as a part of the permitting and sale agreement.
Today it consists of a gymnasium and a community youth club, all under Commercial spaces, and can help to buy housing. The site here was a windowless, unheated portal-framed shed. The corner site is between terraced houses and a friendly and beloved neighborhood pub.
To address the transitioning in scale between the streets, we offset the overall volumes over the larger footprint, done through a series of loggias or internalized balconies, which then address the various surrounding alignments. This results in a series of articulated volumes, decorated with textured brickwork crafted throughout each floor plate, creating a sense of identity.
The aim was to undergo the process of squeezing beautiful architecture out of the tightest budgets, and most of all to provide quality homes with the minimum of means. The charity would not have been able to remain in its place without this housing program today. This process of retaining civic use as an offset gain from commercial pressure is a negotiation. One we are often faced with within many of our larger retrofit projects where often this is the only way to stop larger listed buildings from becoming derelict.
