Heeley Energy House

Heeley Energy House is an interactive energy centre that gives energy saving advice and demonstrations to the local community. Our Live Project work has focussed on defining a fresh future vision for the Energy House. Through research and community, stakeholder and client engagement we have developed three approaches to deliver the vision.

The initial brief was quite broad, however, through several client meetings, we developed and expanded the brief throughout the six weeks and established a hierarchy of what we could achieve. We aimed to provide a stronger identity and presence within the community, refresh the internal educational facilities and look towards a sustainable future. Primarily, we rebranded ‘Heeley Energy House’ with a new name, logo and graphics, which were then implemented through updated internal information boards, social media templates, signage and enhancing the appearance of the building. By initially splitting into subgroups, we also developed a two-phased future vision for the interior refurbishment of the house and created a master plan as a three-phased external vision.

We developed our physical designs on-site and were able to re-use materials from the farm, aligning ourselves with the ethos of the farm whilst also reducing our costs. These physical interventions included the construction of new signage, painting and internal information boards. One of the most beneficial aspects of our Live Project was that we were able to work regularly from the Energy House which meant we were able to have efficient and fluid communication and engagement with clients, other stakeholders and the community, particularly farm volunteers and the maintenance manager which enabled them to provide their input and approval throughout all stages of the project.

The client will use the future visions to help gain support and funding to enable the phased designs to become reality within the next 2 to 5 years. The physical interventions have already increased the footfall to the building by heightening the visibility and enhancing the identity of Heeley Energy House. By undertaking this project we, as students, have gained new insights into community-led sustainability and the impacts of fuel poverty and through continuous client engagement, both formal and informal, we have gained invaluable experience for our futures in practice.

Credits

Student Team: 

Idowu, Kallum Lightfoot, Jamie Lau, Hojung Lee, Kasia Bogucka, Madeleine Hill, Harry Henderson, Maja Oparnica, Alice Jenkins, Tom Franks, Shuhao Yu, Ruiqi Xu, Xinyi Li, Yixuan Liu, Yashica Goyal

Mentor:

Kate Nicklin