Calverley Community Space

Year | 2022

Location | Calverley, West Yorkshire

Clients | The Landmark Trust

Calverley Old Hall, situated between Leeds and Bradford, is a restoration project by the Landmark Trust. They are a charity funded organisation with the overarching responsibility to sensitively restore historic buildings in danger of being lost and providing them with a new future. In Calverley, the restoration will transform a derelict medieval hall into a 10-bed holiday let, rentable flat and community space.

Our brief for the Live Project was to establish how the community aspect of the Landmark Trust’s approach can be adapted to provide the maximum benefit to the local community, by engaging with the local community groups to determine how we can compliment the facilities already available within the village and not be viewed as the competition. This included community engagement events targeted for the older and younger generations within Calverley to create a shared vision for Calverley Community Space. Events included interactive maps and plans that aimed to open the discussion with the community about ideas for the space, whilst the VR provided the opportunity for the community to view the restoration works of the remainder of the building. The subsequent Halloween workshop took place in the space during half term with free arts and crafts and external games aimed at testing the feedback from the first workshop. The Live Project Team used their creativity and adaptability to find activities and imagery to communicate ideas while testing out the uses of the space. The team also gained valuable insight into the process of collaborating with local community groups and understanding their needs in relation to existing or missing facilities in Calverley.

Our research and engagement events have tested and concluded the success of the space as well as the potential activities within. As a result, the contacts, feedback and lessons gathered throughout the engagement events have been collated into a document. This establishes the methodology that can be applied to future community developments at the Landmark Trust. In addition, the document reflects upon the site specific research of Calverley and translates it into a design proposition for a flexible space. These proposals reimagine the existing plans and encourage a more ambitious design with the community at its heart.

Instagram: @ssoa_calverley.community.space

Calverley Room of resource: Click Here

Digital Report: Click Here

Credits

Student Team: 

Sofia G Sergiou, Argyro Epaminonda, Colombine Vaillaud, Charlie W Harris, Guocheng Wang, Jemma L Woods, Ruonan Wang, Sahide, Robert A McCarthy, Almira Ugurlu, Will P Tankard, Yuhan Huang, Yen Liang Ho

Mentor:

Simon Baker