Star House

Year | 2024

Location | City Centre, Sheffield

Client | Sheffield Futures

Creating adaptable youth spaces and open-source resources to amplify Sheffield Futures’ impacts as a Catalyst for positive change in Sheffield.

Earlier this Autumn, local charity Sheffield Futures announced their plan to relocate and sell their current home – Star House, on Division Street. Despite its ideal central location, the growing needs for mental health and career supporting services for local young people necessitated a relocation. In response to this relocation in the near future, a conceptual task emerged: designing a series of youth-focused spaces for their future, unknown building, addressing the charity’s and youth’s shifting spatial needs.

To ground the design in reality, young people’s needs and desires were prioritised. A group of architecture students initiated a series of arts-and-crafts workshops in collaboration with the charity, resulting in an exciting body of work produced by the young people. Their work includes a large, foldable tapestry, and a piece of custom-designed, adaptable furniture adorned with their own drawings. Both items were designed to be easily relocated to the charity’s future building, symbolising the power of young people in shaping the space they inhabit.

Valuable insights were gained from the workshops regarding the preferred look, feel and purpose of the future spaces. At the same time, the staff also contributed by identifying spatial qualities, functional adjacencies, and practical requirements. This collaborative input resulted in the design of flexible, multi-purpose spaces, which are based on a ‘pick-and-choose’ system, making them adaptable for any unknown, future walls.

To facilitate more immediate changes, as a meanwhile output, the group of students also transformed a currently under-used meeting room, applying the same methods proposed for the charity’s future spaces. This transformed meeting room serves as a testbed for their ideas, demonstrating how various design elements come together in a realistic setting. Formerly a formal meeting room, it is now converted into a hang-out space for young people, reflecting the charity’s youth-oriented vision, while providing a valuable preview of the impacts that thoughtful, youth-led design can have.

Extending Beyond Walls, the designs are part of an open-source resource, comprising of a design manual and interactive Augmented Reality (AR) postcards, which encourage direct feedback and engagement. Through the publication of learnings, design guidance and mixed-reality experiences, Sheffield Futures extends its impact beyond the walls of any one location, acting as a Catalyst for positive change, working towards a better future for Sheffield’s young people.

“Anchoring the design of spaces in participation, making young people’s needs a core part of the design process.”

Maria Christodoulou, Live Project team member

Credits

Student Team: 

Maria Christodoulou, Marwa Saleh, Angus Govier, Louis Wilkinson, Izzy Saxon, Hope Cooney, Jhern Han Len, Sher Lynn Mok, Chun Tse, Sandra Sabau, Muye Wu.

Mentor:

Rosanna Sutcliffe