Winner of 3rd prize in New Horizon Youth Centre’s ideas competition “Hidden Homlessness”.
A collaboration with Catja de Haas Architecs and Rosie Birchard.
The project proposes a building that combines a shelter and a hotel. Everybody needs a good night’s sleep, but unfortunately, not everybody has this opportunity.
The synergies between these two programmes we see as threefold;
- Interaction and exchange of information between guests and beneficiaries by way of public lectures, workshops and talks in the hotel’s restaurant.
- The hotel would offer a variety of jobs in a safe environment that could help beneficiaries that are seeking job vacancies.
- The old underground station on York Way, with its central location in London should be a profitable location for a new hotel. Instead of the profits going to the private owners or shareholders, the profits would go to the running and maintenance of the shelter.
The old station building would be refurbished and rebuilt as a hotel. The shelter is housed in the new concrete extension that is 5 stories high on the south side of the station building.
The shelter works entirely separate from the hotel and hotel guests do not have access to the shelter. The beneficiaries of the shelter have access to the restaurant of the hotel.
The concrete extension is designed with varying levels of openness to provide privacy to the beneficiaries. Concrete was chosen for its solidity to convey a feeling of security and permanence.