TNG Youth & Community Centre
London
RCKa 2013
Unusual without being wilful,
this south London community building poses questions about how we build and how
architecture engages with those that use it.
The project won an RIBA National Award this year for RCKa, who were also
named RIBA London Emerging Architect of the Year.
With a quicksilver surface and simple rectangular volume, TNG Youth and
Community Centre is a bold yet enigmatic newcomer among the post-war
residential blocks of the Wells Park Estate in South East London. Clear polycarbonate cladding reveals wall construction
of timber framing and silver foil insulation, provoking curiosity and slight
professional unease: questions are asked
in this project and the answers refreshingly uninhibited by convention. The building is located at right angles to
the sloping main road, its entrance facing the lower end of Wells Park and
separated from the neighbouring pub to the rear by a netted ball court. As you pass
from the external concrete ramp and steps through the deeply recessed entrance,
the interior space unexpectedly expands: you are met with tall ceilings and dramatic
multi-height spaces on three levels, interlinked by an informal stair and
surprising vistas that constantly shift and re-form as you move around the
building. Designed with a care and
discipline that communicates respect for those using it, the building is a safe
haven, providing a calm and relaxed environment, rich with casually theatrical spaces.
In contrast to the cool, silvery exterior, internal spaces are imbued with the warmth
of lightly stained engineered timber panels. Entering TNG inspires a sense of
freedom: this is an institution which offers
choices and possibilities. The reception
desk is discreetly located to one side, inviting the visitor to make their own
assessment of what is on offer.
Architects RCKa, working closely with Lewisham Council, were
instrumental in the initiation of this £3.5M project, which attracted funding
from the government's Myplace scheme. They have demonstrated great skill in
integrating the views of over 30 stakeholders; including Millwall Football Club
youth outreach programme, church groups, local youth theatres, and the
Centrepoint homeless charity. A steering
group of local young people, actively engaged in the design process, came up
with the title 'The New Generation' (TNG). The brief that developed out of this
process brings together diverse spaces: a hall, climbing wall, recording
studio, youth forum, health clinic, training kitchen, cafe, winter garden and
outdoor ball court. Despite the tight
brief, the building retains a flexible un-programmed quality. The architects had the sense to design a
building using an engineered timber system resistant to value engineering.
Without the application of these political skills there would not be a building
to discuss in any terms, let alone one that touches on the essence of what
makes socially engaged and yet aesthetically refined architecture.
A didactic note sets the tone for the construction: a preoccupation with
materials and construction underpins the aesthetic, creating an effect that is sometimes
more ‘interesting’ than ‘beautiful’. Large
irregularly distributed windows punctuate the facade, while an opening onto a
small terrace overlooking the park hints at the interlocking volumes of the
interior. The winter garden, a dramatic slot of space, lines the entire
3-storey rear facade. Robustly detailed
in sawn timber framing with clear polycarbonate cladding and a paving slab
floor, this versatile space has been earmarked to grow vegetables, but works
equally well as a break-out space or exhibition gallery.
TNG feels like a building that has been thought through from first
principles. A simple box like volume clad in sinusoidal profile corrugated panels;
the exterior encompasses a curious amalgam of the fragile and the robust:
translucent polycarbonate sheet, at high level and in protected areas to the rear
and polymer-reinforced Ductal concrete panels cast to the same profile
elsewhere. With the delicacy of porcelain, the smooth white surface of the
concrete challenges any sense of defensive construction. At high level you can see the sky through parapets
walls clad on both sides in polycarbonate. The appearance of the corrugated profile constantly
transmutes in response to the changing light, whether shadow cast across or
beneath the surface; reflection off foil-backed insulation, or the absorption
of ambient light and colour. Further refinement is added by the carefully
considered junction between adjacent panels:
butt-joints with a compressible foam packer and slim aluminium cover
strip instead of the usual laps.
Of course RCKa are by no means the first architects to adopt a polemical
attitude to construction or social engagement. Lubetkin and Tecton, made an attempt, albeit
unsuccessful, to remove the ubiquitous reception desk from Finsbury HealthCentre (1938), an institutional building which, like TNG, is easily understood
by users. Innovative articulation of
walls in Otto Wager's 1904 Vienna Post Office includes the expression of
rusticated masonry as thin stone panels bolted to an underlying substrate. RCKa’s inversion of conventional expectations
is subtly disconcerting: the Ductal
concrete cladding panels form a plinth that is also clearly hung from the structure. Above this floats the polycarbonate, an insubstantial
echo of the concrete. Visual frisson is achieved not through wilful effect, but
by a logical exposition of construction. At TNG, an ‘unfinished’ quality evokes Frank
Gehry’s early work, using cheap products like plywood, chain link and
corrugated metal sheet in projects, such as his own house in Santa Monica
(1971). Facing Wells Park, the entrance
elevation of TNG, with lateral steps and a doorway framed by a stepped composition
of contrasting materials recalls Aalto's library for the Polytechnic at
Otaniemi (1969). Like Aalto, RCKa enjoy
materiality in construction and a willingness to use this to make patterns;
they deploy the natural warmth of timber to create a sympathetic environment
for human occupation.
Instability of identity is an unusual and intriguing quality in
architecture, but one which seems to define TNG. It is a building that balances
different and ostensibly contradictory readings: monumentality and informality;
solidity and transparency; tradition and novelty; the fixed and the
provisional. This ambiguity is the outcome of careful judgement and empowers individuals
to interact with the building in a way that suits them. Empathy and respect for the users of TNG
tempers RCKa’s professional preoccupation with tectonics. If the architects pose questions, they also provide
answers.
All photos above courtesy RCKa
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