Nunhead Green
Building hosting a community centre in southeast London, whose construction investigated the potential of architecture amidst the rhetoric and economic restrictions of austerity and the Big Society, and the relevance of postmodernism to contemporary architecture.
- Submitting institution
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Kingston University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-24-1682
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- The Green, 5 Nunhead Green, Nunhead, London SE15 3QQ, U.K.
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- -
- Year of production
- 2015
- URL
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https://www.theaoc.co.uk/projects/nunhead-green
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Located in Nunhead, southeast London, The Green community centre is an architectural response to the challenge of unsupported
community services running in degraded and inefficient community buildings in the ‘age of austerity’ in early-21st-century Britain.
Architectural researcher Tom Coward co-designed the building as part of AOC Architecture, which he co-founded in 2005. The centre builds
on Coward’s research into both the potential of architecture amidst the rhetoric and economic restrictions of austerity and the Big Society,
and the relevance of postmodernism to contemporary architecture. Utilising postmodernism’s communicative design language to invite
a multiplicity of uses for a range of users, the centre aims to be an innovative operational and physical model for providing sustainable
community services in the 21st century; the building built by a local council but run by a local community group, providing the activities it
needs and balancing revenue generation with social services.
This community centre was commissioned by Southwark Council in 2012, following lobbying by the community group ‘Nunhead’s Voice’
in response to local housing-led regeneration and a critique of local service closures, including a local tenants’ hall and a nursery on the
development site.
The collaborative research-based design process included significant engagement with the local community and the building
development group in co-design and co-specification processes, as well as theoretical and building-based research into postmodernism.
Figuratively defined as a ‘public house,’ the building includes a range of different-sized spaces, underpinned by an emphasis on low energy
use, low running costs and high-quality acoustic design.
Since opening, The Green has been exhibited as part of the Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year Award 2016, published in Post-
Modern Buildings in Britain (2017), and given a RIBA London Award 2017. It was shortlisted for the RIBA The MacEwan Award
2017 for ‘architecture for the common good’.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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