The new build Brickworks project provides a new 1,000 sq.m community centre – now the largest in Islington and twenty three new homes located in Crouch Hill, North London. Our team worked closely with the community through extensive community consultation and design workshops to develop the proposals. An existing car park at the corner of the Holly Estate was used as the footprint for the new building with minimum disturbance to the residents and protecting the mature trees surrounding the site.

The 23 new one, two and three bedroom flats are arranged around two staircases with two accessible flats at ground floor. Flats are dual aspect throughout, many benefitting from corner windows with views across the leafy Holly Estate. All of the flats are designed to Lifetime Homes Standards, Islington’s Accessible Housing standard, Secured by Design and the Mayor of London’s London Housing Design Guide.

The new community centre is the amalgamation of the Hanley Crouch centre in an old laundry building and the Ivy Hall community centre in the ground floor of a two storey car park. The laundry site will become a separate small housing scheme which will be sold to help fund the new centre and affordable housing.

The design of the building by Brady Mallalieu was especially effective in creating a unique set of spaces which responded to all the feedback from the community.  The interior of the community centre is designed to be robust using naturally finished materials of brick and wood and is flexible to allow different groups to adapt and inhabit the space over time as their own to suit their needs. A range of facilities including a sports hall, children’s centre, roof garden, offices, music recording space and residents office spaces are organised around a central ‘inhabited lobby’. This double height space provides a focus for the community centre combining circulation areas, with links to surrounding rooms and the potential for it to host events. The centre provides support for the whole community including space for study, computer and internet access, spaces for music rehearsal and tuition.

The community centre has office space for the management staff and provides space for community care staff as well. The community centre is designed to BREEAM Excellent and the new homes to level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. 

A communal gas powered boiler is shared between all of the flats at the community centre and has been future proofed for connection to a district heating scheme when this becomes available as planned in the Borough.

The project was opened by Jeremy Corbyn MP in March 2018