GreenHouse - spatial design for social enterprise recycling, education and retail centre

Nick Gant and I were commissioned to creatively direct the GreenHouse social enterprise project and to draw together the opportunities that the project identified and develop a physical and sustainable spatial building programme that facilitated recycling, training and education and retail in one environment. The project responded to a successful Big Lottery Grant application made by the West Sussex based Guildcare charity who commissioned the work.

The key interesting challenges in this project were to successfully unite aspects of education, retail selling and recycling in a single designed environment that would promote positive aspects of rejuvenation, reuse, rehabilitation and community well-being. One essential task of the design was to redress the tawdry image that charitable retail outlets had developed in relation to other commercial organisations. By utilising the progressive and timely nature of the issues that the project represented we were able to take this once acre, former refuse lorry depot, brownfield site and rebuild an award winning spatial design that explicitly and positively exploited the use of discarded objects as a starting point for re-appropriation education and commercialisation. The design scheme created an interior garden with geodesic domes and interactive gardens made from waste and interactive features to inform visiting school children and users of  the recycling initiatives.

The project won the National Charities Association Design Award 2005.