New Horizon Youth Centre
Somers Town, London
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Project Details
- New Horizon Youth Centre, Somers Town, London, 2007–2012
- Project: Renovation and extension of a day centre for young homeless people
- Client: New Horizon Youth Centre
- Status: Built
Awards
- RIBA National Award 2010, Winner
Located on the ground floor of a housing block in Somers Town, the New Horizon Youth Centre has been providing support for young homeless and vulnerable people since 1968. The centre was refurbished and extended to support flexibility for the wide range of activities for individuals and large groups; a calm, big house, offering stability and security. The approach to flexibility is to provide a range of spaces with different characters with spatial generosity; so the stairs are over-wide, giving the opportunity to sit and read on them or have a chat half-way up. The kitchen servery could be used as bar to hang out at or a simple stage for a role playing workshop, and the long wooden table for eating together, playing, chatting - simple and relaxed like a nice settled house. Lots of ways to sit, using the building - busy and communal, or private and quiet, or a dreamy escape up in the roof.
From outside the extension picks up the surrounding Arts and Crafts language of steeply pitched roofs and homely stability, but twists it to something fresh and surprising. Inside a lofty wooden room of softly folded roof planes; an exuberant home for the imagination and play. A big window, with a window seat and cushions, looks out to the sky and the trees in the court, and so the room is as much for individual day-dreaming or an intimate chat.
Client Design Team
- David Bonnett Associates
- Davis Langdon LLP
- Gordon Ingram Associates
- Price & Myers
- Robinson Associates
- Tim Lewers
Contractor John O'Neill & Partners
Photography
- David Grandorge
- Ioana Marinescu
Film Lewis Khan
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'A fantastic sense of civic generosity'
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‘Adam Khan is one of the most inspiring, original and committed architects of his generation…He was immensely sensitive to the needs of the 16 to 21yr old vulnerable and homeless people with whom we work. His understanding of how we worked and our ambition for our work produced a completely brilliant building which won an RIBA Award…I strongly encourage anyone tempted to work with him to go ahead and do so.’
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