We Made That

We Made That are delighted to announce that both Battersea Design and Technology Quarter and Cheney Row Park have been shortlisted in the NLA Awards 2020.

Battersea Design & Technology Quarter was shortlisted in the Planning Category. The framework support the delivery of a distinct creative and economic cluster, capitalising on existing and incoming institutional assets in the area. 

Cheney Row Park was shortlisted in the Placemaking Category. A former landfill site that, through remediation and community co-design, has been transformed. The new £1.2m park includes an events space, outdoor stage, playspace and 467 new trees. 

More info on other categories and shortlists can be found here.

3Space and We Made That are hiring a Local Community Coordinator to join our team to assist, plan, develop and run a programme of events and activities for the Harlesden Canalside project.

Are you early in your career and keen to build your skills in coordinating public engagement and events? Do you have direct links to networks of local young and under represented people in the area?

The part time and flexible role will run from October 2020 to January 2021. A budget of £4000 has been allocated to the Local Community Coordinator for an expected minimum of 20 days. APPLY NOW! Deadline 5pm, 12th October 2020. Details and how to apply  

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

OPDC, in partnership with Brent Council and the Canal & River Trust, is bringing forward exciting improvements to Harlesden Canalside.

To deliver the project, OPDC has appointed specialist community and commercial space operators, 3Space and architects, We Made That, and a wider consultant team to work closely with the local community to scope, deliver and operate the space. The project is part of a £1.2m community investment, funded by the Mayor’s Good Growth Fund to bring forward a range of improvements to public spaces on the canal. 

Holly will be speaking as part of the Oslo Urban Arena 2020 programme on Friday 11th September, discussing Super-mix and the city - how can we integrate industrial activity into the urban environment?

Oslo Urban Arena is a collective of architects, planners, developers and urban activists from a multidisciplinary background with a mission to launch a conference, debate and lecture arena every year, on urbanism and urban development from the heart of the centre of Oslo.

Holly will discuss the forgotten industrial areas of our cities - those that clothe us, feed us and deliver to us - and speculate on their futures. Holly has led a unique range of projects for We Made That, from pioneering industrial intensification work through to comprehensive high street regeneration projects and incisive research into local economies. In her role as a Mayor’s Design Advocate for the Greater London Authority, she advocates for equitable city-making.

We’re proud to become supporters of the Accelerate programme run by Open City. We want to help correct the bias in who gets to shape the cities we live and work in. We know that much more needs to be done and think that this programme makes important inroads in built environment industries that have a poor track record when it comes to wider participation and diversity.

Accelerate is a pioneering design education and mentoring programme aimed at increasing diversity in the built environment professions. It gives sixth form students from under-represented backgrounds, the confidence, skills and connections needed to make strong applications to study architecture and other built environment courses. Every year, Accelerate provides 30-40 sixth form students from across London with a series of skills workshops in university environment, one-to-one mentoring at an architecture practice and in-depth guidance on university applications.

More info here: https://open-city.org.uk/accelerate

We’re delighted to extend and renew our support and sponsorship of the next cohort of New Architecture Writers. As the talented second cohort gives way to the third, we believe we must all amplify excluded voices and build a more progressive and representative architectural media.

New Architecture Writers is a free programme for emerging design writers, developing the journalistic skill, editorial connections and critical voice of its participants. N.A.W. focuses on black and minority ethnic emerging writers who are under-represented across design journalism and curation. A series of evening workshops, talks, and writing briefs form the core of N.A.W.’s programme with one-to-one mentoring from experienced design critics and editors throughout.

More info here: http://newarchitecturewriters.org

Two new members have joined our team!

Benedikt Straňák joined We Made That as an Urban Research Assistant after earning his masters in Regional and Urban Planning Studies at the London School of Economics, where he gained extensive training in data science and professional experience in participatory research. 

Chandni Patel joined We Made That as an Architectural Assistant. She completed her Part I in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2018 and went on to gain experience at a variety of practices around London. 

3Space, We Made That and PRD have been selected to activate an underutilised stretch of the Grand Union Canal with new facilities including a boater repair workshop.

The multi-disciplinary team have been appointed by the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) to bring life to an underutilised stretch of the canalside. Located upstream from Acton Lane in Harlesden the project recognises the strategic importance of the Paddington arm of the canal as a major public realm asset and also the opportunity to deliver a thriving gateway to London’s largest Opportunity Area, Old Oak and Park Royal.

The aim of the 5-year project will be to create a flagship facility which boat dwellers, local residents, workers and visitors can use for decades to come. The project is expected to begin operations in 2022 and is funded by the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund and supported by Brent Council and the Canal & River Trust.

As part of the Government’s Future High Street Fund initiative, We Made That have recently submitted Stage 2 funding bids for Tottenham High Road (London Borough of Haringey) and March Town Centre (Fenland District Council) on behalf of the respective local authorities. The projects have a combined ask of c. £25m towards transformative projects creating resilient High Streets and Town Centres fit for the future. The bids were developed with our long-term collaborators Hatch Regeneris, alongside wider teams including Urban Movement, PRD, Gort Scott, Authentic Futures and Stockdale.

By skilfully balancing the needs of the local area and requirements of the funder, the team proposed a varied programme of interventions; from a transformative public realm re-think at the town centre and series of small scale mixed-use development proposals in March, to a major upgrade of the youth centre and extension of three public markets in Tottenham.

We await the outcomes with bated breath in autumn 2020! In the meantime continue to assist with urgent Covid-19 response initiatives and further project development work.

Freya and Will recently contributed a children’s workshop to Open City and Celebrating Architecture’s learning platform ‘Learning from Architecture’. Consisting of two activities, the workshop titled ‘Grow your own city’ asks children of all ages to think about how they would imagine their city if it was designed by play and nature - two things that are crucial to mental wellbeing. The first activity was to draw it, followed by a set of instructions for how to grow it: by making our own recycled wildflower-seedbomb-slingshot, we can grow the spaces we want to play in. Grow your own city here!

We Made That are pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted in the Public Realm Architect of the Year category as part of the AYA Awards 2020 by Building Design. 

More info on other categories and finalists can be found here.

We Made That aims to be better for everyone

We Made That starts a project by developing the brief with the stakeholders. But it’s not altruism that drives their commitment to community and forgotten spaces.

It’s said often enough that architects need to get out of their professional ghetto, collaborate with other professions and trades, be less concerned with look-at-me buildings and more with the public realm, do solid research, hit the streets and talk to real people more. It’s hard to disagree, especially when you are talking to one of the now firmly established practices which does all these things. Here they are, and they are called We Made That.

See full article on The RIBA Journal here: 

https://www.ribaj.com/culture/we-made-that-architects-as-strategists-public-spaces

Social value has been firmly on the public sector agenda since 2012 when it gained a formal place on the pre procurement radar of public sector clients with the passing of the Social Value Act. Under the Act, Social Value is considered in three parts: social, economic and environmental. Since 2018 it has moved further up the agenda after even the notoriously dry Treasury Green Book sought to include social value in its guidance on how to appraise and evaluate projects.

These developments have altered the procurement process, as commissioners have been asked to increasingly asked to consider how to get more social value for money out of procurement. They are considering how best to secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits for their area or stakeholders, often as a ‘by-product’ of the original commission. Any tender should therefore target these three parts of social value directly, demonstrating how the practice will enhance social value through each one specifically.

In a competitive tender market, at We Made That we’re always seeking to maximise the social value that can be realised through the processes and outcomes of our work.  One approach that we’ve found to be successful is to work in collaboration with other practices, local partners or stakeholders to enhance social value in both the tender and delivery process.

Collaboration offers multiple opportunities to boost social and economic benefits to a project. For example, including team members with a close relationship to the local community, or collaborating with local practices to support spend in the local economy of a project.

One example of this approach is our current work on a mixed-use masterplan for the Purley Way in Croydon. We Made That are leading a large project team, including design collective, Resolve, an interdisciplinary team which combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. They have a close relationship to the local community in Croydon having grown up in the area, and frequently work with youth and under-represented groups in society and engaging them in the design process, as well as working with local communities as stakeholders in the short and long term management of local projects. Resolve are leading the engagement strategy for the masterplan and have developed an online platform in response to COVID-19 implications, to crowd source stories, memories and local knowledge about the area. At the other end of the practice scale spectrum, the project team also includes Hawkins\ Brown, who are long-term collaborators with We Made That, bringing their diverse team and experience to the project.

Supporting spend in the local economy can also offer ‘added value’ to a project. In 2017, We Made That were appointed by Harrow Council to lead on the design of the new public space in the centre of Wealdstone, with the intention of using the project to bring the community together. This included building an identity for Wealdstone which celebrated the town centre and it’s successful activity. We collaborated with Spacemakers and design studio, Silo, alongside local graphic designer Karolina Ciakaite who led a series of workshops for a group of local young people to research, design and produce furniture for the new square. This was a direct response to addressing the emerging challenge of a lack of activity for young people due to cuts to youth services, and the resulting negative perception of groups hanging around the town. The Wealdstone Youth Workshop produced ‘The Wealdstone Leg’, a furniture component that forms the basis of a range of stools, benches and chairs to be used in the square. The resulting furniture is also available to buy, with all proceeds going back into the project, and the workshop participants each receiving a royalty on sales as well as a stipend for taking part in the project.

In addition to social value gained for the local community through collaboration, We Made That directly experience the additional value offered through a collaborative approach; working with larger or more established practices helps to open doors that otherwise might not otherwise be open to us, and working with more recently established practices brings new ideas and energy to the team, whilst providing a helpful ‘hand up’. In a global context that’s keeping us all physically apart, we will continue to pursue project that bring teams and communities together.

By Lorna Reed

See article on Building Design Online here: 

https://www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/in-a-world-thats-keeping-us-apart-lets-work-together/5106593.article

We Made That are excited to announce that our proposals for Woolwich Town Centre are now open for public engagement. We have been working with Royal Borough of Greenwich and Gerald Eve on one of 100 applications for the ‘Future High Streets Fund’ to The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The application will explore innovative responses to bring transformative change to Woolwich Town Centre. The successful bids will be announced in Sept 2020. Have a look here and tell us your thoughts!

We Made That are looking for two new team members to join the practice: a skilled Part I Architectural Assistant and an early-career Urban Research Assistant with a minimum degree level qualification in urban studies/economics/geography or a similar related discipline.

Architectural Assistant (part I)

The role includes working on urban-scale strategies, participative co-design projects and early stages of project development. You must be a talented designer and have good technical knowledge with a great eye for presentation. Excellent communication skills and a desire to contribute to lively creative & productive team working required. Job description pdf.

Urban Research Assistant

The role includes contributing fieldwork and desk- based data auditing to a number of research commissions spanning spaces of culture industry and employment. The ideal candidate will have a good understanding of both quantitative and qualitative research design and methods a conscientious approach to research and the ability to build manage and analyse large datasets. Job description pdf.

Deadline for applications is Friday 29th May 2020 and details of how to apply can be found in the job description pdfs above.

We Made That, “polemic, provocative and, in most cases, imminently practical, inviting the reader to ask what it really means to make “good” architecture today.”

We Made That feature alongside the London Practice Forum in Ark - the Finnish Architectural Review - in an article about the potential for architects to take collective action on ethical grounds. It includes our “Things We Won’t Do” manifesto, first exhibited at the Royal Academy’s What is radical today? show in 2019.

We Made That and Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy were commissioned by the Local Government Association to produce a guide for local authorities on writing a cultural strategy. The published guide offers a core framework approach along with key considerations that can be adapted by local authorities looking to develop a cultural strategy. The guide also presents a set of case studies and best practice points under each key consideration.

This guide is vital in helping local authorities to maximise the impact of cultural assets for community cohesion, as well as the local economies in which they sit.

Read the full guide here. 

We Made That remain committed to our clients and the communities that we work in. We understand our collective and social responsibility to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We have the infrastructure to effectively maintain the functioning of the office and business during this challenging period.

All meetings are being moved to virtual platforms and all engagement events are being postponed or adapted to online methods.

Best wishes to all our clients collaborators and communities during this time.

‘A Home for Culture’ Thamesmead’s Cultural Infrastructure Plan is the first localised cultural infrastructure plan in London. We Made That led a team including Hatch Regeneris and Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy to produce the plan and supporting evidence bases. It has been nearly two years in the making and sets out Peabody’s commitment to creating a network of new cultural spaces as part of the long term regeneration plans for Thamesmead.

The Cultural Infrastructure Plan provides the opportunity to hard-wire culture into Thamesmead, by planning for culture in the same way as we plan for housing and transport. It puts artist housing on the agenda and focuses on both small and large cultural facilities, such as a new home for our community radio station and archive, to large scale production facilities and a new waterfront arts centre.

Read the plan here.

We Made That have been appointed by Croydon Council to analyse existing community facilities in central Croydon, and to develop ideas for improving the current offer; improving accessibility, extending hours of use, diversifying range of available spaces and increasing activation and programming. In exploring the existing community spaces, the team will identify gaps in provision and develop a clear and deliverable strategy for reimagining and transforming the community facilities landscape of Croydon.

We Made That is supported by economic consultancy PRD and engagement specialist Migrant’s Bureau to deliver this project which will include a series of engagement events to understand community needs and aspirations, as well as generate ideas collaboratively with the local population and existing voluntary and community sector organisations. 

We Made That are delighted to announce the launch of the Public Spaces Programme 2020, organised with The London Society.

This year The London Society are exploring the theme of ‘public’ for a series of talks, panel discussions, walks and tours. ‘Public’ is identified as a key ingredient to all cities, as the space where we interact with other citizens, and the quality and efficiency of these spaces that determines liveability. The series will therefore explore a series of issues including public space, public transport, public art and public housing. We Made That are curating the ‘public spaces’ element of this series.

The first events as part of the Public Spaces programme include:

TALK | Public Spaces, Diverse Places: identity and race and the public realm, Thursday, 20 February 2020

Nile Bridgeman (Afterparti) and Akil Scafe-Smith (Resolve) discuss their articles from Afterparti Issue 00, unpacking contemporary urban space through the lenses of identity and race.

TALK | OK Boomer! - Age and the Public Realm, Tuesday 3rd March 2020

A panel discussion on the implications for public space design of an ageing population, chaired by Holly Lewis.