Meridian Water

Project
Social Value

Client
Enfield Council

Project Team
Karakusevic Carson Architects

Location
Enfield, North London

Beyond The Box were invited to collaborate with Karakusevic Carson Architects on a Meridian Water social value project in Enfield, North London. As part of the collaborative project we designed a site specific provision in line with Enfield Council’s key priorities.

Over a 9-month period we delivered a bespoke Design Leaders Programme, designing and facilitating weekly creative workshops that explored the principles of architectural design, community building and co-design, working in collaboration with the local youth community.

We created additional paid employment opportunities for three of the young Londoners within the Design Leaders Programme, each took a central role in designing and facilitating the project with the Beyond The Box team.

The Design Leaders worked together to design and build a new space with NYCC youth centre, a local Edmonton Green charity.

Co-design in action…

Watch our video to see how the project came to life through collaboration and innovation, working in partnership with young Londoners to design an arcade space for their peers at youth centre NYCC.

UP-SKILLING

Our team facilitated weekly sessions with the design leaders out of Edmonton Green Library. We began by introducing the young leaders to the principles of architecture and design, exploring what co-design means to us as a creative practice, and how to begin to present ideas through architectural drawings. The design leaders were given the opportunity to understand more about our model for building equity via working in partnership with communities to design solutions based on user centred design.

After initial research, we identified a local organisation who could benefit from a design intervention. The team were introduced to local organisation Youth & Community Connexions NYCC, who after forming a partnership essentially acted as the client for the young design leaders.

The team had the opportunity to meet with Chris, Director of NYCC to ask questions and to better understand the opportunities and constraints in re-designing one of their spaces within the youth centre and to develop a brief; a multifunctional space that can be used for either an arcade and drama space.

PARTNERSHIP WORKING

As part of our project aims to develop and grow the young leaders networks and skills, we took the young leaders on trip to the Karakusevic Carson Architects studio to gain a deeper understanding of the architectural profession, the studio environment, and to receive advice from a number of staff on their CVs and portfolios.

This workshop was also an opportunity for the design leaders to develop their brief and design ideas for the space. During the workshop the design leaders had a guided tour of the studio and past project Kings Crescent, based in Stoke Newington, led by one of the Architects that worked on the scheme.

The design leaders then ran sessions with some of the young attendees of NYCC to share their developed ideas and the gain further feedback and ideas. The team then held a dragons den style pitch, with the design leaders having formed two groups to pitch and present their ideas to be critiqued by NYCC Director & 3 NYCC young beneficiaries.

The key areas for consideration were sustainability, creativity, accessibility, functionality, social value, longevity, innovation, build-ability, cohesion of ideas and overall presentation. Deliberating on each idea, the arcade/games design ideas were chosen for the design space.

Meet Design Leader Zaeem

Meet Design Leader Tim

“I loved the experience and I appreciate the opportunity given to work in the KCA space. Really felt a part of the team working on the same software I saw other architects using for their other projects.”

Zaeem Abudallahi - Design Facilitator

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Following the pitch, the design leaders then set about developing their designs, having the opportunity to gain work experience at Karakusevic Carson Architects to develop their rough drawings and sketches of the arcade space to architectural scaled drawings.

The design leaders began to research local collaborators to bring their ideas to life, learning how to create budgets, write to artists and carpenters.

The design leaders then created a plan of action to crowdfund, firstly by creating visuals of the space for the posters they planned to distribute to the public and then they designed a storyboard for their fundraising video to add to their online Crowdfunder, commissioning one of their peers to create the video - after a series of bake sales and fundraising the raised a total of £1,706.

BUILD WEEK

We worked with key individuals in the community, commissioning locally and all working towards the build week and activating the space for the local youth community. We worked with graffiti artist Reves, local carpenter Vincent, and build a relationship with local arcade company Bespoke Arcades.