I recently heard the designer Thomas Heatherwick talk about his ongoing project to “humanise” our physical environment. The event was under the Chatham House rule, but I don’t think it would betray any confidences to report that he called for care, craft and joy in the design of new buildings. It’s a sentiment with which I and most architects I know would wholeheartedly agree. A helpful next step in exploring this shared ground would be to find and celebrate examples where, often in challenging conditions, such plainly desirable qualities are achieved.
Take, for example, a new development in north London called Highgate Newtown Community Centre, that hollows out a calm and engaging public space, lively with architectural detail, while also providing bigger and better facilities for a successful local asset and as many new homes as could be expected on an intricate and complex urban site. The project’s primary aim is to serve Highgate Newtown Community Partners, an organisation that has, since the 1970s, been offering to disadvantaged people such multifarious activities as lunch clubs, drop-ins for under-fives, classes in pottery and cookery, trapeze skills, psychotherapy, affordable hairdressing and nail bars. Almost as importantly, the new building seeks to enrich the neighbourhood in which it stands.
