Storyhouse Method
Chester
Services
- Engagement
- Vision
Team
- Client: Storyhouse
- Project Management: Counterculture
- cost: Modero
- Structure: Elliot Bond Consulting
- Services: Silcock Leedham
Area
- 1020 sqm
Cost
- Undisclosed
Project Overview
In a competitive process, Architectural Emporium and a series of other Architects were interviewed by two of the young people and senior figures within Storyhouse. The engaged young people have stayed present as part of the design steering group, which comprises approximately 15 young people. They are key to the process, with their input shaping proposals. The brief addresses anti social issues and a lack of space and provision for 13-21 year olds in Chester. It will provide young people with a space to relax, learn and enjoy adjacent to the highly successful Storyhouse facility, which is already a magnate for many young people.
" Architectural Emporium have embraced working collaboratively with young people at Storyhouse from the very outset of our journey together when they were interviewed and selected by young people for the project. AE’s whole approach has ensured our young people’s steering group which encompasses a broad range of young people with very different lived experiences and needs, have felt central to the whole process of design. From precedent visits to other spaces to help develop our collective tastes and build a shared understanding, to the many workshops where we have designed the building and its spaces together. Luke and Toby have created safe spaces for honest feedback, reflection and ideas generation. Key to this process has been Luke and Toby’s transparency with the group at every stage, their good humour and their ability to treat the young people as the key stakeholder in this journey rather than just participants or beneficiaries. Co-creation is an overused term but one that is rightly used to describe this process."
Suzie Henderson, Creative Director, Storyhouse
The first workshop allowed us to explore the space and start to consider a distribution of uses within the existing building based on the areas provided in the brief. Groups explored different arrangements and explained their reasoning, which was recorded and fed into proposals.
Following this we went on a bus tour of similar buildings for inspiration. We explored buildings in Birkenhead and Liverpool and arranged tours and discussions with building operators . The young people fed back their thoughts in the following session and it inspired a design aesthetic and wider discussions about how the entrance should work, how spaces should feel and interrelate.
Workshop 2 explored initial options combining the Storyhouse and Cheshire West Employment Hub briefs. Groups discussed and fed back pros and cons for the different options.
Workshop 3 featured more refined options but ones that looked at different ways to treat the key interventions such as the link, the entrance and courtyard. We also explored different architectural styles and distributions of spaces. We produced precedent imagery and asked people to rank the visuals in order of preference.
Following a value engineering exercise, where we looked to retain internal functions, but shift some of the more expensive external elements of the proposals into phase two, we met to explain the development and look at how we could animate the façade affordably. Workshop 4 focused on signage, planting and different treatments to the frontage. We also reviewed the name for the scheme.
