Haringey Civic Hub

Strategic study to develop the brief, location and potential design of a new civic hub for haringey council

Following an Economy and Employment Space Study of Wood Green Town Centre that 00 were part of a larger team led by Avison Young, 00 were commissioned by Haringey Council to undertake a number of feasibility and site appraisal studies to develop the brief and test the potential location, capacity and form of a new Civic Hub for Haringey Council in Wood Green.

Location of project: Wood Green, Haringey

Client: Haringey Council

Programme: May 2018 – February 2020

Size: 27,000sqm

 

Brief Development

The first was a feasibility study exploring the potential of a Civic Hub in Wood Green’s Cultural Quarter, this study included an initial stage of brief development with Haringey Council during which, through an iterative process we created a brief which outlined both the quantitative requirements as well as the qualitative aspirations for the Civic Hub.

It was identified in this study, that co-locating the library and civic hub on a single site offers the opportunity to create operational and management efficiencies while potentially releasing other council town centre assets for alternative development.

Site Options Appraisal

00 were then commissioned to carry out a further Site Options Appraisal Study, which was a technical capacity study of four council-owned sites in Wood Green Town Centre to assess how they might accommodate the co-location of all functions specified in the Civic Hub brief.

Our role as lead consultant was to bring together the necessary team of sub consultants to conduct both a technical study of 4 Council-owned sites, to develop a massing study and site arrangement and to concurrently develop an assessment matrix including strategic and technical criteria with scoring to assess each site and support client decision making. Site analysis and massing development was informed by constraints of Planning, Daylight/RoL; Utilities, Geo technical, Flood Risk, Sustainability & Transport.

Beyond design, our role included assessing the potential local economic development potential of the chosen site, such as contribution to town centre vitality as well as identifying project viability factors, such as Capacity, Delivery, Accessibility and Impact.

The Site Options Appraisal Study found that a particular site was the highest scoring single site out of the four sites by a significant margin.

Preferred Site Feasibility Studies

00 were then commissioned to further develop the feasibility of the Civic Hub on the preferred site identified in the Site Options Appraisal Study.

With such a complex brief of different uses, this and our previous studies had highlighted that multiple facilities within a Civic Hub have a requirement to be public-facing and furthermore would be ideally located on the ground floor. This placed a constraint on the capacity of any potential development beyond simply the quantity of achievable floor space.

The third study developed design options that not only provided accessibility and visibility to these public-facing functions, and created appropriate adjacencies between them, but also created active frontages supporting pubic realm within the Town Centre. This study also highlighted the potential for additional capacity on the preferred site beyond the Civic Hub brief.

00 were then commissioned for a fourth study which further developed the potential of the additional capacity of the preferred site, testing the potential to deliver residential space as well as the Civic Hub brief.

This study explored 3 design options for a mixed-use Civic Hub which could enable Haringey Council to achieve their aspirations to deliver employment space, leisure facilities, homes, and to improve the town centre and the legibility and quality of the public realm, all on the preferred site.