Hackney Marshes Centre

The new multi-use space comprises public changing rooms, café, teaching space and office accommodation, and is designed to blend into the urban open space landscape with a long horizontal form embedded in the woodland margins of the football pitches.

Formed from load-bearing masonry with in-situ concrete slabs and walls, the structure is exposed to create the architecture of the spaces, as well as to provide an economic structural solution.

The materials have been chosen for robustness and their ability to blend into the landscape. Steel panel cladding provides a tough surface which develops and evolves over time. Some panels are perforated and others slide to allow light into the internal spaces. Gabion walls, filled with recycled crushed concrete from a demolition site in Wembley, provide a robust envelope and function as a framework for climbing plants. In front of the changing room windows, the gabion baskets are reduced in depth to allow light into the space, while maintaining privacy.

The project achieved a BREEAM ‘Very Good’ rating.