Challenging consumer habits through innovative retail design.
Project Overview
Case Study: DeBeauvoir School
Our proposal for a highly-sustainable new-build Nursery School in Hackney was a study in how to develop sensitive urban sites while remaining a good neighbour.
Sector
Hospitality & Retail
Services
Architecture, Interiors
Design Strategy
The Challenge
Memorable and impactful spatial designs built around sustainability and consumer insights.
Context
62B Southgate Road is a former storage yard hidden behind a residential terrace in the DeBeauvoir area of East London.
The plot is bounded and overlooked by residential properties on all sides, making it a particularly sensitive site for development of a school due to a multitude of potential issues such as privacy, noise, overshadowing, rights of light, to name a few.
We were introduced to the developer after a previous architect’s scheme was proven unviable commercially, despite a number of iterations over a two year period.
Buyers can customise the materials and finish of their homes from a set of predefined options. These are unique to each site, based on the history, character and immediate context of the local area.
House-builder App Prototype
Prefabricated construction offers opportunities for customisation - a unique value-add over bricks-and-mortar homes.
We developed a prototype app to test guiding customers through the process of tailoring their home, and gained insight into the value perception of different levels of design control.
Each home is preassembled off-site in factory conditions. The timber panelled construction provides a structural integrity that allows them to be delivered in just two parts and craned into place with minimal on site works required.
Levels of User-Control
Insights gained from user-testing helped inform the strategy for how to balance factory-line efficiency with customer benefit and avoid creating manufacturing challenges.
For example when it came to bathrooms, stylistic variations offered a sense of individual identity and control for consumers, but locations of services remained fixed to allow for consistency in production.