Down Lane Park Community Hub is set within a renewed park Masterplan developed through a co-design process with the local community at the heart of the new Tottenham Hale District Centre regeneration. The new civic hub provides flexible community spaces, a cafe, park toilets, kitchen, and changing facilities to serve the wider community.
The building uses red brick with elegant detailing alongside weathered steel cladding to reference the local context, heritage, and industrial history of the site. Active frontages on all sides of the building respond to the varying conditions of the street, community garden, and park. Generous areas of glazing create strong visual connections and offer passive surveillance between the hub and the park.
Sustainability has been considered from the outset of the design process. Striving to achieve Passivhaus certification, the building form and orientation maximise natural daylight and ventilation as well as facilitate solar gains into the key community spaces. Paired with PV panels, high levels of insulation and building air tightness will ensure low running costs across the lifespan of the building.
The internal arrangement has been designed with flexibility in mind. Dividing screens allow the three community spaces and cafe to be reconfigured into varying sizes to host the community during educational, social, and sporting activities. The exposed timber structure and finishes create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Accessibility has been embedded into the design, ensuring level access between internal and external circulation spaces.
A timber pergola directly adjoined to the hub acts as a key gateway between the building, the community garden, and the park. This pergola is one of several areas that provide spill-out spaces from the community spaces, including sheltered garden teaching areas and the external cafe seating.
A new passivhaus designed hub building with café, kitchen and function spaces to support a range of community events and workshops.