This project is trying to propose a co-housing plan on Shields Road, as a part of the strategy by Newcastle City Council to revive the wider Byker community. As Shields Road been nominated as the worst high street in the UK in 2019, the council has since realized to take action in bringing the past glory back. Lately, they have been taken action in surveying people’s attitude and suggestions for the street. By identifying these comments gives us a better vision of what the general public living there want the street to be like in the future, and as well as solving any problems and conflicts that are currently occurring. These comments eventually leads to our choice for the not-for-profit facilities in our design. There are two parts to our design: one is the choice of not-for-profit facilities in the building, which most likely would be on the ground floor, open to the wider community, and the other concerns the levels above, which would mainly designated for the residents of the co-housing community. Eventually, my choice for the not-for-profit facilities are child care, small clinic, and an open kitchen for gathering. These choices are not only driven by the comments made by the community, but also considered the demography of the community and the residence group that lives in the co-housing building. My residents are these two types of people: seniors and young family with small children. Thus, this combination of demography group allows the co-housing to have a multi-generational sense of home.
The highlight for my design would be the pyramid-shaped atrium located in the center of the building. It is open from the bottom ground floor, where there is a central garden, all the way to the rooftop, where you can find a pyramid skylight. This structure maximizes the amount of light into the building, which creates more flexibility with the interior space arrangement. Nevertheless, the upper two floors of the building would be framed with mass-timber construction attached to the original concrete frame on the lower two levels. And a cantilever is protrude two meters out of the original building from the second floor onward. And most of the columns and beams from the original building will be kept, for sustainability purpose.
The threshold between private and public is clear in the design. Take the ground floor plan as an example, it shows the threshold between the public of Byker community and the private of the co-housing community. Visitors once enter the building through the alley-like corridor will be directed to the central garden, where they can reach which ever space they wanted. And the circulation to the top right corner of the building is only for the residents living there, which is separated by a wall and security door.