For Creative Nomadsby Jan Zimmermann | 15.01.2016

Yardhouse

Everything is in motion, everything comes to an end. Architecture, building and real estate industry are not excluded from this rule, even if they create the immobile. Sure, many houses last many, many years but they are also often demolished and replaced by new ones. Many of such changes are related to the creation of value, and connected to this is, in an urban context, however, one word that sounds like a curse in many ears: gentrification. In the beginning of this “nobilisation” or “aristocratization” of neighborhoods, there is low-value vacancy or brownfields – a money vacuum (from an owner’s point of view) that has to be filled. Then, poor creative folks take advantage of this situation, fill the empty spaces and keep on creating until this once unwanted place eventually becomes attractive, interesting, cool and finally valuable and lucrative. In the end, the creative folks have to make way for a financially stronger clientele and search for a new cheap place for their creative lifestyle. Recently, London-based architecture collective Assemble came to the architectural rescue of these poor creative souls doomed to involuntary nomadism.

Building quick and low-cost

The help by Assemble comes in the form of a prototypical house that offers creative or working space and can be both cheaply and quickly constructed and deconstructed: the Yardhouse. The idea is to make short-term vacancies usable by such cheap quickly constructible/removable space. So the Yardhouse kind of resembles a tent that is taken down when it is time to leave and then re-erected somewhere new.

Three-aisled Post and Beam Structure

The Yardhouse is named after the area where it is situated, London’s Sugarhouse Yard. The building with a base of 12 by 12 meters is built as a simple post and beam structure and comprises two stories that are divided into three aisles. The two aisles to the sides offer altogether 16 studios, of which one may rent up to four at a time. The ceiling heights between 3.5 m and 4.5 m provide for a well-lit working environment. The central aisle is an atrium with double-ceiling height.

Communicative-cooperative creative Space

The project is primarily provided for designers and artists who create things with their hands. It is not about a quiet desk-based working environment but rather workshops that are noisy, messy and alive. The main focus is laid on communication and cooperation between the creative folks. They are supposed to learn from each other. Therefore, there are initially no separating walls between the studios and also the atrium is designed as one big meeting place.

Reproducible but individual

The constructive principles of the Yardhouse can practically be produced everywhere. But characteristics such as size, orientation or exterior design are specific to every individual building. Especially the façade’s design of the Yardhouse is a real eye-catcher. The front is covered in a cladding of colorful tiles that have been designed and crafted by the architects themselves and which make this prototype an incomparable individual.