Places are sometimes said to exist in the memory, as a context for stories of experience or sensation. It is Ash Sakula’s ambition to create places that can, in future, serve as repositories of such memories.
Place-making is a practice that considers the designed building, not as an isolated object, but as a locality that will be used by many different people, in many different ways, over a long period of time; as a piece of the city or countryside that charms, works for people and generates value.If places can be said to exist in the memory, it is Ash Sakula’s ambition to create places that can serve as future repositories of such memories. We understand that buildings are pieces of the city that can bring people together and make them happy (and make them money) and that when we knit people, buildings and landscape together into a versatile, functioning whole, we are creating places which people connect to and decide to stay in. In doing this, we avoid the pointless waste of creating fragmented non-places, that please no-one, belong to nobody and generate nothing.
In our focus on people’s experience of our architecture, we try to find out what people like and don’t like. Why is this particular corner everybody’s favourite place to be? And why is this place busy and buzzy while that place is shunned? We frequently find that the key to successful place-making is in setting up inside and outside spaces that connect and interact well with each other. This might mean wrapping a building around an active courtyard, carving out a little patio off a living space or forming a café terrace that is sheltered, sunny and great for people-watching. Such considerations of the landscape and the public realm are as important as the craft of architecture-as-object.Our ambition, always, is to make buildings and places that are well-used, appreciated, adapted and loved.
The Phoenix is a productive, sustainable, equitable and largely car-free neighbourhood of 700 homes on a former industrial site in Lewes.
Mixed tenure homes in a traditional seaside town.
An alternative vision for replacing a tired 1960s shopping precinct in Norwich
Creating a convivial neighbourhood of streets and houses on a riverside site in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Inventing new futures for a canalside site in east London.
Bringing an aloof town hall to life as a place for people
Opening a new chapter for Cardiff’s radical cultural hub.
A masterplan for a town extension of 2,000 new homes in Slovakia.
26 new homes for the Clapton Park Estate in Hackney, east London
Reinventing a backland site and historic carriage ramp near Deptford Station
Constructing a self-built arts village on derelict land in east London.
Negotiating the community’s priorities for a new public square in south London.
Turning a redundant council office in Leicester into a multi-use theatre for a school and its community.
Putting under-utilised land and buildings to better use - sustainably and profitably.
Reinventing a pioneering centre of rural regeneration, education, social justice and the arts.
Urban stitching creates a series of public squares and secret gardens threading through a new mixed use neighbourhood.
A building designed to support, enable and celebrate carnival arts.
Making creative co-working space for the arts in Hackney.
A flexible, informal and profitable flagship store
A vibrant new quarter for Ashford town centre
Bringing new audiences to an arts centre in north London
New neighbourhood for Erith town centre
An old rectory on Deptford High Street is refurbished and extended to create eleven mixed-tenure homes above two restaurants.
New homes and imaginative uses carefully wrapped around a stately home near Bratislava, Slovakia.
Co-creating new communities; getting two sides of the tracks to talk to each other.
Spatial complexity in a tiny London mews.
