By Becky Chipkin and Jack Swanson
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Connection to Harringay Warehouse District
The design forms a significant marker and entryway to the Harringay Warehouse District, acting as a kind of billboard. The pavilion is robust and tough but can also be open and inviting. The pavilion includes a totem that refers to the nearby chimney stack at the centre of the district. The pavilion offers shelter for a whole host of activities – acting as a kind of ‘market hall.’
Proposal Outline
The site for the Tottenham Pavilion sits next to the transient and bustling Seven sisters road. In Venturi Scott Brown’s study ‘Learning From Las Vegas,’ Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown highlight the billboard typology as a structure often found along the American highway. The job of the billboard is to announce a series of messages, almost instantaneously to drivers passing by at 70mph. The site also marks a kind of ‘entryway’ to the wider Harringay Warehouse District, we therefore propose a structure that is both a building and a marker or sign. The main facade is a large, colourful billboard and there would be a totem placed on the end of the pavilion nearest to the Seven Sisters Road. We see an analogy to the prominent Harringay Warehouse District Chimney stack.
We propose to remove the portion of the existing fence nearest to Seven Sisters Road, gifting the parcel of Land nearest to the high road as a public ‘pocket square.’ The pavilion would then establish a new boundary line for the site. We imagine the facade of the pavilion to be highly permeable with a series of robust sliding panels, allowing the public to move through to the back of the site during an event.
The Pavilion itself offers sheltered space to perform all kinds of activities, we wanted to avoid offering ideas about specific programmes, instead we see the possibility that the pavilion offers a generous covered space to be inhabited by any range of activity – it could form the backdrop to a play, a feast, a market or a workshop. The pavilion provides a kind of ‘scaffolding’ to events that might be organised by community in the Warehouse District.
Towards the rear of the site we propose a staircase on which people can sit, chat and observe the goings on of any event. The staircase works in unison with the pavilion ofering two ‘anchorpoints’ to the site. Around these two fixed objects the car park is left free for any activity / garden / event.
The structures will be built using very basic timber and corrugated aluminium construction requiring entry level diy skills, the project will be run as an inclusive construction project amongst locals – we find analogies to a ‘barn raising’ in this process. As a team we also have experience running and organising community events in Brooklyn, NY. We have recently completed our first built work at the Pavilion d’Arsenal in Paris as part of a showcase of young practices.