Main facade engaging with the courtyard (photo: Tim Brotherton and Katie Lock)

Featherstone Young were appointed by Providence Row to design a new arts and activity building as part of their day care facility in Wentworth Street in London’s East End. Providence Row is a homelessness charity that provides support to homeless people in Tower Hamlets (one of the UK’s most deprived districts) and the City of London. Providence Row provides essential services such as food, clothing and showers, helping to restore users’ health and dignity.

The new building allows Providence Row to operate a range of structured and meaningful activities for their users. The ground floor houses a bike workshop, enabling users to develop their skills and set them on the first steps towards employment. The first floor contains an art centre for visual and performing arts activities, allowing users to express themselves creatively and develop their artistic skills. Providence Row will use the top floor for office space, while other parts of the building will contain storage and archive facilities for the charity.

Bike workshop on the ground floor (photo: Tim Brotherton and Katie Lock)

Featherstone Young were keen to create a thoughtful yet functional building that uses its landlocked site to its full advantage, in order to accommodate as many uses as possible in the limited space available. As the building faces the main day centre across an under-used courtyard, Featherstone Young also wanted to find a design solution that could animate the courtyard and improve connections and flow between the two buildings on the site as a whole.

With its green and yellow perforated cladding panels and angular design, the building projects its own strong character alongside its neighbours, animates the underused courtyard and enlivens the otherwise bland setting.

Arts studio on the first floor (photo: Tim Brotherton and Katie Lock)

The charity's offices on the second floor (photo: Tim Brotherton and Katie Lock)

Green and yellow perforated facade (photo: Tim Brotherton and Katie Lock)

For more information about the architects, please visit: Featherstone Young Architects