Rising Green

Freehaus were appointed by Haringey Council, to oversee the retrofit and transformation of an existing high street retail unit into a youth space in the centre of Wood Green - named Rising Green. A project which came with a clear remit from the council to co-design and deliver the youth hub alongside local young people.

Young people use our built environments and use the city as much as any other demographic, yet public spaces and our buildings do not actively offer invitations to them. As a response to this, together with collaborating architects JA Projects, we led a series of co-design exercises with a group of local young people, known as the 'Wood Green Young Voices', to help embed their ambitions within the design for the youth hub.

JA Projects led the co-design of the youth hub’s main entrance, a threshold that can often be a barrier to entry for young people. Over the course of three months, they worked alongside the Wood Green Young Voices to capture lived experiences, define barriers, opportunities and explore the look and feel of the new youth hub. Delivered under pandemic restrictions in 2021, the online sessions culminated in a ‘broadcast’ where young people presented their ideas to other stakeholders, including regeneration officers and local councillors.

This directly influenced the architectural design with the creation of a flexible exhibition zone upon entry. The space provides an opportunity for the users of the hub to present to the high street, exhibiting artistic outputs produced within the flexible spaces on the first floor and activating the frontage through performance and display. A generous entrance lounge provides valuable space for play and from which to undertake quiet study and homework; a monochromatic café serves the space, directly supported by the adjacent Training Kitchen, which provides vocational training opportunities within the hub.

At first floor level the monochromatic approach continues, moving through tonally distinct spaces, which have been carefully zoned to identify activity and to provide a sense of lightness, combatting the lack of natural light using warm tones. Provisions on this level include a games lounge, multiple flexible teaching spaces, quite room, multimedia suite, music production suite and recording studio, clad in a vibrant green acoustic foam which envelopes the space.

The architectural design is supported by the wider brand who oversaw a second wave of co-design programme to shape the hub’s identity. Its logo and most importantly its new name - Rising Green - which was born out of the desire for young people in the area to take back control of the narrative associated with Wood Green and a desire to uplift the community through the youth hub. The branding directly ties into the aesthetic of the hub, with a complementary palette of sunset tones and neon gradients which were influenced by the 80s gaming aesthetic of popular video games and music videos identified within the co-design sessions.

Post completion we maintained this spirit of co-design with a new series of workshops, in collaboration with local Photographer Ben Blossom. Using photography - of both the hub and its users - these sought to frame more positive messages about young people in Wood Green and their agency in the local area. Reinforcing the message of a space for young people, designed - and now represented by - young people. As with all the previous workshops, the focus was on upskilling to share cultural capital and promote pathways into creative professions - these photographs can be found displayed throughout the hub.