community/cultural
Matthew Lloyd Architects, 2022
Christ Church, 159 Highbury Grove, N5 1SA
The Community Centre at Christ Church Highbury, Islington N5, close to Highbury Fields, designed by Matthew Lloyd Architects, was completed in 2022. The centre, whose biodiverse roof hosts a bee colony, was designed in consultation with the church and local people and provides accessible, flexible spaces, church offices and a cafe, enabling the church to better meet and serve the local community.
Highbury & Islington
Finsbury Park
19
The building is entirely one one level at ground floor with level access
The space is calm and light, seating will be provided.
The Christ Church Community Centre was developed, through a sensitive and contextual design, to enable this established Grade II listed church on Highbury Fields to better serve its local community.
Christ Church Highbury is an early Victorian listed Church of England landmark, sitting right at the top of Highbury Fields in Islington. The church itself has stood the test of time to serve its congregation, but in recent decades it has lacked suitable spaces to welcome visitors, provide facilities and outreach to the wider community. It was therefore decided that the adjoining vicarage’s oversized garden should be divided, to create a site for a brand-new accessible and sustainable building for this purpose.
Matthew Lloyd Architects worked closely over several years with the Church community to create this sensitive design for new community building within this highly contextual and historic setting. Designed within very tight planning constraints, the new building provides a divisible multi-purpose space, a café and a public-facing Church office, all entered from a newly landscaped church forecourt.
The single-storey fully accessible building draws on its local historic and park context to inspire its choice of materials and details. It has excellent daylight and natural ventilation, and a living green roof blooming in summer with wild flowers and hosting a thriving bee colony. Its walls are clad in curving, thin linear brickwork in a colour to exactly match original stone of the church itself with windows and its roof capping in bronze coloured powder-coated aluminium.
Drop in / Family activity
community/cultural, concert/performance space, religious, online
A Grade I and II* treasure that’s home to an inclusive church, an award winning venue, a unique organ and The Margins Project for those in crisis in London. Family Organ Building Workshops are generously supported by the Institute of Physics.
James Cubitt, 1877
