community/cultural
Jan Kattein Architects + Meanwhile Space CIC, 2025
Greenhill Way Car Park, HA1 2TL
Occupying a corner of a car park in Harrow is a new cultural centre offering affordable event, exhibition and workspaces for creative businesses around a new public square. The square is made up of demountable structures such as stacked containers and prefabricated agricultural systems so that they can be completely relocated at the end of the project's tenure.
Harrow On The Hill, Harrow & Wealdstone
Harrow On The Hill, Harrow & Wealdstone
114, 140, 183
11:00–16:00
12:00–13:00
13:00–14:00
14:00–15:00
15:00–16:00
Harrow Town Centre is one of London’s 13 metropolitan town centres. Despite its significance and large catchment, its’ cultural offer is limited. Harrow Council initiated the creation of a temporary creative and cultural quarter in 2022. The projects would forge a culture of enterprise, diversify the town centre and create a new destination that local people could be proud of. The chosen site, a Council-owned car park represents a deliberate attempt to visibly demonstrate alternative, socially and environmentally sustainable uses in Harrow.
The project provides 14 genuinely de-mountable, self-contained workspace units of various sizes and 6 micro exhibition spaces distributed across 3 small buildings that frame a triangular courtyard. The site connects to the high street via an existing archway under Station Road terrace.
Social-, economic and environmental sustainability were key parameters shaping a design process structured around extensive community engagement, rigorous business planning and a modular typology that facilitates re-location at the end of its’ tenure on site.