Transformation of a Victorian Pub

Tuckey Design Studio has transformed a derelict pub in West London – dating back to 1884 – into its new studio, accommodating the growth of the practice while doubling up as a gallery and lecture theatre. The new office serves as an example of the practice’s approach towards existing structures – bringing them back to life through intelligent architectural interventions. The former pub continues its function as an ‘urban living room’, but now through exhibitions, talks and community engagement.

The practice has inserted a freestanding timber volume into a large void created by removing part of the existing ground floor. This new platform simultaneously creates an integrated storage system while allowing natural light to filter down to a workshop in the basement. Therefore, the main visible design intervention is an L-shaped slot that cuts through the whole building, with a large mirrored wall on one side that bounces additional light to the lower floor. It also offers an illusion effect of a continuing street when viewed from the outside.

A timber lattice structure forms four walls of shelves that wrap around the upper level office space, containing books, models and drawings in a permanent exhibition of the practice’s work. The wooden walls also become desks for the architects that can be quickly converted into additional exhibition space or benches for a ‘theatre-in-the-round’. Below, the pub’s original vaults have been carefully restored to provide further exhibition opportunities for larger objects, lit from above as they would be in an intimate gallery. The rest of the lower level is used for the practice’s extensive model making, with the team working through design iterations in physical form.

Located on a prominent corner site behind the Olympia Exhibition Centre, the studio retains many of the pub’s original elements, embracing its Victorian heritage and protecting its presence on the street edge. During the renovation process, original exterior tiles were uncovered and kept to reveal a layer of the building’s past which had long been hidden. The office is able to create an open dialogue with passers-by thanks to a series of large windows that reveal its inner workings and outdoor tables that act as external meeting rooms.

Tuckey Design Studio moved into the new office at the end of Summer 2017 while still making the finishing touches to the interior spaces. The studio hosts regular architectural exhibitions and talks as part of the 'Building on the Built' series – www.buildingonthebuilt.org.

Common Waters; A Symposium on Bathing

This year at Open House, Tuckey Design Studio will be presenting an exhibition exploring the history, architecture and culture of bathing in the UK.

Common Waters; A Symposium on Bathing, explores this history through archival photography, drawings, objects and publications, tracing the changing face of bathing and swimming in Britain. The exhibition considers the bathhouse not simply as a place of hygiene or recreation, but as a civic space; somewhere to meet, pause, recover, exercise and experience water collectively.

At the centre of the exhibition is a new bathhouse proposal for Bankside, London by Tuckey Design Studio, developed with Jane Withers Studio. The project asks what a permanent publicly operated bathhouse might mean in a city where access to water is increasingly shaped by climate change and the pressures of urban life. It proposes bathing as a form of shared infrastructure, one that can support physical and social wellbeing while creating new relationships with the city and its waterways.

The exhibition looks back in order to ask what might come next. What can the history of British bathing teach us about designing spaces that are genuinely open and accessible to all? How should policy respond to the growing popularity of wild swimming, and what responsibilities do we have towards the rivers and waters in which we swim? As summers become hotter, where can people find safe, affordable places to cool down? What might the renaissance of sauna culture tell us about our desire for collective rituals and restorative spaces that can weave into habitual routine?