Formerly a Haringey council-run plant nursery, Wolves Lane was taken over in 2017 by a consortium of community food-growing organisations, including The Ubele Initiative, OrganicLea and BlackRootz, a multigenerational, Black-led growers’ enterprise.
The Wolves Lane site with new buildings to the right © Luke O’Donovan
The 3.5-acre site contains a series of 1970s-built glasshouses, allotments and a small woodland with rainwater capture tanks. The glasshouses include an established palm house (complete with terrapins and koi carp) and a cactus house; while the rest are used to propagate and grow a wide variety of vegetables for both community and commercial use, including supplying the restaurant Ottolenghi.
At a public open day on Sunday 8 June, the centre unveiled three barn-like community buildings made using natural and sustainable materials. Providing much-needed space for teaching, meeting, learning and food storage, the new buildings are the result of a deeply collaborative process that has prioritized, from conception to construction, the values of Wolves Lane: to engage people, and to work together and with nature.
The community hall at Wolves Lane opens its doors to the public © Luke O’Donovan
Co-design principles, community involvement and low carbon construction
The design was led by a partnership between two architectural practices: Studio Gil and Material Cultures – who specialize in participatory and bio-regional construction methodologies. This led to a palette of timber, clay, straw and lime; all natural materials that can be locally sourced and easily maintained and adapted.
“The buildings are inherently rooted in place and low in embodied carbon,” says project architect Paloma Gormley from Material Cultures. “Plant-based materials sequester and store carbon and, together with minerals such as clay, can ultimately be returned to the ground at the end of their life.”
The brief was developed through a series of visioning exercises with the client organisations about their aspirations. This process resulted in the creation of three separate buildings with differentiated functions: a ‘hall’ for community events; a ‘classroom’ with teaching and office space; and a food distribution and storage building, all arranged around a public garden and working yard.
It was important for the buildings to be tools for learning and communicating the value of natural materials, throughout the construction process and in the honest expression of material and structure in the completed buildings.
The structural engineers were TDUK members Tisserin Engineers, who were involved from the early stages of the project, advising and designing sustainable solutions for the site including its timber frame and straw-bale construction.
Wolves Lane users were deeply involved throughout the build process © Henry Woide
The construction system consists of a lightweight timber frame infilled with straw bales, sourced from a farm close to London. Lime rendered elevations are partially overclad with larch lath timber screens, providing additional protection, while the roofs are clad in a combination of zinc and, on two of the buildings, (value engineered) lightweight agricultural galvanized steel. As much material as possible was retained from existing, semi-derelict buildings, with concrete waste from the existing slabs used to form rubble trench foundations, and the clay extracted to dig them used as plaster for the internal walls.
The client organisations and volunteers were involved throughout the build process, allowing them to learn about the construction materials and techniques and leaving them with the knowledge and skills to look after their building in use.
The project was designed to use C16 softwood to allow for the timber to be sourced from smaller scale local UK sawmills. Gormley explained that although homegrown and locally sourced timber was written into the specification, the contractor in the end did not deliver on this, and the structure was built with imported timber. “The project still demonstrates the case and viability for designing with lower structural grades of timber, thereby opening up the supply chain for regional specification.”
Larch lath screening adds further protection to the facade © Luke Donovan
