The Fareshare scheme has finished on site. This is a great project for AFHUK who have been involved with the scheme for the last 18 months, its taken some hard work, good ideas and a lot of colaborative working but the end result is a great looking building that the client is very happy with and will enable them to persue their good cause. Many thanks to interdisciplinary design team of:
Architects: Chris Medland, Sam Hau, Ronan Needham
Structural Engineer: Julia Ratcliffe
M+E and Sustainability: Chris Eaton
Photography: Nathan Willcock
Furniture: &Made
The project is outlined below by the project manager and client Mike McNally from Fareshare:
AFHUK – FareShare Training Centre Project
Introduction
FareShare is a national charity which re-distributes surplus food stocks to people suffering the effects of poverty – particularly those people suffering from poor diets. A significant percentage of our labour force is made of people from within these same projects. They often have a history of having been in care, or are recovering addicts of one sort or another. Either way they often have no education or work record. These are probably the most significant drawbacks to a person in a similar position finding and then actually getting a job. We realised that there was an educative ‘gap’ to be filled and which we were in a position to do so in
London.
The Design Brief
In the autumn of 2007 FareShare received funding with which to build a four room training centre. It was to be situated within the rear third of our
London warehouse. We were given the contact of AFHUK, who with us, drew up plans for the building. It was decided from the start that it should ‘feel’ and look, as un-institutional as possible. This is because a significant proportion of the people who will use the facility, have little or no formal qualifications and for whom an institution would be an immediate “switch off”.
To this end AFHUK have designed a light airy building of sensible proportions – given the constraints of the floor plan we have – which meets all the needs of the brief.
The Training Centre
This has four rooms, plus a forklift training side which was already in place. These consist of:
· An IT suite where trainees will work up to gaining an ECDL qualification
· A fully equipped kitchen where they can be trained up to restaurant standards of food preparation and cooking, together with Waiting skills.
· A secondary kitchen in which to learn basic food ‘prep skills’, receive basic food safety training to CIEH Level 2. Basic and Food budgeting together with other essential ‘life skills’ will also be taught here.
· Final we have a meeting room – it’s alternatively titled somewhat grandly “the boardroom”.
It utterly true to say that we would not have achieved such a facility without the considerable expertise and guidance of AFHUK who in addition to doing the architect work also provided the structural, mechanical and electrical engineering support, all pro bono. This pro bono factor has allowed us to create a genuinely brilliant space as opposed to a plain ‘box’ of a building.
We offer our sincerest thanks to AFHUK – all the people who gave up their own time – who have made this possible.
Mike McNally – National Development Manager – March 2009
many thanks to Nathan Willcock for the photos below:
