cahft saltaire
The practice is currently developing proposals for a new Centre for Arts, Heritage and Future Technologies in the highly significant setting of the World Heritage Site at Saltaire, West Yorkshire. Shipley College, our client, and their end user partner Saltaire World Heritage Education Association, were allocated grant funding from the government Towns Fund to develop a new building to house the Saltaire Collection - an archive and repository of historically important documents and artefacts - and additional accommodation for Shipley College to support their expanding technology curriculum.
We were initially appointed after an invited design competition in March 2022 to prepare a concept design and RIBA stage 2 feasibility study for a larger site and brief that included a new performance venue for the well-known Caroline Social Club. Our design proposed two pavilion buildings set within a garden landscape and used the lie of the land to minimise the visual impact of making new buildings in the sensitive setting of the World Heritage Site. The strategy borrowed from the existing setting and distinctive Italianate architectural language of Saltaire to create a volumetric approach that respected the urban grid and massing of the neighbourhood while providing a new civic space, improved visitor orientation facilities and well-proportioned functional and accessible building accommodation. This approach was refined at concept stage into a smaller building form housing only the Saltaire Collection and Shipley College, designed as a delicate glulam structure pavilion, civic garden and roof garden with lower ground level classroom accommodation set within a sunken garden landscape.
We have now been appointed to design the scheme from RIBA Stage 3 to completion as a traditional building contract and we are developing three dimensional studies before submitting a planning application in January 2023.