We are working with Cena, an Approved Housing Body formed to address critical accommodation needs for travellers, focusing on Culturally Appropriate Homes.
We embraced this exciting opportunity to study and respond to the different cultural attitudes that exist in the traveller communities towards space, settlement, modes of living and relationships with the outdoors.
The challenge presented is one of how to capture the essence of a nomadic identity and lifestyle and to translate this into architecture.
By studying and identifying key cultural ideas, we were able to incorporate them into the design. These ideas include a strong connection to the outdoors including celebrating outdoor cooking. Furthermore, we made efforts to understand and capture a feeling of being within an object in the landscape as opposed to being inside a box isolated from your surroundings. This involved exploring opening up rather than walling in, thus evoking the traditions of the horse drawn wagons.
This was all considered while maintaining a coherent form in the established suburban context.
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