Inefficiencies of the Welfare

Our proposal aims to address the current inefficiencies of the Welfare in a considered, cost effective and impactful manner. What makes our project unique is its focus on the potential of the existing building, allowing us to provide a realistic and modest scheme.
To do this, we will make small but meaningful interventions that directly address the community’s needs and ensure that the building is easy to maintain in the future.

We will retrofit rather than replace and, through doing so, restore key historic features of the building that celebrates the village’s heritage and reinstate a sense of community pride in the architecture.
After recognising that the Miners’ Welfare has undergone several alterations over its lifetime due to the ever-changing needs of its community, our design aimed to facilitate the inevitability of future changes in use by providing an adaptable community space. Alongside the limited budget available, we chose to maximise the potential of existing spaces in a minimal intervention approach.

In order to achieve a considered proposal, we started by finding opportunities in the existing plans, finding ways to maximise space by making the smallest moves that create the biggest impact. By identifying the inefficiencies in the building, we were able to reimagine the Welfare without disturbing much of the historical building.
To attract the local community, we placed an importance on creating spaces that can host a wide range of activities. The current extension is very disconnected from the bar to connect these two spaces we proposed to knock through the two spaces and introduce a new lightweight timber extension that will flood light into this brand-new flexible space.