Redcliffe food and wellbing community centre

The project provides a verdant urban corridor with a food and wellbeing community centre which injects vitality to Redcliffe community, visually, pragmatically, spiritually. The project emerged from the issue of urban memory. In Bristol, the Colston statue, a monument to an individual personally responsible for the 17th Century enslavement of 84,000 Africans, and long-since a symbol of division in the city, became a focus for this outpouring. The project locates at Colston Parade.

As symbols of historic wealth and exploitation, they create an incongruous boundary to a housing estate blighted by social isolation, material deprivation, and inequitable access to education, employment, and community facilities. As a large and elongated structure, it physically separates the picturesque churchyard and relaxed atmosphere from the north.

The project aims to dissolve this barrier, allowing sightlines and movement to go through and to introduce greenery atmosphere into the community. The existing site is dissolved through landscape, floor level and vertical level. By opening up the walls of the original building and providing access to the interior and by renovating the original bay window, partially retaining the original chimney, retaining the brick walls and the floor structure, a critical inheritance and sustainable development of the original historic building is achieved. As a key focal point, in the urban scale, the project will connect Somerset Square in the deep southeastern community with the linear garden in the northwest, leading towards Queen Square on the opposite side of the river. Through this diagonal axis, a vibrant landscape and informal meandering route will be created, connecting the community with the urban landscape, Redcliffe Parade, the harbor, and the downtown area. The isolated Redcliffe community is integrated into the urban fabric.

This project aims to improve the community environment, reduce food burden, encourage communication, and build a community sense and enjoyable atmosphere. The community center serves as a central element, focusing on indoor and outdoor food growing. With cultivation teaching, growing, communal cooking, communal dining as a main thread, it develops a series of open and communicative spaces that blend harmoniously with the picturesque context, promoting interaction and communication while offering a pleasant environment.