Sill to Sill, Hackney City Farm
Competition winning entry for Hackney City farm. The brief was turn the area at the entrance to the farm into a new shop that became the face of the farm. It was to provide as place where they could sell farm produce and incorporate a new central notice board for the farm.
Hackney City Farm promotes the use of recycled and locally sourced materials. ‘Sill to sill’ takes on this challenges and looks at the local neighbourhood as a rich palette of potential materials. We looked at Hackney’s traditional terraced housing, its recent history of gentrification and its green ethos in order to design a shop front that creates a link between the city farm
and the homes of it’s community.
I worked with Lucy Paton, Benedetta Rogers and Sigrid Bylander.
“There is an estimated 600 acres (400 football pitches) of window sill growing space in the UK”.
‘Sill to Sill’ aims to encourage the local community to use window sills to grow food and plants. The design of the shop links the farm to the
home. Through the sash window, the visitor is inspired by an intriguing but familiar display of plants. To buy from the window sill, take home and grow on the window sill.
The front of the shop is animated through the re-use of Hackney’s salvaged sash windows. Each window performs a different function: bench, counter, notice board, shelf, internal and external display space. The roof light bring extra light to the interior and the roof lantern creates a beacon for the shop.
This drawings shows the assembly sequence. The scaffolding boards are threaded onto the up turned acrow props to build up the wall. As the wall grows the different elements are inserted (different variations of the sash window frames and vegetable storage boxes) When the wall has reached full height the acrow props are tightened to compress the wall.
Materials used: Painted scaffolding boards, Salvaged sash windows, acrow props, corrugated iron, plywood and concrete.
