Adam Khan Architects

New Horizon Youth Centre

photos: Adam Khan Architects

The refurbishment and extension of an established day centre for young homeless people.
Centred on the concept of Home, and how to invest an institutional building with the nurturing qualities, the flexibility, ease and generosity of a welcoming, settled house.

The user can make themselves at home - opportunities for seating and working are quietly provided with varying degrees of privacy and sociability - window nooks, wide stairs, consulting desks that allow side-by-side working. Solid pieces of infrastructure - the concrete counter, the long oak table, banquette seating, are highly durable, but allow an active creative inhabitation.
This culminates in the Barn, a space of emotional intensity. A lofty wooden room of softly folding roof planes, it is an enveloping home for the imagination, play and daydreaming.