Cockpit Arts

This transformative project for social enterprise Cockpit Arts saw the transformation of a 1960s former council office building for the benefit its makers and the local community.

The glass front doors of Cockpit

Key information

Architect

Cooke Fawcett

Client

Cockpit Arts

Value

£1.67M

Year of Completion

2023

Challenge

The aim of this project was to make the organisation's site in Deptford more publicly accessible and help Cockpit in its mission to support makers and artists.

A new public entrance was created, leading into a redeveloped ground floor area creating a new foyer and café, which also serve as an events and informal gallery space. There is also a new education space that can be divided into two for a range of workshops and classes. The project also saw the creation of three new studios, a leather workshop and a business incubator were added. 

A standalone building was constructed in the rear yard to house two large new workshops. These spaces were specifically intended for the creation of large pieces, such as sculptures and furniture.

With the charity as the client, the design team kept a keen focus on delivering the best improvement to the utility of the building possible while working within the relatively constrained funding available for the redevelopment. Existing elements were retained in many cases, while some were upgraded where the impact would be greatest.

Accessible acoustics

We introduced acoustic absorption into the public-facing spaces in order to control noise levels during times of high occupation, and to aid speech intelligibility in the education space. As with all interventions in the project, this design was kept as lean as possible, with the treatment focussed on the most efficient areas.

The sound insulation of key elements - such as the moveable partition which can be deployed to subdivide the education space - was similarly optimised to provide high performance in the areas it would have the most impact.

Another key area of work for the acoustics team was to ensure that the planning information would protect the centre from noise complaints from future nearby residential developments. The noise impact assessment demonstrated that the noise of the activity of the studios, which can include chainsaws being used in external spaces, was unlikely to increase significantly as a result of the redevelopment, and it will therefore be the responsibility of future developments to adequately protect their residents from this existing source of noise.