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Second Skin: Longlisted entries

Words:
Michèle Woodger

Four projects finished longlisted in RIBA Journal/Norbord Europe's Second Skin competition to repurpose an existing building

OSB is specified for the interiors of each heritage craft workshop, for its resilience, appearance and acoustic properties.
OSB is specified for the interiors of each heritage craft workshop, for its resilience, appearance and acoustic properties.

Kreft – Megan Coe

Coe’s community project, a series of five craft workshops, embraces the industrial heritage of a historic Cornish foundry. A series of OSB insertions with a mezzanine level are arranged around existing features and openings. The design maintains the language of a derelict mill, making the most of its hybrid spaces and crumbling stonework. Kucharek praised Coe’s proposal to create a community space. The Kreft scheme (‘craftsperson’ in Cornish) would encourage locals to learn trades listed on the Heritage Crafts Association’s ‘at risk’ register. All the judges praised the high quality of Coe’s visuals which ‘communicated the sense of an idea with immediacy’.


 

Visualisation of a modular OSB workstation making use of discarded department store fixtures and fittings.
Visualisation of a modular OSB workstation making use of discarded department store fixtures and fittings.

Fixed Fashion – Matthew Cooper and Sarah Rogers

Cooper and Rogers’ proposal, to insert standardised OSB workstations into an empty department store, aims to provide a new retail model for Northampton’s fashion industry. Designer-makers create and sell sustainable goods, educating shoppers about a circular fashion economy. Each offsite manufactured, flat-packed workstation includes a raised deck (accommodating services), bench, shelving, flip-out ironing board, lockable store and optional fitting area. The judges praised both the interesting programme, the modularisation of units, and the realistic use of SterlingOSB Zero. Sian commented: ‘The theme [of the declining high street] is highly topical and the project merits its place on the long-list.’


 

An OSB structure of peripheral rooms cocoons Kirkton Steadings’ central common space.
An OSB structure of peripheral rooms cocoons Kirkton Steadings’ central common space.

Inhabited Walls: Reimagining Kirkton Steadings – Reuben Roberts and Lucy Maughan

The project repurposes a barn on Scotland’s Craignish Peninsula to accommodate four winter-season forestry workers. OSB sheets are used to repair the roof and partly dilapidated stone walls, as well as to create an internal structure whereby rooms of different programmes are placed along the periphery, ‘cocooning’ a central, communal living space in warmth and comfort. The conversion does not considerably alter the building’s exterior, retaining its visual harmony with nearby 12th-century chapel ruins. Reed commended the scheme’s respect for context, modest ambitions and ‘humanity’, while Kucharek and Proctor praised the ‘loose’ drawing style and ‘strong graphics’ of the visuals.


 

An OSB cassette construction is inserted into the church’s side aisles, leaving the central nave for continued worship.
An OSB cassette construction is inserted into the church’s side aisles, leaving the central nave for continued worship.

Sancta Civitas – Charles Wellingham, Fergus Connolly and Joe Franklin

This polemical entry divided the judges with its programme, but wowed them with its detailed renderings. To subsidise a working C of E church in Bristol, revenue-generating Airbnb accommodation (in the form of a self-supporting OSB unit) is inserted within the side aisles, leaving the central nave open for continued worship. The independent OSB structure enters into considered dialogue with interior features  – church organ, reredos etc. Reed praised the ‘interesting proposition’, but Seilern was unconvinced, finding it ‘problematic and disrespectful’. Although the thought of tourists sipping cappuccinos during mass was tasteless to some, this ‘Marmite’ entry was nonetheless a convincing runner-up.