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Samovar Space

Samovar Space, is the first of four public spaces conceived and designed by young people involved in the Apprenticeship in City Design. It was officially opened on Saturday 22nd of October 2022. The scheme, located at the top of world-famous Olympic Way, in Wembley Park, London transforms a small site previously used for car parking. The project is the result of 26 months of collaboration with the five apprentices aged 16-24.

Themes: Engagement, Design

 

Project team: Julia King (at LSE Cities) in partnership with Flanagan and Lawrence; and funded by Quintain

Credit: Chris Winter

Delivered in partnership with and funded by Quintain, the developer behind Wembley Park, the space is expressly designed by and for young people in recognition of the value of their role in inclusive urban design.​

The apprentices’ overarching intention was to create a place for young people to ‘just be’, a place to ‘hang out’ without needing to spend any money. They identified three themes, providing a design intention without creating strict definitions or rules for the project:
 

COLLABORATE: a place to see and be seen
CALM: a place to chill out and do nothing
CONSUME: a place to snack and chat

 

The final designs were developed in collaboration with architects Flanagan Lawrence who worked with the apprentices through an iterative process to help translate their initial conceptual ideas into realisable spatial solutions. The end result is a brightly coloured space with exposed and covered areas for seating, AstroTurf, and a commissioned floor mural. The space hosts a purpose-built Soundshell, designed by Flanagan Lawrence, that will play host to events for young people throughout the year.

As part of the naming process, the apprentices drew on the core aim of the project: a place for people to come together and relax, free from judgement. Early design inspiration had been the collective practice of drinking tea from a Samovar. Originating in Eastern Europe the samovar is widely used throughout South-Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Middle East, Azerbaijan and is also known in some parts of Central Europe. The Apprentices could see the name working, as they imagined telling a friend “Let’s meet at the Samovar Space”.

 

Whilst Samovar Space is a meantime space the process of working with young people is being carried forward to four other permanent spaces at Wembley Park by Quintain. Samovar Space itself will also live on in the way it informs the future design of the spaces when its current location is developed as part of the consented Wembley Park masterplan.

 

To document the process of the development of Samovar Space Julia King at LSE, who led the apprenticeship programme, commissioned a graphic narrative Making Brent with a text written by Marianna Janowicz and the illustrations by Sabba Khan. The graphic narrative draws on multiple conversations with the group of apprentices involved in the design of Samovar Space.

"It is a sad fact that young people's needs are often overlooked when it comes to the built environment. With Samovar Space, we wanted to give this demographic a place to hang out and so we set the LSE apprentices the task of designing something they felt was fitting."
Julian Tollast, Head of Masterplanning and Design at Quintain

Our outputs

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Making Brent Graphic Novel

 

2022

 

A graphic narrative to document the process of the development of Samovar Space commissioned by Julia King with a text written by Marianna Janowicz and the illustrations by Sabba Khan. Making Brent draws on multiple conversations with the group of apprentices involved in the design of Samovar Space.

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