Community Hub, All Saints Church, Truro

Appointed in 2015, Lilly Lewarne Architects have worked closely with All Saints Church, Highertown, to develop their vision into an architectural brief, providing support and expertise through their community engagement processes, developed the architectural design and co-ordinated the entire successful planning process for their proposed community facility. The existing church complex at All Saints impacts a wide range of user groups at a variety of scales. The new community hub will transform the existing premises aligning the varied and sensitive needs of a community with a purpose-built facility offering meeting spaces, offices and storage facilities that will benefit groups and individuals both now and in the future. The scheme has been based on a detailed mapping of the varied and specific needs of the both the church community and the community they serve.

The proposed architecture will be sustainable, utilising the previously developed site area, safeguarding as much of the existing outside green space as possible, replacing poorly performing structures with contemporary construction methods and introducing a variety of sustainable building materials such as a green roof. The building itself being a physical manifestation of the church’s stewardship of creation and the environment through energy usage and the impact their proposals have on the surrounding context.

The scheme seeks to retain the historic fabric of the main worship space (constructed in the 1980’s) as an armature about which the new facility will emerge. The existing piecemeal agglomeration of buildings and link spaces will be replaced with the approved scheme creating a new purpose-built community hub facility. The whole scheme will also incorporate a holistic landscape design seeking to unify the streetscape and improve the visual presence of the church along Tresawls Road. The landscape scheme will also knit the proposed extension into the existing church and the entire site into the adjacent context.