Carl Turner Architects - Peckham Levels

Carl Turner Architects

• 2017

Peckham Levels offers much needed creative workspace, designed to inspire and support a new community of artists, makers and entrepreneurs, as well as providing benefits to the wider community. All tenants are creatives and independent businesses, mostly drawn from the local area, and selected on their commitment to contributing positively to the community through participation in a structured programme of outreach projects.

Peckham Levels is our second innovative workplace campus, delivered in collaboration with the social enterprise, Makeshift, and designed to support and inspire a new community of artists, makers and entrepreneurs.

Occupying seven of the previously ‘empty levels’ of the existing multi-storey car park the project delivers specialist facilities including creative studios, shared workshops, co-working, kiln rooms, 3D printing, among other uses and will be home to a diverse community of tenants, ranging from individual start-ups to organisations working in arts & culture. Communal areas on levels 05/06 will encourage visitors to mix with artists in a place of interaction and exchange, to build an identity and sense of place. Conceived as a ‘kunsthaus’ the project will act as a social space in the heart of Peckham with free event space, children’s play area, music venue, gallery, bars, restaurants, cafe, yoga studios and even a hair salon.

The commission was won by the practice through an open ideas competition run by Southwark Council in September 2015. The brief from Southwark required entries to demonstrate how the proposals could be designed, built and managed for the lifespan of the project. Our proposal, Peckham Levels offers much needed creative workspace, designed to inspire and support a new community of artists, makers and entrepreneurs, as well as providing benefits to the wider community.