The Catford Constitutional Club was a popular local pub until its closure in 2019. Its original core is a Georgian farmhouse built in 1736, the oldest extant building in Catford, with successive mid-19th and 20th century extensions adding to its volume. Due to years of neglect and lack of maintenance, the building fabric and structure deteriorated to the extent that it is unsafe to enter. We were tasked to save the building, by repairing and refurbishing it to bring the building back to life as a pub and community kitchen.
Catford is a town in southeast London undergoing rapid change. The town centre will be regenerated through the Catford Town Centre Framework drawn up in 2020, including the decision to demolish the 1970s Brutalist Milford Towers Estate and Catford Shopping Centre, to be replaced with new public realm and mixed use residential and commercial tower blocks. Hayatsu Architects were appointed by Lewisham Council in 2020 as part of a larger team of consultants to work on the first phase of the redevelopment, consisting of a refurbishment of the locally listed Catford Constitutional Club, complementing two new tower blocks in the adjacent council-owned parking plot. The project is partly funded by Greater London Authority.
Our design approach was to express the process of repair as part of the trace of human intervention embedded in the building fabric. Instead of covering these marks behind plasterboard, stitched brick walls and patchwork stone and plaster repairs are exposed and celebrated.
A new internal timber frame is inserted into the Georgian section, conceived of as permanent scaffolding bracing the existing walls and tying them together. The structure frames a triple height space with gallery access and an interwoven platform lift, acting as a central hall connecting all the existing rooms and making them fully accessible.
New toilets and mechanical plant bring the services up to modern standards. The hall opens onto a new garden on the northern edge of the site, connecting to the future development. The pub operator will run a community kitchen as part of the offer, with a programme of cooking and educational classes, promoting healthy food culture to local businesses and communities.
