![midas civil 2015 midas civil 2015](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S2HGwbeLKU8/WeA0FUp1amI/AAAAAAAARsQ/Fe7hd5XT_hEGdesnMFaA7HL0mTVkLOzBACLcBGAs/s1600/CIVIL%2B%281%29.png)
The interior fit-out of the educational Creator Space was won by Pearce+Fægen, a young collective of architect-makers and engineers who extended their involvement to Year 8 students from local schools, bringing them into the design process assisted by environmental psychologist Helen King. Invisible Studio led the initial design process until Stage 3, after which Ellis Williams Architects took it to completion. The successful realisation of these spaces involved a wide range of individuals and groups with a spectrum of expertise. On the ground floor, the two arms of the building open out to accommodate a restaurant, café and shop, creating a shared public space with sheltered seating in what would otherwise be a very windy and exposed coastal condition. On this level, passers-by can watch and engage with makers occupying a range of workshop spaces. This programme is not constrained to the site but extends outwards to the town, connecting physically to the many pathways permeating Watchet via an external walkway on the first floor linked directly to the town’s coastal path. This is expressed predominantly through a culturally diverse brief, enabling the overlap of a range of interrelated activities, featuring two art galleries, 11 artist studios, a geology workshop, a restaurant and educational spaces. Given the site’s location on the edge of an abandoned boatyard annexed from the town, it manages to achieve a strong sense of connectivity.
![midas civil 2015 midas civil 2015](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50900773407_0150373ed2_c.jpg)
The input of young people was particularly key as Watchet had the lowest social mobility in the UK at the time – a direct consequence of lack of opportunity and aspiration compounded by a low cultural offering.
#Midas civil 2015 series#
Working in collaboration with Invisible Studio, the collective held a series of community conversations over a two-month period with a wide range of stakeholders, from the Watchet Conservation Society and Harbour advisory groups to local youth clubs and schools. It was this context that spurred the formation of the Onion Collective social enterprise in 2011 – a local all-female-led, not-for-profit social enterprise – and which catalysed the search for an identity in a town that was fast at risk of having a false narrative forced upon it. This, coupled with its peripheral position as a remote seaside town, puts it in a fragile state of being sidelined and forgotten by mainland conversation. Like many seaside towns along the west coast, Watchet is characterised by its disparate architecture an eclectic mix of ramshackle cottages gradually becoming more industrial as you move towards the coast.