Inside Out
Thomas Butler

Inside Out

Inside Out is an inclusive dolls' house for all children whatever their needs and abilities. One element is a concrete house with a bonsai tree and herb garden which sits outside. The second, a series of elements that are individual oak rooms, hollowed out in bright colours that can be inserted into the house. It is fun for children and encourages outdoor play and most importantly raises a critical housing issue for families with disabled children.

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Project data

Project Year
2013
Category
Exhibitions

Inside Out House

Inside Out House

The Inside Out House is an inclusive doll’s house for all children whatever their needs and abilities. The house is conceived as two distinct elements. The first element is a concrete house with bonsai tree and moss garden/herb garden which sits outside. The second series of elements are individual oak rooms, hollowed out in bright colours that can be inserted into the concrete house. When it is raining outside, children can play inside building different compositions with the oak rooms. On a sunny day the children can play outside, inserting and balancing the oak rooms on/in the concrete house located in the garden.


Our architecture is well made, robust, tactile, colourful and is made of noble materials that will get better with age, our doll’s house is no exception. This is not a toy to be forgotten, it has a permanent place outside. A sculptural form that lives with the family throughout the year and offers different ways of playing, dependent on the changing seasons. Bringing up a disabled child can make it harder for parents to work, many disabled children live in low-­‐income families. These families require a garden for a number of reasons including difficulty in getting to local parks, issues of safety and supervision when playing outside and the requirement for a peaceful place for the whole family to rest. In recognition of this, social landlords will allocate such families houses with gardens due to their greater need when available.


The current under provision of housing has created a crisis of availability due to increased ‘affordable’ rents, benefit cuts, the so called ‘bedroom tax’ and stagnating wages. All of these issues combined leads to more families with disabled children living in unsuitable accommodation.


Coffey Architects work is defined through an approach based around empathy and context, understanding the people we design for and understanding the place that we seek to build in. A connection to the ‘Outside’ is fundamental to our process, the ‘Outside’ to us is not just our garden, but our street, our city, our planet and beyond and how we all live together. We aim to create a delightful architecture that connects people to the places that they live, physically, climatically and psychologically.


The Inside Out House is a concentration of these thoughts, it is fun for children, a toy that encourages outdoor play and most importantly raises a critical housing issue for families with disabled children.


Brand description
We are in one of the most exciting phases of our development. Over the last 15 years we have built a reputation in the property industry as one of the most exciting, innovative and forward thinking developers working in the UK. We see huge opportunity ahead of us. Our time is now. To us, property is as much a commodity as a catalyst for social and economic change. Our skills and experience allow us to create and develop the kind of places and communities that have a vibrant economic and social future. They allow us to turn around lost pockets of London and the south-east, and put broken places back together again. To create jobs and homes and a sense of well-being. To generate value in unlikely neighbourhoods. Value not just for us, but lasting value for local economies, communities and businesses. We’d call ourselves agents of socio-economic change. The Public Private Partnership development model that we created early in Cathedral’s life, building 6000 student bedrooms in partnership with higher educational establishments across London and the South East, that we nurtured through our partnership with the London Fire Brigade at Canary South, has now matured and could not be more relevant to today’s economic reality. How we can pay for public buildings in this time of economic difficulty and public spending austerity programmes is a problem facing local authorities and other public service bodies right across the country. Our PPP development model, perfectly illustrated by our scheme in Clapham – a partnership with Lambeth Council that’s provided them with a new library and leisure centre at no cost to the public purse – could not be more relevant. It provides a way forward for local authorities to realise value from public landholding that is lasting, rather than straightforward disposal. It means a whole new way of thinking about partnership between private and public sectors, requires creativity and commitment to public service ideals and at its heart it’s about great community placemaking. We have the experience, the resources and the team to grasp this opportunity, build on the very successful £500m PPP pipeline we are already developing and make a real contribution to how people live, work and play. Through strategic partnership with a number of joint venture partners including Development Securities PLC, United House and McLaren we have been able to build a £3.5bn GDV pipeline of property development projects across our entire portfolio and create significant uplift in land value by employing great design, understanding what makes great places and delivering them by innovative and thoughtful use of the planning system. We are ambitious for the places we create. We’re building a business on the skills and experience we have in placemaking and partnership – with communities, local authorities, funding partners and a host of outstanding architects, artists, planners, poets, psychologists, teachers, economists, horticulturalists, food scientists, public health professionals and educationalists. We are winning awards – 15 major international awards for design and development in the last two years. More importantly, our model of collaborative public-private partnership and innovative, mixed-use, people-centred development is making a real difference to places and people in London and the South East. We are creating economic and social change. Our secured projects will generate around £10bn of socio-economic benefit to the communities that surround our sites over the next 10 years. Hotels We hold a number of hotels in our portfolio including the Grade II listed Jacobean-style mansion Eynsham Hall in Oxfordshire and Grade I listed Sundridge Park Manor in Bromley which was designed by British Architect John Nash in 1797. Jeremy Wall, our Head of Hotels manages the hotel portfolio which we are currently expanding to include more properties throughout London the south east. Cathedral Healthcare Over the past 13 years we have delivered extensively in primary healthcare, providing high quality health facilities and medical centres throughout the UK. Several our of schemes have been awarded Europe-wide accolades for design and delivery. Each of our healthcare projects is tailored to the needs of our client and we are very proud of the partnerships we have built with with individual GP practices and PCTs.
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