Flexible Masterplan
It may be still snowing in Creede, but here at 51% studios we’re working hard at work on the development of the sustainable masterplan for the Upper Rio Grande Event and Recreation Complex [formerly known as, and still encompassing, the Mineral County Fairgrounds] which has been made possible by the El Pomar Grant Award.
Phase 1, which included remediation, relocation of willows and the outdoor arena, is complete and has affored the community of Creede a safe, beautiful and windfree place to rope and ride.
For upcoming events and news, do also take a look at the MCFA’s newly launched website: www.upperriogrande.org
City Year London
Give a year. Change the world.
City Year unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service, giving them skills and opportunities to change the world. Here at 51% studios we are proud to be working closely with City Year to plan and implement their first office and training spaces in London’s Shoreditch.
In a recent article in the Guardian, Sophie Livingstone writes: “Our experience at City Year over the last 20 years is that young people are transformed through both the full time nature of the programme – they spend ten months with us – and because they can, to paraphrase the Gandhi quote used by David Cameron today, ‘lose themselves in service’. They serve every day from 8am–6pm as tutors, mentors and role models in schools, having an impact on childrens’ attendance, behaviour and performance in maths and English, as well as providing them with role models to whom they can aspire.
That double benefit, to both the young people and the communities they work in, has been seized on by Barack Obama, whose endorsement of City Year is our biggest recruiting tool amongst young people in London, and it’s a concept that has huge potential for tackling pressing problems in the UK.”
Recycling Concrete in Dungeness
Planning laws do not allow anything new to be built on the Ness unless on the footprint of a previous structure. At 51% studios we took this one step further and retained the existing concrete floor slab of the building to be removed. The Crosley Building was a large shed used for material testing and was contaminated with lead and asbestos, so there was no otpion to reuse it, but the slab we discovered was just stong enough to act as a foundation raft for our new build, which meant also we did not need to dig foundations.
We did, however, need a service trench to connect the new Crosley building and the former Generator to the Air Source Heat Pump located in the workshop. We were impressed by this home-made scaled-up version of the builders chalk line the concrete cutters used for setting out.
Out & About
