Details
Competition entry for AJ Forgotten Spaces Competition
Location - Soho, London
Value - N/a
Date - 2010
Honorable mention and published on AJ-Online magazine
KSA entered The Forgotten spaces competition and combined our love of cycling with architecture.
The competition's brief was to create a new building within a forgotten part of the city, using the urban fabric as a backdrop to the new design .
Ham yard has undergone several uses from historic market square to its current use as a luxury hotel and restaurant. But in 2010, before the Crown Estates extensive re-development of Soho it was a dis-used old car park and dumping ground for local traders and perfect for this competition.
Soho was also the epicenter of London's bicycle couriers and fixed wheel cycling culture was alive and well in the area well before the current craze. In response KSA designed London's first and only underground velodrome with an urban park on the roof. The design uses the subterranean car park and protruding steel stanchions and builds around their existing form. For natural light, large linear openings are created in the roof which visually connect the velodrome with the urban park.