For Blackhorse Sideshow we collaborated with Blackhorse Workshop, one of London’s most exciting makerspaces. Blackhorse Workshop were invited by U+I to bring one of their future development sites to life for the duration of a year as a space for celebration, encounters and workshops. The project gave Blackhorse Workshop a shop front in the community and allowed U+I to build community support for their development and better tailor their housing offer to local needs through community engagement. 

Our design was rooted the industrial past of the site - formerly home to the Associated Equipment Company who developed the prototype for London’s iconic Routemaster bus. Sideshow was conceived as a series of ‘theatre flats’ reminiscent of the industrial skyline of Walthamstow. This stage set became a playful showcase for the work of Blackhorse Workshop makers, run educational workshops and hold events. At the rear of the site, a decommissioned mobile gaming hub was converted into a café.

The Sideshow’s main attraction was a giant marble run, designed by our friend, artist and maker Toby Poolman, which wove through the structure. By integrating bus components into its mechanism, industries of the past and present were combined into a joyful large-scale toy. Visitors were invited to make the marbles run by operating a hand-turned Archimedes screw, levers and wheels that powered the installation. The sound of the metal ball bearings as they rushed down the pipes and chutes created a unique soundtrack evoking a busy industrial workshop.

As a temporary installation, we wanted the structure to touch the earth lightly. Materials were sourced from Blackhorse Workshop – painting the flats in fire retardant paint in bright colours allowed us to use whatever leftover materials were to hand. The construction itself was a close collaboration between us and the Blackhorse Workshop makers. We worked with structural engineers Graphic Structures to design a framed structure that was weighed down by paving slabs rather than invasive and carbon-intensive foundations. Once the show was over, the installation disappeared without trace, its component parts dismantled and re-used.

Client testimonial: ‘'Working with Citizen Architects on the Blackhorse Sideshow project was a fantastic experience.  The project was very ambitious in scope and budget, and yet they were undeterred by this, delivering a fantastic and functional design, and supporting us thoroughly through every step of the build process.  They went above and beyond what was asked of them and were always professional, and happy to offer advice or recommend solutions to issues that came up.  We would be very happy to work with them on another project in the future and thoroughly recommend them as a practice.'

 - Harriet Warden, Creative Director Blackhorse Workshop

Talk about the clients and collaborators and what they got out of it in the first paragraph.

We don’t need to do these highlights on the website, but I am trying to refer the text for each project back to our values.