Tea Time
O'DonnellBrown
Tea Time is a solution addressing social isolation and the monotony of work without colleagues and the happenchance conversations that occur in the typical office environment. It takes as its starting point the UK’s existing and often constrained housing stock, imagining how these building types could be improved by a simple, sensitive and sustainable addition. Using the example of a Glasgow tenement block, the project envisages how occupants including a young professional in a ground floor flat, a couple in a top floor flat and a family on the first floor could relieve spatial pressure in their own homes through collectively building add-on space suitable for work, retreat, social interaction or simply to enjoy a change of scene at tea time.
Providing an auxiliary hearth-focused space at each level, the kit of parts tower is tied together by a shared chimney symbolic of warmth and togetherness. The tower is self-sustaining and generates energy not only for itself but for its community via fuel cell technology, powered by hydrogen gas extracted from abundant Glasgow rain. The steam from energy generation and the boiling of kettles within the towers would rise up over the city, visually representing people coming together.
Team:
O’DonnellBrown
Jennifer O’Donnell, Michael Dougall
Dress for the Weather
Matt McKenna, Andy Campbell
Will Knight
WSP
Derek Main