Enhancing the social and cultural values of craft by creating a physical platform to empower UK craftspeople and propose an original architectural language based on reinterpreted crafts.

This project aims to support the heritage, making, skills and beauty of handcrafts in the UK. It is interested in domestic and public environments and seeks to care for craftspeople, protect cultural heritage and diversify the spaces people inhabit.

The project addresses the social life and work of craftspeople. The architecture creates communities that revive skills and businesses with access to knowledge, tools and objects. The project also explores how studio crafts can be translated into the building fabric.

'Burslem Craftworks' aims to care for the craftspeople of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, responding to the rich history of the Potteries. Retrofit structures extend the abandoned Royal Pottery Works to save it, while reserving the site for the craftspeople and their ways of making.

Within the advancing age of the online environment and social media, the project seeks to understand how architecture can support the livelihood of manual craftspeople, to benefit both the maker and wider society. A selection of accommodation types, workshops, co-working spaces, seminar spaces and postage services care for the complex needs of craftspeople in today’s digital age.