A new community to help the city’s homeless get back on their feet.
Embassy Village was conceived by homeless charity Embassy, and is made possible by a dedicated design team providing their professional services free of charge. It will provide a safe place and private home for residents to transition from life of the streets and integrate back into local communities.
Sector
Residential
Value
Pro Bono Project
Client
Embassy Village
Gallery
The village will contain 40 modular “pod” homes, planned to be built over two phases, plus a village hall and reception pod with green space, allotments and sports facilities. Each resident will have their own private home, enabling them to secure employment, claim benefits and gain the skills to move onto fully independent living. Embassy estimates the average stay will be around six months, with wrap around support provided by their team throughout that time.
Crookes Walker have provided a full range of MEP design services, and will continue to provide client side services as the project gets on site later this year.
As the site was derelict, initial site surveys were key to identifying the existing services and limitations impacting the wider design team’s proposals. Crookes Walker have provided design solutions for the external service routes for pod installations, and determined the servicing strategy within pods and the village hall in line with acoustic limitations, fire safety and energy planning requirements. The lighting is designed to celebrate the village’s location, enhancing the visual impact of the railway arches on the site.
Work is planned to start in site in October 2023. Crookes Walker are extremely proud to be able to support Embassy with this project, which will have a profound impact on the lives of vulvenrable people in Manchester.
“The team at CWC The team at CWC boldly joined the Embassy design team very early on, knowing that the charity had no way to pay for design and consultancy work to let alone the capital funds to build the Embassy Village. But because of CWC and others like them, the team has now got as far as RIBA 4 and the build begins in October 2023. The quality of design work and also the credibility that having CWC and others on the Design team afforded us helped secure a major donor for the capital funds for the build.
I am personally so grateful to the team at CWC for the many hours of work, the willingness to take a big risk to do the right thing and for additional funds raised by the staff and their contacts. It is a pleasure to work with CWC and they are a very encouraging bunch!”
SID WILLIAMS, CO-DIRECTOR & FOUNDER – EMBASSY
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