Albion Pavilion

The Albion Pavilion is a new community arts centre in Bermondsey, occupying the ground floor of a former Victorian warehouse. The brief asked for a building that could serve the local community as both a gallery and a workshop space — a place where making and showing could happen simultaneously, dissolving the usual hierarchy between artist and audience.

The existing warehouse structure provided the project with its most valuable asset: a series of north-facing rooflights that flood the main gallery with the even, diffuse light prized by artists and curators alike. The intervention is deliberately light: the original brick walls have been cleaned and sealed, the concrete floors ground and polished, and new services installed with great care not to damage the historic fabric.

A flexible partition system allows the 800 sqm ground floor to be configured as a single open hall, a sequence of smaller gallery rooms, or a combination of both. The workshops occupy the ground floor rear, with a glazed screen allowing gallery visitors to observe the making activity within — a gesture that places creative process at the centre of the building's identity.

The project was developed through an eighteen-month community consultation process, with local residents, artists, and young people contributing directly to the brief. The result is a building that feels genuinely owned by its community rather than delivered to it.