Architect and Director
The Social Bite Village, set up in 2018 and run in partnership with Cyrenians, is an innovative, highly supported community which helps to offer the right support, living environment, and training opportunities for people affected by homelessness, helping them towards an independent life. The Village is made up of ‘Nest Houses’ and a central Community Hub, where residents can cook, gather and relax together.
Social Bite needed to relocate the Village due to expiry of their lease and asked us to assist them in the design of the new Village, which is made up of a new Community Hub, six new re-designed nest houses, and nine relocated nest houses. After working through appraisals for different sites, we developed a layout for the new coastal Granton site which focuses on providing great views of the Forth, a sense of enclosure, and access to nature for the residents, supplemented by generous planting and landscape spaces designed by SLR.
Nest houses and the community hub are of modular construction, made off-site by Ecosystems Technologies, with a focus on energy efficiency and usage of environmentally friendly materials such as Scottish grown CLT, local timber cladding, cellulose and wood fibre insulation. We aided the project team by coordinating the technical approval of the Hub, providing advice on regulatory compliance and specification.
We are proud to have been able to help Social Bite deliver this important facility to help support people experiencing homelessness.
