The Production Park in Purfleet is the UK’s first-ever national centre of excellence for technical skills, crafts and artistic production. Uniquely, the focus of the park will be on cultural production and the importance of the ‘behind the scenes’ work necessary to create music, craft and art. The high-quality studios will stand alongside the Royal Opera House’s new set and scenery workshops, the National Skills Academy for Creative & Cultural Skills and the restored Grade II listed farm buildings.

The Architects HAT have worked closely with Acme Studios who will operate the building, to produce a design that meets the needs of artists across the spectrum of artistic practice, and will house studios from 15m2 to 150m2 spaces for large-scale projects. The low-cost, robust quality of the building is essential to both its business plan – keeping rents down for the artists, and expressing the primacy of the work contained within. Clad in profiled metal sheet and common bricks, the design is unashamedly functional – a container for, not a representation of, creative work.

This presented a number of challenges including a need to think outside the box when dealing with the buildings overall pattern of energy use, as it didn’t fit neatly within the constraints of Part L. As Approved Inspectors we were able to adopt a back to basics strategy and discuss a range of options with the Architects and engineers that satisfied the requirements of the regulations without impinging on the design philosophy.

Works commenced in October 2012