My final project for the BA Interior & Spatial Design at University of the Arts London explored how space can be reimagined through materiality, culture and the existing architectural framework. Responding to ongoing conversations surrounding environmental and social sustainability, I transformed Peckham Safe House 2, an abandoned Victorian building in Peckham, London, into a public exhibition space dedicated to Latin American and Caribbean designers. Inspired by fragments of indigenous cave systems, sculptural interventions form thresholds throughout the existing architecture, creating spaces in which the exhibition and building become intrinsically connected.

Throughout this project I was interested in the original street design of the space, where 3 Victorian houses once stood parallel to each other, before one was demolished. My dissertation, graded a First in, focused on post-colonialism and architectural design. Honouring my project to my heritage tracing back to slaves from both South America and the Caribbean, as well as British great-grandfathers who owned slaves, I had an uncomfortable conversation about being in a juxtaposition between the two. 

Adding to the original Safe house 2, this project looks to reclaim the original street design, with 3 Victorian terraces thus, re-introducing a third Safe house to the site, imitating the original Victorian façade. To honour Vernacular spatial systems in the Caribbean and South America, Safe house 2 and Safe house 3 uses Bamboo and brick over the top of the Victorian brick to reestablish a sense of de-colonialism, interrupting the existing architectural fabric.