Architectural mentor 8: STORE

STORE is a social enterprise that runs summer schools and after-school clubs with schoolchildren on building, to support routes into the creative industries for young people from underrepresented backgrounds.

Describe who you are
We are an association of artists, designers and architects based in London and Rotterdam, all working to help support routes into the creative industries for young people from underrepresented backgrounds. We run public programmes, including an after-school club, where state school pupils can take part in workshops with leading practitioners, and can experience the whole cycle of design, from making to retail – often in the form of a timber pavilion.

This summer our students created a log cabin pavilion – STORE STORE Pavilion – in Granary Square at King’s Cross to host London Design Festival workshops. And students can even earn royalties on their products sold in STORE STORE’s King’s Cross shop.

What is the aim of your organisation?
STORE’s after-school clubs aim to give young people the chance to see their ideas go from imagination to reality, from initial conception through to design, prototype, manufacture and retail. The team has run workshops in glass-blowing, 3D-printing, mycelium, milk plastic and bioplastics, pattern-cutting and ceramics. These clubs help to supplement students’ portfolios for university applications, supporting STORE’s mission to widen access to the creative industries. In the last two years, more than 500 secondary state school students have joined STORE’s London workshop programmes.

This summer's pavilion at Granary Square (photo: Kaye Song)

Are you volunteer-led?
No. We pay everyone London Living Wage. But for us, who run it, a lot of it is volunteering by ourselves. We’re all part-timers so we do this alongside our other jobs. This allows us to involve our own networks, collaborators and practices.

If you are paying something for their services, there is an expectation, I guess. We’re tough on whoever is coming in to run a workshop that they do the best workshop they’ve ever done!

We have two project managers who work in our space in Coal Drop’s Yard – which has more of a design focus – and then two project managers who work in our Hackney space which is the architecture programme.

And then there are our young trustees, of which there are around five. They are taking on more responsibility week by week. They organise our graduate piece, essentially putting together a report on how well STORE is doing at teaching and mentoring young people at the end of the year, while working to support graduating students. They help facilitate a graduate network for our students so there is more of a tie between school and university.

Do you partner with any other organisations?
Loads. Structural engineers, other architects and real-life clients.

This summer’s STORE STORE Pavilion is the first step towards a larger construction project, STORE Build, which aims to transform an underutilised garage site into community education and workshop space in London. The focus is on participatory design and local engagement: the project is to be designed and delivered with groups of London state secondary school students, helping them gain valuable skills and experience to access higher education and careers in design and architecture.

The construction site will become a living classroom, raising awareness of green building technologies and the circular economy, and feeding directly into the curriculum. We hope lessons in design, geography, art and physics will come to life in hands-on demonstrations of making and planning. We’re just working out what this next six months will look like with our planning application, and if successful then how we will translate this into after-school clubs.

STORE summer school (photo: STORE)

What kind of programmes do you run?
Each STORE summer school focuses on a different aspect of a pavilion’s construction: the STORE STORE Pavilion. This year we had: Cabin Fever; Raising Roofs; and Open Doors. Cabin Fever was guided by architect Flimsy Works and focused on the design and build of an urban log cabin to form the walls of the STORE STORE Pavilion. Students learn how to work with timber by hand and with machines.

For Raising Roofs, we worked with engineer Manja Van de Worp, architect Mat Barnes of CAN and Matt Gabe. Students designed and built a roof that could be disassembled and reassembled. For Open Doors, students were guided by Theo Tan and Matt Lucraft to build two thresholds.

What’s amazing about our summer school projects is the levels of co-design within them. Collaboration comes together in the most innovative ways. We break down the build process so the students can be involved as much as possible throughout. It’s not just nailing a shingle onto a ready-made roof.

The way we work is with groups, generally. We’re keen on the teach-to-teach model. We teach some students how to do something and then encourage them to teach others as that’s a great way to learn.

What has been your landmark achievement?
When we bring members of the public in to see the projects, the students are super proud to see how people interact with what they do!

Organic connections are also fostered through our workshops. What was lovely at our STORE STORE Pavilion build is that everyone made friends. At the start of the week, our students don’t know each other, and by the end they are chatting away, enjoying the process and taking on more and more responsibility for making it work.

Finally seeing how all our students’ independent ideas come together in a building is fantastic. Our STORE STORE Pavilion this summer was truly a test of how much agency you can give young people in the design and build process without compromising on safety.

STORE STORE Pavilion 2024 (photo: Kaye Song)

What role are you filling that other outreach programmes aren’t?
The client nature of what we do is unique. There are loads of similar organisations running builds but what we’re doing here is ambitious. In fact, it’s a bit of nightmare! But we feel the applied nature of it – teaching students how to use tools, to understand materiality, to understand structure – and then testing their skills in real-life scenarios to see whether they work are really successful aspects.

Our young trustees run the graduate piece at the end of every year now. They’re helping us learn more about our programmes and how we can evolve them.

What single biggest change would you like to see in the architecture industry?
We would like to see community projects working more in the way we run our build summer schools. We feel it’s a scalable model for lots of different contexts and situations. We see projects taking longer but in a positive way, meaning there is more meaningful engagement. More time is needed to make a difference.

What advice do you give your students who are thinking of pursuing a career in the built environment?
To value process as much as possible. At the end of the day, that’s 90 per cent of a project. Also to collaborate with others. The importance of collaboration is that it provides insights into other people’s skills. Don’t be too shy to ask others for help and, finally, have the confidence to let other people share your ideas and trust that that will be reciprocated. You’re not always in competition!

Questions answered by Kevin Green, Joe Tompkins, Kaye Song and Tasmin Tabassum