“Can you reinvent an existing community asset without compromising its best attributes?” This was the question at the heart of a London workspace renovation by [Y/N] Studio, a local firm founded on the belief that the answers to the complex problems facing cities today should be as simple as yes or no (hence, its name). Dubbed Bradbury Works, the office and retail hub in the borough of Hackney is a paragon of the studio’s less-is-more design philosophy.

Over two decades ago, the site, a former parking lot now known as Gillett Square, underwent a drastic transformation courtesy of another London firm, Hawkins\Brown. In 1998, they converted the Bradbury Street terrace into workspaces, opened market kiosks a year later and completed the Dalston Culture House in 2004, rounding out the public space. Hemmed in by abandoned warehouses and Victorian townhouses, the square has become a vital hub in a previously underserved area of the city, hosting events that showcase the diversity and creativity of its community. In 2017, Hackney Co-operative Developments (HCD) received over £1 million to improve the existing workspaces and add capacity for emerging businesses — and tapped [Y/N] Studio to lead the project.

With a few simple design moves, the firm has deftly married the old with the new. After temporarily relocating existing tenants to nearby HCD-operated properties, they removed the building’s roof and walkways to make way for 500 square metres of studio spaces, enclosed in a lightweight structural steel frame supported by the original masonry party walls. A new pitched roof prevents loss of light into the square — and ensures the extension is mostly hidden from Bradbury Street, which falls within a conservation area.

Referencing the blue-green cladding of the nearby Culture House, the whole volume was then clad in a polycarbonate façade. Slightly translucent, it allows natural light to flood the workspaces and terrace behind it while also allowing the original architecture to shine through, rendering it visible from the square. During the day, the façade’s luminescent finish reflects its surroundings; at night, it glows from within.

Ten mini retail units at ground level, each measuring just 10 square metres, face the square, activating the urban realm. These stalls offer below-market rent for a variety of local businesses — which run the gamut from a tailor to a jerk chicken stand and a coffee shop featuring beans from the owner’s family farm in Ethiopia. When closed, profiled metal gates deploy for security and privacy, opening during the day to reveal fully glazed store frontages.

[Y/N] consulted with many existing tenants — including the internationally recognized NTS Radio, who originally set up shop in a Gillett Square retail pod in 2011, and The Mentoring Lab, who provide 1:1 and group mentoring for young people from Global Majority backgrounds — to better understand how to improve the original building while retaining its character. But beyond client satisfaction, the firm had a vested interest in the project’s success: Bradbury Works is also home to its own office.

On the second floor, 600 square metres of existing affordable workspaces (ranging in size from 10 to 36 square metres) have been renovated, retaining and refurbishing the original masonry structure while upgrading the building to current accessibility and sustainability standards. [Y/N] also revamped the circulation spaces with new wayfinding, using the colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black — known as the CMYK printing colour range — as a metaphor for Bradbury Works’ ambition “to become a melting pot of cultures and disciplines which are greater than the sum of their parts.”

The structure, too, plays a central role in the interior. “The industrial style steelwork of the first and second floors was exposed, which required thoughtful consideration of the elements, connections and interfaces with the secondary and existing structure in order to develop an elegant structural solution,” explains Kath Hannigan, a structural engineer at Engenuiti who worked with [Y/N] to develop the design.

Sandwiched between the ground floor retail units and the two-storey addition above, the former circulation decks have been converted into terraces and breakout spaces facing the square. Outfitted with picnic tables and ample greenery, they promote interaction between tenants in all seasons, and bring the building’s social ethos to the forefront.

Additional workspaces — larger, open-concept spaces with private mezzanines — are concealed in the third-floor extension. In contrast to the colourful circulation route, the designers opted for a muted palette here, allowing tenants to customize each unit to their preferences. A checkerboard arrangement of operable skylights filters light into the upper floors and allows for natural ventilation during the summer. Alongside traditional desk setups, the space is rented to charities and businesses focused on wellness, who offer on-site yoga and art therapy workshops. While much of the space is for private use, a flexible meeting and event space can be rented out either by tenants or the general public.

For its thoughtful design — and its community-centred ethos — Bradbury Works recently won a RIBA London award. “What the jury liked about this project was both its modesty and its ambition,” wrote the RIBA Journal. “Using simple materials and methods, an existing building has been judiciously expanded and improved. But the use of the polycarbonate skin – a relatively basic building material – as a way of unifying what could have been an awkward extension, lifts the whole project.”