Sill to Sill Farm Shop

The Sill to Sill design was the winning entry for an Architecture Competition held by Hackney City Farm, an environmental charity based in East London. 

The design seeks out and reuses discarded timber sash windows, relocating them playfully across the facade of the new shop. These windows, cut from their original homes, are given a new lease of life as bench, counter, roof light, notice board or shelf, proudly displaying plants and herbs on their colourful sills and flooding the interior space with light.

Continuing the recycle and reuse ethos; the walls around the windows are constructed from old scaffolding boards. The horizontal lines of the boards, laid one on top of the other, compliment the rigid geometry of the surrounding farm buildings built from London stock bricks.

The edges of the boards, painted in bright colours and carefully planed, further emphasise this horizontal pattern and subtly guide the eye towards the painted window sills. Though visually sophisticated, the design utilised basic timber construction techniques and simple materials in a manner that could easily be assembled by a team of unskilled volunteers.