Eleven Magazine’s Tonle Sap competition

Eleven Magazine recently ran a design competition for concepts to improve lifestyles of the floating communities living on Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia – for more details and to vote for your preferred entries, please click here. Hub’s entries are numbers EC0185 and EC0186!

As part of the London Design Festival, the Hub team developed their design ideas, which formed the centrepiece of their exhibition in September. This UNESCO wildlife biosphere is regarded as the ‘heart’ of Cambodia and is home to over a million people in unique floating villages.

Initial ideas identified the need to improve agricultural practice by empowering local floating self-sufficient communities and to promote sustainable collaboration.

Main image courtesy of Eleven Magazine.

The reinvention of Margate

The birthplace of the British seaside is undergoing a renaissance and the town is beginning to bloom again. A sunny day was spent sampling Margate’s seaside experience including David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary Centre and Dreamland, the oldest surviving amusement park in the UK. With Wayne Hemingway at the design helm, the restored funfair has woken up the sleepy seaside town and given back the buzz it once had in its heyday.

Since opening in 2011 to mixed local reaction, Chipperfield’s gallery has attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists and launched a vibrant gallery scene in the old town, along with a host of welcoming cafes, vintage stores and other independent retailers. Margate’s seafront is not quite Brighton yet, but it has generated a bit of the energy found there.

The new retro theme park is reassuringly authentic, the rides, lights and décor are sourced from parks around the world, with a kitsch and playful backdrop of candy stripe colours and lots of upcycled furniture and fittings. The roller room turns into a venue for bands and DJs, and a large outdoor concert arena is planned to open next year, providing much needed entertainment options for the area.

Having grown up in East Kent, and spent many hours working at and enjoying the previous incarnation of Dreamland before it closed in 2003, it is great to see the sad, run down seafront in Margate get a new lease of life.

By Beverley Gibbs

Open Studio for London Design Festival / Queen’s Park Design District

Thank you to everyone who made it to our Open Studio for London Design Festival 2015. It was the first year that Hub have taken part in the QPDD, and we enjoyed welcoming visitors of all ages to see our work displayed in the studio. Watch this space for 2016 events – and we hope to see you again next year!

Open Hub party – LDF / QPDD

Hub’s offices were transformed to welcome clients, consultants and local businesses, showcasing an exhibition of current and completed work, and our responses to a competition on the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. This UNESCO wildlife  biosphere is regarded as the ‘heart’ of Cambodia and is home to over a million people in unique floating villages.

Thank you to everyone who came and who made the evening a success.