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Granary Yard

Location
Leeds
Year
2021
Typology
Workplace
Area
620 m²
Interior design
Wigglesworth
Photography
—
Contractor
—
01

Spend it on the parts everyone uses

Eleven tenants, eleven budgets, and a landlord who wanted each studio finished to the same standard. We argued the opposite: keep the studios plain and put the money in the stair, the kitchen and the yard, because those are the only rooms all eleven see every day. A tenant can paint their own wall. Nobody paints a stair.

The stair is the one piece of joinery in the building that was not value-engineered. It is also the only thing anyone photographs.
A studio as handed over
The same unit, eighteen months in
One kitchen, not eleven kitchenettes. It costs less, it is used more, and it is the only reason tenants who share a building actually meet.

The yard, which was a loading bay and is now the lunch room.

Original hoist doors, glazed in place
New openings, deliberately not matched

The full depth of the store, before the partitions went in.

A shared building is only as good as the rooms nobody owns.

Post and beam left exposed through every studio. Boxing them in would have gained about four per cent of floor area and cost the only thing all eleven units have in common.
The landing, wide enough to stop in
Which is where most of the letting happens
A tenant can paint their own wall. Nobody paints a stair, which is why that is where the money went.

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Ferrier Rooms

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