# Project Description The Bridge to Home Emily Saunders Summary Final work My name is Emily Saunders and I am a Part 1 BA Architecture graduate from Central Saint Martins. I'm driven by a commitment to feminist spatial practice, with a particular focus on how the built environment can support healing, autonomy and safety, especially for women and marginalised communities. Alongside design, I am deeply engaged in architectural research and writing, using critical theory and personal narrative as tools to investigate the lived experience of space. My name is Emily Saunders and I am a Part 1 BA Architecture graduate from Central Saint Martins. ... College Central Saint Martins Course BA (Hons) Architecture Graduation year 2025 The Bridge to Home connects the gap between public and private dwelling. There is a need to design for public and community integration (especially given the friction and disparity of the neighbouring boroughs and surrounding site context). The Bridge To Home intends to do exactly that, create a bridge between the community, refuge and finding a sense of home and belonging amongst a community of women and children. My work explores the intersection of domestic space, care ethics, and power structures, challenging conventional norms and reimagining housing as a site of support rather than control. The ground floor has been intentionally designed to act as a civic hub, a site for community action and engagement, especially given the existing social urban context of borough disparity, disconnected communities, isolated residences and distinct programmatic zoning of the area. The reimagined structure no longer serves cars, it now serves people. Specifically, it serves women and children seeking refuge, solidarity, and safety, as well providing a key social, cultural and communal service to the surrounding site. The building’s ground floor operates as the civic heart; a public threshold that softens the hard edge between the private interior and the bustling street. A semi-open market spills outward, blurring inside and out, and enabling residents to sell handmade goods, grown produce and other items directly to the public. Here, women reclaim visibility, and their labour is no longer hidden behind domestic walls but celebrated publicly. The building is a refuge that reclaims the vertical city for those most often excluded from it. But this is not just a place to retreat. It is a place to reimagine how to live together. On the first and second floors, the building opens into a shared domestic realm, it that privileges collectivity, care, and autonomy over isolation. The key users of the space are agents in their own right, and therefore the space is specifically designed to accommodate their needs and encourage the expression of agency and autonomy in domestic environments. There is the complete rejection of traditional gendered roles, domestic environments and standard ways of living, with a key focus on a blend between private and communal living. A large, double-height kitchen and dining area form the social core. Framed by exposed concrete and softened with recycled timber surfaces, this is where women cook, eat, talk, and find routine again. The act of preparing a meal becomes shared work, shared ritual, and shared agency. The main driving force behind the design was how to weave wellbeing and healing into the routines of daily life and dwelling. Final work View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery Research and process View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery Share this project The Bridge to Home connects the gap between public and private dwelling. There is a need to design for public and community integration (especially given the friction and disparity of the neighbouring boroughs and surrounding site context). The Bridge To Home intends to do exa... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Gender Activism Places & Spaces