Maria Nazaryan

Gather and Grow is a community centre which fulfils and satisfies people's needs. The initial influence came from the Childcare Crisis, which is the ongoing lack of accessible, affordable, and high-quality childcare options available for parents and carers to pick from. The crisis represents the difficulties, struggles, and strains the childcare sector has been experiencing in the United Kingdom currently and over the past several years. Ultimately, this has led to many issues for people, especially those in low-income areas. There are many factors that have led to the ongoing problems causing the crisis. For example, rising costs, limited support, and the built environment. This has caused parents to begin to struggle and, as a result, not be able to manage work and home life. Children’s early years can be impacted because of all these issues, causing a negative strike on their development. My proposal towards this was to create an environment that would positively affect the childcare crisis by designing an adequate space that catered to all the users' needs. I chose to do this by designing a community centre, Gather and Grow, with the main function of the space being a full-time childcare play area for early childhood children. As well as this, in order to accommodate all members of the community, other experiences are featured at the centre, such as working, calming, and socialising spaces for adults. All parts of the space have been carefully researched, iterated, and intentionally designed for the users in order to benefit them and their well-being, whether that be the ergonomic seating, play facilities, or community interaction spaces.