Restore — Jessop and Cook Architects

RESTORE, fleet meadow

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Restore is an award winning Oxfordshire-based mental health charity that supports people to take control of their recovery, using gardening and other activities to help rebuild self-esteem, develop skills, and lead meaningful lives.

Restore’s key aims are:

To provide people who have mental health problems with recovery and coaching support.
To work with the whole community to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.
To be governed by environmental principals in all aspects of its work.

Restore provide recovery Groups in 6 locations and sub-contract delivery in 2 further locations. One of the locations run by Restore is at Fleet Meadow Allotments in Didcot. The current building has served it’s purpose and nearing the end of it’s life span. The charity are intending to replace their building with a permanent recovery centre that will meet the needs of the user groups activities and comfort levels and be more suitable for the setting.

The group at Fleet Meadow runs activities in gardening, woodwork and arts and crafts. The proposed new building gives opportunity to expand the activities offered to include cooking classes and promote taking pride in preparing and eating healthy produce grown in the gardens. Restore’s vision is to replace the existing portacabin with an energy efficient building, guided by sustainable principles, to provide a new facility that is efficiently designed to embody the personality of the charity.

The design priorities include minimal environmental impact with efficiency of construction to reduce waste of materials and achieve economical construction and running costs. The design for the new building has been based on early input from contractors and off site manufacturers, to create an affordable and practical solution over a phased approach. The new building will be timber frame and made in a factory to maximise quality, minimise waste and to ensure the building is the most sustainable and climate conscious it can be.

Jessop and Cook Architects have been asked to design the new building and are in the process of preparing a planning application with an aim to start construction in 2024.

The nature of the charity means that funds are limited and it has taken a long time to get to this point in the project. This will greatly limit the scope of the construction they can afford right now, and therefore a phased approach is proposed.