The Level Centre, Matlock, Derbyshire
- Client: First Movement Trust
- Principal designer: Clash Associates Ltd
- Principal engineer: Price & Myers
- Principal contractor: Wildgoose Construction
- Contract value: £841,000
About the project
The Level Centre is home to First Movement, which develops arts projects with people with learning disabilities. It provides performance spaces, studios and technology for video and audio link-ups with a mobile outreach unit.
The brownfield site, formerly a dairy, is at the edge of the Peak District National Park. The architects wanted the building to contribute to renewal of its immediate surroundings and also rural regeneration over a larger region.
The brief was developed closely with the building’s users. Full-scale building fragments, such as doors, windows and corners of rooms with different proportions and lighting conditions, were constructed and the responses of people with physical and learning disabilities recorded. Natural light and clarity of spatial organisation emerged as priorities.
This traditionally procured building was constructed swiftly and to high standards. Contemporary materials relating to the area and the industrial vernacular of local mill buildings were used. Hand-made bricks and pre-weathered grey/green zinc blend into the valley and surrounding hills. Low-technology, high-insulation and high-mass construction, and natural lighting and ventilation, create a low-energy, low-maintenance building.
Judges' comment
"A striking new hub for the arts on the edge of the Peak District National Park."
