The Paradise Classroom was designed and built for the Paradise Cooperative, an urban community garden promoting nature connection, food growing and community cohesion in Wandsworth, London. Flimsy Works used a combination of reclaimed materials and off-the-shelf products to create a new sheltered space in place of a dark old yurt, inspired instead by the lightness of allotment greenhouses.
Opal polycarbonate panels provide light-filled but ventilated shelter, enclosing tiered seating formed of breezeblocks bound by ratchet straps. Timber columns are reinforced with 'socks' and 'scarves' only where necessary to prevent deflection and eight cross-lap jointed rafters above form a strong reciprocal roof structure, creating a clear span beneath free of columns.
We were given a strict requirement to maintain the yurt’s existing footprint and volume, which enabled us to reuse the tropical hardwood railway sleepers from this structure. New materials that were brought in were only cut where necessary, minimising the amount of waste produced in this project.
We assembled the structure over four days, facilitating construction workshops with the Paradise Co-operative’s community of garden volunteers.