St Margaret’s is a Church of England parish church in Putney and it was in desperate need of improvements. Our new designs for the church included an infill linking the worship space to the church halls, doing away with a pokey side alley. We introduced much needed modifications to the church hall elevation facing the church gardens and provided the parish with a new parish centre, that feels warm and welcoming, a community kitchen, accessible WCs and of course, much needed storage.

From a design perspective, we focused on making the most of the current facilities and providing flexibility for how each space is used, all within the budget left as a legacy for the church by Margaret Worth. Our designs are pared back and modern, allowing people to enjoy the sense of space and to celebrate the church’s features. We introduced a simple but effective lighting scheme and plenty of windows to help make the church and parish centre feel truly inviting. We included roof windows as well to bring light into low ceiling areas and provide a view back to the original building.

The project created independent access to all of the Church buildings, which now allows activities to be taking place in the church, the crypt, the two halls and the new Parish Centre. This is a huge increase of capability for the parish, which previously had very little in the way of community space, enabling new activities for the community. This will allow new community groups to start up and existing ones to expansion and for these groups to be better served by improved facilities. The project started in August 2022 and was completed by Christmas 2023.