Spacemakers

Projects

New, New England House

We’re proposing a new future for New England House, a council-owned factory in Brighton – using a model made out of bread crates.

New England House is a brutalist 10,000 sq m tower block, opened in 1963. For over sixty years, the building provided affordable workspace to a diversity of makers and businesses: artists to architects, bakers to coders, wood-workers to wind-turbine testers. In 2025, the city council closed the building indefinitely due to fire risks. The obvious options are binary: demolish or sell it.

We’re proposing a new future for the building. The model, created by artist Tom James, uses eight bread crates to represent the eight levels of the building. Each one is filled with everyday materials linked to the building’s past, to tell a story of how the building could work.

The bottom three crates propose new public uses of the building: a public art space, an open access workshop, and a public canteen (complete with a canteen tray, cutlery, a plate and an espresso cup). One crate contains modular shelf brackets, to propose a modular building (easy to change and rent by the hour); whilst another uses sheep’s wool and an Evian bottle to propose a cheap retrofit and a grey-water system. The top floor is reserved for croissants – sourced from Real Patisserie, the bakery which formerly occupied the bottom floor of the building.

We want to use the model to get the city talking about what it wants from the building in the future. We know that we can’t waste buildings in a climate emergency. We can find a future that supports affordable workspace in perpetuity, makes more money for the city, and repositions it as a public factory. We want to create a New, New England House.

The model builds on our long-term campaign to reimagine the building which began in 2018, supported by Turner Prize-winning architects Assemble, graphic designers Europa and maker and educator Peter Nencini. The creation of the model was supported by Maker Assembly, funded by Comino Foundation. Photography by Lewis Ronald.

To find out more or to get involved, follow @newnewenglandhouse on Instagram.

Information

About

We create radical, bottom-up regeneration projects, which aim to get inside the machinery of urban regeneration, and use it for good instead of evil.

We specialise in reactivating dead buildings and dead spaces, harnessing unused potential in a community, and creating projects that address the economic and social issues that are causing the problem in the first place.

We work with local authorities, private developers, architects and community groups. Our work has produced new cultural infrastructure and interventions across the country, and been featured across the national press.

Spacemakers is led by Matt Weston and Tom James, and was founded by Dougald Hine. We're based in Brighton, London and Stockholm.

Website designed by Jon Cannon, built by Rich Cook.
Consultancy

Along with our project work, we have a strong history of consultancy.

We’ve been part of the Greater London Authority’s Special Assistance Team since its inception in 2011. During this time, we’ve worked with London boroughs on projects as diverse as public space, workspaces, local economics and identities. We’ve also worked nationally, advising on market squares in Basingstoke and university campuses in the midlands. And we’re part of NESTA’s New Radicals, a network of radical organisations changing Britain for the better.

We’re often brought in early on, to work out what the right strategy for a project is long term. We use the experience we’ve gained from our own projects to advise others on how best to bring their buildings, spaces and communities back to life. We’re honest, we give critique and we have ideas.

We do feasibility, problem solving and ideas generation, from a single day to an entire year. If you have a project that could do with some new thinking, please get in touch.
Contact

info@spacemakers.info

+44 (0)7740 345828