Forge Wood Community Centre, Crawley

New Community Centre

Mildren was appointed to design and build a new community centre.

The new community centre is founded on conventional foundations, suspended block and beam slab with a partial steel frame and masonry externals. Using brick and block around the frame, the building also features yellow and red brick featuring quoins and corbelling details as shown in our photos.

The main hall has sliding partition doors subdividing the rooms and allowing for flexibility in its use. The floor is sprung oak with a separate hall, kitchen and two servery areas to the café space. There are seven additional storage rooms for community use.

The project included infrastructure and engineering works, parking, hard and soft landscaping including tree planting around the car park, along with shrubs and turfing. We installed a cycle shelter.

Three air source heat pumps power the underfloor heating throughout the whole ground floor along with the hot water system.

Social value initiatives

We embedded ourselves within the local community during the project, working with Forge Wood School and hanging signage for them. Regular letter drops were carried out notifying locals of any disruption during the project.