About Us
“Craftedspace have a sensitive and collaborative approach with a strong professional style. They created an imaginative community space that is invaluable to its residents.”
Ryland Llewellyn, Urban Renewal, Caerphilly Borough Council
Craftedspace makes bespoke, crafted architecture for private clients and cultural organisations working in regeneration, social inclusion and the arts.
We value warmth, simplicity and the natural world and try to bring the outdoors in, as far as possible. We also value the act of making and use physical models as well as virtual models in our design process. Jenny Hall is the founding director. She is an architect, carpenter and artist. Her work is inspired by E.F. Schumacher’s philosophy of ‘Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.’
The studio’s response to the urgent political and ecological agenda for social change and climate action is to create space for connection, exchange and belonging through holistic and innovative problem solving and collaboration, grounded in sustainability. Craftedspace offers a participatory design service to support multi stakeholder projects at the strategic and conceptual design stage to create better outcomes for everyone affected by a project.
We work on a variety of projects, including residential and community architecture, as well as art, research and teaching.
People
We value key relationships with the associates we collaborate with regularly as well as the wider network of professionals who provide project specific services such as ecological studies, engineering services, surveying skills and specialist design and fabrication.
Jenny Hall
Founding Director & Architect
Jenny is an architect, carpenter and artist. Sustainability has provided the context for her work, stimulated by a fascination with vernacular architecture. Her practice hones the character, functionality and quality of space to create dwellings and cultural spaces that are a pleasure to inhabit. She prototypes ideas through physical model making.
Jenny has received awards from Wales Arts International and The Arts Council of Wales to research and exhibit her work developed at Fiskars, Finland and The Wood Program at The Alvar Aalto University. She lectures on Interdisciplinary Practice at Aberystwyth University and is a Build Tutor on the Masters in Sustainable Architecture course at the Centre for Alternative Technology.
Tabitha Pope
Associate Architect
Tabitha Pope is an architect specialising in collaborative design, self-build and immersive spaces. She has a deep understanding of zero carbon architecture, circular design and low impact materials honed at the Centre for Alternative Technology and ZEDfactory. With her training in carpentry and interest in reclaimed materials, she founded the design and build collective Recycled Venues from 2006-2011.
In 2013 she set up in practice to create award-winning immersive experiences for clients such as Greenpeace UK and Anagram. Tabitha is a knowledge worker, helping to facilitate group decision-making processes at an institutional level, and an educator at The University of West England.
Marc Rees
Associate Artist
Marc is a Wales based, internationally renowned interdisciplinary artist whose practice focuses on site-specific and community-responsive work. His projects dig deep into multi-layered histories of locations to expose unusual details. He then, in collaboration with artists and community participants, takes the materials - the facts, anecdotes, artefacts, stories, images and characters, to create composite portraits of a place, that audiences encounter in an immersive experience - composed of installation, film, sound, archive, permaculture, protest and performance. Architecture and scenography galvanise these creative elements and the audience together.
Rosie
Associate Arts Producer
Rosie is a freelance arts producer and a director of Articulture. She is experienced at delivering outdoor arts in public space, meaningful audience engagement and forming strategic connections across sectors. She is particularly skilled at shaping processes.
Articulture supports the development of outdoor arts that reimagines the participants, the place and the possibilities of art, engaging diverse communities in dynamic and life changing ways in the places they live.
Karina Kolesnikaite
Architectural Designer
Karina graduated with First Class Honours and Distinction from The Universty of Portsmouth and The Centre for Alternative Technology where she studied MArch Sustainable Architecture. Her Final Design project explored the sustainable re-imagining of Reading Prison as a community hub for heritage and the arts.
Moving to Wales to take up a full-time position with Craftedspace, Karina now lives in a cabin overlooking the Dyfi estuary where she makes time to re-purpose second hand clothing and develop her passion for foraging and processing nature’s bounty.
Clients
Aberystwyth University
Arad Goch Theatre
The Centre for Alternative Technology
Caerphilly County Borough Council
Culture Action Llandudno
Ceredigion County Council
Ceredigion Museum
Eisteddfod Genedlaethol
Franwen
Greenpeace UK
Gwynedd County Council
National Theatre Wales
Mac Birmingham
Machynlleth Comedy Festival
Montgomery Scouts
National Dance Company Wales
Ceredigion Museum. Image by Iris Thorsteindottir
Caradoc’s Hideout. Image by Giles Thaxton
Sustainability
Craftedspace has signed up to Architects Declare, a network of architectural practices committed to addressing the climate and biodiversity emergency. We want to support our clients develop the most appropriate, and as far as possible, the most ambitious sustainability outcomes. The RIBA Plan of Work can help clients visualise the timeline of a project and help embed strategic thinking early enough so it can be effective
Good health & wellbeing are one of the Sustainable Outcomes that the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) seeks to champion in its response to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The other five outcomes focus on principles of sustainability and the twin targets to create homes and buildings that have net zero embodied carbon and use net zero operational carbon. Net zero refers to a reduction in the demand for energy and materials to a level that can be met solely by sources that do not emit greenhouse gases.
Research and Teaching
Some projects benefit from a thorough research phase, where a knowledge base is enlarged to open up all possibilities. Some of these make it off the page into installations and others exist as theoretical pieces of work informing future projects.
Room Model for Private Client. Image by Jenny Hall
Media
Video: The Hollow Town Highlights by This Project
Review: Wales Arts Review: 'Hollow': Mining for stories by Karen Westendorf
Review: a-n review: Hollow by Ellen Bell
Article, online: Architects Journal: Culture 6 April: Jenny Hall's restackable installation opens in Aberystwyth
Review: Welsh Reader NWR 110: Jenny Hall’s Hollow at Aberystwyth Arts Centre by Claire Pickard
Article, print & online: Cambrian News: Thinking outside the box in print 31 March, online 3 April
Article, print: Humans of Aberystwyth: 23 March on Facebook
Image, print & online image: The Times: Metal Work in print 24 March and on twitter @Times Pictures
Article, online: Wales Arts Review: Hollow: Getting inside the art online 14 March
Article, print: Ego Aberystwyth: Where Minecraft and Fine Art Meet in print March edition 2016