Unit 2C - Adapt-Adept: Bella Tam

RE:BEESTON is a furniture recycling centre combined with a set design studio, which redirects unwanted and defective household goods from landfill.

I’m a fourth-year MEng student from Cambridge, passionate about reducing waste through material reuse and designing community-focused schemes that prioritise sharing over individual consumption. In my architectural design work, I enjoy being able to integrate technical and artistic skills from other disciplines such as figure drawing and embroidery, with an emphasis on detail and sensitivity.

Bella Tam, Fourth year architecture student

RE:BEESTON

RE:BEESTON is a furniture recycling centre combined with a set design studio, which redirects unwanted and defective household goods from landfill. Furniture will be disassembled into components and used to produce scenography for local theatres around Nottingham.

The building is clad with old washing machine panels and other white goods, highlighting the scale of fly-tipping and improper furniture recycling. Steel columns are reclaimed from the Broadmarsh Car Park demolition and windows salvaged from local demolition projects.

The Miura fold is an origami pattern which is modular, collapsible, and sound absorbing, used in the building’s glulam roof, for an acoustic barrier to the adventure playground and retractable canopies over the outdoor theatre and festival space. These provide flexibility for hosting a range of public events in Beeston.

Unit 2C Adapt/Adept focuses on adaptive architecture, which involves buildings designed to be flexible, interactive, and responsive to their occupants and environment, operating at varying timescales, from seconds to years.