Urban Rooms

The Urban Rooms at the Farrell Centre provide a permanent exhibition space where visitors can explore the present-day city of Newcastle and Tyneside, while also imagining how it might evolve in the future. Through interactive displays, models, and participatory installations, the spaces encourage reflection and dialogue, giving people the chance to share their own ideas about the city.

As fabricators, Raskl was commissioned to bring to life various bespoke elements across the project. These include scaffold-style shelving and seating, fitted with Stormboard panels made from recycled plastic. In addition, we worked with artists whose works are part of the exhibition, producing custom art-pieces and display structures.

The Farrell Centre is a £4.6 million retrofit of a Grade II listed Victorian building in central Newcastle, part of Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. The project was designed by Space Architects and Elliott Architects in close collaboration with the Centre’s director, Owen Hopkins.

In its inaugural exhibition, More with Less: Reimagining Architecture for a Changing World, the Farrell Centre worked with several studios and collaborators, including Office S&M, McCloy + Muchemwa, Dress for the Weather, and the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University. The architectural-ideas studio CAN also designed key components of the Urban Rooms themselves.

Our role was to produce and assemble components designed by others: transforming concepts into tangible, durable elements that suit the industrial scaffolding aesthetic, while supporting the flexible, participatory character of the Urban Rooms.