Case study · (add: year)
Bold Theatre
A five-week field-research project at Bold Theatre in Elephant & Castle. Interviews, on-site observation, and an intervention built around the contrast between a plain exterior and an active interior.
Researcher & designer (group project)
Context
Bold Theatre sits in Elephant & Castle, south London. From the street, the building reads as plain — easy to walk past. Inside, it runs workshops, rehearsals, and community sessions. The five-week brief asked us to spend real time on site, understand what was happening inside the building, and respond to what we found.
Field research
- Repeated visits to the site at different times of day. - Interviews with people connected to the theatre: (add: who — staff, participants, neighbours, passers-by). - Observation of how the building was used vs. how it was perceived from outside. - Note-taking, photos, and short recordings as the raw material.
The insight
The strongest thing we found wasn't a missing service or a broken journey — it was a perception gap. The exterior hid the warmth and activity that the interior actually held. People walking past had no signal that any of it was happening. The design question became: how do you make the inside legible from the outside without flattening what makes the place specific?
What we made
(add: a paragraph describing the intervention — façade work, fabric, mirrors, public interaction, or whatever the final outcome was. Include one or two images if possible.)
My role
(add: what you specifically did in the group — research lead, interviewer, prototyper, documentation, etc. Be specific, not generic.)
What I'd do differently
(add: one honest reflection — a decision you'd revisit with what you know now. Keep it short.)