Brutalism is often defined by its honesty. It expresses structure and material without ornament, favouring raw concrete, brick and exposed elements over decorative flourish. While the style is celebrated for its clarity and strength, it has also been criticised for prioritising function over the emotional needs of the people who inhabit its spaces.
The extension to Heywood’s Civic Centre seeks to bridge that gap. While embracing the bold civic presence associated with brutalist architecture, the design introduces a more humane layer, one that considers how people move, gather and feel within the building. Transparency and permeability shape the extension’s layout. From outside, glimpses of everyday life inside the café – people meeting, talking, pausing over coffee become visible from the square. These subtle moments of interaction help to signal welcome and familiarity, reducing the sense of formality that can sometimes make civic buildings feel distant or intimidating.
Completed in early 2026, the project refurbished and extended Heywood’s 1960s civic venue through a comprehensive £5.5 million transformation. At its heart is a modern, flexible and fully accessible 500-seat multi-purpose performance space, complemented by a new community café that opens directly onto Peine Square. While the intervention celebrates the building’s architectural heritage, it also repositions the Civic Centre at the heart of Heywood’s town life, enabling an expanded programme of performances, exhibitions and community events.
Left: Entrance to building prior to works. Right: Entrance upon completion of works.
The renewed venue supports a wider programme of performances, exhibitions and community events, creating an adaptable platform for arts and culture. Equally important is the transformation of the building’s accessibility and public interface, ensuring that the Civic Centre can be experienced and enjoyed by the whole community.
The design of the extension carefully respects the building’s brutalist origins. New brickwork was meticulously colour-matched to the existing masonry, reinforcing the monochromatic palette that defines the original structure, particularly its distinctive blue brick surfaces. Rather than competing with the historic fabric, the extension quietly extends it.
Photograph of brick colour matching on site
Facing Peine Square, the front of house café becomes the building’s most visible civic gesture. Internally lit spaces glow outward into the square, projecting warmth and activity beyond the building’s façade. This sense of invitation continues inside, where planed timber finishes introduce warmth and tactile richness, contrasting with the more austere blue-purple brick surfaces of the original structure. The result is a subtle rebalancing of brutalism’s language: the architecture retains its solidity and presence while becoming noticeably more inviting.
Chamfered edge development
The extension also responds carefully to its wider urban surroundings, particularly the architectural presence of Heywood Library. Positioned along the northern edge of Peine Square, the new façade introduces a more permeable and active edge to the public realm, deliberately contrasting with the library’s more enclosed elevation along the square’s eastern side. Together, the two buildings create a subtle dialogue: one solid and introspective, the other transparent and outward looking.
To ensure the new structure complements rather than dominates its neighbour, the extension is chamfered along its eastern edge. This subtle architectural gesture reduces the perceived mass of the addition while preserving clear sightlines to the library’s façade from across the square.
The form of the extension emerged through a series of massing studies exploring how the building could best respond to patterns of movement across the square. Early sketches revealed that the volume needed to be broken down to avoid presenting a single monolithic edge. Instead, the massing was shaped to align with existing pedestrian flows, creating active edges that engage with the life of the square.
Before the project, Peine Square functioned largely as a transitional landscape: a place people moved through rather than a destination in its own right. Yet it also offered moments of pause: a bench, a quiet corner, a place to sit and reflect. The design builds on this existing character, working with the established movement patterns while introducing new opportunities for engagement and social interaction.
In reframing Heywood Civic Centre, the project demonstrates that brutalism need not be cold or intimidating. Through careful interventions of transparency, warmth, and human-centred design, the extension proves that architectural language can evolve to meet contemporary social and cultural needs. It stands as a model for how civic buildings can balance heritage, bold presence, and emotional resonance.
Author’s note
For me, architecture has always been about more than form, material or technical resolution.
With a personal interest in how spaces make people feel and how design can shape a sense of belonging within everyday environments, this becomes especially important in civic and community buildings, where architecture has the potential to either welcome people in or quietly signal that a space is not meant for them. Solid façades, limited views inside and inward-facing elevations can unintentionally make civic spaces feel distant or overly formal. Opening the building up and introducing permeability became an important way of addressing this. Glimpses into the café reveal moments of everyday life: people meeting, creating, sharing a coffee or simply pausing during the day.
I was interested in how small, thoughtful interventions could shift the character of Heywood Civic Centre without compromising its architectural identity. The original brutalist structure carries a strong civic presence; however, the extension explores how warmth, transparency, and material contrast can soften that presence and make it feel more approachable.
When buildings allow people to see themselves within them, to feel comfortable entering, staying, and returning they begin to form a meaningful relationship with the communities around them.
