JW3 Jewish Community Centre London, Finchley Road Building, JCC Hub

JW3 Jewish Community Centre, London

Finchley Road Project, Hampstead building design by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands (LDS)

8 Oct 2013

JW3 Jewish Community Centre in London

Jewish Community & Arts Venue

Design: Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands

Location: Finchley Road, Hampstead, north west London, UK

JW3, London’s newest community and arts venue, is now open to the public. The newly constructed £12m building on the Finchley Road in Hampstead will become a destination venue for London, open to all who have an interest in Jewish life.

photo © Hufton+Crow

Inspired by the successful Jewish Community Centre (JCC) of Manhattan, JW3 has been ten years in the making. Funded by Dame Vivien’s Clore Duffield Foundation and other private donors, and designed by award-winning architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, JW3’s vision is to be at the heart of a unified, diverse community, with a programme inspired by and engaged in Jewish arts, culture, learning and life.

photo © Hufton+Crow

JW3 is located, as its name suggests, in NW3 on the route between central London and the city’s Jewish heartlands to the north. Sitting directly opposite the Camden Arts Centre, the venue establishes a lively new cultural hub for north London.

The purpose built 35,000 sq ft building is made of durable materials – brick and (cast) stone, detailed with brass. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands’ design is composed of a number of simple architectural set-pieces – the tower and an elegant pavilion accessed by a bridge that spans a sheltered piazza – and is a composition of simple rectilinear forms that provide great flexibility, creating a loose-fit structure to respond to the tests of time.

photo © Hufton+Crow

To support JW3’s ambitious programming, the building features diverse facilities arranged hierarchically over four storeys, with the most public at ground level spilling out onto the piazza, which will host food markets and outdoor cinema as well as ice-skating during the winter.

The heart of the building is Zest, JW3’s lower ground floor restaurant, bar and café. Run by award-winning Ottolenghi-trained chefs, Zest will provide delicious Modern Jewish cooking throughout the day, from coffee and freshly baked pastries in the mornings to multi-course al fresco dinners on the piazza at night.

photograph © Nina Solugubenko

Next to the restaurant is a double-height, multi-purpose hall. Retractable bleacher seating creates a 268-seat auditorium for performances and events, whilst the space seats 200 in banquet mode for public and private functions. On the other side of the café is a 60-seat cinema that will host film festivals and talks.

The first floor reception is reached from Finchley Road via a bridge over the piazza. On the mezzanine and first floors are a learning resource centre, a dance studio with sprung floor, drama and art rooms, multi-functional education spaces and a fully equipped demonstration kitchen.

photograph © Maria Spann

The top floor of the building is occupied entirely by the day nursery, with its own dedicated outdoor play space. Run by Active Learning, the nursery provides 86 places for children aged six months to five years.

photograph © Matt Wain

Alex Lifschutz, Director of Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, said:

“JW3 offered us an opportunity to explore the meaning of a 21st Century community centre and how a building can help catalyse cultural output. The new building had to be welcoming to Jews and non-Jews, to respect Jewish traditions but, in our view, it also had to be an engine-room of new ideas – challenging, irreverent and experimental.

We felt it essential that here culture should be created as well as consumed and fundamental to our approach was to create a robust building that can be adapted to the needs of the community today and in the future.”

photo © Hufton+Crow

JW3’s launch season’s programme of 1,300 events and activities between October and December includes instantly recognisable names such as Ruby Wax, Zoë Wanamaker, Edmund De Waal and Kevin Spacey.

Open from 7.30am to 11pm daily, JW3 represents a step change for London’s Jewish Community, providing it and everyone interested in Jewish life with a world-class building and a high-quality programme of events equal to the very best in the capital.

Jewish Community Centre London images / information from Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands

Jewish Community Centre

JW3 Centre for Jewish Life

image from architects
JW3 Centre for Jewish Life