TACO!
We designed a new home for TACO! (Thamesmead Arts and Culture Office) on Cygnet Square, beside Southmere Lake at the heart of the Thamesmead Estate: a gallery, event space, bookshop, café and broadcast studio for radio RTM.FM.
Our design draws on brick interventions made by residents into the concrete brutalist structures of the estate. We built the new gallery walls in the style of a domestic house, timber-framed with a brick outer leaf in Ketley brown brindle. The inset panels lift out, opening the gallery into the foyer for performances. A bull-nosed stretcher course recalls the civic brickwork of the 1960s.
We kept the services at high level and used underfloor heating, so the walls stay clear and the rooms flex between exhibitions and events. The soundproofed radio studio faces the café across a sliding glazed window, connecting performers directly with their audience. From the corner café, parents can watch children in the adjoining play space over coffee, and the same paving runs inside, so the gallery is part of the square and part of the community around it.
Featured in the Architects’ Journal, April 2023
Mix Awards 2024 - Positive Impact & Public Sector - Finalist
“What Manalo & White has made for us is a home… They dared us to think differently and to be ambitious, and they looked after us as they did it. The project has been transformative for us. And that’s exactly what architecture should be.”
Mat Jenner, TACO! Director
Installation views: Got Damp by Avril Corroon (March 2023), Wendy by Frances Scott and Chu-Li Shewring (May 2023), Running on Ahead by Charlie Godet Thomas (September 2023), Hello Neighbours by Gusty Ferro (October 2024), Flood Drill by Adam Shield (October 2025)
Photography by David Grandorge, Marcus Quigley and Tom Carter
