Sheffield: 100-home co-living scheme nears completion
The Hive, our 100-home co-living scheme for Grantside, is nearing completion. Designed around community, connection and wellbeing alongside active ground-floor commercial space.
The scheme explores how co-living can extend the experience of home beyond the individual apartment, combining private living space with shared amenities that encourage interaction while allowing residents to choose how much they engage with the wider community.
At its heart is a central courtyard, creating a shared focus for the development. A level 1 communal terrace is overlooked by balconies and breakout spaces, whilst at ground-floor, retail creates active frontages on three sides and invites the wider public into the ground floor courtyard.
Shared amenities are integral to the co-living model. Co-working space, a gym, cinema, yoga studio, laundry and shared lounges sit alongside communal kitchen and dining facilities, encouraging residents to cook, eat, work and spend time together.
At roof level, a communal allotment provides another shared space for residents. Designed to encourage social interaction and wellbeing, it also supports biodiversity and sustainable food production, with beehives managed by a local organisation. The level-access rooftop garden/allotment and amenity pavilion as communal facilities for all residents.
The architecture responds directly to Sheffield’s industrial and craft heritage. A weathered-steel frame expresses the building’s construction, with profiled weathered-steel panels and perforated screens incorporating patterns associated with the local crafts industry.
The Hive has been designed with a net zero carbon ambition, prioritising locally sourced, low-maintenance materials with high recyclable content.
Together, these elements create a co-living model in which private homes, shared spaces, environmental performance and opportunities for social interaction are considered as part of one integrated approach
"The Hive is about creating much more than a collection of individual homes. Hive allows us to consider how architecture can support interaction, flexibility and wellbeing as part of everyday life. The ambition is to give residents the privacy of their own home alongside a rich variety of shared spaces to enrich the daily lives of the collective, creating a place that feels connected both internally and to the wider Kelham Island community.”
— Ian Walsh, Director
