Architect
Powell and Moya
with Eric Chick
Developer
Kingsclere and Whitchurch RDC
Contractor
Percy Chick Builders
Planning Authority
Kingsclere and Whitchurch RDC
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Powell and Moya were a young firm already famous for their competition win with the Churchill Gardens scheme in Pimlico (Award 1953). But Highworth Cottages may in the long run prove to have been even more influential as a housing model. For this unassuming terrace conceals a radical approach to planning and construction which was at least ten years ahead of its time.
Philip Powell had worked with the engineer Eric Chick on the wartime steel-framed Howard House, and when Chick returned home after the war to run the family building firm at Highworth he renewed the partnership, after winning a contract to build 8 houses for Kingsclere and Whitchurch Rural District Council.
Chick's expertise with materials, and Powell's flair for planning and detailing produced a highly economical timber frame and crosswall solution which caused a considerable stir at the time; and the 'Highworth House' was to be widely imitated by housebuilders in the following decade.
Virtually nothing has needed alteration in No.1 over the years, and the house performs as well today as when it was built. The continuous glazing still floods the rooms (and storage cupboards) with light. The side-by-side 'clean entrance' and 'dirty entrance' (with a lobby to shed boots, coats, shopping and coal) still work brilliantly. And there's a staircase so fresh and elegant in its design that it could have been built yesterday. Touches like these, achieved within the constraints of postwar austerity, present a clear vision of what can be achieved in an ordinary, everyday house.
In fact, this is one of few housing developments where the original artist’s impressions are not only matched but surpassed by the reality. The planting has matured magnificently, and the patios and planters display every possible variation in treatment, from minimalist austerity through an Italian family’s vegetable garden to fiery blazes of crocosmia and pelargoniums. There is no vandalism, no graffiti. And the overlooking patios and upper walkway has proved an invaluable security feature: sharp eyes and tongues deter the inevitable ne’er-do-wells in an area prone to drug abuse. Surveillance is enhanced by a significant proportion of retired people, many original residents, and again strengthened with CCTC at the two accesses to the scheme for non-residents to make their way to small commercial tenants, such as a dentist, optician and tanning house within the block. This is closed off again each night as these premises shut up.
CGCA’s allocation policy has proved its worth, bolstered by the formation five years ago of a Tenant Management Organization by the energetic residents’ association. This runs the block, employs an on-site manager, and maintains the CGCA’s criteria for tenant selection. A strong community has weathered the consequences of over-optimistic detailing (waterproofing, insulation, inadequate planter depths), a multiplicity of stakeholders - Right to Buy has spawned absentee landlords) - and the dead hand of bureaucracy (Westminster Council, which retains overall control, will not let a resident caretaker with a young son swap his one bedroom flat for a family flat tenanted by an elderly couple who want smaller accommodation, because of ‘the rules’). But the residents are resilient. Despite these problems, and those of dealing with an investment company freeholder whose interest appears to be in the shops and car park below (which Westminster should have purchased on GLC’s demise), they would not part with their stake in a remarkable oasis of calm in Central London, or the community they have struggled so long to maintain.
Odham’s Walk demonstrates that design has to consider management to produce a successful result for housing of any complexity. Good design by itself can rapidly fail without effective management. Good management can only alleviate the consequences of poor design. But the two working together will succeed, even in the face of ill-considered legislation, conflicting ownership responsibilities and a testing local environment.